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Sunday, October 21, 2007

Controlling The Weather


Scientists have made a breakthrough in man's desire to control the forces of nature – unveiling plans to weaken hurricanes and steer them off course, to prevent tragedies such as Hurricane Katrina

Except that steer 'em in the wrong direction and you will face a mighty wind from the legal community:

But the hurricane modifiers are fighting more than the weather. Lawyers warn that diverting a hurricane from one city to save life and property could result in multi-billion dollar lawsuits from towns that bear the brunt instead. Hurricane Katrina caused about $41 billion in damage to New Orleans.

Although the two schemes under consideration involved dropping dark dust or bits of "tyre" (note: English newspaper, I love how they spell that. And "connexion" as well) into the Hurricane cloud tops and thus heating them up, one nifty variant on the idea would have "Satellites...heat the cloud tops by beaming microwaves from space."

So when these guys were done firing up the grid they could zap storms from their place in geosynchronous orbit.

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous5:03 PM

    I don't believe it. I think that controlling a hurricanes direction is impossible. How will the people in the planes get close enough without crashing. They need to rethink what their doing before the put innocent lives in danger. The hurricane might go in an opposite direction other than the one intended.

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