Hurt wrote:
Perhaps. It would be far easier to start a tropical
system than to steer it. Either action, however, is
beyond anyone's capabilities . . . (as an energy analysis
would show)


Please show me the analysis; roughly. I think the challenge would be
informational, not energy. Just gotta keep "zapping" the right points.

An average thunderstorm, many hundreds of which comprise
a hurricane, releases in an hour about 10M kilowatt-hours
of energy. Of course, a lot of that energy is drawn out
of the sea surface -- but if environmental conditions are
correct, it can be redistributed into the atmosphere. The
energy from the warm sea surface is converted into latent
heat and also wind and ultimately wave action.

Say you wanted to control a thunderstorm -- maybe you'd only
have to input a small fraction of the energy released, assuming
you have a sophisticated enough model to tell you *where* to
input that energy. "Zapping" the right points, as you put it.
Where those points are changes constantly as the dynamic and
thermodynamic structure of the atmosphere changes -- and those
changes that influence the structure of the thunderstorm are
caused by the thunderstorm. But say you *could* predict those
points. First off, you'd be very famous, because you'd have
a better model of thunderstorm evolution than exists at
present. How much energy would be needed for the nudge?
Maybe 10% of the hourly amount released? That's a 2-kiloton
warhead.

And again, this is for just 1 generic thunderstorm. Multiply
this by many times and you'll see what you're up against to
initiate or control a thunderstorm complex that might (or
might not) evolve into a hurricane.

I hope you're rich. You'll need plenty of resources to do
this several times before you acquire the background knowledge
to be efficient at it. Maybe no one will notice the abortive
attempts.


Scott