James DeMeo

### DeMeo, James:

## PRESS RELEASE on a ‘New’ Method for Drought-Abatement and Desert-Greening: Cloudbusting http://www.orgonelab.org/PressRelease2.htm

15 January 2003, For Immediate Distribution ( http://www.orgonelab.org/PressRelease2.htm )

A 1950s Discovery Holds Promise to End Drought and Green Deserts inIsrael, Australia, the Horn of Africa, the USA, and Elsewhere.

An independent scientist and former university professor from Oregon, among others, has in over 25 years of field research, verified the method originally developed by the controversial Wilhelm Reich, called “Cloudbusting”.

Positive results have been observed in field experiments undertaken in the USA and overseas, over many years.


Reich Cloudbuster at work in Namibia, Africa, 1993.
Copyright 2003 All Rights Reserved, on all text and graphics, by James DeMeo and OBRL.

An Environmental Scientist working at a private Institute in rural Oregon claims to have a solution to the ancient plagues of drought and famine. Dr. James DeMeo, formerly a geography professor at Illinois State University and the University of Miami, and currently Director of the Orgone Biophysical Research Laboratory, has been undertaking field experiments and a detailed study of the controversial Reich cloudbuster.

“I read about Dr. Wilhelm Reich’s discoveries when I was a teenager studying at Florida International University, in the early 1970s.” DeMeo said, “That was the time of the last big famine disaster in the Horn of Africa, and newspapers and television were full of horrible images of parched landscapes, starving children and dead animals. I was studying methods for combating drought and desertification or desert spreading, and basically learning that very little could be done by using orthodox approaches. That’s when I decided to make a more in-depth study of Reich’s cloudbuster device.”

The cloudbuster, according to Reich’s descriptions, consists of a special movable antenna resembling a large “pipe organ”, which can be aimed at different parts of the sky. The device taps into and influences natural energy currents in the atmosphere and ground, and when used in certain specific ways, wind and weather patterns respond accordingly. DeMeo states “While the cloudbuster makes little sense from the standpoint of classical meteorology, in fact both Reich and several other scientists had published fairly convincing reports of their field experiments since the 1950s. I read those reports, and found them nothing less than amazing. Over subsequent years, I met and trained with two of the scientists who had closely followed Reich’s approach, Mr. Robert Morris and Dr. Richard Blasband, and undertook a variety of laboratory experiments to become familiar with his overall discovery. I observed the experiments of others, using large cloudbuster devices, and could hardly believe my eyes at the way the atmosphere responded. When I was a graduate student at the University of Kansas, I finally was able to make my first cautious steps and systematic research into the question.”

DeMeo’s subsequent 1979 study on the cloudbuster at the University of Kansas Geography-Meteorology Department, was a milestone in that he was the first to openly research Wilhelm Reich’s biophysical work within a mainstream university, and it provided positive results confirming Reich’s claims. “I studied the influence of the device upon the dynamics of cumulus clouds, making photographs which were then digitized and graphed on a computer, and also 12 different experiments to increase rains. The study area was the entire state of Kansas, given that Reich observed very widespread influences from the cloudbuster. The device was operated for only a few hours on the test days, and produced dramatic increases in the percentage of cloud cover and measured precipitation over the entire state, starting usually within an hour or two after the onset of operations.”

This element of widespread effects, DeMeo explained, was an expected result from cloudbusting. Reich had discovered a basic energy which he called the orgone energy and which was specific to living organisms, but also existing in the atmosphere in a free form. According to Reich, atmospheric orgone energy exists as a widespread continuum, much like the “cosmological ether” of 19th Century physics. DeMeo was emphatic: “The old ‘ether-theory’ of physics was never disproven, but it fell out of favor around the same time Reich discovered the atmospheric orgone continuum. Reich’s arguments thereafter were received with skepticism as there were no parallel concepts in modern physics. However, the old ‘ether-theory’ is making a come-back, and possibly that situation will change as well. For now, I simply make note that Reich’s discovery was never factually refuted by replication of his experiments with negative results — in fact, I was the first academic scientist to actually attempt such experiments, and got positive results. Reich was attacked by his critics purely for theoretical disagreements — they could not believe it was possible, and so never bothered to attempt the experiments. This was exactly what Galileo’s critics did, when they refused to ‘look into the telescope’ to confirm his observations. With Reich, however, there has been a long line of scientists and naturalists outside the universities who have confirmed his findings — I was simply the first university academic to do so, and so I owe a big debt to both Reich and also the others who kept his work alive over these many years.”

Unlike the better-known method of “cloud-seeding” where chemical stimulants are dispersed into the atmosphere to affect a small region, cloudbusting uses no chemicals whatsoever, and has both long-distance and persisting effects. It functions by excitation and triggering motion within the large energy continuum surrounding the Earth, and in which localized energy potentials are observed to create clouds and weather fronts. “We don’t try to ‘milk’ one or another cloud for rains, like the cloud-seeders do, but rather undertake to restore natural energetic pulsation, which as Reich discovered is a fundament for good cloud growth and development. In this sense, cloudbusting takes more of its theoretical background from the biological sciences than from mainstream physics, which only speaks of a dead atmosphere and ’empty space’. From the Reichian perspective, we view the atmosphere, Earth, and cosmos as being filled with a living pulsatory energy, somewhat in keeping with the ‘living Earth / Gaia Hypothesis’ of Lovelock, except that Reich’s orgone is an objectively demonstrable energy, and not merely a theoretical speculation. Reich described the healthy atmosphere as characterized by cycles of rain-dry-rain-dry, which were caused by natural energetic pulsation and self-regulatory properties of the orgone energy itself. Hard deserts and drought regions had lost this pulsatory capacity, as Reich described it, becoming energetically stagnant and immobilized. With the cloudbuster we have a means to re-invigorate and mobilize the atmospheric energy, and thereby restore energetic pulsation. Once this is done, like restoring a heart-beat to someone whose heart has stopped, natural rainfall cycles resume and we put away our equipment and do no additional work. It is only used for brief periods.” In this context, DeMeo explained, the cloudbusting method is like a form of atmospheric acupuncture, where the “acupuncture needle” or “cloudbuster” is used for brief periods to stimulate and restore a flow or movement of energy, after which the “symptoms” of atmospheric blocking and “illness” — drought — is eliminated. DeMeo noted that, with both acupuncture and cloudbusting, classical science has a hard time to understand them, as the background energy of Chinese medicine and of cloudbusting, is not generally known or accepted by those who haven’t studied them. “Nevertheless” DeMeo said, “they both work.”

Data sample:

Results of 12 Cloudbusting Operations in Kansas.
Data has been averaged together over a period of one week, showing the rains and percent cloud cover for three days before operations, the day of operations, and three days after operations. There is a peaking of rainfall starting immediately after the onset of operations, with a secondary peak two days later. Cloud cover remains higher during the days after operations as compared to before. From: James DeMeo, Preliminary Analysis of Changes in Kansas Weather Coincidental to Experimental Operations With a Reich Cloudbuster, Thesis, University of Kansas, Geography-Meteorology Department, Lawrence, 1979.

