On this blog, we sometimes address positions that encourage potentially lethal or harmful behavior, such eschewing vaccines, prohibiting importation of genetically modified foods into drought-stricken areas, or treating lymphoma with tree bark.

Then there are issues which are serious but pose no danger to public health, such as evolution denial, taxpayer-funded anthropologists chasing Bigfoot, or multi-level marketing scams. Finally, there are the silly notions, such as a flat Earth, ancient aliens carving the Nazca lines, or “grounding,” the idea that walking barefoot on grass will enable one to can access unspecified energies for multitudinous health benefits.

Suspecting that HAARP is a nefarious undertaking would seem to fall into the latter category, but last year we saw how even seemingly innocuous issues can have serious consequences.  

In October 2016, two Georgia men who fervently believed the HAARP conspiracy theory traveled to Gakona, Alaska, equipped with firepower, maps, and deadly intent. Alex Jones and Nick Begich had convinced the would-be attackers that HAARP controls our weather and minds. I’ve always found the last part of that claim self-defeating. If we KNOW they are controlling our minds, the control isn’t working. And if minds are being controlled, it’s not by top secret government technology, but rather by YouTube narrators with foreboding voices. Most of the blame for this lies on Begich, who wrote a book with contents almost as horrible as its title, Angels Don’t Play This HAARP.

The Department of Defense began the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program in 1992 to study the upper reaches of Earth’s atmosphere. The resulting research has advanced deep underwater communication with nuclear submarines and has assisted with the detection of underground military facilities.

Some do not accept this disappointingly mundane reality. Ironically, most HAARP conspiracy theorists are right wingers who are ostentatiously pro-military, want unbending loyalty to the current White House occupant, and are generally OK with the expanse of government police power. Yet they bristle when seeing what they think are the results of this blank check being cashed.

This includes the federal government having the ability to modify the weather. One unwritten rule of conspiracy theories is that the intent must be malevolent. So rather than creating a typhoon to target North Korean leaders or siccing a sandstorm on ISIS, HAARP overlords are responsible for this year’s rash of Atlantic and Gulf Coast hurricanes and California wildfires, as well as various tornadoes and earthquakes.

However, there is nothing classified about HAARP. No security clearance is needed to tour the facility and there is an annual open house. Skeptoid’s Brian Dunning did a Google Earth search which revealed four cars in a small parking lot. There were no security barriers and there was no blurring of the imagery as happens when one does a Google Earth search for classified areas.

That’s because there is no reason to hide what HAARP is doing. Most of the year, its activities consist of university and government scientists conducting ionosphere research. HAARP has an observatory and adjacent large field with 180 high-frequency antennas. The program has no potential to impact weather since the frequency emitted by HAARP instruments are incapable of being absorbed by the troposphere. That is the lowest point of Earth’s atmosphere and the level at which almost all weather conditions occur. One must go all the way to our atmosphere’s top level, the ionosphere, before HAARP’s transmitted energy can be absorbed, and that is much too high to impact weather.

So why does haarp.net dub the project a “military research laboratory to build new machines for their killing fields”? It stems from some haphazard, if not deliberate, misinterpretations.

ARCO Power Technologies constructed the HAARP facility. A scientist for one of the company’s subsidiaries, Dr. Bernard Eastlund, owns the patent for a “method and apparatus for altering a region in Earth’s atmosphere, ionosphere, and/or magnetosphere.” Eastlund’s method would require a location near the poles, where the lines of the Earth’s magnetic field are roughly perpendicular to the surface, and where there is thought to be natural gas reserves.

This is unrelated to the work done at HAARP, but theorists have finagled a connection. Known inaccurately as the HAARP patent, Eastland’s invention is regularly presented in conspiracy circles as being the method by which Uncle Sam unleashes his unnatural disasters.

In truth, the patent involves using natural gas to generate electricity in order to create electromagnetic radiation. Again, this would take place far too high to affect the weather. The idea that Eastland’s invention could be used to unleash hail and other plagues from on high is unfounded.

What’s more, Eastlund’s patent is for a speculative device, not for a completed invention. This hypothetical object would be about one million times more powerful than anything HAARP has unleashed. None of his patent’s drawings resemble anything present at the HAARP site. Dunning noted, for example, that HAARP’s antenna array measures about 1,000 feet on a side, while Eastlund’s imagined device would have to be spread over 14 miles.

There is also the issue of mechanism. Theorists believe HAARP controls the weather by heating up the atmosphere. But they never explain how warming a small area above Alaska would cause tectonic plates under California to collide, or make Atlantic waves and winds form a rapidly rotating storm system.