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.