A Brief to the Senate Foreign. Relations Committee, Subcommittee on Oceans and the Environment, Jan., 1976 Hearings on Weather Modification. 

Introduction

The events surrounding the storms that hit the European continent around New Year. 1976 make possible the establishment of a prima facie case that the storms themselve, resulted from NATO-coordinated weather modification aimed at Europe. This weather modification operation had the deliberate intention of bringing into play civil defense and military personnel who, in the wake of the emergency. would regiment and demoralize the areas’ working class population. 

 The following brief will outline the history of weather modification; NATO-U.S. operational capabilities in weather modification; the unusual weather histories of the storms, including information on deliberate sabotage of European storm warning systems before they hit, and the military apparatus that was poised to carry out civil defense functions in the wake of storm destruction. As will be clearly shown in the brief, the actions of civil defense personnel during and after the storms parallel military operations necessary to establish and maintain national military governments capable of enforcing the austerity programs which currently stand as adopted government policy in the U.S., Canada and Western Europe. 

On Dec. 30, at noon Greenwich Mean Time, a U.S. weather satellite observed a low pressure weather system east of Richmond, Virginia, and south of Newfoundland. By the time this system died, it had become the worst storm to hit Europe in 29 years. Striking the Northern Irish coast on Jan. 2, in- . tensifying drastically over Scotland, sweeping destruction over the North Sea and Northern Europe with 100 mph winds and severe flooding, this was followed after one day by yet another storm, nearly as severe as the first. 

The events in the scenario of the 1976 New Year storms indicate that much more was involved than meteorological phenomena and subsequent recovery. The storm wave took place in the context of an on-going economic and political drive by the Rockefeller allied international financial faction to preserve the dollar-denominated debt structure against escalating pressures of depression collapse. Related to this political framework is the fact of on-going research into and implementation of geophysical warfare techniques. At the 39th session of the General Assembly, the Soviet Union, recognizing a significant weather warfare potential already developed by NATO forces, entered a call to eliminate the danger of the modification of the environment and climate for military and other purposes, since these would be incompatible witli ensuring international security, human welfare and health. 

The events involving mobilization of the affected populations. the incidents involving agencies concerned with various aspects of the storm. and the suspicious nature of the stormtracks. indicate that a chaos and confusion operation to be directed at the European working class was in place, ready to be triggered under the right conditions. Winter storms exist in plenty. To trigger a weather warfare operation it would be necessary only to wait for a storm suitable for modification, particularly one over mountainous Scotland, and then begin the operation. 

The Scenario

The satellite information giving the location of the storm was supplied by the National Weather Satellite Service, and all times are Greenwich Mean Time (Central European Time i6 one hour illter.) The early motion of the storm was typical for winter storms in the Atlantic, moving generally northeast (see the accompanying map). 

As the center approached Great Britain, it began to accelerate and intensify. The storm then slowed. only to intensify very suddenly as it passed over Scotland, dropping from 984 millibars to 975 millibars in only six hours. (Millibars refer to air pressure: a pressure of 1000 millibars is about normal; 970 millibars is very low, although a hurricane, which is a much smaller storm than a full-scale winter storm, has pressures of 940 millibars. The figures given refer to the pressure at the center of the storm.) Storm winds gusted to 100 mph in England on Friday, Jan. 2. knocking out power stations there, and began to push water in the North Sea into the coast of Germany and Denmark. 

Although the British Meteorological Services published a bulletin on Friday, announcing this as a wind of Force 9 (indicating winds of over hurricane strength), the warning did not appear in the British press. The French daily Le Monde was the one paper on the continent, to pick up the warning, which was then published as a regular weather report. Simultaneously workers at the National Meteorological Bureau in France went out on strike. The Parisian daily Le Figaro published on Jan. 2 a notice reading, “a partial strike at the National Meteorological Bureau does not allow us to produce a weather map today.” 

