Every year huge rotating storms packing winds greater than 74 miles per hour sweep across tropical seas

and onto shorelines--often devastating large swaths of territory. When these roiling tempests--called hurricanes in the Atlantic and the eastern Pacific oceans, typhoons in the western Pacific and cyclones in the Indian Ocean--strike heavily populated areas, they can kill thousands and cause billions of dollars of property damage. And nothing, absolutely nothing, stands in their way.

This article was originally published with the title Controlling Hurricanes.

2 Comments

1. 1. driverdoug2002 06:01 PM 12/18/09

   I still don't understand why the seeding, spraying, or the dropping of polymers or other such chemicals is seriously considered when our oceans are dying from pollution made by our plastics industry. Why add to our Mother's misery? And why attempt to stop an eye already in progress? Missourians all have the experience of floating on a lake on a hot July day. The top four or five inches are nice and warm, and the deeper we go the colder it gets. We can even feel the gradient as our feet are colder than up by the raft. Why not cool the ocean surface by columnar buoys or anchored "fans" using the Archimedes principle to bring up cool water? These beautiful and graceful cone shaped screws matching the nautiloid cephalopods abundant in the Ordovician and Silurian could be adjusted using the incredible airjet technology found on our latest cruise ships. All we need to do is select a region in the Gulf or near the Carribean where hot waters begin the advection process. Large corkscrews closer to the bottom can move in a slow rotation to get the upwelling started. We blab of El Nino this and El Nina that, but we never DO anything about it. Let's create are own microwave relayed, cell pad controllable, "fans" to cool the ocean's surface ourselves. The marine life would love it! The larger one's may stop biting us and beaching themselves once they see we are finally serious about undoing our human damage! These devices would only need be active from July 5 to say Sep 25 along the tropic of Capricorn. This slow and steady priniciple of cooling is evident in the Bahamas every time we look up at the ceiling and see the slow, steady rhythm of the fan. We have a huge plastic "trash bag" the size of Texas whirling the middle of the Pacific. Don't you think it is about time we do something to help our friends in the sea? Wouldn't it be nice to get insurance in Florida again because the risk is almost gone? Wouldn't it be nice to know we could move to Houston or New Orleans or Tampa, and not live in fear about the weather. Add up all the damage from Camille and Andrew up to Katrina, Francis, and Jeanne, and even Charlie, and tell me we don't have the rationale to work with Exxon and Arco and others in the Gulf and use their resources, their scientists, their platforms, their engineers, to help keep their investments safe, and keep our land based structures safe. How about it State Farm, are you Game?

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2. 2. driverdoug2002 in reply to driverdoug2002 06:06 PM 12/18/09

   whoops, tropic of Cancer Cap would be the inverse dates, Jan 5, Mar 25.

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