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'Leak oil into the sea'
27/09/2005 11:55 - (SA)
Washington - Long before Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, governments and engineers with lively imaginations have come up with a few strange ideas on how to combat nature's wrath.
Hurricanes fail to inspire awe among these advocates of man-made anti-storm schemes.
While others try to evacuate, these inventors draw up plans to seed clouds, spill oil, set up windmills and even drop atomic bombs to soften the blow of lethal hurricanes.
In the 1970s, the Soviets intentionally leaked oil into the Pacific Ocean in an attempt to stifle the droplets of water spray that help feed the violent winds of a hurricane.
Presumably the attempt failed but the results of the experiment have yet to be revealed, say researchers at the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML).
Trying to reduce the impact
Another variation on the same theme resembles a kind of modern art installation. The idea calls for laying out an enormous fabric over the ocean surface to slow the evaporation of water. The fabric, however, would have to span an area of at least 1 800 square kilometres.
The United States government once embraced an ambitious experiment offering the tantalising possibility that violent winds and torrential rains could be tamed with some technology and scientific know-how.
"Project Stormfury" was launched against storms Esther in 1961, Beulah in 1963, Debbie in 1969 and Ginger in 1971 but never quite lived up to its impressive name.
Funded by the US national oceanic atmospheric administration, airplanes were sent out to seed clouds with silver iodide in an attempt to create a sort of counter storm that would soften the effects of the hurricane.
For a while, government researchers believed they had managed to slow down a few storms, but scientists later concluded that the method was utterly useless.
Innovative ideas
Storms often gain speed or weaken quickly due to natural conditions, as did Hurricane Rita when it declined from a category five storm to a category three before it hit the southern coast of the US on Saturday, according to Hugh Willoughby, a researcher at the AOML in Miami, Florida.
"If I were really astute, I'd go out tonight and seed the clouds, and when the winds drop I'd claim I saved Houston. For $50m, I'll do it again!" he said.
For some who dream of halting hurricanes, seeding clouds is merely child's play. Long papers have been written advocating using giant tubes to direct cold air or even detonating an atomic bomb in the middle of a storm.
Scientists have pointed out that an atomic explosion would merely make the hot centre of a storm even hotter, not a particularly effective approach. There is also the problem of unleashing massive radiation near coastal cities.
The atomic bomb idea, like some other ambitious proposals, underestimates the sheer power of a serious hurricane, which generates thousands of times more energy than a nuclear bomb or power plant, Willoughby said.
Sceptical about preventative measures
One businessman proposed releasing a gooey substance into storm clouds. This would supposedly prevent the hurricane from rising up into the atmosphere and gaining force. Willoughby's laboratory is sceptical as much about the methods as the intended effect.
The laboratory calculated that the idea would require using 38 000 tons of the gooey substance to disarm a hurricane.
Other storm solvers have tried to keep their proposals simple and straight forward. If warm temperatures on the ocean's surface help trigger the formation of a hurricane, why not try to chill things down? Some have suggested deploying icebergs, and one man reportedly wrote to the national hurricane centre calling for airplanes to drop chunks of ice into the centre of a storm.
Even if some of these industrial-sized interventions succeeded, the consequences of the method used might be worse than the storm itself, Willoughby said.
"When you do this kind of mega-engineering, you might create a solution that comes back and bites you in the backside," he said.
"Perhaps the best solution is not to try to alter or destroy the tropical cyclones, but just learn to co-exist better with them."
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