Best known as the former chairman of Microsoft, billionaire Bill Gates now has reportedly filed several patents aiming to help one day be able to stop hurricanes that plague the Gulf of Mexico each year.
“Theodp,” a well-known patent watcher, discovered the patent and then passed on the news to TechFlash. In the patent filings, Gates and several other inventors plan to use large fleets of vessels to mix warm Gulf of Mexico surface water with colder water under the surface.
Conduits would extend from one vessel beyond the ocean’s thermocline, which is an invisible line separating the warmer, mixed layer of water closer to the surface from the cooler and calmer water that is seen further below the ocean’s surface. Sunlight routinely is captured by the surface layer of ocean water, and a different vessel would be used as a heat/energy sink for water at deeper depths.
The following is an excerpt from one of the patent filings:
Below this mixed layer, however, the temperature decreases rapidly with depth, for example, as much as 20 degrees Celsius with an additional 150 m (500 ft) of depth. This area of rapid transition is called the thermocline. Below it, the temperature continues to decrease with depth, but far more gradually. In the Earth’s oceans, approximately 90% of the mass of water is below the thermocline. This deep ocean consists of layers of substantially equal density, being poorly mixed, and may be as cold as -2 to 3.degree. C.
So basically this is just putting off the problem (and amplifying it) till the thermocline also gets nicely heated after a few years of mixing and the hurricanes become worse than ever and the hurricane season lasts for longer.
Why would anyone patent technology to stop hurricanes?
A patent certainly seems to imply you’re going to use that patent to legally stop people from using your technology.
Does that mean Bill Gates will only stop hurricanes if you pay him? Otherwise, you’re on your own, suckers?
What a nice humanitarian! He should get the Nobel Prize.
Unless he has some ships the size P.R. this idea is nuts.
Bill Gates is teaming up with Al Gore to combat global warming. An unintended consequence will be disruption of the thermohaline circulation, which will result in global warming.
All the environmental wacko’s (ie Greenpeace) will find a reason why this technology should never be used.
They will come up with some fish or squid or something who’s spawning habits will be affected and get a court order prohibiting it’s use until untold environmental impact studies have been completed.
So, even if this technology was viable, cost effective, saved hundreds of lives and billions of dollars in damage, it will never be used because the envirowacko’s care more about squid than people.
Patrick, not necessarily. The amount of temperature reduction needed may not be very much relatively speaking.
There was a person posting at RealClimate last month, calling himself CycloneBuster, with this same idea, and also claiming that it would generate plenty of electricity. I assumed he was just trolling, but the hurricane busting possibility was verified, just not the electricity generation.
This post was then followed up at The Blackboard.
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/cyclone-busting-can-it-work/
Meh, it would be easier to just make some super tsar bombs, say… 500mega tons, and drop them in the hurricanes when they are still tropical depressions, and blow the weather system apart.
Geez postman,
It’s not like we all haven’t wanted to try that. If it wasn’t for the radioactive fallout it would be a no brainer.
#2 Yeah, let’s hope Steve Jobs gets it first.
#5 – Ah_Yea
Yeah, let’s fuck those stupid environmental impact studies… Who gives a fuck if this messes up the Gulf Stream? Except for those fucking tree hugging environmental assholes in northern Europe?
Would someone, please explain the photo?
#10, I have to agree with your sentiment. The Gulf Stream runs on a temperature-salinity differential. You don’t want to jack with that.
I may not subscribe to the current man-made climate change theories but this would definitely get my ire up if they were successful.
# 8 B.Dog said, “If it wasn’t for the radioactive fallout it would be a no brainer.”
“Fallout” only occurs where there are solids to irradiate and then spread. At least in any amount to worry about.
# 12 LibertyLover said, “The Gulf Stream runs on a temperature-salinity differential. You don’t want to jack with that.”
GazProm should do this and cut off the heat train to the EU.
#10 said: “Except for those fucking tree hugging environmental assholes in northern Europe?”
You seem to know them very well. I see that you do not allow their agenda affect you, good for you!
#10 & #12,
It makes you wonder about Gates. If we could see in 5 minutes that this plan will never happen, why couldn’t he?
Oh, and Jägermeister, how rude of those hurricanes slamming into the gulf coast, flooding lowland marshes, and destroying pristine habitat without first getting an appropriate environmental study and government approval!
How DARE we think that just because a hurricane is going to do incalculable environmental damage which could last for decades (Katrina) and stir up the Gulf’s thermo layers anyhow, that we should be proactive and save the environment!
How DARE we!!
They already know one thing that would have a major impact. Drop a few thousand gallons of vegetable oil in the storms path using heavy bombers to try and get a good spread. This would cause a much smaller storm surge, smaller storm waves, and help short circuit the heat and water vapor transfer until after the the digestible oil was consumed by microbes.
They aren’t going to do this because you would do some damage to the environment and might turn the thing toward some other location causing class action law suits from those hit and people needing rain located further inland who will claim you are the reason they didn’t get rain.
#1 is right. There are unintended consequences.
Hurricanes contain amazing amounts of energy that starts with the sun. The water and air of the tropics capture large amounts of tropical sunlight. When you consider that 70% of the earth surface is water, that adds up to a lot of surface area to capture solar heat. Some of that energy is dispersed by storms.
If you eliminate hurricanes, then where does that build up of energy go? It will warm even more water ocean water, which will cause even more powerful hurricanes. The Gulf Stream will get warmer. That warm water will blast north, warming the North Atlantic Ocean and Greenland. That will cause melting of ice up there.
If we are concerned about global warming, then we actually want more hurricanes to wick away that stored energy and dissipate it as wind.
Basically, when you f**k with nature, it f**ks you back ten fold.
This doesn’t eliminate hurricanes or wreck the Gulf Stream. You would only implement the water uptake when you see the hurricane forming, and this would reduce its effect.
I got a better idea. Fix Vista.