There is an unfortunate bit of confusion over the ability of mankind to influence the weather.  Many conservatives rightly see in the ginned-up hysteria of ‘man-made climate change’ a tool in the hands of the globalist elite to increase their power over the lower classes – to restrict the latter’s ability to own property, or to eat certain foods, to travel, etc.  Folks like Patrick Wood and Marc Morano have been documenting that for years.

That said, those same conservatives take their opposition to phony ‘climate change’ claims to an unnecessary extreme – they deny that mankind has the power to alter the weather at all.  There is a protective kind of humility here, which we appreciate, which implies that the weather is in the hands of God, rather than man’s.  In a world without sin, it would be possible to agree to that and move along to other matters.  But in the fallen world, it is not.  Our Lord does indeed counsel us to be ‘innocent as doves,’ but also ‘shrewd as serpents’ (St. Matthew’s Gospel 10:16).  It is the shrewdness we need in analyzing the claims of weather alteration, not an excessive innocence.

In the world of sin, mankind has indeed advanced to the point of altering the weather/atmosphere.  Mainstream reports on this subject abound.

A company in Germany, Cloud Seeding Technologies, offers services to deal with hail, rain, snow, and fog.

Salon via MSN reports,

Yet Arizona State University law professor Karen Bradshaw knows firsthand that there are forms of weather control that do work.

“I became interested in cloud seeding after learning that the tiny, rural community of Mt. Shasta, Calif., near where I grew up, attempted to pass a local ordinance to prevent an electrical utility from cloud seeding,” Bradshaw recalled by email. She explained that a group of concerned citizens became concerned about the health effects of local cloud seeding efforts. Cloud seeding is the practice of introducing tiny ice nuclei into specific subfreezing clouds to create rain and even snow. While this can be a boon to the agriculture industry, residents of Mt. Shasta were worried after they read a scientific study about silver iodide showing up in fish populations.

“When I began to dig into that story, I was so surprised to learn about the history and prevalence of cloud seeding,” Bradshaw told Salon. “How was it possible that even environmental law professors did not understand how widespread it was? When I began mentioning the topic, people brushed it off as a conspiracy akin to chem trails; very few people were aware that weather and climate modification are real and happening. There is a UN Convention, federal statutes, legal cases and state research reports on the topic.”

Weather control opens up all kinds of implications, and not just the sinister, storm-generating kind. It raises questions about what is scientifically possible — and what is ethical. Examples include Project Stormfury, an attempt by the US government to weaken tropical cyclones by soaring planes into them and sprinkling them with silver iodide. Despite multiple attempts, it wasn’t effective because hurricanes are just too massive.

Attempts to modify hail storms and increase rainfall have been more effective. Operation Popeye, a weather modification project in North Vietnam and Laos during the 1960s American invasion, entailed more than 50 cloud seeding experiments. The goal was to lengthen the monsoon season, causing excessive rains and landslides that would disrupt truck traffic. The U.S. Department of Defense deemed the results “outstandingly successful,” with 82% of the seeded clouds producing rain within a brief period.

The Wyoming Water Development Office proudly details their cloud seeding program to enhance precipitation.

The AP reports on a current federal program to seed clouds in the Western States to refill the Colorado River.

Then there are the more exotic projects, such as guiding lightning using lasers.  Via Salon–MSN again:

New ways of controlling the weather are being researched. In January 2023, researchers reported in Nature Photonics that they’d successfully guided lightning discharges using lasers. “This work paves the way for new atmospheric applications of ultrashort lasers and represents an important step forward in the development of a laser based lightning protection for airports, launchpads or large infrastructures,” the authors concluded.

And creating an artificial aurora borealis using an ionospheric heater.  Scientific American this time:

The antennas belong to the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), a former U.S. military facility near the hamlet of Gakona [in Alaska—W.G.]. The array will beam 2.1 megawatts of radio energy into the ionosphere—the region that starts at 100 kilometers above the ground, where solar photons and charged particles crash into Earth’s atmosphere. There the radio signals will excite electrons and turn them into waves of relatively hot ionized gas, or plasma, in a narrow slice of sky. . . .

The facility is also going to be generating artificial aurorae. At full power, HAARP’s transmitter can produce a glowing plasma high in the sky that, although not as bright as the natural aurora borealis, is visible to the naked eye. Producing artificial aurorae has taught scientists unexpected lessons about how gases are ionized in the ionosphere, a process that helps protect Earth from harmful ultraviolet solar radiation. “Understanding how energy from the sun flows into the upper atmosphere is important for understanding the effect on Earth from extreme solar events,” Bristow says.

If conservatives ignore all this, then they place themselves in a precarious position, as the globalists will then proceed to use all these things to increase their power and control while conservatives remain blissfully unaware until some catastrophe strikes.

