Humans Have Intentionally Modified Weather for Military Purposes and Climate Control for Decades

→ Washington’s Blog

Weather modification is a well-known endeavor. For example, governments have been seeding clouds for decades to create more rain.

And during warfare to create mud to slow the enemy's ability to use roads.

As the Guardian reported in 2001:

During
the Vietnam war, the Americans launched Project Popeye, a secret
mission to seed the tops of monsoon clouds and trigger phenomenal
downpours that would wash away the Ho Chi Minh Trail used for ferrying
supplies.

For five years Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos were sprayed
during the monsoons, and military intelligence claimed that rainfall
was increased by a third in some places. It only came to an end in March
1971 when [Washington Post] journalist Jack Anderson exposed the
project and caused such a public furor that the UN general assembly
approved a universal treaty banning environmental warfare.

But
the US air force planners recently came up with new proposals to
launch new weather weapons. Instead of silver-iodide, the idea is to
shower fine particles of heat-absorbing carbon over clouds to trigger
localised flooding and bog down troops and their equipment. Lasers on
aircraft would also trigger lightning onto enemy aircraft, whilst other
lasers could be fired at fog to clear a path over enemy targets on the
ground.

Whether or not they work, past experiences tell us to
be wary of tampering with the weather. In 1947, meteorologists tried to
kill off a dying hurricane out at sea by seeding the clouds. The
following day, the hurricane suddenly gathered strength, swung round
and hit Savannah, Georgia causing extensive damage. The weather boffins
were so rattled by the disaster it was not until August 1969 that they
dared try again.

When Hurricane Debbie was 700 miles out at
sea, they flew three seeding missions around its eye, where tropical
storms are at their most intense, but the results were mixed - with
each seeding the hurricane's winds were reduced and each time they
picked up again.

Interestingly, U.S. weather modification efforts during the Vietnam war were revealed as part of the Pentagon Papers.

As the Washington Post reported on July 2, 1972:

Indochina
- by the evidence of a long-ignored passage in the Pentagon Papers -
has been a test battleground, the site of purposeful rain-making along
the Ho Chi Minh trails.

***

Sen. Claiborne Pell (D-R.I.)
is prominent among members of Congress who believe it has become a
reality. "There is very little doubt in my mind," he says. Rep.
Gilbert Gude (R-Md.) states: "There's no doubt in my mind that it's
going on in Vietnam."

"I think there's no doubt rain-making was
used in Laos on the trail," says a Senate committee aide wee versed in
defense affairs.

***

It is a "successful" pre-1967 use
which is documented in the "senator Gravel" version of the Pentagon
papers. In late February, 1967, this document discloses the Joint
Chiefs of Staff prepared a list of "alternative strategies" for
President Johnson.

One, titled "Laos Operations", read:

"Continue
at present plus Operation Pop Eye to reduce trafficability along
infiltration routes ... authorization required to implement phase of weather modification process previously successfully tested and evaluated in same area. (Italics added)

In
1967 -- according to columnist Jack Anderson, who published the first
allegation of Indochina rain-making -- U.S. forces started secret
Project Intermediary Compatriot "to hamper enemy logistics" ... (with)
claimed success in creating man-made cloudbursts ... and flooding
conditions" along the Ho Chi Minh trails, "making them impassable."

The Post makes clear that cloud-seeding wasn't limited to the Vietnam war theater:

The
Defense Department freely reports that it has "field capacities" for
making rain. It used them in the Philippines in 1969, in a six-month
"precipitation augmentation project" at the Philippines request; in
India in 1967, at a similar invitation; over Okinawa and Midway Islands,
and in June, July and August, 1971, over drought-stricken Texas, at
the urgent request of Gov. Preston Smith.

***

Navy
rain-makers are currently involved in two long-range California programs
-- one over the Pacific off Santa Barbara, an attempt to increase
rainfall over a national forest; the other over the Central Sierras to
try to increase the snow-pack for electric utilities that depend on
water power.

In 2008, the Denver Post noted the enormous scope of weather modification projects:

Scientists
are monitoring more than 150 weather-modification projects in 40
countries, including at least 60 in the Western United States. The
projects include wringing additional snow out of clouds for California
hydropower and easing droughts in sub-Saharan Africa.

Most of the current research on this inexact science is being conducted abroad ....

In 2005, the Boston Globe provided an account of the early discovery of silver iodide as a tool for modifying weather:

In 1946, over Mount Greylock in western Massachusetts, a General
Electric research chemist named Vincent Schaefer scattered three
pounds of crushed dry ice out of an airplane into a cloud and set off a
snow flurry. It was the world's first successful cloud seeding-later
that year, the meteorologist Bernard Vonnegut (brother to the
novelist) discovered that silver iodide smoke had a similar
effect-and weather modification emerged from the realm of con men and
eccentrics. Most meteorologists remained skeptical, but by 1951, 10
percent of the United States was under commercial cloud seeding.

