Well, Dave, to be hon­est with you, since our lit­tle talk a cou­ple of weeks back, I have done a bit of think­ing con­cern­ing HAARP and weath­er con­trol as of late..........
I can now con­cede that a few indi­rect forms of weath­er control{like sim­i­lar to cloud seed­ing, but done in a dif­fer­ent man­ner}, may in fact be quite possible.{How about nul­li­fy­ing incom­ing weath­er sys­tems to pre­vent rain­fall, for exam­ple? I can see that as a very pow­er­ful tool.}

How­ev­er, though, I will have to say that DIRECT manip­u­la­tion meth­ods, such as steer­ing hur­ri­canes, manip­u­lat­ing Gulf mois­ture, or mod­i­fy­ing indi­vid­ual super­cells & cre­at­ing and steer­ing tor­na­does, sim­ply isn’t pos­si­ble in this day and age, not only that, but is prob­a­bly being used to cast a bad eye on legit­i­mate researchers{and increas­ing­ly being used to try to dis­cred­it cli­mate change research, it seems} and, as you so cor­rect­ly fore­warned in FTR #272, “Such think­ing and action exhibits “con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry at its worst,” and plays in to the hand of cyn­i­cal crit­ics, in addi­tion to obscur­ing real, sub­stan­tive inquiries into the pos­si­ble mil­i­tary appli­ca­tion of envi­ron­men­tal modifica­tion tech­nolo­gies.”.

{Although, it can be grant­ed that East­lund’s tech­nol­o­gy could the­o­ret­i­cal­ly try to stop tor­na­does from forming........although you also point­ed that many crit­ics warned that it could actu­al­ly back­fire and make the weath­er even worse........at least under the right con­di­tions. How­ev­er, though, I believe that would fall under the ‘indi­rect’ cat­e­go­ry.}

In any case, please do for­give my pre­vi­ous hard­core skep­ti­cism, but there’s so much crap out there{you want a good exam­ple? Google the YouTube user by the name of Dutchsinse for starters}, it can some­times be quite a pain in the @$$ to fig­ure out what’s a crock of horse manure, and what’s actu­al­ly pos­si­ble.

In any case, I did enjoy your lat­est FTR post­ing, and I hope to see a new FTR soon.

Farewell for now, and please, do keep up the good work. =)

What should be not­ed is the very fact that treaties have been drawn up regard­ing this issue. This sug­gests that weath­er manip­u­la­tion tech­nol­o­gy is indeed pos­si­ble. What the cur­rent state of the art is can only be con­jec­ture by those not in the know. But it would be safe to say that it has gone sev­er­al decades past seed­ing rain clouds with sil­ver iodide.

I agree with steven. There is a lot of crap mixed with the gen­uine sci­ence in this field par­tic­u­lar­ly, and the sub­ject of HAARP specif­i­cal­ly.

I’ve come to see HAARD as a sort of “gate­way top­ic” that, if one takes up, starts a ratio­nal per­son on a “slip­pery-slope” to becom­ing an expert on the undis­cov­ered galac­tic tribes of the 18th fed­er­a­tion of Prilosec.

In fact Mr. Emory’s post above is the FIRST time I’ve ever seen HAARP dis­cussed with­out it being used some­how, no mat­ter how irrelevent or unre­lat­ed, as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to bring up the secret space aliens that our gov­ern­ment knows all about and has since..
..ugh. for­get it...you know what I mean.

It’s not hard to under­stand though how less­er minds can get ini­tial­ly turned by this.

Imag­ine get­ting to the end of Fam­i­ly Of Secrets and in the last chap­ter Russ Bak­er writes defin­i­tive­ly about the Bush­es rela­tion­ship with the Grays.

It’d be con­fus­ing would­n’t it?

Thanks Dave

They live.

@Devil James: Thanks, man. =)

The inter­views that Dave did with Dr. Nick Begich can be lis­tened to start­ing with FTR #1. The research work that Dr Begich under­took on the HAARP project is sure­ly the most com­pre­hen­sive. No talk of beings from out­er space or such. And not to lose sight of the fact that Newt Gin­grich is a big sup­port­er of the mil­i­tary appli­ca­tions of both the use of the var­i­ous tech­nolo­gies against ene­my com­bat­ants and for con­trol­ling the pop­u­lace domes­ti­cal­ly and else­where.

