| GREG-STRANGE.COM |
"If you haven't found something strange during the
day, it hasn't been much of a day." -- John A. Wheeler
day, it hasn't been much of a day." -- John A. Wheeler
PROVIDING SUBSTANTIVE COMMENTARY ON THE
PEOPLE, POLITICS, EVENTS AND ABSURDITIES OF
OUR TIME. SERVED UP WITH ACERBIC WIT, YOU
SHOULD FIND IT QUITE SATISFYING.
PEOPLE, POLITICS, EVENTS AND ABSURDITIES OF
OUR TIME. SERVED UP WITH ACERBIC WIT, YOU
SHOULD FIND IT QUITE SATISFYING.
Battling Global Warming-Induced Hurricanes
With Diversionary Tactics
Remember back in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina devastated
New Orleans? Immediately afterward we were all told by those
in the know that because of global warming this was going to
become the norm and that raging, Katrina-like storms would be
routinely ravaging the United States and other hurricane prone
areas like never before.
Never mind that what had once been a Category 5 hurricane
was only Category 3 when it made landfall. And never mind all
the special conditions peculiar to the city of New Orleans
which contributed to the destruction, such as nearly half the
city's land being below sea level and the failure of badly
designed and sometimes substandardly constructed levees. A
report by the American Society of Civil Engineers earlier this
year said that two thirds of the flooding could have been
avoided if the levees had held.
But forget about all that. What happened to New Orleans
would eventually befall the rest of us because of the sin of
manmade global warming. One overly excitable writer in the
Boston Globe said that "the hurricane that struck Louisiana
yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather
Service. It's real name is global warming." He went on to
blame every notable and destructive weather anomaly that
year on -- all together now -- global warming.
And then a funny thing happened on the way to planetary
devastation in 2006. Not one single hurricane struck the
United States. Huh. Well there's a real forehead slapper. Had
to be a total fluke, right? If so, we're having another fluky year
because so far in 2007 -- and the tropical season is almost over
-- there has only been one hurricane to hit the U.S. and it was a
measly Category 1.
So what's going on here? Where are all the global warming-
induced catastrophic hurricanes that were going to make
mincemeat out of U.S. coastal cities? Apparently, predicting
global warming-related disasters isn't quite as easy as it must
have looked right after Katrina.
But let's say things pick up in the next few years and Katrinas
become as common as garden variety thunderstorms. Thanks
to a reported scientific breakthrough, we may be able to avert
countless cyclonic catastrophes without having to shut down
modern civilization as we know it.
According to computer simulations performed at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, there may be a way to
decrease the strength and alter the direction of hurricanes.
The idea involves dropping soot or other black particles into
the clouds at the tops of hurricanes. The particles would
absorb heat from the sun which would theoretically cause a
hurricane to warm up and which would in turn, theoretically,
reduce its wind speed and cause its path to change.
So, if a hurricane were bearing down on a major city and it
received this treatment, its intensity might be decreased and
its path might be diverted away from the city. Sounds
fantastic, doesn‘t it? Think of the loss of life and property that
could be avoided. Talk about the greatest thing since sliced
bread, really.
Unfortunately -- and I hate to be a spoilsport here, but --
there’s just one problem: lawyers.
Well, of course. How could it be any other way? What initially
sounds like one of the greatest technological innovations that
could ever be developed to benefit mankind would really just be
one more excuse for an endless morass of contentious lawsuits.
Here's the problem in a nutshell. If you divert a hurricane
away from a major city and then it hits Podunkville instead, the
folks in Podunkville are going to sue the pants off somebody for
causing a hurricane to hit them.
And who could really blame them? If scientists hadn’t
interfered, Podunkville would have missed the brunt of the
hurricane, but instead it got hammered. Sounds like an open-
and-shut case to me. If jurors will award millions to someone
who spilt hot McDonalds coffee in her own lap, they’d likely
break the bank over something this obvious and this big.
It’s not the end of the story just yet, however, because the team
of scientists at MIT has now hired a professor of risk
management to help them try and solve all the pesky legalities
that could otherwise doom a great thing. Well, okay, good luck
with that. But in a society as insanely litigious as this one --
where a baby stroller, for instance, comes with a warning label
that says “Remove Child Before Folding” -- it’s hard to imagine
how you lawyer-proof the activity of hurricane diversion.
