Weather War?

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Weather War?

 

New evidence suggests US & Russia are embroiled in an illegal race to

harness the power of hurricanes & earthquakes

 

by The Daily Express

 

October 8, 2005

The Daily Express (U.K.) - 2005-07-16

 

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THE huge mushroom cloud soared skywards, the captain was gripped by

fear, believing his plane was about to be engulfed by the fall-out

from a nuclear explosion. After declaring mayday and ordering his crew

to don oxygen masks, the experienced pilot had the presence of mind to

record that the cloud measured an estimated 200 miles in diameter and

was tipped by an eerie light, like nothing he had seen before.

Eventually, it soared harmlessly into the atmosphere, leaving the

passenger jet to continue safely on its journey from Anchorage, in

Alaska, to Tokyo.

 

But far below, a fleet of fishing boats trawling the sea between Japan

and the Soviet Union was drenched by a violent but short-lived

downpour before the weather suddenly cleared. Nuclear tests and

volcanic activity were later ruled out but scientists concluded that

this was not a natural phenomenon. More than two decades later

suspicion still exists that the stunned airline crew and fishermen in

1973 were witnessing a sinister Cold War experiment, in which water

from the Sea of Japan was blown into the air to create clouds and rain.

 

British government papers, just released by the National Archives,

show that throughout the Seventies there was deep mistrust between the

two superpowers over environmental warfare. The documents reveal that

both the US, which led the field, and the Soviet Union had secret

military programmes with the goal of controlling the world's climate.

" By the year 2025 the United States will own the weather, " one

scientist is said to have boasted.

 

Since then, a United Nations treaty has been signed which bans

environmental warfare, such as causing earthquakes, melting the polar

ice caps and altering climate. But some experts believe that

clandestine work to create the ultimate weapon of mass destruction

continues.

 

These claims are dismissed by sceptics as wild conspiracy theories and

the stuff of James Bond movies but there is growing evidence that the

boundaries between science fiction and fact are becoming increasingly

blurred. The Americans now admit that they invested L12million over

five years during the Vietnam war on " cloud seeding " - deliberately

creating heavy rainfall to wash away enemy crops and destroy supply

routes on the Ho Chi Minh trail, in an operation codenamed Project Popeye.

 

It is claimed that rainfall was increased by a third in targeted

areas, making the weather-manipulation weapon a success. At the time,

government officials said the region was prone to heavy rain.

 

However this sort of rain-making experiment was nothing new. In

Britain, it has been alleged that before the devastating Lynmouth

floods in Devon in 1952, the RAF had been conducting secret

rain-making tests. Aircraft showered clouds with silver iodide, on

which water droplets formed, became heavy and eventually fell to the

ground as rain. In the next 12 hours nine inches of rain fell - 250

times the normal amount for August - and 35 people were killed.

 

Former North Devon MP Tony Speller, then a 22-year-old soldier who

helped in the relief effort, sought answers from the MoD.

 

" I have no doubt they were seeding in the area because there were RAF

log books to prove it, " he says now. " Of course the MoD denied any

knowledge but that is not to say it did not happen. "

 

Speller, now 76, adds: " I doubt we will ever know the truth. "

 

Early work on climate control was crude and unpredictable but it is

claimed that both the Americans and Russians continued to experiment

behind closed doors even after the UN ban in the mid-Eighties, and

both now possess sophisticated systems which are capable of

controlling the weather - with potentially devastating results.

 

In the US, the technology was developed under the high-frequency

active auroral research programme ( HAARP) - originally part of Ronald

Reagan's controversial Star Wars defence system. Based in Gokoma,

Alaska, the weapon operates by beaming powerful radio waves into the

upper atmosphere to alter weather patterns. Some experts claim the

system is already up and running, while others say it won't be ready

for another 20 years.

 

Michel Chossudovsky, professor of economics at the University of

Ottawa in Canada, who has studied official military documents about

HAARP, is in no doubt that the weapon is ready.

 

" There are very clear statements by the US Air Force to the effect

that weather modification technology is available. HAARP will be fully

operational by next year and could be used in actual military

situations, " he says.

