So Long, Ike; Next Up: Hurricane Nutjob

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We continue with more exclusive coverage of the coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Ike. The image above is the storm as it looked last Wednesday from the International Space Station, which was at an altitude of 220 miles. (For comparison’s sake, the GOES satellites that provide most of the views we see of Earth weather are parked in geosynchronous orbits with an altitude of 22,300 miles. The Terra and Aqua earth observatory satellites that regularly provide stunning images of wildfires and other events work at an altitude of about 430 miles.) NASA has posted a gallery of ISS shots of Ike. And if you like these ethereal views of killer storms, see a wonderful collection published last week on the Boston Globe’s The Big Picture blog.

Enough fawning over pictures. Now to the serious business at hand: If you think those photographs merely depict awesome natural forces at work, you’re sadly mistaken. No. Just like Katrina before it, those who see world weather as a giant conspiracy have declared that Hurricane Ike was a storm on behalf of (someone’s) scheme for global domination.

First, there’s this: An alert from Kevin Martin, a self-described meteorologist in Southern California, that “chemtrails” (a type of evil aircraft condensation trail) were detected last week in areas of the United States along Ike’s forecast path. Whoa. If you’re not sold on the forecaster’s credentials after reading that, check out his public plea for letters of recommendation so that he could be admitted Mississippi State’s online course for would-be TV weathercasters. (There’s more to Kevin’s story, too: one of his inspirations, it turns out, is that he was once struck by lightning.)

Then there’s this: Scott Stevens, formerly of Pocatello, Idaho, TV weatherman fame, announced before Ike’s landfall that “this entire storm is manufactured.” Scott, like Kevin, also saw dark doings overhead in the Midwest before the remnants of Ike got there. Faceless Global Dominators were manipulating weather to fill all the region’s rivers and streams before the moisture-laden ex-hurricane arrived. The motive behind the storm and associated “tweaking,” apparently, is economic chaos. As if we need any more help.

My one and only question to the World Weather Conspiracy folks would be: In olden times, before the advent of high technology–or maybe I should say human high technology, because the Faceless Dominators could be extraterrestrials or Greek or Norse gods unhappy in their retirement–who was responsible for all the floods, droughts, hail storms, heat waves, cold snaps and other weather catastrophes that beset us?

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Contrails

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Snapped this while driving through downtown Spokane, Washington, at about 10 in the morning on June 23 with my friend Pete. You can count eight clearly visible contrails here, and the remains of possibly two more. I don’t know what accounts for the jet traffic over Spokane, though Seattle is in the direction most of these appeared to be headed. (I meant to post this ages ago, but am just getting around to it now because of a “thar’s strange things afoot in yonder sky”:comment made on a post elsewhere.)

Another Yakuza Hit

Let me be (nearly) the first to congratulate Japanese mobsters for their expert manipulation of tropical weather to aim another gigantic hurricane at the United States.

I say nearly the first because no doubt Scott Stevens — the Pocatello, Idaho, TV weather guy who announced earlier this month that Hurricane Katrina was the work of yakuza weather warriors wielding a secret Soviet climate weapon — has beaten me to the punch.

Stevens is finally getting some actual press attention for his ideas: The Associated Press picked up on an Idaho Falls Post Register story on Stevens’s ideas. The USA Today version of the AP piece (“Cold War device used to cause Katrina?” — a careless headline that gives Stevens’s notion credence) quotes the weatherman on his reaction to seeing a manipulated cloud mass with his own eyes:

“I just got sick to my stomach because these clouds were unnatural and that meant they had (the machine) on all the time,” Stevens said. “I was left trying to forecast the intent of some organization rather than the weather of this planet.”

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Katrina: The Real Story

What the media isn’t telling you (and you should be glad):

That Katrina was a weather weapon, wielded by the Yakuza, the Japanese mob. Or maybe Russia. Or China. Or India. Idaho weatherman extraordinaire Scott Stevens promotes this view, based on the belief that the Soviet Union developed energy weapons that can manipulate the weather, set off earthquakes, and mundane things like disable satellites and spacecraft. Stevens appeared on a podcast called the Enigma Report just before Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. He told host Kathleen Keating that Katrina’s Florida landfall was a smoking gun:

SS: As I was doing my evening weathercast the Thursday prior, the evening of the 25th of August, I was reading the discussion out of the NHC where the eye of Katrina as she made landfall went over the top of the NHC. If that isn’t putting … let’s just say you’re putting the bead of the eye of the gun on the target. It was amazing. That should have been a big heads up. …

KK: To me that was Yakuza all over. To me that was like their signature.

SS: Yakuz … yeah. It was a very clear signal that you’ve been targeted; you’ve been targeted.

And a little later, he explained that the Yakuza was just one possible culprit: “It could be Yakuza, It could be the former Soviet Union with this. There was China involved. There is India now. There are so many nations that all they have to do is do their little part to keep this thing going.” He also noted that all the planes leaving suspicious contrails over most of the United States had migrated to the region where the storm was active. Of course, neither he nor the host ever explain how storms like this happened before the onset of supersecret Soviet technology.