“After my work at the University of Kansas, I had the opportunity to test out the cloudbuster in several severe drought regions in the USA, all of which produced positive results. In 1986, a severe drought of historical proportions affected the Southeastern states. I led a team of four scientists using two cloudbusters into that region, and within a week, heavy saturating rains were falling all over the region. A newspaper in Athens, Georgia reported on our work, and I wrote a paper which was published by the South Carolina Climatology Office, in a special Proceedings on that drought situation. But hardly anyone noticed our work. In 1988, with help from my assistant Theirrie Cook, I undertook work which restored rains to much of the Midwest during a terrible drought, but the most spectacular consequence was a ‘surprise snowstorm’ which hit Yellowstone Park shortly after we had worked in areas just to the west of that location. Those snowstorms made the international news, but again, only a few persons took note of our work, which has always been undertaken on a non-profit basis, without efforts to commercialize it, or to seek media attention. In 1991, I directed a team of workers using several different cloudbusters, which produced the California ‘Miracle March’ rains. These were widely celebrated in all the newspapers, but we simply did not have time to go seeking out newspaper reporters. I could give other examples of projects undertaken in the USA to end drought, but these should be sufficient for the moment. I do emphasize, however, that all these operations were fully documented with film and videocamera, with many witnesses, and published articles documenting the increased rains and beneficial results with analyses using National Weather Service data.”


Figure 2: Cloudbusting operation in mid-September 1988 during an intensive drought affecting the Pacific Northwest USA. After four days of cloudbusting in Washington and Idaho, Pacific storms began entering the region moving west to east, bringing exceptionally good rains and extinguishing the fires which had devastated Yellowstone Park. The top line represents the percentage of cloud cover over the State of Washington, while the bottom line is the measured precipitation over the state, from 150 different National Weather Service rain stations. A strong peak in rains develops quickly after operations, with a second rainfall pulsation about a week thereafter. In fact, a pulsatory cycle of rains developed over the entire Pacific NW after these operations, and continued for several months thereafter. From James DeMeo, “CORE Progress Report #20: Breaking the Drought Barriers in the Southwest and Northwest USA”, Journal of Orgonomy, 23(1):97-125, 1989.

DeMeo’s most systematically-designed cloudbusting operation in the USA was undertaken in Arizona in 1989, to test out the observations of Wilhelm Reich that the cloudbuster could be used for more than just drought-abatement, but actually had a desert-greening capability. Reich used his cloudbusters in the dryland area near Tucson in 1954, observing increases in atmospheric humidity, dew and rains, with the development of prairie grasses on formerly barren areas where older residents had no prior memory of grasses. Those observations of Reich, published shortly after his death in 1957, always fascinated DeMeo.

“This was the most dramatic claim of Reich, that the cloudbuster could bring streams of energy and moisture off the ocean and deep into the heart of desert regions, to prevent their spreading and to even green them up somewhat. The implications are, of course, enormous. In 1989, I had the opportunity to evaluate this claim, and in fact verified that Reich was on solid ground. With help from volunteers, I undertook five cloudbusting operations on pre-selected dates over a period of five months. I sent telegrams to National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration offices in Washington to document them, and made extensive video and photographic documentation as well. A German film-crew actually came along and made a documentary on the first expedition. We drove one of our large cloudbusters into the desert region along the Colorado River, near Blythe, California, worked the device for a few days, and then returned to home base in the San Francisco Bay area. This was done five times on the pre-selected days, and we subsequently evaluated the effects of those operations by reviewing official weather records from over 400 National Weather Service rain-gathering stations. Those official weather data showed that our operations had created a ‘rainfall doubling’ effect — that is, rains during a 15-day period after our operations was twice what was observed for an identical 15-day period ‘before’ operations. This result was similar to what we had observed and documented for the various drought-abatement experiments, but it was both remarkable and satisfying to see that it would also work in harsh dryland regions as well.”


Figure 3: Results of 5 different cloudbusting experiments in the Southwestern USA, averaged together, for 15 days before and 15 days after operations. Data covers all of Arizona plus the southeastern parts of California and southern Nevada, with a total of 424 National Weather Service rain stations. A “rainfall doubling” effect is apparent in the graph for this entire region, starting one day after the onset of operations and lasting for a full week thereafter. From: James DeMeo, “OROP Arizona 1989: A Cloudbusting Experiment to Bring Rains in the Desert Southwest”, Pulse of the Planet, 3:82-92, 1991.


Cloudbuster Icarus, a large remotely-controlled apparatus constructed by James DeMeo in 1978, shown here at work on the banks of the Colorado River during the OROP Arizona 1989 project.

Reich observed a working cloudbuster could also have negative biological effects upon the operator, and DeMeo has confirmed this personally. “Reich noted certain symtpoms of ‘overcharge’ and other problems which were at the very least a nuisance to this work. At worst, they could be life-threatening. Several persons using cloudbusters have been made severely ill to the point they could no longer do it. I take all kinds of precautions, including use of electrical motors and a remote control so I can stand off by 100 feet and not get close to the device when it is working. We don’t know what the long-term health effects are of this device upon the operator, and it might be similar to what the early experimenters in atomic energy suffered through.” DeMeo says he was sickened temporarily on a few occasions, but feels confident about his protective measures.

DeMeo was also invited to work overseas. In 1991-1992, with support from a private foundation and the Israeli government, he and Theirrie Cook went into Israel at the time of a 3-year drought which had reduced all that nation’s water reservoirs to historically low levels. “The meteorologists and hydrological experts were told by their superiors to assist our project, and we were given carte-blanche access to any part of the nation where we felt the cloudbuster should be applied. Our contacts cleared the way with the large water authority, Mekroth, and with the military, so that they would not become alarmed at the sight of several Americans driving around with such a large and strange-looking device, which might otherwise be confused with a Katusha rocket-launcher.” DeMeo referred to the appearance of the cloudbuster’s long tubes, which as mounted on a trailer might be confused with a military-type of weapon.

“We worked from the northern part of Israel near the Golan Heights, down to the southern part, near the Red Sea port city of Eilat, over a 10-day period. Immediately afterward, storm fronts began to move inland off the Mediterranean Sea, with a vigor not seen over the prior years. Heavy saturating rains, well above normal levels, fell thereafter over all of Israel and many neighboring nations. And the rains continued in a pulsatory cyclical manner, over the following months of their rainy season, without any need for additional cloudbusting. The Sea of Galilee, or Lake Kinneret as the Israelis call it, went from historical low levels to historical high overflowing levels, with a lot of water flowing over the Deganya Dam into the Dead Sea. Rains fell everywhere, even in the Negev Desert, and snow blanketed Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. It was incredible. I have newspaper articles showing Jewish and Arab kids having snowball fights, and laughing, having a fun time. Snow also piled up on Mount Hermon and the Golan Heights, which looked like Switzerland instead of the dry Middle East, and snow fell for the first time in memory on the mountains surrounding Eilat in the south. New lakes formed out in the middle of the desert. The Negev was quickly covered with wildflowers, the likes of which nobody had remembered, and tour busses began taking long-time Israeli residents out to see them, because nobody had ever seen such a thing. I also got stories of some old dead peach trees in the middle of the Syrian desert, where the tree orchard had been abandoned years earlier due to lack of irrigation water, suddenly coming back to life and growing big plump peaches! One can hardly imagine such things today, but I saw much of this transformation with my own eyes, as did all the people of the region. There were some complications to ordinary life for awhile, but in fact the death rates due to highway accidents actually declined because people were driving slower, and farm yields also increased by the end of that year, in spite of many water-logged fields, because the subsoils were recharged with moisture, and accumulated salts washed out. ”


Figure 5: A map of rainfall patterns in the eastern Mediterranean from late-November to early-December 1991, showing the percentage of normal rainfall during the period immediately after cloudbusting operations in Israel. The highest percentage of rains, at 400 percent of normal, fell over Israel. This map matches the first peak of rainfall data as seen in Figure 3, above, for this same late-November early-December period. From: James DeMeo, “OROP Israel 1991-1992: A Cloudbusting Experiment to Restore Wintertime Rains to Israel and the Eastern Mediterranean During an Extended Period of Drought”, Pulse of the Planet 4:92-98, 1993.