"Intervention
in atmospheric and climatic matters on any desired scale" was only
decades away, predicted John von Neumann, the mathematician who helped
invent and began programming the first electronic computers to model
the weather. Over the next 30 years, the federal government spent
hundreds of millions of dollars on projects all over the country to
increase precipitation, to mitigate hailstorms (an age-old enemy of
farmers), and, most successfully, to clear the fog from around
airports. Perhaps the era's most ambitious endeavor was Project
Stormfury, which sent up airplanes to seed the eye walls of hurricanes
with silver iodide to weaken the winds before landfall.

(And see this discussion by an MIT scientist regarding the use of weather modification to mitigate hurricane damage.)

Moreover, the Post points out that - even in 1972 - weather modification has been tested for other applications as well:

Among
patterns that can be predictably" be modified [Robert M. White, the
current chief of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ]
said, are: cold fog (which can be cleared from airfields) ; cumulus
clouds (most common in the tropics -- "In Florida,", White said, "we
have been able almost at will to make them grow explosively");
orographic clouds (moist air moving up over mountains -- "At the right
temperature you can begin thinking of milking them for water") and
hailstorms (which can often be suppressed, according to recent claims by
the Russians, who fire silver iodide into them from rockets and
artillery).

And - as the Post notes - even in 1972, the government was studying the affect of weather modification on climate:

ARPA
Director Stephen J. Lukasik told the Senate Appropriations Committee in
March: "Since it now appears highly probable that major world powers
have the ability to create modifications of climate that might be
seriously detrimental to the security of this country, Nile Blue [a
computer simulation] was established in FY 70 to achieve a US capability
to (1) evaluate all consequences of of a variety of possible actions
... (2) detect trends in in the global circulation which foretell
changes ... and (3) determine if possible , means to counter potentially
deleterious climatic changes ..."

"What this means," Lukasik
explains, "is learning how much you have to tickle the atmosphere to
perturb the earth's climate. I guess we'd call it a threat assessment."

The
Post also quoted high-level scientists warning that enemies could
modify weather as a direct form of warfare, for example, by flooding
coastal areas where one's enemy resided.

Now, weather modification is so mainstream that Texas openly discusses it's cloud-seeding programs.

And U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas introduced the Weather Modification Research And Technology Transfer Authorization Act in 2004, saying:

Weather
modification is the general term that refers to any human attempt to
alter the weather.... These efforts have been used in the U.S. for
more than 50 years to reduce crop and property damage, optimize
useable precipitation during growing seasons and lessen the impact of
periodic, often severe droughts.

The weather modification
projects in Texas and other States in the U.S. are much more than well
considered responses to drought. They are trying to use the latest
technological developments in the science to chemically squeeze more
precipitation out of clouds. Moisture that is needed to replenish
fresh-water supplies in aquifers and reservoirs.

(The bill apparently didn't pass)

There's even a Journal of Weather Modification (here's a peek inside).

The Technology Has Advanced Far Beyond Seeding Clouds With Silver Iodide

The technology has advanced a long way since the early 1970s.

For example, the Telegraph reported
yesterday that Abu Dhabi 'creates man-made rainstorms' by "using giant
ionisers, shaped like giant lampshades, to generate fields of
negatively charged particles, which create cloud formation." "There
are many applications," Professor Hartmut Grassl, a former institute
director, is quoted by the Daily Mail as saying. "One is getting water into a dry area. Maybe this is a most important point for mankind."

And former secretary of defense William Cohen told a conference on terrorism on April 28, 1997 that people can:

Alter the climate ... remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves.

The Use of Sulfur Dioxide to Affect Climate?

Tom Wigley - senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and former director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and current - has proposed releasing sulfur dioxide in the upper atmosphere to reflect sunlight and reduce warming. And see this.

Wigley talks about this proposal in a Discovery channel special on weather modification.

Other scientists have suggested the same thing. See - by way of example only - this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this.

More History ... and Complicated Issues to Consider for the Future

The above-described Boston Globe article pointed to the complexity of the issues involved in weather modification:

In
2003 the National Academy of Sciences recommended "a coordinated
national program" to "conduct a sustained research effort" into
weather modification.

Politicians in Western and Southwestern states are funding attempts to tickle more moisture out of the clouds ....

