No, 'weather modification vessels' were not responsible for Valencia's deadly floods
- Published on November 11, 2024 at 12:29
- Updated on November 12, 2024 at 11:36
- 10 min read
- By Théophile BLOUDANIS, AFP Greece
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"The mysterious ship that generates electricity happened to be in Spain a few days ago. #HAARP", read one Facebook post from November 3, 2024, shared over 7,200 times since. It shared a video of a cargo ship with a dozen smokestacks and high-voltage pylons on its deck.
Users commented extensively on the post, repeatedly claiming it was a "HAARP system". "The same system (HAARP) produces not only meteorological but also seismic warfare! All for our good!!!!", one wrote.
Other users also claimed that the floods in Spain were caused intentionally. "It was a fake incident. It's clear," said one.
In addition to be being shared in Greek on Facebook here and on X here, similar posts were also spotted in French, Dutch and Spanish.
Another Facebook post from November 3, 2024 in Greek shares another video of a similar ship, and reads: "Again, a few days before the climate attack, a mysterious ship was spotted near Valencia. Its official purpose was to be used as a floating power station. Rumour has it that Spain has cancelled its arms supply agreement with Israel. The HAARP weather weapon was released a few days later. Just a coincidence, right?"
But these claims are false. The two vessels visible in the video are floating power plants belonging to a Turkish company that has nothing to do with HAARP or weather manipulation, as one expert explained to AFP. Furthermore, the two videos offered no proof that the two vessel were off the coast of Valencia before or after the floods. On the contrary, AFP found that one of the vessels was off the coast of Ghana. And the second video proved that the other was near the island of Gran Canaria at the end of September 2024. Finally, the HAARP research programme is not capable of influencing the weather or causing storms.
Death and devastation
On October 29, 2024, the Valencia region was hit by torrential rain (archived here), which caused deadly floods that caused untold damage and left 219 people dead and 89 missing. The Spanish government announced a 10.6-billion-euro aid package to rebuild the devastated region.
According to World Weather Attribution (WWA), an international group of scientists and meteorologists who study the role of climate change in extreme weather events, the devastating downpours and flooding in Valencia on October 29, 2024 were 12 percent heavier and twice as likely as in the pre-climate change world. WWA did not establish a direct link between the event and climate change, but said it was "very likely" to be the cause.
According to the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), extreme weather events causing floods and droughts with far-reaching consequences have become more likely and more severe as a result of man-made climate change.
Experts told AFP that Spain's deadliest floods in a generation were due to powerful storms favoured by global warming, poor urban planning and neglect.
Ships not off the Spanish coast
The earliest instance AFP was able to find of a video sharing the false claim was this post on Facebook on November 3, 2024. However, using a reverse video search, AFP was able find the original posted on August, 11, 2017 (archived here) -- years before the floods in Valencia -- on the official YouTube channel of Karpowership, a Turkish company that builds and operates powerships. The title of the original reads "Karadeniz Powership Osman Khan | Istanbul, Turkey". The video shared with the false claim uses the same soundtrack as the original.
According to a search on the Marine Traffic ship tracking site using the name of the vessel, the Karadeniz Powership Osman Khan is currently stationed in Ghana.
It has been stationed in the port of Takoradi in Ghana since 2019, according to the Power Technology website. The vessel can also be seen on Google Maps.
Another reverse video search also led to the original of the second video shared on Facebook. It was posted on September 25, 2024 -- also long before the floods in Valencia -- on TikTok, by an account named "restorantepuntomarino" (archived here and here).
In the video, a voice is heard saying in Spanish: "Power station on the sea. This boat arrived on Wednesday, full of antennas". At no point does the voice mention HAARP or anything to do with the weather.
Another video on the same TikTok account (archived here) features a restaurant called "Punto Marino", which, using a search on Google Maps, can be located on the island of Gran Canaria.
That means the powership would have been off the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean rather than off the coast of Valencia in the Mediterranean.
In addition, according to an article published in the Spanish media outlet La Provincia on September 26, 2024, the Karadeniz Powership Onur Sultan did indeed call at Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. The newspaper published photos and a video of the ship that are very similar to the one in the video shared on Facebook and TikTok.
