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Analysis: "Weather as a Force Multiplier - Owning the Weather by 2025"
Those that believe in certain hoaxes on Internet conspiracy sites that involve topics
such as radar anomalies, "chemtrails", and weather control, often will cite an Air Force document
as evidence that the Air Force has a weather control program in place and may already be controlling
the weather. Sites such as RadarMatrix actually
suggest that the U.S. government controlled the weather during the 2002 Winter Olympic
games in Utah. The claims are quite incredible, really.
The reality is much less spectacular. The Air Force document they are speaking of, called
Weather as a Force Multiplier:
Owning the Weather by 2025, is real and was written and published in 1996.
The inaccuracy is the radical and incorrect interpretation that some conspiracy theorists
place on the document.
The "Owning the Weather by 2025" document itself begins with the following
disclaimer
(emphasis mine):
"2025 is a study designed to comply with a directive from the chief of staff of the
Air Force to examine the concepts, capabilities, and technologies the United States
will require to remain the dominant air and space force in the future. Presented on 17
June 1996, this report was produced in the Department of Defense school environment of
academic freedom and in the interest of advancing concepts related to national defense.
The views expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not reflect the
official policy or position of the United States Air Force, Department of Defense, or
the United States government. This report contains fictional representations of
future situations/scenarios."
In other words, the whole document is a hypothetical "future scenario" conceived by the
authors of the document. It's a conceptual excercise very much like the hypothetical
situations and "war games" that the military is constantly planning and reviewing.
Military planners have responses in place for virtually every conceiveable military situation,
and probably many "inconceiveable" situations. Certainly there are war plans that consider
the possibility of a conflict with Canada or Mexico despite the extreme improbability that
such a war will actually take place any time soon.
Likewise, the "Owning the Weather" document is a study on the potential benefits of being
able to modify the weather. It does not mean that the military has the capability of doing
so now nor does it necessarily indicate that they actively doing research into this kind of
technology any more than a war plan for Mexico suggests an imminent invasion of Mexico. That
the report was published in 1996 as an unclassified document further suggests that this
is not indicative of any secret military program that is currently in place.
SIMILAR MISINTERPRETATIONS
Another recent example is the recent story that ran with the title
Pentagon
Tells Bush: Climate Change Will Destroy Us. Suddenly news sources around the world were
reporting this seeming contradiction between the Pentagon and Bush's skepticism regarding
global warming. The article reads, in part:
"A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns
that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged
into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread
rioting will erupt across the world."
Again, the truth
is very different. The report was never secret and certainly not suppressed. The "secret"
report can be found here as
a 22-page PDF. Once again, we find the report starts with a disclaimer even before its
executive summary:
"We have interviewed leading climate change scientists, conducted additional research,
and reviewed several iterations of the scenario with these experts. The scientists
support this project, but caution that the scenario depicted is extreme in two fundamental
ways. First, they suggest the occurrences we outline would most likely happen in a few
regions, rather than globally. Second, they say the magnitude of the event may be consdierably
smaller."
Again we find that this is basically a mental exercise in planning. The purpose of the document
wasn't to confirm or state that climate change is real or is happening but simply to consider
the possible national security implications if it were to occur at catastrophic magnitudes. One
would assume that if we have at least thought about a worst-case scenario that we'd be ready for
anything less. Even Doug Randal, one of the authors of the report, said
here that: "The Pentagon
asked us to think about abrupt climate change and what its geopolitical implications might be.
We weren't saying this is what will happen, only that it plausibly could happen....
There are no scientists we've run into who say that abrupt climate change will unfold exactly
as we've outlined"
CONCLUSION
The Department of Defense commissions many studies and reports internally and through
external parties. These studies do not reflect U.S. policy and, many times, don't even
reflect reality. Just as war scenarios with Canada and Mexico are practically absurd, the
excercise of considering them gives military planners insight into issues that could arise
in the improbable event of such a conflict, or in similar conflicts elsewhere. A war plan
with Mexico doesn't mean we're going to attack Mexico or even consider such an event to be
remotely probable.
The conspiracy theorists that have latched on to the "Owning the Weather by 2025" document as
proof of a military capability to modify the weather are committing the same error that the
mass media has committed in mischaracterizing the Pentagon's climate change report. Both are
"what if" scenarios and not a statement of the military's goals or even a statement of what
the military believes is probable or possible. Neither were classified but rather are
readily available to anyone in the world that wishes to read them. This is hardly the
stamp of a secret military program or initiative.
In short, the "Owning the Weather by 2025" document is simply not sufficient evidence to give
us any reason to believe that NEXRAD, ELF, HAARP, or "chemtrails" are part of a military
program to control the weather.
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