Climate Dissent: The Climate Debate Continues

J. Scott Armstrong, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, and a leading expert in the field of professional forecasting, believes that prediction attempts are virtually doomed when scientists don’t understand or follow basic forecasting rules. He and colleague Kesten Green of Monash University conducted a “forecasting audit” of the 2007 IPCC report and “found no references…to the primary sources of information on forecasting methods” and that “the forecasting procedures that were described [in sufficient detail to be evaluated] violated 72 principles. Many of the violations were, by themselves, critical”. _Forbes

CLOUDs Over Climate Science (via AT)
A new peer reviewed paper from Lindzen and Choi keeps the focus on the critical "climate sensitivity parameter." If the climate models have exaggerated climate sensitivity, their projections will be worse than useless.

...the climate sensitivity for a doubling of CO2 is estimated to be 0.7 K (with the confidence interval 0.5K – 1.3 K at 99% levels). This observational result shows that model sensitivities indicated by the IPCC AR4 are likely greater than than the possibilities estimated from the observations.

...This modest warming is much less than current climate models suggest for a doubling of CO2. Models predict warming of from 1.5°C to 5°C and even more for a doubling of CO2 _

The paper discusses the relevance of a lower climate sensitivity than models are currently using. (Full study here)

The upcoming Lindzen-Choi paper follows closely on a recent paper from Spencer and Braswell, which -- using satellite observations -- calls into question other assumptions used by climate modelers. Another recent paper suggested that the most popular computer climate model exaggerates warming by 67%.

A PDF report on today's Global Warming Policy Foundation website traces the history of increasing alarmism and obfuscation of the limitations of climate models by the IPCC and IPCC - affiliated climate researchers. As politics, ambition, and greed became more closely tied to the "cause" of global warming catastrophe, self-interested collective bias came to replace objective scientific judgment more frequently (PDF). (More on the downward evolution of IPCC standards here)

Massive redistribution-of-wealth schemes have somehow become tied to the global warming agenda at the highest levels of government and inter-government. Literally $trillions are on the table in this high stakes game of faux environmental poker. And yet the basis of all of this hoopla! -- alarmist climate models -- are seemingly not ready for prime time. What is worse, the very ground-level data which is fed into climate models is unreliable.

The advanced world is in a twin quagmire of debt and demography. To any objective observer, this would be the worst possible time to commit struggling economies to an grand absurdist gesture based upon little more than "garbage in -- garbage out" computer models.

This would be a good time to take a look at your political leaders, and how they are likely to play this high stakes poker game as it approaches the end-stage. Choose well.

Remember -- Even the IPCC once admitted that it was impossible to accurately predict future climate states:

“In climate research and modeling, we should realize that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.” _IPCC 2001 PDF_via_Forbes

More: The US National Institue of Standards and Technology says that we need to get a lot better at measuring greenhouse gases -- and their sources and sinks. (NIST workshop report available here) Without better observations and measurements over the full range of climate related parameters, climate models are no better than an academic circle jerk.

In a Climate Where Science is Being Raped by Political Correctness, Can the Scientific Method Be Restored?

The video above, "Restoring the Scientific Method," is taken from the recent 6th International Conference on Climate Change. Follow this link to all the videos from that conference. (via Anthony Watts) The ICCC was instituted to provide a forum where an open exchange of information regarding issues of climate could be exchanged, without regard to political correctness.

But climate is just one small -- albeit multidisciplinary -- area where science is engaged. Political bias distorts outcomes from a wide array of topics where political correctness has taken an interest in science. Of course, none of the other politically hot topics in science have declared their intention to take over the advanced world's economies and industries, as climate science politics has done. So climate clearly warrants citizen oversight on a large scale.

But if science can be distorted and prostituded in the area of climate, it can be hired out to powerful interests in other areas as well. Scientific misconduct and outright fraud appears to be more common than previously thought, in the age of a growing dependency on government for research funding.

In Hitler's Germany, science was bent to do the will of the Fuhrer, to prove the superiority of "the master race." In Stalin's USSR, science was perverted to prove the superiority of the socialist system. Dissenting (honest) scientists were sent to the Gulag or worse.

In the modern world of government-financed science, groupthink in both funding agencies and in laboratories plays a powerful part. If the scientist does not play to the prevailing expectations of the financing agency and the power-clique controlling scientific publishing, he may lose his grant, his lab, his ability to publish, and his livelihood. Scientists generally understand the rules that must be obeyed to get along.

