ok, this is off the wall, i admit.

[mopinko]

Last edited Sat Aug 19, 2023, 09:16 AM - Edit history (1)

w a hurricane about to hit la, and a big season predicted in the atlantic, i find myself musing about hurricanes as a relief valve that used to work quite well to keep oceans livable. why dont they now?
every time i read about the rising ocean temps, i feel the urge to light a candle to the storm gods.

i am fully cognizant of the toll of such storms in the areas that are hit. it has been proposed that a big enough array of wind turbines could impact the strength of these storms. this kind of win-win should be done w all possible speed.

from which point my mind starts to wander-
could we spawn a hurricane on purpose? could we spawn weak hurricanes to blow off some heat w/o doing a lot of damage? in the future, could we set them off and steer them into such arrays? hell, could we set them off and steer them into drought stricken areas?
yes, we are talking a huge order of magnitude here, but just for argument’s sake, lets say we set off a fairly huge, hot bomb over a forming storm system?
i mean, if we can fly a helicopter on mars…

this is right up there w strategic volcano dust bombs to cool shit down while we do better, imho. something that ought to be getting more attention than it apparently is.

anybody else got any blue sky thoughts?

eta, yes, i realize the ct crowd will go nuts at the idea of f’ing w the weather.
and also- we could be steering rainstorms rn, but the trouble is that you’re taking water from somewhere else. but this is also something that shd be on the table.

[multigraincracker]

1. Every dark cloud

has a silver lining.

[mopinko]

2. the trick is figuring out how to mine it.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

3. Orbiting mirrors to reflect the heat before it gets in the envelope.

[mopinko]

6. i like it.

deployed over the poles, so it doesnt cut sunlight to crops.

[OKIsItJustMe]

28. It's not a new idea

NASA Final Report: Mitigating Climate Change With Earth Orbital Sunshades

[Gruenemann]

4. Reminds me of tfg's idea...

...to nuke hurricanes.

Please don't fuck with Mother Nature.

[mopinko]

5. well, she's about to fuck w us.

ordinarily a good plan, but…

[RandomNumbers]

27. we already f*cked with Mother Nature

quite a bit.

Hence where we are.

[MiHale]

7. It's not nice to fool around with Mother Nature...

That’s, in a kinda twisted way, what got us here.

“Just dump it in the ocean nobody will see it”

“Don’t worry about the smoke from that chimney…the wind takes it away”

“ Dig a hole…bury it if it can’t be burned”

We were naive then…we can’t afford to be now.

[mopinko]

8. except mother nature is on life support, and it's our fault.

we’re not naive now. we know full well how much damage we have done.
imho, we have an obligation to explore positive impacts, or at least diminishing harm.

[orthoclad]

21. Is it "our fault",

or the fault of exploiters who got vastly rich (and powerful) from burning all that carbon?

"the species" was coexisting ok with the world until capitalism met imperialism in England. Now, one feudal billionaire burns as much carbon as a million "commoners" in the US. That would equal about 20 million Bangladeshis, for example. Should we punish those people with collateral consequences of geo-engineering?

A surgeon doesn't remove an entire abdomen to take out a spleen.

[notemason]

12. Naive?

or misled...

[OKIsItJustMe]

16. More naive

A simple example. I used to wonder, “If running a car in a sealed garage will kill you, what about running hundreds of millions of cars in the open? That’t can’t be good…”

Many “skeptics” feel that the world is such a large thing, compared to people (and they’re right about that much) that we cannot have a significant effect. “Skeptics” will point out that the emissions we create are minuscule compared to the (natural) “Carbon Cycle.”



I typically reply that if you have a perfectly balanced scale, adding a light weight to one side of the balance will cause it to tip.

[MiHale]

18. Naive...

The fake quotes I used were the examples of how naively we handled things is the past. Back then let’s go to the 1900’s it was the way we disposed of stuff. If you didn’t see it it was gone and forgotten…no ramifications. That was then…

We were misled later when we should have known better because stuff was starting to ruin things.
We still don’t know the total after effects of all that naïveté.

We cannot be that way again.

[mopinko]

26. that borders on a personal attack.

not led by anything but my own curiosity.
ya know, al gore proposed the volcano dust thing a long time ago.

w billions going into carbon capture tech, seems to me it’s easier to attack the heat.

[OKIsItJustMe]

9. Re: could we spawn a hurricane on purpose?

I believe the simple answer is “no.” I don’t think it is within our abilities to spawn a tornado, much less a hurricane.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/hurricane-power/

Hurricane Power
Fact: The total energy released through cloud and rain formation in an average hurricane is equivalent to 200 times the worldwide electrical generating capacity.

BY PETER TYSON SATURDAY, JANUARY 1, 2005

[mopinko]

10. well, i'm assuming an underlying storm system.

but that’s a useful metric.

but still, how much is a b52 full of napalm?

[OKIsItJustMe]

11. How do hurricanes form?

https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/how-hurricanes-form.html

Recipe for a Hurricane

Whipping up a hurricane calls for a number of ingredients readily available in tropical areas:

• A pre-existing weather disturbance: A hurricane often starts out as a tropical wave.
• Warm water: Water at least 26.5 degrees Celsius over a depth of 50 meters powers the storm.
• Thunderstorm activity: Thunderstorms turn ocean heat into hurricane fuel.
• Low wind shear: A large difference in wind speed and direction around or near the storm can weaken it.

