Any question that lets the weather geeks write sentences like
“The heat release [in a hurricane] is equivalent to a 10-megaton nuclear bomb exploding every 20 minutes.”
or understatements like
“To change a Category 5 hurricane into a Category 2 hurricane you would have to add about a half ton of air for each square meter inside the eye, or a total of a bit more than half a billion (500,000,000) tons for a 20 km radius eye. It’s difficult to envision a practical way of moving that much air around.”
Man that’s funny. But that question is about as real as the questions in Personality Parade. It comes up every season? Some questions, even if they are too stupid to be asked, are too much fun when answered.
This reminds me of a Daily Show bit where Stephen Colbert said that what the U.S. needed to restore “freedom” in Iraq and peace to the world was a bomb that destroyed ideas – so that we could wipe out the idea of Saddam altogether.
My response is the same – don’t give the Bad Men any ideas!
If a single hurricane releases half the energy used by the whole human race in the course of a year, then wouldn’t we be able to forget about both fossil fuels and nuclear energy if we succeeded in harnessing the energy of two hurricanes?
{ 10 comments }
Doug 09.18.03 at 12:28 pm
Spoilsport!
Any question that lets the weather geeks write sentences like
“The heat release [in a hurricane] is equivalent to a 10-megaton nuclear bomb exploding every 20 minutes.”
or understatements like
“To change a Category 5 hurricane into a Category 2 hurricane you would have to add about a half ton of air for each square meter inside the eye, or a total of a bit more than half a billion (500,000,000) tons for a 20 km radius eye. It’s difficult to envision a practical way of moving that much air around.”
is a very good question indeed.
matt 09.18.03 at 2:26 pm
Envy the dry-humored weather geek who gets to type this:
“Now for a more rigorous scientific explanation of why [nukes] would not be an effective hurricane modification technique.”
Matt 09.18.03 at 6:02 pm
How about ‘Nuking a hurricane will make the situation so much worse that you will forget about the wind and rain’…
david 09.18.03 at 6:17 pm
Man that’s funny. But that question is about as real as the questions in Personality Parade. It comes up every season? Some questions, even if they are too stupid to be asked, are too much fun when answered.
Doc 09.18.03 at 6:50 pm
We believe that hurricanes are pursuing a program for WMD production…
brayden 09.18.03 at 7:09 pm
This reminds me of a Daily Show bit where Stephen Colbert said that what the U.S. needed to restore “freedom” in Iraq and peace to the world was a bomb that destroyed ideas – so that we could wipe out the idea of Saddam altogether.
My response is the same – don’t give the Bad Men any ideas!
Tripp 09.18.03 at 7:53 pm
Why don’t we get all the airplanes to fly in the opposite direction to the winds?
Jeremy Osner 09.18.03 at 8:47 pm
My tagline henceforth:
epist 09.19.03 at 12:22 am
This is the sort of thinking that results in beached whales being filled with explosives and distributed over a 5 mile radius as a chunky rain.
Makes for excellent TV though. . .
Check it out. . .
http://www.hackstadt.com/features/whale/
zizka 09.19.03 at 1:09 am
If a single hurricane releases half the energy used by the whole human race in the course of a year, then wouldn’t we be able to forget about both fossil fuels and nuclear energy if we succeeded in harnessing the energy of two hurricanes?
They said that space flight was impossible too.
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