Transterrestrial Musings

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Maybe that explains why you need 100,000 km altitude...

So let me get this straight... Hurricanes are more powerful than nuclear bombs (uh huh), the effects of nuclear bombs are bad (suppose so), but controlling Hurricanes from satellites is good?

Posted by Leland at September 27, 2005 03:24 PM

Actually, that's not what's being proposed at all. It seems that the microwave transmission that space solar power station would use can be retuned to steer hurricanes. I blogged the paper where this was proposed a week or so ago. Space elevators come into it as a suggested means to build SPSs.

Posted by Mark R. Whittington at September 27, 2005 03:27 PM

We don't have to control hurricanes by matching our brute force against their brute force; that's a matchup we lose by several orders of magnitude. But we may be able to defeat hurricanes by sophisticated application of much smaller amounts of force in precise areas.

Space elevators provide us the high ground, where sunlight can easily be collected and focused (or else beamed down as microwaves) onto storms which are still in their infancy. If it works, we not only banish an ancient scourge, but we have a ticket to the solar system thrown into the bargain.

Posted by Daniel Wiener at September 27, 2005 03:57 PM

pardon the ignorance, but since hurricanes grow fastest in hot water, why wouldn't heating up the hurricane by directing microwaves at it just accelerate the intensification of the tropical storm?

Posted by HAW at September 27, 2005 04:19 PM

The "Save The [Cute Sea Critter] Here" folk might have problems with microwaving huge areas of the tropical Atlantic.

Posted by Mark Poling at September 27, 2005 04:44 PM

Leland,

So let me get this straight... Hurricanes are more powerful than nuclear bombs (uh huh), the effects of nuclear bombs are bad (suppose so), but controlling Hurricanes from satellites is good?

Well, consider the massive investment in controlling nuclear weapons and their proliferation. I imagine that the global cost is on the order of tens of billions of dollars per year.

HAW,

pardon the ignorance, but since hurricanes grow fastest in hot water, why wouldn't heating up the hurricane by directing microwaves at it just accelerate the intensification of the tropical storm?

There are other factors. First, even if you can't diminish the power of a hurricane, you may be able to steer it. Even a near miss on a populated area may save many lives and billions of USD in property.

Second, there does seem to be some er, "delicate" structure to a hurricane which can be disrupted to reduce the strength of the storm.

Mark,

The "Save The [Cute Sea Critter] Here" folk might have problems with microwaving huge areas of the tropical Atlantic.

Got to agree. Also, there's the matter of people caught in these storms. Would you abort because a ship drifted into your target area?

Posted by Karl Hallowell at September 27, 2005 05:04 PM

If we were to manage to control or dissipate tropical storms before they become full-fledged hurricanes, there would of course be a lot of opposition from all the hysterical environmentalists.

Some people worry about anything humans do to control nature. They'll raise fears that we'll harm marine life and algae; that the earth's heat balance will be disrupted; that Mother Earth will not be denied, and sooner or later we'll suffer a category 8 uber-hurricane to make up for all the ones we avoided; that solar arrays in space will be used as weapons of mass destruction; that Caribbean island nations and some states on the mainland U.S.A. may suffer drought as a result of avoiding hurricanes; and that other weather damage will result from hurricane control efforts and thus qualify for massive class action lawsuits.

I'm sure lots more could be added to the above list. But after Katrina, and after the way Florida was pummeled last year, I think that public opinion in this country would not be too receptive to such environmental fear-mongering.

Posted by Daniel Wiener at September 27, 2005 05:55 PM

Suggest they get back to us after they demonstrate that the concept can work in computer simulations. Till then, it's far from clear doing something like this wouldn't make matters worse. Suppose there's some kind of "Law of Conservation of Hurricane Energy", and preventing one of them only means that its energy has to be superadded into the next one?

Posted by Mark at September 27, 2005 06:42 PM

Good point, Mark. That's why I've avoided using space elevators to prevent earthquakes here in Southern California.

Posted by Daniel Wiener at September 27, 2005 07:07 PM

Mark,
Funny, but what you say is "not what's being proposed" is the same thing that you say is being proposed. Are you playing semantics on the term satellite, because it is an elevator attached to the ground?

Anyway, I'm ok with the concept of controlling hurricanes. I just expect it would bring a furor greater than what we see now with people decrying man-made global warming.

Personally, I care less about the occasional hurricane and would prefer the promotion of nuclear power.

Posted by Leland at September 27, 2005 07:29 PM

I just can't see experiments such as this ever being tried let alone a retry of the clouding seeding experiments conducted in the '60s and '70s.

Imagine this: the U.S. government announces experiments on a tropical depression in the Atlantic off the coast of Africa to determine if its behavior can somehow be altered. The experiment has no impact. However, by chance the tropical depression ends up becoming a Katrina class killer 2000 miles away in the Gulf of Mexico.

And we thought the "Blame Bush" loonies had a field day after Katrina.

Posted by mpthompson at September 27, 2005 10:31 PM

mpthompson hits it right on the head. Even experiments in weather control by this country will be cause for every weather related disaster being blamed on the US. Not to mention the potential for very large ramifications due to small miscalculations. History has shown this culture is adverse to very low probability of high penalty technology such as nuclear power. Weather control would fall under that heading.

