From New Dawn 175 (Jul-Aug 2019)
Weather modification is a reality. Every four years, the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organisation publishes a multi-hundred-page report on civilian weather modification undertaken by dozens and dozens of nations around the world.
The two primary reasons for civilian weather modification are the inducement of rain in drought-stricken regions to help crop growth and the suppression of hailstones, which can damage crops. The chemicals used include dry ice and silver iodide. The most common and practical means of chemical dispersion are via small aeroplanes that fly into the troposphere where clouds form.
Needless to say, the military have always been interested in weather modification. In the 1950s, the British Royal Air Force flooded the small twin towns of Lynton and Lynmouth when, as part of Operation Cumulus, they unleashed a deluge by dumping dry ice into clouds, killing 34 people. From the late-1960s to the 1970s, the US Defense Department used weather as a weapon in the Vietnam War (Project Popeye).
But climate modification is much bigger. Unlike weather modification, there is no concrete evidence that climate modification is happening on a large scale. But there are plenty of clues that covert planning and even operations could be underway. Weather control implies manipulating localised climates for a short period. Climate control implies altering global weather patterns and temperatures for months or even years. Like those involved in weather modification, there is overlap between civilian and military scientists. Like weather modification, the civilian and military tools used in the alteration of the climate – aircraft, chemicals, science, analysis – also overlap. Unlike weather modification, the existence of which few deny (though its effectiveness is still debated), authorities in science, government and the military deny that deliberate climate modification is happening.
In more recent years, climate modification has been known as geoengineering. Since at least the early-1960s, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) expressed curiosity about geoengineering. This article charts the history of the CIA’s interest in the topic.
CIA in the ‘60s: “A Totally New Type Of Warfare”
In the context of the Cold War and the emerging science of climate change, individuals linked to the US military strategised the weaponisation of the climate. The earliest reference to the CIA’s interest in climate modification appears to date back to November 1960, when the Agency was forwarded a confidential report on the topic. The report states: “Militarily, a climatic control capability raises the possibility of a totally new type of warfare. This type of warfare may be termed ‘Geophysical Warfare’ in which our ability to control the weather environment can be used as a weapon.”
Rear Admiral Luis de Florez was an aviation pioneer working for the US Navy. Florez forwarded the confidential report on climate modification to the CIA’s Deputy Director, Gen. Charles P. Cabell. The report was written by the Research Division of the Travellers Insurance Company, headed by the geophysicist, Dr Thomas F. Malone. Like de Florez, Malone was a military man, having served in the Air Force as a weather forecaster. Like Florez, Malone was connected to MIT, having graduated and then taught at the Institute. Malone’s report advocated “The Need for a Climate Control Study Program” and is worth quoting at length. It says, “Large scale climate control requires the modification of the global weather patterns by altering and interfering with the large-scale physical processes which are associated with the characteristic motions on the scale of the general circulation of the atmosphere.”
People who believe that stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) of particulate matter is occurring today note the whitening of our skies (albedo effect) by persistent trails left by high-altitude aircraft. The memo notes that “proposals have been made to alter the energy balance of large areas by altering the surface albedo. Proposals of this nature involve changing surface albedos by the use of substances of appropriate absorptive or reflective characteristics which differ from the natural surface.” Ergo, the concept of SAI dates back to at least the early-1960s. Conversely, “An example is the proposal that polar areas be covered with layers of soot” to cause warming. In the 1970s, Colorado University proposed modifying jet afterburner engines to release carbon black dust (soot) in order to stimulate precipitation.
With regards to scientific climate control in general, the 1960 report notes, “Other proposals are made to alter the energy balance of the atmosphere by injecting dust and other particulate matter into the high atmosphere which might alter the input of solar energy to the atmosphere.” This is relevant to today’s proposed geoengineering because, what has just been quoted, describes modern SAI proposals/possible secret programs. Later, we shall examine the CIA’s contemporary interest in SAI.
The memo adds, “Proposals for altering the normal energy cycle of the atmosphere extend also to the alteration of the chemistry of atmospheric substances especially in the high atmosphere which might also affect radiational balance (sic).” Instead of seeding hurricanes with silver iodide and other chemicals as previous researchers had, in an effort to weaken and even attempt to steer hurricanes, climate modification (“changes in circulation regimes”) could “affect the normal paths of destructive storms.” But for this, supercomputers were needed. Computers allow for “various physical processes” to “be studied under controlled conditions.” The memo notes that “it has now become feasible not only to speculate about the consequences of human intervention in the atmospheric processes but also to stimulate, test and study these consequences.”