Last
fall, a meteorologist named Ross Hoffman suggested in Scientific
American that a network of microwave-beaming satellites could literally
take the wind out of hurricanes.

In some of the driest parts
of Mexico, a Bedford-based company called Ionogenics is testing a
rainmaking apparatus that uses an array of steel poles to ionize the
air.

China, a country with widespread cloud seeding, has
announced plans to engineer clear weather in Beijing for the 2008
Olympics.

Meanwhile, deepening concern over the possibly
cataclysmic effects of climate change has spurred a number of recent
proposals, some sketched out in considerable detail, to engineer a
measure of counteractive cooling. John Latham, an atmospheric
physicist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder,
Colo., has proposed increasing the reflectivity of the cloud cover by
stirring up water vapor from the ocean with a fleet of giant
egg-beater-like turbines.

A few years ago, a team led by the
late Edward Teller suggested creating a similar effect by launching a
million tons of tiny aluminum balloons into the atmosphere.

***

As
our ability to comprehend the weather improves and as the threat of
climate change looms larger, some scientists are ready to brave the
uncertainty and tangled ethics of tinkering with the skies. . . .

The
US military, unsurprisingly, was intrigued by the possibility of a
godlike meteorological arsenal. According to Spencer Weart, a physicist
and historian of science at the American Institute of Physics, the
thinking in the Defense Department was "maybe we'll give the Russians a
real Cold War, or maybe they'll give us one, so we should be ready."
Pentagon money funded much of the era's climate research, helping to
create the weather models we now use in forecasting. War gamers
dreamed up climatological warfare scenarios like laying down a
blanket of fog over an airfield or visiting drought upon an enemy's
breadbasket.

***

But the grandest climate engineering
schemes came from the Soviet Union. The most Promethean among them was
a late 1950s proposal to dam the Bering Strait and, by pumping water
from the Arctic Ocean into the Pacific, draw warm water northward
from the Atlantic to melt the polar ice pack, making the Arctic Ocean
navigable and warming Siberia. The leading Soviet climatologist,
Mikhail I. Budyko, cautioned against it, arguing that the ultimate
effects were too difficult to predict (though he himself had played
with the idea of warming the Arctic by covering it in soot to
decrease its reflectivity). John F. Kennedy, as a presidential
candidate, suggested the United States look into collaborating on the
project. While the two countries continued desultory discussions of
the Bering Strait plan into the 1970s, the American government was by
then losing interest in the whole field of weather modification.

***

In
1972, a government cloud-seeding run in South Dakota was followed by
a violent deluge, and more than 200 people were killed in the
ensuing flood. Meteorologists disagreed over whether seeding was to
blame, but the incident became an ominous symbol for those who saw
weather modifiers as latter-day Pandoras. . . . Boyle's caution may
be merited, but scientists are better equipped today to understand
and manipulate the weather than they were 30 years ago.

***

Some
scientists and engineers, such as Daniel Schrag, director of
Harvard's Laboratory for Geochemical Oceanography, point out that, in
light of the planet's growing thirst and rising temperature, even
Soviet-scale climate modification is attracting real consideration.
Boyle, who spoke at a joint MIT-Cambridge University conference on the
topic last year, readily concedes, "There are very prominent,
serious scientists who are considering these things."

***

A
1996 Air Force report entitled "Weather as a Force Multiplier:
Owning the Weather in 2025," argued that "the tremendous military
capabilities that could result from this field are ignored at our own
peril."

***

Even purely peaceful aims would lead to a
cascade of seemingly zero-sum conflicts. In the US, cloud seeding has
set off several lawsuits in which, for example, downwind farmers
have accused a cloud-seeding neighbor of "stealing" their rain. Such
issues only grow in complexity along with the scale.

***

According
to Joe Kaplinsky, a technology analyst in London, "To raise these
things before the technology has really gotten off the ground is to
deprive us of the potential benefits of any technology, because any
technology can be misused." "Of course some people will benefit and
some people will lose," Kaplinsky says, "but there are social
mechanisms for solving disagreements, either through compensation or
through democratic debate."

Here is a copy of the Air Force study "Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025".

The American Institute of Physics - the organization mentioned in the Boston Globe article - provides an interesting overview of the history of weather modification:

From
1945 into the 1970s, much effort went into studies of weather
modification. American entrepreneurs tried cloud-seeding to enhance
local rainfall, Russian scientists offered fabulous schemes of
planetary engineering, and military agencies secretly explored
"climatological warfare."

***

In
the mid 1970s ... Research turned instead to controversial
"geoengineering" schemes for interventions that might restrain global
warming if it started to become unbearable.

