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Home » 'Canes » Hurricane, Halt!

Hurricane, Halt!

Note to self: Next time a super-​​storm wipes out a major American city, do not wait two weeks to men­tion Ross Hoffman’s research into con­trol­ling hur­ri­canes.
cane.jpgIn May ’04, I wrote a bit about Hoffman and his work for Wired News:

For 25 years, Ross Hoffman has had a vision: to use tiny changes in the envi­ron­ment to alter the paths of hur­ri­canes, slow down snow storms and turn dark days bright.
For most of those years, Hoffman kept his ideas largely to him­self. His adviser at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology told him weather con­trol was too out­landish for his Ph.D. the­sis. The chances of a buttoned-​​down foun­da­tion or gov­ern­ment agency fund­ing such research were so slim, Hoffman didn’t even bother to ask.
But, in 2001, all that changed. Hoffman stum­bled upon a tiny, obscure cranny of the American space pro­gram — the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts, or NIAC. In this $4 million-​​a-​​year agency, Hoffman found a place where the wildest of ideas were not only tol­er­ated, they were wel­come…
With his [NIAC research grant], Hoffman tweaked a weather-​​prediction pro­gram to show that mov­ing a hur­ri­cane was pos­si­ble — at least in the­ory. Here’s how: You need a ring of satel­lites in orbit, chan­nel­ing the sun’s energy, stretch­ing around the Earth. The machines would beam power to the planet, using microwaves. But, tuned to 183 GHz, they could also heat up small regions of the atmos­phere by a degree or two. Those small changes could have enor­mous impact, Hoffman’s sim­u­la­tion showed. A deadly hur­ri­cane, headed for the Hawaiian island of Kauai, drifted off into the Pacific, harm­lessly.
“One of the great things about NIAC is that they never say, ‘That’s crazy, you can never build a fleet of solar-​​powered space sta­tions,’” Hoffman said.
In this Scientific American arti­cle from last October, Hoffman fleshes out his storm-​​curbing idea. If microwave-​​blasting satel­lites aren’t avail­able, he sug­gests, maybe we could coat “the ocean sur­face with a thin film of a biodegrad­able oil that slows evaporation.”


(Big ups: /​.)

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September 12th, 2005 | 'Canes, Bizarro | 17015 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2005/09/12/hurricane-halt/Hurricane%2C+Halt%212005-09-12+17%3A28%3A41noahmax You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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  1. Pedestrian says:
    September 12, 2005 at 11:32 pm

    Let me tell you. If this ever becomes real­ity, left­ists and rad­i­cal envi­ron­mentlists will claim that this will cause unpre­dictable weather dis­as­ter chang­ing the weather through­out the world and become use­ful as a weapon. Phillipines con­sid­ered a con­cept years ago to decrease the hos­til­ity of typhoon, but it was rejected by other nations due to geopo­lit­i­cal prob­lems that could cause dam­age to the crops for lack of rain. Some peo­ple don’t care about lives at steaks while they care more about their own ide­ol­ogy and the unpre­dictable weather.

    Reply
  2. JSAllison says:
    September 13, 2005 at 9:02 am

    The envi­rowhackos screeched about this long ago when beam­ing sun­sat power from orbit was stud­ied because of the pos­si­bil­ity of atmos­pheric heat­ing. And now some­one thinks atmos­pheric heat­ing is a good thing? I can hear heads pop­ping with­out the ben­e­fit of hawai­ian music already… ;)

    Reply
  3. GLOWMASTER says:
    September 23, 2005 at 7:50 am

    I don’t want to HAARP on this issue too much (pun intended) but I’ve noticed a cor­re­la­tion to the pat­terns of Katrina and Rita and the data avail­able from HAARP’s web­site (specif­i­cally the mag­ne­tome­ter read­ings). FYI: HAARP is an “ionos­pheric heater”. Just thought I’d men­tion that since a pre­vi­ous post, and this arti­cle, referred to heat­ing the atmos­phere.
    http://​www​.haarp​.alaska​.edu/ HAARP Homepage
    http://137.229.36.30/cgi-bin/magnetometer/gak-mag.cgi Magnetometer read­ings (select and review the last week’s read­ings and com­pare to the move­ment and speed of Rita)

    Reply
  4. Keith Weborg says:
    September 30, 2005 at 3:28 pm

    I sent an E Mail using your “con­tact us” and got one screwed up E Mail address. I changed it so that it might go through. Keith

    Reply
  5. Michael Cohen says:
    October 18, 2006 at 10:06 am

    After exper­i­ment­ing for 60 years in con­trol­ling hur­ri­canes in Projects Cirrus, Stormfury and Popeye — see google — it looks like the 2006 storm sea­son was a great suc­cess. No major stomr has hit the US this year because all that weather tech­nol­ogy found in Dr. HOffman’s arti­cle in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN in Oct 2004 is now being used and hur­ri­canes have been destroyed or had their courses changed.For exam­ple Hurricane Chris was hea­d­i­ung directly at S.Florida in July but SUDDENLY DISAPPEARED! A SPACE SATELLITE BEAMING DOWN MICRWAVES PROBABLY DID IT. Who is behind this pro­gram to stop these storms? IT is not the White House, but THE OIL COMPANIES, THE INUSRANCE COMPANIES AND THE ISRAEL GOVERNMENT (try­ing to pro­tect the Jewish com­mu­ni­ties in Florida).

    Reply

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