That is why it is so fascinating when scientists are willing to go against the prevailing winds -- because that is when scientific revolutions and paradigm changes tend to happen.

Most scientists willing to publicly go against the climate orthodoxy of doom, are retired from active grant-seeking and publication in journals. With nothing to lose, they are free to speak out. But a few active and outspoken climate researchers are beginning to speak out against the closed and closed-minded nature of the orthodoxy. As the influence of these brave persons grows, the ability to restore the scientific method to climate studies at large also grows.

Can you think of some other areas where political correctness prevents or obstructs the open examination and discussion of scientific issues? These are the things that one rarely sees in the media. They are things that most persons have been conditioned not to mention or discuss. They are those things and ideas which must not be named.

But ideas do tend to get around in the era of tweets, social media, and new technologies.

Always focus on falsifiability, when looking at a scientific theory or idea. How could you prove it wrong? What near-term predictions can you make based upon the theory? If your predictions are set to fall on the year 2100, how can that "science" be called falsifiable in the year 2011?

Fake science avoids the risk of being tested. Fake science tries to shut down debate, using underhanded tactics and means. Fake science hides in a faux consensus, ignoring the fact that true science is not about taking votes to reach a final conclusion, or reaching a final, beyond-debate agreement in committee.

Why the Obama / Gore Carbon Hysteria Orthodoxy Is Wrong

A short 9 minute video based on the scientific findings of climatologist Roy Spencer, explaining why the IPCC climate orthodoxy and associated media / political carbon hysteria is turning out to be wrong. More at WUWT

According to the Greenland ice core charted above, temperatures were warmer 1,000 years ago, and warmer yet 2,000, then 3,000 years ago etc. CO2 levels have also been significantly higher in the past, particularly during some of the Earth's most prolific evolutionary eras.

It has been profitable for scientists and faux environmentalists to jump on the climate alarmist bandwagon. It was easy to fool the politicians, academics, and government funding agency bureaucrats -- and particularly easy to fool "science journalists" -- causing them all to panic.

Thanks to Obama administration suppression of coal, offshore oil & gas, nuclear power, and opposition to expanded use of Canadian oil sands, the US almost toppled into a state of energy starvation -- saved only by the fortuitous rise of the shale oil & gas industry. And the Obama administration is even trying to shut down shale fracking, behind the scenes! How stupid is that?

Healthy economies need energy. Lots of energy. When a US president bases his energy policy on a pseudoscientific theory of carbon hysteria, the entire nation suffers.

Politically Correct Delusions and Madnesses of Crowds

The fates of modern democratic societies are dependent far more upon the behaviour of crowds -- or the mob -- than most citizens would like to believe. Popular culture is determined by mob tastes and preferences, and the often unpredictable behaviour of mobs on election day is bemoaned by leaders of all political parties -- at one time or another. Mob behaviours are guided by mob beliefs, which are as often as not, delusional. Here is a good example of a modern popular delusion from Princeton Physics Professor William Happer:

I want to discuss a contemporary moral epidemic: the notion that increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide, will have disastrous consequences for mankind and for the planet. The “climate crusade” is one characterized by true believers, opportunists, cynics, money-hungry governments, manipulators of various types—even children’s crusades—all based on contested science and dubious claims.

...We need to be vigilant to keep our land, air, and waters free of real pollution, particulates, heavy metals, and pathogens, but carbon dioxide (CO2 ) is not one of these pollutants. Carbon is the stuff of life. Our bodies are made of carbon. A normal human exhales around 1 kg of CO2 (the simplest chemically stable molecule of carbon in the earth’s atmosphere) per day. Before the industrial period, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was 270 ppm. At the present time, the concentration is about 390 ppm, 0.039 percent of all atmospheric molecules and less than 1 percent of that in our breath. About fifty million years ago, a brief moment in the long history of life on earth, geological evidence indicates, CO2 levels were several thousand ppm, much higher than now. And life flourished abundantly.

Now the Environmental Protection Agency wants to regulate atmospheric CO2 as a “pollutant.” According to my Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, to pollute is “to make or render unclean, to defile, to desecrate, to profane.” By breathing are we rendering the air unclean, defiling or desecrating it?

