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Slow a Hurricane?

04/01/2014 5:13 PM

would a phalanx of windmills really impede the destructive path of a hurricane?

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/offshore-wind-farms-could-knock-down-hurricanes1/

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#1

Re: slow a hurricane?

04/01/2014 5:37 PM

"cost would be recouped over time through electricity sales"

Costs about $1.2-2 mil per mW to build a turbine.

Bullcrap!

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#2

Re: slow a hurricane?

04/01/2014 5:40 PM

the powerful seagull lobby might be hard to get past

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#3

Re: Slow a Hurricane?

04/01/2014 6:39 PM

And I calculate if everyone in Florida goes outside and starts fanning with Chinese hand fans we could blow the next hurricane toward Washington where the rising hot air will dissipate it.

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#4
In reply to #3

Re: Slow a Hurricane?

04/01/2014 6:56 PM

Only if the hurricane hits on one of the 110 days a year that Congress happens to be in Washington.

Nice work, if you can get it.

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#5

Re: Slow a Hurricane?

04/01/2014 7:02 PM

Since the blades on the turbines would most likely be "feathered" in a high wind, you might as well just erect a great big screen...still wouldn't do much.

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#6
In reply to #5

Re: Slow a Hurricane?

04/01/2014 7:06 PM

actually I'd enjoy seeing a computer model of the concept if I ever get the chance but if it comes to a bet I'm taking mother nature!

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#7
In reply to #5

Re: Slow a Hurricane?

04/01/2014 7:13 PM
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#8

Re: Slow a Hurricane?

04/01/2014 7:52 PM

Really!? Have you never seen a hurricane?

Not to mention that you would be on the suction side of this heat engine....the only way to stop a hurricane is to cut off the heat....

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#9
In reply to #8

Re: Slow a Hurricane?

04/01/2014 8:00 PM

slow and stop are different concepts

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#12
In reply to #8

Re: Slow a Hurricane?

04/01/2014 8:31 PM

Yes, but have you ever seen 78,000 wind turbines?

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#13
In reply to #12

Re: Slow a Hurricane?

04/01/2014 8:53 PM

How and where to are you going to send all of that electrical power?

That many turbines running at full capacity would add up to some ~200 gigawatts of outgoing electrical power which is considerably more than what the whole North American continent is using on average at any single moment in time.

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#14
In reply to #13

Re: Slow a Hurricane?

04/01/2014 8:56 PM

to a bank of fans onshore to blow the cane back to sea of course

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#15
In reply to #13

Re: Slow a Hurricane?

04/01/2014 9:01 PM

The power could be used to power carbon scrubbers to halt global warming.

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#17
In reply to #13

Re: Slow a Hurricane?

04/01/2014 10:03 PM

We might be begging for storms soon!

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#29
In reply to #13

Re: Slow a Hurricane?

04/03/2014 11:05 AM

Send it into battery banks for storage, then we can use it to power all the Tesla cars on ... the ... road... . Okay we'll use it to power the cars that Tesla is going to sell ... except ... on ... the East Coast... .

We could use it to send about 165 Marty McFlys back to the 80's.

Hmmm, you think that much power pumped into a laser could carve something into the Moon?

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#18
In reply to #12

Re: Slow a Hurricane?

04/01/2014 10:52 PM

No but I've been in a dozen hurricanes....and how do you know where the next hurricane is going to hit?...Because if you don't know where the hurricane will hit, then where will you build this wind farm?.....or must we make them mobile as well?

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#19
In reply to #18

Re: Slow a Hurricane?

04/01/2014 10:56 PM

I think it is time for DoorMan to step up and develop millions and millions (pardon the Saganism) of propeller beanies and we should mobilize the Salvation Army to act as that mobile wind farm.

Any way the wind blows can be their new motto and song.

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#20
In reply to #19

Re: Slow a Hurricane?

04/01/2014 11:02 PM

I'll ping him on our LynDoor™Telekinetic communicators and let him know of the new market. Mind you, they are still in the prototype stages, so he may get zapped with 3 giga-flops of fur balls.

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#10

Re: Slow a Hurricane?

04/01/2014 8:03 PM

Hmmm. The numbers don't add up.

Given one average sized hurricane dissipates more energy than all of human kind uses in 50 - 100 years combined I have my doubts they are going to have much of an effect.

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#11

Re: Slow a Hurricane?

04/01/2014 8:27 PM

Don't scare me. I' ve been in far too many hurricanes already. Even the biggest possible bomb explosion can hardly change the pattern.

However, it could destroy the windmills

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#16

Re: Slow a Hurricane?

04/01/2014 10:02 PM

The path of the hurricane will impede on the looks of the windmills phalanx.

We can't even stop the rain!

Answer is NO.

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#21

Re: Slow a Hurricane?

04/01/2014 11:05 PM

Maybe we could just build a bunch of these giant robots and get them to stand shoulder to shoulder when a storm comes....and maybe mount a wind turbine on his back....

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#22
In reply to #21

Re: Slow a Hurricane?

