Can hurricanes be avoided? 9

The Coriolis force does not allow the wind to be directed to the centre of a low-pressure zone, but instead the air is swirled around the low.
The Coriolis force, however, is low at the equator. Therefore, the regions between 10 - 35° latitude are particularly endangered by storms because here the water temperature as well as the Coriolis force are sufficient to promote the hurricane formation.

“In an article in the September 27th, 2004 issue of Scientific American, Ross N. Hoffman of AER suggests that an array of earth-orbiting solar power stations could eventually be used to supply sufficient energy for the disruption of hurricanes. By heating an area of ocean, scientists in the future may be theoretically able to "steer" a hurricane off its projected path if it threatens population centers. Hoffman concedes though that the amount of energy needed to achieve such an objective would be substantial.
Since hurricanes draw their power from evaporating sea water, cutting off the supply of warm water available to them could reduce their strength.

Operating on this premise, Hoffman suggests another tactic involving the application of "a thin film of a biodegradable oil" to slow the evaporation that serves as the fuel for a hurricane. A great deal more research is needed to determine where such a strategy is feasible especially with a large hurricane that may cover hundreds of square miles of ocean surface.”


Luis

 

[RDK]

Weather is the major means of distributing the energy of the sun that strikes the earth. Storms are created by an energy imbalance that is equalized by the storm movement.

Stopping storms would simply increase the energy imbalance and instability to the point where the unstoppable resulting storm would make Katrina look like a slightly windy and rainy day.

Don’t forget the law of unintended consequences and that its not nice to fool mother nature.






Rick Kitson MBA P.Eng

Construction Project Management
From conception to completion

http://www.kitsonengineering.com

 

[IRstuff]

Not to mention mucking about with the ambient temperature for the fish population.

At least, this is possibly more plausible than the ice cubes idea ;-)

TTFN

 

[rb1957]

not to mention beaming a whole bunch of additional solar energy into the atmosphere, which just has to impact global warming (in a bad way)

 

[0707]

“Don’t forget the law of unintended consequences and that it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature”.
I agree with the statement but what have engineers done since the beginning of humanity?
Nothing but to fool Mother Nature…
Regards

Luis

 

[IRstuff]

What? So why stop now?


The difference is that in the past, engineers believed that they could control the consequences. That's no longer true. This is a situation where we know so little as to be extremely dangerous and we know that any little perturbation can have serious fallout.



TTFN

 

[casseopeia]

You could always test the theory on Jupiter's Great Red Spot, a hurricane that's been around for 400 years.

"If you are going to walk on thin ice, you might as well dance!"

 

[0707]

Ok it would be dangerous to fight against hurricanes because the consequences of this fight would be unexpected.
Meanwhile why not minimize their effects through land regulations, town urbanizations and architectural specifications by building aerodynamic houses to impart the strong winds?
Why keep on building on sea front and tornado path houses along the line costs where tornados usual happen?
A global weather control project would cost billions of dollars, but in the long run would save lives, infrastructure, and billions in insurance claims.
Regards
Luis Marques

 

[IRstuff]

Have you actually scoped how much such a house would cost?
Very few people want to live in and work in the desert.
A large portion of the houses were not destroyed by wind, but by flooding. But flooding is a common sprintime problem in the South, in general.
Do you expect oil platform and refinery workers to commute 100 miles each way to work?
Tornados are primarily located in the center part of the US, not the coast.
Do you intend to evacuate the state of Florida?
Do you intend to only allow rich people to live near the coast, since they're the only ones that could afford to build the type of structures you demand?
Do you intend to empty ALL coastal cities on the mere possibility that there might be a catastrophe in the distant future?
Do you want to double or triple the current transportation costs for goods and materials because all the ports have to be closed?

TTFN

 

[0707]

So for you hurricanes are a fatally that we should live with.
It doesn’t matter people running out of towns before a hurricane arrival?
It doesn’t matter rescue teams looking for the poor ones who decide to stay in flooded areas?
It doesn’t matter oil prices increasing because of damaged industrial infrastructures?
I believe that some thing could be done to minimize hurricane effects on people’s quality of life.