Can we just say — it is after all 2011 — that any can­di­date whose name you could even know is by def­i­n­i­tion a rub­ber stamp for the most bloat­ed mil­i­tary in his­to­ry? Dems and Reps alike. They’re only dis­tin­guish­able through the mar­ket­ing plan.

@Sandra: True, but even a real­ly intre­pid hon­est researcher like Begich can get sucked in to some of the B.S.

@Rob Coogan: That is true to a good extent, although I think Oba­ma is being played by the estab­lish­ment. Go back a lit­tle while in the archives and you should come across some­thing called ‘Bad­jack­et­ing Oba­ma’.

@Steven: Of course, Bad-jack­et­ing is a key point. When the time comes (if it comes), it’s the “off” switch for any politi­cian who might break a rule or think inde­pen­dent­ly while in office. Oba­ma’s “off” switch, or his being played by the estab­lish­ment does­n’t change the fact that he is also 100% theirs from the start. They paid for him, after all. And they are reap­ing great rewards. (One could say this about any pres­i­dent.)

Look at the wars (eve­last­ing), the war spend­ing (largest in his­to­ry), the long-term poli­cies and the (yes, it sounds cliché) cor­po­rate agen­da. It’s not about par­ties or per­son­al­i­ties, but about the func­tion of the front-men and front-women who run for office, play their roles, and deliv­er the goods. The entire nar­ra­tive-cha­rade of elec­toral pol­i­tics is bought and paid for by those who prof­it from it the most. (Cen­tral­ized con­glom­er­ate own­er­ship of media, etc., blah blah blah...)

I’m describ­ing some­thing along the lines of what S. Zizek calls Post-Pol­i­tics (sur­face), and what P.D. Scott calls Deep Pol­i­tics (below the sur­face). If you see through the for­mer, all there is that’s mean­ing­ful is the lat­ter. Hence, FTR.

Pol­i­cy for­ma­tion is ever and always out of the hands of the peo­ple gov­erned. It is formed secret­ly, from the top down, who­ev­er is in office. It requires a cred­u­lous will to go on believ­ing there is any mean­ing in our polit­i­cal sys­tem, any­thing mean­ing­ful beyond cut-outs and front-men, as described. This is my hum­ble opin­ion, of course, but what oth­er con­clu­sion is there to draw? See the lat­est Hirsch, for a fun exam­ple of poli­cies no one can dis­cuss in polite com­pa­ny.

I sus­pect we’re going to see more hints at weath­er con­trol tech­nolo­gies (like this) as the weath­er gets weird­er and the pub­lic even­tu­al­ly starts clam­or­ing for solu­tions. The “let’s geo-engi­neer the envi­ron­ment” solu­tion is just too lucra­tive for the usu­al sus­pects to not cram it down our throats:

Geo-engi­neer­ing: a bad idea whose time has come?

By Deb­o­rah Zabarenko, Envi­ron­ment Cor­re­spon­dent

WASHINGTON | Fri Dec 9, 2011 3:32pm EST

(Reuters) — The main­stream approach to cli­mate change does not seem to be work­ing so some sci­en­tists and pol­i­cy­mak­ers say it may be time to look into some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent: re-engi­neer­ing Earth­’s cli­mate.

Var­i­ous­ly called geo-engi­neer­ing, cli­mate reme­di­a­tion and plan­et hack­ing, the idea is to do on pur­pose what indus­try and oth­er human activ­i­ties have done inad­ver­tent­ly, which is to change the amount of cli­mate-warm­ing green­house gas­es in the atmos­phere, and as a result, cool it down.

The con­cept has been around for near­ly a cen­tu­ry, from about the same time sci­en­tists and engi­neers not­ed the warm­ing effect car­bon diox­ide emis­sions had on cli­mate. Until quite recent­ly, the notion has been rel­e­gat­ed to the fringes of debate. Glob­al cli­mate talks have focused instead on curb­ing future emis­sions of green­house gas­es, known as mit­i­ga­tion.

But in the lead-up to the lat­est round of U.N. cli­mate nego­ti­a­tions in Dur­ban, South Africa, there have been seri­ous exam­i­na­tions of what it might take to start coun­ter­ing the effects of increas­ing car­bon diox­ide in the air.

...

