The fast changing weather patterns around the world have been blamed on the rising levels of carbon dioxide from the millions of cars, trucks, ships, aircraft and factories belching exhaust from our excessive use of carbon-based fuels.

But what if there is another silent factor at play here? As the planet warms we have all been suspicious of those contrails criss-crossing our skies. Some believe military aircraft are regularly spewing fine particles of aluminum, boride and other metals designed to deflect the heat of the sun. Others theorize that the government is using new technology like HAARP to stop hurricanes and severe storm fronts. But instead of helping, the technology is making everything worse.

That is just one conspiracy theory.

Another unexpected theory was introduced recently by Joel Carlinsky, who says he once studied orgone biophysics under Dr. Eva Reich, the daughter of the late Austrian-American scientist Wilhelm Reich, inventor of the infamous "cloudbuster."

Those who know about Dr. Reich know that he designed the cloudbuster to manipulate orgone energy in the atmosphere to produce rain. Reich, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, claimed that orgone was a natural cosmic energy that streams through the body as well as all things in existence. He believed that illness was caused by depletion or blockages of this energy within the body. He treated patients by having them sit in "orgone accumulators" designed like large, hollow capacitors.

Reich’s radical treatments and his books attracted the attention of the press, and eventually led to accusations of fraud. His books on orgone energy were seized and burned, and Reich was eventually tossed in prison where he died in 1957.

His work and his books were not forgotten, however, and Reich has since gone down in American history as a legend and somewhat of a folk hero. Some say Reich was a genius who made such an amazing discovery, the medical community conspired to shut him down and bring a halt to his work before it put doctors out of business.

According to American mythology, Reich’s "cloudbuster" was considered so dangerous by the government, that anyone caught building such a device was subject to arrest and imprisonment. We are not sure that is true, since the Internet is ripe with plans for building these devices.

"I have been campaigning for laws to require some responsibility and transparency in the cloudbusting field," Carlinsky wrote. "As of now, anyone who wants to build a cloudbuster and do whatever he wants with the weather is free to do so."

While long known as a natural way to regulate a damaged or stagnated atmosphere, the cloudbuster operators now in the hands of "incompetent irresponsible operators" may be causing the severe flooding and other weather-related damage and led to the deaths of thousands, Carlinsky said.

He calls them "cheap and easily-made weapons of mass destruction." If we allow this to continue unchecked, he believes "the atmosphere will become too unreliable to allow us to survive."

So what is a cloudbuster? It is a long hollow metallic tube pointing from the ground to the sky. Nobody knows just why it works but it seems to be an effective way to forcing clouds to produce rain.

On his website, Carlinsky warns that "cloudbusters are now in second place as a cause of climate breakdown and atmospheric destabilization. Most of the deterioration in climate stability that is conventionally being ascribed to greenhouse gases is, in fact, being caused by backyard hobbyists playing with cloudbusters."

Carlinsky rebuts the greenhouse gas and increased carbon dioxide theories. He shows on his website how "the climate is changing but it is not getting warmer. It is also not getting colder. What it is doing is get ting warmer and colder. It is getting wetter and drier. In short, it is getting more random. It is getting more variable. It is getting more chaotic and fluctuating more widely. It is going to extremes. It is pulsating more rapidly and with greater amplitude."

So if hobbyists tinkering with cloudbusters are the second major cause of climate change, and Carlinsky believes the buildup of carbon dioxide has nothing to do with it, what does he think the major cause of our wild weather might be? He says it is the radioactivity from the man-made bombs, power plants and all of the other devices being used in hospitals and doctor’s offices.

Read his website to study Carlinsky’s theories. He offers an interesting argument that should perhaps be looked at seriously.