Weather experts are frankly frightened.
Unless BIG CHANGES are brought about in weather patterns soon, scientists fear one third of earth's
population will be wiped out by drought, floods and famine in the next ten years!
Here are the facts — with direct on-the-spot reports from Geneva, Switzerland,
on an International Congress devoted to the study of today's growing weather problems.
Suddenly, weather experts have become alarmed. A crisis is confronting the world which has scientists — and especially meteorologists — baffled. Something has gone wrong with the weather.
Drought and floods are stalking large areas of Asia, Australia and the Central U.S. A breakdown in the world food supply is approaching. Yet the world's population soars upward. As a result, over 12,000 human beings worldwide are now dying from starvation each day.
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© Ambassador College
Fifth Congress of World Meteorological Organization in General Assembly Room, Palace of Nations, Geneva, Switzerland.
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Why Scientists Worry
In a last-ditch effort to head off this crisis before it is too late, scientists are rushing ahead with special weather studies. To report to you what is taking place behind-the-scenes, we recently sent two of our PLAIN TRUTH staff members Ernest L. Martin and John E. Portune — to Geneva, Switzerland. They attended the Fifth International Congress of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). They interviewed weather experts from both sides of the Iron Curtain. What they found ought to shake us out of our lethargy.
Here, in summary, is their report, together with photographs.
Dr. R.M. White, head of the American delegation, was the first to announce to the assembled scientists in Geneva the latest steps in man's quickening pace to control weather.
For decades, he said, we have only been able to stand back and report the actions of the earth's weather. Man has been without effective worldwide coverage by weather stations and without adequate communication systems. But with the advent of computers and with newly developed techniques of transmitting pictures from satellites back to the earth, the days of the "guessing" weatherman, declared Dr. White, will soon be past.
But are weathermen really happy over these new-found advancements?
Not at all!
They are worried! Professor Federov, head of the Soviet delegation and newly elected Vice-President of the WMO, warned, in an address before the entire assembled Congress, that man's abilities in the field of weather are now becoming so vast that they are outgrowing his moral capacity to handle them. Federov urged international cooperation in control of scientific experiments in our atmosphere as an absolute necessity.
Today man is tampering with the delicate balances of the atmosphere before he thoroughly understands the complex laws which govern it. He could well set off "chain reactions which might affect the climate possibly in an undesirable direction," acknowledged Professor Federov.
And Now — a "Weather War"?
For a number of years scientists from various countries have been feverishly working on what some have called the "ultimate weapon" — control of an enemy nation's weather!
The idea of waging a "weather war" is very much alive. In the past it has been openly admitted that both the United States and Russia are hard at work, trying to devise methods to control the weather for military reasons. They are not alone in this race. The West Germans have been developing plans to combine weather warfare with germ warfare. The plans call for sending diseases through jet air streams into enemy lands.
In 1959, Clinton Anderson of the United States Senate warned: "Who needs to be told how long it would take to bring the United States to her knees if it lay in the power of another country to deny us at will our drinking water or our wheat crop, to alternately freeze us or burn us up; to flood our cities and scorch our farms?"
New Techniques
The scientific inventions now available to man for peace or for war are spectacular. Take a look at the new weather satellites which military men have their eyes on.
Two basic types of weather satellites exist — the Command Response Satellites and the Automatic Picture Transmitting Satellites. The first of these is highly technical and usable only for complex research by the country launching it. But the other, which was in operation at the Geneva WMO Congress, has really opened up the field of satellite meteorology.
Circling the earth every ninety minutes from pole to pole, these remarkable assemblages of electronic hardware transmit continuous television-type pictures back to earth of the cloud systems covering thousands of square miles right over the very station receiving the signal. With extremely modest equipment almost anybody, particularly ordinary weather stations, can receive these photographs taken about 500 miles above their own station at that very time. Accompanying this article is a copy of one of the pictures which came in right on the spot in Geneva. Alongside the satellite picture is a normal synoptic chart taken from ground observations. The two charts agree remarkably, but the satellite picture shows far more to the weatherman than does the ordinary old-fashioned surface chart.
Satellites are among the newest facilities being used by meteorologists. But what our staff editors were seeing in Geneva would undoubtedly be out-of-date and antiquated by the time the next WMO Congress is held four years from now!
No wonder scientists are worried. Man's knowledge is increasing much faster than his ability to control that knowledge! Over and over again the major theme at World Congress was a desperate appeal for the control of man's experiments within our delicately balanced atmosphere. If man tampers with this complex creation of God along unknown lines, he risks creating irreversible disasters.
And scientists admit it!
Meteorologists know that weather patterns, which now provide temperate conditions to many areas of the earth, could be dangerously altered by man's experiments. In learning to control the weather, men could mistakenly turn normally wet areas into arid regions, and bring tropical downpours into temperate zones.
A similar fear was sounded a few years ago by an American scientist, Dr. Alan T. Waterman. He warned that careless scientific tinkering with the atmosphere "might touch off a catastrophic reaction."
More recently a National Academy of Sciences panel warned that even if man could prevent ordinary hurricanes, the energy bottled up in the tropical seas may then only spawn SUPER ones — just as indiscriminate use of sprays has spawned super insects that are now poison resistant. Man has already changed the weather pattern in local areas. The buildup of great cities with asphalt and concrete pavements has altered moisture distribution. So have man's denuding of vital forest areas, and putting to the plow millions of acres which were not meant for cultivation. Remember the Soviet blunder under Khrushchev? Vast areas in Asiatic Russia were wrongly put to cultivation, virtually turning the whole region into a dustbowl! The United States, South Africa, and other nations have affected climate patterns in the same manner.
And don't overlook the activities of industry — the combustion of fossil fuels like coal and oil — which have altered weather patterns by causing substantial increase in the heating of the lower layer of the atmosphere.
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© Ambassador College
Professor Federov (left) Head of Soviet delegation to the 5th International World Meteorological Organization (WMO)
Congress chats with Dr. Ernest Martin, of the PLAIN TRUTH staff.
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The Power in Our Atmosphere
The atmosphere is one of God's greatest gifts to man. Without it, life on earth would be impossible.
Even so, most people take the atmosphere for granted. Few realize what colossal power resides in this canopy of air surrounding our planet. The divinely controlled daily movements of the earth's air involve energy equivalent to the simultaneous explosion of 10,000 of the largest hydrogen bombs. Or, to use Professor Federov's illustration, if man were to gather together in one spot EVERY form of steady energy available today — electric generation plants, engines, motors and so forth — he would not be able to equal the energy of the present movements in the atmosphere over the continent of Europe alone.
It is this potential energy that man is rushing to direct or to control for his use on earth. But here is the paradox. For all his vaunted knowledge, man still lacks understanding of the most basic laws governing climate!
At Geneva, weather experts confessed to the Congress that man still does not really understand the laws which cause simple rain to form in clouds — despite the fantastic new knowledge which has been gaining in meteorology.
No wonder Professor Federov warned his fellow meteorologists from around the world to be extremely careful in the experiments being done towards controlling the weather. Present worldwide weather patterns are at stake!
But now, how will it all end? Will men be allowed to use the weather for their own selfish purposes? What does God say about this latest venture of Science? For, after all, there is an Almighty God who controls the weather! Though many are willingly ignorant of this simple and obvious truth!