Excluded from the Copenhagen Agenda: Environmental Modification Techniques (ENMOD) and Climate Change The manipulation of climate for military use

by Michel Chossudovsky for Global Research.ca

"The manipulation of climate for military use is potentially a greater threat to humanity than CO2 emissions."

"Why has it been excluded from the debate under COP15, when the UN 1977 Convention states quite explicitly that "military or any other hostile use of such techniques could have effects extremely harmful to human welfare"?"

The term "environmental modification techniques" refers to any technique for changing - through the deliberate manipulation of natural processes - the dynamics, composition or structure of the Earth, including its biota, lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere, or of outer space. (Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques, United Nations, Geneva: 18 May 1977)

"Environmental warfare is defined as the intentional modification or manipulation of the natural ecology, such as climate and weather, earth systems such as the ionosphere, magnetosphere, tectonic plate system, and/or the triggering of seismic events (earthquakes) to cause intentional physical, economic, and psycho-social, and physical destruction to an intended target geophysical or population location, as part of strategic or tactical war." (Eco News)

"[Weather modification] offers the war fighter a wide range of possible options to defeat or coerce an adversary... Weather modification will become a part of domestic and international security and could be done unilaterally… It could have offensive and defensive applications and even be used for deterrence purposes. The ability to generate precipitation, fog and storms on earth or to modify space weather… and the production of artificial weather all are a part of an integrated set of [military] technologies." (US Air Force document AF 2025 Final Report)

World leaders are meeting in Copenhagen in December 2009 with a view to reaching an agreement on Global Warming. The debate on Climate Change focuses on the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions and measures to reduce manmade CO2 emissions under the Kyoto Protocol.

The underlying consensus is that greenhouse gas emissions constitute the sole cause of climate instability. Neither the governments nor the environmental action groups, have raised the issue of "weather warfare" or "environmental modification techniques (ENMOD)." for military use. Despite a vast body of scientific knowledge, the issue of climatic manipulations for military use has been excluded from the UN agenda on climate change.

John von Neumann noted at the height of the Cold War (1955), with tremendous foresight that:

"Intervention in atmospheric and climatic matters ....will unfold on a scale difficult to imagine at present... [T]his will merge each nation’s affairs with those of every other, more thoroughly than the threat of a nuclear or any other war would have done." (Quoted in Spencer Weart, Environmental Warfare: Climate Modification Schemes, Global Research, December 5, 20090

In 1977, an international Convention was ratified by the UN General Assembly which banned "military or other hostile use of environmental modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting or severe effects." (AP, 18 May 1977). Both the US and the Soviet Union were signatories to the Convention.

Guided by the interest of consolidating peace, ... and of saving mankind from the danger of using new means of warfare, (...) Recognizing that military ... use of such [environmental modification techniques] could have effects extremely harmful to human welfare, Desiring to prohibit effectively military ... use of environmental modification techniques in order to eliminate the dangers to mankind. ... and affirming their willingness to work towards the achievement of this objective, (...) Each State Party to this Convention undertakes not to engage in military ... use of environmental modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting or severe effects as the means of destruction, damage or injury to any other State Party. (Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques, United Nations, Geneva, May 18, 1977. Entered into force: 5 October 1978, see full text of Convention in Annex)

The Convention defined "'environmental modification techniques' as referring to any technique for changing--through the deliberate manipulation of natural processes--the dynamics, composition or structure of the earth, including its biota, lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere or of outer space." (Environmental Modification Ban Faithfully Observed, States Parties Declare, UN Chronicle, July, 1984, Vol. 21, p. 27)

The substance of the 1977 Convention was reasserted in very general terms in the Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) signed at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro:

"States have... in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of international law, the (...) responsibility to ensure that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to the environment of other States or of areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction."  (UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, New York, 1992)

Following the 1992 Earth Summit, the issue of Climate Change for military use was never raised in subsequent climate change summits and venues under the auspices of the UNFCCC. The issue was erased, forgotten. It is not part of the debate on climate change.

In February 1998, however, the European Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs, Security and Defense Policy held public hearings in Brussels on the U.S based weather warfare facility developed under the HAARP program.

The Committee's "Motion for Resolution" submitted to the European Parliament:

"Considers HAARP.[The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program  based in Alaska].. by virtue of its far-reaching impact on the environment to be a global concern and calls for its legal, ecological and ethical implications to be examined by an international independent body...; [the Committee] regrets the repeated refusal of the United States Administration... to give evidence to the public hearing ...into the environmental and public risks [of] the HAARP program." (European Parliament, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Security and Defense Policy, Brussels, doc. no. A4-0005/99, 14 January 1999).

