Just a couple of follow-ups based on hopefully not too foggy a memory:
1. If one calculates the latent heat release rate from a large hurricane
(so take an area of the rainfall, and a rainfall rate of say 6 inches in
a day over that area), one can then compare to the energy of a nuclear
weapon, just to get a sense of relative magnitudes. When I did so
several decades ago, as I recall that the rate of latent heat release
(as one metric of the energy a hurricane is processing) was equivalent
to a few megatons per minute (now this energy is not all dissipated as
most is transformed into rising motion that returns as heat when air
elsewhere is pushed down, but even if a few percent goes to friction
loss with the surface, one gets a sense of why the destructive path can
look like a war zone). The size of most nuclear weapons in current
arsenals is perhaps at most a couple of hundred kilotons, and in any
case, a megaton explosion would take its energy well up into the
stratosphere. So it is really hard to see how using even a dozen nuclear
explosions could do much of anything, even as a storm was forming,
especially as it is heat that is driving the intensification of the
storm. And one would have no idea what the outcome would be, if anything
at all--and since pretty much each storm system is unique, there really
is no good baseline. Basically, the idea is ridiculous.
2. I once got invited to Teller's office to answer whether nuclear
explosives could be used to break the California drought in the
mid-1970s or so. I rough estimated the energy involved in the drought
(foregone latent heat release), ocean temperature anomaly said to be
diverting the storm track, and month-long effect of the excess albedo
due to midwestern snow cover that was also suggested to be a cause--each
came out at something 10**21 calories. A megaton is 10**15 calories. So
even if one could imagine a 1% trigger to change things, it was still 4
order of magnitude. Teller was said to be an order of magnitude
thinker--I put these numbers on his blackboard and that was the end of
that idea (not his, but one of his proteges--and not Lowell Wood, but ET
did want an analysis).
3. On the Alaska harbor idea, the book about it is "The Firecracker
Boys", and the idea was to make a good harbor as the basis for economic
development. Environmental analysis pretty quickly showed the risks to
the food chain and health as radionuclides got taken up in moss and then
the reindeer ate the moss and then the people ate the reindeer, etc. It
was study of this and a few other such ideas that led, as I understand
it, to formation of the Office of Biological and Environmental Research
(or some similar name) within the AEC. That office later became the
Office of Health and Environmental Research in DOE and got started on
climate change research back around 1978. Also, much of the research
done on radionuclide paths to people, etc. turned out to be really
useful (in addition to making clear the risks of using nuclear
explosions to make a harbor) for figuring the heavy metal dose to people
from such pollutants as mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants.
So, not in vain.
Mike MacCracken
On 8/27/19 4:20 PM, David Appell wrote:
Didn't Edward Teller go to Alaska to try to convince a small town to
let him enlarge their harbor using nuclear bombs?
On Tue, Aug 27, 2019 at 1:17 PM Jim Fleming <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Fixing the Sky, p. 194: "In 1945 Julian Huxley, then head of
UNESCO, spoke at Madison Square Garden about the possibilities of
using nuclear weapons as “atomic dynamite” for “landscaping the
Earth” or perhaps using them to change the climate by dissolving
the polar ice cap."
On Tue, Aug 27, 2019 at 3:09 PM Jessica Gurevitch
<[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Hadn't heard this.....yes, this would indeed be geoengineering
(of weather, with unintended climate consequences).....it just
gets crazier and crazier.....
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On Mon, Aug 26, 2019 at 1:35 AM Andrew Lockley
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
wrote:
Poster's note: obliquely relevant as MCB is potentially
able to influence hurricanes
Axios: Trump suggested dropping nuclear bombs into
hurricanes to stop them from hitting the U.S..
https://www.axios.com/trump-nuclear-bombs-hurricanes-97231f38-2394-4120-a3fa-8c9cf0e3f51c.html
Scoop: Trump suggested nuking hurricanes to stop them
from hitting U.S.
