Hawaii Island police announced the start of an arson investigation into the Ka brushfire after hearing from Hawaii County that the Hawaii Fire Department had put out the brushfires in Naalehu and Pahala. The Ka brushfire was found to have started under suspicious circumstances, according to police.
The Hawaii Fire Department was informed of numerous brushfires on Mill Camp Road in Pahala in the late afternoon of August 9. Upon arrival, they discovered two distinct fires, one on each side of Mill Camp Road. According to a news release, they were blazing in the same location, but the fires’ origins seemed to be distinct.
Investigators discovered that one of the fires was caused by an unsupervised cooking fire.
Because detectives discovered an incendiary device on the street where they think the second fire began, it’s possible that it was set deliberately.
The fire departments put out both fires.
According to the inquiry, a man driving a green all-terrain vehicle was seen leaving the area of Mill Camp Road shortly after the flames started. His current identity is unknown.
Police claim that there is no connection between the fires in Pahala and those in the North and South Kohala Districts. There is no known reason for those fires.
A government watchdog group has filed a complaint with the Biden administration over its use of a dataset frequently used to push its climate agenda.
Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) filed the complaint with the Commerce Department over the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) “Billions Project” dataset, which purports to keep track of natural [and climate] disasters that have caused at least $1 billion in damages going back to 1980. The billion-dollar disasters (BDD) data — cited frequently by the Biden administration to insinuate that climate change is intensifying and justify sweeping green policies — is based on opaque data derived from questionable accounting practices, PPT alleges in the complaint.
“American families and businesses continue to struggle with persistently high inflation, which many attribute in large part to the energy policies and government spending of the current administration. The idea that blatant violations of scientific integrity could be underlying the rationale for these policies should concern every American,” Michael Chamberlain, PPT’s director, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Unfortunately, this is far from an isolated incident. The Biden Administration came into office pledging that its decision making would be grounded in the highest-quality science, but all too often has failed to live up to those promises.”
The complaint was filed with the Commerce Department, as NOAA operates under its auspices, Chamberlain told the DCNF.
PPT’s complaint alleges that NOAA does not adequately disclose its sources and methods for compiling the BDD dataset, adds and removes BDD events from the dataset without providing its rationale for doing so and produces cost estimates that are sometimes significantly different than those generated by more conventional accounting procedures.
While NOAA states that it develops its BDD data from more than a dozen sources, the agency does not disclose those sources for specific events or show how it calculates loss estimates from those sources, PPT’s complaint alleges.
The complaint further alleges that NOAA’s accounting methods are opaque and “produce suspect results.”
For example, when Hurric ane Idalia took aim at Florida in 2023, NOAA initially projected that the storm would cause about $2.5 billion worth of damages before insured losses ultimately came in at about $310 million, according to PPT’s complaint, which cites the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation
for that figure. Nevertheless, NOAA subsequently marked up its estimate for how much damage the storm caused to $3.5 billion, a discrepancy for which NOAA provided no explanation, PPT alleges in its complaint.
NOAA researchers have disclosed in the past that the agency considers factors such as functions pertaining to livestock feeding costs — in addition to more conventional types of damages — in their cost calculations.
Further, the complaint alleges that BDD events are quietly added and removed from the dataset without explanation, citing Roger Pielke Jr., a former academic who believes climate change to be a real threat but opposes politicized science. In a forthcoming paper analyzing the merits of BDD statistics, Pielke compared the dataset in late 2022 to the dataset in the middle of 2023 and found that ten new BDD events were added to the list and 3 were subtracted without explanation.
Apart from the issues with methodology alleged by PPT in its complaint, the use of BDD events as a proxy for climate change’s intensity is inherently misleading because economic data does not reflect changes in meteorological conditions, as Pielke has previously explained to the DCNF.
For example, increasing concentrations of assets, especially in coastal areas, can confound the usefulness of BDD events as an indicator for the intensity of climate change, as Energy and Environment Legal Institute Senior Policy Fellow Steve Milloy has previously explained to the DCNF. Hypothetically, the same exact hurricane could hit the same exact place, decades apart, with vastly different damage totals; this would be the case because there are simply more assets sitting in the way of the storm, not because the storm was any more violent due to worsening climate change.
NOAA has acknowledged this limitation of the dataset in prior communications with the DCNF.
Additionally, NOAA will add disasters to the list retrospectively because it adjusts for inflation, meaning that a hurricane that caused $800 million in damages in 1980 dollars would be added to the list because the damages exceed $1 billion when adjusted for inflation, for example.
The Biden administration has frequently cited the BDD dataset to substantiate its massive climate agenda.
For example, Deputy Energy Secretary David Turk cited the dataset in written testimony submitted to lawmakers in February explaining the White House’s decision to pause new approvals for liquefied natural gas export terminals.
The BDD statistics are also referenced Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5), the Biden administration’s landmark climate report that is intended to provide the most sound scientific basis for lawmakers and officials to craft climate policy.