***

At
the close of the Second World War, a few American scientists brought
up a troublesome idea. If it were true, as some claimed, that humans
were inadvertently changing their local weather by cutting down forests
and emitting pollution, why not try to modify the weather on purpose?
For generations there had been proposals for rainmaking, based on
folklore like the story that cannonades from big battles brought rain.

Now
top experts began to take the question seriously.... At the end of 1945
a brilliant mathematician, John von Neumann, called other leading
scientists to a meeting in Princeton, where they agreed that modifying
weather deliberately might be possible. They expected that could make a
great difference in the next war. Soviet harvests, for example, might
be ruined by creating a drought. Some scientists suspected that
alongside the race with the Soviet Union for ever more terrible nuclear
weapons, they were entering an equally fateful race to control the
weather. As the Cold War got underway, U.S. military agencies devoted
significant funds to research on what came to be called "climatological
warfare."

***

In 1953 a President's
Advisory Committee on Weather Control was established to pursue the
idea. In 1958, the U.S. Congress acted directly to fund expanded
rainmaking research. Large-scale experimentation was also underway,
less openly, in the Soviet Union.

Military agencies
in the U.S. (and presumably in the Soviet Union) supported research not
only on cloud seeding but on other ways that injecting materials into
the atmosphere might alter weather. Although much of this was buried in
secrecy, the public learned that climatological warfare might become
possible. In a 1955 Fortune magazine article, von Neumann himself
explained that "Microscopic layers of colored matter spread on an icy
surface, or in the atmosphere above one, could inhibit the
reflection-radiation process, melt the ice, and change the local
climate." The effects could be far-reaching, even world-wide. "What
power over our environment, over all nature, is implied!" he exclaimed.
Von Neumann foresaw "forms of climatic warfare as yet unimagined,"
perhaps more dangerous than nuclear war itself. He hoped it would force
humanity to take a new, global approach to its political problems.

***

Around
1956, Soviet engineers began to speculate that they might be able to
throw a dam across the Bering Strait and pump water from the Arctic
Ocean into the Pacific. This would draw warm water up from the
Atlantic. Their aim was to eliminate the ice pack, make the Arctic
Ocean navigable, and warm up Siberia. The idea attracted some notice in
the United States — presidential candidate John F. Kennedy remarked
that the idea was worth exploring as a joint project with the Soviets,
and the discussion continued into the 1970s.

***

Beginning
around 1961, Budyko and other scientists speculated about how humanity
might alter the global climate by strewing dark dust or soot across
the Arctic snow and ice. The soot would lower the albedo (reflection of
sunlight), and the air would get warmer. Spreading so much dust year
after year would be prohibitively expensive. But according to a
well-known theory, warmer air should melt some snow and sea-ice and
thus expose the dark underlying soil and ocean water, which would
absorb sunlight and bring on more warming. So once dust destroyed the
reflective cover, it might not re-form.

***

A
1972 U.S. government rain-making operation in South Dakota was
followed by a disastrous flood, and came under attack in a class-action
lawsuit.

***

Already
back in 1965, a Presidential advisory panel had suggested that if
greenhouse effect warming by carbon dioxide gas ever became a problem,
the government might take countervailing steps. The panel did not
consider curbing the use of fossil fuels. They had in mind
geoengineering schemes — spreading something across the ocean waters to
reflect more sunlight, perhaps, or sowing particles high in the
atmosphere to encourage the formation of reflective clouds. Some
back-of-the-envelope arithmetic suggested such steps were feasible, and
indeed could cost less than many government programs. In 1974, Budyko
calculated that if global warming ever became a serious threat, we
could counter it with just a few airplane flights a day in the
stratosphere, burning sulfur to make aerosols that would reflect
sunlight away.

For a few years in the early
1970s, new evidence and arguments led many scientists to suspect that
the greatest climate risk was not warming, but cooling. A new ice age
seemed to be approaching as part of the natural glacial cycle, perhaps
hastened by human pollution that blocked sunlight. Technological
optimists suggested ways to counter this threat too. We might spread
soot from cargo aircraft to darken the Arctic snows, or even shatter
the Arctic ice pack with "clean" thermonuclear explosions. [For
background, see this and this.]

***

The bitter fighting among communities over cloud-seeding would be as
nothing compared with conflicts over attempts to engineer global
climate. Moreover, as Budyko and Western scientists alike warned,
scientists could not predict the consequences of such engineering
efforts. We might forestall global warming only to find we had triggered
a new ice age.

Such worries revived the
U.S. military's interest in artificial climate change on a global
scale. A group at the RAND corporation, a defense think tank near Los
Angeles, had been working with a computer climate model that originated
at the University of California, Los Angeles.

