strange thought
One of the strange thoughts I had yesterday, was that “what if the decrease in hurricane attivity from the 1960s to 1990s was from the increase in oil production in the Gulf of Mexico, and the related oil leaks and spills”. As I prevoiously linked to(I’ll update with the url later today), oil spread over the ocean decrease the strength of hurricanes, by preventing water evaporation from feeding the storm.
Now, with our recent improvements in environmental considerations in oil production (not to mention the increased efficiency and utilization of pumped oil), we spread less onto the seas, helping to increase the power of the storms?
I haven’t been able to find anyone else mentioning an idea, but I’m sure I’m not original with it. What do you think?
September 22nd, 2005 at 9:58 pm
This theory I had not heard.
Was the coverage of oil over water so significant in the past 4 or 5 decades that evaporation was hindered to that degree?
If so, that’s pretty intense. Perhaps it is good that we’ve kinda fixed that. Now will have to learn how to deal with full-strength hurricanes. For the future, I don’t think we can depend on positive side-affects such as this by coating the gulf of mexico in oil just to protect coastal cities.
September 23rd, 2005 at 7:40 am
But what is our oportunity here? Can we create an environmentally friendly chemical, that would reduce the evaporation over an area?
The major side effect will be the loss of heat transfer from the tropical zones to the further north sections of the planet.
So who wants to make an enironmentally friendly chemical we can pour over large sections of the ocean? It should be cheap, easy to produce, and dissipate naturally over a 72 hour period.