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So this video and other blog posts are making the claim that Haiyan was influenced, started or even straight-up controlled by man-made microwave emissions.

He doesn't cite any sources much beyond his own blog and videos, so it's difficult to even understand his claims well enough to debunk them. It seems to be playing off the speculative idea put forward by some scientists over the years that weather could possibly be influenced using microwaves.

SIMEL
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user16150
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3 Answers3

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His argument goes like this:

  • "What we've seen several times is out here near Guam, of all places, we see a large microwave spiral shaped pulse that comes from the north and then extends to the south over Guam."
  • "Following that, we see rotation begin to develop and form into these cyclones."
  • "And, it's happened time after time now; it's happened like four times. And I've documented each one on my website."

There is no pulse

He fails to demonstrate that there is such a phenomenon as a "microwave pulse". (He attempts to at 3:33 and onward.) His example does not demonstrate a large microwave spiral shaped pulse. He doesn't demonstrate that anything originates from the north or Guam. What he claims is an example of this pulse (from 0:50 of this video):

http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mimic-tpw/wpac/images/mosaic20131022T000000.gif

is only an expected artifact from the composition process:

As stated above, this technique is highly sensitive to biases between the different satellite instruments' calibration and/or retrievals of TPW. Even slight differences between retrievals can create two easily discernable artifacts in the animation: 1) The appearance of data swath edges throughout the image domain, and 2) The apparent "pulsing" of various high-TPW areas, especially in areas of precipitation. (From http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mimic-tpw/prodDesc/)

These artifacts are frequent and easy to find. For example, here's one sequence filled with such artifacts:

And another more extreme example:

http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mimic-tpw/natl/images/mosaic20130426T000000.gif

Post hoc ergo propter hoc

He then commits the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. Even if, a "microwave pulse" happened before the formation of these storms, that does not suggest causation. In fact, he gets the causation backwards. The data provider says these artifacts will be found "especially in areas of precipitation".

Confirmation bias

Notwithstanding any of the above, his analysis also suffers from either confirmation bias (if not deliberate) or reporting bias (if deliberate). A proper analysis would include how many times a "microwave pulse" occurred and was not followed by a cyclone and how many times cyclones formed without such a "microwave pulse" occurring.

Glorfindel
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    *"spiral shaped pulse"*?!? Does he ever say what he means by that? – dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten Nov 11 '13 at 19:36
  • @dmckee Closest I could find to him pinning down that definition was with an example at [0:50 of this video](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f7lcGKsrPo&t=50s). ([screenshot](http://imgur.com/TC3aDDB)) –  Nov 11 '13 at 19:45
  • To put it into perspective, that animation is 3500 x 3500 miles. Since the animation is blending data from multiple polar satellites (http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mimic-tpw/prodDesc/), it makes sense that there is some streaking... – ventsyv Jul 17 '19 at 21:05
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http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mimic-tpw/epac/main.html

this is supposed to be the website where you can see the microwave data for yourself, archived for the past several years. its been said that if you look through the archives you can see many things that look like "pulses" and yet no weather events follow

vince
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He's just playing the post hoc fallacy game. Something happened to the weather after a "pulse" therefore the "pulse" caused the weather. It doesn't matter the "pulse" was just an error in the display or data feed. It doesn't matter that 99.9% of such "pulses" aren't follow by significant weather. They saw a blip on the screen and the storm happened. That blip must have been something.

There's a thread on metabunk.org which includes an email which confirms that the 'pulses' are an artifact:

enter image description here

ChrisW
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vince
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  • Why is an unreferenced comment in a forum a valuable reference here? – Sklivvz Nov 16 '13 at 13:49
  • This isn't an answer, it's a comment on somebody else's answer. Also, image links are strongly discouraged because a) if the hosting site vanishes then so to the images and b) they're an accessibility nightmare (screen readers can't do anything with images) – GordonM Jul 18 '19 at 09:02