It was only a matter of time before a bone-headed Congress Critter or two introduced legislation to control the weather — again.

Michael Bastasch reports at Daily Caller:

If Texas Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and Colorado Democratic Sen. Mark Udall have their way, rain will go away come again some other day of their choosing.

Both Hutchison and Udall have introduced unsuccessful bills in the past that would have created national boards to oversee and fund research into weather modification. That is, artificially changing or controlling the weather. …

In 2004 and 2005, Hutchison introduced a bill that sought to establish “a comprehensive and coordinated national weather modification policy and a national cooperative federal and state program of weather modification research and development.”

“While we may not be able to stop Mother Nature entirely, we can sometimes alter her course, changing the weather in small, yet significant ways,” Hutchison said on the Senate floor in 2004.

The bill never became law, in part because of efforts by the George W. Bush administration, which rained on Hutchison’s parade.

In June 2005, Sen. Udall, then in the House of Representatives, introduced a companion in the House and called for appropriations of $10 million annually over a ten-year period.

A big push came natrually following hurricanes Rita and Katrina. Even Congress didn’t want a repeat of those devastating storms. If only Congress would empower itself to foil Mother Nature …

In 2007 and 2009, Hutchison introduced additional bills in another failed effort to fund weather modification, though she began referring to the practice as “weather mitigation.”

The 2009 bill called for $25 million in annual funding between 2010 and 2014, but a Congressional Budget Office estimate from 2009 showed the bill would have actually increased discretionary spending by $88 million during that five-year period.

Then-Rep. Udall again introduced a companion bill in the House in 2007, which called for appropriations of $10 million annually over 10 years.

The Weather Modification Research and Technology Transfer Authorization Act of 2005 introduced by Hutchison would have established a Weather Modification Operations and Research Board. The bill was identical to the bill she had introduced in 2004.

Bastasch adds the detail that “Controlling or tampering with the weather has been banned by the United Nations since 1978.”

Actually,the move began earlier than that. As I reported at SourceWatch, “Weather control, as well as ‘weather tampering’, is expressly forbidden dating from at least December 10, 1976, when the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 31/72, TIAS 9614 Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques was adopted.

“The Convention was: Signed in Geneva May 18, 1977; Entered into force October 5, 1978; Ratification by U.S. President December 13, 1979; U.S. ratification deposited at New York January 17, 1980.”

Bastasch continues: “Also, weaponizing the weather has been on the minds of lawmakers since at least the early 1970s. Congressional hearing[s] were held on the issue and President Richard Nixon held discussions with the Soviets on how to overcome the dangers of weaponizing the weather and environment.”

The UN convention is very specific on what it prohibits:

Article II:

Weather control, referred to here as “environmental modification techniques”, means “any technique for changing — through the deliberate manipulation of natural processes — the dynamics, composition, or structure of the earth, including its biota, lithosphere, hydrosphere, or of outer space.”

Examples would be:

. Manipulation of a natural process could be altering the flow of the Jet Stream.
. Controlling the dynamics could, again, include the Jet Stream as well as creating rainstorms, thunder and lightening, and hail.
. A change in the “composition or structure of the earth” could refer to earthquakes.
. Damage, injury, or destruction of the “biota” of a nation translates to damage, injury, or destruction of “animal and plant life of a particular region considered as a total ecological entity”. In other words, these Weather Control capabilities can wipe out an entire ecological system.
. Damage, injury, or destruction of the “lithosphere” of a nation refers to “the solid outer layer of the earth” which “lies above the semi-fluid asthenosphere [30-150 miles down] and includes the crust and the solid part of the mantle down to about 75 kilometers (47 miles).” This is the area where earthquakes occur.
. Damage, injury, or destruction of the “atmosphere”–including Outer Space–of a nation, or group of nations.

Perhaps you now know the real purpose behind the convention. It’s really about global warming and climate change and protecting Mother Earth and her ecological systmes from manmade damage — not to mention the prevention of “damage, injury, or destruction” to “Outer Space”.

Speaking of “Outer Space”, there is also the matter of weather wars. The Weather Wars website states that the weaponization of weather by eco-terrorists was a very real concern 15 years ago.

“Others [terrorists] are engaging even in an eco-type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves… So there are plenty of ingenious minds out there that are at work finding ways in which they can wreak terror upon other nations…It’s real, and that’s the reason why we have to intensify our [counterterrorism] efforts.” Secretary of Defense William Cohen at an April 1997 counterterrorism conference sponsored by former Georgia Senator Sam Nunn.

If eco-terrorists could pull this scientific hattrick off, then what’s to stop ordinary folks like the U.S. or Russia or China or North Korea or Iran from engaging in environmental warfare?

Well, the UN has a convention at the ready to cover that, too. — assuming any country has ever been held back from doing something by agreeing to a UN convention, that is.

The 1977 Treaty is the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 31/72, TIAS 9614 Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques. Signed in Geneva May 18, 1977; Entered into force October 5, 1978; Ratification by U.S. President December 13, 1979; U.S. ratification deposited at New York January 17, 1980.

This assumes that countries that agreed to the convention would comply with it — or, at the very least, refrain from planning how to use weather modification for military purposes.

You know that’s not going to happen. We have two examples of the latter: the August 1996 paper, Weather As A Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather In 2025. Military Applications of Weather Modification, presented by a group of officers at Air Force 2025, and the July 2003 report, Strategic Plan for the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, prepared by the Climate Change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Global Change Research. Doubtless there are many more.

This brings us back to our recent news report. Ask yourself this question: Is this recycled legislation really about the serious weather concerns in the U.S. or does it have another, more troubling agenda?