Is HAARP an earthquake weapon or a weather weapon?

2016.3.9追記：以前のリンク先はなくなっています．アラスカ大学のHAARP関連ページはこちら．
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(This is the English version of the former posting, dated August 13, 2008.)

昨年８月１３日の記事「地震兵器？　気象兵器？」の英語バージョンです．影響力のある信頼すべきアメリカ人がこの珍説を真面目に考えている様子に驚愕し，あやふやな英語ながら作文して見ました．この記事へのアクセス数はその前後のものの４倍にのぼり，現在までに1,915となっています．）
応援のクリック歓迎 (1日1回まで)

There are some blogs or websites which claim that the facility to observe the ionosphere by an active method, called HAARP (High frequency Active Auroral Research Program), is an earthquake weapon or a weather weapon. I will show you that those claims are just absurd.
According to the HAARP website, this is an experimental facility to study the properties and behaviors of the ionosphere by transmitting high-power short waves to it.
HAARP website : http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/haarp/index.html

Since the DOD is involved in this project, it is easily supposed that this facility could be partly working for military purposes. However, the claim that it could be an earthquake weapon is nothing but a joke. This is evident if one checks the power of the radio waves employed and the direction they are transmitted to. Let’s see the technical specifications of the instruments shown on the above website.

From the Technical Information page of the above site, general characteristics are summarized as follows;

1) Wavelength and power: HF band [1] (2.8 to 10 MHz), 3.6MW maximum [2].
2) Beam direction and target: to the ionosphere, “partially absorbed, at an altitude between 100 to 350 km (depending on operating frequency), in a small volume a few hundred meters thick and a few tens of kilometers in diameter over the site. ”
3) Power density at the target : “less than 3 microwatts per square cm [3], tens of thousands of times less than the Sun's natural electromagnetic radiation reaching the earth and hundreds of times less than even the normal random variations in intensity of the Sun's natural ultraviolet (UV) energy which creates the ionosphere.” (Even at this small intensity level its effect can be sensed by a high-sensitivity receiver.)

If we add some detailed figures from the HAARP Fact Sheet,
4) Phased array radio transmitter.
5) It has 180 towers.
6) Each tower supports two pairs of crossed dipole antennas, one for the low band (2.8 to 8.3 MHz), the other for the high band (7 to 10 MHz).
7) “An elevated ground screen, attached to the towers at the 15' level, acts as a reflector for the antenna array”.
8) It has 30 transmitter shelters. Each shelter contains 6 pairs of 10 kW transmitters, for a total of 6 x 30 x 2 x 10 kW = 3600 kW available for transmission.

The above figures are reasonable and can be believed as claimed.

Artificial earthquake of large magnitude can only be caused by such a great energy as a megaton range hydrogen bomb. Far smaller energy would be needed to trigger the earthquake if the seismic energy is stored underground, just as virtually no energy is needed to trigger a handgun. But we must know where and how much this energy is stored to be released, namely the technology of accurate precognition of the earthquakes is needed.

Although general characteristics of HAARP shown above reveal that it is a very large equipment as a radio emitter, its energy is far smaller than the seismic energy or the energy to trigger it by many orders of magnitude. Moreover, the radio waves of these frequencies do not penetrate into the earth (and the direction is opposite, not to the ground but to the sky). One could far better strike the ground directly by the same available energy.

Things stated above come from the common knowledge of scientists or engineers of all areas, and no one will contest these arguments. In other words, the idea that HAARP has something to do with earthquake is just absurd. It is just the same with the “weather weapons”.

Since meteorological phenomena are essentially chaotic, one could cause a large scale climate change if one can find some critical ‘tickling’ which would steer the evolution of the atmospheric system. But this may be far more difficult than the long-term weather forecast, just as the case to find a trigger of the earthquake. In addition, the earth’s meteorological system is an unified one as a whole, namely no such “weapon” can change the climate of the enemy country without its influence, sooner or later, back to their own country.

Since the beginning of the radio broadcasting, humankind is continuously irradiating the ionosphere with radio waves. Largest source of such irradiation in Japan may be the JOAK radio station with 300kW power. Voice of Russia (formerly Radio Moscow) has even a larger transmitter of 500kW power. We have probably some tens of sources of such scale in the world, and their total power would easily exceeds the HAARP power of 3.6MW. The only difference is that the HAARP irradiates a very small area of the ionosphere compared to the radio broadcasts which are sparged almost uniformly.

[1] Radio wave with frequencies between 3 to 30 MHz.
[2] Twelve times the power of the JOAK radio station which transmits at 300kW (channel 1 of the NHK radio, Shoubukuki radio transmission site).
[3] Pretty good amount, but it is 1/3 of the power density at 1m distance from the mobile phone.