Monday 10 November 2014

Weather modification: a reality, but a safe one?



     In Jules Verne’s 1889 novel The Purchase of the North Pole (in French: Sans Dessus Dessous), land in the Arctic is put up for auction. The anonymous American bidder who wins the auction undertakes the mammoth project of detonating a giant cannon in the Arctic to remove the tilt of the Earth's axis, making it perpendicular to the plantes orbit like Jupiter's. That change would bring an end to seasons, as day and night would always be equal and each place would have the same climate all year round.  As well, the heating of the Arctic would make the coal deposits believed to underlie the ice accessible for exploitation.
Interesting story. 
But man-made weather modification is no longer just entertaining fiction.

For seventy years now, scientists have been conducting experiments on weather modification through chemical and electromagnetic processes.  There are certainly undeniable benefits to these scientific advances, and we will explore them – but are they worth the risks that are ignited by such large-scale experiments?
For those yet unaware that weather modification has been researched and executed by scientists for over half a century, here is a quick chronology to update you.


 A brief history of weather modification developments


1946: Dr. Bernard Vonnegut discovers the process of cloud seeding. This consists in injecting silver iodide into clouds, resulting in increased rainfall[i]

1958: Soviet scientists propose placing a ring of metallic potassium particles into Earth’s polar orbit in order to increase solar radiation and melt polar ice[ii]

1961: The private company Weather Modification Inc. is founded in the US[iii]

1966:  World-renowned scientist Gordon J. F. McDonald describes possible weather manipulation techniques, including polar icecap melting, ozone depletion, earthquake engineering, ocean wave control, creation of draughts or storms, and brainwave manipulation using the Earth’s magnetic fields[iv]

1967-72: Project Popeye during the Vietnam War aims to increase rainfall in order to obstruct the passage of guerilla groups[v]

1975: Canada and US sign the Agreement Relating to the Exchange of Information on Weather Modification Activities [vi]

1976: The UN Environmental Modification Convention, which prohibits the use of weather modification techniques for military use, is signed by 48 countries[vii]

1990: The US military-led HAARP (High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Project) program is launched, exploring the use of electromagnetic waves to modify weather[viii]

1997: Ex-US Secretary of Defense William Cohen warns of an “eco-type of terrorism, whereby enemies can alter the climate, set off earthquakes and volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves”.[ix]

2008: China uses cloud seeding during the Olympic games to reduce rainfall[x]
How does one modify the weather? A bit of science…










         I am no scientist, but from the research I conducted on weather modification, I gathered that there are two main ways of modifying the weather: the first is chemically, through the injection of chemicals into the atmosphere in order to alter the amount of precipitation on the ground. An example of this is cloud seeding, whereby chemicals are injected into clouds (usually via airplane). Silver iodide, the most commonly used chemical in this process, favours the formation of ice crystals in the cloud that will collect unfrozen drops and eventually fall through the cloud and turn to rain. The opposite result can also be achieved by introducing hygroscopic agents -which absorb moisture- into the clouds: the resulting homogenization of droplets reduces the formation of bigger droplets that would otherwise turn to rain.

The second way of modifying weather is electro-magnetically through an antenna system on the ground that emits radio waves into the ionosphère (which is the electrically-charged shield around the Earth that filters harmful wavelengths of solar radiation). Out of the innumerous effects that this technique can have on weather, three are especially noteworthy.   

 First, when tuned to a pre-determined frequency, the emitted radiation can excite certain electrons, and therefore alter the molecular composition of an atmospheric region. For instance, ozone levels can be artificially increased, while pollutants like carbon monoxide or nitrogen can be reduced. Such possibilities constitute a major discovery in the quest to counter ozone depletion and reverse global warming.

Second is the increase in rain precipitation (as in during cloud seeding):  the artificial ionization of particles caused by electromagnetic waves induces the fallout of charged particles from the Van Allen radiation belts; these falling ions then form ice crystals which precipitate rain clouds.

A third method currently employed consists in pulsing electromagnetic waves into the atmosphere in order to influence oceanic rain patterns: in this way, rain clouds hovering above the ocean can be ‘directed’ to an arid region on land.


 Private companies selling weather modification technology



The Australian company Aquiess was founded in 1999 to develop Oceanic Rainfall Acquisition (ORA) technology. It has already conducted several weather modifying projects with success. Its documents state that “the company has been successful in more than 80% of cases, delivering oceanic rainfall to combat drought, famine and wild-fires in Australia, UAE, Saudi Arabia and USA”[xi].
In an interview with the Kenyan news network KTN News, Aquiess CEO David Miles explains that the company uses a “gentle but powerful technology, electromagnetics, to modify the flow of the weather system over the ocean and draw it into a target; in this case, the Horn of Africa.”[xii]
Indeed, in August 2011, Aquiess presented its most recent project at the United Nations : Rainaid aimed to relieve the Horn of Africa of a drought that left an estimated thirteen million people scrambling for food and water.