And with severe water short­ages loom­ing over all these won­der­ful mega-cities and boom­ing pop­u­la­tions around the world, we might see a lot more uni­lat­er­al geo-engi­neer­ing like this in the not too dis­tant future:

Time
Sci­en­tists Cre­ate 52 Arti­fi­cial Rain Storms in Abu Dhabi Desert
By Josh San­burn | @joshsanburn | Jan­u­ary 3, 2011

Hail, light­ning and gales came through the state’s east­ern region this sum­mer thanks to sci­en­tist-pup­pet­mas­ters.

As part of a secret pro­gram to con­trol the weath­er in the Mid­dle East, sci­en­tists work­ing for the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates gov­ern­ment arti­fi­cial­ly cre­at­ed rain where rain is gen­er­al­ly nowhere to be found. The $11 mil­lion project, which began in July, put steel lamp­shade-look­ing ion­iz­ers in the desert to pro­duce charged par­ti­cles. The neg­a­tive­ly charged ions rose with the hot air, attract­ing dust. Mois­ture then con­densed around the dust and even­tu­al­ly pro­duced a rain cloud. A bunch of rain clouds.

On the 52 days it rained in the region through­out July and August, fore­cast­ers did not pre­dict rain once.

...

Huh, so ion­iz­ers in the desert cat­alyzed the droplet for­ma­tion. Sounds famil­iar.

It looks like pub­lic sup­port for Putin’s “Unit­ed Rus­sia” par­ty is drop­ping and his response is to to order a sig­nif­i­cant change to the par­lia­men­tary rules that will allow his par­ty to retain pow­er more eas­i­ly:

Putin orders change in Russia’s par­lia­men­tary elec­tions
By David M. Her­szen­horn
| New York Times

Jan­u­ary 03, 2013

MOSCOW — Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin has ordered a major change in the rules for par­lia­men­tary elec­tions, a move that could help solid­i­fy his pow­er and influ­ence toward the end of his cur­rent term and insu­late him from dwin­dling pub­lic sup­port for Unit­ed Rus­sia, the par­ty that nom­i­nat­ed him and cur­rent­ly holds a major­i­ty in Par­lia­ment.

At Putin’s direc­tion, half of the 450 seats in the State ­Duma, the low­er house of Par­lia­ment, would be filled using a pro­por­tion­al sys­tem based on votes for par­ties, with each par­ty then fill­ing its allot­ted seats.

The oth­er half would be filled by direct elec­tion of indi­vid­ual can­di­dates, cre­at­ing a poten­tial open­ing for inde­pen­dent cam­paigns.

The new sys­tem, which the Cen­tral Elec­tion Com­mis­sion is expect­ed to unveil in com­ing weeks, replaces a sys­tem of strict par­ty-list vot­ing. It would be the sec­ond major change to the par­lia­men­tary vot­ing process in less than a decade and essen­tial­ly amounts to a return to a sys­tem that had been in place until 2003. The pro­pos­al also comes just a year after alle­ga­tions of fraud in the par­lia­men­tary elec­tions in Decem­ber 2011 set off a wave of huge street protests in Moscow.

But while the prospect of indi­vid­ual can­di­da­cies sug­gests a lib­er­al­iz­ing of a polit­i­cal sys­tem often crit­i­cized as heav­i­ly tilt­ed in favor of Putin and the gov­ern­ing author­i­ties, his­to­ry shows that they can actu­al­ly have the oppo­site effect.

This is because indi­vid­u­als endorsed by the major­i­ty par­ty tend to have an advan­tage in name recog­ni­tion and resources in local races, and because can­di­dates who run as inde­pen­dents can often be enticed to join the major­i­ty par­ty when the new Par­lia­ment is formed, using perks offered by the pres­i­den­tial admin­is­tra­tion.

In neigh­bor­ing Ukraine, the adop­tion of a mixed elec­toral sys­tem like the one pro­posed by Putin helped Pres­i­dent Vik­tor Yanukovych’s Par­ty of Regions win more seats in elec­tions this fall, despite pub­lic opin­ion polls — and even elec­tion results — that showed sup­port for the par­ty had dropped.

...

