Russian Scholar Warns Of US Climate Change Weapon

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.'"

Comments

So, Conspiracy Theories Are /. Worthy Now?

[Maarx]

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

[nomadic]

In Russia this type of propaganda is as acceptable as Americans whole believe Obama is not a US citizen.

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

[cgenman]

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

[jpapon]

I worked with HAARP for several years, including conducting several experiments at the facility itself. While it is certainly a neat piece of hardware, there's absolutely nothing sinister going on there. I tried to explain what we were doing at the facility to some of the tin-foil-hat-wearing locals, but unfortunately they didn't even want to try to understand.

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

[shutdown -p now]

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...