Tired of hurricanes? Hold off on the nukes

Anna Radinsky/Entertainment Director

President Donald Trump denied saying that he wanted to use nuclear weapons on hurricanes in his tweet on Monday, Aug. 26.

“Just returned to Washington from France and the very successful G-7, only to find that the Fake News is still trying to perpetuate the phony story that I wanted to use Nuclear weapons to blow up hurricanes before they reach shore. This is so ridiculous, never happened!,” Trump tweeted.

But what would happen if you try to nuke a hurricane?

“The simple answer about nukes in hurricanes is that [hurricanes] are bad enough without making them radioactive,” said Hugh Willoughby, an FIU research professor of the Department of Earth and Environment. “The worst hurricane is a lot better than the best thermonuclear war.”

Willoughby was a Navy military officer for six years in the 1960s and 70s. He learned that the only thing nuclear weapons were good for were to keep other countries from using them on each other.

“Once one [nuclear weapon] goes off, everybody loses… Also, if we were to use nuclear weapons for weather modification, the Russians and the Chinese and everybody else would think [Americans] are testing weapons,” said Willoughby.

If starting a nuclear war isn’t convincing enough to avoid using them in hurricanes, Category 5 hurricanes can release heat energy the equivalent of a 10-megaton nuclear bomb exploding every 20 minutes, according to NOAA research meteorologists.

Since the 1960s, scientists have tried other options to weaken hurricanes, including spreading oil over the ocean surface and pumping out cold water from the bottom of the ocean to the surface. All have failed, according to Willoughby.

“There were a lot of ideas over the years to modify the hurricanes,” said Willoughby. “I would love to have there be a way to make them go away or be weakened because they cause so much suffering.”

The Eastern U.S. is predicted to have a 45-87 percent increase in the frequency of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes despite a possible decrease in the frequency of storms, according to the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, a nonprofit organization that is the successor to the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.

Warmer sea surface temperatures and sea level rise could intensify tropical storm wind speeds, which lead to greater damage and higher damage control costs.

A Category 5 hurricane can now cost more than $100 billion.

Willoughby says the answer to weakening hurricanes is having countries, institutions and people be serious on how to minimize the effects of global warming and climate change.

He is critical of the role that the University is playing when it comes to dealing with global warming, climate change and sea level rise.

“We should be arguing for reduced emissions and we should be arguing for not bulldozing green space… You got to choose between the institution and the environment. Imagine if all of our roofs were covered in solar cells…We could do that,” said Willoughby.

An institution as large and influential as FIU has the ability to make change, he says.

“[FIU] has a huge positive impact on the community, but we can do better. Maybe we need to step back from some of the institutional goals and look at what’s our role, and this sounds really corny, in the world,” said Willoughby.