Posted by K at September 27, 2005 11:34 PM

I don't know about this idea... Suppose--just suppose--that some supervillain gets ahold of one of these hurricane-controlling space elevators. He could wreak havoc on the Earth! And the only way we could prevent it from happening is to call up Superman. And you know that he's retired...

Posted by Joe Athelli at September 28, 2005 06:59 AM

Question to ponder: How many times throughout history have altruistic ideals and solutions produced unanticipated problems greater than the original problem? Manhattan Project, Agent Orange, etc comes to mind. Space and James Bond laser beams are not the answer to these sorts of problems. Now for a Canadian perspective.

Activism starts in your own backyard!

The elevator concept is perhaps an inevitability, but it comes with its own socio-political problems; read Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy. The incremental increase in the intensity of hurricanes is a result of global warming, caused by our current chosen lifesylye. 10 years ago when the "Lets all Recycle" movement started, the philosophy was, "If we all do our own little part, it contributes to a much greater whole", that is what we have done in reverse to our atmosphere. We all drive to work, and use hydro generated by carbon based resources. The space elevator and SSPS' are better applied to providing alternative "green" energy sources to the masses, than firing laser energy at the Earth. If you take away the element causing the problem at the lowest common denominator then you should have no need for "shock and awe" solutions. Alot less liability and much more practical. And that translates into the global community, not jst the US. It'll take a while to see the effects, and for equilibrium to be found once more, but also ask, What have I used today that has been made of recycled goods?

Posted by DenommeX at September 29, 2005 12:43 PM

The incremental increase in the intensity of hurricanes is a result of global warming, caused by our current chosen lifestyle.

Can you cite any reputable meteorologists who believe this? Hurricanes historically go through cycles--we've simply entered into another one.

Posted by Rand Simberg at September 29, 2005 12:55 PM

So you watch CNN, so what? Some guy comes on and says that we are coming into a 20-40 year cycle of intensity, the last one having ended around 1940. Shows you some wonderful Excel generated graphics and he tells you everything is ok, go fill your gas tank, open up a Pepsi, and have your Big Mac meal, and you feel ok about it.

Now I'm no environmentalist, by any stretch, I'm in the electronics engineering industry, but when I cant go outside cause my bare-skin turns red after 10 minutes in the sun, a bright sunny day turns to blowing rain within a half hour, without notice, and I have to put money into a can for people victimized by a disaster event in another country, I tend to question the proaganda saying "What global warming?" I live in Canada, when I was a child we had 5 months of winter, moderately cold but enjoyable, with fairly consistent snowfall. Now, 20 years later, summer is 6-9 degrees C (10.8-16.2F)hotter than back then, winter is 4 months long of bitter cold(-72.4F with windchill) and alternating yearly between little snowfall to 6 foot tall snowbanks. But everything is ok, coming from some guy of indeterminate questionability.

It is not in the interest of government or industry to give creedance to the theory of global warming, too expensive of a problem, to both to tackle, much cheaper to put some guy with a labcoat on tv with some Excel graphics, and tell people what they'd like to hear.

Ask Katrina victims how comforting their government is to them, and how normal things are! How many times has New Orleans been under 26 feet of water? That should be an indicator of normal!

Posted by DenommeX at September 29, 2005 01:45 PM

So you watch CNN, so what?

I almost never watch CNN. Do you have an answer to my question? It was a simple one.

And do you really believe that a storm of this magnitude has never before hit southeast Louisiana?

Posted by Rand Simberg at September 29, 2005 01:50 PM

Qiang Fu-University of Washington
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/MediaAlerts/2004/2004112917957.html

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science/hurricanes-and-climate-change.html

There is a reputable scientist for you, and he is at the forefront of the global warming issue. He is all about quantitative evidence.

To be honest, I cannot answer your second question, I neither live in Southeast Louisiana, nor do I know anyone from there. I would tend to say that if a hurricane of that magnitude has hit that area in the past there would be some legacy from it.

What I do know, is that weather records at best only go back as far as the late 1800's, early 1900's, and particular attention to the global warming issue has only been around since the mid to late 70's.

New Orleans has always been a flawed engineering concept, and I'm amazed that there is any consideration at rebuilding in the same location, but a greater question is posed from all of this:

Are Americans willing to wait for another Katrina caliber of devastation before saying that, "Yes there is a new pattern of global warming here!"?

Must we wait for more lives to be lost before action, even the commensement of the space elevator, to take place? "Ahh...sorry...M'bad" means little to the dead and the homeless after something like this happens. Why wait? Even if all the scientists are wrong, what have we to lose as a whole?

Posted by DenommeX at September 29, 2005 02:50 PM

There is a reputable scientist for you, and he is at the forefront of the global warming issue. He is all about quantitative evidence.

Why is it that most meteorologists don't agree with him?

Why wait? Even if all the scientists are wrong, what have we to lose as a whole?

Why wait for what? Things like Kyoto? What we have to lose as a whole is the vast foregone wealth that we would have had had we not curtailed our energy use, and that would be available to solve problems in the future.

