We can’t tame hurricanes, and we can’t fight them, either, Max Mayfield told readers in a lively Ask the White House online forum Friday. Ben from Davenport, Iowa, asked the director of NOAA’s Tropical Prediction Center-National Hurricane Center if hurricanes’ power could be harnessed to generate energy. Mayfield was game, responding that hurricanes do indeed release “an incredible amount of energy … due to the conversion in clouds of water vapor to liquid water,” a process called “latent heat release from condensation.” Unfortunately, he added, there’s no current way to tap it. “This is not to say that it is impossible, but such use of hurricanes as energy sources is not likely in our lifetime,” said Mayfield. A bit later came a question from Austin, in Wisconsin, who asked if the U.S. is doing anything to stop hurricanes. “No federal agencies are presently doing, or planning to do, any research or experimentation on the modification of hurricanes,” said Mayfield, who provided a link to an NOAA page on past experiments. To make storms less destructive, he instead advised better land use, forecasting and planning.