Courtesy of peterj in the comments, this bit of idiocy.
The walls would need to be about 1,000 feet high and 150 feet wide, he said. Tao is presenting his research next week at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society in Denver.
Now, I don’t know if this would work or not (the article offers two opinions that it won’t), but if it does then maybe the scientist can tell us just how it would also effect local weather. It probably wouldn’t be a good idea to turn the mid-west farming country into a dust-bowl.
Almost as dumb as a border wall next to Mexico.
Yup. They can’t even get the wall between US and Mexico up. What makes them think they can build a weather wall? Oh, yea. With all those people given amnesty-either build the weather wall or the border wall-your choice.
Isn’t it easier to build basements?
I think they keep floating these trial balloons so the previous
stupid things said and done will look less stupid.
Sorry, doesn’t work that way.
To quote another Bozo “STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES”
This is another really,really GOOD idea! Give the fellow the Nobel Prize!
“Aside from the cost of $60 billion per 100 miles…”
And, you can bet that every single contractor would be of the correct political persuasion.
Remember a few years back when brilliant geo-scientists wanted to cover all the world’s desert areas with a white thermal blanket,to reflect the heat from the sun and thus decrease catastrophic global warming?
And in the 70’s,the geo-scientists who wanted to cover all the arctic with soot, to attract the sun and prevent global cooling?
Whenever there’s a need, there’s a crackpot with a completely unworkable idea. Only difference between now and the days of my youth,is back then nobody payed any attention to these guys except to heartily guffaw.
Grok, a friend of mine bought a house in Memphis in 2009 during the great foreclosure clear out. She reports that there were no basements in any of the houses they looked at. The normal construction in Tennessee is a concrete slab floor.
If you wish you can buy a welded steel structure the size of a small closet that is bolted to the slab in the garage or an underground shelter that looks like a glorified septic tank with a stairway and door added on one end.
I’m told the reason for the basement being so common in Canada is we have to place the footings four to six feet below grade to prevent frost heaving. Since the hole is already dug you might as well use it.
I remember a time people thought solving the water problem in the West was to cut up ice burgs. To float them by ship to the coasts than pipe the water to irrigate the dessert regions.
Can you imagine the hullabaloo environmentalists would create doing that today?
We have lost the idea of thinking big.
Might be worth considering as an amenity for trailer parks.
Combined with 78,000 wind turbines this idea is a winner! Utopia!
http://news.yahoo.com/wind-farms-tame-hurricanes-scientists-140949072.html
Well if Kansas gets one, every State in the midwest will want one. Every state in the union has had tornadoes so they should all build them. Think of the employment opportunities. The Mexican border could be thrown wide open and there still would be a lack of manpower. Who pays ?…who cares ! That’s never been a concern of Obama or the EPA and would still be cheaper than implementing Agenda 21. Like good neighbors they could share cost of State border walls. At a thousand ft. high and 150 ft thick they could eliminate standard housing and turn the whole nation back into cave dwellers. think of the benefits. No air conditioning or heating required. No country could ever consider putting foreign troops on home soil because it would make conquering Stalingrad look like childs play. I could go on and on about the benefits of this wonderful idea with the only downside being on the shady side of the wall. 1000ft wall would throw one helluva shadow, but hey, mirrors would solve that. The sheer weight might also present a problem, but nothing that can’t be overcome. Compared to a .038% trace gas warming the planet this is truly insightful and should be implemented immediately. If the sky does fall it will rest on top of this tornado proof wall. Just love it when true scientists can think outside the box. Bet they had a grant for this and it finally paid off.
http://www.weather.com/outlook/weather-news/news/articles/top-tornado-states_2012-03-06
“Only difference between now and the days of my youth,is back then nobody payed any attention to these guys except to heartily guffaw.”
Kooky and goofy ideas are now easy to promote because of the internet and easy to create due to 3D models and visualization. Nowadays, any doofus with CAD, animation software and time to waste can generate stunning-looking graphics and convincing technical drawings that capture the imaginations of the ignorant/pollyannaish.
And of course, 14 year-olds are now experts in everything thanks to the world wide web.
Back to T-squares and drafting boards, I say!
This is the difference between engineers and scientists: engineers spend their time making things happen, not dreaming up unworkable eco fantasies.
Besides, go ahead. Spend $bazillions building your TorWall. What do you do when Gaia titters and throws you a curve by launching a tornado INSIDE the walled areas? Now everyone is fenced in with no place to go. The Malthusian hacks probably wanted that all along.
mhb23re
If I remember my university stuff correctly there is 2 big problems.
the first being the reasons that fences are built with open space in them (20% open to 80% board). …. This allow some air to move through which helps limit the wind on the leeward side. When you build a solid wall it compresses the air to move over top and swirls it around on the other side. You can actually make it more windy at a distance past the wall equal to 4 times the height of it.
The second problem is that air movement doesn’t stop at 1000 feet. The mountains provide a good example. When wind moves air over the top it forces moist warm air up into colder levels atmosphere creating rain (and snow) over top and on the downward side. A wall that size would create big deviations in the weather patterns on both sides and all around the areas where they are built.
A perfect example of solving the problem by acting as though you were in a vacuum and nothing else will change. … leftist thinking at its finest.
Now that you mention it, how long and deep a snowdrift would be created by a 1000ft high wall?
Maybe they are not really for protection from tornadoes. These walls could be to protect humans from the Titans : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OkpRK2_gVs
With weather like this, that wall would be better suited in keeping out the White Walkers.
Exactly. Now days the loonies quite often run the governments.
If they just used the wind turbines as fans, they could blow the storms away.
mid island mike
Well, if they built the walls from Democrats stacked like cordwood, they might serve a purpose. Otherwise, not bloody likely.
I think it’s a great idea my self….Start building the wall at the U.S.A.&Mexican boarder!!
He wants to put these giant walls in the wrong places. I would suggest,and be happy if they would put one about 100 feet high along the Eastern Kalifornica, Oregon, and Washington border. That one to keep the drizzle of bullsh-t out of the rest of the country. The other should start at the bottom of Washington DE and go straight up West of Philadelphia (excluding western NY) to Canada. By having two walls, that would keep the country in balance, from tipping over like Guam. Those walls would facilitate the departure of those sections of the country from the Union. They would also provide a positive barrier to coal, oil pipelines, fracking, and gunbearing, bible thumping neanderthals that so upset our elites.
As far as building it at the Mexican border, most of us down here will take a Mexican (legal or illegal) over a New York/Kalifornica marxist librul any day.
Time to start fundraising. Any one like carrot cake?