***

The
RAND group had to scramble to find support elsewhere. They turned to
the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense.

***

When
a National Academy of Sciences panel convened in 1991 to catalog the
options, the members got into a long and serious debate over whether to
include the grand "geoengineering" ideas. Might hopes of a future fix
just encourage people to avoid the work of restricting greenhouse gas
emissions? The panel reluctantly voted to include every idea, so that
preparations could start in case the climate deteriorated so badly that
radical steps would be the lesser evil. Their fundamental problem was
the one that had bedeviled climate science from the start — if you
pushed on this intricate system, nobody could say for sure what the
final consequences might be.

What About Contrails?

The Environmental Protection Agency notes in a report entitled "Aircraft Contrails Factsheet":

Persistent contrails can last for hours while growing to several kilometers in width and 200 to 400 meters in height.

***

Figure
2. Photograph of two contrail types. The contrail extending across the
image is an evolving persistent contrail. Shown just above it is a
short-lived contrail. Short-lived contrails evaporate soon after being
formed due to low atmospheric humidity conditions. The persistent
contrail shown here was formed at a lower altitude where higher humidity
was present .... (Photos: J. Holecek, NOAA Aeronomy Laboratory,
Boulder, CO.)

***

Figure
3. Persistent contrails and contrails evolving and spreading into
cirrus clouds. Here, the humidity of the atmosphere is high, and the
contrail ice particles continue to grow by taking up water from the
surrounding atmosphere. These contrails extend for large distances and may last for hours.
On other days when atmospheric humidity is lower, the same aircraft
passages might have left few or even no contrails. (Photo: L. Chang,
Office of Atmospheric Programs, U.S. EPA.)

***

Figure
5. Satellite photograph showing an example of contrails covering
central Europe on May 4, 1995. The average cover in a photograph is
estimated by using a computer to recognize and measure individual
contrails over geographical regions of known size. Photograph from the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)-12 AVHRR
satellite and processed by DLR (adapted from Mannstein et al., 1999).
(Reproduced with permission of DLR.)

***

Persistent
contrails are of interest to scientists because they increase the
cloudiness of the atmosphere. The increase happens in two ways. First,
persistent contrails are line-shaped clouds that would not have formed
in the atmosphere without the passage of an aircraft. Secondly, persistent
contrails often evolve and spread into extensive cirrus cloud cover
that is indistinguishable from naturally occurring cloudiness (See
Figure 3). At present, it is unknown how much of this more extensive
cloudiness would have occurred without the passage of an aircraft. Not
enough is known about how natural clouds form in the atmosphere to
answer this question. Changes in cloudiness are important because clouds
help control the temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere. Changes in
cloudiness resulting from human activities are important because they
might contribute to long-term changes in the Earth’s climate. Many other
human activities also have the potential of contributing to climate
change. Our climate involves important parameters such as air
temperature, weather patterns, and rainfall. Changes in climate may have
important impacts on natural resources and human health. Contrails’
possible climate effects are one component of aviation’s expected
overall climate effect.

***

Persistent line-shaped contrails are estimated to cover, on average, about 0.1 percent of the Earth’s surface ....

It
is clear that persistent jet contrails can affect weather and climate.
I have no idea whether persistent jet contrails are an unintentional
affect of airplanes interacting with the environment, or an intentional
attempt to affect the weather.

The articles quoted in the first
part of this essay provide support for the possibility that at least
some of the affects might be intentional. And as a 2008 international workshop on weather modification noted:

It
has been well established that successful implementation of Cloud
Seeding resulting in precipitation enhancement has significant positive
beneficial impact in managing the issue of global warming and climate
change....

German television network RTL purportedly alleges
that the German government has admitted testing persistent jet
contrails for military purposes - as a high-tech form of "chaff" to
disrupt enemy radar.

The EPA
attributes formation of persistent jet contrails to altitude and
humidity, as well as trace impurities such as sulfur contained in jet
fuel. On the other hand, some claim
that very high concentrations of chemicals like barium and sulfur have
been found in groundwater after the incidence of persistent jet
contrails increased. And see this.

But
whether or not persistent jet contrails are intentionally being created
to affect climate or for military purposes or are an unintentional
byproduct of flying a modern airplane is beyond the scope of this essay.

Comments

[The Alarmist]

Chem Trails .... And you wonder why all the bees are dying.

