Transterrestrial Musings

Comments

Maybe you could build one of those cast-concrete houses like they have in Guam. :)

Posted by Scott Ferguson at September 9, 2004 11:28 AM

I, of course, blame George Bush.

Nah. Everyone knows its all Clinton's fault.

Posted by at September 9, 2004 11:48 AM

quote: "It makes me start to wonder how big, or how many nukes it would take to disrupt these damned things, or if that's even feasible (ignoring, of course, the radiation issues)?"

Heh I was really going to post nearly that same thought when you originally quipped about moving out to florida just in the knick of time for Frances.

I know they used to ponder using nukes to dramatically alter landscapes. I wonder if anyone seriously studied the effects of nukes on hurricanes/tornadoes? I imagine it would be a pretty impressive site. I say just keeping dropping city busters right in the middle of the hurricane eye and see what happens. :D

Posted by Josh "Hefty" Reiter at September 9, 2004 12:25 PM

I wonder if it would be possible to put a giant cement wall about a 1/4 of a mile high extending around the SE tip of Florida a hundred or so miles from the shore that would dampen hurricanes? I know the cost would be enormous, but maybe it would be better than cleaning up the mess after being hit with dozens of hurricanes.

It's time we start engineering the planet the way we want it. Heh heh.

Posted by B.Brewer at September 9, 2004 12:27 PM

I'm not sure it would be as useful to drop them in the middle of the eye, as to hit the eyewall and disrupt it. Unfortunately, I suspect that the feeder bands would continue to bring in energy from the perimeter to reform it. That's why I asked how many...

Posted by Rand Simberg at September 9, 2004 12:27 PM

NOAA has this issue on their FAQ page.

The amount of energy in a huuricane dwarfs that of an atomic weapon.

http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/C5c.html

I think deliberatly inducing droughts in Western Africa is much more practical way to stop hurricanes.

Posted by James at September 9, 2004 12:38 PM

I actually remember reading such a study a while back. Not terribly detailed, but it seemed to do a good job of dismissing the idea. Its primary points were that: 1.) Hurricanes carry energy in the multi-gigaton range, so anything we could through at them would be miniscule in comparison, and 2.) any short-term disruption of the cyclone would be more than offset by the increase in heat, which is what feeds the hurricane in the first place.

Posted by Nathan Koren at September 9, 2004 12:39 PM

This has a bit on the possibility of stopping hurricanes -

Unusual ideas to stop hurricanes abound

We would definitely need to know more about how they work to affect them significantly. I suspect weather control may be a real possibility when we can orbit very large but extremely thin "mirrors." Instead of weather prediction models, you might be able to develop models that would show key points to add extra energy to affect weather systems. And with a hurricane, even if you can't stop it, it would still be very useful if you could DIRECT it.

Posted by VR at September 9, 2004 01:17 PM

An Eye for an Eye: Bush Braining Storms. Hurricanes terrorize our nation. In this polemic, war is declared on hurricanes.

President Bush addressed the nation today from the oval office, “My fellow Americans, due to the grave threat posed by future hurricanes like Charlie and Frances, I have asked Congress to declare war on hurricanes and they have done so.”

The move comes as a surprise to many. A senior administration official familiar with the matter said, “We had no choice. We face a canny enemy. Hurricane Frances targeted Florida and Ohio and appears to be an attempt to alter the result of November's election.”

President Bush announced a realignment of foreign policy priorities given the new world order, “Today I announce a coalition of the willing to eradicate hurricanes that includes Iran, North Korea, Syria, Cuba, Serbia, Sudan and Somalia. We thought the enemy was Iran when they were storming our embassy in Tehran. Now we know the enemy was the storming. Nations must stand with us to fight hurricanes or they stand against us.”

Donald Rumsfeld described the first administration policy action to initiate the War on Hurricanes, “We are moving our military bases to coastal nations to reflect our new strategic priorities. To the nations of Europe that support us, I say to paraphrase the immortal words of George Orwell, 'Double New Europe double plus good. New Old Europe double plus ungood.'”

Ralph Nader delivered the Green Party response to the President's speech, “This war is all about wind. We should be switching to hydrogen instead of wind. There is no truth to the statement that wind is required to produce hydrogen. No blood for wind!”

In solidarity with the President, the Republican Party has announced its next convention will be at Disney World.

At over 160 deaths per year, hurricanes account for 1 out of every 15,000 deaths in America. Hurricanes are the second leading cause of heart attacks during hurricanes after heart disease. Hurricanes are a close rival to the flu causing 1/3 of 1% of the deaths of the flu every year.

