We grow accustomed to our monsters, fearing them less over time. Familiarity breeds contempt. So, we continually invent new monsters, or at least shift focus to older and less familiar monsters in order to titillate ourselves. For example, as nuclear power and genetically modified organisms have lost their capacity to terrorize us we have shifted our fear reflexes to climate change and even come to see the old monsters as potential allies in the struggle against the new ones. Another monster that is currently being domesticated and harnessed for draft work is geoengineering.

Rivers fed by melting snow and glaciers supply water to over one-sixth of the world's population--well over a billion people. But these sources of water are quickly disappearing: the Himalayan glaciers that feed rivers in India, China, and other Asian countries could be gone in 25 years. Such effects of climate change no longer surprise scientists. But the speed at which they're happening does. "The earth appears to be changing faster than the climate models predicted," says ­Daniel Schrag, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at Harvard University, who advises President Obama on climate issues.

Well, as noted in earlier posts it may be 300 years rather than 25 before this climate monster appears, but just go with it for now.

"The likelihood that we're going to avoid serious damage seems quite low," says Schrag. "The best we're going to do is probably not going to be good enough."

This shocking realization has caused many influential scientists, including Obama advisors like Schrag, to fundamentally change their thinking about how to respond to climate change. They have begun calling for the government to start funding research into geoengineering--large-scale schemes for rapidly cooling the earth.

The problem with climate change as the kind of hobgoblin that can panic us into the arms of ever greater government control is that those controls are now widely understood to be ineffectual. The moment has passed when we would willingly abdicate, thus the old monster of geoengineering is being curried.

John Holdren, the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, broached the idea soon after he was appointed. "Climate change is happening faster than anyone previously predicted," he said during one talk. "If we get sufficiently desperate, we may try to engage in geoengineering to try to create cooling effects." . . .

Well, Holdren is a lunatic with a long history of shouting fire in the theater and seeking to capitalize on the ensuing panic, but he is now part of the vermin in the White House that came to town with Obama, and so in a position to do more damage even if his manias are no more credible than in the past.

It isn't that I have ever found fault with nuclear power, genetic engineering or geoengineering. They never seemed like demons to me though they are powerful and need to be used with care commensurate with that power. It's that the current attempts to rehabilitate these old demons is almost comical. If you can't shoot them, join them. And it isn't that funding research is objectionable. The problem here is that a frenzy of funding prompted by climate panic provides so many opportunities for graft and corruption which will not be scrutinized in the rush to defend against the new monster.

We need to hold the mark, be smart in funding and selection, and have the maturity and courage to identify and tase those who seek to incite panics and profiteer on the ensuing chaos.