...As far as green plants are concerned, CO2 is not a pollutant, but part of their daily bread—like water, sunlight, nitrogen, and other essential elements. Most green plants evolved at CO2 levels of several thousand ppm, many times higher than now. Plants grow better and have better flowers and fruit at higher levels. Commercial greenhouse operators recognize this when they artificially increase the concentrations inside their greenhouses to over 1000 ppm.

...We would be perfectly healthy in a world with little or no atmospheric CO2—except that we would have nothing to eat and a few other minor inconveniences, because most plants stop growing if the levels drop much below 150 ppm. If we want to continue to be fed and clothed by the products of green plants, we can have too little CO2.

The minimum acceptable value for plants is not that much below the 270 ppm preindustrial value. It is possible that this is not enough, that we are better off with our current level, and would be better off with more still. There is evidence that California orange groves are about 30 percent more productive today than they were 150 years ago because of the increase of atmospheric CO2.

...A rare case of good correlation between CO2 levels and temperature is provided by ice-core records of the cycles of glacial and interglacial periods of the last million years of so. But these records show that changes in temperature preceded changes in CO2 levels, so that the levels were an effect of temperature changes. This was probably due to outgassing of CO2 from the warming oceans and the reverse effect when they cooled.

...The earth’s climate has always been changing. Our present global warming is not at all unusual by the standards of geological history, and it is probably benefiting the biosphere. Indeed, there is very little correlation between the estimates of CO2 and of the earth’s temperature over the past 550 million years (the “Phanerozoic” period). The message is clear that several factors must influence the earth’s temperature, and that while CO2 is one of these factors, it is seldom the dominant one. _WUWT

Full article by Professor Happer at First Things

Another popular delusion of politically correct crowds is a strong belief in the desirability of replacing modern coal, gas, and nuclear power plants with wind and solar power.

Mass delusions do not require reason or logic to gain converts. They only need to project the view that "everyone knows that ..." "every schoolboy knows ..." or "everybody believes that ..." This false sense of security in perceived numbers of believers has taken in a huge number of pseudo-intellectuals within the academy, in journalism, in politics, and in popular media and entertainment. All the better to project the delusion of universal belief.

In hindsight, such delusional madnesses are quite clearly absurd and without rational foundation. But when one is living through the delusion, the primeval instincts of the species hold sway.

Basic Reading on crowd behaviour:

Gustave le Bon: The Crowd
Charles Mackay: Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
Both titles above are also available for download at the Gutenberg Project

More on Gustave le Bon from Against Politics

23 May 2011 More: The increasingly rowdy and violent mobs known as government unions should be seen a particularly ominous portent for the future, to anyone who cares about freedom and independent action.

A Return to "Snowball Earth"

via NextBigFuture
The natural state of most planets is cold, very cold. Planet Earth owns some prime orbital real estate near its sun, but even so it has experienced periods of Snowball Earth, when virtually the entire planet was covered with snow and ice. If humans are not careful how they approach the chaotic issue of Earth's climate, they could very well push the planet back toward that strange and very cold attractor. Here is one way it could be done:

HIGH-FLYING BLIMPS, based on existing protoypes, could support a hose no thicker than a fire hose (above) to carry sulfur dioxide as a clear liquid up to the stratosphere, where one or more nozzles (below) would atomize it into a fine mist of nanometer-scale aerosol particles.

The cost to construct a Stratospheric Shield with a pumping capacity of 100,000 tons a year of sulfur dioxide would be roughly $24 million, including transportation and assembly. Annual operating costs would run approximately $10 million. The system would use only technologies and materials that already exist—although some improvements may be needed to existing atomizer technology in order to achieve wide sprays of nanometer-scale sulfur dioxide particles and to prevent the particles from coalescing into larger droplets. Even if these cost estimates are off by a factor of 10 (and we think that is unlikely), this work appears to remove cost as an obstacle to cooling an overheated planet by technological means. _NextBigFuture

Remember the idea of using "near space" as a waystation to Earth orbit? The type of lighter-than-air craft involved are very similar. One big difference between the two schemes is that the climate repercussions of massive cooling of the planet could lead to the dieoff of billions of humans, due to widespread crop failure.

A similar geoengineering climate scheme involves the use of stratospheric mirror-balloons to reflect any unwanted solar radiation back into space. The mirror-balloons -- unlike the sulfur dioxide aerosols -- would be controlled so as to block sunlight, allow the sunlight through, or to focus sunlight on a particular area of land surface, ocean, or atmosphere. The weapons potential of the mirror-balloon geoengineering scheme should be obvious.

