Superstorms – New York and why can’t they do what we’ve done?

Question by BaitersinSpace: Superstorms – New York and why can’t they do what we’ve done?
Have you seen this new drama called Superstorm with Tom Sizemore slumming it in a BBC production trying to do what I’m afraid only the Americans can do really about an impending catagory 5 hurricane bearing down on the Big Apple – you know – he was one of the armed robbers in Heat Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Val Kilmer and all that ? Well he’s the big American with access to the money & power to do all this storm modification palava and on BBC2 afterwards they had a reality behind-the-fiction data type documentary:-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/proginfo/tv/wk18/sun.shtml#sun_superstorms

Anyway, what I want to know is here on the MWMALI (Mean Wet Minimalist Apathetic Little Island) or UK we finally got round to making the Thames Barrier, which as it happens is just about out of date now, but we did actually build the bloody thing & it’s supposed to prevent countless lives being lost & an estimated £50 billion worth of damage being caused by a similar storm surge like depicted
in this drama and subsequent documentary. But why haven’t the Americans with all their money & power yet built something similar if not a lot larger and better round manhattan Island? I mean they’re used to big constructions projects – look at the Big Dig for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig_%28Boston%2C_Massachusetts%29 – if they can do that kind of mammoth building project – hadn’t they better get a move on & start building a massive moveable barrier like we have – I’d say something more like 100 foot high though – that can be moved into place at short notice – apparently with today’s technology you only get 2 hours notice for a fairly accurate forecast and they’d not put any new plan in place since old ‘zero-tolerance’ Juliani was running the show!

Do they want to lose New York – coz it looks increasingly more likely – what with all this global warming (If you believe all that – that is!) – I mean we’ve just had a 4.3 earthquake in Folkstone would you believe?
Of course if they can achieve this weather modification (by ‘seeding’ it as they call it), an existing weather front to cause a hurricane to change course then they can start moving storms round and of cause the pentagon wants to get it’s greedy little mits on that to use as a potential weapon and the beauty of it is, that you can wipe out your enemy – not have nuclear fallout to worry about and say to whoever you ‘steered’ the storm to – ”nothing to do with us – you must have been unlucky and just had some bad weather”!!

They can have their cake and eat it then, can’t they – in essense – a weapon you can hide in ‘plain site’!!!
What a bunch of useless answers so far – I think the expression is – ‘where there is a will there’s a way’.

Perhaps we should all jump off cliffs like lemmings!

Admittedly a 200 foot wall of water is a bit of a tough one to crack – but there is always that ‘lateral thought’ business which is what this storm modification is all about – fighting nature with nature – albeit modified nature.

The real problem is not what is possible and not possible to achieve, but this absolutely pathelogical paranoia about making a mistake – if one has egg on one’s face because they made a prediction that turned out to be wrong – that coupled with (especially here in the UK) spending money is to be avoided at all costs – to be ridiculed because you made a mistake is far a worse fate apparently than thousands and thousands of dead bodies and a city’s infrastructure decimated – when are we going to grow up and smell the coffee????

Best answer:

Answer by one under god
the big worry for usa is a 200 foot sunami ,seems there is this little land slip slipping into the ocean ,just west of upper africa ;one day it will slip , then a few hours and the east coast gets it [no thames barrier is going to stabilise it]

its sort of a real; life armogeddon situation that like the giant hot spot under yellow stone , an d that little fault near la , are just 3 little things ,
that knowing about cant prevent these are as some realise too big to worry about
we could go into the gulf stream but thats more for the britts to worry about

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