160 deaths is 16 times as many US deaths from that other bane of meteorology, asteroid strikes. Sources in the administration anticipate a major announcement on the restructuring of NASA accordingly. NASA has been told to refocus all efforts on meteorology.

Hurricanes also account for $5B/year in property damage. Other less costly methods than declaring war such as using IBM's Deep Thunder supercomputer were deemed too little too late to address the destructive power of hurricanes according to sources familiar with the matter.

FEMA announced changes to the rebuilding assistance program. Low interest loans have been offered to Floridians that are willing to rebuild, but only if they build at least 10 feet below sea level. In the words of President Bush, “We will not let hurricanes affect our planning. If we do, the hurricanes have won.”

President Bush asked Los Alamos to build a peaceful fusion bomb using lunar 3He that will destroy hurricanes with only 3% of the radiation of conventional nuclear air bursts.

The vote in favor of the declaration of war in the Senate was 77-24. Senator Kerry accounts for the unusual tally. He is counted as both for, against and absent.

A tri-partisan hurricane study commission has been assembled, co-chaired by Zell Miller, Jim Jeffords and John McCain. They all said in unison, “Hurricanes are a uniter, not a divider.”

Reaction to the Congressional action was swift. The Kerry Campaign said that Kerry has been fighting against hurricanes for decades pulling someone out of a motor boat in the 60s at grave risk to himself.

The people in the motor boat say, “Kerry did not have to have three limbs reattached afterwards, only one.” Kerry's subsequent testimony before Congress that the militaristic response to hurricanes was counterproductive was probably why there is a discrepancy.

Congress also passed the “Not Unamerican Act” to help fight hurricanes which allows the Federal Government to tap all phones, pagers, blackberries and weather stations. The ACLU responded, “They are blowing in the wind. Hurricanes can be fought with no reduction in individual rights.” Michael Moore began filming, “Category 5” but has not received permission from 3com to use the title.

President Bush also announced that he was merging all agencies that have anything to do with the weather including the National Weather Service, FEMA and NASA into one cabinet level agency, the Department of Weather Security. All TV weather announcers have been nationalized and are now federal employees. A spokesman from Clear Channel Communications said, “It is clear that centralization will help get all weathermen on message.”

Governor Jim McGreevy was appointed as new coordinator and in emergency action confirmed by the Senate. McGreevy said after being sworn in, “My first act is to announce a proposed constitutional amendment banning wind mills. Second, since only God may create storm cells, by executive order, meteorologists may only study natural storm cells, not create new ones.” These two actions appear to be a nod to President Bush's Republican base.

McGreevy continued, “Third, the existing hurricane warning and watch designations reveals sources and methods and are therefore too specific. We have instituted a national level of hurricane threat. The threat level will always be red to avoid confusion.”

In a nod to civil libertarians, McGreevy announced an additional measure, “Fourth, we are eliminating the category designations for hurricanes as they amount to profiling. As President Bush told me, 'We are at war with hurricanes, not wind. Some of my favorite kinds of weather are breezes.'”

The administration next announced a specific alert, “Fifth, based on three-year old data, we are preparing for Hurricane Isabel. We are fully aware that the hurricane already hit in 2001.” The clarity of the announcement was unprecedented and won praise from the media.

McGreevy continued “Finally, we are instituting a national tip line to report windy days, but to avoid criticism, the line will always be off the hook.” The move satisfied neither the left nor the right, a sure sign of optimal policy.

McGreevy announced a national preparedness strategy, “The best way to prepare for hurricanes is to get plenty of duct tape and plastic sheeting and keep half a tank of gas in your tank.”

In an unusual departure, McGreevy then continued with a cost-benefit analysis, “We understand that filling up twice as often will reduce GDP by 1/2 of 1% a year as people spend 12 extra minutes filling up every week, which is a cost of $50B a year or ten times the cost of hurricanes, but everyone has to sacrifice if we are going to win this war.”

Hurricanes cannot be beaten by domestic measures alone. President Bush announced a preemptive attack strategy to stop hurricanes before the threat becomes imminent, “Hurricanes originate based on warm water off the coast of West Africa. Today Navy SEALs have toppled the government of Liberia and installed fisherman Humid Cross-eye as the new President in Monrovia. He just called me on the phone and said, 'No more hurricanes from West Africa, we promise.'”

President Bush announced a new alliance member would be given an important role, “Our allies in Antarctica have promised us millions of tons of ice which we will melt off the coast of Africa.”