Putin’s author­i­tar­i­an incli­na­tions and deep ties to Rus­si­a’s intel­li­gence and oli­garchs com­mu­ni­ties have always left Rus­si­a’s future some­what in doubt. And then there are the, um, ‘issues’ oppo­si­tion lead­ers also have to work through that also leave Rus­si­a’s future some­what in doubt. The far-right ‘nation­al­ist’ con­tin­gent of the oppo­si­tion team­ing up with young ide­al­ist has a “Mus­lim Broth­er­hood is going to take over after the youth does the rev­o­lu­tion­ary ground­work” kind of feel to it. Hope­ful­ly some good can come from this new set rules and we’ll see a shift­ing of alliances that allows for an oppo­si­tion coali­tion to emerge that has a real chance at giv­ing Rus­sia a non-fas­cist future. Of course, that also means the nationalists/fascists might start get­ting poached by “Unit­ed Rus­sia” in the new sys­tem and who knows how that kind of devel­op­ment could play out. Like “Unit­ed Rus­sia”, Rus­si­a’s per capi­ta influ­ence is ele­vat­ed, to say the least. The coun­try’s fate is poised impact the course of human­i­ty over the next cen­tu­ry so it’s always a trou­bling devel­op­ment when news like this gets report­ed.

As a cit­i­zen of the US — anoth­er coun­try that dra­mat­i­cal­ly impacts the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty with an even high­er per capi­ta influ­ence — all I can say is “Phew! Good thing crises con­trived by far-right pow­er net­works using rigged vot­ing sys­tems could nev­er hap­pen here!”

This is just his­tor­i­cal reminder that our con­tem­po­rary unre­strained car­bon-based glob­al econ­o­my is alarm­ing­ly sim­i­lar to a 50’s-era dooms­day attack:

Salon
We tried to weaponize the weath­er
Cold War secrets: Melt­ing polar ice cap with nukes, chang­ing the sea lev­el, even LSD weapons were all on the table
By Jacob Dar­win Ham­blin
Sat­ur­day, Apr 27, 2013 02:00 PM CST

Excerpt­ed from “Arm­ing Moth­er Nature: The Birth of Cat­a­stroph­ic Envi­ron­men­tal­ism”

The years between the first hydro­gen bomb tests and the Lim­it­ed Test Ban Treaty in 1963 saw more than just increased anx­i­ety about the efiects of nuclear test­ing on weath­er. They also saw increased inter­est in large-scale, pur­pose­ful envi­ron­men­tal mod­i­fi­ca­tion. Most cli­mate mod­i­fi­ca­tion enthu­si­asts spoke of increas­ing glob­al tem­per­a­tures, in the hopes that this would increase the quan­ti­ty of cul­ti­vat­ed land and make for fair­er weath­er. Some sug­gest­ed black­en­ing deserts or snowy areas, to increase absorp­tion of radi­a­tion. Cov­er­ing large areas with car­bon dust, so the the­o­ry went, would raise tem­per­a­tures. Alter­na­tive­ly, if sev­er­al hydro­gen bombs were explod­ed under­wa­ter, they might evap­o­rate sea­wa­ter and cre­ate an ice cloud that would block the escape of radi­a­tion. Mete­o­rol­o­gist Har­ry Wexler had lit­tle patience for those who want­ed to add weath­er and cli­mate mod­i­fi­ca­tion to the set of tools in man’s pos­ses­sion. But by 1958 even he acknowl­edged that seri­ous pro­pos­als for mas­sive changes, using nuclear weapons as tools, were inevitable. Like most pro­fes­sion­al mete­o­rol­o­gists, in the past he had dis­missed the idea that hydro­gen bombs had affect­ed the weath­er. But with the prospect of deter­mined exper­i­ments designed to bring about such changes, he warned of “the unhap­py sit­u­a­tion of the cure being worse than the ail­ment.”

What­ev­er one might have thought about the wis­dom of tin­ker­ing with the weath­er in peace­time, the manip­u­la­tion of nature on a vast scale for mil­i­tary pur­pos­es seemed to be a per­fect­ly legit­i­mate appli­ca­tion of sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge. While plan­ning a total war against the Sovi­et Union, every avenue begged for explo­ration. Let’s explore how the sci­en­tif­ic advi­sors of America’s key allies in NATO saw the alliance fight­ing in the future. Numer­ous ideas for cre­at­ing cat­a­stroph­ic events through nat­ur­al process­es were pre­sent­ed, espe­cial­ly using hydro­gen bombs as trig­gers. In these dis­cus­sions, held as ear­ly as 1960, top sci­en­tists debat­ed the fun­da­men­tal envi­ron­men­tal ques­tion — can humans have a long-term effect on the glob­al envi­ron­ment?