Asked why, if such a positive and dramatic result occurred, has not cloudbusting been accepted, DeMeo turned serious again. “Our work was opposed from the start by some of the same people who opposed Reich in the 1950s, who worked so hard to have his books burned and Reich imprisoned. They have no shame about what they did then, but are good at disguising themselves as ‘rational skeptics’, which they most certainly are not. The nasty rumors they circulated about Reich, they now also circulate about me. In addition, there is petty professional jealousies often at work, where scientists working inside a big institution may become very anxious against any outsider who offers something new and unusual which challenges both their bibliography and possibly their funding as well. It is easier for them to simply dismiss the entire matter as nonsense, than to carefully take their time and review the matter seriously. Specifically in Israel, the meteorologists and hydrologists initially were interested, but eventually they became vocal opponents after the unforecast rains started to fall. They could not believe it, because it was totally outside of the weather forecasts, and because they could not accept Reich’s theory. Basically, they felt threatened. Eventually, one of them came up with the idea that all the rains were the result of the eruption of ‘Mt. Pinotubo’ in the Philippines. That eruption had taken place many months before our work, on the other side of the world, but that idea was a lot easier for them to accept than the implication that all the textbooks were dramatically incomplete, and that Wilhelm Reich’s ‘crazy’ ideas were correct. They used the Mt. Pinotubo idea as an excuse to block any further support for our project, which we believe could green the deserts of the entire region. We have always had some people who supported our work, and for whom the theoretical questions were not so important. Others have become highly emotional about Reich’s orgone theory. We don’t push Reich’s ideas at people, but neither do we feel it is appropriate or ethical to somehow hide Reich’s foundational role in all of this.”

DeMeo laughed when recounting one of his encounters with a “skeptic”. “In 1992-1993, a project was initiated with considerable help from Dr. Manfred Metz and Prof. Dr. Bernd Senf in Germany, to undertake drought-abatement work in the nation of Namibia in southern Africa. Namibia was then suffering from a very hard drought of 3-years’s duration, but also with a longer trend towards increased dryness starting some 12 years earlier. We constructed a new cloudbuster in Namibia and, with help from their hydrological and agricultural ministry, undertook the necessary work, and brought forth some excellent rains which ended their drought, and also ended drought conditions across the whole of southern Africa. At the end of our work, shortly before flying home, we visited the Namibian Meteorological Service, and met the man who headed that department. He was an old Afrikaner, and a religious fundamentalist we were informed, who had opposed cloud-seeding methods as well anything which had the appearance of modernity. After entering the room, I had hardly introduced myself when he literally shouted at me: ‘Only God can make it rain, so GET THE HELL OUT OF MY OFFICE!’ After that, it was pretty sure we would get no further support in Namibia.”

“Some of the skepticism, I can understand” DeMeo said, recounting stories of several misguided individuals who had only limited knowledge of Reich’s discovery. “There are all sorts of people building devices which they are calling ‘cloudbusters’ but which in reality have only a superficial resemblance to Reich’s original discovery. They haven’t read his original publications, and mix up Reich’s good science with a lot of funny things and fairy-tales, and if you hear about Reich from them, you would naturally be very skeptical.” DeMeo compares them to people strapping boards to their arms and jumping off the barn roof, claiming they could fly. “I admire their enthusiasm, but get frustrated when I learn that a scientist or politician has generated a negative view of Reich, or cloudbusting, based upon such nonsense. We have a group called the ‘CORE Network USA’ which tries to apply this discovery in a rational and scientific manner, keeping the record straight and offering training to serious individuals.” DeMeo offers seminars every summer at his institute, to educate students and professionals on the relevant discoveries, and his internet web site www.orgonelab.org overflows with scientific information on Reich and his own work.

DeMeo’s most ambitious project to date was undertaken in Eritrea, at the invitation of the Eritrean Ministry of Agriculture. Suffering from a 30-year drought, the small nation of Eritrea had only recently won its independence from Ethiopia, following a 30-year war of independence which paralleled the drought conditions. Without a change in the weather, there was little chance for this small nation to develop or resurrect itself from the economic devastation of the long war. With private donations, a cloudbusting experiment was organized in 1994, and rains were restored to Eritrea and surrounding regions as well, yielding above-normal levels for the first time in decades. The Eritrean government was sufficiently impressed to invite DeMeo back to conduct a 5-year research project, which was ended in 1999. A Report on the Eritrean experiment was recently published, showing an approximate 50% increase in rains following DeMeo’s experiments. DeMeo explained:

“The invitation came from Dr. Aurelio Albini and Carlo Albini, who are part-Eritrean. They had good personal contacts with one of the head meteorologists in Eritrea, as well as with the Research Division of their Ministry of Agriculture. Together with their help, and with assistance once again from Theirrie Cook and Bernd Senf, we organized and carried forward the project over a 5-year period. We had good rains every year we worked, and the Eritrean government provided systematically-gathered rainfall data from across the nation, as well as access to satellite images, a truck and driver, and for other expenses. Once again, we witnessed a most incredible results, year after year. We knew from the work in Arizona that a ‘rainfall doubling’ effect was possible, but the Arizona desert is not anywhere near as dry or harsh as the Sahara Desert, which covers the northern part of Eritrea. The work in Israel did show a strong development of rains, but Israel’s drought was only 3 years duration. In Eritrea, we were looking at 3 decades of dryness and below-normal rains in an already dry region, where the Sahara Desert had been slowly spreading southward over that same time period. Even so, good saturating rains came quickly after our first operations, and most every other operation thereafter. And the rains in Eritrea were widespread and soaking, lasting all day into the evening, of a kind that older residents confirmed they had not seen since childhood.”


Figure 6: Results from three years of cloudbusting work in Eritrea, Africa, with rainfall data averaged to show measured precipitation data 15 days before operations, as compared to 15 days after operations. A clear increase in rainfall after operations can be seen on the graph, which rose by an approximate 50%. Systematically-collected data was not available in Eritrea for the first and last years of our work (1994 and 1999) and no work occurred in 1996 during a temporary cessation of operations. From: James DeMeo, “Green Sea Eritrea: A 5-Year Desert Greening CORE Project in the SE African Sahel”, Pulse of the Planet, 5:183-211, 2002.

“By 1998, we had three separate cloudbusting stations operating in Eritrea, receiving daily weather maps and satellite images from our home-base in the USA, and with communication links for coordination of operations in Eritrea by radiotelephone. That was the year of the biggest observed rains, but also the year when another shooting war started with Ethiopia.” This project would have continued, DeMeo believes, had not the new border war develop in 1998. The Asmara International Airport was bombed by Ethiopian jets, and there was a massive exodus of Europeans and Americans. “We continued with the work into 1999, but the war was heating up, funding was no longer possible, and it became impossible to continue working. Nevertheless, some years later, we heard of even more remarkable results from our work.” DeMeo showed satellite pictures of the Sahara Desert near Aswan, Egypt, along the Nile River. There, in the open desert, were four giant new lakes, formed from the overflow of Lake Nasser along the Nile River. Lake Nasser, which was created by the impoundment of Nile River water behind the Aswan High Dam, filled to overflowing during the years of the cloudbusting project in Eritrea, for the first time since the Dam’s construction in the 1960s.

“I call this an ‘unbelievable result’, because I still have difficulties to believe it myself — but the evidence is there. Our project in Eritrea stimulated excellent above-normal rains across not only Eritrea, but also across many parts of neighboring Sudan and Ethiopia. In fact, the entire eastern Sahel zone benefited from our work. This same area is also the catchment basin for the Nile River, and the downstream effects of this increased rainfall were most evident far downstream in Egypt. Lake Nasser, behind the Aswan Dam, filled fairly quickly after our work in 1994, with overflows of Lake Nasser starting in 1998, and forming the giant new lakes which could be seen on satellite images by the year 2000.”

