How to stop hurricanes

It’s an accepted bromide that you can’t fool with Mother Nature. She’ll do whatever she wants. 

Indeed, that is pretty much the thought process when it comes to hurricanes coming near and through Florida. You can’t stop her. 

Longtime Floridians know the drill: Get ready. Get water. Get food. Get out of town. Secure your property. Take cover. 

Then face the grim aftermath.

We also know these storms ebb and roar inconsistently and unpredictably. 

Yes, the trifecta of Debby, Helene and Milton was a rarity, especially for this area. But let’s not also forget 2004. That was a doozy of a late summer: Hurricanes Charley (Aug. 13), Frances (Sept. 5), Ivan (Sept. 16) and Jeanne (Sept. 25) all affected this area, albeit on the fringes, coming at us seemingly one week after another. It was exhausting. 

As the table shows, all of the storms were deadly and costly in property damage: 

2004: 106 deaths in Florida; $37.3 billion in losses. 

2024: 56 deaths in Florida; close to $100 billion in property losses.

It’s difficult to grasp the scope of death and destruction. But the total property losses from this year’s three storms essentially are the equivalent of wiping out the entire taxable value of all real estate in Sarasota County. Picture that.

All of which prompts the thought: There must be a better way, a better way to protect against and mitigate hurricane damage than just letting Mother Nature take her course. 

Observer reporter Carter Weinhofer has quoted Bob Bunting, CEO of the Climate Adaptation Center, saying: “We have to change the way we do business.” 

The most obvious way is to build better resistant buildings and refurbish, renovate and harden existing buildings. Those steps have been occurring with improved construction and stricter building codes. 

One simple illustration is the level of building destruction throughout the region. As we reported previously, asked where the worst damage occurred along the coast from Helene and Milton, one insurance executive told us Palmetto had worse damage comparatively, largely because of the age of its buildings. Few, if any, of the recently built high-rise condominiums suffered physical damage; it was on the ground levels from Helene’s surge.

So, duh, hurricane-resistant construction — while far more costly than bolting together an aluminum trailer home — makes sense. And no doubt insurers will continue to urge their policyholders to harden their homes, while Florida lawmakers will continue to use your tax dollars to subsidize home improvements.

Realistically, however, think of the massive amounts of money, materials, labor and time it would take to rehab all of the 30-, 40- and 50-year-old single-family homes and apartments throughout Florida. 

Is there a better, more economical, more efficient way to protect and mitigate?

Turbines in the Gulf of Mexico.

Ten years ago, Mark Z. Jacobson, a Stanford University professor of civil and environmental engineering, and two colleagues developed computer simulations showing how wind turbines actually can reduce the force of hurricanes.

In a 2014 paper in Nature Climate Change, Jacobson his two associates from the University of Delaware — Christina Archer, an earth, ocean and environment professor, and Willett Kempton, an electrical and computer engineering professor — posed the following:

Can offshore wind turbines mitigate hurricane damage while avoiding damage to themselves? 

The conclusion (as published): “(L)arge turbine arrays (300+ gigawatt installed capacity) may diminish peak near-surface hurricane wind speeds by 56 to 92 mph and storm surge by 6% to 79%. 

“Benefits occur whether turbine arrays are placed immediately upstream of a city or along an expanse of coastline. The reduction in wind speed due to large arrays increases the probability of survival of even present turbine designs,” their study concluded.”

In their models simulating Hurricanes Sandy in the Northeast and Katrina in New Orleans, the three professors determined “Offshore wind turbine arrays reduced storm surge by up to 34% for Sandy and 79% for Katrina, mainly owing to the average wind speed decreasing by up to 14% and 58% upwind of New York and New Orleans, respectively.”

As for cost, they concluded: “The net cost of turbine arrays (capital plus operation cost less cost reduction from electricity generation and from health, climate and hurricane damage avoidance) is estimated to be less than today’s fossil fuel electricity generation net cost in these regions and less than the net cost of sea walls used solely to avoid storm surge damage.”

In a phone interview this week, Jacobson said the cost of wind-farm energy is dropping below that of fossil fuels — 7.5 cents per kilowatt-hour for wind versus 10 cents for fossil fuels.

“In sum,” the professors wrote, “large arrays of offshore wind turbines seem to diminish hurricane risk cost-effectively while reducing air pollution and global warming and providing energy supply at a lower net cost than conventional fuels.

“Turbines pay for themselves from the sale of electricity they produce and other non-market benefits, but seawalls have no other function than to reduce storm surge (They do not reduce damaging hurricane wind speeds.), so society bears their full cost.”

Asked where his research stands today, Jacobson said he hasn’t pursued since 2014 in large part because: “The physics doesn’t change. It still stands.”

One thing that has changed is the strength and technology of turbines. Today, there are turbines that can withstand Category 5 hurricanes.

What’s more, they’re more powerful. When Jacobson and his colleagues did their simulations, they based them on 7.5 megawatt turbines. At that size, it could take a wind farm or farms of 80,000 offshore turbines to make a significant difference. You can imagine how Florida’s dolphin lovers and fishing industry would respond to 80,000 turbines offshore. 

But now, Jacobson said, turbine technology has advanced to 20 megawatts, thus requiring one-third the number of turbines to have maximum mitigating effects.

“It’s not like you need 100,000; one turbine would actually help,” Jacobson said.

How they would work: As a Category 5 hurricane approaches, the turbines would extract energy from the wind and turn it into electricity and send the power to shore through an underwater cable. That process would slow down the hurricane winds, which in turn would slow down the storm’s wave heights.

Asked why his research hasn’t been put into practice, Jacobson acknowledged large-scale wind farms are only now starting to percolate. “They are starting to put some in Asia where they have typhoons,” he said.

In Florida, no surprise, Jacobson said there is a moratorium. Any time someone suggests erecting oil rigs or, now, wind farms off the coasts of Florida, the environmentalists and tourism lobbies go bananas, and the short-sighted lawmakers (driven to be reelected) jump on the anti-rig wagons.

In the words of economist-philosopher Thomas Sowell, everything is a tradeoff. Likewise with energy-producing, hurricane-mitigating turbines. In the context of the three storms that ravaged our region — plus all of the historical damage and deaths that have occurred over the decades, what makes sense? To let Mother Nature continue to destroy people and property unabated? 

Or to embrace human ingenuity and technology that has demonstrated Florida could have its cake and eat it, too? Wind-farm turbines can produce year-round clean energy and, as a bonus, serve as protection and mitigation against Mother Nature’s destructive winds and surges. 

Someone call Elon Musk.