The desire for nov­el mil­i­tary tech­nol­o­gy seemed espe­cial­ly urgent by the ear­ly 1960s. Although ofi­cial­ly part of the Inter­na­tion­al Geo­phys­i­cal Year, the Sovi­et Union’s launch of Sput­nik in Octo­ber 1957 had clear mil­i­tary ram­i­fi­ca­tions. Not only did it begin the space race but it also took the arms race to a new stage that includ­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions satel­lites and inter­con­ti­nen­tal bal­lis­tic mis­siles. The launch of Sput­nik made the world seem small­er and made the most far-fetched visions of the future seem pos­si­ble. The gee-whiz, Buck Rogers feel of the imme­di­ate post­war years returned. But this wave of tech­no­log­i­cal enthu­si­asm was dark­er, because instead of com­ing on the tide of a war vic­to­ry, it came as a fore­bod­ing new com­pe­ti­tion. For years the Amer­i­cans had been prepar­ing for the mis­sile age, gath­er­ing data on the atmos­phere and on the earth’s grav­i­ty over the poles. The Sovi­ets clear­ly had kept the pace. Sput­nik served as a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for a vast array of projects to use sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge to tam­per with nature on a large scale.

Rein­forc­ing the sense of urgency, Pres­i­dent Eisenhower’s spe­cial com­mit­tee on weath­er mod­i­fi­ca­tion sub­mit­ted its final report in Jan­u­ary 1958, just months after Sputnik’s launch. The committee’s chair­man, retired Navy Cap­tain Howard T. Orville, said at a press con­fer­ence that he sus­pect­ed that the Sovi­ets already had begun a large, secret pro­gram on weath­er con­trol. Despite rou­tine dis­missals of the idea through­out the decade by mete­o­rol­o­gists, the high-lev­el com­mit­tee ranked weath­er con­trol ahead of hydro­gen bombs and satel­lites in mil­i­tary sig­nif­i­cance. Orville urged the gov­ern­ment to sup­port research on con­trol­ling large-scale weath­er sys­tems, not just rain­mak­ing. He fur­ther sug­gest­ed that find­ing ways to manip­u­late the heat bal­ance between the sun and earth might be the key to weath­er and cli­mate con­trol. The earth already had been heat­ed up by man’s efforts, by intro­duc­ing car­bon diox­ide into the atmos­phere through the burn­ing of fos­sil fuels. This car­bon diox­ide helped to trap the heat and cre­ate, as the New York Times put it, a “green­house effect.” It might be pos­si­ble to har­ness this green­house effect. “If such steps are fea­si­ble,” jour­nal­ist John Finney report­ed, “then New York City might be put under a few hun­dred feet of ice or a few hun­dred feet of water depend­ing on whether the tem­per­a­ture was raised or low­ered.”

Rumors spread quick­ly about sci­en­tists in the Unit­ed States and Sovi­et Union exper­i­ment­ing with unprece­dent­ed tools for con­trol­ling nature. Were the Sovi­ets plan­ning to dam the Bering Strait? Were the Amer­i­cans able to steer storms? Naysay­ers point­ed out that mete­o­rol­o­gists could not even pre­dict nat­u­ral­ly occur­ring weath­er, so how could any­one con­trol it? One author opined in the New York Times, “For would it not be fool­ish for any­one to talk of con­trol­ling an intri­cate piece of appa­ra­tus until he knew pre­cise­ly how it worked?” After the report of Eisenhower’s spe­cial com­mit­tee was made pub­lic, sci­en­tists in allied coun­tries received strange, sheep­ish let­ters from their defense estab­lish­ments, ask­ing if the lat­est rumors about Amer­i­can research could be true. For exam­ple, a British Air Min­istry sci­en­tif­ic advi­sor, E. V. Tru­e­fitt, pre­sent­ed his coun­try­man, oceanog­ra­ph­er George Dea­con, with “one or two ques­tions which have come up in odd con­ver­sa­tions.” He called them “wild cat” ideas that he did not real­ly take seri­ous­ly, yet they appeared to be in dis­cus­sion in the Unit­ed States. Despite his instinct that they could not pos­si­bly be real, he felt oblig­at­ed to run them by a com­pe­tent man of sci­ence.

