No, Dumbasses, the Government Didn’t Cause Hurricane Irma With Its Secret Weather Machine – // David Axe – 09.12.17 1:00 AM ET // The website promoted a Sept. 9 story by YourNewsWire.com that seems to be a major accelerant of the current round of HAARP conspiracy theories. The YourNewWire story falsely claimed that physicist Dr. Michio Kaku admitted that recent “‘man-made’ hurricanes have been the result of a government weather-modification program in which the skies were sprayed with nano particles and storms then ‘activated’ through the use of ‘lasers.’”
The story is a fabrication. “Kaku never said that HAARP was responsible for hurricanes,” fake-news-debunking website Snopes explained. “YouTube videos espousing the conspiracy theory splice together misinformation about HAARP with an interview Kaku did with CBS News in 2013 in which he talked about the possibility of governments one day being able to cause rainfall using lasers and other means.”
What HAARP actually does is far less frightening than what the truthers claim it does. Built by the U.S. Air Force starting in 1993, the 33-acre facility includes a high-frequency radio transmitter composed of 180 crisscrossing antennae that transmit up to 3.6 megawatts of power straight into the ionosphere, which extends from around 40 miles to around 300 miles up.
The power HAARP sends into the sky subtly changes the ionosphere, providing scientists on the ground with useful data that can support advancements in communications technology. The Air Force transferred HAARP to the University of Alaska in 2015.
Source: No, Dumbasses, the Government Didn’t Cause Hurricane Irma With Its Secret Weather Machine
