You have got to be kidding me!

[JP Santiago]

This was posted on an aviation forum I frequent:

http://newtechspy.com/articles06/operationdarksky.html

"Well-connected" defense sources? This might as well be a fart in a supercell.

 

[brody_clifton]

That is hilarious, would be funny to see it in action. IMO they would have a better chance of success at disrupting a major hurricane eyewall by seeding with 21 gigatons on silver iodide, not a mere 21 tons of explosives. Or maybe drop a few tens of thousands of those $300.00 toilet seats into the eye :lol: Would waste about the same amount of money.

 

[cdcollura]

Leave it alone...

Hurricanes serve a purpose ... Transferring thermal energy poleward from the tropics. They even out an uneven distribution of heat.

Stopping something like this (or trying to do so) will cause much larger and far more serious consequences (in addition to it being extremely expensive to the already shambled US economy).

In my opinion, this is a very BAD idea. And we don't even know if it would even affect such a humbling large storm ... Like "spitting into a blast furnace" and expecting the fire to go out ... Or like what JP said, "a fart in a supercell".

This bad idea of weather modification has become more popular with the hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005 being so deadly.

Maybe focusing on greenhouse gases caused by obcessions like "I just have to have that (gas guzzling) SUV" ... As well as us being sooooo attached to petroleum fuels when we already have so many renewable energy resources out there.

Maybe diverting from this will eas the global warming issue and we would not have to stop these storms in the first place!

 

[David Wolfson]

When I read something this absurd I think, "What are they really going to do...?" How in the heck are they going to set off a fuel-air munition in the turbulent wind tunnel of an eye-wall, never mind the amount of energy itself being insignificant? :roll:

Just what the eye-wall needs -- more heat.

 

[Mike Gauldin]

I find this line funny...

The secret operation will not be disclosed to the American people unless it is a complete success

So who's supposed to be reading this?

 

[Kevin Bowman]

im going to laugh my ass off if they make it into something much more terrible than it already was

 

[Greg Campbell]

Interesting - most of the other stories on the site seem straightforward. Bombing hurricanes is clearly leaning towards the Art Bell end of the credibility spectrum.

Dropping a handfull of MOABs into a hurricane is going to be about as effective as shooting shoulder launched missiles into a tornado......
Any blast effects will be transient. The only thing the storm will notice is the heat release, and a few tens of tons of HE is a drop in the bucket compared to a hurricane's total energy budget. (Anyone got numbers - how many tons of hot seawater does a hurricane process per second? How many calories per second. How many JIGAwatts?)

If you rounded up half the Air Force, and dropped hundreds of the things, you might manage to temporarily disrupt convection in a section of the eyewall. Maybe that would be enough to accelerate or postpone an ERC? That's the only sensible plan of attack I can think of. (FWLIW)

As forcasting and theory improve, the ability to nudge an unstable system in one direction or the other will improve. Still, I think we're a LONG way from accurately computing - and then exploiting - the Butterfly Effect on a hurricane-sized scale.

-Greg

 

[cdcollura]

Pure Energy!

Good day,

From my web site and a bit of research (link is http://www.sky-chaser.com/schurr.htm)...

A strong hurricane (or typhoon) can release enough latent heat energy (which is just 3% of the total heat energy available to it at any give time) equivalent to detonating 500,000 (yes, half a million) Hiroshima type atomic bombs per day. In megatons, this is about 6,000 megatons. In wattage, about a billion megawatts (or a million gigawatts). In horsepower, about 1.3 TRILLION horsepower!

Gentlemen, start yer engines!