Weathering heights

Conventionally, the concept of weather weapons look more like a plot of a Hollywood sci-fi movie or a hypothesis derived from some fictional tale of Michael Crichton. Clearly, the hypothesis seems to be finding growing empirical support.

Weather warfare technology is not a very recent technology. An American scientist John Von Neumann, (from the US Department of Defense) was found undertaking similar researches back in 1940s for the American military. Similarly, a report by a BBC investigation team (dated August 30, 2001) revealed that the destruction caused by 90 million tonnes of water that literally washed away Lynmouth in August, 1952, was a result of a military experiment.

Today, the concept of weather weapons apparently is a reality being tested and engineered in ultra-sophisticated military control rooms – but of course, in complete secrecy. You see, most nations have to still contend with a three-decade old United Nations treaty prohibiting weather weapons development, which came into force on October 5, 1978, after the Convention on the prohibition of military or any other hostile use of environmental modification techniques.

The convention perhaps got momentum due to the Vietnam War, during which the US used various hostile weather influencing methods, including cloud seeding – a method that hastens rainfall by seeding clouds with catalyzing agents – to block enemy’s reinforcement channels; a fact revealed by the Weather Modification Hearings before the Subcommittee on Oceans and International Environment of the Committee on Foreign Relations, held during 1973-74.

Despite the UN Convention treaty, weather modification weapons are becoming a reality. In a conference on ‘Terrorism, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and US Strategy’ (April 28, 1997, University of Georgia), the then US Secretary of Defence, William Cohen fantastically revealed, “Others are engaging even in an eco-type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves.” For decades, Russia and even China have reportedly used this technology to get rid of untimely and unwanted rainfall, or to hasten rainfall on parched regions. In 2011, Iran’s President Ahmadinejad was found asking the US and Europe “to stop causing droughts [in Iran]” by forcing the clouds to rain before they reach Iran. Back home, the 2010 cloudburst in Leh was alleged to have been engineered by China.

But without doubt, the biggest suspected weather weapon of recent times has been none other than the much-touted HAARP (High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program), a slimly disguised US defence initiative. Set up way back in 1992 in Alaska, HAARP is basically a matrix of extremely high-powered antennas that blast high-frequency radio waves to influence the ionosphere. In his book Weather Warfare, author Jerry E. Smith talks about the probable role of HAARP in influencing Hurricane Katrina, one of the most devastating calamities to hit America. Award-winning author Dr. Michel Chossudovsky wrote in 2007 that “HAARP is a weapon of mass destruction, capable of destabilising agricultural and ecological systems globally.” He further points to a report by the Russian State Duma, which mentions, “HAARP [is capable of] breaking radio communication lines and equipment installed on spaceships and rockets, provoke serious accidents in electricity networks and in oil and gas pipelines, and have a negative impact on the mental health of entire regions.” In March 2011, The Examiner reported that “evidence gathered by nuclear scientist Leuren Moret (Environmental Commissioner in the city of Berkeley, California) indicates that the Japanese quake was a military attack using secret sophisticated HAARP weaponry.”

If nuclear was the weapon nations coveted yesterday, weather influencing equipment is the weapon nations will covet soon... and US seems to have stolen this march already.