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Why Weather Control Conspiracy Theories Are Scientifically Ludicrous
barlevg writes "The Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang breaks down two popular conspiracy theories: that HAARP is responsible for severe weather and that contrails from commercial airliners are actually 'chemtrails' sprayed for nefarious purposes. The article shows why each is preposterous to anyone with even an elementary knowledge of meteorology or an iota of common sense. The author readily acknowledges that his analysis will do nothing to convince the tinfoil-hat-wearing, vinegar-spraying members of the populace."
This is ground-shaking stuff.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I have to state unequivocally that the author is correct - there is nothing to worry about.
Ewige Blumenkraft
The opposite of progress is congress
They may not be nefarious, but they do add particulates that had a demonstrative effect on atmospheric temps during the 9/11 airspace shutdown.
And Jesse Walker has a new book on the United States of Paranoia that traces the bipartisan conspiracies since our founding and before.
I'll check that out before some condescending post article
TO: WeatherGang
FROM: J. Bezos
SUBJECT: Weather Conspiracy Theories
Guys,
I know you're not that great at the whole internet thing and all, being a newspaper and such. But one of my other companies is actually pretty good at it. So take my advice. Don't feed the trolls.
Regards,
Jeff
The 1960s? Are we going to start seeing new stories about the government seeding the clouds?
AVOID THE BROWN ACID, MAN!
#DeleteChrome
Just like those "Gummint is watching everything you do!" tinfoilers were wrong. I'M ONTO YOU!
I think that in light of recent events, you have to give the tinfoil-hat crowd the benefit of the doubt, no matter how insane they seem.
The sad thing about conspiracy theories and the internet age is that no matter how far out or whackjob the theory may be, you can find a dozen videos documenting "proof" of the theory and entire forums full of people who believe in the lunacy and who circle-jerk each other in a frenzy of panic.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
This article is a pretty weak debunking. If the government really wanted to spray chemicals from commercial jets, they wouldn't let a little thing like weight limits stop them. Make shorter flights that require less fuel. Leave a lot of empty seats to provide more slack weight. Spray in really small quantities. Whatever.
Seriously, Occam's Razor debunks better than this. Simply: what the hell makes you think that chemicals are being routinely sprayed out of commercial jets for nefarious purposes? On what basis is the ordinary scientific explanation about vapor condensation not a good enough explanation for the trails? And if the government can spray chemicals in the air on that scale, why can't they make them invisible too?
It's got nothing to do with weight limits and everything to do with unnecessary complexity.
As long as I'm at it, wouldn't you think that if chemtrails were a real thing, Manning and Snowden would have found out and blabbed?
The article shows why each is preposterous to anyone with even an elementary knowledge of meteorology or an iota of common sense
Actually, it doesn't. The closest I saw was this:
HAARP does not and cannot control the weather. While the frequencies are high powered, it doesn’t have nearly enough energy to do anything over the Lower 48, let alone specifically target communities for destruction like one would see in a science fiction movie. Both common sense and a basic understanding of meteorology debunk the conspiracy theory surrounding HAARP’s alleged ability to control the weather.
So the question is, how do we know how much energy is being pumped into the ionosphere? The whole article seems mostly of ridicule. "Well, of course it doesn't, you'd have to be crazy to believe otherwise, but we're not going to provide any evidence."
Don't get me wrong, I don't think HAARP is part of an evil shadowy conspiracy to create tornados and tsunamis or whatever. But I'm also not a meteorologist... so a breakdown of the physics required to perform such a feat compared to what we know would be pretty useful. I remember a Weekly World News article claiming hackers can turn your computer into a bomb... and as a computer professional, I know exactly why that's impossible and might even giggle at the thought. But I can't expect the general public to explicitly know that there's no real-life equivalent to the HCF instruction.
Kind of like What If at xkcd... putting things to scale such as a hair dryer that just happens to draw 11 petawatts of power can really hit the understanding home.
More Twoson than Cupertino
The Washington Post has no credibility, but I guess they are right this time.
You're confusing Washington Post with Washington Times, which is some kind of right wing scandal rag (suitable city to have one, though, never a shortage of scandals, just be kinda nice if they were to report equally on the idiocy of either side of the aisle, but I guess the WaPo is for reporting on the Right Side of the aisle).
Seriously though, Weather Control Conspiracy is the domain of Weekly World News if you're going to discuss print media.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
...is being officially denied.
A very good quote I heard somewhere, and though I can't get it verbatim, I'll try to at least do it justice:
"There are people who will immediately dismiss out of hand the opinions of well educated experts in the field, but without a moment's hesitation take for word of fact the writings of someone they have never met and know nothing about.
All the WaPo writers are doing is further cementing the opinions of conspiracy theorists (as if any actually would deign to read the WaPo) that there really is at least one secret weather control program.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
They don't actually address HAARP, just a straw man of what the author imagines the conspiracy to be, which is much easier to do by someone with a lay educational background than the real conspiracy.
