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Originally Posted by THGL
I don't think anyone's mentioned this yet, but do we really want to stop a hurricane after it's been formed? What I mean is that everything on this planet happens for a reason and why should we destroy something that Mother Nature thought was necessary. Yes, hurricanes are destructive; yes, people die; yes, it costs us millions or billions to rebuild, but that's all part of living on a dynamic planet.
All that energy has to go somewhere. If we start destroying hurricanes maybe the activity in Tornado Alley will increase tenfold. Or maybe the intensity and duration of thunderstorms in North America will increase.
Our time and money is better spent on making sure buildings/levies/etc. can withstand the next Cat. 5 hurricane that blows by.
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If that energy is dissipated into turbulent flow rather than an organized system, it will collapse on itself with a net increase in entropy.
I've been reading
Chaos by James Gleick, and I've been pondering the effect of chains of massive fuel-air bombs on hurricanes. Instead of hitting the eye, I took into consideration that there are many warm and cold areas within a hurricane, and that air spirals in toward the eye. If we were to disrupt several lines of air into the eye, I think that htere's a potential not to destroy the hurricane, but to divert it by throwing it off-balance. The basic idea is that sustaining turbulent flow in a confined but unbounded area requires much more energy than sustaining ordered flow.
It's all working out in my head, but there's probably something I'm missing.