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.

Comments

Not this again!

[Anonymous Coward]

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

LMFAO

[Anonymous Coward]

What could possibly go wrong?!

Re:LMFAO

[Z00L00K]

Don't build so darn near the shoreline. And don't build on former riverbeds or other lowland that's a candidate for flooding. Also keep some areas of forest and ponds to slow and absorb runoff water.

Re:LMFAO

[GameboyRMH]

It's a shame nobody asked that when people started burning fossil fuels.

Re:LMFAO

[LunaticTippy]

And don't continue to breed like fucking rabbits.

Huh. Are rabbits known for stable, gradually declining populations? Cuz that's what all developed countries do. There is a demographic implosion underway in many countries, Japan is leading the way with an economy that has been in a deflationary spiral for over a decade. Even Mexico is just over replacement rate with fertility rate at 2.21 (down from 7 a generation ago)

Most developed countries have declining populations projected for the indefinite future. The US is way below replacement rate, only growth is from immigration. Your facts are dated and out of touch with reality.

First sentence is absurd

[Train0987]

"As hurricanes continue to increase in frequency and intensity"

Except they are not increasing in frequency or intensity. Slashdot should be ashamed of what it's become, click-bait for cultists.

Re:First sentence is absurd

[avandesande]

That's bullshit. Hurricane season has been almost non-existent the last several years. You are just making shit up.

Re:First sentence is absurd

[CrimsonAvenger]

The last few hurricanes have been and still are breaking records all over the place, so how can you reasonably argue that intensity is not increasing?

Which last few are those? Harvey and Irma? How about Jose and K(whatever it's called?)? Or A(whatever) through G(whatever)? Were you bothering to include them?

Or last year's storms? Anyone even remember any of them? Year before? Any year since Katrina? Any of the other storms that year?

Selective memory is a thing, people. You remember the big, flashy things, and forget the overwhelming majority of pedestrian things...

Re:First sentence is absurd

[Whorhay]

From what I understand historical records for storms in the ways we measure them don't go back very far. It wasn't all that long ago that unless a storm made landfall nobody would know it existed at all. Well I suppose any ships caught in the storms would know, but they'd likely be more concerned with the immediate need to survive than measure wind speeds and atmospheric pressure. We can make guesses about how strong storms where when they made landfall based on the destruction they wrought but that is pretty iffy at best. A lot of the damage we see in our modern age from storms is a result of the flooding. And we have made the flooding a lot worse by eliminating wetland areas along with roofing and paving over everything in site. The prevalence of stick built houses filled with drywall and electrical wiring makes for larger losses when a structure is flooded.

I'm not really sold one way or the other so far as whether storms are getting stronger and more frequent. But even anecdotally it doesn't seem so. It's been almost a decade since the gulf states saw serious hurricane danger.

Re:First sentence is absurd

[Solandri]

Only the North Atlantic has seen a slight uptick in hurricanes the last 15 years. The eastern North Pacific has been pretty flat. Tropical cyclones in the Indian Ocean have been down. As have cyclones in the South Pacific (off Australia). And cyclones in the western North Pacific have been mostly flat with a recent downward trend.

So if you cherry-pick your data from just the one storm basin which fits your preconceived expectations and ignore all the others, yes hurricanes have been increasing in frequency and intensity.

I would say no

[parkinglot777]

Even if what they said works, the idea is to reduce hurricane threat. They don't think further of what other impacts on other thing else on the Earth? This is just an advertising. Not a real implementation.

Re:I would say no

[Anonymous Coward]

We should try it out in Earth.Dev and Earth.Test first.

As what the what now????

[SuperKendall]

As hurricanes continue to increase in frequency and intensity

Say what? That we have seen an overall increase of cat4/cat5 hurricanes is very much open to debate. It's not great when you just start out by assuming that to be true.

As hurricanes continue to increase in frequency

[110010001000]

Citation needed

Understand the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Until you understand the whole problem, don't fuck around with anything. The atmosphere is a complex and chaotic system, and we can't even predict the weather accurately for more than a few days (or even on the day). How about we don't start pumping more shit into the atmosphere until we have a fucking clue, huh?

In fact, if you read the article you discover it has a lovely side-effect: the process completely destroys the ozone layer. Yay. It also means all those chemtrail nutcases are going to be very smug. Double yay.

US hurricane landfalls are trending down

[acoustix]

http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/E23.html

Landfalling US hurricanes are trending down the last 140 years. All categories (1-4+) are trending down.

Fairness

[HBI]

The reason it wasn't a hurricane when it made landfall was that it had undergone an extratropical transition before landfall. Only tropical storms are hurricanes. The intensity was sufficient for the case.

The reason it was such a big deal was that New Jersey/NY had not seen a hurricane since about 1988, and no direct hits since 1985 - I remember, because I had to evacuate that year. In the meantime, construction was performed by people who had forgotten that, yes, we do get hurricanes there, just very rarely. A lot of that construction was swamped and destroyed, with the requisite whining from all involved.

Older people know full well that the area gets hurricanes and lived inland as a result. A wise government policy would prevent new construction in low-lying areas, but good luck getting that to happen in the face of all the money involved.