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Can Bill Gates Prevent the Next Katrina?
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."
He'll have an island in the middle of the ocean with a volcano that has a giant face on it that looks like him.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
"Where do you want (the wind) to go today?"
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.
"His name was James Damore."
Can anyone say environmental catastrophe?...
I only have one thought...
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
This is Red Alert all over again!
The next step of Gates' plan: Regroup all his weather-altering devices into a single prototype named the Weather Dominator. Proudly go on the air while wearing his blue uniform and matching helmet with mirrored facemask and announce his global domination plans. COBRAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!
"Face it - Bill Gates is a about a white Persian cat and a monocle away from being a Bond villain."
A co worker and I were already discussing this! Bill steals another idea and patents it... what's new?
There are things we should not play with on the same planet as we LIVE ON!
I am sure you have good intentions with all this Gates, but the LAST thing we want to do is screw around with the weather.
I hope they do not run Windows on those ships LOL.
I can see the Hurricane helper now.
An Unknown Error has occurred.
Would you like to
Abort the mission.
Try again
Just curl up and die .
Whatta crock!
OMG he is god HeadOn. Apply directly to the forehead
I think is not feasible. but anyway, if they can do it, New Orleans will be safe but Florida will receive the hurricane deviated.
I know people understand hurricanes decently well, and clearly by taking/giving enough energy (heat) at the right locations in a hurricane you could theoretically stop it. But my question is - could this actually work? Or would it take so much energy that it's practically impossible with today's (or tomorrow's, etc) technology?
weinersmith
That's a great idea!!
And there can't possibly be any consequences of doing something like that...
There has already been talk about the possible shutdown of the Gulf Stream plunging Europe into a mini-ice age. It seems like meddling with the mix of warm and cold ocean water in this fashion could make things even worse. And who knows what pumping billions of gallons of cold water from the depths up to the surface would do to the marine wildlife.
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.
Great - more vaporware from Bill Gates... ;-)
Computer Science is all about trying to find the right wrench to bang in the right screw. -T.Cumbo?
Bill Gates working on some sort of OS for the World:
Blue Planet of Death??
We do not want the world to crash do we?
Ron
until you get a blue tornato of death
Where is the whatcouldpossiblygowrong tag when you need it?
I don't think there has ever been a more appropriate reason to use it....
Life starts at the end of your comfort zone.
Weather man: The sky is lovely and blue today ...
Us: ZOMG! Blue skyz of deathz!
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
Bill Gates have made something that CRASHES the storms? I have very high hopes that this works. I just hope BSoD is not literal in this context.
The catch is that as Bill would have to visit Magrathea to get the planet built, it would be cheaper just to engage them to fix the global warming on this one. (and add a few more fjords while at it.)
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
/. guys, this is the exact time to use Borg icon and it is missing.
He can control the weather AND Microsoft's nuclear missiles.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
Ok, as much as hurricanes hurt and destroy peoples homes, lives, and regions economies, I can tell you right now that to suppress them is A BAD IDEA.
Hurricane season and storm activity represent a huge portion of the rainfall/water collection/water renewal in the Caribbean, and is still a significant water contributor in the southern U.S.A., a region that is still experiencing drought conditions, even if its not as severe as last year. What, is this a plot to dry up an important freshwater source for a large region, then sell expensive desalination plants?! Desertification of a whole region to put up solar plants or harvest silicon?
Plus the hurricanes help to suck up all the warm water that's killing the the coral reefs - you know, one of the bastions against the waves pounding coastlines?
Oh wait, the Caribbean is full of small islands and a few unnecessary Central American countries that act as the hurricane buffer for the U.S.A., and absorb the majority of the insurance hikes when Florida/Louisiana/Texas gets hit. Shafting us and destroying our ecology is business as usual.
It looks like you are trying to suppress a hurricane. Would you like some help with that?
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...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Cause the most prominent argument regularly put forth as to why weather control is bad is:
Do *you* want to be the one who causes lots of insurance companies to have to pay out because someone can make a reasonable case that where the hurricane landed was no longer an Act Of God?
Gates is used to playing God.
And he'll find a way to demand ridiculous payment from all of you while
he's at it.
Just another stab at charging for something that can't be done. But he
will convince you that you need it.
It's proof that nobody can avoid senility.
He just declares flooding as the new international standard
I figure it will probably be the same pseudo science employed by Gore.
In other words, claims of consensus, its for the children, we're smarter than you, and such should suffice.