Closer to home, British Colombia Hydro hired in 2011 the company Weather Modification Inc. to conduct a study on how to augment the snowpack, thereby increasing run-off and filling water reservoirs to capacity[xiii].

Approximately forty-two nations have weather modification programs[xiv].

These technologies clearly constitute advances for our societies, and offer hope for solving environmental crises such as the drought in the Horn of Africa. But is it ethically sound that such tools, operating on massive scales, remain in the hands of private companies?

In the interview with KTN News, David Miles affirms that weather modification technologies, although developed by private companies, should one day be over-seen by an international body: “My hope is to set up governance like the UN or collaborate with the UN to adjust the climate of the world to benefit each and every country. It has to be managed by the right people”.

Gabriella Fanous, a McGill University student specializing in the ecological determinants of health, agrees with this approach: “You need to have a meaningful social discussion on what it means to engineer climate. It’s not something that any company or any one government should decide. It should be managed by international bodies.”

However, she remains skeptical as to the likelihood of this type of accountability actually taking place: “In real terms, I think that those –whether it be companies or governments- with big power will likely keep controlling and overseeing that technology”.

 The most powerful radiator ever conceived: HAARP


HAARP (High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Project) is a project that was initiated in 1990 by the US Navy and Air Force. It consists in a large field of antennas set up in Alaska and designed to work together in focusing radio-frequency energy to influence parts of the ionosphere. 
This 300 million dollar project, when operating at full capacity, will beam one billion watts of radiated power into the ionosphere. According to Dr. Begich, co-author of Angels Don’t Play this HAARP, this facility allows radiated energy to be ‘pulsed, shaped, and altered in ways never before possible’.
The military describes this project as a key research facility for manipulating communications; for conducting earth topography (scanning the earth floor for underground resources or passages); and for ballistic missile detection and annihilation. Indeed, when the radiated energy is pulsed from the antennas, it can be concentrated into a laser beam that has the ability to disrupt the guidance system of ships, airplanes, or missiles[xv].

[Canada seems to have bought this technology in August 2014 for protecting its Aurora surveillance patrol jets: according to an article in the Ottawa Citizen, the Canadian military purchased a 225 million dollar aircraft system that includes “sensors to warn of an approaching missile”, and a “laser transmitter that tracks an incoming rocket and then uses its laser beam to jam the missile’s guidance system”.[xvi] ]

However, unpublicized patents assigned to APTI, the contractor hired to build the HAARP facility, include the following[xvii]:
-Creation of artificial ionization clouds
-Nuclear-sized explosions without radiation
-Method for creating an artificial electron cyclotron 
-Method and apparatus for altering a region in the Earth’s atmosphere or ionosphere

It is therefore conspicuous that HAARP may not only be used for military communication and anti-missile defense, but also to manipulate the weather – all this under the control of the military.

Is this something one should be concerned about?
Brendan Armstrong, a physics student at Carleton University, sees it as inevitable:
“The military is what funds a lot of scientific advances in the world”, he says. “It’s much more economically feasible for the military to finance that kind of progress than it is for private companies. That’s just the reality.”.   

The risks

 1.     The use of chemicals

One would have to be naïve to think that humans can artificially end droughts in Africa, prevent rain when desired, and replenish the ozone layer without ever inducing risks to the environment and to human health.

The Weather Modification Association’s website states that “there is no evidence that suggests cloud seeding creates any significant negative environmental impacts on the environment”[xviii].
But a 1997 report by the US National Park Service and the Colorado State University on environmental contaminants shows evidence to the contrary. At geographical points where water concentrations of silver were considered high, it found a concentration of 4,500 ug/L in precipitation from clouds seeded with silver iodide. [xix]

Finished water from a water treatment plant can have a maximum silver concentration of 5 ug/L.

The report also mentions that “fallout from cloud seeding with silver iodide is not always confined to local precipitation; silver residuals have been detected several hundred kilometers downwind of seeding events”.

I do not think it necessary to expand on the health risks of ingesting even small quantities of silver,  for both humans and animals.

2.     The dangers of radio waves

The Environmental Impact Statement on HAARP does not mention any potential risks to the environment where biodiversity and humans are exposed to the radio waves.
However, the environmental statement was financed by the military, as explained in Holes in Heaven, the 1996 CBC News documentary on HAARP that was banned after its publication[xx].
One of the scientists interviewed in the documentary, Dr. Brooks Agnew, affirms that in 1983, he completed an earth tomography with 30 watts of radio power. He explains that by beaming radio waves into the ground, the various layers in the earth would 'vibrate', creating sounds that would be associated with different resources (crude oil, gas, etc.).

“That was only with 30 watts”, says Dr. Agnew. “HAARP plans to operate on one billion watts! Such violent vibrations could easily create the potential for an earthquake”.

