By Rahab
S Hawa
While scientists,
governments and concerned groups worry about increased industrial
emissions of greenhouse gases and its effects on the planet,
the role of the military in climate change has been ignored.
‘When environmental
crises occur, it is usually only the civilian economy that is
called upon to rectify the balance, while military programmes
are rarely taken to task,’ says Dr Rosalie Bertell, renowned
scientist and nuclear activist.
According
to her, the military has got away scot-free from responsibility
for polluting the environment and ecological disasters.
In her
path-breaking book titled ‘Planet Earth: The Latest Weapon of
War’ (2000), she cited examples from the Vietnam War, the Gulf
War and the NATO bombing in Kosovo.
These wars
have not only destroyed lives and property, they have contaminated
large areas of land for years to come.
According
to Dr. Bertell, the hundreds of burning oil fires during the
Gulf War was the ‘worst man-made pollution event in history’.
It led to environmental and climatic disasters worldwide.
Scientists
worldwide predicted fiercer monsoons due to greater warming,
acid rain, forceful storms and severe flooding all over the
globe.
‘In time...a
huge typhoon struck Bangladesh on 1 May, killing more than 100,000
people...Soviet scientists reported very high levels of acid
rain in Southern Russia. Satellite images showed smoke and darkened
snow in Pakistan and northern India,’ she said.
‘Astronauts
[on] the space shuttle Atlantis reported so much haze shrouding
the Earth. ...Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences
claimed that dense clouds from the Gulf War were also responsible
for the disastrous floods which took place in their country,’
Dr. Bertell recalls in her book.
Heavy storms
were reported over Eastern Europe. ‘There was severe flooding
from Bavaria to Czechoslovakia with several deaths, destruction
of farmlands, and bridges washed away. Rail lines throughout
Austria were submerged and the Danube River reached record heights,’
she added.
In both
the Gulf War and in Kosovo, depleted uranium ordnance was used
by the US and NATO forces on a large scale. This has led to
contamination of land, air and water with long-term effects
on human health: just as in Vietnam, where the US military deliberately
targeted the environment and destroyed and contaminated millions
of acres of land with ‘Agent Orange’ and other toxic chemicals.
But this
devastation pales in comparison to the havoc that the military
is now capable of wreaking on planet earth.
The vast
experiments that the military, especially the US, have been
conducting over the decades involving experiments with the ozone
layer, manipulation of the weather and use of wave technology
to probe inside earth itself, is in preparation for wars that
will be launched in the 21st century.
These atmospheric
experiments and research ‘are not just about exciting scientific
exploration. Space is the next battlefield’, meaning that the
military is taking war into space. They are ‘going to fight
in space,’ she quotes.
‘Because
of the secrecy shielding military research, it is not always
easy for the public to understand the possible consequences’,
Dr Bertell says.
Beginning
in 1946 in the Pacific, nuclear atmospheric testing by the US
and later, the Soviet Union and the UK, have seriously damaged
the environment.
According
to Dr. Bertell, ‘the 300 megatons of nuclear explosions between
1945 and 1963 had depleted the ozone layer by about 4%’.
Although
the first ozone hole had begun to heal in the 1980s, in 1986,
civilian scientists established the existence of a second ozone
hole in the Antarctic.
‘Scientists
have estimated that a 1% loss of ozone would result in 1-3%
more ultra-violet radiation reaching the Earth,’ she writes.
‘This would increase the skin cancer rate and affect all life
forms,’ she added.
In the
1990s, US military experiments with nuclear-powered rockets
increased and the launching of plutonium into space became a
routine activity.
These nuclear-powered
space missions were highly dangerous as plutonium could be dispersed
over large areas of the earth in an accident.
According
to Dr. Bertell, the first major space accident seriously affecting
Earth took place in April 1964 when the US rocket SNAP-9A was
aborted and the 17,000 curies of plutonium it was carrying scattered
over the globe. The plutonium is still detectable in soil and
the bones of people and animals.
‘In 1997,
there were two SNAP-9A rockets in orbit - each carrying 17,000
curies of plutonium and each planning on [the] completion of
their mission to disperse the plutonium as the 1964 rocket had
done,’ she warns.
Because
of the secrecy surrounding these space plans, the public are
not aware of the dangers involved in these projects especially
when ‘the history of the space programme is littered with disasters’.
The weapons
of war in the new millennium would involve the use of planet
earth itself as a weapon, harnessing the power of natural processes
for war.
At the
Peoples’ Health Assembly in December 2000 in Dhaka, Bangladesh,
Dr. Bertell revealed to a shocked and incredulous audience that
‘the latest weapons in the arsenal of the US military is Planet
Earth itself ... and weather will be one of the worst destructive
weapons by the year 2025’.
Dr. Bertell
was referring to how engineered earthquakes and tornadoes could
wreak havoc on populations and nations.
According
to her book, electromagnetic weapons ‘have the ability to transmit
explosive and other effects such as earthquake induction across
intercontinental distances to any selected target site on the
globe with force levels equivalent to major nuclear explosions’.
For the
past 40 years, the US military has conducted experiments on
the earth’s atmosphere using waves and chemicals.
