Weird 'Facts' of the Paranormal

Weather modificationi s the act of intentionally manipulating or altering the weather. The most common form of weather modification is cloud seeding to increase rain or snow, usually for the purpose of increasing the local water supply. Weather modification can also have the goal of preventing damaging weather, such as hail or hurricanes, from occurring; or of provoking damaging weather against an enemy or rival, as a tactic of military or economic warfare. Weather modification in warfare has been banned by the United Nations.

Cloud Seeding

Cloud seeding is a common technique to enhance precipitation. Cloud seeding entails spraying small particles, such as aluminium oxide, barium, or silver iodide onto clouds in order to affect their development, usually with the goal of increasing precipitation. Cloud seeding only works to the extent that there is already water vapor present in the air. Critics generally claimed successes occur in conditions which were going to lead to rain anyway. It is used in a variety of drought-prone countries, including the United States, the People's Republic of China, India, and the Russian Federation. In the People's Republic of China there is a perceived dependency upon it in dry regions, and there is a strong suspicion it is used to "wash the air" in dry and heavily polluted places, such as Beijing.

Storm Prevention

In mountainous areas of the United States, such as the Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevada, cloud seeding has been employed since the 1950s.

Project Stormfury was an attempt to weaken tropical cyclones by flying aircraft into storms and seeding the eyewall with silver iodide. The project was run by the United States Government from 1962 to 1983. Various methods have been proposed to reduce the harmful effects of hurricanes.The Florida company Dyn-O-Mat proposes the use of a product it has developed, called Dyn-O-Gel, to reduce the strength of hurricanes. The substance is a polymer in powder form (a polyacrylic acid derivative) which reportedly has the ability to absorb 1,500 times its own weight in water. The theory is that the polymer is dropped into clouds to remove their moisture and force the storm to use more energy to move the heavier water drops, thus helping to dissipate the storm. When the gel reaches the ocean surface, it is reportedly dissolved.
The company has tested the substance on a thunderstorm, but there has not been any scientific consensus established as to its effectiveness. Numerical simulations performed by NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) showed that it would not be a practical solution for large systems like a tropical cyclone.

In the 19th century, hail cannons have been used by some farmers in an attempt to ward off hail, but there is no reliable scientific evidence to confirm their effectiveness.

HAARP

The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) is an ionospheric research program jointly funded by the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Navy, the University of Alaska, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Designed and built by BAE Advanced Technologies (BAEAT), its purpose is to analyze the ionosphere and investigate the potential for developing ionospheric enhancement technology for radio communications and surveillance. The HAARP program operates a major sub-arctic facility, named the HAARP Research Station, on an Air Force–owned site near Gakona, Alaska.

Conspiracy theories: Development of Weapons Technology

HAARP is the subject of numerous conspiracy theories. Various individuals have speculated hidden motives and capabilities to the project, and have blamed it for triggering catastrophes such as floods, droughts, hurricanes, thunderstorms, earthquakes in Iran, Pakistan, Haiti and the Philippines, major power outages the downing of TWA Flight 800, Gulf War syndrome, and chronic fatigue syndrome.

Allegations include the following:

A Russian military journal wrote that ionospheric testing would "trigger a cascade of electrons that could flip earth's magnetic poles".

The European Parliament and the Alaska state legislature held hearings about HAARP, the former citing "environmental concerns".

Former Governor of Minnesota and noted conspiracy theorist Jesse Ventura questioned whether the government is using the site to manipulate the weather or to bombard people with mind-controlling radio waves. An Air Force spokeswoman said Ventura made an official request to visit the research station but was rejected-"he and his crew showed up at HAARP anyway and were denied access".

Physicist Bernard Eastlund claimed that HAARP includes technology based on his own patents that has the capability to modify weather and neutralize satellites.

Stanford University professor Umran Inan told Popular Science that weather-control conspiracy theories were "completely uninformed," explaining that "there’s absolutely nothing we can do to disturb the Earth’s [weather] systems(sounds like a cover up to me). Even though the power HAARP radiates is very large, it’s minuscule compared with the power of a lightning flash—and there are 50 to 100 lightning flashes every second. HAARP’s intensity is very small."