Hurricane Sandy.

Discussion in 'Earth Science' started by Bebelina, Nov 8, 2012.

  1. Buddha12 Valued Senior Member

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    I'm suggesting that the peoples who's homes have been destroyed be relocated only, not everyone who lives there. That way there will be fewer problems in the future if another storm should hit again. The people with insurance could use that money to buy elesewhere and not return to where they use to reside. The places that are destroyed would be made into mini parks or beaches that the public could go to instead of homes blocking the ocean view.
     
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  3. Buddha12 Valued Senior Member

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    I guess you missed my point, I'm suggesting only those homes which were destroted be relocated not everyone. That way at least the people who move will not have to have their homes rebuilt again over and over.
     
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  5. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    So you are suggesting that big government step in and forbid the rebuilding rather than letting economics take its course? Are you suggesting eliminating federal support for hurricane victims (e.g. elimination of federal flood insurance program)?
     
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  7. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    You just answered your own question. Those big hotels and other buildings on the seashore are extremely popular for both residents and tourists. As a result they take in enormous income and the owners pay very high taxes. Even people who use them only as their primary residences pay high property taxes, because the property's assessed valuation (based more-or-less on its market value) is very high.
     
  8. Trippy ALEA IACTA EST Staff Member

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    I've done some thread cleaning, by the way. Split a bunch of posts and moved them to the cesspool.

    There's a couple of replies to some of the crud that I moved that I have left in the thread because they provided some good, useful information.
     
  9. Bebelina kospla.com Valued Senior Member

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    You guess wrong. I just took your suggestion further.

    Trippy, that is not ok. Now it looks likes I'm ok with Read- Only calling me "young lady" and claiming I know nothing, but maybe that's the point, because you so happen to agree, or what?
     
  10. The Marquis Only want the best for Nigel Valued Senior Member

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    Tidal wave hit SE Asia a few years back. Never garnered as much interest as this did.
     
  11. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    It's not uncommon for people to fantasize about how to control the weather, so as to make it suit their fancy.
     
  12. Bebelina kospla.com Valued Senior Member

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    I remember the tsunami, it got a lot of interest all over the world, but perhaps not in US?

    Why do people think about how to control the weather? Is it because we need to learn how to do it?
     
  13. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    The desire to control the weather is probably much older and more immediate than our awareness that we might actually need to do it for our survival.

    For example, if you wear a new pair of fancy shoes, you probably wish it wouldn't rain that day, as that would ruin your shoes.

    In agricultural settings, people had an acute awareness of how dependent they are on the weather, so in droughts, they wished for rain, and when there was too much rain, they wished it would stop.

    Etc.
     
  14. Bebelina kospla.com Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, those are good examples. Maybe this discussion need to be put on a level of a five year old, so "normal" people also can follow.

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    The natural step in the human evolution is to learn to control the weather then, you agree? Otherwise the thought of doing it wouldn't have existed for so long within the human consciousness. Just as we need to learn how to cure the common flu and lots of other seemingly impossible tasks.

    It would be interesting to find out how far the scientists have come in this field, for real, without people immediately starting to scream that it's impossible. It's the same dilemma as with genetics I suppose. The scientist have in reality come a very long way, but moral issues within society prevents them from presenting these advances to the public.
     
  15. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    A 5 year old would be able to understand the consequences of using a magnifying glass, that it will sting if you focus it on your skin. By age 12 she might have begun to understand that light is made of rays, that lenses bend the rays and focus them. At 20 she may understand that there's a certain amount of solar power falling on the lens, which the lens reduces to a pinpoint. And she can get an idea that it's the same energy, but producing a much higher temperature over a small area. She might reason that the pinpoint is 1/100th the area of the light collected, so there's about 100 times more energy per surface at the hot spot. Taking this one step further, she could imagine a lens 100 times larger, that, if focused on her whole hand would be pretty deadly. A quick search would show that maximum sunlight gives about 1 kW per sq meter. So a lens 1 m in diameter would provide around 1 kW of energy to the surface where its focused. A huge lens a million meters in diameter could make a lethal death ray like in the movies, and so on. But if she ever tried to figure out how someone might actually build a chunk of glass or plastic 1 million meters in diameter, she would quickly get bogged down in the practicalities of how or why that's so hard to do. By age 30 she might have her PhD and working in the solar energy field. If she were to come across your thread, she might suggest you start by looking at how much energy the sun puts into a hurricane, and how much energy the whole world produces in a year. You might even want to look at how much energy is in all the oil that ever was and ever will be, plus all the uranium. That would at least give you a way to think of scale. Then you might try to guess what sort of scale you had in mind when the idea first crossed your mind.

    On a small scale, yes, heaters and air conditioners. Larger would be a huge arena or mall. I recall a government building complex which was miles of sinister skunkworks. It pulled huge amounts of power to keep it comfortable inside. I've been in a few places that tried to heat or cool the open air, but these were in a land where money grew on trees. (Of course I will be resurrecting these projects when my face is on all the money.)