Human scientists barely understand the salient mechanisms of Earth's chaotic climate. Certainly stratospheric water vapour concentration is also likely to be extremely important in the overall scheme of climate.

But once humans begin to actively interfere with the radiative balance of Earth on a grand scale, they risk pushing the scale toward a catastrophic ice age, which would be incalculably worse for the human population of the planet than any realistic temporary warming scenario from anthropogenic greenhouse gases.

People are getting de-sensitised by the constant doom-and-gloom predictions from faux environmentalists and climate pseudo-scientists. Particularly when many of these predictions are decades old, and no closer to coming true than when they were originally published or proclaimed. The IPCC in particular is losing credibility by the day.

But the momentum from all the decades of carbon hysteria and faux environmental doom will take time to dissipate. Many academics, journalists, and other slow thinkers will take years or decades to die off -- or wise up to the obvious fact that their most closely held beliefs are not supported by the evidence or the passage of time.

The SO2 injection scheme pictured at top is a good example of a "file it and forget it" idea. Anyone who wants to push the planet into an ice age so as to trigger a massive human dieoff.orgy may want to pursue the idea further, however.

Oceans: More Complex and Resilient than We Know

Wiki
Popular culture is soaking in the dogma that "humans are killing the oceans" and "man is destroying the planet." But science is so abysmally ignorant about what is actually happening in the seas and on land, that the faux environmentalist message of doom is based upon a blooming ignorance, and little else.

Take a recent declaration of "plankton apocalypse" by researchers from Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. Faux environmentalists seized on the single, unsubstantiated report as confirmation that the end of the world is near. More knowledgeable and intelligent persons knew -- or at least sensed -- that the Dalhousie report was hagwash. And so it seems to have been. Much of modern published "science" dealing with the environment and climate is unmitigated hogwash, albeit politically correct.

But there is much valid and valuable science to be learned from the oceans, if one can work objectively and without prejudicial biases.

Physorg

"The big mystery about bacteria is what they are doing in nature," Whitman said. "The organisms metabolize compounds for their own needs. We need to understand what they are getting out of it to understand what it means for the ocean, and now it will be possible to look at the environmental importance of this process and how it's regulated." That will help to answer the "why" of the two sulfur fates. _Physorg

Notice that the U. of Georgia scientists are microbiologists -- not "climatologists." Although the microbiologists link their study to climate -- for reasons of funding among others -- their results help to expose the abysmal ignorance of climate "science" with regards to the oceans and cloud formation.

SeaFriends

Scientists have discovered that marine diatoms, tiny phytoplankton abundant in the sea, have an animal-like urea cycle, and that this cycle enables the diatoms to efficiently use carbon and nitrogen from their environment.

The researchers, from the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) and other institutions, published their findings in this week's issue of the journal Nature.

The team, led by lead author Andrew Allen from JCVI and co-author Chris Bowler, Institute of Biology, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, believes that the cycle could be a reason for the domination of diatoms in marine environments, especially after upwelling events--the upward movement of nutrient rich waters from the deep ocean to the surface.

In response to ocean upwelling, diatoms are able to quickly recover from prolonged periods of nutrient deprivation and rapidly proliferate. _Physorg

NatureHere again, we see a significant finding that relates importantly to global carbon balance, ocean phytoplankton levels, and atmospheric oxygen levels. How many other momentous and paradigm-changing discoveries are waiting for humans to discard their politically correct prejudices in order to better perceive the reality of the universe?

Taken from an earlier posting at Al Fin the Next Level

Congratulations to Anthony Watts: Best Science Blog 2100 WUWT!

WUWT Best Science Blog
Watts Up With That has won the 2011 best blog award in the category of "Science." The award is called the "Bloggie", perhaps in imitation of the Emmy or the Grammy. Regardless, it is a distinct honour, and one that is well-deserved by Anthony Watts and his team.

Anthony Watts first became well-known in the blogosphere with his vitally important "Surface Stations" project, to determine the quality and validity of the important climate data being collected by the large network of USHCN surface stations. This data becomes the raw material for climate models -- which could easily determine the fate of $trillions of government spending and redistribution in the not-so-distant future.

From there, Watts founded the "Watts Up With That?!" blog, which has rapidly grown to the most popular source for high quality dispassionate and sceptical information regarding the global warming political and quasi-religious movement.

