Physicist James McCanney joins to present his theory that Earth's weather is primarily driven by electrical currents from the ionosphere rather than solar light heating the surface. He argues that jet streams are bands of ions and electrons powered by the outer magnetic field, and that hurricanes draw their enormous energy from vertical electrical batteries formed by solar wind interactions. McCanney contends that traditional meteorology cannot account for the energy contained in major storms through conventional thermodynamic calculations alone.
McCanney makes a striking claim that the 2003 Northeast blackout was caused by a Tesla coil experiment at an underground base near Kanata, Canada, which accidentally tunneled through the atmosphere to the ionosphere and dumped roughly 1,000 megawatts of uncontrolled power into the grid. He proposes that hurricanes could be weakened by deploying grounded tethered balloons or laser beams to drain their electrical energy before landfall.
Key Moments
Jet streams are electrical bands, not solar-light convection: McCanney rejects the textbook account of solar light driving the jet streams and argues they are electron and ion belts in the upper atmosphere, with a westward equatorial electron belt powering hurricanes.
Energy calculation: hurricanes don't have enough local energy: McCanney argues a freshman-level physics energy calculation shows hurricanes and tornadoes contain more energy than is locally available in the atmosphere, forcing him to look to the electrical solar system.
Hurricane Isabel could power the country for a year: McCanney claims the energy in Hurricane Isabel alone, if tapped from equatorial electron belts, could run the United States for about a year, framing hurricanes as a free-energy resource.