[extropy-chat] anti-hurricane engineering, reply

[Adrian Tymes]

--- Johnius <Johnius at Genius.UCSD.edu> wrote:
>   I forwarded some of your feedback posted on the 
> anti-hurricane engineering thread to Wenger.  He's
> now back from his teaching tour and sent the 
> following replies.

> ==== begin forward ====

>  << Hmm.  I wonder if one could do a
> sub-million-dollar
>  proving project, that would slightly but measurably
>  reduce the force of a cat 1 or 2?  Preferably one
> not
>  slated to come ashore, just in case the worst
> happens.
>  Once one has proven it this way, then one could
> make
>  backed-up-by-evidence projections of how much it
> would
>  cost to diminsh a cat 4 or 5, and try to get
> funding
>  for that upscaled project.   A.T. >>
> 
> It might be feasible to get a mile or so's
> deployment out there, run computer 
> predictions of hurricane performance from the four
> or five current best 
> weather models, then compare actual hurricane
> performance.  But you'd need to do 
> that a few times to get confidence of data,
> especially since the changes would 
> be small - so I'm thinking the minimum figure would
> be more likely somewhere 
> between five and ten million dollars.   ...w 

Eh, what?  Did I actually suggest something that might
work?  ^_^;;;

If five to ten - or, for safety factor's sake, let's
call it twenty - million dollars is all that would be
needed to prove this out, that sounds like something
in the range of charity or a small government-funded
study.  Either way, funding seems possible.

So, I wonder if there's anyone on this list who's more
of an expert at these kinds of studies, who might want
to run with it.  Or, if not, where would be a good
place to suggest this idea to get it run with
(possibly with further reality checking, of course).
A quick google on "otec hurricane" shows I'm not the
only one who's thought of this in the past few months,
but I didn't find any plans for formal studies of the
idea.