Microwaves to stop hurricanes?

[tronbunny]

Nonsense...
And they (concerned environmentalists ) want to attack people for driving SUVs.
Please!
The amount of damage that can be done to our environment/atmosphere by redirecting such an immense amount of energy is way beyond driving hundreds of thousands of SUVs!!

[dhweather]

Not a chance in hell ... man shouldn't even be even THINKING about tinkering with Mother Nature ... disrupting the balance will LIKELY have far worse and deadlier consequences in the future ...

SF

Yes indeed! There is a reason for hurricanes - they cool the ocean heat
content. IF we mess that up, what happens then?

[GoneWiththeWind]

No! No! No!

We need to put the money to better use than to fund a way to alter the balance of the earth. We do enough to the environment and need to spend money cleaning it rather than messing it up more. Surely if we mess with the way the earth re-distributes it's heat something worse will come along. What a waste of federal funds. It'll bite us in the butt. People just continue to live in areas that are prone to natural disasters, and that is just about anywhere you put your head on a pillow at night. Do we have to mess with everything? Sure it would be nice to have controll over things, we are all 'controll freaks' but GOD has the final say and is the one that is truely in controll so there no use!

OK! My rant is over and I am stepping down from the soap box! Next in line please!

Love the Shoney Big Boy Platform

[x-y-no]

The sattelite idea is particularly ridiculous, IMHO. How many square miles of solar panels would it take to collect enough energy to make a significant difference to a hurricane?

And where would such an array orbit? If one put it way out in geostationary, it would be nearly impossible to focus the microwave energy on a small area of the surface with any kind of array capable of transmitting the tremendous energy involved. But any lower orbit would mean having to wait until the sattelite passes over the area of the storm, and then only having a very limited time for delivering the energy.

Regarding the other ideas - the silver iodide idea is very old and AFAIK discredited. The oil slick idea might work, I suppose, but I wonder how much oil one would have to deposite to effectively coat an ocean being whipped up int 20 or 30 foot seas.