Makes one think that TPTB, who are so much smarter than us and have already decided that it is better to put millions, no billions of mercury-containing light bulbs into use all over the western world despite a real risk of environmental mayhem if only a fraction of them were to break or be disposed of improperly, may have also taken it upon themselves to geoform the environment to prevent dreaded global warming. Of course, given the track record of TPTB, it is easy to see how what was but a few years ago Global Warming recently seems like the beginning of the next ice age. 

Whether GW is right or not that they are screwing with the weather, the fact remains that if they do screw with the weather, all they will do is screw it up.

Time to take something to get mellow and put on Chemtrails by Beck.

[Dr. Sandi]

Time to take something to get mellow and put on Chemtrails by Beck.

Wait a minute, are you sayin' that Glenn Beck is selling Chemtrails now? Man, that guy must be rich by now.

[zero-g]

you can neutralize the chemtrails in your area with a device you can build for about 200 bucks, www.orgonite.info.

[Dang]

And they can steer hurricanes and cause earthquakes using H.A.A.R.P.

[ebworthen]

Less snow, I'm tired of shoveling.

[New_Meat]

"But whether or not persistent jet contrails are intentionally being created to affect climate or for military purposes or are an unintentional byproduct of flying a modern airplane is beyond the scope of this essay."

So, what?  All of this discussion and it might or might not be something to think about?

We all can scientifically acknowledge that DHMO (di-Hydro-Monoxide) is the dominant greenhouse gas.  Probably why it has been so fricken cold locally due to low RH and gasp ... "radiational cooling" that the weather-guessers have even said these past two weeks.

We can scientifically acknowledge this because one can do an experiment to disprove the assertion.  Contrast "global climate change" that says "whatever people do, it causes some change.  that is bad.  So do this prescription..."

Carl "Billions and Billions" Sagan had the same stupid nostrums to cure the same problem, except that they were solving the "global cooling" problem.

QED

- Ned

[Dr. Sandi]

For me, the big question is a basic physics or economics question.

When we make rain fall over here, where did it NOT rain?

Naturally, that is only a philosophical question that has no practical validity. Other than to whoever didn't get that rain, of course.

But those who can muster the resources to change the weather are more deserving than those who were too lazy to co-opt an entire government.

[New_Meat]

Sandi-mostly it rains [ed. phone call] on the ocean.  Like 2/3 of the time.  go figure. - Ned

[mtomato2]

But the Rain in Spain Falls Mainly on the Plain...

[AchtungAffen]

On the famous japanese animation series "One Piece", during one of the argumental arcs (Alabasta) there was the story of a desertic island where people once discovered the technology to make rain (sort of cloud-seeding). The thing is that, as in our own real earth, it was a zero sum game. The water you make fall here, you're taking it away from somebody else. Which led to civil war and the end of that "country". I wonder if we just can't learn from fiction and commit the same mistakes.

[velobabe]

GW, i remember in the mid 70's colorado rockies had almost zero snow fall in'76. the aspen skiing company owned by the crown family that owns General Dynamics was pushing cloud seeding because they lost so much revenue that winter. they were scared shitless that it was a pattern and pushed heavy to cloud seed. i think they did it, but can't remember, but it didn't work. man, good exposure on these corporate criminals killers. nothing gets in their way to destroy something, to get immediate results. i was personally horrified to learn man could be capable of altering the climate.

[Green Leader]

USA is doing its 21st Century version of the Monroe Doctrine in the Caribbean w/this program. Watch:

http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/east/tatl/loop-wv.html

Russian Bear & the Dragon are also watching, but it's the Bear who's really pissed off!

[Careless Whisper]

great post. thanks gw.

[MGA_1]

Interesting stuff, but in a financial blog?  Can't we talk about how corrupt wall street and govt is or something like that ?

[mtomato2]

EVERYTHING is related to global economics now.

[velobabe]

it is all connected, boob head.

GD‎

[onlooker]

The Australian flooding of last week was caused by Al Gore seeding the clouds. He was seen buying a George Bush mask before the incident. The source, close to the White House, states the reason for the act was to illustrate that silver in private hands was an implement of terrorism and that it needed to be confiscated.  It is further reported that the Tuskegee Lab has found a direct relationship with humans injected with gold and severe health problems. Test animals appeared to move about in a heavy manner. The Health Administrator of the Federal Reserve may issue a directive to address these problems.

[neutrinoman]

It's more correct to say that humans have been *attempting* to modify weather/climate since the 1950s or whenever.  Since weather is chaotic, there's not much one can do about controlled modification.  Weather can't be predicted beyond about 10-14 days ahead, apart from the rigid daily and seasonal cyclicalities.

[neutrinoman]

It's more correct to say that humans have been *attempting* to modify weather/climate since the 1950s or whenever.  Since weather is chaotic, there's not much one can do about controlled modification.  Weather can't be predicted beyond about 10-14 days ahead, apart from the rigid daily and seasonal cyclicalities.

