alchemike
Veteran Member
[ot] the talking monkeys are at it again...
is there anything that can't be solved by bombing it into submission???
this kind of stuff is a perfect real-world analogy to the brilliant sarcasm of the dude who wrote the 'nuke the moon' piece...
if i've said it once, i've said it a thousand times...this kind of arrogant behavior can be argued to be the root cause of many of humanity's woes...this separation from nature...
we are the incredible humans...we are separate and 'above' all of the natural world...everything else on this earth is 'below us' and can do with them what we will with no consequence...
this idea that man is not an integral part of nature is a cultural error that must be corrected...or it is going to correct itself...
man's god complex has about run its course...this cultural meta-program of disrespect for life and the natural order has its obvious extrapolations...it is self evident all around the world we live in today...
unless we begin to live in balance and cooperation and respect with the natural order, the technosphere is finished...
o)<
mike
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/lo...ne22jun22,0,4130218.story?coll=sfla-news-palm
Local experts and amateurs look for ideas to stop hurricanes
By Ken Kaye
Staff Writer
June 22, 2003
It seems reasonable to Bob Williams: If a powerful bomb can blow apart a 12-story building, why can't it destroy a hurricane?
"I am not being whimsical. I'd really like to know," said Williams of Boca Raton, a retiree who used to run a wholesale oil distributorship in Ohio.
Every hurricane season, many people wonder why the U.S. government doesn't take action to kill hurricanes, considering they cause damage averaging $5 billion a year in the United States.
The most common suggestion: Nuke 'em. That's followed by the recommendation to use more conventional weapons, such as missiles.
Other ideas include pouring great amounts of ice into the ocean to cut off a storm's heat supply or laying vast sheets of plastic or film over the seas.
Then there are those who think that seeding the clouds around a hurricane's eye to create rain will suffocate it, or that dumping absorbent materials in the core will sap it of strength.
One man suggested the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's hurricane research center in Miami use prayer to combat hurricanes.
"When I stopped taking him seriously, he prayed a hurricane would come and get me," said Hugh Willoughby, NOAA's former director of hurricane research.
The fact is, Willoughby says, there is no practical way to stop or weaken a hurricane without serious consequences to nature's complex atmospheric cycles.
That includes nuking the monster storms.
"Terrible idea, a nuclear bomb," said Willoughby, who is researching how to mitigate storm damage for the International Hurricane Research Center at Florida International University in Miami.
Rather than diffuse the energy of a hurricane, a nuclear bomb could fill it with more hot air.
That might strengthen the storm because heat drives the systems, he said. Then, of course, there would be the environmental problem of nuclear fallout.
Nukes aside, military bombs such as those used in the Iraq war wouldn't even dent a hurricane, Willoughby said.
It's not like NOAA hasn't tried to knock down hurricanes.
Under a project called Storm Fury, the government conducted cloud-seeding experiments from the early 1960s through the 1980s, releasing silver iodide crystals into the eyes of eight tropical systems.
The theory was that if enough rain could be produced to create a new eye wall, it would strangle the old one.
Scientists initially thought the program had merit because a few of the storms did weaken. But Willoughby said it was later determined the seeding had no effect because the hurricanes would have weakened anyway.
Today, NOAA's research division doesn't spend one penny of its $3 million budget on methods to destroy hurricanes, said Frank Marks, the current director of hurricane research.
Marks said NOAA's research division gets about five inquiries a month about killing hurricanes, enough to address the matter on its Web site, www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/.
A company in Jupiter, Dyn-O-Mat, says it is a year away from halting hurricanes with SK-1000, a substance that looks like snowflakes, feels like baby powder and is able to absorb more than 2,500 times its weight in water.
"Once moisture is introduced anywhere around this product, it is immediately solidified into a gel," said J.D. Dutton, president of the company, which specializes in materials for environmental cleanup.
With enough SK-1000 poured over the eye of a hurricane, the storm structure would get bogged down and weakened, he said.
In an experiment two years ago, a cloud dissipated with a much weaker version of the absorbent material.
Taking the absorbent material idea seriously, NOAA experimented with it and found it still wasn't feasible. For instance, the problem with SK-1000 is it would take an enormous amount, "thousands and thousands of tons," Willoughby said.
At this point, NOAA doesn't see any product or invention that could diminish a hurricane. But two ideas might be worth pursuing, Willoughby said.
An alcohol-based substance could be sprayed over expansive areas of the Atlantic, forming a soapy film that would slow evaporation and deprive hurricanes of moisture.
The problem: "It would take supertanker loads of the stuff, even though a layer one molecule thick is all it takes," Willoughby said.
The other way involves pumping cold water from the depths of the Atlantic into the warm Gulf Stream -- using the power of that current to drive the pumps -- between Florida and the Bahamas. That would cool the ocean surface and deprive a storm of its warm-water fuel, he said.
The problem there: Cooling the Gulf Stream could change the planet's climate, potentially sending it into another ice age, Willoughby said.
"I would hate to have to draft the environmental impact statement for that," he said.
More realistically, developers should build stronger homes and residents should plant as many native trees as possible because that roughens the surface of the landscape, which, in turn, grinds down hurricane winds at ground level, he said.
"That's kind of a green solution, as opposed to nuclear weapons," he said. "You might get more branches through roofs, but you don't get any roofs blown off."