The Committee's request to draw up a "Green Paper" on "the environmental impacts of military activities", however, was casually dismissed on the grounds that the European Commission lacked the required jurisdiction to delve into "the links between environment and defense". Brussels was anxious to avoid a showdown with Washington. (see European Report, 3 February 1999).

In 2007, The Daily Express reported --following the release and declassification of British government papers from the National Archives-- that:

"The [declassified] documents reveal that both the US, which led the field, and the Soviet Union had secret military programmes with the goal of controlling the world's climate. "By the year 2025 the United States will own the weather, " one scientist is said to have boasted.

...

These claims are dismissed by sceptics as wild conspiracy theories and the stuff of James Bond movies but there is growing evidence that the boundaries between science fiction and fact are becoming increasingly blurred. The Americans now admit that they invested L12million over five years during the Vietnam war on "cloud seeding" - deliberately creating heavy rainfall to wash away enemy crops and destroy supply routes on the Ho Chi Minh trail, in an operation codenamed Project Popeye.

It is claimed that rainfall was increased by a third in targeted areas, making the weather-manipulation weapon a success. At the time, government officials said the region was prone to heavy rain. (Weather War?, Daily Express, July 16, 2007)

The possibility of climatic or environmental manipulations as part of a military agenda, while formally acknowledged by official government documents and the US military, has never been considered relevant to the Climate debate. Military analysts are mute on the subject. Meteorologists are not investigating the matter, and environmentalists are strung on global warming and the Kyoto protocol.

The HAARP Program

The High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) based in Gokona, Alaska, has been in existence since 1992. It is part of a new generation of sophisticated weaponry under the US Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Operated by the Air Force Research Laboratory's Space Vehicles Directorate, HAARP constitutes a system of powerful antennas capable of creating "controlled local modifications of the ionosphere" [upper layer of the atmosphere]:

HAARP has been presented to public opinion as a program of scientific and academic research. US military documents seem to suggest, however, that HAARP's main objective is to "exploit the ionosphere for Department of Defense purposes." (See Michel Chossudovsky, The Ultimate Weapon of Mass Destruction: "Owning the Weather" for Military Use, Global Research, September 27, 2004

Without explicitly referring to the HAARP program, a US Air Force study points to the use of "induced ionospheric modifications" as a means of altering weather patterns as well as disrupting enemy communications and radar. (Ibid)

HAARP also has the ability of triggering blackouts and disrupting the electricity power system of entire regions:

"Rosalie Bertell, president of the International Institute of Concern for Public Health, says HAARP operates as ‘a gigantic heater that can cause major disruptions in the ionosphere, creating not just holes, but long incisions in the protective layer that keeps deadly radiation from bombarding the planet’.

Physicist Dr Bernard Eastlund called it ‘the largest ionospheric heater ever built’. HAARP is presented by the US Air Force as a research programme, but military documents confirm its main objective is to ‘induce ionospheric modifications’ with a view to altering weather patterns and disrupting communications and radar.

According to a report by the Russian State Duma: ‘The US plans to carry out large-scale experiments under the HAARP programme [and] create weapons capable of breaking radio communication lines and equipment installed on spaceships and rockets, provoke serious accidents in electricity networks and in oil and gas pipelines, and have a negative impact on the mental health of entire regions.’

Weather manipulation is the pre-emptive weapon par excellence. It can be directed against enemy countries or ‘friendly nations’ without their knowledge, used to destabilise economies, ecosystems and agriculture. It can also trigger havoc in financial and commodity markets. The disruption in agriculture creates a greater dependency on food aid and imported grain staples from the US and other Western countries." (Michel Chossudovsky, Weather Warfare: Beware the US military’s experiments with climatic warfare, The Ecologist, December 2007)

An analysis of statements emanating from the US Air Force points to the unthinkable: the covert manipulation of weather patterns, communications systems and electric power as a weapon of global warfare, enabling the US to disrupt and dominate entire regions of the World. According to an official US Air force report

"Weather-modification offers the war fighter a wide-range of possible options to defeat or coerce an adversary... In the United States, weather-modification will likely become a part of national security policy with both domestic and international applications. Our government will pursue such a policy, depending on its interests, at various levels." (US Air Force, emphasis added. Air University of the US Air Force, AF 2025 Final Report, http://www.au.af.mil/au/2025/ emphasis added)

Copenhagen CO15

The manipulation of climate for military use is potentially a greater threat to humanity than CO2 emissions.

Why has it been excluded from the debate under COP15, when the UN 1977 Convention states quite explicitly that "military or any other hostile use of such techniques could have effects extremely harmful to human welfare"? (Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques United Nations, Geneva, 1977)

Why the camouflage?

Why are environmental modification techniques (ENMOD) not being debated by the civil society and environmentalist organizations under the auspices of the Alternative Forum KlimaForum09?