Now here’s the thing if you spend the time to listen to this guy’s Yakuza/energy weapons claptrap: You’ll find much of what he says thoughtful and perhaps agree with it. For instance, how the destruction of wetlands in Louisiana has contributed to New Orleans’ vulnerability to catastrophic flooding; or how irresponsible it is for our government to commit hundreds of billions to the Iraq war. And he’s reasonably well informed about the economy and the Gulf region’s place in it.

Then he caps everything off by noting that our side failed to do anything to fight the enemy hurricane warriors, whoever they are, and ends by saying, “The great sorting has begun.” Meaning the apocalypse is here, I guess.

More Fun with Chemtrails

Today’s installment: An Idaho weathercaster, Scott Stevens, who has started a site dedicated to recording all the chemtrail activity he sees and that the many chemtrail investigators everywhere send him pictures of.

This is a guy who has studied the weather and makes a living standing up acting like he’s forecasting the highs and lows and storms and fair weather for the next few days. And he’s come up with his own interesting theory about the supposedly odd behavior and increasing incidence of jet condensation trails: At least some of the contrails are just contrails. But the planes that are leaving them behind are doing atmospheric research in conjunction with the development of some type of energy weapons that will be used, among other things, to manipulate the weather.

Of course, there’s more to the story than that. Stevens links to a site that contains a long Q and A with a chemtrail expert that tells all, or mostly all, about what’s going on: The trails are part of a global effort to disperse a variety of materials that will create The Shield — a barrier meant to combat meant to combat the effects of global warming. The reason we don’t know about any of this is it’s secret; and it’s secret because … well, let the experts tell you:

“Due to the severity of the situation it is mandatory to maintain public calm for as long as possible. The Earth is dying. Humanity is on the road to extinction – without the Shield mankind will die off with in 20 to 50 years. Most people alive today could live to see this extinction take place.”

Twenty to 50 years? Why are we bothering with Social Security? Or Iraq? Of course, the government is probably undertaking those projects for show — just to keep our minds off the really important stuff that’s happening “in plane sight,” as Scott Stevens says. He also urges his readers to “demand an accounting from your government, now. I know that they can’t believe they have been able to keep this secret for this long.”

OK — besides the principle of Occam’s Razor, here’s my problem with this as with so many other conspiracy theories: It all goes back to the government. Not that the government’s not capable of some secret double-dealing. But the historic examples of “the government” — any government — pulling off the kind of massive undertaking without alerting the world in general that something big is going on are rare. People blab. Even the Manhattan Project was infiltrated by Soviet spies. And once an atomic bomb was actually detonated in New Mexico, it was just a matter of time before word of what was happening down there got to the outside world (in practice, the secret only needed to be kept for about three weeks before the whole world knew we had the bomb).

But I’m digressing again.

The point is, the same government that — just a couple exhibits here — can’t figure out how to put armor on Humvees, that has blown up two spaceship crews in the last two decades and can’t seem to fly the shuttle anymore without getting in trouble — the same government most people don’t think competent to fill a pothole — is somehow credited with unerring use of its vast omnipotence to carry out its secret ends. Of course, there’s no paradox at all: the the Humvees and the Columbia blowing up are just part of the sleight of hand.

[Actually, I’m late, very late to the chemtrail picnic. USA Today was on the case in March 2001. Now they’re just part of the conspiracy, too.]

An Important Thing You Must Know

Chemtrails

A special message to the tiny sliver of humanity that reaches this dust-bunny-ridden corner of the World Wide Web: condensation trails aren’t what you think they are. For months, I’ve seen the mysterious stickers up all over town referring to "chemtrails." Probably some sort of conspiracy crap, right? But it wasn’t until I heard people talking about them at last week’s peace vigil and subdued hootenanny that I did what one of the stickers suggested and Googled "chemtrails." You should be glad I did — if it’s not too late.

You think condensation trails are … condensation trails. Caused by the near instantaneous freezing of water vapor in aircraft exhaust at high altitude. You might call them contrails for short.

But whatever nifty terminology you use, if you believe that they are just the product of some sort of garden-variety jet exhaust and cold air, then you’re just a patsy for a huge government conspiracy.

Open your eyes! "Contrails," my … you know … bum! They’re really chemtrails. An evil, or at least unwholesome, rain unleashed by whoever unleashes things like that. The United States government, for sure. Could be the United Nations. And United Airlines is probably getting a piece of the action — getting secret payments to use their harmless-looking though increasingly unpleasant-to-ride-in airliners as long-distance crop dusters. We can only guess who else. (Can I get odds on Satan?)

And what’s the crop. We are? Capacity for independent thought immobilized by the vapors wafting down from on high. Or maybe the effect is physical. No one seems to know. Yet.