One of the ideas was to melt the polar ice cap by explod­ing nuclear weapons on it, thus rais­ing the glob­al sea lev­el. The Sovi­ets might be con­sid­er­ing it, so the rumor went, to drown cities in the Unit­ed States and West­ern Europe. Anoth­er idea was to change ocean cur­rents or tem­per­a­tures to inter­fere with an enemy’s cli­mate and food pro­duc­tion. Tru­e­fitt had no idea how assess an ocean-ini­ti­at­ed cli­mate change, but he had made a rough cal­cu­la­tion to deter­mine what was need­ed to melt the polar ice cap. He believed that it would take about a mil­lion tons of fis­sile mate­r­i­al to melt enough to raise sea lev­el by 30 feet. “This is a large amount of fis­sile mate­r­i­al whichev­er way you look at it,” he wrote to Dea­con, “and con­se­quent­ly my guess is that it is not the kind of project that even the Amer­i­cans would embark on under the in?uence of Sput­niks.”

Des­per­ate to find “weapon of the future”

The truth was that the imme­di­ate post-Sput­nik years had a pecu­liar air, both of des­per­a­tion and of oppor­tu­ni­ty. Doors were wide open to a range of tech­no­log­i­cal pos­si­bil­i­ties. Near­ly any­thing that was tech­ni­cal­ly fea­si­ble made it to the high­est lev­els of dis­cus­sion. For starters, that meant revis­it­ing the ques­tions sur­round­ing bio­log­i­cal, chem­i­cal, and radi­o­log­i­cal weapons. But it also sparked dis­cus­sion of the ambi­tious, the hor­ren­dous, and the quirky. Like wild­cat­ters explor­ing for oil, Amer­i­can sci­en­tists grasped des­per­ate­ly around them, striv­ing to find the next weapon of the future.

There were sev­er­al post-Sput­nik e?orts to push the lim­its of the “pos­si­ble,” to explore exot­ic ideas that might prove deci­sive 5, 10, or 20 years into the future. Some actions to direct this sci­en­tif­ic work were high pro­file and pub­lic. Pres­i­dent Eisen­how­er cre­at­ed a sci­ence advi­so­ry com­mit­tee to guide the course of Amer­i­can tech­nol­o­gy and ensure that the Amer­i­cans did not fall behind the Sovi­et Union. This President’s Sci­ence Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee (PSAC) also exist­ed to rein in some of the wilder ideas, to avoid waste­ful spend­ing. Oth­er brain trusts, often dom­i­nat­ed by physi­cists with exper­tise in nuclear a?airs, sprang up behind closed doors to advise mil­i­tary estab­lish­ments. One of these was “JASON,” an elite group of sci­en­tists who got togeth­er dur­ing the sum­mer months to assess major sci­en­tif­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal prob­lems of mil­i­tary sig­nif­i­cance. Paid by gov­ern­ment con­tract through sev­er­al difier­ent bod­ies through­out its exis­tence, “the Jasons,” as they called them­selves, were drawn from the cream of civil­ian aca­d­e­m­ic sci­ence. Despite their out­sider sta­tus, the Jasons gained the respect and trust of ofi­cials in the Defense Depart­ment and the armed ser­vices, and their advice often rev­o­lu­tion­ized mil­i­tary think­ing dur­ing the nuclear era.

...

For many in NATO, look­ing at the world as a zero-sum game between the nuclear-armed Unit­ed States and the Sovi­et Union, envi­ron­men­tal war­fare seemed like an ine?cient sideshow. As inter­est­ing as ocean manip­u­la­tion and weath­er con­trol might be, nuclear explo­sions would be required to pro­duce them. In that case, pre­sum­ably a real war would have begun, and the ene­my could be bombed direct­ly with­out resort­ing to exot­ic meth­ods such as these. Even in the case of bio­log­i­cal, radi­o­log­i­cal, and chem­i­cal weapons, chang­ing the envi­ron­ment would be a more cir­cuitous route than attack­ing direct­ly.

