Important policy discussion: should we kill hurricanes?

[Aimless]

http://www.techflash.com/seattle/200...e_concept.html

http://www.techflash.com/seattle/200..._50385622.html

According to the book, deploying 10k of these would cost about a tenth of the annual cost of hurricane property damage in the US alone. Good deal?

[Aimless]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...nes-be-stopped

annual cost of hurricanes btw

[LittleFuzzy]

http://www.techflash.com/seattle/200...e_concept.html

http://www.techflash.com/seattle/200..._50385622.html

According to the book, deploying 10k of these would cost about a tenth of the annual cost of hurricane property damage in the US alone. Good deal?

Depends what the measurable effect of 10k of these would be. Also worth pointing out that even if they work, they only suppress formation in the water they're deployed in. They would also presumably weaken hurricanes which end up traveling over that area *though I wouldn't care to wager on how long they'd survive in that situation* It's not going to depress the temperature of the whole ocean region where hurricanes form unless they're deployed in far more massive numbers. And of course there's the law of unintended consequences. What is the ecological effect of constantly sending warm water below the thermocline?

[EyeKhan]

I agree with Fuzzy, more or less. What happens when you heat the lower reaches of the oceans like that? Do currents change? Are ocean fauna and flora affected good or bad? Would this alter, maybe slow down, the overal dispersal of seasonal summer heat and end up with odd winter weather? Or maybe the heat won't disperse entirely over the winter period and you could end up with a net annual gain of heat over a period of years until the entire 200 meters of ocean depth is the same temperature. Then what? Hurricane season returns? Or maybe you end up with a multi-year long hurricane season until the stored heat disperses. Who knows what would happen - this could even aggravate climate warming.

Nevertheless I think its worth a try. Why not? If it doesn't work, or if some unintended and undesirable consequences manifest, you could always sink them easily enough and shut the system down. Its certainly a safer idea, I think, than the idea to cool the atmosphere - and offset climate warming - by injecting sulfur into the stratosphere. That one seems too irreversible if it goes very bad. We'd just have to wait for the sulfur to dissipate, even if we end up with a global winter for a few years. Not good.

[Dreadnaught]

Aren't there all sorts of sea life that probably depend on fluctuations in ocean temperature at certain depths for mating/migration patterns?