What is the real story on nuking hurricanes? Obviously Trump is not smart enough to think of such a strange idea himself. It was discussed during International Geophysical Year in the late 1950's obviously, something which the parade of experts seemed to ignore.
The NOAA page speaks of using a "nuclear weapon" but then speaks of it in more neutral terma (they mention it violates a convention on "peaceful nuclear explosives" or something like that).
Is it just something the labs wouldn't want to discuss as the true history of it, as with a lot of cold war stuff is such an embarassment or they want to stay out politics?
On a more practical note, suppose we use conventional explosives to target tornadoes, as they approach populated areas they could be targeted over farmland, through some sort of missile defense system. I believe the SDI people later came out with a laser to shoot down insects, too, to prevent malaria, and it looks promising.
4 comments:
"Obviously Trump is not smart enough to think of such a strange idea himself."
That never happaned like so many of these things it was made up. In fact G.W Bush was also accused of wanting nuke hurricanes and thhey said the same thing about Reagan. It is old joke that keeps being brought up to smear presidents. Remember the one about Trump wanting a Gorilla channel? That is a variation on the one where Bush wanted the Hitler channel. Also there is Trump saying to drink bleach, he never said that, how about the one that there are good people on both sides, where you leave off the next sentence when he says "I do not mean the neo nazies of course". The list goes on and on and you keep repeating this stuff.
The nuking hurricanes is an old one, I believe even Teller discussed it. The simplest idea is that you throw it off its track not that you can dissipate it. Hurricanes are thousands of times more powerful than any nuclear bomb. If you tilt the track even 1% when it is far away you can help it avoid landfall. The problem is that predictions tracks are not that accurate so may just send into land instead. There is also the radioactive part and so on. People had all sorts of funny ideas about nukes, such flooding cities, space travel, getting rid of storms and so on but even the simplistic calculations show that these do not work, or you could never get anywhere near the precision. The rocketship sort of works but there are better options. Nuking a tornado is also dumb, but leave it as a two line exercise of math for you to figure out way.
I have the vague recollection that some of these odd nuclear things are discussed in Jearl Walker's Flying Circus of Physics, which was published during the Cold War.
There might be other issues about throwing it off track too -- it would not really be fair to the people who were hit -- and the issue that any fallout or contamination that did happen would not really be fair to those people who were not faced with a hurricane. And of course, nuking a few hurricanes but not all, might be objectionable whenever one was not hit.
Perhaps, part of the implication about Trump or other presidents was that he would ignore such moral dilemmas. The US seems to be incredibly sensitive to stuff like that, as you know our health care system has endless debates about "death panels" or someone who needed unlimited coverage to recover from a rare disease. This has resulted in the entire system being a failure for many people, sometimes who have simple requirements like needing insulin or a bone set.
I'm guessing for sure there is no Gordian Knot to be cut so Trump can somehow make nuking Hurricanes practical, but other technologies seemingly might present better opportunities for that -- for example, diabetes is not really a choice, and rationing insulin makes no sense in a rich country, so it should be provided free of charge I think, to every diabetic. The country would benefit overall by having healthy people, and it would lower health care costs overall, since some of the complications of diabetes are quite expensive to treat.
" Trump or other presidents "
Trump never said anything about nuking a hurricane and no other president ever said it either. You cannot find a recording of it, or actual name to credible witness. It just gets thrown out some late nigh talk show and people just eat it up because they think Bush, Trump, Clinton or whoever is just a total idiot and would say something like that. It is obvious it is fake because it is same claim or joke. Remember the Jewish space laser, again this was said by a comedian and now attributed to congress person. 10 years form now it will be attributed some other congress person and so on.
von Neumann did discuss weather control in some of his papers, although I believe it was not particularly focused on anything nuclear -- he wanted to construct global climate models, and did bring up a belief that global warming had been one degree F by 1955. He warned weather could be used as a weapon and that there would have to be global agreement on climate issues, as I recall. That is he didn't express an opinion about whether global warming was good or bad, instead that there might be an argument about where to "set the thermostat" as it were.
Climate control is of course, an issue that is being revisited, as it would mitigate some of the warming effects caused by CO2 and other gases, although of course, not changing ocean acidification and the beneficial effects on plant growth. It could be done, for example, by changing the earth's reflectivity, placing structures in space, or releasing particles or gases that would act so as to lower temperature, increase cloud cover, and so on.
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