In try­ing to imag­ine uses of envi­ron­men­tal weapons, mil­i­tary ana­lysts work­ing with NATO con­front­ed the same ques­tion that has stood at the cen­ter of envi­ron­men­tal issues ever since: can human actions have long-last­ing, detri­men­tal con­se­quences upon the earth? As an advo­cate of peace­time nuclear test­ing, Teller had rea­son to min­i­mize the long-term impacts of human action, par­tic­u­lar­ly nuclear fall­out. He spoke at length to the com­mit­tee about how some sci­en­tists had exag­ger­at­ed these e?ects, and his point of view pre­vailed. The NATO com­mit­tee con­clud­ed that the dan­ger of sick­ness and dis­ease from con­t­a­m­i­na­tion “are no worse than the oth­er haz­ards which would have to be faced by the sur­vivors of a nuclear war.” As for the long-term genet­ic e?ects upon future gen­er­a­tions, the com­mit­tee toed the protest­ing line that the ulti­mate e?ects on future gen­er­a­tions could not be pre­dict­ed with cer­tain­ty.

Nev­er­the­less, some on the com­mit­tee were con­vinced that humans were capa­ble of mak­ing large alter­ations to the envi­ron­ment. Through­out the Von Kár­mán reports were repeat­ed ref­er­ences to unpre­dictable con­se­quences of human action on the atmos­phere. Increas­ing or decreas­ing the ozone con­cen­tra­tion in the atmos­phere was cer­tain­ly pos­si­ble, alter­ing the amount of ultra­vi­o­let light reach­ing the earth. Delib­er­ate cre­ation of an ozone hole might con­fuse sur­veil­lance sys­tems; dete­ri­o­rate air­craft mate­ri­als such as rub­ber, plas­tic, glass; and harm humans and crops. Less pur­pose­ful might be the intro­duc­tion of chem­i­cals from rock­et fuel or oth­er sources, result­ing in “large inad­ver­tent changes” in atmos­pher­ic prop­er­ties.

NATO con­clud­ed its assess­ment of envi­ron­men­tal war­fare with a warn­ing that major changes might already be under way. “Much of the mil­i­tary plan­ning of today assumes that the earth’s atmos­phere will remain sub­stan­tial­ly as it is,” it wrote.

Reprint­ed from “Arm­ing Moth­er Nature: The Birth of Cat­a­stroph­ic Envi­ron­men­tal­ism” with per­mis­sion from Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press USA. Copy­right © Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press 2013

Lol, yeah, sure CIA, this study is just for look­ing at geo­engi­neer­ing ways to halt changes in the weath­er. Uh huh:

Moth­er Jones
CIA Backs $630,000 Sci­en­tif­ic Study on Con­trol­ling Glob­al Cli­mate
Con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists, rejoice!

—By Dana Liebel­son and Chris Mooney
| Wed Jul. 17, 2013 3:00 AM PDT

The Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency is fund­ing a sci­en­tif­ic study that will inves­ti­gate whether humans could use geo­engi­neer­ing to alter Earth­’s envi­ron­ment and stop cli­mate change. The Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences (NAS) will run the 21-month project, which is the first NAS geo­engi­neer­ing study finan­cial­ly sup­port­ed by an intel­li­gence agency. With the spooks’ mon­ey, sci­en­tists will study how humans might influ­ence weath­er pat­terns, assess the poten­tial dan­gers of mess­ing with the cli­mate, and inves­ti­gate pos­si­ble nation­al secu­ri­ty impli­ca­tions of geo­engi­neer­ing attempts.

The total cost of the project is $630,000, which NAS is split­ting with the CIA, the Nation­al Ocean­ic and Atmos­pher­ic Admin­is­tra­tion, and NASA. The NAS web­site says that “the US intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty” is fund­ing the project, and William Kear­ney, a spokesman for NAS, told Moth­er Jones that phrase refers to the CIA. Edward Price, a spokesman for the CIA, refused to con­firm the agen­cy’s role in the study, but said, “It’s nat­ur­al that on a sub­ject like cli­mate change the Agency would work with sci­en­tists to bet­ter under­stand the phe­nom­e­non and its impli­ca­tions on nation­al secu­ri­ty.” The CIA report­ed­ly closed its research cen­ter on cli­mate change and nation­al secu­ri­ty last year, after GOP mem­bers of Con­gress argued that the CIA should­n’t be look­ing at cli­mate change.