Since this strike assumes unusual significance for the fate of the continent during the storms, it must be thoroughly investigated to determine the possibility of its instigation by provocateurs or other means of manipulation. Although the ocean weather bureau in Hamburg, West Germany knew of the impending storm as early as the morning of Jan. 2, the German daily Die Welt received an official weather report from the bureau predicting warm and mild weather. The Hamburg bureau sent no storm warning until} :45 pm, on Jan. 2, when storms for southern Germany were reported on evening TV. By midnight, Jan. 3 storm center pressure had dropped to 972· millibars, and the center had moved to the southwest coast of Norway. With the strongest winds 200 miles from the center, water in the North Sea began to pile up along all the coasts bordering the storm. The Meteorology Office in England began to put out notices of flood tide warnings which undoubtedly sounded very strange to the population. The office gave warnings for “areas 12, 13, and 14” etc. but no one was told where these areas were until later, when the BBC intervened to explain the mysterious warnings. Weather reports in the European-wide press were fairly innocuous up until virtually the moment the storm hit. In Denmark, where 20,000 people were evacuated once the storm hit, the computerized advance flood warning system failed to work, according to a report in the London Times. Furthermore, an alert put out by the parallel manually operated flood tide warning system was buried by the head of the system, Dr. Christainsen. If there is an investigation of this failure, it is being blacked out by the press. Near the mouth of the Elbe, the water level on Jan. 3 was 14 feet above normal at the harbor in Hamburg, threatening to block the cooling water supply of a nearby nuclear power station. Immediate fears arose that without adequate cooling water, the station’s reactor’s core would melt, producing a steam explosion, rupturing the station and releasing nuclear contaminants into the seashore.

Second Storm 

Before the first storm was over, the same region was struck by another storm which produced winds from the same direction, adding to the damage, and piling up water at the European end of the North Sea. 

The effects of the storms were by no means limited to the coastal countries. According to a London Times report, Czechoslovakia had 72 hours of continuous and severe storm weather. Other Eastbloc countries reported heavy flooding, together with massive disruption of communication, transportation, and electrical grids. The Magdeburg area of the German Democratic Republic, which produces much of the coal for the country, was severely affected. In the immediate wake of the storm disruptions, Werner Maihofer, the West German Interior Minister and the only West German cabinet member not on vacation at the time, formed an emergency crisis government. This was in response not only to the storms, but to renewed terrorist threats against West German airports.

As with the case of the strike at the French Meteorological Bureau, so-called terrorist threats of this nature have been repeatedly exposed to be manipulated from the highest levels of the CIA and associated agencies. A sense of the effects of the storm on the population can be seen from reports directly to IPS from Europe. During the blizzards that were produced in Scandinavia, for example, people were seen to be wandering in a daze at railroad stations. 

Three seemingly coincidental occurrences around the storms must be noted by any intelligent observer of international politics. The Swedish newspaper, Aftonbladet, controlled by Swedish Social Democratic Premier and long-time NATO agent Olof Palme, printed a study, Dec. 30, by the Stockholm International Institute for Peace Research, itself a long-time NATO-connected source, which in effect predicted in detail the weather attack that occurred later in the week. Author of the study, “Prospects for the Future,” frank Barnaby noted that, since a nuclear strike would probably entail a full retaliatory response, a “future war” in Western Europe could be fought by directing storms, cyclones and typhoons against the enemy, by redirecting rivers to provoke floods, by poisoning rivers and water supplies and by manipulating rainfall to provoke economic consequences like famine. 

Three weeks previous, Danish, Swedish and West German Civil Defense and Civil Preparedness officials met jointly in Copenhagen immediately after the Swedish and Danish armed forces had participated in a joint maneuver around a population evacuation scenario involving the explosion of a nuclear fission plant. During the storm itself, the city of Bonn, West Germany, experienced a power failure that was, as of current reports, in no way related to the storm.