Any reduction in storms proves their process works, any increase proves it wasn't executed properly and would work with more money and adherence to their process.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
God Complex
I took a 1000 level Earth and Atmospheric Sciences class a few years ago and one of the first things we touched upon was this idea. And why it wouldn't work. Before we even ask the question of why Bill Gates is doing this, let's ask the question of why he's patenting it?
... he owes us one.
kulakovich
I guess Bill is taking what he learned from Windows and applying it to the weather...
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
Just think of all those tiny windows flags. Fluttering in the wind.
ALWAYS fluttering in the wind.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Someone had to say it
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
GPF in Rainfall.exe. Abort, retry or ignore?
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
. . . he is destined to encounter, and do battle with piracy.
This time the real thing.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I am no enviromental scientist or anything...
But wouldn't decreasing the surface temperature of the ocean also decrease the temperature of the winds blowing over it and subsequently result in affecting the global temperature substantially? Hmm...
Can't wait to see the Blue Sky Of Death when the system crashes....
The Binary Anti-Pattern [http://beyondboolean.blogspot.com/]
...for a number of years (though I'm an IT guy, not a meteorologist), I learned enough to know that not only is this doomed to failure, they should already know that it's not scientifically possible.
How in the name of God are they going to generate the energy needed to cool the water at "greater" ocean depths? The would have to launch a fleet of ships far greater then they can possibly imagine.
Not only does this appear to be scientifically and logistically improbable, but have they ever considered the issues with screwing with global weather patterns? Stopping hurricanes (or, in reality, stopping their potential capability for damage to humans and land structures) is a noble dream, but every weather even had both positive and negative affects on other weather patterns, events that we actually may want to occur.
He would be better off taking all the money he'd invest in this silliness and hand it over to people in hurricane-damaged areas so they can rebuild. Or move.
Joe Dougherty, Florida, USA
The words I thought I brought, I left behind. So, never mind.
Yes, in the short term, this will cool the surface temperatures.
However, warmer water cannot hold on to as much CO2. This is the reason for, ~800 years after warming by being nearer the sun, the oceans release CO2 and increase the effect of the milankovich cycle.
It takes, without deliberate mixing by humans, 800 years to warm the deep waters enough to let go of its load.
With mixing, not so long.
Is this barnpot dictator INSANE????
Don't hurricanes serve as a major way for Mother Nature to blow off heat into space?
And Gates not only wants to prevent this, but instead to use this heat to warm up the deeper parts of the ocean?
It seems to me that this -- if it works -- could cause as many problems as it solves.
So no, Only RMS can Prevent Katrina {Linus can help}
First, we're fighting "climate change" like the war on drugs... Nothing will change as we don't have the power to. Next, we're fighting storms by water temperature into the ocean. ...And we think scientists saying the world was flat was insane. The future is going to be getting a good chuckle out of this generation's "science".
Mixing cold water at depths with warm surface water quickly is impossible with pumps and stuff. Just drop a nuclear depth charge and explode it about a mile below the surface! Instantly all that water will mix together and the storm will dissipate. 16000 warheads from Russia and 8000 warheads from U.S.A, we can prevent hurricanes for the next, what 3, years?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
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.
Cripes, all we need is for insurance companies to add 'lack of action by God' to their list of things they don't cover.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
trust me im not a PETA member im thinking more about the edible yummies in the ocean...what type of environmental effect could this possibly have on them...like fishie global freezing, i mean i really doubt their climate for water has changed too much in years now imagine it suddenly 20 degrees or so cooler? hell imagine it 20 degrees colder in any of our winters, idk about yall but id move to the equator...
-Noc
if only gates knew there were people obviously much smarter than him posting on slashdot at five am!!!
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.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Anyone who thinks they can change the weather is either absorbed in hubris or insane.
A Hurricane can't be stopped or prevented. Or influenced in any way by anything human beings could do to it. You could detonate the largest nuclear bomb ever made in the middle of a hurricane and it wouldn't even dent it. A hurricane has so much energy that it releases more energy than all explosives ever detonated by humans every MINUTE...
Corporatism != Free Market
First off, Katrina was just a CAT 3 when it went through New Orleans, and it was not not a direct hit. The levees should have held, but---
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.
Republican leadership = Idiocracy
Why doesn't he just buy New Orleans?
and, as a bonus, our children would have superpowers!*
* development of superpowers may be hindered by early death or one or both parents' infertility. contact your local representative for further information.
weinersmith
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
The problem is that some of the best places to put population centers are also where hurricanes tend to be. Population centers are often near ports. I would bet that, just about every one of the world's great cities began on a river or a sea port, and its certainly true for the cities along the gulf coast. There's so much economic activity around ports that it is actually profitable for our species to lose a city to storms every now and then but still have the economic gain from waterborne trade.