The goal of the CIA-backed NAS study is to con­duct a “tech­ni­cal eval­u­a­tion of a lim­it­ed num­ber of pro­posed geo­engi­neer­ing tech­niques,” accord­ing to the NAS web­site. Sci­en­tists will attempt to deter­mine which geo­engi­neer­ing tech­niques are fea­si­ble and try to eval­u­ate the impacts and risks of each (includ­ing “nation­al secu­ri­ty con­cerns”). One pro­posed geo­engi­neer­ing method the study will look at is solar radi­a­tion management—a fan­cy term for pump­ing par­ti­cles into the stratos­phere to reflect incom­ing sun­light away from the plan­et. In the­o­ry, solar radi­a­tion man­age­ment could lead to a glob­al cool­ing trend that might reverse, or at least slow down, glob­al warm­ing. The study will also inves­ti­gate pro­pos­als for remov­ing car­bon diox­ide from the atmos­phere.

The Nation­al Acad­e­mies has held two pre­vi­ous work­shops on geo­engi­neer­ing, but nei­ther was fund­ed by the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty, says Edward Dun­lea, the study direc­tor for the lat­est project. The CIA would not say why it had decid­ed to fund the project at this time, but the US gov­ern­men­t’s appar­ent inter­est in alter­ing the cli­mate isn’t new. The first big use of weath­er mod­i­fi­ca­tion as a mil­i­tary tac­tic came dur­ing the Viet­nam War, when the Air Force engaged in a cloud seed­ing pro­gram to try to cre­ate rain­fall and turn the Ho Chi Minh Trail into muck, and there­by gain tac­ti­cal advan­tage. Between 1962 and 1983, oth­er would-be weath­er engi­neers tried to change the behav­ior of hur­ri­canes using sil­ver iodide. That effort, dubbed Project Storm­fury, was spear­head­ed by the Navy and the Com­merce Depart­ment. Chi­na’s “Weath­er Mod­i­fi­ca­tion Office” also con­tro­ver­sial­ly seed­ed clouds in advance of the 2008 Bei­jing Olympics, hop­ing to ensure rain would fall in the Bei­jing sub­urbs instead of over the Olympic sta­di­ums.

Although pre­vi­ous efforts to manip­u­late weath­er and cli­mate have often been met with mock­ery, many geo­engi­neer­ing pro­pos­als “are fun­da­men­tal­ly doable, rel­a­tive­ly cheap, and do appear to be able to reduce cli­mate risk sig­nif­i­cant­ly, but with risks,” explains David Kei­th, a Har­vard researcher and top geo­engi­neer­ing pro­po­nent.

But if geo­engi­neer­ing is cheap and “fun­da­men­tal­ly doable,” as Kei­th claims, that sug­gests for­eign coun­tries, or even wealthy indi­vid­u­als, could mess with the cli­mate to advance their own ends. “This whole issue of lone actors: Do we need to be con­cerned about Chi­na act­ing uni­lat­er­al­ly? Is that just idle chat­ter, or is that some­thing the US gov­ern­ment should pre­pare for?” asks Ken Caldeira, a geo­engi­neer­ing researcher at the Carnegie Insti­tu­tion’s Depart­ment of Glob­al Ecol­o­gy and a mem­ber of the cur­rent Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences pan­el.

At least one indi­vid­ual has already tried mod­i­fy­ing the cli­mate. Russ George, the for­mer head of Plank­tos, a com­pa­ny that works to devel­op tech­nol­o­gy to deal with glob­al warm­ing, seed­ed the Pacif­ic Ocean off west­ern Cana­da with iron to gen­er­ate a plank­ton bloom that, in turn, was sup­posed to suck up car­bon diox­ide from the air. George’s effort was wide­ly con­demned, but at present there’s lit­tle to stop oth­er indi­vid­u­als or coun­tries from try­ing it or some­thing sim­i­lar. That’s part of what has the US intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty inter­est­ed.

The CIA’s deci­sion to fund sci­en­tif­ic work on geo­engi­neer­ing will no doubt excite con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists. The last time the gov­ern­ment tried to do cut­ting-edge research relat­ed to the atmosphere—with the High Fre­quen­cy Active Auro­ral Research Pro­gram (HAARP), which aimed to pro­tect satel­lites from nuclear blasts—people spec­u­lat­ed that it might be a death ray, a mind con­trol weapon, or, worst of all…a way to con­trol the weath­er.

Also, note that reports of HAARP’s shut­down appear to be pre­ma­ture. It just has new own­ers. And there are lots of oth­er HAARP-like facil­i­ties around the world so it does­n’t real­ly mat­ter.