I’ll simply say “thank you dear readers”, and leave it at that. I also owe thanks to the many moderators and guest bloggers that make WUWT what it is. You are winners too.

I have a temporary badge up, a permanent one follows when they have it all completed. The main page here http://2011.bloggi.es should have the announcement soon – Anthony _WUWT

The award is well deserved. Here's hoping for many more of the same in the future.

The result of the conscientious efforts of bloggers such as Anthony Watts, Roger Pielke Sr., and Steve McIntyre is a turning away from a politicised carbon hysteria, back toward a more honest science of climate -- at least in some circles.

The jury is still out on other attempts at increased transparency in climate studies.

The Natural Chaos of Climate

Earth's climate is driven by ongoing cycles on many levels. When natural resonant cycles overlap -- at whatever level -- they can contribute to a chaotic pattern.

When the overlap starts, many higher-order resonances are also involved so fairly large areas of phase space have their tori destroyed and the ensuing chaos is "widespread" since trajectories are now free to wander between regions that previously were separated by nonresonant tori. _Wolfram

We begin with a pictorial overview of the natural components of climate -- sun, ocean, land, atmosphere, volcanoes, ice & snow, living organisms -- all of which appear to be subject to periodic cycling of various types, with potentially chaotic overlap.

Volcanoes can exert very strong influences on climate. It appears as if volcanic activity can occur at widely separated locations almost simultaneously, due to underlying geologic activity. Whether or not such tectonic movements occur "cyclically," the impact of such large scale volcanic activity can easily contribute to a naturally chaotic climate.

Natural ocean oscillations are thought to be driven by periodic solar variation, pictured below. These ocean oscillations such as El Nino (PDF) drive cycles of atmospheric heating and cooling, cycles of ice & snow, and strongly influence populations of living organisms worldwide.

Solar variation influences the size of the heliosphere, and determine the extent of galactic cosmic ray infiltration into the solar system and Earth's climatic system. This cyclic variation of cosmic ray bombardment on Earth's atsmosphere is thought to influence the amount of cloud formation in the atmosphere, which influences planetary ensolation and radiative heat balance.

The Milankovich orbital cycles occur with different periodicity in the tens of thousands of years, creating overlapping resonances with potential chaotic results on climate.

Another multi-thousand year orbital cycle which could easily influence global climate, is the slightly varying angle of Earth's solar orbit to the ecliptic. As the planet falls slightly below the plane and risis slightly above the plane of the ecliptic -- over tens of thousands of years -- the thickness of intervening dust between Earth and Sun varies. This periodically alters the ensolation of the Earth's system. Such cycles may have subtle effects, but in combination with other overlapping resonances, these overlapping effects may push the system into a chaotic result.

The image above illustrates the heliosphere, which can expand and contract according to the Sun's periodic activity. The fluctuating heliosphere is an important line of defense against galactic cosmic rays -- which are very likely to influence Earth's climate.

The Solar system is passing through an enormous interstellar cloud, which may or may not have an influence on climate. But it is a rather fascinating topic all the same.

Understanding natural chaos in climate is a crucial matter for policy-makers, who must determine the fate of US$trillions of future spending of tax dollars.

For science to provide the greatest benefit to those who fund it, it must focus upon genuine problems which need to be solved. As long as scientists have open, sceptical minds, they are more able to look at problems from varying perspectives -- from the close-in small picture, to the far-out big picture.

The last thing that tax-paying humans need is for their tax-paid scientists to fly off on a narrow tangent which ignores the larger picture. That would be a very wasteful tragedy.

You're Going to Look Pretty Stupid When the World Ends

h/t Lubos

Apocalyptics who do not happen to be religious tend not to realise or believe that they fall into the category of apocalyptics at all. You might even call them apocalyptic deniers. Which highlights the fact that humans are not actually rational creatures. They all have religions, even if they are unwilling to call them by that name.

Thinking Through the Greenhouse Effect

An imaginary planet surrounded by a thin transparent shell a few kilometres above the surface (vertical scale exaggerated). The top of the transparent shell has been temporarily removed to clarify the physical layout. For our thought experiment, the transparent shell completely encloses the planet, with no holes. There is a vacuum both inside and outside the transparent shell_WUWT_Eschenbach
Willis Eschenbach imagines a thin transparent shell "greenhouse" completely surrounding the Earth. Then he thinks through the implications of this shell -- with regard to radiative balance and global temperature. As a simplified model of the Earth's actual "greenhouse effect," it serves well enough as a useful starting point. And we know that the starting point is merely a place where one begins, not where one ends.

