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Could 'Re-Engineering' Earth Help Ease the Hurricane Threat? (nbcnews.com)

As hurricanes continue to increase in frequency and intensity, a $10-billion-a-year project proposes injecting sulfate into the atmosphere to cool down the Earth and reduce the number of hurricanes by 50% for a staggering 50 years. From a report: In an attempt to combat climate change, a multinational team of scientists are working on a plan to literally re-engineer the Earth in order to cool it down and reduce the impact of storm systems. For example, a team led by John Moore, who is the head of China's geoengineering research program, is studying how shading sulfate aerosols that are dispersed into the stratosphere could help cool the planet and reduce the number of hurricane occurrences. In an interview with Popular Mechanics, outlining how the plan works, Moore asserts, "We're basically mimicking a volcano and saying we're going to put 5 billion tons of sulfates a year into the atmosphere 20 kilometers high, and we'll do that for 50 years." In their current research model, in which the scientists tested a senario where the sulfate injection is doubled over time, the team found that incidences of Katrina-level hurricanes could be maintained (they would be kept at the same rate that we currently see) and that storm surges, which is the rise in seawater level that is caused solely by a storm, could be mitigated by half. The researchers noted that the volcanic eruption in 1912 of Katmai in Alaska "loaded the Northern Hemisphere with aerosol [sulfates], and [was] followed by the least active hurricane season on record." Moore explains that warmer waters can spark and fuel hurricanes, and cooling them with shading sulfates reduces the size and intensity of these hurricanes.

4 of 262 comments (clear)

  1. Not this again! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I ain't going to be riding no train around the world forever in the snow. Fuck that!

  2. Re:First sentence is absurd by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Actually they do.
    There are not only Hurricanes that make landfall. There are Hurricanes in the atlantic you never hear about.
    And there are Cyclones, Taifuns etc. too.
    Get rid of the stupid idea that continental USA are the center of the world.

    It is just some 3% or 5% of the globe.

    --
    Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  3. Re:The law of unintended consequences by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Your on the right page.

    Biology 101 class, our Ecosystem traps about 15% of solar engery into usable bioengery. If we block it, than thats less for that 15% to trap and use for life. Therefore less possible food.

  4. obSnowpiercer by SlaveToTheGrind · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The hubris of this bunch is unbelievable. Faced with an ecosystem so unbelievably complex and interdependent that nobody can say with much confidence what is really going to happen down the road, they propose to massively, rapidly, and irreversibly alter a single variable in that system.

    What could possibly go wrong?