Figure 7: Satellite image of the Nile River around Lake Nasser and the Aswan High Dam, Egypt. The exceptional rainfalls in the Nile River Basin after c.1994 slowly filled Lake Nasser to capacity, for the first time in its 35-year history. The excess waters were diverted into the Toshka Depression, out in the open Sahara Desert, where four giant overflow lakes were created for the first time since the Sahara Wet Phase of c.5000 BCE. (From the MODIS imaging spectroradiometer, NASA, 10 October 2000, posted on internet at: http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/viewrecord?6506 ) Also see: James DeMeo, “Green Sea Eritrea: A 5-Year Desert Greening CORE Project in the SE African Sahel”, Pulse of the Planet, 5:183-211, 2002.

Those four new lakes are now being exploited for agricultural production by the Egyptian government, under their “New Valley” program. Several of the lakes are so large one cannot see the other side of the shore, the largest covering an area of 700 square kilometers. Their combined capacity is roughly at 700 billion cubic feet of water.

“Nothing like this has been seen in the Sahara for 6000 years! It is an incredible support for Reich’s original findings, and supports his vision from the 1950s, that the deserts of the world could be greened with the cloudbuster. He wrote about this possibility when I was only a child, and I feel humbled and privileged to have done the work which provided factual support for his ideas.”

DeMeo has presented his findings to various scholarly societies in the USA, to include the Association for Arid Lands Studies, Association of American Geographers, American Association for the Advancement of Science, International Society for Biometeorology, American College of Orgonomy and Internationally to the Congress on Geo-Cosmic Relations in Amsterdam, and Symposia on Relations of Biological and Physicochemical Processes with Solar Activity and Other Environmental Factors, in Pushchino, Russia. He has additionally been invited to present on his work to the Namibian Scientific Society, as well as at various European universities, where the name of Wilhelm Reich attracts much positive interest. DeMeo was less optimistic about the situation in the USA.

“Old prejudices die slowly, and there are too many American scientist who bet their reputations that Reich was wrong. The same thing was said about the Wright brothers, Goddard’s rocket, and a whole long list of visionary inventors, I would point out. The critics were wrong about Reich, for sure, but those same prejudiced people still hold the keys to power and research funding in the USA, and they are not going to change their minds, no matter what the evidence. Max Planck once remarked that ‘Science progresses, funeral by funeral’, and that unfortunately describes the situation in the USA.”

“These problems aside, we always are looking for support to apply this method against any one of several major droughts and water-deficit situations, which seem to occur around the world with depressing regularity. Australia was suffering badly from wildfires in recent months, and the East-African region is also progressively going dry once again. The drought in Ethiopia specifically will, by all estimates, create a dramatic famine catastrophe unless they get good rains this summer.” DeMeo estimates a relatively nominal sum would be required to put his teams and equipment into the field in any of these suffering regions, small by comparison to the $179 million recently spent by the US Government on food-aid to Ethiopia. The recent shut-off of water to the State of California and lowering of reservoir levels across the West also suggests applications of the cloudbuster closer to home. DeMeo commented on these situations: “We have a proposal to set up several cloudbuster stations across the Western states, to bring good winter rains and mountain snowpack across the Colorado River Basin region, which would relieve the pressures upon water resources to farmers, cities, and for natural ecosystems alike. What is needed is some wealthy individual or a private foundation concerned about these various drought situations to step in and provide the needed funding. Government institutions could do it also, and sometimes they can move quickly on such matters, but this is only possible when the top people have the courage to act, as we saw in Israel and Eritrea. More typically, elected leaders and officials are overly cautious, even timid creatures, moving much more slowly than a drought or wildfire does. I am always forced to ask, how many years, and how many catastrophes will have to occur, before the world of science and government takes this work seriously? How big do the disasters and tragedies have to become?”

DeMeo provides a shocking example of the consequences of academic and governmental lethargy. “I tried to convince the Governors of two states, Arizona and Colorado, about the potentials of cloudbusting to end drought and bring rains this last summer, 2002, when their states were burning up from all the wildfires — you will remember that terrible situation which cost billions of dollars, burned down numerous homes and entire forests, and claimed dozens of lives. Of course, I could not speak with those Governors directly, but their senior aides and secretaries were contacted. In the case of Arizona, a well-known professional friend of mine made the contact with the Governor’s aide, who was alerted to a forthcoming express-mail package of information and documentation, with a cover letter outlining a simple proposal to bring our equipment into the fire areas and get to work, basically for expenses and some logistical assistance. However, only silence followed afterward. They did not even have the courtesy to write or call back, and I know my package of information got into their hands. And so, the fires raged on until winter rains finally develeoped. I estimate about half of the fire damage last summer could have been averted, if they had taken my proposal seriously. I think, in the USA, the nasty rumors about Reich have done a tremendous damage, but this is no excuse, because the scientific professionals and politicians have a responsibility to examine such proposals in a more open and serious manner. You know, the wildland firefighters have a joke they tell: ‘How does the US Forest Service fight a wildfire? They pour money on it until it rains!’ Well, that’s really not a funny joke, but it carries an element of truth. Most big wildfires are put out by the rains, and are only confined, with luck, by all the hard and difficult work of the firefighters. My work demonstrates that Reich was entirely correct in his assertions, and with a cautious application of this methodology, we can do more than just simply ‘wait for rain’, but there’s got to be some recognition of the possibilities by responsible public officials, and some open funding and assistance, before the full potentials and benefits of this discovery will be realized.”

Dr. James DeMeo’s institute, the Orgone Biophysical Research Lab, is a non-profit science research and educational foundation, set up for tax-deductible donations.

For more information, contact: James DeMeo, Ph.D., Director of Research ; Orgone Biophysical Research Lab; PO Box 1148, Ashland, Oregon 97520 USA ; Tel/Fax: 541-552-0118 Email: demeo@mind.net

# SUMMARY ARTICLES (Posted to Internet):

* “OROP Arizona 1989: A Cloudbusting Experiment To Bring Rains in the Desert Southwest”
This paper documents a 200% “rainfall doubling” effect over a very large area of the Southwestern desert regions of the USA, following 5 cloudbusting operations undertaken on pre-selected dates in 1989.
http://www.orgonelab.org/OROPAZ1989.htm

* “OROP Israel 1991-1992: A Cloudbusting Experiment to Restore Wintertime Rains to Israel and the Eastern Mediterranean During an Extended Period of Drought”
This paper documents a the dramatic ending of drought conditions in Israel, with record-breaking rains following cloudbuster work over a 10-day period at the start of the natural rainy season. Reservoirs across the region were filled to overflowing.
http://www.orgonelab.org/Israel1991.htm

* “Cloudbusting: Growing Evidence for a New Method of Ending Drought and Greening Deserts”
This paper summarizes DeMeo’s work into the early 1990s, and also gives some brief theoretical discussion.
http://www.orgonelab.org/AIBC.htm

# Selected Citations on Atmospheric Problems and Cloudbusting, by James DeMeo, Ph.D.:

– Preliminary Analysis of Changes in Kansas Weather Coincidental to Experimental Operations with a Reich Cloudbuster, James DeMeo, M.A. Thesis, Univ. of Kansas, Geography-Meteorology Dept., Univ. Microfilms International, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1979. (High quality xerographic edition available http://www.orgonelab.org/xdemeo.htm — UMI version not recommended due to poor quality); Chapter 1 reprinted in Int. Journal of Life Energy, 2(2):35-48, 1980, and in Planetary Assn. for Clean Energy Newsletter, 2(2):6-8, 1980. Abstract of work in Masters Abstracts, 18(1), 1980 (below).

