http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/national/nationalspecial/11storm.html

Yes, and I can tell that really burns you up. The very thought that someone might actually make money from saving U.S. citizens hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars (through decreased tax payments for federal payouts, and through decreased private payments for insurance and repair of uninsured damages), really annoys you.

Shouldn’t there be some law that forces the private entitities to come up with a solution for free?,” you wonder. And being of a conservative bent, you wonder, “Why can’t they just muddle along exactly the way they’ve always done…preparing for monster storms, and then cleaning up afterward?”

Hugh continues, “It is that by imagining the ‘fault tree’ of potential problems in expecting 100% efficiency from this ‘device/system/whatever’ you must admit that it would be irresponsible not to continue to reduce vulnerability in less techno-centric ways e.g. through actual enforcement of mobile home building codes and planning laws?”

I’m curious, Hugh. It appears you live in the U.K. What do you know about “actual enforcement of mobile home building codes and planning laws” in the United States? Do you know of any “mobile home building code” or “planning law” that is not enforced in the U.S.? If so, which code or law is not being “actually enforced,” and where?

“I’m just concerned I guess that an optimistic bias could creep into the development decisions of certain city authorities, whereby it would be considered appropriate, now that a device/system/whatever is ‘on the way’, to only build to standard of protection for a Cat 3 storm…”

I don’t know if you’ve looked at a map of the U.S. Gulf Coast and East Coast lately, Hugh, but suffice it to say that there are quite a number of cities from Brownsville, Texas to Miami, Florida (Gulf Coast) and Miami, Florida to East Port, Maine (East Coast). Now, maybe you think Corpus Christi, Galveston, Houston, New Orleans, Mobile, Miami, Tampa, Jacksonville, Savannah, Charleston, Wilmington, Virginia Beach, etc. etc. should all pay (and be paid) to take measures to withstand a Category 5 hurricane…even if a system exists such that Category 5 hurricanes will almost certainly not happen. But it takes a lot of money to do that for the 1600 miles of the U.S. Gulf Coast, and the 2100 miles of the U.S. East Coast. Maybe you think it’s less expensive to do that than to develop and deploy a system that ensures that a Category 4 or 5 hurricane doesn’t hit either of those coasts. If so, I’d like to see your estimates of costs for those two options.

Hugh continues, “Whatever the strength of the ‘tamed’ energy that makes landfall there are always going to be those who lose, whether it is due to a barge slipping its mooring and breeching a levee or because 4 nails have been used to secure roofing panels rather than 36.”

Again, I’d like to see your cost estimates for “tamed” versus “untamed” hurricanes. Roger Pielke Jr. has already made an estimate that, if the 1926 Great Miami hurricane were to hit Miami, FL in 2020, the cost would be $500 BILLION dollars (in year 2004 dollars). Are you saying that if that hurricane was reduced to a Category 2 hurricane, that there would not be a huge reduction in cost (i.e., over $200 billion for that one hurricane)?

I’d like to see your cost estimates. Or don’t you have any?

“However, it is my opinion (which I assume you’ll agree I’m entitled to) that in the discontinuance of Project Stormfury a message was sent (whether heard or not) that adaptation in the path of certain natural hazards is more practical and achievable than is macro-scale climatic engineering.”

I agree that you’re entitled to your opinion, even if it’s wrong, and based primarily on ignorance. I hope you agree that I’m entitled to an opinion of your opinion. My opinion is that you probably have never had your life or property, or the life or property of any of your close relatives or friends, endangered by a strong hurricane.

Hugh concludes, “Just as an aside I quickly realised that my idea for hurricane intensity reduction was doomed to failure by your initial reward criteria. Refrigeration filament stretched across the surface of the Atlantic sounded to me an ideal solution, until I analogized it to drift net fishing, which as we all know is an industrial tool that does the oceans’ cetaceans and sea birds no favours at all.”

Well, that’s where a brainstorming session might help. Someone might think of the idea of mounting those refrigeration coils aboard the bottoms of barges, and having the barges travel across the ocean like teams of lawnmowers mowing a baseball outfield. That would eliminate the danger of whales getting caught in the coils.