Feasibility of Weather Modification

Although no hard proof can be presented at this time, that the two storms in question were subject to weather modifification, there is strong indication that this is the case even if the civilian and military mobilization are not taken into account. Two aspects of the storms: 1) The severe intensification of the first storm over Scotland, and 2) The southeast track of both storms during their periods of intensification, provide the indication. Weather systems involve a complicated relationship between micro- and macro-processes. Micro processes include the changes in phase between vapor, liquid, and solid, and the heat transferred when water passes from one phase to another. About 540 calories of heat are released for every gram of water vapor that condenses into water drops, and 80 calories are released when a gram of water freezes. 

This small amount of heat becomes enormously significant when large amounts of water are involved. Changes in phase are induced by change in temperature and pressure of the air. Macro-processes involve interaction between large air masses with different internal characteristics and involve the interaction of these masses with the earth’s gravitational field and its spin. The amount of energy involved in changing the macro-processes is very large -typical systems involve energy transfers equivalent to thousands of nuclear blasts the size of the Hiroshima bomb. Weather modification programs concentrate on affecting the micro-process in order to affect the macro-process. 

The concept underlying weather modification is to trigger the inherent instability in these weather systems. Most of the publicly known processes involve forms of cloud seeding, which forces an increase in the rate of condensation of water into ice. In the cloud seeding process, water droplets in clouds are forced to freeze by providing crystals that resemble the structure of ice, such as silver iodide. Once freezing has begun, more water is then able to freeze using the growing crystals as templates. Depending on the physical conditions of the system, the heat released by this process can cause updrafts bringing in more air which then release its heat as its water content freezes, continuing the process. When the crystals become large enough, they fall as snow, changing to rain if the temperature of the lower air is sufficiently warm. 

Most known experiments to date involved relatively small systems. Clouds have been seeded to produce more rain than would have fallen (usually only 10 per cent of the water con- . tent of a cloud is precipitated naturally), or hail storms have been prevented by stimulating its precipitation prematurely from the systems. Hurricane modification was begun as a classified program in 1947. Under the program called, “Stormfury,” the U.S. Navy seeded hurricanes at first in the wall clouds of the eye; seeding was then moved outward from the center. Since the eye of a hurricane is a region of very strong updraft, it was thought that the updraft region could be expanded, thereby expanding the whole storm. The circulation pattern, and therefore the winds, would decrease in the same way that a skater’s spin slows down when his arms are extended outward. In one experiment, wind speeds were  reduced by 10 to 20 per cent on three different occasions with the same hurricane. with the effects lasting up to 18 hours each time. Stormfury attracted much attention when charges were made against the program that several hurricanes were diverted into the coast into Atlanta, Georgia and into Cuba and Honduras for example.

According to Pierre St. Amand, who is head of the Earth and Planetary Sciences Division of the Naval Weapons Center at China Lake. California, the experiments in cloud seeding that took place before 1957 were conducted under difficult handicap. According to St. Amand. the experimenters were not seeding the clouds with silver iodide as thought. The generators designed to yield silver iodide were actually producing complex mixtures including silver, potassium and sodium. Given the success of subsequent cloud seeding experiments and programs after this flaw was corrected in 1957. It is likely that many of the attempts that were judged “not statistically significant” should have been repeated for significance. It seems that many were not. at least not publicly. 

This short history implies that the possibility of successfully seeding Atlantic winter storms is far from ruled out. Dr. St. Amand. has successfully seeded winter storms on the Pacific coast using both airplanes and a seeding generator located on a mountain top over 3400 feet above sea level. He has also achieved success in storm track diversion. although there has been no public comment on results with storms of the size of those in question here. Nevertheless. the fact that the first storm increased in intensity over Scotland. with its well-placed mountains. and the fact that the storm soon after changed its track in an extremely unlikely direction. all contribute to a prima facie case for weather modification. 

