http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/s ... 3149.shtml
Code: Select all
Hurricanes can't be stopped, they say -- but he wants to try
A Florida entrepreneur wants to drop his absorbent gel into a building storm.
By DANA TREEN, The Times-Union
Taking the punch out of a rainstorm is a far cry from whipping a hurricane, say skeptics of a South Florida man who has caused clouds to disappear and thinks he can tame a cyclone.
But Peter Cordani is not discouraged by naysayers. Instead, newspaper stories with disparaging quotes hang like challenges in the foyer of his Jupiter business where he touts the potential of a powder to absorb water from a hurricane.
In one story, famed hurricane expert Bob Sheets declares it's nearly impossible to dissipate a hurricane while another chides that Cordani's efforts to do just that do not show much promise.
But if the 44-year-old South Florida entrepreneur is right, if it is possible to weaken a hurricane enough to make it fall as much as one category, the result could be millions of dollars or more in damage prevented.
As he tries to raise $30 million for the project that will take four years to research, Cordani says all he wants is the chance to be proven wrong.
That chance could be coming. A lot of attention has funneled his way in the seven months since the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, and experts are predicting 17 named storms in 2006.
Cordani, who started in business with an absorbent mat for garage floors, believes a polymer powder his company developed can tear down the powerful forces of a hurricane, saving the populated coasts of the United States and other places from death and destruction.
Some say hugely unmanageable amounts of the powder, which they liken to the stuff of disposable diapers, would have to be used.
Cordani thinks that once dumped into the top of a hurricane's vortex, the powder would effectively inhale the storm's moisture before forming a glop that drops harmlessly into the sea. From there, it would be degraded by saltwater and burned off by the sun.
A sugary-looking powder with the microscopic profile of a corn flake, Dyn-O-Gel is capable of absorbing up 1,000 times its weight in water, turning it into a clear, squishy gelatin. It would theoretically tear a wedge from the edge of the hurricane to the core of the storm's column, forcing the wind to turn in on itself and collapse the spiral.
Cordani has used the powder successfully in clouds off Jupiter and Stuart but not tried it in a hurricane.
Peter Ray, a meteorology professor at Florida State University who wants to test the theory, said the gel formed has the potential to clog the hurricane's rotation and sap wind energy.
"A big glob of water has more drag," Ray said. "[It] takes energy out of the hurricane to push it around. The energy has to do more work on it to get it to move."
Ray has been an unpaid consultant on Cordani's side and would lead a research team of 50 experts if the project finds backing, he said.
"There is no shortage of ideas," Ray said. "This is in the category of worth investigating."
The nation is hungry for ideas, prompting things such as Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's bill for $90 million in research money to see if weather modification is even feasible. The bill is awaiting a hearing on the Senate floor.
It is not surprising that as spring heads toward the June 1 beginning of another hurricane season, Cordani's is only one of several hurricane-buster plans rattling about.
It's been getting attention, from mention in a Popular Science magazine feature about stopping storms to an Australian TV show filmed in Jupiter last month.
Competing proposals include one that would drag barges full of jet turbines into the storm to blow upward, and another would slick the ocean with liquid to rob the hurricane of heat.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is regularly questioned about firing a nuclear weapon into a storm's core.
None of the ideas, including Cordani's, have gained much traction, in part because of the daunting task they propose. For example, NOAA estimates the heat energy released around the eye of 1992's Hurricane Andrew was 5,000 times the output generated by the Turkey Point nuclear power plant that was in its path.
"It's all pie in the sky," said Hugh Willoughby, a research professor at the International Hurricane Research Center at Florida International University.
Willoughby once participated in a hurricane seeding project that banked on the same theories Cordani espouses. Seeding involves adding materials to the atmosphere that induce moisture to become larger water drops.
Between 1962 and 1983, Project Stormfury used silver iodide to seed the outer wall of hurricanes and diffuse the storm.
Initial results were positive, but later it was determined hurricanes naturally have drops and surges in power.
There was worry, too, about where an altered storm would go and the political fallout that could come if areas hit would have been spared in a natural storm path.
Cordani once had the support of Willoughby, who tested the powder in his own backyard using a spray of hose water, then scrutinized it with calculations. Over time Willoughby came to believe the amount of powder needed would be immense.
"All the military heavy-lift aircraft in the world would not be enough," he said, reflecting a similar skepticism voiced by NOAA on its Web site.
Willoughby also began to think the effect of the powder would increase the strength of the storm.
"We weren't sure if it was going to make the storm stronger or weaker," he said. "The ball is kind of in their court. I'm not saying they are crazy. I'm just saying convince me."
Cordani said he is looking for public or private funding.
"We want to know because no one knows these answers," he said. "Science will have to prove this out."
He points to successes.
In August 2000, a plane spread a load of Dyn-O-Gel across a cloud off Jupiter Inlet.
"It cut the cloud in half right in front of us," Cordani said. The test was also observed by TV and newspaper reporters.
The next summer, the powder took down a building thundercloud, wiping it from radar at Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach. But experts note hurricanes are huge engines of heat, wind and moisture far different than offshore thunderstorms.
Cordani said he does not expect to stop a storm like Katrina but believes slowing one down or cutting the strength from a Category 5 storm to a 4 or 3 would save billions of dollars and save lives.
"Why not take a crack at it now?"