DARPA’S “Nile Blue” & the Origins of Climate Science
Formalised climate research began in the 1970s at the Pentagon’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) with Project Nile Blue. Climate research continues today at various civilian institutions. ARPA later tagged the prefix “Defense” to its name for good measure. It is now known as DARPA. In the 1990s, weather modifying military scientists instructed potential weather weaponisers to “look for the butterfly,” meaning look for small effects that can be used to trigger much bigger phenomena. The 1960s report says the same. It advises readers that “so-called ‘trigger mechanisms’ will probably require access to energy sources of immense magnitude for proper exploitation. In this atomic age, we now have available truly immense potential sources of power, and it is highly likely that our lifetime will see the harnessing of hydrogen fusion power.” It is relevant that US military agencies were interested in using nuclear energy to modify the climate because they feared that the Soviets were doing the same. In fact, fear of Soviet nuclear testing for climate modification stimulated the US military’s interest in climate change science.
In March 1971, the Soviet Union detonated three nuclear bombs in an effort to form a canal trench. US sensors detected the blasts and the US charged the Soviets with violating the Limited Test Ban Treaty (1963). The US considered this domestic irrigation operation to be an act of geoengineering (albeit land-based). The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was tasked with studying the climate to monitor any possible Soviet manipulations of the climate. Air Force Officer John Perry, who had a background in meteorology, was put in charge of the program, which was codenamed Nile Blue. The $3 million project (about $20 million in today’s money) was coordinated with the head of DARPA’s nuclear monitoring, Eric Willis.
(D)ARPA researchers created the ARPANET, which others developed into the Internet. (D)ARPA also ran ILLIAC IV, an early supercomputer. But ILLIAC IV was at risk of being de-funded, so it seemed the perfect fit for Nile Blue, which had a respectable budget and needed the services of a supercomputer. DARPA’s research concluded in 1976. But it helped establish a national climate change research program, later expanded by civilian agencies, including the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Into the 21st Century: The CIA & Climate Change
In 2009, the CIA established the Center on Climate Change and National Security. (Congress closed it three years later.) The Center included representatives from the Directorate of Intelligence and the Directorate of Science and Technology. The Center aimed to “provide support to American policymakers as they negotiate, implement, and verify international agreements on environmental issues. That is something the CIA has done for years.” Then-CIA Director Leon Panetta said: “Decision makers need information and analysis on the effects climate change can have on security. The CIA is well positioned to deliver that intelligence.”
Two years later, two consultants working for the CIA, Michael Canes and Roger Lueken, asked the civilian climate scientist, Dr Alan Robock, some disturbing questions. They asked if: a) the US could be detected if it were to modify the climate, and b) if enemy states could be detected doing the same. Interestingly, Canes and Lueken asked whether a thin layer of cloud could be spotted by satellites or by other means. This confirms that if the US were to use aeroplanes in stratospheric geoengineering programs or experiments, such programs/experiments would produce thin stratospheric clouds. But thin stratospheric clouds are called cirrus. Aeroplanes naturally produce human-made cirrus in the form of persistent condensation trails. Many credible witnesses have long-reported unusual, persistent trails (known as “chemtrails”) in areas where commercial jets don’t usually fly. Could these observations have anything to do with the thin cloud cover noted by Canes and Lueken?
Robock responded to the CIA contractors, saying that “there’s no way to do [large-scale geoengineering] without the agreement of the rest of the world. I guess a country could do it over its own territory.” Robock also responded to the question of whether the US could detect others modifying its climate: “If somebody was creating a thin cloud in the lower stratosphere we could detect that with our current satellite and ground-based observational system. We can see the effects of various small volcanic eruptions.” He said, “If somebody were sailing ships around the ocean brightening clouds, we could see the lines in the clouds with satellite imagery. And we could see the airplanes or the ships that were doing it. So it would be impossible to do it in secret.” Robock told a journal: “Of course, what they were also asking is, ‘Can we control somebody else’s climate?’”
