Global warming and mitigating a hurricane
Many news sources are disagreeing with my earlier post on the effect of global warming on hurricanes. Overall, it seems, global warming is at least increasing the intensity of hurricanes. There have been more Category 4 and 5 storms over the last 35 years outside of the normal waxing and waning of the normal hurricane cycles. I stand by what I said, though, regarding the assertion that global warming is solely to blame for the destruction of New Orleans and the Mississippi delta: it was bound to happen eventually.
This brings us to the next question: could humans realistically mitigate a hurricane before it makes landfall? I think most people’s first thought would be “no way” — mine included. But upon further reflection, it might be possible. There are a couple of ideas being tossed around, some more far-fetched than others.
- One plan calls for using jet engines to create small cyclones ahead of a hurricane to suck the energy out of the atmosphere, but this doesn’t seem feasible given the amount of air that would have to be moved. It is doubtful that even a large array of jet engines could trigger even a small storm.
- Another is putting a layer of oil on the ocean waters in front of a hurricane to decrease the lubrication, thereby robbing a storm of its power. Doing this, however, would entail an enormous amount of oil, and a sufficiently powerful enough storm could disrupt the water enough that it wouldn’t make a difference.
- Still another plan called for seeding storm clouds with soot to disrupt, but tests by the US Naval Research Laboratory were inconclusive.
- The last, most far-out (literally) idea calls for using space mirrors to reflect radiation back on the storm on Earth, heating the atmosphere and disrupting the storm.
The biggest problem with hurricane mitigation what happens if the hurricane still hits land and causes significant harm. Could the scientists involved with altering the storm be sued? There is no way to conclusively prove that any one strategy or combination of strategies will work all the time, and as such, there is enough legal room to sue if something goes wrong.
Legal issues aside, the physical challenges of all the ideas aside, I don’t think that creating a massive oil slick, putting tons of soot in the air, fashioning a giant blow dryer, warming the atmosphere artificially is good for the environment in any way. Who will clean up an oil slick once it’s laid? How will the soot be removed once it’s released? How will we cool the atmosphere once it has been warmed? Global warming is already a big issue, and heating an area large enough to disrupt a hurricane might perhaps kill a single hurricane, but the long-term effects of atmospheric warming will exacerbate the overall global warming which will in turn lead to more hurricanes.
I think humanity’s best bet lies in weathering the hurricanes as best we can; decreasing global warming; and not building major cities in areas vulnerable to natural disasters. But somehow I don’t see any of these things happening in the near future: we’ll go after the symptoms, but not the causes.
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