14 DAY TRIAL // Following hurricane Sandy, numerous people are wondering whether or not it might be possible to use science and technology to keep such Frankenstorms from manifesting themselves again in the future.
While others went as far as to suggest that storms should be nuked and thus stopped from hitting coastlines, one British researcher named Stephen Salter is looking into the possibility of using old car tires in order to fight back the extreme weather manifestations brought forth by climate change and global warming.
His idea is fairly easy to comprehend: Stephen Salter believes that used car tires can help support several giant tubes which would extent roughly 100 meters below the ocean's surface.
According to Mashable, this would allow the warm water at the surface of the ocean to “slide” all the way down to the sea floor, or at least change its location to several feet below the surface.
The tubes through which this warm water would travel are to be fitted with valves at their end, which basically means that the water would have to remain below the surface, where it would mix with the colder one.
To cut a long story short, these used car tires, together with the giant tubes attached to them, would cool the ocean's surface below 26.5 degrees Celsius (about 80 degrees Fahrenheit), which is basically the critical temperature at which hurricanes are formed.
As specialist Stephen Salter puts it, “If you can cool the sea surface, you would calm the hurricanes. I estimate you would need about 150-450 of these structures.”
“They would drift around and send out radar signals so that no one would collide with them,” he went on to explain.
Interestingly enough, both Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold have agreed to offer their support to Stephen Salter, meaning that they have helped him patent this innovative solution for dealing with future hurricanes.