Robock made another important statement: that the CIA had funded a major National Academy of Science conference which resulted in two reports. “It was funded mainly by the CIA. The CIA asked several other agencies, like NASA and NOAA, to help fund it, so that the report would look like a joint effort.” NOAA is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “I was told it was almost all the CIA, which goes by the ‘US intelligence community’ in the report. What’s wrong with this picture? The CIA wants to figure out how to control the globe’s weather.”
The conference produced two reports: Climate Intervention: Carbon Dioxide Removal and Reliable Sequestration and Climate Intervention: Reflecting Sunlight to Cool Earth.
Consider the speech given in 2016 by then-CIA Director John Brennan to the US Council on Foreign Relations, which discusses atmospheric whitening and carbon removal, like the reports Robock mentioned. Brennan notes “the array of technologies, often referred to collectively as geoengineering, that potentially could help reverse the warming effects of global climate change.” Brennan goes on to say, “One that has gained my personal attention is stratospheric aerosol injection, or SAI.” Recall that the 1960s report passed onto the CIA was discussing SAI (then under a different name). Brennan describes SAI as “a method of seeding the stratosphere with particles that can help reflect the sun’s heat in much the same way that volcanic eruptions do.” Brennan goes on to note that, “An SAI program could limit global temperature increases, reducing some risks associated with higher temperatures, and providing the world economy additional time to transition from fossil fuels.” As Robock pointed out, the question is, could it be detected? Brennan adds, “This process is also relatively inexpensive. The National Research Council estimates that a fully deployed SAI program would cost about $10 billion yearly.”
“As promising as it may be, moving forward on SAI would also raise a number of challenges for our government and for the international community,” Brennan continues. “On the technical side, greenhouse gas emission reductions would still have to accompany SAI to address other climate change effects, such as ocean acidification, because SAI alone would not remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere…. On the geopolitical side, the technology’s potential to alter weather patterns and benefit certain regions of the world at the expense of other regions could trigger sharp opposition by some nations.” Brennan concludes: “Others might seize on SAI’s benefits and back away from their commitment to carbon dioxide reductions. And as with other breakthrough technologies, global norms and standards are lacking to guide the deployment and implementation of SAI and other geoengineering initiatives.”
Conclusion
What other evidence exists for military interest in geoengineering? In a projection out to 2045, the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) writes:
GeoengineeringWatch.org.
“Theoretically plausible geoengineering methods (intentional, large-scale activities intended to counteract aspects of climate change) have been proposed for a number of years. Detailed studies on the environmental implications of different geoengineering activities have recently begun to appear, but large-scale testing and implementation of such methods has not occurred – in some cases due to public opposition.”
The document adds:
“One theoretical ‘solar radiation management’ technique would aim to disperse sulphates into the upper atmosphere, reflecting the sun’s rays back out to space, producing a cooling effect. However, as with most geoengineering techniques, there are questions about how to maintain the intervention, and minimise the potentially harmful side-effects. For example, it is not known what the longterm effects of dispersing large quantities of sulphates into the atmosphere would be. Over-reliance on particular geoengineering technology to mitigate the effects of climate change could also render users vulnerable to catastrophic effects if equipment failed or was sabotaged. It is not clear therefore what, if any, role geoengineering will play by 2045 in countering the effects of climate change, and the extent to which it could heighten international tensions.”
Another UK MoD report out to 2050 states:
“The cost of climate change to governments and societies will increase and, as time passes, mitigation measures will become increasingly complex and expensive to implement. The demand for a coordinated global campaign to address climate change will grow as acute effects are felt from an increasingly volatile climate and concerns develop about an approaching ecological ‘tipping point’. Geoengineering (deliberate, large-scale manipulation of an environmental process) could become a strategic geopolitical (and irreversible) choice for governments… Defence and security planning assumptions, not least access, basing routes, logistics and environmental envelope in which military capabilities will have to operate, will need to be reviewed.”
The report concludes by noting the possibility of “unilateral adoption of geoengineering.” It would seem that the CIA’s interest in geoengineering, which dates back to at least the 1960s, has fuelled contemporary debates on the subject within military circles. The military origins of supercomputers and their uses in climate modelling have blurred the distinction between civilian and military climate change studies. Keep watching the skies!
