A World Helpless
Against the Assaults of Nature
October 11, 2005 — By Calvin Woodward, Associated Press
WASHINGTON — In a more hopeful time,
the promise of science brought assurances that hurricanes could be
tricked into dispersing, earthquakes disarmed by nuclear explosions and
floodwaters held at bay by great mounds of dirt.
Such conceits are another victim of a year of destruction.
The planet's controlling forces romp over dreams like those. Usually the
best that can be done is to see the danger coming long enough to run.
Rich and poor nations have taken the hit over a period so twisted in
nature's assaults that one month, rich is helping poor and the next,
poor is helping rich as best it can, and then the poor gets slammed
again.
The United States, giver of tsunami aid in December, accepted hurricane
aid from some of those same countries in September. Now it is giving to
South Asia a second time, in response to the weekend earthquakes. India
is sending tents, food, blankets and medicine to its foe, Pakistan,
geology briefly shoving aside geopolitics.
More than 176,000 people died in the earthquake and tsunami of December;
an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 in the quake Saturday; perhaps 1,000 or
more in Guatemalan landslides last week; more than 1,200 in Katrina.
Asian beaches, mountainous Kashmir villages and American urban streets
and casinos were overwhelmed.
It wasn't supposed to be this way.
After World War II, nothing seemed too far-fetched for science, not once
the atom was split and, again, not once men stepped on the moon.
In one of the most enduring efforts, still alive but hardly about to
happen, man thought he could seed clouds, make rainfall reliable and put
a stop to devastating drought.
The effort continues, especially in China; there rockets, anti-aircraft
guns and aircraft regularly pelt the sky with chemicals. The results so
far: China has lots of experience, but limited success, in making the
rains come.
If humans are inexorably warming the globe, they've proved unable to
fine-tune the megaforces to their benefit.
They can cause earthquakes, little ones, by injecting fluids into deep
wells, filling huge reservoirs with water or setting off nuclear
explosions, but they can't prevent any, says the U.S. Geological Survey.
Any notion of "lubricating" tectonic plates to relieve destructive
tension would only make things worse, if it made any difference.
Earthquakes can't be forecast, either. Danger zones and long-term
probabilities can be surmised, but "there currently is no accepted
method to accomplish the goal of predicting the time, place and
magnitude of an impending quake," the survey says.
The idea of hauling icebergs to hurricane-prone waters to cool things
off did not fly. Research continues on trying to fool hurricanes into
thinking they're over land.
One trick being tested: coat the ocean with a thin, biodegradable, oily
film to deny a hurricane the evaporation that feeds its fury, in essence
mimicking conditions after landfall.
One response to Hurricane Katrina was decidedly lower tech: Civil
engineers proposed putting up old-fashioned air raid sirens so people
would know to get away.
The belief persists that humans will someday be able to dial up a
thunderstorm at will, tweak the jet stream to avoid floods and starve a
tornado of its energy once it starts spinning.
Such faith is reflected in a decade-old report done for the U.S. Air
Force, on the possibilities of modifying the weather for military
advantage.
The study suggested extreme examples of made-to-order weather, such as
steering severe storms to particular areas or achieving large-scale
climate change, were beyond reach over the next 30 years. But kicking up
fog, rain and clouds was considered doable in that time.
The Air Force said later it did not plan to meddle with Mother Nature.
The study, subtitled "Owning the Weather in 2025," came to little.
A decade later, the weather still owns us.
Source: Associated Press |