Posted by Rand Simberg at September 29, 2005 03:02 PM

[bad physics]
Space elevators as giant heat sinks for the ocean! :) How many space elevators would it take to offset global warming by bypassing the atmosphere for heat dissipation from the planet?
[/bad physics]

Posted by Jason at September 29, 2005 03:33 PM

The meteorologists disagree with him because doing so would mean that the data that they had been feeding to us, and incorporating into their own science for the last 20+ years is wrong.

Would you like the guy who comes along and tells you that everything you've been doing for 25 years has been wrong? I now I would have no love lost!

Question: How much of that "foregone wealth" do you stand to lose? Curtailing our energy use is just common sense, there is a point of dimminished returns. Future problems are problems that we choose to ignore today. And of what wealth are you speaking? No one will buy fuel at $10/gal and still only making todays minimum wage.

The days of fossil fuels are numbered. Just the consideration of alternative solutions like the space elevator signal the end of such wasteful energy useage.
The cost will be paid for such an advanced endeavour, and then free renewable energy. That is the real drive behind the elevator. Energy, and a pathway to the stars. Death Ray Weather laser beams notwithstanding. Now how to get there.

Posted by DenommeX at September 29, 2005 03:46 PM

Jason, if the elevator is made up of carbon nanotubes, it would have high conductive properties. There is also the matter if the elevator is anchored in the ocean or on land.

Now generally the air above the ocean is warmer than the water itself. So if the elevator were anchored in the ocean it would more then likely act opposite to a heatsink.

Posted by DenommeX at September 29, 2005 03:59 PM

I was not being serious denommex. You may have noticed the "bad physics" tag and the :) I had to use [] instead of the standard 'greater than' and 'less than' because the comment program stripped them out.

It just seemed like the most reasonable sounding (as opposed to truly resonable) method for a space elevator to directly be used to affect the weather.

You failed to consider that it would still reduce overall heat in the system if increased heat loss into space from the atmosphere. The atmosphere could, in a miniscule ineffective amount, pull heat out of the atmosphere and dump it into both the ocean and space.

Posted by Jason at September 29, 2005 04:15 PM

The meteorologists disagree with him because doing so would mean that the data that they had been feeding to us, and incorporating into their own science for the last 20+ years is wrong.

Would you like the guy who comes along and tells you that everything you've been doing for 25 years has been wrong? I now I would have no love lost!

All of them? Oh, OK. Now it's a Vast Conspiracy.

Question: How much of that "foregone wealth" do you stand to lose?

I have no idea, but more than I want. What makes you think this is about me?

Curtailing our energy use is just common sense, there is a point of dimminished returns.

OK, so you're economically ignorant as well.

Posted by Rand Simberg at September 29, 2005 04:59 PM

No conspiracy, they were just using satelite data that wasn't properly configured. Unless your playing devil's advocate, I don't see the benefit of taking the stance of industry and government on the issue of energy consumption.

And what I said before of deminishing returns is in the context that increases in the cost of fossil fuels greatly increases the effects of inflation on an economy unable to support such an increase. The fuel industries can only raise the price so far as to the point where the number of customers decrease to the threshold where profits will remain the same with a greatly reduced customer base. At the rate we consume energy fossil fuels will become cost prohibitive within the next...say 100years. That is what necessitates a solution like the elevator and SSPS'. But that would still entail curbing enery usage. However, advancing technology "should" help with maintaining the functionality of our lives with reduces energy cost.

Posted by DenommeX at September 29, 2005 05:40 PM

Unless your playing devil's advocate, I don't see the benefit of taking the stance of industry and government on the issue of energy consumption.

I am taking the stance of people who understand economics.

Posted by Rand Simberg at September 29, 2005 05:49 PM

Well you count your beans. And lets agree to disagree. Economics plays a large role in the elevator project, but nowhere as large as the engineering that will be required. And I doubt that the US will be able to play much of a role in it. With a failing space program and damage control, there's no money to be had. Private enterprise, and stable political environments will be the real force behind the elevator.

Posted by DenommeX at September 30, 2005 05:25 AM

DenommeX

I tend to question the proaganda saying "What global warming?" I live in Canada, when I was a child we had 5 months of winter, moderately cold but enjoyable, with fairly consistent snowfall. Now, 20 years later, summer is 6-9 degrees C (10.8-16.2F)hotter than back then, winter is 4 months long of bitter cold(-72.4F with windchill) and alternating yearly between little snowfall to 6 foot tall snowbanks.

And some 10k years ago, we had an Ice Age, and strangely enough another before that....in an almost cyclical pattern. Ye Gods man, you have a high opinion of mankind. Mother nature will have her way, and whatever we as mankind do in the interim will have no effect, because of the magnitude scale of what we can do, to what she can do. The problem in determining global warming as a REAL event is that we don't have the data going back long enough to make an effective model, however it is easier to THEORIZE that global warming is occuring because of what man has done. I can just as easily THEORIZE that global warming may be occuring because of the cyclical nature of our planet's conditions. Without the data to back it up, it's nothing but theory.

Posted by Mac at September 30, 2005 02:04 PM

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