Scientist Are Working to 'Steer' Hurricanes 310
E++99 writes "In the wake of Katrina, two teams of climate scientists have been working to steer hurricanes. Both teams are using the technique of removing power and speed from strategic points in the hurricane, effectively refracting its path. The American team is approaching this by warming the areas of the tops of the hurricane clouds, either by dropping ash to absorb heat from the sun, or directly beaming microwaves on those areas from space. The Israeli team is taking the approach of cooling the bottom of the hurricane by releasing dust along its base."
Uhmmm...... (Score:5, Interesting)
If you steer the hurricane away from the big city, but it still hits a small town 100 miles away, and kills 100 people, have you just murdered those 100 people? And at that rate, the ones who survived are going to be pretty pissed that the government shot a HURRICANE at them.
What if we screw up, and send a Category 5 Hurricane on a collision course with Havana or Mexico City? That would have disastrous consequences.
This sort of technology has terrifying military applications as well. Send a hurricane at *insert insular communist dictatorship here*, wait til it's passed, and then invade the nation while they're picking up the pieces.
I'm generally for the advancement of science, but in this case, we're coming a bit too close to "playing God" for our own good.
Further Thoughts... (Score:5, Interesting)
Also for a gratuitous Star Trek II reference, "we are dealing with something that could be perverted into a dreadful weapon."
Re:Sounds dangerous (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems to be working; I haven't seen or heard about hail damage in a few years now.
There is a lot of energy in a thunderstorm... not hurricane energy, but I expect such a thing IS doable.
Re:Sounds dangerous (Score:3, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:WMD (Score:2, Interesting)
I'd imagine controlling a viciously-strong storm up the coast could have some devastating consequences. Sure, it wouldn't hit the intended target at full force but if an enemy controlled enough of them during a bad hurricane season they'd wear down the area a little.
Re:Sounds dangerous (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Uhmmm...... (Score:0, Interesting)
Re:We shouldn't be doing this. (Score:4, Interesting)
Wrong end of the stick (Score:2, Interesting)
The real question is: what are they doing about the butterflies in Brazil [wikipedia.org]?
Re:No thank you Israel. (Score:1, Interesting)
'Murder' is intent to kill (Score:2, Interesting)
If you have the technology to steer the hurricane away from the big city, but are paralysed by tough ethical choices into inaction, and so allow the hurricane to hit the big city and kill 1,000 people, have you just murdered 1,000 people? Or just the 900 difference in body count? If failing to prevent a death is less ethically unsound than causing a death in the course of preventing ten other deaths, how MUCH less ethically unsound is it?
Causing death while endeavoring to save lives is not murder. It's something I expect most people would have a lot of trouble coming to terms with, of course, and shouldn't be done without due consideration, but if I were put into the unenviable position of choosing which people live and die, and had nothing else to base the decision on, I'd go with the fewest deaths possible even if those deaths wouldn't have happened if I did nothing. Then drink myself insensible. Possibly every day for the rest of my life, hurrah Winston Churchill.
Re:Uhmmm...... (Score:3, Interesting)
It's particularly interesting, because I'd initially dismissed the problem as another bit of "mental masturbation" for philosophers to obsess over to little effect, as the situation had no fathomable real-world analog. (Nothing quite makes you want to pull your hair out like getting stuck in the middle of an argument between two philosophy majors).
But the real-world parallel gets even more disturbing. You can steer the hurricane either to the east or to the west of the city. To the east lies a resort town, and to the west lies a trailer park. For academic purposes, suppose there are an equal number of people in both towns. Which way do you steer it? If you want to save as many as possible, you'd steer it toward the resort town, since the buildings there are likely to be stronger. If you want to cause as little monetary damage as possible, you steer at the trailer park -- the whole thing will be leveled, but replacement trailers are cheap. On the other hand, if only a handful of buildings in the resort town are damaged, the damage relative to the entire town will be a lot less, although the dollar amount of the damage will be a lot higher.
Even though the case to send the hurricane toward the resort town is slightly stronger, I have no doubt that an order would come down from the top to send it at the trailer park instead.
Re:Further Thoughts... (Score:3, Interesting)
Here we go again (Score:5, Interesting)
I am highly skeptical of any conclusions drawn from simulated data. As a cloud modeler running at very high resolutions (much higher than hurricane simulations since I am studying much smaller individual thunderstorms) I can tell you that even the most sophisticated cloud microphysics parameterizations are extremely crude. Clouds and rain are represented not by droplets, but mixing ratios, and gross assumptions are made about drop size distributions, transfer rates between species, etc. So, to say "we dropped some parameterized soot in the model and it made a difference" is not saying much.
Small perturbations in a highly unstable chaotic simulations such as a hurricane simulation will result in noticeable changes in the simulation days down the road. This is not a surprise. But even a small perturbation in a model would involve a huge amount of matter or energy in the real world, and whether these perturbations could be orchestrated to create a predictable change in course is very highly doubtful.
Another problem that plagues all forms of weather modifications is that you'll never know for sure if the modifications themselves caused a shift in storm evolution, or if an observed shift was something that would have happened anyway. Causality is the hardest thing to prove - even in a model where you know the state of your system to seven decimal points of precision.
I really hope federal money is not spent on this kind of research. Is there a limit to the hubris of mankind?