Using data from winter 1971- 1972 storm modification experiments carried out off the coast of California and scaling up the operation used at that time. we can see that the ability to minimally modify a storm such as the first to hit Europe this year is well within existing capability. It would take about 16 gallons total of a 10 per cent solution of silver iodide ntxed in acetone and ammonium iodide. burned at the rate of about 10 quarts per hour. in 12 airplanes for about a half hour. (If mountain top generators were used. the figures would have to be changed somewhat.) Even if these figures need to be increased by as much as a factor of ten. it would still be possible. merely by using 160 gallons with faster airplanes and increasing the burning rate. (The California experiment used 110 mile per hour airplanes.)

The fact that the latter path of the second storm took the . same direction as that of the first is equally questionable. However. an assessment of the possibility of weather modification of the second storm is difficult at this time due to a limited general scientific understanding of the overall behavior of the atmosphere in circumstances such as those caused by the first storm.

Call for Investigation

Members of Europe’s leading anti-Rockefeller industrialist factions have already taken the question of weather modification of these devastating storms into serious consideration. Gerhard Stoltenberg, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) Prime Minister of the West German state of Schleswig-Holstein, a leader of this faction in West Germany, stated at a Jan. 6 press conference that the possibility of the use of deliberate “meteorological warfare” methods such as cloud seeding during the two storms cannot be excluded, and demanded an immediate, thorough investigation of the matter. 

As Stoltenberg recognized there is no question that the storms, from both the scientific and the political standpoints, were unusual. It is well known that the U.S. and NATO military forces are currently working to achieve an operational capability for startling weather modification maneuvers. The Soviets have repeatedly warned of such capabilities, and as recently as June of 1975, the East German military journal Armeerl,lndschau noted that NATO’s continuing research in “geophysical war” technologies, and doculllented NATO weather modification techniques for creating tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes and “windows” in the earth’s ozone layer which would allow highly destructive cosmic radiation to hit the earth’s surface.

 In January and March 1:1,’1, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations held hearings on weather modification before the Subcommittee on Oceans and International Environment; Senator Pell, subcommittee chairman, raised questions which resulted in both an environmentalist frenzy over the capability of weather modification, even in the primitive form carried out in Viet Nam, and a subsequent coverup of much of the ongoing U.S.-NATO research into weather modification. In these hearings, the subcommittee heard testimony from Dr. St. Amand on the possibility of modifying winter storms, which has not been publicized.

The subcommittee asked for clarification of the participation by the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Council, and the office of international Security Affairs in the Defense Department. in particular, a report with “Secret” classification of an Interagency panel of the National Security Council, the Pollack Committee, was requested, but the report was not supplied, and is still classified. 

The State Department was involved acting as mediator for the weather modification research and deployment on the field. The direction in which this initial investigation must be taken, should be made clear in light of the new hearings convening before the same committee on Jan. 21, 1976. To reach a competent ass(‘ssment of the operational and immediate future capabilities of weather modification, we must have the following questions answered:

* What covert research not previously revealed by the Pell subcommittee investigations has been conducted? What are the realized and potential capabilities?

* What operational capabilities, based on such research, have been set up by U.S. or NATO forces?

What is the role of the CIA, the NSC, and DOD and adjunct agencies and think tanks in planning and deploying research and operations?

If these questions are left again unanswered by the 1976 hearings, the already substantial possibility for wide-scale destruction of crops, cities and populations through misuse of weather modification technologies will be significantly increased. Weather modification has important and valuable potential use, as does any applied science, and the avenues for productive research are clear. Critical research areas are the relationship between the ionosphere and weather systems in the atmosphere, and particularly how the ionosphere is related to solar magnetic phenomena and the solar wind. Whether weather modification technologies are applied to scientific development of the worldwide productive forces, or wielded as new weapons of destruction by the political forces in whose hands they now lie, will be determined in great part by the investigations of the committee. 

PDF http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1976/eirv03n04-19760125/eirv03n04-19760125_028-the_1976_new_year_storms_in_euro.pdf

Volume 3, Number 4, January 25, 1976

Cover of EIR Volume 3, Number 4, January 25, 1976

 

Full Issue http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1976/eirv03n04-19760125/eirv03n04-19760125.pdf

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