In a move designed to placate the international community the administration sought international cooperation, “We have applied to the World Court for a legal opinion to see if we can put up an immense wall in the middle of the Atlantic to keep out Hurricanes.”

The other prompt and sweeping actions were a mere prelude to the most important announcement from President Bush, “Finally, I have ordered the invasion of the Netherlands. Hurricanes are wind and the Dutch are allied with wind.”

President Bush won a strong international mandate for the action, “I have obtained the backing of the UN Security Counsel by promising to impose a Wind for Food program to be administered by the UN.”

The opening salvo in the war was awesome, “I have ordered the bombing of the Netherlands Institute of Space Research. Since Hurricane Frances blew through Cape Canaveral, I could not let their space headquarters remain standing.”

The Kerry Campaign responded, “We need more international cooperation in the fight against windmills. Use of military force against wind should be a last resort, not a first resort.”

By noon eastern time, the invasion was complete. Bush's invasion force consisted of one division with one soldier and 9,999 press embeds.

When the invasion force arrived at Parliament, the Prime Minister of the Netherlands said, “Of course we surrender to America. Did you know mentally ill in the Netherlands are visited by prostitutes once a month? Can I have the gun please?”

The fact that the operation took one minute was criticized by reporters. They thought it should have taken one second.

All war planning was outsourced to the Netherlands which was paid $26B for allowing an invasion base within the Netherlands. The deal was pushed through Congress on a voice vote along with $100B in Netherlands reconstruction aid.

The invasion was an instant success. President Bush addressed the nation again from the oval office, “The Netherlands is completely different from Iraq. We have brought in our NATO ally, the Netherlands, to govern the Netherlands and we handed off power today, a full 2 years ahead of schedule.”

In a brewing scandal, however, Netherlands prostitutes are being threatened with publication of pictures of themselves fully clothed with no makeup as a way to get them to tell everything they know about windmills.

Sources in the Pentagon say that they are completely prepared for the post-war environment. For post-war planning, everyone in the Pentagon is reading Cervantes's Don Quixote, the Bible on attacking windmills.

Posted by Anonymous at September 9, 2004 01:32 PM

Hurricanes feed off warm ocean water. Maybe they can be suppressed by mixing deep ocean water (which is very cold, even at the equator) with the surface water over a large area, or at least not too far from land.

Unfortunately, this might release a huge amount of dissolved CO2. And it's a lot of water.

Posted by Paul Dietz at September 9, 2004 02:10 PM

I was watching NWI Canadian news last week and they actually DID blame George Bush for hurricane Frances. They had a monolog explaining that hurricanes are caused by global warming, which in turn is caused by George Bush not having signed the Kyoto agreements. Are they so stupid that they believe that, or are they just being mean?

First, it's going to be a long time before I watch NWI again. (Advertisers please take note)

Second, I would like to know if there are data showing to what extent various countries, both signers and non-signers, are violating the agreement.

Posted by Dan DeLong at September 9, 2004 02:21 PM

Are they so stupid that they believe that, or are they just being mean?

I vote for both.

Posted by Rand Simberg at September 9, 2004 02:38 PM

There was an article in Analog 15 or so years ago, about builing huge (3000' diameter, 20,000' tall) cooling towers which would would establish a natural draft of warm moist surface air rising inside... condensation would set in, releasing heat which would improve the draw... windmills to extract power from the updraft or indraft... collection nets to capture fresh water... high-head turbines to extract more power from lowering that water several thousand feet...

One possible side benefit described was that the indraft at the base would capture the energy that would otherwise power hurricanes, by cooling the surface waters. Probably need thousands of these floatng every few miles in the waters offshore, though... wouldn't want to write the EIS for that...

Bottom line, if you want to control hurricanes, you have to control a significant fraction of the heat flux that drives them. Not for the faint of heart.

Posted by Doug Jones at September 9, 2004 03:22 PM

I wasn't so much thinking of the heat of a direct blast on the eye wall itself. I was thinking that we could utilize the pressure wave created by the atomic blast to try to push the tops of the eye wall clouds over. This may then produce a series of giant super water spouts and would steal energy from the greater part of the hurricane and cause it to consume itself to death in a relatively short amount of time. Don't try to over power the beast's strength but attack its material weaknesses. Isn't the average eye about 20 miles in diameter thats well within a big dirty nuke's blast zone if it is detonated above sea level.

From: http://www.fas.org/nuke/intro/nuke/blast.htm

"The range for blast effects increases significantly with the explosive yield of the weapon. In a typical air burst, these values of overpressure and wind velocity noted above will prevail at a range of 0.7 km for 1 kiloton (Kt) yield; 3.2 km for 100Kt; and 15.0 km for 10 Mt."

