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Weather Control Satellites

Posted by jamie on from the now-just-put-100-megawatts-into-orbit dept.

This is old news, but quite cool. AntiPasto writes "According to this article at techreview.com ... the Eastlund Scientific Enterprises Corporation has a way to stop a tornado from happening by simply microwaving it. Which brings up the question whether to have it on defrost or not, or more importantly how do you get it in there?" The technical paper is available here and space.com had an article a while back, here.

2 of 16 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Other uses for giant microwaves by jovlinger · · Score: 2

    'cha ever see the first microwave ovens the scientists dreamt up? They basically looked like giant upside down collanders.

    Sweet design. I'd love to lay my hands on one (but not while working...)

    Johan

  2. Hubris, anyone? by Alik · · Score: 3

    Being able to control tornadoes is a wonderful thing. I came close to being killed by one when I was younger, and nearby towns have been totally wrecked by them (and I'm not even in the Midwest).

    One teeny problem I see with this is the problem of balancing ecological requirements with human expansionist tendencies. If we can build something which is genuinely capable of turning off tornadoes, there are plenty of high-risk zones that will suddenly be lucrative development opportunities. They'll be developed. It will be necessary to turn off the storms in those areas to prevent massive damage to life and property.

    Personally, if you gave me the option to set the "Tornadoes" flag for the planet to "No", I wouldn't do it. Although I have no proof, intution suggests that if you remove a major climate phenomenon entirely, you have the potential for seriously screwing up the whole system. Environmental scientists would scream bloody murder if such a system ever went up.

    The obvious solution is to allow storms to form in unpopulated zones. Two problems exist there. One, if there's a square inch of earth that *can* be made habitable, someone will want to live there. Two, once you create the storm, you can't steer it. It might form deep in the wilderness, but move fairly quickly into a populated region. My impression from reading this is that it can only be used to stop storms before they start.

    It's not at all a bad idea, I'm just really worried that it's going to be implemented/used poorly and that we're all going to get screwed over.