– “Field Experiments with the Reich Cloudbuster: 1977-1983”, Journal of Orgonomy, 19(1):57-79, 1985; Greek translation in the Hellenic Orgonomic Association Journal, Thessaloniki, 1990. Contained in the DeMeo Reprint Package. http://www.orgonelab.org/xdemeo.htm

– …with R. Morris: “CORE Progress Report #14: Possible Slowing and Warming of an Arctic Air Mass through Cloudbusting”, Journal of Orgonomy, 20(1):120-125, 1986. Contained in the DeMeo Reprint Package.

– …with R. Morris: “CORE Progress Report #15: Breaking the 1986 Drought in the Eastern U.S., Phase 3: A Cloudbusting Expedition Into the Southeastern Drought Zone”, Journal of Orgonomy, 21(1):27-41, 1987; Greek translation, Hellenic Orgonomic Association Journal, 2:30-46, 1988.

– …with R. Morris: “Preliminary Report on a Cloudbusting Experiment in the Southeastern Drought Zone, August 1986”, Southeastern Drought Symposium Proceedings, March 4-5, 1987, South Carolina State Climatology Office Publication G-30, Columbia, SC, 1987. Contained in the DeMeo Reprint Package.

– “Reduction of Rainwater Acidity Following the End of the 1986 Drought: An Effect of Cloudbusting?”, Journal of Orgonomy, 21(2):249-251, 1987. Contained in the DeMeo Reprint Package.

– “Field Experiments with the Reich Cloudbuster: Positive Evidence for a New Technique to Lessen Atmospheric Stagnation and Bring Rains in Droughty or Arid Atmospheres”, Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Arid Lands Studies, April 1987, Western Social Science Association, El Paso, Texas, see Abstracts of Papers, p.6.

– “A Dynamic Biological-Atmospheric-Cosmic Energy Continuum: Some Old and New Evidence”, Presented at the 11th International Congress of Biometeorology, International Society for Biometeorology, Purdue University, September, 1987, Abstracts, p.43.

– “A Dynamic Biological-Atmospheric-Cosmic Energy Continuum: Some Old and New Evidence”, Geo-Cosmic Relations: The Earth and its Macro-Environment, Proceedings, First International Congress on Geo-Cosmic Relations, 19-22 April 1989, Amsterdam, Netherlands, G.J.M. Tomassen, et al, Editors, PUDOC Science Publishers, Wageningen, 1989.

– “The Orgone Energy Continuum: Some Old and New Evidence”, Pulse of the Planet, http://www.orgonelab.org/xpulse.htm 1(2):3-8, 1989; German translation “Alte und neue Beweise fur das Orgon Energie Kontinuum”, Lebensenergie, 2:13-20, 1991.

– “Cloudbusting, A New Approach to Drought”, Pulse of the Planet, 1(1):1-3, 1989.

– “OROP Arizona 1989: A Cloudbusting Experiment to Bring Rains in the Desert Southwest”, Pulse of the Planet, 3:82-92, 1991; also published as a Special Report, Orgone Biophysical Research Laboratory, 1991.

– “Research Progress Report: Desert-Greening Program, CORE Operations in the Western USA, CORE Research and Field Operations Overseas: Greece 1990, Germany 1989-1990 Orgonomisches Projekt Waldheilung, Core Breakthrough in California Rains, March 1991, Cloudbuster Icarus”, Pulse of the Planet, 3:110-116, 1991.

– “OROP Israel 1991-1992: A Cloudbusting Experiment to Restore Wintertime Rains to Israel and the Eastern Mediterranean During an Extended Period of Drought”, Pulse of the Planet 4:92-98, 1993.

– “Research Reports and Observations: Orgonomic Project Waldheilung 1989 – 1993, OROP Namibia 1992-1993, Cloudbusting is Not ‘Weather Modification’, Healing Lakes with Life Energy?”, Pulse of the Planet 4:114-116, 1993.

– “Weather Anomalies and Nuclear Testing: The Oakland Wildfires of October 1991, Report on Nuclear Accident at Tomsk, Russia, 6 April 1993”, Pulse of the Planet 4:117-120, 1993.

– “Desert-Greening Cloudbusting Experiments in Israel, Namibia and the Horn of Africa: 1991-1994,” Presented to the Annual Meeting of the Association of Arid Lands Studies, Western Social Science Association, Oakland, California, Session on “Climate, Climatic Change and Environmental Quality”, April 1995, Abstracts of Papers, p.21.

– “Global Desert Haze/Dust Transport: An Interconnecting Common Denominator for Deserts, Droughts and El Niño?”, Presented to the Annual Meeting of the Association of Arid Lands Studies, Western Social Science Association, Oakland, California, Session on “Climate, Climatic Change and Environmental Quality”, April 1995, Abstracts of Papers, p.21.

“Cloudbusting: Growing Evidence for a New Method of Ending Drought and Greening Deserts”, http://www.orgonelab.org/AIBC.htm AIBC Newsletter, American Institute of Biomedical Climatology, Sept. 1996, #20, p.1-4.

– “Wilhelm Reich’s Atmospheric Research – Empirical Confirmations”, Society for Scientific Exploration annual meeting, La Jolla, California, June 2001, Abstract in The Explorer: Newsletter of the SSE, Vol.17, Winter-Spring-Summer 2001, p.8.

– “OROP Eritrea: A 5-Year Desert Greening Experiment in the East African Sahara-Sahel”, Pulse of the Planet, 5:183-211, 2002.

– “Origin of the Tropic Easterles: An Orgone-Energetic Perspective”, Pulse of the Planet, 5:212-218, 2002.

# About the Director of OBRL: James DeMeo, Ph.D., formally studied the Earth, atmospheric, and environmental/social sciences at Florida International University and the University of Kansas, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1986. At KU, he openly undertook graduate-level natural scientific research specifically focused upon Wilhelm Reich’s controversial discoveries, subjecting those ideas to rigorous testing with positive verification of the original findings. DeMeo has undertaken field research in the arid American Southwest, Egypt, Israel, sub-Saharan Eritrea, and Namibia, Africa. His published works include dozens of articles and compendiums, and several books, including Saharasia, The Orgone Accumulator Handbook, On Wilhelm Reich and Orgonomy and Heretic’s Notebook. He is also co-editor for the German-language compendium Nach Reich, and editor of the journal Pulse of the Planet. DeMeo served on the Faculty of Geography at Illinois State University and the University of Miami, is a former Research Associate of the American College of Orgonomy, and is on the Advisory Board for the National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Centers (NOCIRC), and the Natural Philosophy Alliance (NPA). He founded the Orgone Biophysical Research Lab and Greenspring Center in rural Ashland, Oregon, holding the post of Director since 1978.

## April 29, 2007, Drought Abatement Project Support Sought http://pesn.com/2007/04/29/9500467_DeMeo_drought_abatement/

American scientist James DeMeo, Ph.D., has proven rainmaking methods that could alleviate the epic drought baking Australia., by Sterling D. Allan ; Pure Energy Systems News ; Copyright © 2007


James DeMeo, Ph.D., with his successful rainmaking machine patterned after the work of Wilhelm Reich.

# Worst Drought in 1000 Years: The Australian economy is on the brink of going under due to the worst drought on record. If rain does not come, irrigation to all primary producers will be cut in seven weeks to be diverted for human drinking. Livestock will die; food crops will fail, vineyards and orchards will perish. (Ref http://news.independent.co.uk/world/australasia/article2465960.ece .) Australia is not the only nation in the throes of crisis due to drought. This is a global crisis of growing proportions (refs http://pesn.com/2007/04/29/9500467_DeMeo_drought_abatement/ ) — unless something can be done to bring rain.

