Should We Be Afraid of the HAARP Project?

Have you heard about the HAARP Project? If so, should we be afraid/concerned about it? There are a number of conspiracy theories that say HAARP can cause earthquakes, control the weather, detect missiles, destroy missiles, or engage in mind control.

I usually do not buy into conspiracy theories, but this week, with the huge snowstorm in the Dallas area, I gave it some second thoughts. I've lived in Dallas over 10 years and I have never seen snow here such as this. The night of the snow, the sky flashed blue lightning. It was the strangest color and it shocked all across the sky. It happened twice and my husband and I both saw it. That night I started googling Blue Lightning. I saw a few youtubes referencing Blue Lightning. That's where I first started seeing talk about HAARP. Today, I saw an expose on HAARP on the truTV channel. I also saw this News reports from February 2, 2005, talk about the light show created by HAARP with their new technology.

Now I am curious. Have you heard about HAARP? Should we be worried?

From Google:
HAARP refers to the "High-Frequency Active Auroal Research Program". It is located near the town of Gakona, Alaska. HAARP project is funded by the US Senate and operated by the US Navy & AirForce. The purpose of HAARP is to analyze the behavior of the ionosphere which is the part of the atmosphere that extends from approximately 70km up to as much as 1500km. This is done by transmitting a focused beam of radio frequency energy, at between 2.8 and 10MHz, directly at a point in the ionosphere between 100 and 350 km in altitude, basically within the "E" layer.
HAARPs Power:
72,000 times more powerfull than the U.S's most powerfull radio station. HAARP can focus all its radio waves into a single beam in the sky, which effectively exceeds its 3.6 Million watt power status. With this enormous power, the possibilites for use of HAARP are endless. Of course activists ,conspiricists, and enviromentalists all have different ideas for applications of this weapon / utility, both good and bad.

Here is what Wiki says about HAARP:
The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) is an ionospheric research program jointly funded by the US Air Force, the US Navy, the University of Alaska and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Its purpose is to analyze the ionosphere and investigate the potential for developing ionospheric enhancement technology for radio communications and surveillance purposes (such as missile detection). The HAARP program operates a major Arctic facility, known as the HAARP Research Station, on an Air Force owned site near Gakona, Alaska. The most outstanding instrument at the HAARP Station is the Ionospheric Research Instrument (IRI), a high power transmitter facility operating in the high frequency range. The IRI is used to temporarily excite a limited area of the ionosphere. Other instruments, such as a VHF and a UHF radar, a fluxgate magnetometer, a digisonde and an induction magnetometer, are used to study the physical processes that occur in the excited region.
Work on the HAARP Station began in 1993. The current working IRI was completed in 2007, and its prime contractor was BAE Advanced Technologies. As of 2008, HAARP had incurred around $250 million in tax-funded construction and operating costs.