Neither of this season’s two hurricanes, Humberto or Ingrid, reached major hurricane status and 2013 will go into the books as a very quiet hurricane season. Some have said the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) that the Air Force runs in Alaska is a possible factor, so what is the straight dope on HAARP?
steppy
Those people are unequivocally wrong. There is no connection between HAARP and the weather. Or earthquakes, since that’s #2 on the crackpot list of things HAARP is supposed to effect.
Hahahahahaha. Hehhehheh. Chortlechortle. [slaps knee] Hahahahahaha.
Or, what Telemark said. Now back to laughing.
Hahahahahahahaha.
Moderator Note
Exapno, this is GQ. If you want to ridicule the OP, do so in the Pit. This adds nothing whatever to the discussion here. No warning issued, but please restrain yourself in the future.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
This is an old Straight Dope column; what actually has been learned since 2002? Is HAARP operational? Did it work? Does anyone know, or is it still classified?
(I’m presuming classified because it deals with submarine communications, and that’s kind of a good reason for being secret. The “weather control” conspiracy fantasies have never made any sense. Okay, maybe we shouldn’t laugh, mock, or ridicule – but they are laughable, mock-worthy, and ridiculous.)
Besides, if we could stomp hurricanes, why did we let one through to muck up New York City? (A west coast conspiracy? San Francisco and Los Angeles put the fix in? Seattle knows but isn’t telling…)
Not wishing to appear too snarky, but this is one of the more common useless ways of asking a question. In a lot of contexts “some have said” is code for “I think but I’m going to phrase it differently to avoid any blame” - especially liked by journalists when interviewing people.
It needs a cite. Any such statement wrt HAARP is about as useful as “this really weird guy I met in a bar said…”. As a general rule HAARP is a conspiracy theorists heaven. All the usual rules apply. The inability to prove a negative being critical. You can blame HAARP for anything. Less of, more of, doesn’t matter.
Chaotic weather systems like hurricanes are intrinsically impossible to predict, and intrinsically behave across a wide range of possibilities. Clustering in random sequences is expected - that is why they are random. You need long term trends, not localised events. Conspiracy theorists don’t like statistics. The energy involved in a hurricane system is insane. You could drop thermonuclear bombs into them and they wouldn’t notice. The idea that some odd radio transmitter could affect one is taking science fiction to extremes. We don’t have the capability to generate enough energy across the entire planet to make a noticeable dent, let alone control or extinguish one.
Not the SD on HAARP, but there was a fairly recent thread here as to the reasons for the quiet season: dry winds and sands coming off Africa is what I read from other sources and posted in that thread.
Yeah, the tropical Atlantic was hit by dry air from 2-3 places which inhibited hurricane formation. We’ve had a “government controlling the weather” thread before and although weather is hard to predict precisely for a small location, it is very well understood in general and it all has a long evidence trail.
For everything that happens with the weather, there are thousands of meteorologists and weather nerds watching the weather models, upper air patterns, satellites, and literally hundreds of other aspects of the weather and know exactly what is going on every step of the way, usually a week or two in advance. The various weather patterns may interact differently than expected, but you can go back and look at more readings and figure out why.
I don’t think the government can control the weather, but even if they could, I just can’t imagine how it would be possible to do without arousing suspicion.
Besides, HAARP has been offline since May, so any conspiracy theorist seeing HAARP activity in current weather patterns inadvertantly proves that in fact, whatever evidence he belives he sees is erroneous, and his conspiracy theory unfounded.
Ah, so your saying HAARP inadvertently caused the New York hurricane so the government pulled the plug and that has resulted in fewer HAARPicanes?