# Rain-making Technology Available: This is why Robert Jones and others in Australia are seeking to get James DeMeo, Ph.D., of the Orgone Biophysical Research Lab to come down from the United States.

DeMeo is a leading specialist in the field of Weather Engineering Technology. (Ref 1: http://www.orgonelab.org/PressRelease2.htm (see above on this page), ref 2 http://www.orgonelab.org/OROPAZ1989.htm , ref 3 http://www.orgonelab.org/AIBC.htm )

He has 29 years experience in drought abatement, beginning with documented results under the auspices of the University of Kansas, and subsequently having seen success in some of the driest regions on earth.

He has refined the Wilhelm Reich Cloudbuster which “consists of a special movable antenna resembling a large ‘pipe organ’, which can be aimed at different parts of the sky. The device taps into and influences natural energy currents in the atmosphere and ground, and when used in certain specific ways, wind and weather patterns respond accordingly.” (Ref http://www.orgonelab.org/PressRelease2.htm (see above on this page).)

Past application of this technology by DeMeo and his colleagues has stimulated significant useful rainfall in each region where it has been implemented throughout the world. This is supported by meteorological data collected during field trials in the 1980s.

“We don’t try to ‘milk’ one or another cloud for rains, like the cloud-seeders do, but rather undertake to restore natural energetic pulsation, which as Reich discovered is a fundament for good cloud growth and development”, said DeMeo. (Ref http://www.orgonelab.org/PressRelease2.htm (see above on this page).)

The technology has been tested over time in different geographic locations. Individual field trials were undertaken during mild to severe droughts in Florida, Illinois, Georgia/S.Carolina, Arizona, Washington State, and California. Results were very positive, with a restoration of natural rainfall episodes, generally within 48 hours after operations commenced.

The technology works as demonstrated by the scientific requirements of cause-effect and repeatability. Rain stimulation experiments have also proceeded in arid and semi-arid lands in the Southwestern USA, Greece, Cyprus, Israel, Namibia and Eritrea. The results were also positive in these cases, sometimes far beyond expectations, with the termination of drought conditions and development of significant rains over adjacent desert areas.

# Financing DeMeo’s Work for Australia : DeMeo is looking into flying to Australia mid May to deploy some of his rainmaking equipment. The project is estimated to require around $10,000.00 USD — “loose change compared to the billions being lost through this drought and the economy we are about to lose if we don’t take action”, said Jones, who is dropping everything to focus on helping to bring this about.

DeMeo says that rainmaking can commence within a few days of his arrival, based upon his bringing key components with him by air freight and purchasing other materials on-site.

He will be in charge of the project, and will decide where best to begin. “Locations of operations are determined as much by logistical realities as by where the atmosphere is stuck, and what needs to be done. Much depends upon what I see with my own eyes after arrival.”

Jones said, “if financial support arrives soon enough, we have a chance. We may be able to save Australia’s food crops and other primary industries in time to return rains before the irrigation is banned.”

Financial contributions toward this effort should be directed to the Orgone Biophysical Research Lab’s research fund. OBRL is a non-profit science research and educational foundation established in 1978. (Link )

# Despite the Government: Jones has written many letters to the Australian government and industry representatives but has failed to gain any active response as of yet. DeMeo also petitioned the Australian government to no avail.

“The harsh reality is that millions could die from crop failure, water shortages, poverty and disease unless rainfall can be restored”, said Jones. “Many more economies will go bankrupt including our own.”

“I feel obligated to act upon this knowledge and do all within my power to duplicate former drought breaking success. And seeing as the technology does exist to stimulate rainfall I will feel partly responsible for those deaths if I did not try my best to prevent them.”

# Other Rain-makers: DeMeo’s organization is not the only independent entity pursuing weather modification for drought relief. The Wilhelm Reich approach has been studied and even attempted by numerous individuals in Australia.

Peter Stevens has an approach he calls atmospheric ionization, and recently formed a discussion group to report the progress he has been making with running his device and rain resulting. (Ref. http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Atmospheric_ionization_research/messages )

Jones himself has seen cloud cover modified first-hand through an electrolysis-like cell he built and which he named a “proton cell”, which inadvertently also affected the weather patterns overhead. (Ref http://pesn.com/2006/11/01/9500429_Proton_Cell/ .)

DeMeo is not necessarily enthusiastic about the attempts by various Australian tinkerers. Indeed, he wonders if some of these well-meaning attempts done incorrectly might actually be contributing to making the Australian drought worse. He says that the instructions often found on the net for the Reich Cloudbuster, especially the “chembuster kits”, clearly fall into this category.

Peter Steven’s Atmospheric Ionization device:

# Contact:James DeMeo ; Orgone Biophysical Research Laboratory, Inc. ; email: info {at} orgonelab.org
Greensprings Center, PO Box 1148 ; Ashland, Oregon 97520 USA http://www.orgonelab.org

Robert Jones ; +61-07-41290429 office ; email: youspeak@bigpond.net.au

# Feedback:
Raining on Target Locations Within 48 Hours ; On April 30, 2007, Peter Stevens wrote:

Gday Sterling. Completed another trial. In fact, we are still running the machine and have shown that indeed it can rain on the locations targeted within 48 hours. Follow-up rain is continuing too fall even after we have [moved the machine away] for up to three weeks. So far we have been on constantly since March 13 2007 and will continue to run the machine until flooding rains come.

# Related Stories:
– Weather Modification a Long-Established, Though Secretive, Reality http://pesn.com/2005/09/06/9600160_Weather_Modification/ – New legislation not designed to foster pleasant or productive weather, but planned as tool of weaponized weather control, already well tested and in use since 1976. Amateur and hostile weather-makers alike likely to lose their technology to the military. (PESN; Sept. 6, 2005)

## On Atmospheric Disturbances, “Chemtrails” and the “Croft Chembuster”: Critical Discussions http://www.orgonelab.org/chemtrails.htm

# 7. Open Letter Critical of the “Croft Chembuster”, March 2002
The following letter has been sent to a number of persons who inquired at OBRL about the Croft “chembuster”. It was also sent to Mr. Croft, whose only reply was to say that his device was “becoming popular”, without expression of interest in the issues being raised.

Dear —– I get quite a few requests for my opinion about the Croft chembusters, which I must unfortunately tell you are not a good idea, unless you want to take the risk of drying out your atmosphere and disturbing the natural atmospheric pulsation. I’ve been meaning to make another try to get the Croft group to stop promoting and selling this technology as if it were pancakes or dish-soap, so my reply to you will be a bit longer than necessary, with copies going to them as well.

The principle upon which the Croft chembuster functions is similar to what Reich discovered years ago, with his “ordinary” cloudbuster — the principle of atmospheric-energetic expansion. In spite of claims otherwise, his device is similar to a dozen or so other devices which have come and gone over the years since Reich’s original discovery. I’ve been engaged in this work using the original “old fashioned” approach of Reich since the late 1970s, and will simply report that his claims are nothing new. However, Mr. Croft is the first to advocate using these devices on a full-time basis, which creates a major problem. Reich used his cloudbuster only for a few minutes or hours, or for a few days at most during severe drought or hard desert conditions. Every responsible cloudbuster operator knows this, follows Reich’s safeguards, and as a consequence, they get good results which can be documented in rainfall measurements from official sources, over wide regions. In the case of the “chembuster”, which is set up and put into operation for months on end, perhaps permanently, this can potentially create an extreme situation of atmospheric over-expansion and over-charge, which are associated with droughts and desert-winds. Dissipating “chemtrails” (aka, “jet contrails”) also dissipates ordinary clouds, and Reich himself noted that an atmosphere which allowed the development and persistence of jet contrails also allowed the development of ordinary rainclouds.