04/01/2014 11:11 PM
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#23

Re: Slow a Hurricane?

04/02/2014 2:18 AM

The pittance of height that any current windmill on earth possesses is just that...a pittance. It would be like ants trying to stop shoes.

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#24
In reply to #23

Re: Slow a Hurricane?

04/02/2014 7:57 AM

The fire ants down here can do it once they get inside!

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#27
In reply to #24

Re: Slow a Hurricane?

04/03/2014 2:40 AM

I don't doubt that they try!

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#31
In reply to #27

Re: Slow a Hurricane?

04/03/2014 7:12 PM

Whoops there goes another rubber sole shoe!

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#25

Re: Slow a Hurricane?

04/02/2014 10:50 PM

Is the aim to harness a hurricane or dissipate the destructive energy?If dissipation is the cause, then deflect upwards or suck downwards. In Australia, we do things 'in reverse'. Cyclones rotate clockwise. Now, if the two rotating weather systems were to be somehow attracted to each other then one might substantially reduce the effects of the other.I am sure that there is a screen based phone app where one weather system can be dragged over the screen to the other with a simple finger movement. No need to spend the dollars on a fixed site wind farm.

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#30
In reply to #25

Re: Slow a Hurricane?

04/03/2014 11:17 AM

Send a left-rotating hurricane into a right-rotating hurricane?

Why does this remind me of one of those 'battling tops' shows from Japan, Keyblade or something like that, "My top spins to the left, so when it hits your right-spinning top, I steal some of your energy, you cannot beat me! Mua-ha-ha!"

I could just see the storm fronts colliding near the equator (the only place the Coriolis effect would be weak enough for them to both exist near each other) and the vortexes feed off each other as the storms mesh like gears.The resulting East-bound Gale would be strong enough to... to... darn it, every time I try to think of the effects of that, I can only come up with cartoonish scenarios, like blowing everyone in the African continent into the Indian Ocean or something like that. I just can't wrap my brain properly around such a massive unleashing of raw power.

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#32
In reply to #30

Re: Slow a Hurricane?

04/07/2014 4:24 PM

You wouldn't need a counter-rotating hurricane. If you could drive it close to the equator (big if), the coriolis force would disappear. They don't work within 10 degrees of the equator. Here is a picture of past hurricanes in the North Atlantic.

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#26

Re: Slow a Hurricane?

04/02/2014 10:57 PM

Try to design something which can absorb/store hurricane's force similar to wave energy.

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#33
In reply to #26

Re: Slow a Hurricane?

04/08/2014 12:11 AM

Wind power is similar to Wave power & Hurricane is similar to Tsunami

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#28

Re: Slow a Hurricane?

04/03/2014 4:10 AM

A phalanx of windmills would have little chance of destroying the power of a hurricane, but a hurricane has a much greater chance of destroying a phalanx of windmills.

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#34

Re: Slow a Hurricane?

04/28/2014 8:44 PM

Oh dear, something to 'ruin' a good argument!

Simulations Show Wind Farms Could Curb Hurricanes
Computer simulations at Stanford University have shown that offshore wind farms with thousands of wind turbines could have sapped the power of real-life hurricanes including Katrina, significantly decreasing their winds and accompanying storm surge, and possibly preventing billions of dollars in damages.
www.techbriefs.com/tv/taming-hurricanes

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#35

Re: Slow a Hurricane?

04/28/2014 10:07 PM

It would be better if we can stop hurricane at its beginning,in the atmosphere,using modern technology,by collecting data from satellites.

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#36
In reply to #35

Re: Slow a Hurricane?

04/30/2014 2:42 PM

Every hurricane starts life as a tropical storm, are you looking to try and stop ALL tropical storms, or just the ones that get strong enough to potentially become hurricanes? Many storms during a season will 'waffle' on the line between being a storm and a hurricane, before either petering out or swelling that last bit to become and stay a hurricane.

Also, many hurricanes will run themselves out before they make landfall.

It would be nice to be able to 'stamp out' hurricanes before they cause property damage or loss of life, but which ones do we go after, and when do we strike out against them? Too aggressive an approach and we're squandering resources quelling storms that weren't likely to hurt anyone, wait too long and the hurricanes become too strong to stop and we might as well be doing nothing.

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#37

Re: Slow a Hurricane?

05/20/2014 6:04 AM

Maybe Jupiter's reducing red spot could help in the lateral thinking ....


By the time NASA's Voyager space probes flew by in 1979 and 1980, the spot was down to about 22,500 kilometers across.

Now, new pictures taken by the Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope show Jupiter's red spot is smaller than it has ever been, measuring less than 16,100 kilometers in diameter. It also appears more circular in shape.

Scientists aren't sure why the Great Red Spot is shrinking by about 1000 kilometers a year.

"It is apparent that very small eddies are feeding into the storm ... These may be responsible for the accelerated change by altering the [storm's] internal dynamics," said Amy Simon, an astronomer with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Simon and colleagues plan follow-up studies to try to figure out what is happening in Jupiter's atmosphere that is draining the storm of energy and causing it to shrink.

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