Inventors who think they can stop storms.

Ivan, a category five hurricane, is destroying his way through the Carribean. A Canadian medical student named Myriam Taylor told CFTO news that the island of Grenada, is "basically destroyed." Tragically, 65 people have already lost their lives. Still unknown is whether the hurricane will still have force when and if it hits landfall. The power which nature is capable of gathering in something as superfluous as the wind makes me think that we are lucky to not get a demonstration too often.

A number of inventors think progress has armed them for a fight with Mother Nature however. There are schemes afoot to suck up hurricanes with absorbent gel (the one I linked to) or build giant fans to blow hurricanes away.

The nuttiest idea I have heard is to try and "blow them up" with nuclear weapons. Now let's stop and break this one down.

A category 5 hurricane releases as much power in three seconds as a many megaton H-bomb. So if you dropped a bomb into a storm, and ignited it, you'd stop or disrupt the storm for at best all of three seconds. And then your friendly neighbourhood hurricane would proceed on its merry way, blowing all the radiation and irradiated debris along every arm of the storm.

Sounds like a plan. :-)