    Personally, I'd like to have superpowers which I'd use to pull humanity out of its needless suffering, but mainly so they'd all bow to me and sing my praises. (You could write the hymns

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    ).

    Imagine a person screaming so loud that it split a mountain in two. It's just a question of scale. How about a Bose speaker a million meters across, with all the power from all the power plants in the world pushing all the amplifiers in the world (with you at the mic, if you don't mind). I think you could cause some air circulation that way.

    I think the moralizers have fallen into a tar pit here lately (in the US). They're starting to look like well preserved saber toothed tigers. Come to think of it... there has been some DNA extracted from extinct critters. Hey: fossil meets fossil. That's a scene I'd like to see. With you bustin a high C at a jillion watts and all the minions paying homage to me... once I get past a few minor technical hurdles.

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  16. Bebelina kospla.com Valued Senior Member

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    I would be happy to sing to you some day, sicne you really seem to desire the soothing sound of my sweet vocalchords.

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    Keep in mind that you are talking to a person that looks at the Earth as it was a little rubberball infested with vermin, to get the scale straight.

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    I like the Earth, don't get me wrong, but it's a very small planet.

    So what you're basically is saying is that the Hubble telescope for example could hold a big enough magnifying glass and point towards the sea outside of New York and create a hurricane?
     
  17. Rhaedas Valued Senior Member

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    It's not quite that simple, but if we added warmth to the water in the right conditions and area, then yes, we could influence storm generation. A long way from planning a hurricane and telling it what path to take though.

    Incidental, the opposite is a considered method of sapping hurricane strength, although the logistics are also quite daunting. Reducing sunlight to waters in front of a hurricane, making the water cooler, could have some effect on a storm. Problems are the size of the blocking mechanism, keeping it on that one spot, and that water holds heat rather well, so it would take a while to drop a few degrees overall. And I'm sure other issues as well.
     
  18. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    No. You'd need a telescope the size of Texas to do that. And you'd actually need a mirror, not a lens, since a lens would take away heat from the areas surrounding it.

    Of course, even if you could create a storm, it would immediately start doing its own thing, and would be about as controllable as a 2 year old who hasn't had his nap.

    There have been a LOT of attempts at weather control, but really about all we've been able to do is to cause clouds to start producing rain a bit earlier than they would have otherwise.
     
  19. Bebelina kospla.com Valued Senior Member

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    Is that really correct? A mirrior the size of Texas in space? Considering the distance then I think a smaller mirror would be enough.

    How big would a mirror on the Hubble telescope need to be to magnify the sunlight enough to create the perfect atmostphere for a hurricane to take form?

    Or how many smaller mirrors placed on different satellites would it require?
     
  20. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    The reason is this. The amount of available energy is measured over the surface that it falls on. On earth, after the sun's energy had been reduced somewhat by passing through the atmosphere, it will hit the ground with a maximum power of about 1,000 watts per square meter. So if you could catch all of it in a perfect solar cell that converted all of the light to electricity, which was 1 sq meter in area, you could expect 1 kilowatt if it was a clear day and the sun was directly overhead.

    Out in space, the watts per sq meter will be slightly greater, but if we call it an even 1000 watts, to collect a million watts you would need a device 1000 sq meters, and to collect a billion watts you would need a device a million sq meters in area.

    The lens in the Hubble (it's actually a mirror) is only 2.4 meters in diameter - a surface area of about 4.5 sq meters. So, if the solar light was 1 kw per sq meter, that would equate to 4.5 kw, which is maybe enough to power a couple of small appliances.

    So, if you had a mirror the size of Texas (696,200 sq km = 696,200 million sq meters) you could expect to collect 696,200 million kW, or about 6.96 x 10[sup]14[/sup] W, which is probably pretty close to the amount of power in a large hurricane.

    (PS - re your sweet voice: I'm all ears. . .I heard some music you posted links to - maybe a year ago or so. I liked it all around, the composition, the texture, the performance and the mix-down. Way ta go.)
     
  21. Bebelina kospla.com Valued Senior Member

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    Ok, building a mirror that size out in space would be difficult, but not impossible. But if we take my other example, the power of many, would that also work, if they were directed at the same spot on Earth at the same time?
     
  22. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    Theoretically, if you put a zillion mirrors in orbit, adding up to the size of Texas, you could manufacture a hurricane. If you pointed them all at the same small spot, on a clear day where it might be possible to aim them to a small spot on the ground... I think you would manufacture a volcano, or at least a caldera. If you pointed them at a small spot in a large body of water, it would boil furiously, but the steam would block the light. So if this beam scanned across the water it could probably whip up rain and possibly a severe storm quite handily.
     
  23. Bebelina kospla.com Valued Senior Member

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    Cool.

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