Saw a somewhat interesting documentary on CBC yesterday about hurricanes. I say somewhat because, while the topic of hurricanes is always fascinating (who can resist the awesome power of nature, and cliches?), the documentary itself was about all the hair-brained schemes people have devised to stop hurricanes. These schemes included such winning ideas as dumping a chemical goop onto the surface of the ocean and spewing immense clouds of poorly combusted petroleum into the air. Nice. On the other hand, I did learn that hurricanes have their origins on the east coast of Africa as simple dust storms.
But then I got thinking, is it actually possible to stop a hurricane? The docu didn’t get into too much scientific detail, but they did have a couple of token scientists who quickly pointed out that these are the most powerful storms on Earth, so there’s little hope that we humans could possibly stop them. How powerful are they? Well, as this link points out, there’s some 3.8×10^5 TJ of energy in a typical hurricane. Forget about what the world-wide energy capacity is these days. This energy is equivalent to about a hundred 1 megaton h-bombs. As the exam solution paper puts it, that’s enough energy to shove a billion humpback whales a full kilometer into the air.
I wonder what the answer would be for pigs?