 

(See

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle & code=CHO20040927 & arti\

cleId=319)

 

" To claim this system has any nonmilitary purposes is twisting the truth.

 

I don't think there are any peaceful applications - it is a weapon of

mass destruction, capable of major climatic disturbance. Part of the

beauty is that the enemy might never know that a weapon had been used.

I believe the UN agreement is certainly being violated. "

 

He claims that at least one British firm has been involved in its

development.

 

" It is time people began focusing on these weapons instead of

concentrating solely on global warming, " Chossudovsky adds. " Both are

a serious threat. "

 

The Russians are thought to have their own " weather steering " system,

called Woodpecker, involving the transmission of low-frequency waves

which are capable of disrupting the atmosphere and altering the path

of the jet stream. It is claimed that a prolonged drought in

California in the Eighties was caused by the blocking of warm, moist

air for many weeks.

 

According to Damian Wilson, a physicist with the Met Office,

controlling climate is a reality but not a precise science. " Clearing

fog by dropping dry ice into clouds is a proven technique which has

been around for decades, " he says.

 

" Large amounts of research have been invested in seeding clouds to

generate rain and it is done in countries where there are water

shortages. The problem is that it is unpredictable and you need clouds

to start with. The technology does not exist to make rain fall from

clear blue skies so it cannot be used in the desert to end droughts

and famines. "

 

WILSON believes it is possible to alter the course of a hurricane,

which could have enormous life-saving potential. The current mayhem in

the Caribbean and America's Eastern seaboard also shows what a

destructive weapon a well-targeted storm could prove.

 

The Americans used cloud seeding to try to control a hurricane in 1947

but the tactic backfired when it picked up strength and hit Savannah,

Georgia.

 

It is known that the US carried out further hurricane-manipulation

experiments between 1962 and 1983, under the codename Project

Stormfury, after it was calculated that a single hurricane contained

as much energy as all the world's power stations combined. More recent

projects have involved pouring tens of thousands of gallons of

vegetable oil on to the sea.

 

" Hurricanes gather their strength from the warm sea surface, " says

Wilson. " By spreading a large film of oil on the sea it would reduce

the intensity by cooling the surface. In theory it is possible to

change the path of the hurricane this way. It would not surprise me if

military research into controlling the weather goes on. As we suffer

more summer droughts in the south-east of England I would also expect

to see pressure for cloud seeding to be introduced in this country. "

 

It is not just the weather that has attracted the attention of the

military.

 

Scientists have also researched ways of triggering earthquakes. By

setting off small quakes, pressure could be released and a disaster

averted. But military scientists believe it is also possible to direct

powerful energy beams into vulnerable fault zones, causing the Earth's

plates to shift, creating a massive earthquake. Along fault lines

beneath the oceans, the same technology could be used to launch

devastating tsunamis.

 

Part of the problem in banning experiments involves agreeing a

definition of what environmental warfare is. It has been argued that

the famous Dambusters mission during the Second World War, when

bouncing bombs were used to flood the German industrial heartland,

were a form of environmental warfare.

 

Half a century later, the threat is still being taken sufficiently

seriously.

 

Former US defence secretary William Cohen warns: " Terrorists are

engaging even in an eco-type of terrorism whereby they can alter the

climate, set off earthquakes and volcanoes remotely through the use of

electromagnetic waves. It's real, and that's the reason why we have to

intensify our efforts. "

 

Owen Greene, director of research at Bradford University's department

of Peace Studies, believes efforts are continuing in secret to develop

weapons that harness nature.

 

" There is so much money within the Pentagon that it would surprise me

if they were not looking into it, " he says. " I suspect it is going on

in both the US and Russia. You can't stop people researching the

weather. As for earthquakes, you don't even need to spend money on

active military programmes because there is so much other work going

on which could easily be adapted. Some of the ideas are quite credible. "

 

Another defence source says: " The risk is that by fooling around with

nature, we may unleash irreversible damage and change our entire

planet's atmosphere. "

 

Despite these stark warnings, such is the immense power of nature, it

seems inevitable that Man will continue to play God.