NOAA asserted that the increasing frequency of BDD events is a sign of intensifying climate change in a January press release and blog post summarizing 2023, and then defended the use of the dataset in subsequent communications with the DCNF.
“Sensational climate claims made without proper scientific basis and spread by government officials threaten the public’s trust in its scientific officials and undermines the government’s mission of stewarding the environment,” PPT’s complaint states. “It also poses the danger of policymakers basing consequential government policy on unscientific claims unsupported by evidence.”
Kentucky and West Virginia are leading a coalition of 24 states suing the Biden administration over its soot rules, which relate to fine particulate matter pollution.
The lawsuit argues, according to the Associated Press, the rules would raise costs for manufacturers, increase electricity rates and block new manufacturing facilities and infrastructure projects.
According to the wire service, Texas and business groups, spearheaded by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers, have each filed lawsuits concerning the rule.
Critics contend that the regulations, beyond their potential economic implications, were crafted without sufficient input from diverse scientific viewpoints.
Even in the face of official records, government documents, patents, and programs on mainstream media, a lot of individuals don’t think that weather is altered by authority.
Weather modification and geoengineering goes back decades, and the U.S. government has utilized them in warfare.
The Vietnam War is a prime example.
In 2013, “CBS This Morning” contributor Michio Kaku, a physics professor at City College of New York, admitted the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) used weather modification weapons in the Vietnam War.
“Even in the 60s, the CIA used this to bring down monsoons in the Vietnam War to wash out the Viet Cong,” Kaku said.
Norah O’Donnell quickly corrected the professor to say ‘allegedly.’
In the clip, Kaku also discussed using lasers to manipulate rain and lightning.
“We physicists are firing trillion-watt lasers into the sky to actually precipitate rain clouds and actually bring down lightning bolts,” Kaku explained.
“Scientists and researchers may one day be able to manipulate rain and lightning using lasers. “CBS This Morning” contributor Michio Kaku, a physics professor at City College of New York, talks to Charlie Rose and Norah O’Donnell about the potential future of weather,” CBS News wrote.
CBS News still has the 2013 video, “Controlling the weather: Is it possible,” on its YouTube:
A rabbit hole dive to share with friends and family oblivious to weather modification is Operation Popeye.
Operation Sober Popeye (Project Controlled Weather Popeye / Motorpool / Intermediary-Compatriot) was a military cloud-seeding project carried out by the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam War in 1967–1972. The highly classified program attempted to extend the monsoon season over specific areas of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, in order to disrupt North Vietnamese military supplies by softening road surfaces and causing landslides.
The former U.S. Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara, was aware that there might be objections raised by the international scientific community but said in a memo to the president that such objections had not in the past been a basis for prevention of military activities considered to be in the interests of U.S. national security.
The chemical weather modification program was conducted from Thailand over Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam and allegedly sponsored by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and the CIA without the authorization of then Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, who had categorically denied to Congress that a program for modification of the weather for use as a tactical weapon even existed.
274. Memorandum From the Deputy Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (Kohler) to Secretary of State Rusk
Washington, January 13, 1967.
SUBJECT
Weather Modification in North Vietnam and Laos (Project Popeye)
Proposal
1. The Department of Defense has requested our approval to initiate the operational phase of Project Popeye in selected areas (map at clip)2 along the infiltration routes in North Vietnam and southern Laos. The objective of the program is to produce sufficient rainfall along these lines of communication to interdict or at least interfere with truck traffic between North and South Vietnam. Recently improved cloud seeding techniques would be applied on a sustained basis, in a non-publicized effort to induce continued rainfall through the months of the normal dry season.
Background
2. A test phase of Project Popeye was approved by State and Defense and conducted during October 1966 in a strip of the Lao Panhandle generally east of the Bolovens Plateau in the valley of the Se Kong River. The test was conducted without consultation with Lao authorities (but with Ambassador Sullivan’s knowledge and concurrence) and, to the best of our knowledge, remains unknown to other than a severely limited number of U.S. officials.
3. During the test phase, more than 50 cloud seeding experiments were conducted. The results are viewed by DOD as outstandingly successful.(a)82% of the clouds seeded produced rain within a brief period after seeding—a percentage appreciably higher than normal expectation in the absence of seeding.(b)The amount of rainfall induced by seeding is believed to have been sufficient to have contributed substantially to rendering vehicular routes in this area inoperable. Since the end of the rainy season, the communists have failed to undertake route repairs and there has been no vehicular traffic.(c)In one instance, the rainfall continued as the cloud moved eastward across the Vietnam border and inundated a U.S. Special Forces camp with nine inches of rain in four hours.(d)DOD scientists consider that the experiment demonstrated a capacity to raise and maintain rainfall under controlled conditions to the level at which the land is saturated over a sustained period, slowing movement on foot and rendering the operation of vehicles impracticable.