The actual conspiracy is that HAARP doesn't use lots of energy, but instead, uses resonance to cause the ionosphere to dump energy (somehow, dunno what energy is expected to be there) into the lower layers of the atmosphere, thereby causing small effects to become magnified (rainstorms into hurricanes, etc).
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
The NSA should hire the SCTO (secret chem trail organization) to handle their security. No more leaks to worry about. Show the NSA how to control information right.
It is clear that the SCTO maintains a global fleet of thousands of specially modified tanker aircraft for 24/7 operations. There is a small army of technicians, mechanics and pilots. They skillfully manage extreme logistical challenges to safely manufacture, store, and distribute all the millions of tons of chemicals. All in secret. Not one whistle-blower. Not one crash or chemical spill. Not one photo or chemical sample has leaked.
This article reeks of poisoning the well. China has modified the weather publicly. Russia has modified the weather publicly. To claim that it's impossible is pretty damn idiotic! If you are not suspicious as to why the most allegedly advanced society in the world claims it can't do it you really should get off the medication.
The fact that the plans for chemtrails and weather modification are not given does not make science study disappear. We know things are happening and we can measure them. Aluminum and Barium in the atmosphere has been shown to be true by numerous scientific studies. Those metals are measurable in plants and soil which has also been measured. The underlying "why" is not seen because it's all "top-secret" but that does not make the metals disappear.
This idiot thinks that their "why" is better than someone else' "why". While everything is buried in "top-secret" files nobody knows. How about petitioning the Government to open up instead of claiming it's all for the greater good without any evidence? If we don't open things up, that speculation that it's all for the greater good has identical credibility to the guy who believes it's for nefarious purposes.
Then we get to the outright lies in this article. "HAARP does not and cannot control the weather. " Wait a minute there non-scientist! If the stated goals of exciting and heating particles and atoms in the ionosphere, and we know that they can do that, how does that not give someone the ability to control weather? What happens to air that is heated and cooled? Water that's heated and cooled? Come now, someone has to have had junior high level physics and chemistry and can see how outrageous that claim is. If their argument is based on a lie, the rest of the summaries are worth nothing.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
So the conspiracy is even more stupid than the straw man version? That's quite an accomplishment.
I am more put off by people who mock and lampoon those with differing belief systems, than I am by those with whom I simply disagree.
All this time, I've been spraying vinegar to clean the kitchen floor. Silly me. I'm not doing anything to stop the... um what was it again... oh yeah! chem trails. At least the floor is clean.
The problem with 1990's nostalgia is that it spent time pining for the 1970's... which in turn was bemoaning the 50's. So it doesn't matter which nostalgia you pick - it isn't as good as it used to be.
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
I even cleaned red wine on a shirt with 25% vinegar, 25% alcohol and 50% cool water, it just all went away and I wore it without washing it further.
Everyone in the office must have loved you.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
A number of patents have been issued for various methodologies for weather modification (which I suppose doesn't prove they work). But don't also forget that China openly brags about doing weather modification such as clearing smog for the Beijing Olympics or around other cities.
I wouldn't suspect they are the only ones.
this has already been thoroughly debunked. It is well known that man cannot affect the weather. Just look up "Global Warming" or "Climate Change", and you will see that they specifically state than "man has no influence on the weather". Anyone who states otherwise is decried as a "denier", and thoroughly mocked.
Why would the United States spend Billions on this research, with significant tax increases, if it was true?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
I live very close to Chicago (less than five miles and O'Hare (which is #1 or #2 of world's busiest airport depending on year). some days many contrails happen to look like grid pattern just because so many jets fly in different directions. But all made by different jets, not a single jet passing back and forth. Since a contrail is just a cloud, whether visible or whether it lingers depends whether a cloud at that same altitude would linger. that could be a short time, could be a long time.
In illinois there were indeed experiments done with cloud seeding with silver iodide, even into the 1980s. Not done from jets, but you can read about them online, they were small experiments and downstate not near chicago. *yawn*
in short, nothing suspicious regarding contrails seen in half a century by me and I am aviation buff. This year's airshow in Chicago to be a bit strange due to lack of military craft. see you there
So the conspiracy is even more stupid than the straw man version? That's quite an accomplishment.
These are not the truths you are looking for, move along.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
When I was about eight I lived in a place where there was a dust storm every week in summer after the plane arrived. It would stir the boundary between the stationary heated air layer above the ground and the moving cooler air above just enough for a lot of the air at ground level to get moving for about an hour. That's my antidote to believing weird weather control shit and instead looking in wonder at things like contrails, made by planes that "didn't exist anywhere on earth" in large numbers before the above poster was 28 but are everywhere now.
It also helped that a failed weather control device was sitting right out the front of my Boy Scout Den when I was young, a "giger vortex gun", a cloud seeding device from the 1900s which was a good reminder that even now we don't know enough to be able to seed clouds and produce rain. There's been plenty of attempts but nothing with repeatable results.