Footnotes
1. For a scholarly history, see James R. Fleming (2010) Fixing the Sky, Columbia University Press
2. WMO Expert Team on Weather Modification’s website, www.wmo.int/pages/prog/arep/wwrp/new/weathermod_new.html
3. AIR 2/13343, “Rainfall of August 15th 1952: Flooding at Lynmouth, opened 18 August 1952.”
4. Memorandum From the Deputy Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (Kohler) to Secretary of State Rusk, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, Vol. XXVIII, Laos, State Department, Office of the Historian, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v28/d274. For extended discussion, see Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation (1979) Weather Modification: Programs, Problems, Policy, and Potential, 9th Congress, 2nd Session, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, pp. 36, 428, 433
5. One report suggests that, unlike weather modification, geoengineering involves changing global temperatures. The Royal Society (2009), Geoengineering the climate Science, governance and uncertainty, London: RS, p. 4, royal
society.org/~/media/royal_society_content/policy/publications/2009/8693.pdf
6. The earliest scientific, in situ weather modification experiment, Project Cirrus (1940s), involved civilian scientists (researchers and theorists), the General Electric corporation (financiers), federal and local authorities (who authorised it), and the military (which provided equipment and share data). Barrington S. Havens (1952), History of Project Cirrus, Armed Services Technical Information Agency and General Electric Research Laboratory, Research Publication Services, apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/006880.pdf
7. For instance: “A coalition representing the most powerful academic, military, scientific and corporate interests has set its sights on vast potential profits … Notable among the group is David Whelan, a man who spent years in the US defence department working on the stealth bomber and nuclear weapons and who now leads a group of people as Boeing’s chief scientist.” John Vidal, “Big names behind US push for geoengineering,” Guardian, 6 October 2011, www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2011/oct/06/us-push-geoengineering
8. CIA (1960), “Climate control,” Memorandum, Executive Registry No. 60-9040, www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP78-03425A002100020014-2.pdf
9. William M. Gray and William M. Frank (1974), Weather Modification by Carbon Dust Absorption of Solar Energy Atmospheric, Science Paper 225, Department of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University, https://
tropical.colostate.edu/media/sites/111/2016/10/225_Gray.pdf
10. This was Project Stormfury. See J.H. Chaffe, M.H. Stans, E.T. Harding and R.M. White (1969) Project Stormfury Annual Report 1969, ESSA-SP-NHRL-71-08, Springfield, National Technical Information Service, apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/717498.pdf
11. Arnold A. Barnes (1997) “Weather modification,” Technology Test Symposium ’97, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Weather Modification/PL/GPA/AAB/970402 21, r3zn8d.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/haarp-weather-modification-test-technology-symposium-1997-
usaf-dr-arnold-a-barnes-jr.pdf
12. Sharon Weinberger, “How Soviet Bomb Tests Paved the Way For U.S. Climate Science,” The Smithsonian Magazine, 7 May 2018, www.
smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-soviet-bomb-test-led-us-climate-science-180968890/
13. CIA, “CIA opens Center on climate change and national security,” Historical Document, 25 September 2009, www.cia.gov/news-information/press-releases-statements/center-on-climate-change-and-national-security.html
14. See, for instance, Robert J. Fitrakis (2005), The Fitrakis Files: Star Wars, Weather Mods & Full Spectrum Dominance, Columbus Alive, Inc.
15. Alan Robock, “Cloud control: Climatologist Alan Robock on the effects of geoengineering and nuclear war,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 71(3): 1-7
16. Council on Foreign Relations, “John Brennan on Transnational Threats to Global Security,” 29 June 2016, www.cfr.org/event/john-brennan-
transnational-threats-global-security
17. MoD (2014) Strategic Trends Programme Global Strategic Trends – Out to 2045, MoD, p. 38, espas.secure.europarl.europa.eu/orbis/sites/default/files/generated/document/en/MinofDef_Global%20Strategic%20Trends%20-%202045.pdf
18. Ministry of Defence (2018 (6th ed.)), Global Strategic Trends: The Future Starts Today, MoD, pp. 13, 57, assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/771309/Global_Strategic_Trends_-_The_Future_Starts_Today.pdf
© New Dawn Magazine and the respective author.
For our reproduction notice, click here.