Do we really want to nuke a hurricane?

[struggle4progress]

The U.S. government has been trying since the 1940s to find ways to control or reduce the strength of hurricanes. The idea that the big storms could be weakened or diverted has become a popular subject on talk shows, the Internet and in letters to the editor in part because of the four hurricanes that smacked Florida last year.

Three suggestions are usually made:

1. Use a nuclear bomb to diffuse the strength. <snip>

The National Hurricane Center estimates one of the storms might generate between 50 trillion and 200 trillion watts of energy, or the equivalent of a 10 megaton nuclear device being exploded every 20 minutes. Obviously, dropping a single nuclear bomb into a storm would do little to its strength, and would probably just create a radioactive storm. <snip>

http://www.sunherald.com/mld/thesunherald/news/editorial/12280441.htm

[atommom]

1. That is one of the most asinine ideas I've ever heard.

I hope Shrub doesn't decide he wants to do it...

[bemildred]

3. Yeah, you can't get much dumber than that.

I can just see the Cat 5 radioactive hurricane plowing into Houston.

[Dogmudgeon]

16. Is this one of Edward Teller's hare-brained ideas?

He's already inflicted the paranoid element with HAARP and chemtrails. I think he's going for his own trifecta.

--p!

[bemildred]

17. He's dead, praise be, but it sounds like one of his. nt

[kestrel91316]

20. Well it's in TX; I could actually go for that, lol

[bemildred]

21. Let's not go there, I might wind up ashamed of myself.

:hi:

[bemildred]

2. Seems a shame to let all that clean energy go to waste. nt

[Puzzler]

4. Two quick comments:

1) To the best of my knowledge a hurricane has the power of many millions of h-bombs. So a nuke would not make much of a difference.

2) Think of the amount of radiation that would be spead from such a blast. It's not like there are high winds, or anything ;)

-P

[wli]

5. far beyond futile

There's an FAQ debunking most of the crackpot notions about how to mitigate hurricanes.

[ironman202]

6. what inbred dope came up with that idea?

Want to stop hurricanes? Stop Global Warming!

[struggle4progress]

9. Cranks have been proposing this stuff for as long as I can remember.

If you like the hurricane, you really would have adored the Panatomic Canal proposal:

... the U.S. in the 1950s planned to string 250 nuclear devices across the isthmus of Panama to create a new canal – dubbed the Panatomic Canal ... Finally .. the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, withdrew the project because of 'prospective host country opposition to nuclear-canal excavation' ... http://www.envirovideo.com/karlsiberia.html

I remember backers of this delightful project were still engineering favorable TV coverage for it in the mid-1960's ...

[htuttle]

7. Radioactive hurricanes

You know, on my big list of 'bad things that might happen', I have to admit I apparently left this one out. Hadn't even considered it.

Damn.

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[struggle4progress]

10. It's really easy to find nuclear cranks who support crazy ideas like this.

Posted 9/14/2004 1:15 PM Updated 2/21/2005 12:21 PM
Groups work on schemes to stop hurricanes
The Associated Press
Amateur hurricane-busters have come up with any number of crackpot ideas to spare Florida from ferocious storms. Among them: blowing hurricanes away with giant fans or blowing them up with nuclear warheads. <snip>
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2004-09-14-anti-cane-schemes_x.htm


Apparently some of them regularly contact NOAA:

Frequently Asked Questions
Subject: C5c) Why don't we try to destroy tropical cyclones by nuking them ?
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/C5c.html


As clearly indicated in the link at the top of this thread, others apparently often write to the newspapers:

05/17/2005 - Updated 09:04 AM ET
FAQ: Attempts to weaken, destroy hurricanes
Answers by Jack Williams, USATODAY.com weather editor. <snip>
Q: Wouldn't a huge bomb weaken a hurricane? If they are worried about radioactivity, they could use powerful fuel-oil bombs.
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/resources/askjack/wfaqhurm.htm

[NNadir]

11. More dumb newspaper links.

It is not difficult to find credulous radiation paranoids who find extreme nonsense and present it as fact.

These people, cranks who claim that the world is about to be destroyed by a leaky pipe at Sellafield, or that everyone in Washington will soon die because of Hanford, or that anyone anywhere in the United States has been injured by so called "nuclear waste," or that uranium mining is 1/100,000 th the threat to the water supply as coal mining, burning and use, are pretty much the same as the guy writing in to ask about nuking hurricanes.