Floating power plants
An advanced online search using the name "Karadenitz Powership Osman Khan" found a description of the ship on the Karpowership company page (archived here).
The image of the same ship appears in a slideshow of images showing similar vessels, where some 20 smokestacks and high-voltage pylons have been installed on deck. The silhouette of these ships also matches that visible in the second video shared on Facebook.
Both ships visible in the videos shared along with the false claims belong to the Turkish powership operator, Karpowership. According to the company's website, it owns 40 powerships generating electricity in several African and South American countries (archived here). The "Khan Class" vessels are capable of generating between 415 and 470 megawatt (MW) of electricity (archived here).
AFP contacted Karpowership for comment, but had received no response by the time of publication.
Lamis Aljounaidi, an energy economist and engineer running Paris Infrastructure Advisory, explained that a powership is a ready-to-use mobile power plant installed on a ship, which can be connected to the local electricity grid and supplied with fuel.
"Unlike conventional power plants, which take several months to build and are not easily dismantled, the powership enables emergency power generation capacity to be deployed, responding to immediate supply needs", she explained to AFP in an email on November 5, 2024.
Run on either diesel or natural gas, these powership were "often used in contexts where institutional and financial capacities are limited making it difficult to develop more sustainable solutions", she said.
"Emergency generation facilities, such as powerships, are generally more expensive and therefore less widespread than conventional generation infrastructure, and are found particularly in countries with fragile governance or financial difficulties, which lack the resources or guarantees to finance conventional infrastructure projects", the expert said.
They can also be deployed following natural disasters, when existing electricity infrastructures are damaged.
According to Aljounaidi, Karpowership is one of the leading players in the deployment of emergency power plants of this type, and is active in several African countries.
Historically, the use of ships as floating power plants has been quite common. For example, in 1929, the American aircraft carrier USS Lexington was used for a month as an emergency power station for the port of Tacoma, Washington. There have also been nuclear projects. The MH-1A floating nuclear station supplied power to the Panama Canal, but was dismantled in 2019.
HAARP cannot influence the weather
The High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), launched in 1990, is" the world’s most capable high-power, high frequency (HF) transmitter for study of the ionosphere," according to the website.
Until 2015, it was operated jointly by the United States Air Force and the US Navy. Since then, it has been managed by the University of Alaska Fairbanks due to a lack of funding from the Air Force.
HAARP has long been the subject of multiple conspiracy theories and speculations and experts have repeatedly explained to AFP, such as here and here, that this research programme does not affect the weather. AFP has also debunked claims that it can cause earthquakes like the one that struck Turkey and Syria in 2023.
According to HAARP, the radio waves emitted by the transmitter are not absorbed by the troposphere, the part of the atmosphere that produces weather. "Since there is no interaction, there is no way to control the weather," it states.
In a previous AFP fact-checking article, Umran S. Inan of Stanford University told AFP that the heating generated by HAARP in the ionosphere was "almost a million times less than that caused by lightning".
"Given that there are around 2,000 active thunderstorms on our planet at any given time, and that an average of 50 to 60 lightning strikes occur on Earth every second, it's completely ridiculous to talk of any impact from HAARP on weather conditions or earthquakes", Inan told AFP in an e-mail on April 24, 2024.
Morris B. Cohen from the Georgia Tech in the US agreed that "HAARP isn't remotely capable of controlling the weather".
"At best, HAARP is like sticking your finger in a big river to study the water and how it flows. These conspiracy theories are the equivalent of saying that sticking your finger in a river causes a massive flood, which is obviously ridiculous”, he wrote in an e-mail on April 24, 2024.
Hélène Galiègue, professor and researcher on electromagnetism and antennas at France's National Civil Aviation School (ENAC), explained that the troposphere, where climatic and meteorological events take place, is in no way affected by the HF waves with which the HAARP project operates, and that "there is therefore no risk of these waves altering the climate in any way".
"HAARP-induced particle heating in the ionosphere is extremely localized and extremely small compared with all the other phenomena affecting particle movement in the ionosphere, such as the Earth's magnetic field. Like throwing a grain of sand into a river, the small impact of the sand grain on the water will be invisible after just a few seconds", she wrote in an e-mail from May 2, 2024.
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