[jSixPack]

No mention of H.A.R.P?

[George Washington]

I think he's referring to the Hinky Association of Retired Persons (?)

[EvlTheCat]

No offence, but are you referring to HAARP or the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Project?

http://newsblaze.com/story/20100202080317zzzz.nb/topstory.html

[Drag Racer]

http://vlf.stanford.edu/research/experiments-haarp-ionospheric-heater

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/17-08/mf_haarp

Many locations...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionospheric_heater

http://arcticcircle.uconn.edu/VirtualClassroom/HAARP/acf.html

http://europa.agu.org/?uri=/journals/rs/93RS01727.xml&view=article

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1996RaSc...31..859B

http://www.eiscat.se/about

http://www2.fiu.edu/~mizrachs/HAARP.html

http://www.lightwatcher.com/chemtrails/CRRES_%20Presskit.html

Large facility in Peru...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jicamarca_Radio_Observatory

I luv a good conspiracy as well as the next guy, but this one is not theory. I can speak from authority on this as my job in the mid 80s was in aerospace control and warning systems for the USAF. I never visited any of the facilities in Alaska but I was 'aware' of them and that they had been there for a while. I will admit these types of facilities do get blamed for all kinds of crazy happenings, but do realize that just because the claims are unsubstantiated and seem far out there does not mean the capability is not there.

[buzlightening]

Like I need reason to accumulate silver!!  Never needed any with gov goons gone wild printing to infinity!!  jpig morgue a good reason ifin you're wanting a pound of flesh from banksters but the truth be known the banksters are doomed as time will give us the continuing self evident truth!!  Kaboom goes paper ponzi always!!

[bubba1231]

GW,

You are seriously a complete and total idiot.  It's one thing to be a conspiracy theorist but bottom line - you simply are not very bright.  And OBL didn't committ 9/11 either...

[Dr. Sandi]

You are seriously a complete and total idiot.  It's one thing to be a conspiracy theorist but bottom line - you simply are not very bright.  And OBL didn't committ 9/11 either...

Yeah, and you're a big poopy-pants too!

[mtomato2]

Dr., I think we just found our junk-n-runner!

[Cognitive Dissonance]

bubba1231 has been a ZH member for 25 weeks. During that time bubba1231 has posted comments on 34 articles.

Econophile 1 time.

Leo Kolivakis 1 time.

Tyler Durden 9 times.

George Washington 23 times.

It appears that bubba1231 has an GW agenda. I wonder why that is?

[Clamdigger]

Ever see Bubba and GW in a room together?

[Azannoth]

.. says an Anonymouse internet jerk with an 'opinion'

[Cognitive Dissonance]

This entire subject has been branded as crazy, silly, stupid etc by the powers-that-be mostly through the MSM media and official denials. At the same time a stated goal of the military is to control something I'm told elsewhere is impossible to control.

Anytime I'm told not to believe something by my benevolent dictators I wonder why.

[zero-g]

Another even more important subject never ever discussed by MSM is orgonite, and how it can be used to counter the chemtrails and other covert weapons. www.orgonite.info has all the info you need to build some devices yourself, or you can buy them premade from a vendor like ctbusters.com or ultimatevision.us

It is really important stuff to understand.

[Abu Morpheus]

Fortunately, GI Joe was able to construct their own Weather Dominator to counter the one built by Destro.  Unfortunately, the Weather Dominator requires three sets of rare-earth chemicals as fuel, the supplies of which are limited to China, Antarctica, and Siberia.

Lacking access to the fuel, America's only option is to destroy the enemy Weather Dominator, which is located on the Island of No Return, somewhere off the coast of Iran.

[penisouraus erecti]

Yet another reason to buy that silver!!

[Salinger]

there is a distinction between weather and climate - I could modify the weather in my backyard if I decided to replace the lawn with pavement and  chop down a few trees  but changing the climate is a different animal unless of course you subscirbe to the Global Warming thesis.

Here's an interesting article

The ‘scientific consensus’ about global warming turns out to have a lot more to do with manipulating the numbers

http://bit.ly/hqLkTN

and this

Clearly the US annual temperatures over the last century have correlated far better with cycles in the sun and oceans than carbon dioxide. The correlation with carbon dioxide seems to have vanished or even reversed in the last decade.

http://bit.ly/grHesJ

[JohnG]

Yeah, sure, riiiiiiiiiight.  WTF?