Attempts
to gain control of the weather, through environmental engineering
with experiments involving laser and chemicals to ascertain
whether they could damage the ozone layer over an enemy; cause
damage to crops and human health through exposure to the sun’s
ultraviolet rays, have been carried out by the military.
Chemicals
like barium and lithium have been released above the ozone layer
creating spectacular light displays and glowing artificial clouds,
which were seen in North America during the 1980s and early
1990s.
These compounds
are most destructive of the ‘ozone layer’ and cause further
chemical changes to the earth’s atmosphere.
According
to Dr. Bertell, ‘changes in the earth’s atmosphere bring about
corresponding changes in the Earth’s weather and climate’.
Another
method is the use of very low frequency electromagnetic waves
in weather modification experiments. These waves can pass through
solid earth and oceans and have been used by the military to
probe the upper atmosphere and the inner structure of the earth.
These pulsed,
extremely low frequency (ELF) waves, for instance, can be used
to convey mechanical effects and vibrations at great distances
through the Earth. They can manipulate the weather, creating
storms and torrential rains over an area.
These waves
have the potential to generate earth movements. ‘It has the
capability to cause disturbance of volcanoes and tectonic plates,
which in turn, have an effect on the weather,’ she states.
For example,
earthquakes are known to interact with the ionosphere (the atmosphere
50-373 miles above the earth’s surface). In fact, many of the
earthquakes that occurred in recent years were preceded by certain
unexplained phenomena, says Dr. Bertell.
Some of
the examples in her book include the Tang Shan earthquake in
China, which occurred on 28 July 1976, and left 650,000 people
dead. The catastrophic event was preceded by an airglow, said
to have been caused by Soviet ELF wave experiments to heat the
ionosphere.
The other
was the San Francisco earthquake. According to Dr. Bertell,
unusual ultra low frequency waves were detected in California
on 12 September 1989. These waves grew in intensity and finally
subsided on 5 October. On 17 October, they appeared again with
signals so strong that they went off the scale. Three hours
later, the earthquake took place.
In fact,
a Washington Times report in March 1992 said, satellites and
ground sensors detected mysterious radio waves or related electrical
and magnetic activity before major earthquakes in Southern California,
Armenia, Japan and Northern California between 1986 and 1989.
The earthquake
that hit Los Angeles on 17 January 1994 was also preceded by
unusual radio waves and two sonic booms.
‘These
strange coincidences have never been explained ... it seems
highly probable that some of these earthquakes have been a result
of human activity, not natural forces,’ said Dr. Bertell.
Tellingly,
the US Secretary of Defence, in 1997, commented on new threats
posed by terrorist organizations ‘engaging in eco-type terrorism
whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, and
volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves’.
‘The military
has a habit of accusing others of having capabilities they already
hold,’ said Dr. Bertell in response.
These experiments
by the military on the earth’s atmosphere have seen an increase
in freak weather throughout the globe, says Dr. Bertell.
‘Between
the 1960s and the 1990s, major natural disaster rates have increased
by a factor of 10,’ she adds.
According
to her, the EL Nino in 1997-98, which was blamed for abnormal
weather conditions worldwide, was actually preceded by violent
disruptions and climatic destabilisation a year earlier.
In 1996,
Dr. Bertell described the severe flooding that occurred in the
Indian subcontinent affecting Nepal, India and Bangladesh in
which millions were left homeless. In China, floods killed hundreds
while tens of thousands had their homes and property destroyed.
At the
same time, Canada was hit by torrential rains, flooding, tornadoes,
hail and thunderstorms - all very abnormal climatic conditions
destroying property, livestock and lives.
Heavy snowfall,
not seen in decades, appeared in South Africa, cutting off food
supplies and taking lives due to the extreme cold.
During
the week ending 19th July, earthquakes rocked the French Alps,
Austria, Southern Italy, Northeast India, Japan, Indonesia,
the Kamchatka peninsular, and Southern Mexico. In New Zealand,
a volcano erupted.
Tremors
were reported in Kenya, Germany, the Greek Islands, Turkey,
northern Sumatra, Bali, the central Philippines, New Zealand’s
North Island, eastern Japan, central Chile, El Salvador and
the Alentian Islands, all within the week ending 26 July, she
reported.
According
to her, ‘While some of the events of 1996 may have been ‘acts
of God’, certainly, the overall volume and ferocity was anything
but normal’.
‘Because
of the intimate connection between the Earth’s atmosphere and
its weather, it is not surprising to find that military activities
have had an impact on local and regional weather patterns,’
she writes.
The fact
that military activities can cause freak weather by accident
as well as deliberately as part of geophysical warfare, is indeed
a frightening prospect for the planet.
More so,
when we know so little about ‘the natural cycles of Earth and
the impact of human activities on it to make good predictions
of what will happen when human activities interfere with them,’
she says.
‘Moreover,
such predictions are based on the natural history of our planet
and are meaningless in the face of random experimentation on
major Earth systems in the upper atmosphere and the bowels of
the planet,’ she adds.
Clearly,
‘the military is also contributing to some of the most intractable
survival problems of the twenty-first century,’ she notes.
