You may have heard of geo-engineering. It describes any number of global-sized schemes designed to alter some earth-sized phenomenon, typically global warming.
Well now a Japanese hydraulic manufacturing firm wants to get into the act with a plan to alter typhoons, or as we in the Western Hemisphere called 'em, hurricanes. Ise Kogyo was recently awarded patents in India and Japan for water-pumping submarines that could be used downgrade the force of typhoons and hurricanes.
The idea is simple: Typhoons gain strength from warmer ocean waters. In fact, the storms need an ocean surface temperature of between 77 and 78 degrees Fahrenheit to develop and 80 degrees F to keep spinning.
Now imagine a fleet of about 20 submarines stationed out in front of the typhoon, each vessel equipped with eight pumps designed to shoot 480 metric tons of cold water per minute to the ocean's surface. In just one hour, the fleet could lower the water's surface temperature by three degrees, snuffing out the typhoon.
The big challenge is accurately predicting the path of the typhoon.
An application in the United States could be approved soon. It's a crazy, big idea and I wonder just how smart it is to tamper with Nature on such a big scale. Maybe typhoons and hurricanes are necessary on some global scale that we just aren't aware of. What do you think?