I had an email exchange on these issues with Mr. Croft in September of last year, when massive forest-fires were widespread across the droughty West, but he claimed his devices “self-regulated” (a term developed by Reich but distorted and misapplied in this case) and that good rains were falling in his area. But he provided no evidence to support this claim. In opposition, I pointed to the fact that the entire NW part of the USA, from Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana, began to dry out around the same time that the Croft network of chembusters began to be set up through that region last year, and you can confirm it by reviewing the drought maps in archive available from NOAA. Compare any of the images from January 2001 to later in that same year. A small drought area centered in western Montana and northern Idaho expanded to eventually encompass the entire Pacific Northwest. Coincidence?

Much of the west got a lot of rain and snow when the CORE Network, http://www.cloudbusting.org of which I am a senior working member, initiated cloudbuster operations in mid-November of 2001 using the “old fashioned” method of Reich. We received 72″ of snow within three weeks afterward, and much of the coastal Western states have dramatically improved. I’m only sorry that we could not organize things for a quicker response. Much drought remains, however. The original Reich operational methodology is typically short-term, lasting only hours or a few days maximum, and the effects last for weeks or longer, spreading widely to cover very large regions. But everyone in our network noticed the tendency for the atmosphere to quickly revert back to dry conditions — this might be related to the Asian dust storms, which cross the Pacific Ocean to affect the West Coast (I assume you know about that), or it very well could be the consequence of all the Croft “chembusters”, setting up a widespread cloud-dissipating influence.

Another clear example came in Namibia, where Mr. Croft lectured in January of this year, and got six of his devices set up at that time. I got emails from friends in Namibia whom I had trained in the original Reich methods in 1991-92. In those years, I led a cloudbusting expedition which was directed against a major 3-year drought which had affected nearly all of Southern Africa. That work was coordinated with permission and assistance from the Namibian Government, and by several German professionals, one of whom worked with the GTZ. Those experiments are written up in my publications, and are a matter of record. In any case, my Namibian friends became quite alarmed because this year, after several chembusters were set up in the region, the rains completely stopped. Factually, it had not rained for two months since they set up their chembusters, and this was during the normal rainy season. (Desert lands are much more sensitive to such influences than moister regions.) When they informed me about the situation, I suggested they immediately take down the Croft devices. Quickly, four of the five or six chembusters were taken down, and rains resumed almost immediately afterward, in one case, within hours after the apparatus was taken down. Mr. Croft thereafter misrepresented this episode to his internet group, as my having somehow meddled in his affairs — but the fact is, his ignorance in misapplying Reich’s discovery was a major meddling with natural atmospheric processes, and nearly led to another drought catastrophe in Namibia. Rather than condemning me, he should have started asking tough questions about why the rains dried up when his devices were put into operation.

[Postscript 2004: Europe suffered a major drought and heat-wave, claiming thousands of lives, shortly after a network of Croft-type devices were set up in the Netherlands, which seemed to repell the meteorological jet stream far to the north, allowing dry Sahara Desert air masses to also move very far to the north. Meanwhile, good natural rains finally returned to the Pacific NW over Winter of 2003-2004. This suggests, it takes about two years for the atmosphere to compensate for the Croft devices, after which it will return to normal pulsatory and genuinely self-regulated behavior.]

As a scientist, where uncertainties are always acknowledged, I cannot be 100% certain his network of chembuster devices was the cause of drought in these cases — there is a large desert-spreading out of Saharasia now for 6000 years, there are also natural cycles of rainfall and drought which are not well-understood, and the atmosphere is negatively affected from a host of human sources — but chembuster-drying is a very real possibility, supported by the direct observation of the jet-contrail dissipating influences of the “chembuster”. I continue to point this out in hopes that persons in his group will be on the watch for such deleterious influences. So far, I’ve got no response from Mr. Croft except a contemptuous dismissal of my concerns, and the claim that I am insufficiently open-minded to his “innovation”. Subsequent postings to his e-group misrepresented my work, and the Namibia affair, along with ridicule for my daring to make a criticism. He has also censored and excluded people from his Yahoo e-group list who have dared to raise challenging considerations, or to discuss Reich’s original findings in a more straightforward manner, which in my view speaks volumes.

If it were only farmers using these devices, I’d have less concern, as farmers at least are outside watching the sky and weather patterns on the satellite images, watching the storms and jet streams, and with exception of lettuce irrigators really want to have good rains. They also tend to have their feet on the ground. So if they know these devices risk drying things out, and they saw the atmosphere drying out, they would take them down pronto, and study the matter in more depth, as their financial existence would be at risk. Unfortunately, many of the people who have erected the cloudbuster/chembusters are not farmers or foresters, or naturalists, but people living in cities who have no kind of on-going contact with nature. And they put up these devices for reasons that are not entirely clear, having to do with fears about aliens or demons and being “poisoned by the government”. In example, we got a call here most recently from a terribly anxious woman who lived in a trailer, in economic distress, asking about putting up a cloudbuster in her backyard, as she was frightened of aliens and had respiratory problems. Other persons who have called here turned absolutely rabid when I advised caution, suggesting aggressive power-destructive motivations on their part. And let us be clear — Croft himself and many of his most central followers are advocates of “shape-shifting reptillian aliens” or “evil demons” in other-dimensional realities, which are the major focus of their concerns. The “chembuster” theory imlicitly assumes toxic materials are being deliberately sprayed by airplanes, for the purpose of killing people (to make way for the “reptillians”?) and they also sell devices like the “Holy Hand Grenade” which is supposed to chase the demons away from your home or office. This is purely psychotic nonsense, perhaps tracable to the old “Saint Germaine” cult out of Mt. Shasta, which many of the chemtrail-chembuster people seem connected with. So their efforts to “change the atmosphere” often have little to do with normal meteorological issues, such as drought and rainfall, but instead are directed towards “protecting” themselves from non-existing “demons” and such.

In our CORE Network, for training in Reich’s original methods, we screen such people out, and everyone gets a rigorous training and apprenticeship. In the chemtrail-chembuster organization, you simply plunk down a few hundred bucks, and you are an “instant weather-modification expert”. You are screened out only if you become critical of their collective psychosis, or read Reich’s original works and start asking the wrong questions. It is yet another example of crazy human beings make a train-wreck out of natural processes, even while self-righteously claiming to be “doing good”. That they do all of this abusing Reich’s name and discoveries, parading around with the words “orgone” and “dor” as if they really understood what they mean, makes it all the more unpalatable.

You can read my longer discussions on the matter of building and using cloudbusters (or “chembusters”) in the following article:

“So You Want to Build a Cloudbuster” http://www.orgonelab.org/sobuildaclb.htm

My advice is, it should be a prerequisite for anyone who might attempt working with the Reich-type of devices, to firstly make a study of classical meteorology and climatology, and also to make a thorough examination of Reich’s original writings, including or especially the large amount of material in his original journals (which can be identified at our online Bibliography on Orgonomy ). Direct experimental knowledge of orgone energy functions, as in the orgone accumulator, would also be absolutely necessary for anyone who might wish to understand orgone functions in the atmosphere. Afterward, they would best undertake an apprenticeship with people who factually know what they are doing, as nearly nothing of the basic information on authentic cloudbuster construction and use has ever been published in books or on the internet (in spite of claims to the contrary). And in most cases, successful apprenticeship in cloudbusting requires the candidate to undergo the authentic orgone therapy Reich developed, to rid themself of pent-up emotional-bioenergetic tension, and increase their ability to feel the orgone energy movement in their bodies, as well as in the atmosphere. People can, certainly, satisfy their curiosity about life-energy and atmospheric processes through personal reading and experiments with Reich’s orgone accumulator technology, which if misapplied will only affect themselves. In any case, I’ve already written on this matter in my longer paper, as cited above. Reich’s discoveries deserve to be taken seriously by the world, but this distorted business of “chembusters” is not the way, and will only add to the social and atmospheric chaos.