Hurricanes, and typhoons, are a worldwide problem too. We Americans might tend to think about hurricanes but Asian cities have been known to get pounded pretty furiously. Those typhoons are arguably more destructive than their Atlantic cousins simply because the Pacific is bigger. We might think about moving New Orleans, or Mobile, but where exactly would we move Hong Kong to?
I don't even think removing insurance would be a sufficient incentive. Shanghai is China's most important port, and its in Typhoon alley. Until recently, I doubt there was any insurance there at all. Yet, the area ultimately started and then drove China's economic turnaround.
This is my sig.
Man, this is a terrible idea. Sheesh, take that money and invest in nano building materials. Build houses that can withstand hurricanes without problems and you'd be much better off.
"Is he running Vista?"
...George Bush caused Katrina, and he's out of office now.
Dark Reflection
The catch is that as Bill would have to visit Magrathea to get the planet built, it would be cheaper just to engage them to fix the global warming on this one
My stupid Javascript global warming calculator estimates that Americans will spend probably somewhere around 8 trillion dollars to reduce emissions down to 20% of what they are today, and that's going to be with a pretty sharp standard of living decrees. I'm working on a more detailed economic modelling engine in C++ that I'll FOSS which I think will show the standard of living cut will actually be worse. Quite frankly its probably cheaper to just to let a few port cities go under water and be destroyed, but, since the world's great powers are essentially a coalition of port cities, global warming, we will all fight. But, if you live in Kansas, its just going to be a bigger bill.
This is my sig.
Where I live, the annual rainfall is entirely dependent upon having a couple of hurricane remnants pass by us. If the hurricane season doesn't turn up anything, we've got a drought.
AND had the proper money not to care about the outcome to do some experiements with unusual things
AND were succesful
think they are smart enough to be always succesful
And then emporer Qin had the Terracotta Army built
... this will seem like magic. :) :)
Give "me" billions and I will chemtrail the world back to good climate health
See the temperature is dropping
MS saved us all.....
If MS can get the mix right, can they solve overpopulation too?... permanently?
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/14/wetzstein-billionaires-take-aim-population/
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Does his arrogance know no bounds?!
BSOD will take on a new meaning: Blue Sea Of Death.
oosh!
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
call me a troll, call me what you will, but this is NOT some arc angel send from high upon tech mountain to solve all our meatworld woes. the guy spent arguably his entire career at microsoft trying to find ways to fuck other businesses out of a competing edge with his products through "embrace extend extinguish" and chillaxed on the coat-tails of a shitty but defacto standard operating system that was a pile of security flaws, mystery code, and undocumented standards.
This man couldnt prevent windows, a manmade operating system resting on the shoulders of thousands of coders, from bluescreening at a tech conference during a SIMPLE runthrough of plug-and-pray scanner access. he couldnt find a way to innovate past the browser wars, and he couldnt figure out how to make a media player capable of competing with things like realplayer. What in GODS NAME makes us think he can tackle a force of nature?!
if he manages to do it, what will he have sought to accomplish?
bad joke here, but "patenting hurricane system for cloud based services" doesnt seem like its going to work in the meatworld. on the plus side, the next microsoft hurricane to hit will probably segfault somewhere off the coast of florida and turn into a turtle-mocha cheesecake, or ask if im trying to wreck florida again and need help.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Just kill all the butterflies?
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.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
I give him credit for trying. Most people are just standing line for a new iPhone or wasting their life complaining about someone else's attempts to accomplish something. Peace
Is there an open source alternative?
NOTHING man can do on this planet can even begin to compare to the scale of energies involved in natural phenomena
Thermonuclear weapons do not naturally occur on earth. The only E=MC^2 that occurs in nature is in a start. Man can do it anywhere he chooses. And, even in chemical reactions, we have figured out all the good ones.
This would require at least 2.1 * 10^12 Joules of energy.
Well, first off, you have to assume that he would not be extracting the energy from the ocean and in some clever way use the ocean to pump itself. But, be that as it may... remember that we can say that a joule is a watt in a second, and we can use time to reduce our peak energy needs. If you run the process continuously, you'd find that you'd need only about 20MW of peak power applied to get her done in a day. You figure, a nuclear submarine by itself has a 40-50MW reactor on board, and we have on land 1000MW nukes under construction. If you had a big nuke on board an ocean going vessel, you could do all sorts of ocean processing with it, at least from an energy perspective.
