Can Bill Gates Prevent the Next Katrina? 380
theodp writes "He once controlled the world's PCs. Now Bill Gates has set his sights on controlling the world's weather. And patenting it. On Thursday, the USPTO revealed that Gates and ex-Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold have filed five patent applications that propose using large fleets of vessels to suppress hurricanes through various methods of mixing warm water from the surface of the ocean with colder water at greater depths. The idea is to decrease the surface temperature, reducing or eliminating the heat-driven condensation that fuels the giant storms. Hey, a guy can only play so much golf in retirement."
How will they know.. (Score:4, Insightful)
How will they ever know that they reduced the number of storms?
The number of storms on a yearly basis is anything but consistent.
Whatcouldpossiblygowrong! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:How will they know.. (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't. That was one of the (many) problems with Project Stormfury, the government attempt to disrupt hurricanes with cloud seeding back in the 1960's. You don't get enough data to run any kind of reliable control. So not only do you not know for sure whether you're making a difference or not, you don't even know whether you're making things worse or not.
Unless they can somehow manage to drive their fleet into every forming hurricane and make every single one suddenly fall apart, any success they claim is going to be very open to interpretation.
Re:How will they know.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Lets say they implement this sort of thing.. How will they ever know that they reduced the number of storms? The number of storms on a yearly basis is anything but consistent.
This is true--you wouldn't know instantly that you stopped a storm for sure. But as the length of time goes up without a hurricane, your confidence level rises until you surpass some threshold which is the longest distance of time between hurricanes. I'm sure meteorologists would like to speculate that the conditions are right but a new factor is stopping these storms. You'll just never really know.
:)
Now, there's a lot of things you don't know whether or not you're changing. Such as the natural cycle of hurricanes influencing unknown factors like wildlife or pressure systems in other areas or rainfall up the East Coast being reduced resulting in lower crop yields and dryer soil? What effect (if any) will pumping this warm water down and cool water up have on the wildlife or natural currents of the ocean? It's warm and cold bodies of air that create natural cycling of air, I assume the same is true for water. If water went still, it might be great for us but bad for wildlife. I think there's a lot of questions one could raise about this. I'm not arguing against it, I just hope this is taken into consideration.
I mean, this 'weather control' should be used sparingly and I hope they don't take this to the next level and use airships to diffuse hot/cold fronts so that we don't get thunderstorms so that my power isn't knocked out for a few hours while my roommate complains he can't watch the latest episode of True Blood right away. Preventing hurricanes is a neat idea and I hope this works, I just hope there's not hidden costs like the rest of Bill's products.
Gulf Stream (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody likes hurricanes. They cause massive destruction and they kill people. But they are part of nature.
I think a better solution would be to act a little smarter about where we build our population centers, and do not offer insurance to people who choose to build in a location where hurricanes are known to strike on a somewhat regular basis.
Truly Gates now thinks he is God (Score:1, Insightful)
The idea is to decrease the surface temperature, reducing or eliminating the heat-driven condensation that fuels the giant storms.
Ludicrous, ridiculous, etc. NOTHING man can do on this planet can even begin to compare to the scale of energies involved in natural phenomena. There exists something called the British Thermal Unit. It's the amount of ENERGY required to heat (or cool) one pound of (fresh) water by one degree. Considering that one gallon of water is roughly 8 lbs, and one BTU is approximately equivalent to 1054 Joules, it takes close to 8000 Joules per gallon of water to cool it - in an hour. Plus I am assuming that an electric pump is just as efficient as a simple heat exchanger like an air conditioner, or a hot plate for that matter. Let's ignore all the friction in the kilometers of pipe, too.
Now exactly how many TRILLIONS of gallons of water does Mr. Gates wish to cool by one degree? Assuming all you want to cool is the first 1 meter of depth of a 1 km x 1km patch of water contains 1 billion litres of water (around 264 million gallons). This would require at least 2.1 * 10^12 Joules of energy. And remember you have to deliver it in a limited time, in the path of the storm (which can change at any time - in fact is MORE LIKELY to change if you start cooling water ahead of it)? And let's not forget during the daytime you have to also account for sunlight, which will make your cooling process less efficient.
Then let's not forget about all the life forms whose habitats will be altered by changing the water temperatures ever so slightly, especially by heating the bottom of the ocean by a few degrees (as if that was possible to be done by man).