Mix it all together, and you’ve got a hurricane—maybe. Even when all these factors come together, a hurricane doesn’t always develop.

[CoopersDad]

15. Is that equivalency related to instantaneous power, watts, or total energy?

"Fact: The total energy released through cloud and rain formation in an average hurricane is equivalent to 200 times the worldwide electrical generating capacity."

This suggests Joules, kWh, or BTUs but the "600 Trillion Watts" would mean power, not energy.

The article describes using the latent heat of condensation of 22M Olympic size pools of water, but the units, Watts, is not a measurement of energy.

I hate when journalists, especially trusted sources, confuse power with energy, Watts with Kilowatthours.

Your thoughts?

[OKIsItJustMe]

17. This may help

https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/how-hurricanes-form.html[div class="excerpt”]…

During just one hurricane, raging winds can churn out about half as much energy as the electrical generating capacity of the entire world, while cloud and rain formation from the same storm might release a staggering 400 times that amount.

[CoopersDad]

19. Thanks, So, power in MW or TW, and not "energy".

Capacity is the maximum output an electricity generator can physically produce, measured in megawatts (MW).

https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/what-generation-capacity

That is impressive, makes us feel "small". in contract to nature, as we should.

[OKIsItJustMe]

22. Yeah, even a single lightning bolt releases an awesome amount of electricity

Frequently Asked Questions About Lightning

…

What type of electricity is lightning?

Lightning is an electrostatic discharge accompanied by the emission of visible light and other forms of electromagnetic radiation.

How many volts and watts are in lightning?

Lightning can have 100 million to 1 billion volts, and contains billions of watts.

Why are positive lightning bolts deemed more dangerous than the more common negatively charged bolts?

You don’t want to run into either, but positive lightning may be considered more dangerous because its peak electric current is often stronger, the flash duration (continuing) is typically longer, and its peak charge can be much greater than a negative strike. The longer-duration current is thought to make it more likely to ignite fires, as well.

…

[mopinko]

24. ok, we're blue skying here-

how about a drone a long copper tail, cd we steer the lightening?

[OKIsItJustMe]

25. No.

A popular thing to say at “brainstorming sessions” is “there are no bad ideas.”

That’s wrong. There are bad ideas. There’s no point in discussing them.

[Think. Again.]

13. I like the way you're thinking...

...especially because you ARE thinking and trying to explore any and all possible options to do what needs to be done.

My only hesitation about geo-engineering is my fear that we will rush into something without considering that we must build-in a way to immediately cancel or reverse whatever we do, because as we know from experience, there will be unexpected natural reactions to whatever we set in motion, and those natural responses will cause other ecological effects, and so on.

[mopinko]

14. ty. ftr- my brother

was in the air force in viet nam. he flew missions to seed the clouds over the ho chi min trail. so, we know how to do a lot of this shit.
i think it would take a pretty detailed international treaty. but seems to me our only choices at this point it to grow, evolve, or perish.

[orthoclad]

20. Sounds like that preacher

who "prayed away" the hurricane from Virginia, then got sued by New Englanders for causing them death and destruction.

If you interfere with natural processes, then YOU are responsible for the consequences. The US has been looking into controlling hurricanes since the 1950s. The conclusion has always been that it's too dangerous to fool with.

Instead of looking for gee-whiz tech-bro solutions to problems that the First World is causing the rest of the world, we should give up the fossil economy - and its wealth and power. Yeah, I know, ain't gonna happen. Those California freeways... Our friends, the murderous Saud family... fast jet travel... ships full of low-wage unregulated labor products...

The problem I have with geo-engineering is that it will be used for greenwashing. Hey, we can sell more 15 mpg bloatmobiles, just spend a few billion (of public money) on tech-fixes. It's like procrastinating for an appointment, then driving 90 mph to get there.

Tropical storms are the globe's way of evening out energy imbalances. Instead of interfering with that process, stop amplifying the imbalance.

[mopinko]

23. ok but the preacher didnt move the hurricane.

also, a link wd b good, cuz i’m sure it’s an amusing story.

the fact remains we ALREADY ARE altering the weather. even if we never pumped another drop of oil, we’re still fucked.

[orthoclad]

29. The suit against him got thrown out,

because he obviously didn't move the storm. But the point remains: if you intervene and actually DO move a storm, you will be liable for damages.

from wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Robertson_controversies
"Robertson prayed to God to steer hurricanes away from his company's Virginia Beach, Virginia headquarters. He credited his prayers for steering the course of Hurricane Gloria in 1985.[26] The storm instead hit the Mid-Atlantic states and New England, causing $900 million in damage and eight deaths."

If you succeed in moving a storm, there will be harm to someone else, and they damn sure will hold the mover accountable. This is why Federal scientists won't touch it, since the 1950s.

[mopinko]

30. yeah, so stated in my op.

the planet wasnt on fire in the 50’s.

[orthoclad]

31. Scientists agree that it's a bad idea.

[mopinko]

32. still?

look, i’m just kickin ideas around here. i’m not writin a grant. just seemed like a fun thought experiment. there’s tons of big expensive untested ideas out there. this struck me as low tech, more nudging nature that ruling it.

if there arent scientists out there looking at ways to tinker w weather systems, we’re screwed. i get it that decades of ct and scify about how it goes bad is the background of how we all think about such things.
but we better figure it out.