Illustration of Trump pressing nuclear button
Illustration: Lazaro Gamio/Axios
President Trump has suggested multiple timesto senior
Homeland Security and national security officials that
they explore using nuclear bombs to stop hurricanes from
hitting the United States, according to sources who have
heard the president's private remarks and been briefed on
a National Security Council memorandum that recorded those
comments.
Behind the scenes: During one hurricane briefing at the
White House, Trump said, "I got it. I got it. Why don't we
nuke them?" according to one source who was there. "They
start forming off the coast of Africa, as they're moving
across the Atlantic, we drop a bomb inside the eye of the
hurricane and it disrupts it. Why can't we do that?" the
source added, paraphrasing the president's remarks.
* Asked how the briefer reacted, the source recalled he
said something to the effect of, "Sir, we'll look into
that."
* Trump replied by asking incredulously how many
hurricanes the U.S. could handle and reiterating his
suggestion that the government intervene before they
make landfall.
* The briefer "was knocked back on his heels," the
source in the room added. "You could hear a gnat fart
in that meeting. People were astonished. After the
meeting ended, we thought, 'What the f---? What do we
do with this?'"
Trump also raised the idea in another conversation with a
senior administration official. A 2017 NSC memo describes
that second conversation, in which Trump asked whether the
administration should bomb hurricanes to stop them from
hitting the homeland. A source briefed on the NSC memo
said it does not contain the word "nuclear"; it just says
the president talked about bombing hurricanes.
* The source added that this NSC memo captured "multiple
topics, not just hurricanes. … It wasn't that somebody
was so terrified of the bombing idea that they wrote
it down. They just captured the president’s comments."
* The sources said that Trump's "bomb the hurricanes"
idea — which he floated early in the first year and a
bit of his presidency before John Bolton took over as
national security adviser — went nowhere and never
entered a formal policy process.
White House response: A senior administration official
said, "We don't comment on private discussions that the
president may or may not have had with his national
security team."
* A different senior administration official, who has
been briefed on the president's hurricane bombing
suggestion, defended Trump's idea and said it was no
cause for alarm. "His goal — to keep a catastrophic
hurricane from hitting the mainland — is not bad," the
official said. "His objective is not bad."
* "What people near the president do is they say 'I love
a president who asks questions like that, who’s
willing to ask tough questions.' ... It takes strong
people to respond to him in the right way when stuff
like this comes up. For me, alarm bells weren't going
off when I heard about it, but I did think somebody is
going to use this to feed into 'the president is
crazy' narrative."
The big picture: Trump didn't invent this idea. The notion
that detonating a nuclear bomb over the eye of a hurricane
could be used to counteract convection currents dates to
the Eisenhower era, when it was floated by a government
scientist.
* The idea keeps resurfacing in the public even though
scientists agree it won't work. The myth has been so
persistent that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, the U.S. government agency that
predicts changes in weather and the oceans, published
an online fact sheet for the public
<https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/C5c.html> under
the heading "Tropical Cyclone Myths Page."
* The page states: "Apart from the fact that this might
not even alter the storm, this approach neglects the
problem that the released radioactive fallout would
fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land
areas and cause devastating environmental problems.
Needless to say, this is not a good idea."
About 3 weeks after Trump's 2016 election, National
Geographic published
<https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/11/hurricanes-weather-history-nuclear-weapons/>
an
article titled, "Nuking Hurricanes: The Surprising History
of a Really Bad Idea." It found, among other problems, that:
* Dropping a nuclear bomb into a hurricane would be
banned under the terms of the Peaceful Nuclear
Explosions Treaty between the U.S. and the former
Soviet Union. So that could stave off any experiments,
as long as the U.S. observes the terms of the treaty.
Atlantic hurricane season runs until Nov. 30.
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Profile: http://www.colby.edu/directory/profile/jfleming
Series editor, Palgrave, https://www.palgrave.com/us/series/14581
Email: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
"Everything is unprecedented if you don't study history."
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