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.'"
So, Conspiracy Theories Are /. Worthy Now? (Score:5, Interesting)
Didn't a bunch of whackjobs a few years ago try and claim that Hurricane Katrina was the result of some Weather Control Device created by the Axis of Evil?
Re:Truth is perspective (Score:2, Interesting)
Or the moon landing [xkcd.com].
(Obligatory I know, and someone else undoubtedly will beat me to it)
Re:Truth is perspective (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, when someone in America believes in a crazy theory we get an avalanche of posts excoriating the American educational system for producing such a person, American culture for being so anti-intellectual, American politics, etc., which we don't seem to get when any other countries' conspiracy theorists get mentioned.
Re:Truth is perspective (Score:4, Interesting)
Most people on Slashdot are in the US or Europe. Fixing Russia's educational system or culture is not our problem. People in the US and Europe who genuinely believe that hurricanes are caused by god's hatred of gay people, or that 9-11 was a conservative conspiracy to kill liberals, is our problem.
HAARP (Score:5, Interesting)
It's just a big microwave pointed at the sky. It illuminates a stream of charged particles which circle the earth at high latitude, known as the electrojets. By heating and cooling this stream of particles in the ionosphere, we were able to modulate a signal onto the electrojet (since it's conductivity is temperature dependent), turning the electrojet into a gigantic low frequency antenna. We used the signals generated to study the ionosphere and magnetosphere of the earth.
As much as I would like to be able to claim that it can be used to control the weather, such far-fetched notions are pure fantasies, spawned from the minds of those who don't understand the physics of space plasmas. Or have any notion of what a plasma is. Or how weather patterns are created. I mean hell, we were barely able to use it to generate a coherent signal using the electrojet (already quite the feat of science). How the hell could we use it to affect the weather???
Re:I thought Putin wanted it warmer (Score:4, Interesting)
Putin is actually quite correct. Russia is one of the few countries on that planet which would significantly benefit from global warming. Most of its populated areas are well above and away from the reach of any rising water levels, and the climate in them would only get milder. On the other hand, it would result in a lot of permafrost in Siberia thawing - some of that would end up suitable for agriculture, but even where it's not the case, it would provide for easier access to natural resources stored within.
I suspect it might be why Russian official science organizations are very much in denial about the whole AGW thing...
Re:Truth is perspective (Score:2, Interesting)
In Russia this type of propaganda is as acceptable as Americans whole believe Obama is not a US citizen.
I guess no one here is old enough to remember when US-based conspiracy theories about Russian weather satellites were commonplace. Here is a 5 year old news clipping about one of the die-hards... http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2005/tc20051020_323701.htm [businessweek.com]
Re:Russian propaganda channel (Score:3, Interesting)
I would less call it 'censored' and more selectively reported in order to appeal to viewers, since viewers are what drive advertising revenue. People generally do not want to hear bad things about their country unless it is bad things they can attribute to people they already do not like.. and when they do, they vote with their dollars and view elsewhere. No conspiracy or control needed.. just simple economics and self interest on the part of the networks.
EIther way the media controls public opinion and the media is driven by an agenda. In some ways a conspiracy would be "better" since it would likely make mistakes at some point. No, this is worse. This is the work of "true believers". A conspirator in the usual sense knows he is lying, knows he is up to no good, has to keep his story straight. None of that applies to a true believer who can see it no other way.
If you want a fascinating look at the way our media is, just do some research on how they report anything remotely gun-control related. A person legally carrying a firearm stops a crime? The news media says "the attacker was subdued until police arrived". A criminal illegally uses a gun to commit a crime? You get the detailed, moment-by-moment account of the struggle, because guns are bad and independent action even worse, mmkay? There is a definite agenda. It carries a definitely discernable message. One or two stories here and there are one thing but this pattern is amazingly consistent. So are many others. Really, look up this topic and see for yourself how egregious it really is. I am not remotely beginning to describe the depth of it.
Re:Evil plot mechanisms. (Score:2, Interesting)
For starters, your power is not limited to your own input. You're using a nonlinear process (in this case, parametric amplification) to modulate power obtained from other sources (the solar bombardment of the Earth with charged particles).
Well, yes. I've studied amplification effects, and while they are non-linear, the most we've ever recorded is about 30dB. This was using the Siple transmitter in Antarctica, which was a 21x21km dipole antenna (it was built in Antarctica to increase transmission efficiency by using the ice sheet as an insulator from the Earth). Once we got to a certain amplification level, the signals would always break down, possibly because the cyclotron resonance breaks down above a certain power level. But nobody really knows, triggered emissions and amplification are some of the least well understood natural phenomena out there.
I'll admit that it might be possible to alter the weather provided you have sufficient energy. But the amount of energy required would be absolutely phenomenal. And from my experience with HAARP, I don't believe that there's any practical way of doing so with that facility. Not only would you need a MUCH more powerful transmitter (the VLF waves generated by HAARP's interaction with the electrojet are actually fairly weak), but you would need to figure out a way to control the coupling of your amplified waves back into the earth-ionosphere waveguide.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that the HAARP theories are like any good conspiracy theory; they start out with a modicum of truth, and then expand it with unproven, unscientific conjecture. So you start with something possible (heating the electrojet with microwaves, or demolishing a building with explosives) and reach something completely impractical, and essentially impossible (Control of weather, gigantic perfectly executed government plan to destroy the WTC).
Such low frequencies penetrate the Earth's surface to considerable depth.
Not if you're talking about EM waves. If we go by the standard model which treats the Earth-Ionosphere cavity as a waveguide, the Earth is essentially an excellent conductor. And the skin depth of a good conductor is essentially zero in terms of geological scales. Earthquakes travel a long way through the earth because they're physical, compressional waves.
Wanna See Something Interesting? (Score:3, Interesting)
Go to the HAARP website, and look up the online data [alaska.edu]. Call up the Magnetometer Charts, specifically the archives.
Look at a few of the charts, zoom in, zoom out, change the dates, play with it a bit.
Now...
1. Go to a "history timeline" website, one that specifically deals with major events in the last decade. This is a reasonably okay one? [mapreport.com]
2. Go back to your magnetometer chart. Zoom in to a 2-week data range, starting 1 week before a major event, and ending 1 week after.
3. Look at how the dataline is relatively flat. RELATIVELY flat, mind you, compared to the other data.
4. Look at the massive spike either just before, or right AT the event. For example, look at the data for the morning of 9/11.
5. Now look at the data for every single major security scare, national security event, or even a major natural disaster where everyone got worked up into a froth, or there were a lot of people injured or otherwise killed.
Isnt' that interesting?
Now then, I am NOT suggesting that HAARP was responsible for 9/11 or the Haiti earthquake. Please, don't even go there.
What I am suggesting, is that major catastrophes have an effect on the magnetosphere, effects that can be measured.
Now here's the $100,000.00 question?
Exactly what is it surrounding these events that is affecting the earth's magnetosphere? Radio traffic? Cellphone traffic? Pumping up the satellite feed to overcome interference?
Some have suggested that human emotions are responsible. That's a bit of a reach, though. Isn't it?