It is important to be on our guard against some scientific advances for another reason:  They will likely be used by the forerunners of Antichrist to pull the hearts of people away from God.  The much-beloved Elder and teacher, Athanasius Mitilinaios, in his renowned series of sermons on the Book of Revelation, says of this,

Beware of what‘s being exhibited at these civic cultural centers science fairs: new technological inventions, unimaginable gadgets, as well as attachments for the personal computer— all of which mesmerize the masses. All these things dazzle the masses to such a point that they inadvertently begin to develop a certain confidence in these novelties. When people are constantly bombarded by new strides in scientific and technological knowledge and the successes in science, they develop a sense of expectation that there will be more and more to see, until they get to the point of saying that they no longer need God…they deify technology every which way: “We do not need God to give us rain or snow. What is the purpose of doing a litany to ask God for rain? We will have the expertise to control weather conditions (via Fr. Peter Heers’s presentation).

But those faithful to Christ are not in a lesser position vis-à-vis the weather.  Throughout Church history, whether before Christ’s Incarnation in the Old Testament or afterwards in the New, the saints have been able to harness the weather for good goals, and this without advanced gadgetry/technology – rather, through their purity of heart and union with God.

This miraculous power of believers was foretold by the Lord Jesus himself:  ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father’ (St. John’s Gospel 14:12).

The Brother of the Lord, St. James, also makes reference to this in his letter:  ‘The prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects’ (James 5:16).

James Perloff goes into more detail in his short book on the subject of saints and their ability to work miracles, Missing Saints, Missing Miracles.

But let’s look at some of these weather-related miracles themselves, to see what is possible by going down the right-hand path.  Moses the God-seer brought down hail upon the people of Egypt and also caused a thick darkness to descend upon that land (Exodus 9:22-23; 10:21-22).  His successor as leader of the Israelites, Joshua, caused the sun to stand still in the sky (Joshua 10:12-13).  The Holy Prophet Elijah brought the rains to an end for three years while also calling down fire from the heavens (I Kings 17 & 18).  All of this before the Age of Grace.

After the Incarnation of Christ and the descent of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost, these kinds of miracles have multiplied.  We have already noted some of them that St. Genevieve performed in France.  Here are a few others.

St. Porphyrios (+420) worked this wonder in Gaza:

In Gaza there were only three Christian churches, but there were a great many pagan temples and idols. During this time there had been a long spell without rain, causing a severe drought. The pagan priests brought offerings to their idols, but the woes did not cease. Saint Porphyrius imposed a fast for all the Christians; he then served an all-night Vigil, followed by a church procession around the city. Immediately the sky covered over with storm clouds, thunder boomed, and abundant rains poured down. Seeing this miracle, many pagans cried out, “Christ is indeed the only true God!” As a result of this, 127 men, thirty-five women and fourteen children were united to the Church through Holy Baptism, and another 110 men soon after this.

St. Scholastica (+543), the sister of the famous St. Benedict of Nursia, Italy, brought forth a great storm by her prayers:

At that time, the sky was so clear that no cloud was to be seen. The Nun, receiving this denial of her brother, joining her hands together, laid them upon the table: and so, bowing down her head upon them, she made her prayers to almighty God: and lifting her head from the table, there fell suddenly such a tempest of lightning and thundering, and such abundance of rain, that neither venerable Benedict, nor his monks that were with him, could put their head out of door: for the holy Nun, |95 resting her head upon her hands, poured forth such a flood of tears upon the table, that she drew the clear air to a watery sky, so that after the end of her devotions, that storm of rain followed: and her prayer and the rain did so meet together, that as she lifted up her head from the table, the thunder began, so that in one and the very same instant, she lifted up her head and brought down the rain.

Oppositely, St. Herman of Alaska (+1837), caused a raging storm to subside:

In 1842, five years after the passing away of the Elder, Archbishop Innocent of Kamchatka and the Aleutians, was near Kodiak on a sailing vessel which was in great distress. He looked to Spruce Island, and said to himself, “If you have found favor in God’s presence, Father Herman, then may the wind change.” It seems as though not more than fifteen minutes had passed, said the bishop, when the wind became favorable, and he successfully reached the shore.

Thus, there are two potentialities regarding weather alteration:  the scientific way of fallen man, and the miraculous way of redeemed man.  If conservatives or any others fail to acknowledge one or both of them, they will be less likely to safely navigate their way in this world.  For to deny any truth will leave one stumbling about in the darkness of lies and ignorance.  Acknowledging the truth, on the other hand – in this instance, about the weather – will allow men of good will to discuss ways to harness it (or not to harness it) in the most beneficial way possible.  Failing to do that will leave the globalists in the catbird seat, unchallenged in their development and deployment of a very potent technology – a situation that would rightly leave most anyone, whether saint or sinner, feeling quite uneasy.