[Winston Smith 2009]

Why this article is on a financial blog is beyond me, but I'd like to add that the grounding of all aircraft in the US during and after 9/11 had a significant, measurable effect on climate:

http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~rennert/etc/courses/pcc587/ref/Travis-e...

[Irwin Fletcher]

I think the connection with finance is that a small group of people are attempting to control global variables that affect many people, and that they are not accountable to the public for their decisions. Your link is interesting. Measurable effect, sure. Significant? I can't tell. No p-value, etc. reported. The closest excerpt to a statistical test of significance -

"This increase in DTR is larger than any during the 11–14 September period for the previous 30 years, and is the only increase greater than 2 standard deviations away from the mean DTR (s.d., 0.85  C). Moreover, the 11–14 September increase in DTR was more than twice the national average for regions of the United States where contrail coverage has previously been reported to be most abundant (such as the midwest, northeast and northwest regions)"

[Chappaquiddick]

'Silver' iodide for weather control!  Yet another application that'll need loads of silver.  Oh yeah, Baby!  Buy, Buy, Buy!!!!! 

[George Washington]

Now you're thinking ... this is intimately connected to the economy and investing!

[Chappaquiddick]

And the environment....

[HellFish]

Sure thing GW.

[New Revolution]

So,... what your saying, is that the Crosby and Ovetchkin didn't have to play in the rain on wet ice last Saturday night, and the USAF could have made it alright.   Damnit,... it would have made for a better game.

[ATG]

Nice start GW

Now check out aluminum barium chemtrails from modified Jet Fuel, J6 or HAARP

(ZH please correct captchas that reject correct - answers)

[max2205]

Great. Know what happens when we extract all the moisture from the atmosphere?! Mars

[George Washington]

Total Recall!

[westboundnup]

Quaid . . . start the reactor . . . free Earth.

[max2205]

Too funny!

[Mark Medinnus]

Classic!

[Fix It Again Timmy]

Other brainstorms by our creative cretins in the Pentagon:

The process by which supplies were moved southward by the PAVN was extremely complicated, requiring coordination between various transportation elements and numerous transfers of cargo in and out of vehicles and wayside storage areas. Almost all movement was conducted at night in a series of short shuttles, rather than by long-distance hauling. Drivers drove their trucks over the same routes night after night, becoming thoroughly familiar with their assigned segments. Periods of high-moon illumination, which allowed travel without headlights, and low cloud cover, were exploited to avoid detection from overhead aircraft. Truck movement began shortly after nightfall and normally trailed off about 3:00 a.m. to allow time for the unloading, dispersal, and concealment of supplies and vehicles before daylight. Although the North Vietnamese later made limited use of waterways and pipelines, their road network and trucks remained throughout the war as the heart of their logistic system. Intelligence estimates put the North Vietnamese truck inventory in Laos alone at 2,500 to 3,000 during the 1970 and 1971 dry seasons with from 500 to 1,000 moving per night, each carrying about four tons of supplies. Replacement trucks were drawn from large inventories maintained within the sanctuary of North Vietnam in the vicinity of Hanoi and Haiphong.

By 1970 the entire trail was protected by anti-aircraft guns, some equipped with radar. The PAVN’s employment of “hunter-killer” teams and tribal scouts also protected the trail against enemy incursions. By the end of the war, according to the North Vietnamese, nearly 2000 miles of the 12,000-mile trail had been camouflaged. The PAVN’s use of underwater bridges not detectable from the air, and the employment of deception tactics such as strewing gasoline-soaked rags along the trail to trick pilots into believing they had struck real targets, served to make the trail even more elusive to US air power.

The elusive nature of targets along the Ho Chi Minh Trail prompted the US to explore the application of new technology to the interdiction problem. The “Igloo White” program was the most effective, consisting of a network of sensors and remote surveillance systems (mainly dropped by planes). During the lifetime of the program, which ran from 1966 to 1971, the United States spent approximately $1.7 billion to create a network of 20,000 battery-powered sensors along the trail in Laos. The Igloo White system was vast. In the words of one Air Force officer, “we wired the Ho Chi Minh trail like a drugstore pinball machine and we plugged it in every night.”

In addition to the Igloo White program some of the more exotic ideas developed by the US for slowing movement on the Trail included dropping Budweiser beer on the Trail, developing chemicals to turn the dirt into mud, rain seeding to prolong the monsoon rains, monitoring Trail movement by developing sensors that resembled dog excrement (it was cancelled after it was learned that there were no dogs on the Ho Chi Minh Trail), and training pigeons to carry munitions, land on North Vietnamese trucks, and explode on touchdown (among other difficulties, the pigeons couldn’t tell a communist truck from a non-communist one).