Who knows what ideas could be developed, until such a brainstorming session is tried? I wonder if such brainstorming sessions, followed by technical and economic analyses of all options identified, were conducted before Project Stormfury?

My guess is that answer is “no.” If so, it’s very unfortunate. The concept of reducing hurricane strengths (and those of cyclones/typhoons), rather than simply cleaning up afterword, seems to me to be worthy of multiple international conferences, with literally hundreds of possible solutions identified, and analyzed for technical and economic feasibility. Category 3, 4, and 5 hurricanes (cyclones/typhoons) are clearly a worldwide problem, and will probably cause over a trillion dollars in damage over the next few decades.

What concept? The concept of reducing hurricanes by two Saffir-Simpson categories?

If so, on what do you base your opinion of “utter technical infeasibility”? How many years/months have you studied the concept?

What ways have you identified, that you’ve rejected as “utterly technically infeasible”?

What is your background, such that you think you are qualified to judge what is or is not “technically feasible” in this area?

Thanks for your question. We do think that it is credible in the sense that the dataset that we have created — in large part — removes the signal of societal change from the damage database. We believe this for three reasons:

1. We do see climate data in the normalized dataset. A study by Katz (2002) and Pielke and Landsea (1999) clearly shows the ENSO signal on hurricanes in the damage data. This provides some strong confidence that we have to some degree successfully accounted for the societal factors.

2. The dataset is consistent with the results of catastrophe models, not so much the precise overall numbers for each storm but the relationship of storms to each other over time. We discuss this in Pielke et al. (2000).

3. We have done extensive work with flood loss data also collected by the US NWS (a much moe involved database) and feel that we understand the strengths and limitations of such datasets (see Downton and Pielke 2005)

There are of course considerable uncertainties in the data, and I believe that there is a significant possibility that pre-1950 losses err on the side of being too small when compared to post-1950 where data collection was more comprehensive. We continue to look at the data.

So bottom line, yes we think that this analysis provides a useful but not perfect way to look at trends in hurricane losses over a long time period.

Thanks for your response. I have to agree your concept has an elegant simplicity when viewing it from the perspective of the ‘public purse’ i.e.
**The federal government wins, because they pay ONLY if a reliable hurricane mitigation system can be demonstrated, and they are guaranteed to pay LESS than they have calculated they WOULD pay, in the absence of such a system.**

My argument is not that a system *demonstrated* as reliable may well result in ‘wins’ for the developers of the system; I have always considered these to be amongst the ‘few’ destined to benefit from participation in the project. It is that by imagining the ‘fault tree’ of potential problems in expecting 100% efficiency from this ‘device/system/whatever’ you must admit that it would be irresponsible not to continue to reduce vulnerability in less techno-centric ways e.g. through actual enforcement of mobile home building codes and planning laws?

Such vulnerability reduction would, of course, be ongoing during the privately financed project R&D phase?

I’m just concerned I guess that an optimistic bias could creep into the development decisions of certain city authorities, whereby it would be considered appropriate, now that a device/system/whatever is ‘on the way’, to only build to standard of protection for a Cat 3 storm…but no, that’s already done, what am I worrying about?

Whatever the strength of the ‘tamed’ energy that makes landfall there are always going to be those who lose, whether it is due to a barge slipping its mooring and breeching a levee or because 4 nails have been used to secure roofing panels rather than 36. I agree that consideration should be given to all possible means of damage mitigation. However, it is my opinion (which I assume you’ll agree I’m entitled to) that in the discontinuance of Project Stormfury a message was sent (whether heard or not) that adaptation in the path of certain natural hazards is more practical and achievable than is macro-scale climatic engineering. We are, after all, already doing that, and with no indication of 100% efficiency.

Just as an aside I quickly realised that my idea for hurricane intensity reduction was doomed to failure by your initial reward criteria. Refrigeration filament stretched across the surface of the Atlantic sounded to me an ideal solution, until I analogized it to drift net fishing, which as we all know is an industrial tool that does the oceans’ cetaceans and sea birds no favours at all.