Luis

 

[IRstuff]

Sure, it matters. But the reality is that there are very few places that are truly safe. Safety is illusory. We could die from a meteor impact in 50 yrs. Do we plan to move to Mars?

People died from the cold in the middle of Chicago last year. Do we insist that they should move south? and live amonst the tornadoes? Further south? and get flooded by spring rains every 3-4 yrs? Move west? and live with me amongst the earthquakes?

Your concern, while admirable, is misplaced. 100 TIMES MORE people die from car accidents EVERY YEAR. Don't see anyone clamoring for even safer cars, or more correctly, even safer drivers. You could die just leaving the house.

[aside]someone heard that most accidents occur within 2 miles of one's house, so he moved 3 miles[/aside]

Something can ALWAYS be done, but are you willing to pay $40K for a Honda Accord? But you don't because you've got unibody, seat belts, air bags. But, obviously, there are still lots of people that die in Accords and other cars with similar performance.

Are you willing to pay $600K for a 1000 sqft house on 20ft stilts with Category 5 specs? Or pay that much for a house that can survive a Richter 10 earthquake?

Are you willing to pay $4/gal forever for gas because you forced all the refiners to have Category 5 survivable drilling platforms and refineries?

Obviously, I'm asking a rhetorical question, since I know from thousands of years of human existence that the answer is NO. This is plain human nature, that the pain threshold is always lower than the desired value.

TTFN

 

[0707]

I don’t agree with you that safety is illusory; on the contrary it is real. Ok to live safety you also need to have luck. Safety, luck hazard and risk they live together. When you risk without safety, with luck you can win a lot but if the hazard happens the likelihood to lost everything is great with enormous bad consequences.
Move to Mars? In the future there is that possibility why not? In the XV century new worlds have been discovered by the Portuguese, why to refuse nowadays that probably to developed nations with the actual technological improvements?

People died from cold in the middle of Chicago but it would die much more without solidarity and social assistance. This was a drop in the desert? Yes of course. In this area there is a great opportunity to do much more.

I agree that 100 times more people die from car accidents every year. More campaigns for safer drivers culture are required, more improvements in testing safety car devices, more policemen, and better roads. For sure these measures will diminish die rates.
Much more than money it is a question of will and priorities money should be use for the sake of the humanity, economy should serve people and not prevail over the people.
The intention of my posting was nothing but to discuss about an actual seasonal climate problem, which enters people’s houses trough TV images. I am not indifferent to others disasters but the feeling that there is nothing I can do bothers me.
Regards

Luis

 

[IRstuff]

You can just as easily get smashed by a meteor strike on Mars. "Safety" in your context is absolute, which is illusory.

What you are discussing is simply the "crisis of the week" syndrome.

What about the 50,000 people that died only three weeks ago in Pakistan? That's at least a slightly more solvable problem, and yet equally difficult to implement. You can force Pakistan to make a building code that requires buildings to survive a magnitude 8 earthquake. No one would be able to afford them and they would all freeze to death living in tents.

TTFN

 

[0707]

Hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis are natural disasters, which with more or less accuracy can nowadays be predicted. Contingency plans can be established to minimize their consequences.
NASA is studying even meteors strikes and there are plans to fight against the most dangerous ones.
Of course safety is not absolute we only see the upper part of the iceberg but the amount of the small accidents which lay in the submerse part of the ice; soon or later will contribute to a catastrophic accident.
A lot of safety work is required to do in the submerse part of the iceberg so that the consequences of big catastrophes such as Hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis can be minimized.

Luis

 

[IRstuff]

Minimized to what level? And compared to what other causes? Where and how do you want to spread the increase in federal debt to cover this endeavor?

Katrina's US death toll was about 1200, out of a guessed 5 million people affected. That's about 0.024%. Is that minimized enough?

