Russian Scholar Warns Of US Climate Change Weapon 415
According to Russian political scientist, and conspiracy aficionado Andrei Areshev the high heat, and poor crop yields of Russia, and other Central Asian countries may be the result of a climate weapon created by the US military. From the article: "... Areshev voiced suspicions about the High-Frequency Active Aural Research Program (HAARP), funded by the US Defense Department and the University of Alaska. HAARP, which has long been the target of conspiracy theorists, analyzes the ionosphere and seeks to develop technologies to improve radio communications, surveillance, and missile detection. Areshev writes, however, that its true aim is to create new weapons of mass destruction 'in order to destabilize environmental and agricultural systems in local countries.'"
I thought Putin wanted it warmer (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously, wasn't Putin saying something a few years ago that he would welcome global warming, inasmuch as Russia would benefit due to longer growing seasons, more tractable land, etc.?
Here we go: 'Putin pointed out that "an increase of two or three degrees wouldn't be so bad for a northern country like Russia. We could spend less on fur coats, and the grain harvest would go up".' [newscientist.com]
According to the article, there was some disagreement if this was just snarky or held a "grain" of truth.
Re:Truth is perspective (Score:3, Informative)
Like Governor of Alaska?
Re:Oh, yes, HAARP.... (Score:4, Informative)
Technically, the problem with heatwave in Russia and floods in Pakistan comes from unusual change to local jet stream, which typically separates hot and cold fronts. This ear, jet stream was a bit unusual, on one hand bringing the heat front far north to Moscow (and parts of eastern Europe), and at the same time interacted with seasonal monsoon clouds in Pakistan causing them to become larger then normal and causing floods.
Now, if US indeed has a way to change direction of jet streams, most of the things described by conspiracy theorist are indeed possible. Problem is that energy carried by jet stream, and potentially required to significantly modify it's direction is quite immense, and would probably be detected easily even if such a feat was possible.
This is of course, hypothetical, and if someone has a degree in meteorology with specialization in jet streams and their impact on weather patterns would be welcome to chip in. Is it hypothetically possible to affect small portions of the stream to cause a domino effect? If so, even a scale suggested by parent would be workable.
Re:Truth is perspective (Score:3, Informative)
if HAARP is a US climate control weapon (Score:1, Informative)
Then the US is far behind the Russians, who had a far powerful climate control weapon decades earlier.
It was called Radio Moscow, at one time (and perhaps still) by the far the biggest shortwave broadcaster in the world.
HAARP is basically little more than a big shortwave transmitter pointing up. The only reason that HAARP exists at all is that an unfinished military radar base at Gakona AK was cancelled with the end of the Cold War. It sat in mothballs for a while until a bunch of physicists came up with the idea for HAARP if only they could glom onto the facility, and Ted Stevens got them the funding to do it.
The conspiracy theories came fast and furious afterwards, given that in remains a military-owned facility. But that basically just means that in some time in the future, the military could kick HAARP out and reclaim the facility. It's unlikely that would ever happen.
It is true that HAARP has some terrible PR. It's a bunch of scientists who, although they are quite happy to talk about what they work on, operate on a shoestring budget and simply can't be bothered to produce glossy PR handouts. When they have their open house every few years, they pretty much have to shut down down everything they do to put on their show-and-tell...all of which further enables the tinfoil-hat crowd. Even their web page is run externally and infrequently updated.
Everything they do is non-classified, but they're so disorganized with their public outreach that it's damn difficult for the general public to follow what they're up to there.
They would be better off if their had a full-time public affairs person whose job it was to produce glossy handouts, perhaps even a more or less regular journal with a reasonable level of technical content, and make the web page useful. One thing that became clear during the 2010 open house is that there are quite a few local people who have a fairly good layman's grasp of science and engineering (e.g., lots of ham radio operators). The Q&A session after the presentation quickly got quite technical.
Re:Killing for the profit of oil & weapons inv (Score:2, Informative)
Re:HAARP (Score:3, Informative)
I do it all the time, after a fashion. It's amateur radio, and we use ionospheric skips to get over the horizon.
Don't care enough to educate yourself? (Score:1, Informative)
Iraqis killed by the U.S. government: 1,366,350 [justforeignpolicy.org] and counting.
Iraqis killed before and during 2006 [guardian.co.uk]: 655,000.
Yes, Saddam Hussein was brutal. But the U.S. government has been more brutal.
Re:Killing for the profit of oil & weapons inv (Score:2, Informative)
And in what way was the Vietnam war in any way profitable for anybody? There was no money to be made on that war.
OIL, and now that you have the answer, did you really need to ask?
There was a lot of tungsten too to be mined.
And to be fair, if the farmers had stopped supporting the Geurilla VC (1970's speak for terrorist) then we wouldn't have been dropping bombs on them.
Please go get a dictionary, and look up the word terrorist. The Vietnamese were fighting for independence from France. You know, like july 4th? Ho Chi Minh was Vietnam's George Washington.
The basic rule is: terrorists target only civilians. Soldiers target soldiers. So if you drive a truck full of fertiliser bombs into a military barracks, that is not terrorism, regardless of what the military might say. The northern Vietnamese militants are in the grey area that while fighting against other soldiers, also target civilians unnecessarily, the US troops in Vietnam are also in this grey area.