Daily Express (U.K.): Weather War? – New evidence

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http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=THE20051008&articleId=1061

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

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.

"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.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole
responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect
those of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

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