Of course, all (as in 100%) of anti-environmental anti-nuclear activists who complain about leaky pipes, etc, while the planet faces real challenges from global climate change rely on specious representations, since there are no real ones.

Here, in this thread, we have a vapid reference to some vapid nut case writing into to a web site being represented as a real threat. I submit that the entire thread is proof that vapid nut cases can and do write whatever they wish to websites, government or otherwise. Vapid nut cases write into to government websites about Area 51 in Nevada, but this doesn't mean that the government has an official alien concealing program.

Vapid nut cases write in the environmental section of DU all the time, demonstrating complete ignorance of risk analysis, but this doesn't mean that the risks of say, global climate change, which may kill billions, are more serious that a putative (and largely unproven) risk to one or two Nevada ranchers 2000 years from now.

There is no serious proposal to fire nuclear weapons in hurricanes. No serious scientific journal has discussed the subject. It's all dumb media stuff for dumb media hounds with poor educations and paranoid fantasies.

I love this stuff though. It shows how desperate and bereft of a even the most remote sense of intellectual self-respect radiation paranoia has become.

Woo Woo, baby, Woo woo!



And in a related story, "Aliens Claim Jacko Is Their Son":



http://www.weeklyworldnews.com/features/aliens/61244

[atommom]

14. Bombs? Giant fans???

The "get a bigger hammer" school of hurricane abatement is getting more attention that it deserves, IMO.

Though I'd like to see how much speed * could pick up on that bike of his, if he had a good giant fan tailwind ... :D

[suneel112]

12. Even MIT studies boil down to the same conclusion...

...that a hurricane is the equivalent of a heat engine, just like a car engine. What happens when you press the gas? More gas is burned, generating more heat, in turn generating more power to accelerate the car. The same thing is true for a hurricane. Increase the temperature of the water (amount of heat), increase the speed and range of the hurricane. One of the few good articles in my newspaper (most of them are crap) said that the MIT researcher developed a Power Dissipation Index (PDI). This basically measures the amount of power dissipated by the oceans (usually in the hundreds of terawatts, more power than humans will ever need). The last two years, marked by the hurricanes in Florida, have seen an enormous spike in the PDI.

So where is all this ADDITIONAL power coming from?
The sun? Yes, that is where the power is coming from, but the sun, for all practical purposes, gives the earth the same amount of energy as it always had (power increases are there, but they are in the millionths of watts per square meter).

Burning fossil fuels? Yes, but the waste power (as heat) used by humans is negligible compared to the power recieved from the sun.

The key is THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT, which means that less energy is LOST by the earth as radiation. The greenhouse effect comes from burning fossil fuels at an enormous rate while at the same time destroying the ecosystems that can absorb that excess CO2. If the ocean cannot radiate the heat energy back into space, the power is used in other ways (like storms).

So if you REALLY wanted to stop hurricanes, "save a nuke, ride an EV."

[Boomer]

13. Hurricanes serve an important purpose

Leave it to humans to try to stop a process that is inconvenient for them, regardless of the consequences.

Hurricanes are generated by warm water, and they serve an important role in cooling that same water. The wave action helps churn lower layers of cold nutrient-rich water up to the surface where it can buffer the warm temperatures and refresh the bottom of the food chain.

Stop the hurricanes and we also stop this vital part of the ocean life cycles, all for the sake of people who want to build a few yards away from coastal waters.

But god forbid we should inconvenience a hotel chain. Let the fish starve to death instead, by all means.

[kitkatrose]

18. Of course.

Subverting nature and fucking up the food chain is the American way. :silly:

[Dogmudgeon]

15. Why not try Solar Power instead?

Nuclear is so yucky ... Solar Power is the way to go!

Just build a lens in geosynchronous orbit. The lens would only have to be about 200 miles in diameter, and with a focal length of about 22,240 miles, it wouldn't have to be very thick.

The lens would be aimed at the hurricane to disrupt the airflow by superheating different areas of the storm. The hurricane would then dissipate naturally, and if the lens was used judiciously, fishing fleets could go into the area and harvest tons of tasty poached fish.

This highly scientific proposal could give us a way out of Global Warming, Peak Oil, and 30 years of Bad Sex.

And then, monkeys will fly out of my ass.

--p!

[NNadir]

19. I suggest you apply for a grant.

This is the best idea I've heard since I learned of Lincoln being brought on to advise Cheney/Bush on how to conduct the Iraq War.



GHOST OF LINCOLN ADVISES BUSH ON WAR IN IRAQ
Leaked photo shows Prez speaking with spirit! [br />]