It would probably be much more energy efficient to evacuate the entire population of the coasts involved AND rebuild the damage.
If the USPTO approves this, wait, no - they probably will. I at least would demand a working prototype, just like what was done for the warp drive someone tried to patent.
I have never heard anything so stupid come from someone so smart. But then again we live in an era where politicians would have us believe that we humans are responsible for global warming, too...
Re:Gulf Stream (Score:5, Insightful)
Obvious? (Score:3, Insightful)
I've been thinking about this for some time. A network of floating pumps across the belt where hurricanes form, solar powered, to pump cool water from a few tens of meters down up to the surface. When a depression is spotted, just turn on the pumps in its path to reduce the amount of surface heat to feed it. My oceanographer friend tells me I'm talking nonsense.
Error in logic (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Why would you pump cold water up? It is a heat sink. You pump the heat down.
2. Well THAT is the point. Do you put ice in your drink so it would just drop to the bottom or perhaps to cool the drink by absorbing the heat?
Anyway... Give Gates a LITTLE credit. The guy is NOT a moron after all.
RTFA - his idea is quite simple and rather carbon neutral (once you build a huge fleet of ships).
Basically, the idea is to use pressure and temperature differences to "pump" the warm surface water to the bottom.
Now...
What ecological and climate consequences might pumping huge amounts of warm water to the bottom of the ocean and disrupting natural air and water currents might have... that is a matter of FAR more research and calculation.
Re:So... (Score:2, Insightful)
No, gates can't, because Bush flooded New Orleans (Score:1, Insightful)
Katrina, aka the flooding of New Orleans, was caused by George Bush. Follow this: In 19945 a federal program, called SELA, was created in response to a flooding in Louisiana, that was due to deteriorated levees. This program included a full inspection of all the MS river and Lake Ponchartrain levees, then repairs and upgrades to meet current demands, as needed. Well, the first thing old George does when he gets into office is to cut taxes for the rich- he immediately wasted the surplus Clinton left him. That wasn't enough to balance the cuts, so, and here we get to the heart of the matter, Bush cuts the Army Corps of Engineers' Levee repair funds (SELA) to less than one fourth of what is needed. And not for just one year, but for three, in three seperate USA fiscal year's budgets:
June 7, 2001 Bush signed his massive $1.3 trillion income tax cut into law-- a tax cut that severely depleted the government of revenues it needed to address critical priorities. Bush's first budget introduced in February 2001 proposed more than half a billion dollars worth of cuts to the Army Corps of Engineers for the 2002 fiscal year. Bush proposed providing only half of what his own administration officials said was necessary to sustain the critical Southeast Louisiana Flood Control Project (SELA).
February 2002 The president unveiled his new budget, this one with a $390 million cut to the Army Corps. The administration provided just $5 million for maintaining and upgrading critical hurricane protection levees in New Orleans (SELA) --one fifth of what government experts and Republican elected officials in Louisiana told the administration was needed.
February 2, 2004 White House on February 2 released a budget with another massive cut to infrastructure and public works projects-- this time to the tune of $460 million. The Southeast Louisiana Flood Control project sought $100 million in U.S. aid to strengthen the levees holding back the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain, but the Bush administration offered a paltry $16.5 million.
On top of that, Bush refused to put emergency relief in place before, during and after the storm, unlike Nixon, Clinton and Bush 1. He also turned away relief efforts, like a private bus co. offering to come get the people still in the city, the red cross, and stopping the USS Bataan, a hospital ship, from going from MS to NOLA, to help.
Gates can't make a dumass in charge do the right thing, but Katrina didn't flood New Orleans. Stupid George did.
Re:How will they know.. (Score:3, Insightful)
But then the question becomes interpretation or exploitation?
Scientists are not the only people interpreting the results and often not the most vocal people most people get to hear. For example sales people in corporations have agendas they wish to push behind any PR opportunity that comes along. So what is seen as 'the truth' (tm) is constantly manipulated by them, ultimately for their own gain.
Re:Gulf Stream (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree. I also worry about the amount of rainfall that would be lost if Bill Gates plan actually works. Believe it or not there are some useful aspects to a hurricane and more importantly tropical storms.
Here I sort of agree. We should be smarter about where we build our population centers, but more importantly HOW we build our population centers near the gulf.
I totally disagree. Most of the hurricane's damage is from storm surge not wind. So we should limit the amount of construction on shores and surrounding low elevation areas. However your insurance idea, which by the way is already being implemented, penalizes people who live in the same area (county) but built smartly and rarely have catastrophic damage done on their property.