We lose something like 0.08% of the total US population to car accidents. Is that minimized enough?

Cancer kills about 0.18% of the US population per year. Is that minimized enough?

TTFN

 

[zeusfaber]

Don't want to sound too fatalistic, but there's a definite balancing act to be done here.

Funds are limited.

Death is still inevitable - investment in safety might postpone it a bit, but there's a law of sharply diminishing returns.

Politicians have to find the right balance between using resources to making life tolerable, to avoid disasters, and to provide relief when disasters happen. Money spent on any of these reduces the amount available for the other two. While I feel many of today's politicians have gone a bit adrift with their priorities, I still respect them for having a go at the problem.

A.

 

[jmw]

Let's not get head to head on this. Did anyone say stop all hurricanes?

OK, yes, that was the essense of the original post but let's move on from there to define a more manageable and less contraversial objective:
The only hurricanes we are really worried about are the ones that do exceptional damage.
Therefore if one is to do anything it has to be to find a way to disrupt only those that are going to cause big problems.

That means not attacking all huricanes at source but attacking mature huricanes only when they threaten large population centres. (Weather Engineering is not a new concept. Cloud seeding etc.)

If a large hurricane could be split or re-directed that should be sufficient.
The problem is when the energy contained in a large huricane is disipated over populated areas in unmanageable amounts. If we break them up we get the same energy release but in more manageable amounts or in less critical locations.
Does anyone have any ideas?

My own thought was to dump a fuel air bomb into the thing (a heritage of those old science fiction films where the answer to everything was to bomb/shoot etc); it is a free vortex of swirling air... but as an off-the-cuff idea I have no idea of how realistic this is but it seems to me that hurricanes do split or twin spontaneously so perhaps we can understand how this works and do something about breaking them up into smaller and smaller systems.
How do they change direction and why? is there something we can do there?

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[0707]

Can Hurricanes be avoided? I suppose that the answer is not a definite yes nor a definite no.
Maybe the answer to this question lay in the middle.
Some improvement on meteorological investigations should keep going on as well as on climate mutations.
On this matter there is a curious site at

http://foxfiretechnology.com/id8.html

“Suppressing a Fire and suppressing a Hurricane are very similar procedures. The difference? One attacks a fire with water - the water does not stop the fire the water cuts off the oxygen to the fuel causing the fire to stop. One attacks a hurricane with oil - the oil does not stop the hurricane, it cuts off the fuel (the seawater) that feeds the hurricane.”
Regards
Luis

 

[jmw]

The trouble with the oil film approach is that a hurricane moves.

Dumping fish oil into the hurricane will probably require a great deal of oil much of which will be distributed throughout the wind system. How much will get to the sea surface? How much sea surface do we need to cover? even if we only address this to already formed and category 5 hurricanes headed for the nearest trailer park, I would imagine we need quite a bit.

Assume some of this fish oil gets dsirtibuted into the hurrricane system itself... what effect will this have?
I'm not sure a fish-oil-emulsion hurricane will be better than a rain filled hurricane...

PS why fish oil? Isn't any oil on the sea going to be an environmental problem?


JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[Tobalcane]

Kind of an interesting story related to this thread. I remember watching some kind of myth show on how somebody invented a weather machine, well it turned out that the weather machine was one big microwave (something like one big phase array radar) that they pointed strait to the sky above them. Now this was located in Alaska, so in the dead of winter they turned it on and discovered that they can raise the temp by 10 degrees in their area. The side affect was that it changed the wind pattern and this caused havoc of bigger snow storms and colder temps for the Northern parts of the USA. There is a big radar/microwave facility out in Alaska, but of course they never admitted of doing any kind of experiment like that.

However, the idea is not to far fetch. Can we actually warm up parts of the atmosphere with microwave energy so that we can change the wind direction? If this is true then we can steer the hurricanes away from high populated areas or at least have some kind of control on where the hurricane can go.

Just a far fetched idea.


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Tobalcane