Thought this was super interesting...maybe could save some citrus trees!

Modeling has shown that offshore wind farms can pull a lot of the power out of an oncoming hurricane while being an engineering project that can ultimately pay for itself. Images of a future high tech US coast line are entering my mind! Imagine a future with no more substantial hurricane damage in the US.

http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/thousands-of-offshore-turbines/24626158

Think of all the socialized money wasted on wind turbines that will likely not survive a 20 foot storm surge of a large hurricane. Another green dream to justify un-economic wind turbines. Think of all the jobs that could be created by not building wind turbines and spending the capital on projects that actually make money rather than political talking points. I suppose this is some one's opinion. I'd say the calculations were probably done with the same models that can't prove man caused global warming is happening. I'd be less skeptical if the lefties "global warming" model could explain the last 15 years of no warming.

Wind farms are a huge waste of money. The only reason they exist is because of large government subsidizes paid with our tax dollars to make them "profitable". - Millet

The only reason they exist is because of large government subsidizes paid with our tax dollars to make them "profitable"

the same is true for nuclear plants.

Phil, aren't you an engineer?

I guess windmills trigger a political response. None intended by me. I try to isolate myself from that crap....puts me a bit in a bubble I guess. I'm an engineer and just found this work to be technically interesting. My first reaction was "no way" but after a bit of thought I have no doubt this could be designed.

Probably doesn't need saying, but the modeling for climate change clearly has absolutely no relevance to the modeling for stresses relevant to designing these machines. Feels very bizarre to mentally link this stuff to me, but in the end I don't really understand people. Maybe somehow this is linkable? To me it's all just stress strain curves, yield points, energy transfer calculations. We have really good design tools and people, just feed in the needs and costs will be calculated.

It's an interesting concept, but without the cost modeling that's all it is. Once that's done it's then just an issue of deciding if this is the best method. It could well come back that it's not worth it and it's economically better just to let the damage occur, do our best to rebuild, absorb the losses to our economy, and bury our dead. I don't know, I just picture people sitting back and chatting about back in the old days how horrible it was that we couldn't stop hurricanes from making landfall.

Hurricanes create a lot of (economic) damage, but they are part of life on earth. Eliminating or weakening them might cause other unforeseen problems...

In my area a big problem that seems to affect windmills, is that they frequently brake down, and require repair after repair after repair. One especially that comes to mind, is what a lot of the locals call a PC windmill at a Wall Mart store. The poor thing is down weeks, and even months at a time, 3 to 5 times a year. - Millet