Offshore Wind Farms Could Knock Down Hurricanes
By Mark Fischetti
Hurricanes are unstoppable, right? Apparently not. An intriguing new computer simulation shows that 78,000 large wind turbines spread across 35,000 square kilometers of ocean outside of New Orleans would have cut Hurricane Katrina’s category 3 winds at landfall by 129 to 158 kilometers per hour (80 to 98 miles per hour) and reduced the storm surge by 79 percent. The same collection of turbines offshore of New York City would have dropped Hurricane Sandy’s winds by 125 to 140 kph and the surge by up to 34 percent.
That sounds impressive. But wait…78,000 turbines? Each one 100 meters high with a blade span 127 meters in diameter spaced about 650 meters apart and spanning a region of ocean 2.5 times the size of Connecticut? The idea sounds crazy, except for the bottom line: “The cost would be zero,” says Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University. “The turbines pay for themselves through the revenue from generating electricity. The storm surge and wind protection are free—a bonus.”
Actually the cost to erect such a massive wind farm, or set of farms, would be many billions of dollars. But Jacobson says the cost would be recouped over time through electricity sales, replacing many coal-fired or nuclear power plants. And then there is the alternative, he notes: “New York is considering building $20 billion in seawalls” to prevent future storm surge damage after Hurricane Sandy caused more than $60 billion in losses in New York and New Jersey. “Seawalls don’t pay for themselves,” Jacobson says. “Turbines do.”
Jacobson has calculated in mind-bending detail how turbines could defuse hurricane forces, all laid out in a new paper appearing today in Nature Climate Change. The exercise, based on computer simulations, is the latest step in a series of grand plans the engineer has been building for renewable energy technologies.
more
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/offshore-wind-farms-could-knock-down-hurricanes1/
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Doyle Rice, USA TODAY 4:45 p.m. EST February 25, 2014
Forget the Great Wall of China. How about the Great Wall of ... Kansas?
One scientist thinks we can protect parts of the central USA from ferocious tornadoes by building several gigantic walls across Tornado Alley:
"If we build three east-west great walls in the American Midwest .... one in North Dakota, one along the border between Kansas and Oklahoma to the east, and the third one in south Texas and Louisiana, we will diminish the tornado threats in the Tornado Alley forever," according to physicist Rongjia Tao of Temple University.
The walls would need to be about 1,000 feet high and 150 feet wide, he said. Tao is presenting his research next week at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society in Denver.
He said that major tornadoes in Tornado Alley are created from the violent clashes between the northbound warm air flow and southbound cold air flow. He adds that because there are no west-to-east mountains in Tornado Alley to weaken the air flow, collisions between warm and cold air create turbulence and supercells that spawn tornadoes.
More:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2014/02/25/giant-walls-tornado-alley/5808887/
you have no idea the destructive forces it can wreak...
For shame!
I'm all for wind energy, but this is ridiculous.
because of rising sea levels.
One more thing to worry about.
I don't want to be the fifth planet from the sun in a galaxy far, far away.
If we put enough of them out there, then we can make the Earth rotate backwards and go back in time! 
Well, I can either make that or go over to Black-eyed Pea 