I did not file any insurance claims for hurricane Katrina. Most of the damage from Katrina was FLOOD damage which isn't covered by regular home insurance anyway. But I pay 4 times the state average for insurance, and have a storm deductible based on a percentage of my home's market value. So not only do I pay more, I am less likely to be able to even file a claim. Basically the existence of hurricanes has given insurance companies political cover to rip me off.
There are folks in northern Alabama who have hail damage on their roofs almost every year from the spring storm season, and yet I hear no calls to raise their insurance nor limit the coverage from wind or hail damage. They have a history of tornadoes touching down and wiping out neighborhoods and commercial property, yet their insurance remains unaffected. There are areas in this country where people are susceptible to lose their homes from fires, mudslides, or tornadoes on a yearly basis and yet I hear no calls to relocate them.
Pardon me but you can take that "offer no insurance" idea and shove it up your arse...
Re:Next up! (Score:5, Insightful)
And he will laugh maniacally, when the change in nature's cycles creates huge storms that wipe out entire Europe and half of Africa.
Seriously, why do people still not understand, that everything in nature is a system of sensitive balanced cycles, and when you change things, you have to make a new working cycle or at least balance it all out again, to not create a catastrophe in the long term?
Maybe because they still can. And because when it happens, they are long dead, or it does not affect them.
Well I bet his method will be just as elegant and as well-integrating as Windows. :P
Re:How will they know.. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is what I was thinking as soon as I read the article. Even if it works (and the theory seems valid if they could do it on a massive enough scale, but it would have to be MASSSIVE) what else are you screwing up by doing this? What place do hurricanes occupy in the ecosystem of the east coast of the US? How is all of this cold water going to affect marine life? I mean, you'd need HUGE amount of colder water to affect storm development. We're talking about one of nature's most powerful forces here, you're not going to break it up by dumping a couple of buckets of ice. You're making a huge expanse of the upper ocean several degrees cooler, and simultaneously making a huge expanse of the lower ocean several degrees warmer, what's that going to do?
And before some anti-environmentalist starts saying "Well, yeah, but who cares if we screw up the ecosystem a bit if we're saving lives and property?", do you think the people on the Gulf Coast will thank you if you eliminate hurricanes but cause an overgrowth of algae that ruins the fishing and shrimping industries? Those industries are critical to southern Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and a good chunk of Florida. Or if the weather pattern change causes a heat up in the region and traditional crops to fail? Or for that matter a cool down with the same affect? We have no idea what this kind of thing could do, even assuming we got it to work.
This would need tons of modeling and study before it could be safely deployed, and even then, as parent said, if should be used sparingly.
Re:No, gates can't, because Bush flooded New Orlea (Score:3, Insightful)
The president doesn't write the budget. Congress does. Unless he told Congress he would veto any budget that doesn't cut SELA funding by 75%, you're blaming the wrong person.
Worse idea than rampant CO2 (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How will they know.. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a very significant problem.
Very true, so now we need to figure out the best course of action. Screwing with weather patterns probably isn't the best (or even cheapest) solution.
NOT A TROLL (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent is making a valid point that every location comes with the risk of a natural disaster in response to the absurd assertion that we should never put population centers in a place that can have a storm. People in Kansas have tornadoes, people in California have earth quakes. The solution is not to smugly deny that people live in areas that are victim to the phenomenon du jour, it is to find ways to mitigate those risks.
The danger that hurricanes pose is easily mitigated, just as tornado or earthquake dangers are easily mitigated. Most of those who lost their homes in New Orleans wouldn't have if the government had been doing its job and maintaining the dikes. People in Kansas are safe when the government puts tornado-warning infrastructure in place. People in California are safe when the highways and bridges are built to withstand shock. This is what we have government for.
If we only put population centers in places with no risk of natural disaster, the habitable surface of the earth would be small indeed.
Re:Worse idea than rampant CO2 (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Oh, I don't know, but (Score:4, Insightful)
So if the rate that the ice is melting is rapidly increasing, including the melting of ice that has been frozen for thousands of years, you aren't concerned at all?
Re:Next up! (Score:1, Insightful)
And when will people realize that just because something is "natural" doesn't make it the ideal solution. Using technology to extend human lifespan past 30 has resulted in a cataclysm of course?