Regards,James DeMeo, Ph.D. , Director, Orgone Biophysical Research Lab , PO Box 1148 , Ashland, Oregon 97520
541-552-0118 tel/fax E-mail to: info(at)orgonelab.org ; http://www.orgonelab.org/index.htm

# 3. Preliminary Testing of the Croft “Chembuster” by OBRL, 2002.
Early this year, a Croft “chembuster” device was purchased for experimentation at OBRL. The effort was aimed to test the hypothesis that a “chembuster” might reduce overhead cloud cover in a net sense, and affect not only jet contrails. The experiment was repeated several times, in each case undertaken during periods of overcast rainy weather. The first experiments were conducted in the Central USA by an associate of OBRL who is well informed of Reich’s work, and sensitive to changes in atmospheric orgone energy excitation. The apparatus was shipped from Oregon to Missouri, and then assembled according to the provided instructions. Two tests were undertaken in July 2002, with the following general observations:

1. The chembuster was reported to have a strong, irritating field; the operator reported headaches, and advised to keep away from it.

2. A very short preliminary use of the chembuster, setting it up for less than a day and then disassembling it by removing the extension tubes and placing it into a sheltered environment, was followed quickly by a short rainfall. Since the preliminary conditions were already overcast, no clear significance could be attributed to this observation.

3. In a second test of the chembuster for several days, a prolonged dry period developed thereafter. To quote: “The one long period of dry, droughty weather that this area had, so far this year, followed the [longer] use of the chembuster… there was no rainfall for more than seven weeks.”

After these experiments, the chembuster was dismantled and the core components were shipped back to OBRL in Oregon. With new extension tubes acquired, subsequent short experimental work with the chembuster during November of 2002 in Oregon suggested the following:

4. A strong field characteristic of energetic expansion and overcharge was present around the device, which could be easily felt, and tended in the direction of producing headaches.

Since it has been reported that several chembusters are already set up and operating in SW Oregon (which suffers from chronic drought tendencies ever since they were erected) we decided against further testing of the chembuster at this time. Further testing will be reported here as undertaken.

The preliminary observations suggest that the chembuster, if left running for long periods, produces overcharged, energetically expanded atmospheric conditions, which are known since the time of Reich to be necessary ingredients for creation or amplification of atmospheric dryness and drought. In the one case of prolonged use of the chembuster, this is exactly what was observed.

James DeMeo ; Orgone Biophysical Research Lab ; Ashland, Oregon, USA ; January 2003

# 2. E-mail Letter to Don Croft from James DeMeo ; 9-13-2001

TO: “Don Croft” ; Dear Mr. Croft, I am writing you in my capacity as a senior research scientist with over 30 years of work in the field of orgone biophysics, and having undertaken considerable research into the question of Wilhelm Reich’s work, specifically on the cloudbuster device. Perhaps you know of my published work on this subject at the University of Kansas, and later in the Journal of Orgonomy, Pulse of the Planet, etc. I note your apparatus is similar in design to Reich’s original one, though missing many key components. However, the purpose of this email is not to compare notes on designs, but to point out several dangerous possibilities which you appear unaware of.

1. Constant use of a cloudbuster, for periods of more than a day or two maximum (or even less, in some circumstances) will potentially create an over-expansion of the atmosphere which can lead to drought conditions. Since you are using the device for very long periods, as a method for dissipation of “chemtrails”, it is logical and highly probable that the chemtrail-dissipation effect you claim to have successfully created also affects all other cloud cover in a similar manner. Your emails say you have a network of people using these devices, including in the Pacific NW (Ashland? Spokane? Shasta?) which has suffered under an extreme drought situation for more than a year. If your associates are all taking this approach, keeping the devices up and working for months without a break, it is very possible that your collective efforts have inadvertently exacerbated the current drought conditions.

2. Selling of cloudbusters to the public is an extremely dangerous and irresponsible step, given the fact that a single cloudbusting device can potentially affect weather over an entire continent, for better or worse, depending upon the intentions, training, and character structure of the operator. You do not appear to be educated about the *self-regulatory* atmospheric functions discussed by Reich — leaving a cloudbuster up and running for days on end, or month after month (as suggested in your emails) is highly manipulative, as if to “force” mother nature to “bow down and do your will”. There is no self-critical quality contained in your emails or web pages, and your encouragements to others to buy and use the cloudbuster are extremely alarming. This public selling of cloudbusters can be compared to the selling guns to children, or giving children matches and telling them to go play in the barn. I urge you, in the strongest possible terms, to cease with this irresponsible public propaganda! There are plenty of other useful things you can sell to make your money, where you won’t be endangering entire regions.

3. For the record, and in example of what you don’t know about this subject: The first cloudbusting work in Namibia was directed by myself in 1992-93, in successful effort to end a severe regional drought, with assistance from workers and scientists from the USA, Germany and Namibia, and in cooperation with the Namibian Government. Whatever anomalous rains have occurred in the Namib and Kalahari deserts claimed by your friend in more recent years, are equally likely to have been the product of natural cycles, or the consequence of the very focused and hard work of my team, which has continued to work in Namibia since the early 1990s. Also, several of my associates in the Pacific NW, and Montana specifically, were able to overcome the chronic over-expansion and bring considerable rains there using the traditional Reich cloudbuster, in a manner demonstrably connected to their times of operation — which were run for fairly short times. If you set up such a device and leave it running for a month straight, there’s no way you could make a genuine claim about any result, save for possibly creating a wide-spread energetic expansion, cloud dissipation and drought effect.

I’ve shared your email material with various persons in the affected drought areas, and everyone is alarmed and concerned that your prolonged use of the devices might be worsening the situation, and in particular exacerbating the drought, heat-waves and forest fires. Or, perhaps, that your efforts might have created the drought in the first instance. That is exactly what is anticipated to occur if multiple cloudbusters are set up and left running for long periods during a drought.

Nature is suffering badly from human abuses of all sorts. I see the internet photo of you with your daughter on Mt. Shasta, and hope you are a decent person with a good feeling for life, whose enthusiasm to “do something” helpful has simply run ahead of his knowledge. Reich died in prison defending his work against the nature-hating men in power, who also destroyed my professional career, and who today have made such a ridicule of his work that there are no social institutions for rational coordination and governance of cloudbusting — which Reich noted would be absolutely necessary in the future if chaos was to be avoided. So we can only appeal to each other’s deeper sense of genuineness and honesty. And that is what I am doing now, in an open manner, with you. From your writings, it is totally clear, you have little authentic information about Reich and the cloudbuster discovery, and only a small idea of the dangers involved. Your claim to be having atmospheric benefits is mostly, or even totally speculative; drought, instead, is the common atmospheric feature where your devices have been chronically used.

For everyone’s sake, stop selling the devices, and tell your network to put their pipes away until they have thoroughly studied the matter, and know what they are doing.

Sincerely, James DeMeo, Ph.D. ; Director ; Orgone Biophysical Research Laboratory ; Greensprings Center ; Ashland, Oregon, USA

Scroll to Top