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Katrina's 10 years ago this week so this a slight variation on
the other hurricane power extraction ideas.
Computer simulations indicate that a large number of fixed
position wind turbines would have reduced the intensity of
hurricane Katrina. The costs, both dollar wise and
environmentally,
of installing 80 thousand wind turbines for
each region that might be impacted have most people
looking
at it less than seriously.
As an alternative to the fixed position turbines would it be
possible to develop a mobile flotilla of semi-autonomously
remotely operated rigid sail vessels with subsurface turbine
generators. The generated power would be used to linear
accelerator launch within the calm of the storm eye
electric
prop propelled drones. These drones would climb to the
top
or near top where they would expend any remaining
battery
energy producing a synthetic sheer or otherwise destabilize
the structure. Once the drone’s prop power is depleted it
would then do a controlled fall with the prop reversed to
extract power from the eye wall to recharge its battery as
much as possible. The drone is recovered from the water's
surface and redeployed to one of the sail vessels to begin
the
cycle again. The intention is to use the power of the storm
to disrupt or redirect the force as a martial arts fighter
might
deflect the blow of an aggressor.
Lowball budget estimate based on the annual cost of
evacuations:
(1,000,000 cars X 10 gallons fuel X $3 X 2 for return trip) +
(1,000,000 overnight hotel X $100) = $160M
If this would work there is also that good chunk of carbon
dioxide we could prevent!
Computer Simulations at Stanford
http://stanford.edu...ane/WindHurric.html
The link is to the paper's author and includes a link to a PDF or html version. [dataloss, Aug 27 2015]
[link]
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//Computer simulations indicate that a large number
of fixed position wind turbines would have reduced
the intensity of hurricane Katrina.// Link? |
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Also, congratulations on your first HB post! |
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According to computer simulations, Earth should be without icecaps and oil while providing a habitat for 20 billion humans who make regular excursions to moon colonies that serve test-tube-meat burgers and kelp salad on the side. |
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// regular excursions to moon colonies // |
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No, thankyou. Can't you go to Venus or Mars or somehwere ? It's nice and quiet up here, apart from when that Presley bloke has one of his noisy concerts. |
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How about massive nukes for storms? If you have a
Hurricane spinning anti-clockwise, as they are wont to
do, headed for the coast of Florida, say, then BOOOM!!!!
you detonate a massive nuke underwater on the right
hand side. Now your nuke has lifted much water into the
air. This water has a horizontal velocity of near 0. The
hurricane must accelerate this water* to keep going, this
will slow it down on the right just a tad, kinking it's path.
Now, instead of a hurricane headed for Florida, you have
a radioactive hurricane headed for South Carolina. |
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* and some dead fish, admittedly. |
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Hi [dataloss], and welcome to the insane asylum know as the
halfbakery. I really can't comment on your idea, as it's over
my head. But I wanted to welcome you anyway. So there. |
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[bs0u0155], the "nuke the hurricane" idea has been posited before (here probably, but other places definitely) and it is normally the concensus that it would be a Very Bad Idea.
Mostly because a large, destructive, chaotic entity would become a RADIOACTIVE, large, destructive, chaotic entity. |
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Welcome. Nice idea, well thought through, with enough
detail to keep the pedants engaged, and enough flaws to
warrant comment. |
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The energy present in a mature hurricane is..., well lots,
and the amount of energy that may be harvested from it
by turbines is probably insignificant, even if you could
build a turbine robust enough and mount it on a suitably
stable platform and position it relative to the rotation of
the wind. So the hurricane would likely wreak its
devastation regardless. |
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There's another kind of inertia to overcome too; that of
political will. It's much easier to 'sell' disaster recovery
and reparations when you have evidence of devastation,
than it is to sell disaster prevention when human nature
is habitually optimistic. (Not me, though, obviously.) |
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Perhaps we can name the power extractors with pet
names so that we can say, "go get it Fido" or "sic em
Spot" |
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I’ll have to agree that there is a lot of energy in a
storm. This whole idea came to me while I was a
Katrina evacuee and refugee in Houston, when there
was another call for the evacuation of millions. An
estimated 2.5-3 million crowded the roads. As Rita
rolled in (at my wife’s insistence, we did not
evacuate again) I spent a restless night looking out
the window at the gridlocked traffic on the highway.
I thought that there had to be a better way. But
what could be done? The storms have always been
considered too powerful for people to control. At
that time I did a rough estimate of the power
consumed by people during that evacuation and it
seemed that a large number of people are able to
control (or waste) as much power as that of a
hurricane.
( 10 gallons of gas 10^8J times a million cars is
roughly 10^15J or roughly the kinetic energy in a
hurricane) |
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I wrote a short fictional novel in which the
destructive power of hurricanes could be diminished
by deploying thousands of remotely operated power
harvesters that would extract power from structural
elements of hurricanes - on the water's surface, in
mid-elevation on the eye wall, and from sheering at
the top elevation. |
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I wrote that novel many years ago as a way of
releasing the stress from the annual hurricane season
worries. Then a years ago I read the study by Dr.
Mark Jacobson of Stanford on the significant impact a
large wind turbine array positioned in the Gulf of
Mexico had on a computer model simulation of
Katrina. That along with recent drone technology
confirmed for me that storm control did not need to
be fictional. But maybe that is just my wishful
thinking. |
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Congrats on writing a novel - did it get published? |
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Also bonus points for putting some calculation into
this one. Interesting that the energy used in
evacuating is comparable to that in the hurricane... |
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I wonder what the effect on the overall system would be if something like this was deployed and found to accomplish it's intended purpose. |
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Would it all resolve itself in buffered effects, or are there unforeseen consequences of damping such an event ? |
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It would probably cause the Chinese stock market to
collapse. Oh, wait... |
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Agree that if targeted properly the structure might
be disrupted with less power but please no missiles! |
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It is available but not what I would call published…
i’ve never tried to contact any publishers… it is more
of an autistic spectrum dyslexic’s semi stream-of-
conscience story that I made available via Amazon as
an experiment along with three other roughly 200
page fictional novels. It is more a mental exercise
that I push myself through in retirement. |
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I can’t imagine that there would not be consequences
but at the same time I think there are much greater
negative environmental consequences of having a
high intensity storm come in and tear everything up.
In my first novel “The Weather Age” I struggled a bit
with Earth’s current Type I civilization classification
on the Kardashev scale. It seems to me, with the
weather at least, that we are approaching a point of
transition. So the consequence of not dampening the
storm is that when, as I said, a high intensity storm
comes in and tears everything up then the natives
will come back and spend a lot of energy rebuilding.
Yes, and I often wonder about the wisdom of living in
a place with storm hazards, or is it earthquake
hazard, or dry climates and the potential for
droughts, flood potential, wildfires… where was I
going with this? If we as a civilization do something
to moderate the storms then people, a significant
player of nature, might not do as much damage to
the environment by not having to produce so much
waste during the evacuation and if needed cleanup
and rebuild. |
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Here is a short version of consequences:
Yes there are consequences.... any attempt to
diminish the intensity of the storm should be limited
(if I was certain that a class 3 storm would not
intensify I would not evacuate) |
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We should not use nuclear or other harmful chemicals
to reduce the intensity. |
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Strive to use only the power of the storm to dampen
the storm (no fossil fuel power barges or drones) |
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As a technical aside, aren't all novels fictional by
definition? In any case, if you're on the autistic
spectrum you'll fit right in here. We are pretty much
a full-spectrum community. Which probably makes
us white noise. |
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