Just when you think that man is ready to resourcefully adapt to
the potential hazards of climate change rather than shut down
the use of prosperity-generating energy, you’re brought back to
reality by the prospect of a looming tsunami of litigation. Who
would have thought that ambulance chasers would one day
become storm chasers?
With Diversionary Tactics
Remember back in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina devastated
New Orleans? Immediately afterward we were all told by those
in the know that because of global warming this was going to
become the norm and that raging, Katrina-like storms would be
routinely ravaging the United States and other hurricane prone
areas like never before.
Never mind that what had once been a Category 5 hurricane
was only Category 3 when it made landfall. And never mind all
the special conditions peculiar to the city of New Orleans
which contributed to the destruction, such as nearly half the
city's land being below sea level and the failure of badly
designed and sometimes substandardly constructed levees. A
report by the American Society of Civil Engineers earlier this
year said that two thirds of the flooding could have been
avoided if the levees had held.
But forget about all that. What happened to New Orleans
would eventually befall the rest of us because of the sin of
manmade global warming. One overly excitable writer in the
Boston Globe said that "the hurricane that struck Louisiana
yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather
Service. It's real name is global warming." He went on to
blame every notable and destructive weather anomaly that
year on -- all together now -- global warming.
And then a funny thing happened on the way to planetary
devastation in 2006. Not one single hurricane struck the
United States. Huh. Well there's a real forehead slapper. Had
to be a total fluke, right? If so, we're having another fluky year
because so far in 2007 -- and the tropical season is almost over
-- there has only been one hurricane to hit the U.S. and it was a
measly Category 1.
So what's going on here? Where are all the global warming-
induced catastrophic hurricanes that were going to make
mincemeat out of U.S. coastal cities? Apparently, predicting
global warming-related disasters isn't quite as easy as it must
have looked right after Katrina.
But let's say things pick up in the next few years and Katrinas
become as common as garden variety thunderstorms. Thanks
to a reported scientific breakthrough, we may be able to avert
countless cyclonic catastrophes without having to shut down
modern civilization as we know it.
According to computer simulations performed at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, there may be a way to
decrease the strength and alter the direction of hurricanes.
The idea involves dropping soot or other black particles into
the clouds at the tops of hurricanes. The particles would
absorb heat from the sun which would theoretically cause a
hurricane to warm up and which would in turn, theoretically,
reduce its wind speed and cause its path to change.
So, if a hurricane were bearing down on a major city and it
received this treatment, its intensity might be decreased and
its path might be diverted away from the city. Sounds
fantastic, doesn‘t it? Think of the loss of life and property that
could be avoided. Talk about the greatest thing since sliced
bread, really.
Unfortunately -- and I hate to be a spoilsport here, but --
there’s just one problem: lawyers.
Well, of course. How could it be any other way? What initially
sounds like one of the greatest technological innovations that
could ever be developed to benefit mankind would really just be
one more excuse for an endless morass of contentious lawsuits.
Here's the problem in a nutshell. If you divert a hurricane
away from a major city and then it hits Podunkville instead, the
folks in Podunkville are going to sue the pants off somebody for
causing a hurricane to hit them.
And who could really blame them? If scientists hadn’t
interfered, Podunkville would have missed the brunt of the
hurricane, but instead it got hammered. Sounds like an open-
and-shut case to me. If jurors will award millions to someone
who spilt hot McDonalds coffee in her own lap, they’d likely
break the bank over something this obvious and this big.
It’s not the end of the story just yet, however, because the team
of scientists at MIT has now hired a professor of risk
management to help them try and solve all the pesky legalities
that could otherwise doom a great thing. Well, okay, good luck
with that. But in a society as insanely litigious as this one --
where a baby stroller, for instance, comes with a warning label
that says “Remove Child Before Folding” -- it’s hard to imagine
how you lawyer-proof the activity of hurricane diversion.
Just when you think that man is ready to resourcefully adapt to
the potential hazards of climate change rather than shut down
the use of prosperity-generating energy, you’re brought back to
reality by the prospect of a looming tsunami of litigation. Who
would have thought that ambulance chasers would one day
become storm chasers?