This is not Willis' first thought experiment about the greenhouse effect. He presented an earlier thought model called "The Steel Greenhouse," but the transparent shell greenhouse is a bit closer to the actual situation. But Willis warns readers that this thinking analogy will simply not serve. Then he asks his readers, "Why not?" Comments are entertaining and occasionally enlightening.

One commenter linked to the "Bad Greenhouse" website, which provides a sort of FAQ for the greenhouse effect.

Another comment points to "Greenhouse Confusion Resolved" by Stephen Wilde, Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society. Worth a read.

The CO2 web is a useful look at atmospheric, ocean, and terrestrial effects of CO2, with a number of downloadable papers.

Once you think you have a handle on the greenhouse effect, you may want to read a bit about climate feedbacks in Warren Meyer's Layman's Guide to AGW

Finally, you may wish to observe expert opinions from both pro-AGW and a more skeptical (and better reasoned) anti-climate doom viewpoints. Richard Lindzen provides a great counterpoint to Andrew Dessler in the video below, filmed at the U. Virginia Law School. Dessler goes first, followed by an absolutely incisive Lindzen. The last half of the video is lawyers debating some policy points of AGW, so you can watch that as you wish..  Video H/T Nuclear Green

No one said these things were going to be easy to understand. After all, Al Fin started out as a believer in AGW (possible doom) and Peak Oil (doom), as well as having been a deeply religious soul. It was not easy to change any of those beliefs. But given a significant amount of applied logic and data, the changes came. We were born into a sea of delusion, and not one of us escapes it entirely. But we really should try, all the same.

Power to Control Everyone in the World: Controlling the Sun

NBF

Today, we take another look at Josh Hall's climate machine, a system which reaches into the outer atmosphere in order to control how much sunlight can get through. Brian Wang has more:

The Hall Weather Machine is a thin global cloud consisting of small transparent balloons that can be thought of as a programmable and reversible greenhouse gas because it shades or reflects the amount of sunlight that hits the upper stratosphere. These balloons are each between a millimeter and a centimeter in diameter, made of a few-nanometer thick diamondoid membrane. Each balloon is filled with hydrogen to enable it to float at an altitude of 60,000 to 100,000 feet, high above the clouds. It is bisected by an adjustable sheet, and also includes solar cells, a small computer, a GPS receiver to keep track of its location, and an actuator to occasionally (and relatively slowly) move the bisecting membrane between vertical and horizontal orientations. Just like with a regular high-altitude balloon, the heavier control and energy storage systems would be on the bottom of the balloon to automatically set the vertical axis without requiring any energy. The balloon would also have a water vapor/hydrogen generator system for altitude control, giving it the same directional navigation properties that an ordinary hot-air balloon has when it changes altitudes to take advantage of different wind directions at different altitudes.

By controlling a tenth of one percent of solar radiation is enough to force global climate in any direction we want. One percent is enough to change regional climate, and ten percent is enough for serious weather control. _NextBigFuture

Of course, if controlling one tenth of one percent of incoming sunlight can force global climate "in any direction we want", what about 20% or 50%? (Can you say "Instant Ice Age?") Of course, we humans really do not know enough about global climate to be qualified to adjust solar radiation wisely.

In fact, such a scheme is far better suited for large-scale blackmail and ransom. "Either pay us $1 trillion or next year's crops are guaranteed to fail." Or, "Give us all of your oil output for the next 20 years at 1/2 the market rate, or prepare to live in total darkness for that period of time." Even worse: "Give us all the natural resources we may require, whenever we demand, or we will burn all your cities into ashes."

Control over sunlight gives you the power to cut insolation to virtually nothing, or to magnify incoming radiation to unbearable levels. It is an ultimate control over a regions ability to feed itself, a chokehold on a people's ability to survive.

With that kind of power, what would an Obama regime do? What would China's CCP do? What would Putin do, or Kim, or Chavez?

As we contemplate the grand schemes of geo-engineering climate, perhaps we need to consider the sociopathic nature of most of the world's current leaders. Who will be in control, and what might they do with these new powers?

The same type of persons who are attracted to piracy and organised crime, are also attracted to government leadership -- and for the same reasons. Power, loot, being above the law. Give them more power at the peril of your lives.