Fascinating Mike. Glad you were there. Typed on tiny keyboard. Caveat lector.
On Aug 27, 2019, at 10:37 PM, Michael MacCracken <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: 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..... [https://ipmcdn.avast.com/images/icons/icon-envelope-tick-round-orange-animated-no-repeat-v1.gif]<https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail&utm_term=icon> Virus-free. www.avast.com<https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail&utm_term=link> 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 times to 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. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. 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To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/CA%2BPtSAMJYDzP6xgacfGDn1Vk4Jv%2BfjrPV19k%2B%2BZ_NSRr1S_5hQ%40mail.gmail.com<https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/CA%2BPtSAMJYDzP6xgacfGDn1Vk4Jv%2BfjrPV19k%2B%2BZ_NSRr1S_5hQ%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. -- James R. Fleming Charles A. Dana Professor of Science, Technology, and Society, Colby College 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." -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. 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