          The possibility of creating an artificial earthquake –intentionally or not- , combined with the patents stated earlier, including that of ‘altering a region in the earth’s atmosphere and ionosphere’ (once again, the ionosphere filters out harmful wavelengths of solar radiation), is enough to ascertain that HAARP most definitely has the potential to afflict immense disturbances to the environment.
Ms. Fanous is concerned about these risks: “Weather systems are just that:  when you target one area, you’re affecting a larger system that you may not fully understand. There are many different variables involved; predicting the effects on the environment in the long term, or even in the short term is very difficult.”.
         Radio waves can also have an impact on human health. In 1975, American Senator Gaylord Nelson forced the Navy to release research showing that ELF (Extremely Low Frequency) wave transmissions can alter human blood chemistry. HAARP plans to operate on these ELF waves to manipulate communications. [xxi]

Research focusing on disrupting communications; earth topography; anti-ballistic defense; influencing the weather; and on creating great natural disturbances in a targeted area would all be of significant interest to the US military, one would think.

But despite twenty-four years of research and hundreds of millions of dollars poured into the project, the U.S. Air Force gave official notice to Congress in May 2014 that it intended to dismantle HAARP over the summer.
According to an article by Alaska Dispatch News published on July 14th [xxii], an Air Force spokesman explained at the Senate hearing that “this is not an area that we have any need for in the future. We're moving on to other ways of managing the ionosphere, which HAARP was really designed to do: to inject energy into the ionosphere to be able to actually control it. But that work has been completed".

 However, another article by the same newspaper published -supposedly- on July 2nd mentions that to the contrary, the HAARP closure is actually postponed until the spring of 2015[xxiii].

A bit contradictory, no?


Trying to prevent the inevitable?


It is doubtful that after seventy years of man-made weather modification, and dozens of companies worldwide now selling the technologies associated with it, the phenomenon of weather modification will simply come to an end because some worry about the riss it poses to the environment and to human health.
Hence, if these experiments are to continue happening, the best the international community can do is to insist that weather modification technologies come under the regulation of an international body. By putting in place strict regulation, the risks that accompany these experiments would at least be reduced. International regulation could also ensure a certain measure of equality of access to such technologies, so that rich nations do not become the sole keepers of weather modification knowledge at the expense of poorer nations.

Please not that none of the pictures contained in this article are mine.

[i] Atmospheric Science State University of New York at Albany website: http://www.atmos.albany.edu/deas/bvonn/bvonnegut.html 
[ii] Report by the Government Accountability Office of the United States: Technology Assessment: Climate engineering: Technical status, future directions, and potential responses. Released on August 25, 2011.http://www.gao.gov/assets/330/322216.html 
[iii]Weather Modification Inc. website: www.weathermodification.com
[iv]  Global Research Center:Haarp: the military's pandora's box. Published August 25 2008. http://www.globalresearch.ca/haarp-the-military-s-pandora-s-box/17902
[viii] CBC news documentary 'Holes in Heaven' by Wendy Mesley. It was banned after its publication in 1996, but can be viewed here: http://www.personalgrowthcourses.net/video/haarp_video_documentary
[x] BBC News article ‘Why won’t the UK make the sun shine for the Olympcs?’ by Brian Wheeler. July 2012.  http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-18817945 
[xii] Interview with David Miles on Kenya’s KTN on November 10th 2011: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGAI2wdfeAE
[xiii] Blog entry on July 28 2011 by Laila Yuile: Why did the BC government repeal the weather modification act? http://lailayuile.com
[xiv] Blog entry by Mark Leberfinger: US climate change study explores weather modification. August 15th 2013.  http://accuweather.com
[xv] Dr. Begich and Jeane Manning: Angels Don't Play this Haarp. Earthpulse Press. 2002.
[xvi] Ottawa Citizen article by David Pugliese. Published on August 15th 2014: Aircraft system will cost 225M. http://epaper.ottawacitizen.com/epaper/viewer.aspx 
[xvii] Angels Don't Play this Haarp. See reference [xv]
[xviii] Weather Modification Association website: http://www.weathermodification.org
[xix] US National Park Service and Colorado State University:Environmental contaminants encyclopedia. Silver entry: July 1st 1997. http://www.nature.nps.gov/hazardssafety/toxic//silver.pdf)
[xx] Holes in Heaven. See reference [viii] 
[xxi] Holes in Heaven. See reference [viii] 
[xxii] Alaska Dispatch News article: Air Force prepares to dismantle haarp ahead of summer shutdown. Published May 14th 2014. http://www.adn.com/article/20140514/air-force-prepares-dismantle-haarp-ahead-summer-shutdown
[xxiii] Alaska Dispatch News article: Haarp closure postponed until 2015. Published on July and 2014. http://www.adn.com/article/20140702/haarp-closure-postponed-until-2015 
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