Ken Kaye can be reached at 954-385-7911 or kkaye@sun-sentinel.com.
is there anything that can't be solved by bombing it into submission???
this kind of stuff is a perfect real-world analogy to the brilliant sarcasm of the dude who wrote the 'nuke the moon' piece...
if i've said it once, i've said it a thousand times...this kind of arrogant behavior can be argued to be the root cause of many of humanity's woes...this separation from nature...
we are the incredible humans...we are separate and 'above' all of the natural world...everything else on this earth is 'below us' and can do with them what we will with no consequence...
this idea that man is not an integral part of nature is a cultural error that must be corrected...or it is going to correct itself...
man's god complex has about run its course...this cultural meta-program of disrespect for life and the natural order has its obvious extrapolations...it is self evident all around the world we live in today...
unless we begin to live in balance and cooperation and respect with the natural order, the technosphere is finished...
o)<
mike
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/lo...ne22jun22,0,4130218.story?coll=sfla-news-palm
Local experts and amateurs look for ideas to stop hurricanes
By Ken Kaye
Staff Writer
June 22, 2003
It seems reasonable to Bob Williams: If a powerful bomb can blow apart a 12-story building, why can't it destroy a hurricane?
"I am not being whimsical. I'd really like to know," said Williams of Boca Raton, a retiree who used to run a wholesale oil distributorship in Ohio.
Every hurricane season, many people wonder why the U.S. government doesn't take action to kill hurricanes, considering they cause damage averaging $5 billion a year in the United States.
The most common suggestion: Nuke 'em. That's followed by the recommendation to use more conventional weapons, such as missiles.
Other ideas include pouring great amounts of ice into the ocean to cut off a storm's heat supply or laying vast sheets of plastic or film over the seas.
Then there are those who think that seeding the clouds around a hurricane's eye to create rain will suffocate it, or that dumping absorbent materials in the core will sap it of strength.
One man suggested the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's hurricane research center in Miami use prayer to combat hurricanes.
"When I stopped taking him seriously, he prayed a hurricane would come and get me," said Hugh Willoughby, NOAA's former director of hurricane research.
The fact is, Willoughby says, there is no practical way to stop or weaken a hurricane without serious consequences to nature's complex atmospheric cycles.
That includes nuking the monster storms.
"Terrible idea, a nuclear bomb," said Willoughby, who is researching how to mitigate storm damage for the International Hurricane Research Center at Florida International University in Miami.
Rather than diffuse the energy of a hurricane, a nuclear bomb could fill it with more hot air.
That might strengthen the storm because heat drives the systems, he said. Then, of course, there would be the environmental problem of nuclear fallout.
Nukes aside, military bombs such as those used in the Iraq war wouldn't even dent a hurricane, Willoughby said.
It's not like NOAA hasn't tried to knock down hurricanes.
Under a project called Storm Fury, the government conducted cloud-seeding experiments from the early 1960s through the 1980s, releasing silver iodide crystals into the eyes of eight tropical systems.
The theory was that if enough rain could be produced to create a new eye wall, it would strangle the old one.
Scientists initially thought the program had merit because a few of the storms did weaken. But Willoughby said it was later determined the seeding had no effect because the hurricanes would have weakened anyway.
Today, NOAA's research division doesn't spend one penny of its $3 million budget on methods to destroy hurricanes, said Frank Marks, the current director of hurricane research.
Marks said NOAA's research division gets about five inquiries a month about killing hurricanes, enough to address the matter on its Web site, www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/.
A company in Jupiter, Dyn-O-Mat, says it is a year away from halting hurricanes with SK-1000, a substance that looks like snowflakes, feels like baby powder and is able to absorb more than 2,500 times its weight in water.
"Once moisture is introduced anywhere around this product, it is immediately solidified into a gel," said J.D. Dutton, president of the company, which specializes in materials for environmental cleanup.
With enough SK-1000 poured over the eye of a hurricane, the storm structure would get bogged down and weakened, he said.
In an experiment two years ago, a cloud dissipated with a much weaker version of the absorbent material.
Taking the absorbent material idea seriously, NOAA experimented with it and found it still wasn't feasible. For instance, the problem with SK-1000 is it would take an enormous amount, "thousands and thousands of tons," Willoughby said.
At this point, NOAA doesn't see any product or invention that could diminish a hurricane. But two ideas might be worth pursuing, Willoughby said.
An alcohol-based substance could be sprayed over expansive areas of the Atlantic, forming a soapy film that would slow evaporation and deprive hurricanes of moisture.
The problem: "It would take supertanker loads of the stuff, even though a layer one molecule thick is all it takes," Willoughby said.
The other way involves pumping cold water from the depths of the Atlantic into the warm Gulf Stream -- using the power of that current to drive the pumps -- between Florida and the Bahamas. That would cool the ocean surface and deprive a storm of its warm-water fuel, he said.
The problem there: Cooling the Gulf Stream could change the planet's climate, potentially sending it into another ice age, Willoughby said.
"I would hate to have to draft the environmental impact statement for that," he said.
More realistically, developers should build stronger homes and residents should plant as many native trees as possible because that roughens the surface of the landscape, which, in turn, grinds down hurricane winds at ground level, he said.
"That's kind of a green solution, as opposed to nuclear weapons," he said. "You might get more branches through roofs, but you don't get any roofs blown off."
Ken Kaye can be reached at 954-385-7911 or kkaye@sun-sentinel.com.
Can they do this even there isnt a hurricane coming? Where do I write in to suggest different alcohol-based substances? 