Posted by Josh "Hefty" Reiter at September 10, 2004 06:08 AM

"I wonder if it would be possible to put a giant cement wall about a 1/4 of a mile high extending around the SE tip of Florida a hundred or so miles from the shore that would dampen hurricanes? I know the cost would be enormous, but maybe it would be better than cleaning up the mess after being hit with dozens of hurricanes."

Hundreds of miles of wall around Florida might not be justified, but there's talk of putting one around New Orleans.. According to this, a single category 5 hurricane hitting New Orleans would produce at least 40,000 deaths.

Posted by Ken at September 10, 2004 06:14 AM

ROFL. Really ROFL about the last line of the original post.

Posted by Dave Tufte at September 10, 2004 10:51 AM

Remember that huge coronal mass ejection earlier this year? I am beginning to wonder if hurricane activity is related to CME events. Does anyone know where I can find data for both hurricane activity and solar activity over the last 25 years? I think it would make an interesting comparasin.

Posted by Ed Minchau at September 11, 2004 02:56 PM

I believe I have a highly practical suggestion that, if implemented on a large enough scale, might be successful in eliminating or partially effective in controlling hurricanes, if carried out to a sufficient degree.

Basically, it involves a way to cool the ocean surface, by extracting the thermal energy in the surface waters, utilizing floating heat pump engines, that will convert the thermal energy into electricity. I'm referring the OTEC, or Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion research that was started years ago, and has successfully developed working engines that actually produce a net positive output of energy on an ongoing basis. There are numerous OTEC web sites covering this concept.

OTEC requires a temperature difference of about 36 deg F (20 deg C). This temperature difference exists between the surface and deep seawater year round throughout the tropical regions of the world. To produce electricity, we either use a working fluid with a low boiling point (e.g. ammonia) or warm surface seawater, and turn it to vapor by heating it up with warm seawater (ammonia) or de-pressurizing it (warm seawater). The pressure of the expanding vapor turns a turbine and produces electricity! When using warm seawater (Open Cycle OTEC) vapor, we can also produce fresh distilled water when it is condensed back into a liquid. A closed cycle system can indirectly produce freshwater, since its deep seawater discharge is still cold because it only warms up about 8 deg F (4 deg C) in the condenser heat exchanger. When this cold seawater flows through a separate atmospheric heat exchanger, it condenses fresh water from the always humid tropical air.
If enough of these OTEC engines were to be built and placed in the tropical waters where hurricanes are spawned, they could certainly reduce temperature of surface water sufficiently to greatly moderate the generation of hurricanes.

Ultimately, if successful, many billions of dollars would be saved by reducing or eliminating the annual destruction of property, business and jobs that seems to be escalating of late, not to mention the loss of lives and disruption to the quality of life.

A useful byproduct, of course would be fresh or desalinated drinking water, at virtually no extra cost.

These savings, as well as the other benefits described below, would more than offset the higher cost of OTEC hydrogen, compared to fossil fuel costs.

Granted, much development needs be done to assure these OTEC engines can survive tropical weather disturbances, but they probably could be largely suspended beneath the ocean’s surface, where they would be protected from strong winds and waves.

At the same time, the electricity these OTEC engines generated could be used to produce hydrogen fuel in virtually unlimited quantities, by using the very same ocean water being cooled.

This source of hydrogen could be used to replace, eventually, the current usage of fossil fuels, which would halt the progression of global warming, due to the greenhouse effect of all the CO2 produced by burning fossil fuels.

Global dependence on OPEC oil would be replaced by a new source, OTEC hydrogen.

Using OTEC to produce hydrogen would have a beneficial effect on the environment, eliminating the emission of thousands of tons of polluting chemicals, as well.

Additionally, the stranglehold the OPEC nations hold on the world's need for oil would be broken, and a major source of terrorist funding would simply shrivel up in the sand, as oil wells are abandoned.

Furthermore, the need to resort the nuclear energy would be completely eliminated, as the amount of energy that could be extracted from the tropical oceans is significantly greater than today’s entire global consumption of all forms of energy.

Granted this would take many billions of dollars, and the hydrogen fuel generated might never be as cost competitive as oil.

But, we would have eliminated global warming, hurricane damage, environmental pollution and strife in the middle east.

I suggest its worth pursuing.

Posted by VLipshutz at September 17, 2004 07:44 PM

you need alot more pictures!!! (you know people would like to see pictures).!!!

Posted by mickey mouse at November 18, 2004 05:38 PM

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