4. In our view, the experiments were undeniably successful, indicating that, at least under weather and terrain conditions such as those involved, the U.S. Government has realized a capability of significant weather modification. If anything, the tests were “too successful”—neither the volume of induced rainfall nor the extent of area affected can be precisely predicted. The only absolute control, therefore, is after the fact, i.e., to halt cloud-seeding missions.
Discussion
5. The present DOD proposal would grant authority for the conduct of cloud seeding activities on a sustained basis. For designated areas in North Vietnam, it would mean taking advantage of the present northeast monsoon (the “Crachin”) to increase normal rainfall. The objective is to inhibit overland vehicular movement and to reinforce the bottlenecks already created at stream crossings by the bombing of bridges and ferry installations. With respect to Laos, the objective is to extend rainfall through the dry season (which began in November and continues through April or May), keeping the ground as near the saturation point as possible and obstructing traffic that normally fords streams during the low water period.
6. The assets required for this program are estimated to be very small: extra personnel for existing weather reconnaissance aircraft based in Thailand plus two C–130 aircraft modified for cloud seeding operations with crews, plus supporting personnel. The initial request totals only 33 additional personnel for assignment to bases in northeast Thailand. The cost of the equipment and seeding materials is so low as to be insignificant.
7. A corollary phase of the operation would be to conduct intensified weather reconnaissance and additional experiments in weather modification over international waters in the South China Sea, from Philippine bases—one principal objective being the development of techniques to dissipate cloud cover as well as to induce abnormal rainfall.
8. The proposal differs, in our judgment, from previous weather modification efforts by:(a)being operational rather than experimental(b)having military rather than economic or welfare purposes. Approval could thus be considered to constitute a precedent-making decision with major implications for the future. It raises questions in the political, legal, economic, biological, and psychological spheres, many of [Page 547]which cannot be answered adequately in advance of conducting the operation but which are discussed in the following paragraphs.
9. Urgency. DOD wishes to inaugurate operations at once. A prompt decision would (1) enable 7AF to take maximum advantage of present rainy season conditions along coastal areas of North Vietnam, and (2) permit operations in Laos with minimum loss of time between the end of the rainy season and efforts to recreate rainy season conditions along the infiltration routes. With respect to Laos, the period of heaviest anticipated infiltration activity is at hand.
10. Impact in Target Areas. The target areas within North Vietnam are areas of relatively high population density including the town of Dong Hoi, but at least for the first part of the operational period the areas would be undergoing rainy season conditions even in the absence of the proposed operations. It seems reasonable to conclude that the effect of the operation, at least during the normal time span of the wet monsoon, will fall within the range of weather and terrain conditions already experienced at least from time to time. If the operation continued into rice harvest periods, crop damage could result unless seeding was temporarily suspended. The target areas in Laos, by contrast, are characterized by relatively low population density, but the proposed program would drastically change the weather patterns over the next few months—creating to some extent rainy season conditions during normal dry weather periods.
The increased rainfall will inhibit military movement more than civilian movement (to the extent the former is more dependent on motor transport). The effect on military traffic will be to exacerbate difficulties already experienced, to a degree dependent on the extent to which rainfall can in fact be increased on a sustained basis.
The experimental phase of Popeye, conducted during the rainy season, does not provide sure indicators of the extent to which wet weather conditions can be re-created during normally dry periods. But DOD believes the induction of rainfall to be feasible, and to the extent its predictions are realized there would be an undoubted favorable military effect. The road network over which vehicular movement takes place in Laos, despite improvement as well as extension over the past two years, passes through many low-lying areas and is vulnerable to interruption in bad weather, in narrow defiles, along hillsides, and at innumerable stream crossings where bridges do not exist or have been destroyed and where fording is normal practice. Interruption of road traffic would not only retard the normal rate of movement but would also force concentration of trucks that would be more vulnerable to aerial attacks at points known to us because we created the bottlenecks.
Infiltration of troops, on foot, cannot be halted by creation of wet monsoon conditions, although there would be some retardant effect. The [Page 548]same effect would, of course, apply to the freedom of movement and morale of friendly roadwatch and guerrilla teams operating in the same area.
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The impact on civilian population will be much the same, in kind, and greater in degree, than that discussed below with respect to areas outside the target zones. The psychological impact will be perhaps greater than any other effect, particularly when conditions characteristic of the rainy season are unexpected.
11. Impact Outside Target Areas. In North Vietnam the impact of successful Popeye operations outside the designated area should be slight. The added rainfall would reach the sea over short distances in the coastal areas where operations would take place or would occur in the mountainous border area that is sparsely populated by tribal peoples. There would likely be some spill over in the form of increased rainfall west of the target areas.
There would be some hypothetical effect of an adverse nature in Thailand where, during the northeast monsoon, normal rainfall might be somewhat diminished as the distance west of the mountains along the Vietnam-Laos border increases. However, as a practical matter, rainfall in the dry areas of northeast Thailand is so slight in this season that any difference resulting from the proposed operation is not likely to be either discernible or meaningful in terms of the water table.
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