Can We Stop Storms? the posibility to stop storms

[Zorkaplex 0]

In the 1960s and 1970s many scientists explored technologies to zap strength from hurricanes but thier efforts we drowned because of the cost. With the tragedy of hurricane Katrina more mony has been put into the reaserch to battle weather/storms. It works like this:Make a "oil slick" for the hurricane on the water in its path. This will stop water from evaporating so the storm will weaken. This is hard to complete for the water will be blown at like 100 or so knots! The slick would most likely dissipate under such conditions.A different solution would be to have cargo planes drop water absorbant powder to soak up the water.I am going to look into this topic to see what i can find.If you have any questions post em.

[Cerebral Stasis 0]

This technology certainly sounds possible, but, as you mentioned, it would be very expensive, so the chances of it being used is relevant to exactly how much it would cost (would the cost of the damages caused by the storm outweigh the cost to prevent the storm?). Naturally, most countries/businesses will take the most economically-efficient route; money makes the world go 'round.

[Zorkaplex 0]

Yes well think of it this way would we either have to pay money to prevent storms or take the storm and have it cost money AND lives.

[Plenoptic 0]

The thing is we don't have the money to spend. Atleast the U.S. is already 3 trillion dollars in debt but that doesn't stop us I guess. Putting out oil slicks will kill off the wildlife though and ruin the ecosystem which could eventually come back to bite us in the butt. I think it is sort of wierd to think of the possibility to weaken a hurricane. I guess it's possible but I don't really know what to say. It could work it might not. You never know.

[Jayclark 0]

People have tried to stop hurricanes for many years now. And most of the ideas are pretty stupid. Peter Cordani invented Dyn-O-Mat. Which is the powder mention in this thread. He hasn't tested it yet in a hurricane. But he claims he tried it on a thunder-storm and it made it "disappear" But he did say he didn't think it would stop a hurricane but lower it maybe 10-15 MPH.

[truefusion 3]

To tell you the truth, none of the "solutions" seem like they'll do a significant amount of damage to a hurricane, nor will they be possible of happening. No one can tell you if a hurricane is going to form here or there. Covering one area isn't enough, and it'll cost too much, or ruin the ecosystem more than it already is, to just cover even more areas. And, the chances of getting an area of warm water, during that time, are slim. Although, hurricanes dont just feed off of warm waters.

[Chameleon 0]

To stop the hurricanes, you should kill all butterflies. But seriously, if you stopped hurricanes from occuring you would destroy a component of what makes the world continue spinning, worst case scenario - we lose our centrifugal force and go straight into the sun. Humans aren't at the stage yet where they can think through their actions far enough that they can tamper with how the planet runs itself, the stopping of a hurricane - where would the energy that made up the hurricane go? I think it would be suicidal for the human race to tamper with forces that they don't understand; and you only have to look at the hurricanes that have hit to see that we don't understand them at all.

[Zorkaplex 0]

Well chameleon the general idiea is to not realy destroy hurricanes but to reduce the force and hopefully the hurricane will dissipate naturally by itself.And Plenoptic the "oil slick would not really kill of wildlife because the amount could not be leathle to the wildlife plus it is not like there would be any wildlife living there in the first place because of the hurricane occcurance in the area.

[Chameleon 0]

Zorkaplex - as soon as you change something, it affects something else; if you artificially affected every major storm that came along it would screw something up; there is a reason for the storms occuring, at the very least it is lowering the human population.And the oil slick idea... the amount of oil you would have to use to slow a hurricane down would be immense, and the oil would go everywhere, you would not be able to guarantee that it wouldn't kill wildlife

[Zorkaplex 0]

You are right but remember i did not invent these ideas, they still need to work out kinks and figure things out.

[Cerebral Stasis 0]

Zorkaplex - as soon as you change something, it affects something else; if you artificially affected every major storm that came along it would screw something up; there is a reason for the storms occuring, at the very least it is lowering the human population.

I'm not so sure about this. Although it's possible that hurricanes may serve some purpose, I cannot imagine what it may be (it doesn't stir up the ocean, since the turbulance is only on the surface, and it doesn't really help the land in any way, and it certainly doesn't affect Earth's rotation around the sun, as you suggested earlier).

The only truely effective way to stop a large storm would be to either bombard it with a huge warm front, or a huge cold front that would counteract the winds currently at work and thus cause the storm to be neutralized. All storms, after all, are a result of warm and cold fronts/waters interacting with each other.

[Eikon 0]

Trying to stop something like this is like trying to stop day and night. These types of things happen for a reason, we just might not understand why. For all we know, tropical storms and hurricans are balancing out the eco-system and somehow keeping human existance alive.

[Arigato 0]

Yes, I think that it would be possible to stop storms but it would take nothing less than the energy released in a nuclear explosion. It's not humanly practical to stop something so amazingly powerful. The scale is just massive. Nature is easily capable of creating things with a massive amount of energy but humans are not. If this is something that humans could accomplish then doing something to this scale would probably cost more than hundreds of billions for the research over a period of many decades and a few billion to stop each storm with many negative effects on nature. Is it possible to stop a storm? probably. Is it something that humans will be able to do? probably not.

[Cerebral Stasis 0]

I wouldn't be so pessimistic, Arigato. It may be insanely expensive/out of reach now, but eventually other discoveries will make the leap in technology smaller and smaller until it will finally be practicable. Whether or not it's possible, none of us will be alive to find out.

[tdktank59 0]

ok ever see the day after tomarrow its a good example of cause and effect but sped up to an unrealistic speed... but pretty much shows you what happends if you do one thing and once the world is at an equil liberium the clouds disapear and so on so... the storms are a form of makeing the world in an equiliberium...