I have never heard anything so stupid come from someone so smart.
A lot of Gate's rivals said the same thing... Phillipe Kahn, are you there? I would not be so quick to dismiss Gates on this issue.
But then again we live in an era where politicians would have us believe that we humans are responsible for global warming, too...
You underestimate mankind.
This is my sig.
The problem is that standard of living is extremely hard to define, especially as it is relative. (the Arabs, for instance, were shocked to discover that the Crusader knights lived like Arab peasants.) If you define standard of living in square meters of house and lawn, the decline will be drastic. But if you define it in, say, terms of active life expectancy and access to information, it might be improved (especially compared to the effects of taking no action.) Good luck with your model, but you'll need entire think tanks just to define some of your parameters.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
re "hurricanes are known to strike on a somewhat regular basis" if they were 'regular', we'd know when and where they would occur, and could more easily avoid their consequences. I suggest that 'frequent' is a better description of their occurrence patterns.
Doesn't matter if Congress writes the budget or not, EVERYTHING is Bush's fault, have you not realized this yet??? ;)
it's like trowing a giant icecube in the ocean. not gonna change a thing, just build the dams we dutch proposed and be safe for another 200 years.... stupid icecube in the ocean is not going to protect u from anything...
I agree that this is almost certainly bullsh*t, but I have to throw out the suggestion that possibly they are only talking about deflecting or steering a storm away from heavily-populated areas. It takes a lot less energy to dig a channel for a boulder rolling down hill to follow than to build a brick wall capable of stopping it cold. And of course, like any good American it is easy for me to then make the jump to weaponizing the damn thing - if you can steer it, maybe you can point it at your enemies (not that I have anyone in mind, President Chavez)...
Hurricanes move the energy pressure from the equator and dissipates the energy accross the north and south caps of the earth. If they were to go threw with this, it would get alot hotter alot faster and the radiant pressure builds could have unforeseen consequences.
In any locale there is SOME sort of environmental risk, be it hurricane, earthquake, tornado, godzilla, etc. If people continue to purchase insurance and live in these places, then they have decided that the benefits are worth the risk and expense. Who the hell do you think you are to dictate who can buy and sell insurance? And before anyone even THINKS of replying "well the government subsidizes these insurance plans/customers/companies/whatever", consider that the problem may be your government, not people whose home happens to be somewhere more dangerous than your own. These folks are better off with the storms than with wannabe-dictators like yourself.
Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon detonated, released 2*10^17 Joules of energy. This is slightly more than the wind energy expended by a huricane in one day, and wayy more than your trivial 10^12 Joules.
If they are going to mix warm and deep cold water why not build OTECs and generate power while they are at it? Even in the 70's they got 4MW out of these things, I am sure they could do 10 - 15 MW per plant with modern materials and sciences. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_thermal_energy_conversion
We're all so very gullible.
The Admin and the Engineer
... will be named ... Wind-OS !!!!!
Upon retirement you:
The last option has the added benefit that if it doesn't work, you can always take the first option by force
As soon as someone thinks that can control or SHOULD control the weather we are doomed. Despite the losses seen in violent storms and other weather events, those events keep our world in balance and in check. There are more factors involved than we can comprehend or yet understand. Changes in humidity, movement of seeds/soils... so many things. The problem is, not to sound too greenie, is that we treat the earth like we own it, not like we are part of it. The more we influence it (actively or passively) the more likely it is to get messed up and for things to get worse for us. We need the Earth... it doesn't need us. I think Gates, the meglomaniac/idiot savant, should stick to giving his billions to those less fortunate and leave mother nature alone.
"This technology stuff is just plum crazy!"
Let's suppose for a moment that this would be a valid, usable method to prevent huge natural disasters... should anyone have the right to hold patent for this?
Like does anyone have a patent on the idea of 911 operation?
Hey, a guy can only play so much golf in retirement.
No hurricanes = more time to play around the gulf coast. I think this is entirely motivated by him wanting to play golf.
My webcomic
By applying for a patent the referred technology surely has been proven to work. That is, he successfully implemented prototypes.
Or maybe not and he's trying to stifle people that really want to make a difference and to make money from litigation. What else?
The lack of evidence -who deploys huge scale experiments without the world taking note- supports my theory -which a five year old could come up with.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
It's like using a leaf-blower. If doesn't get rid of the leaves, just moves them to somewhere else. If that "somewhere else" is is still on your property (or in the same ocean) then the problem hasn't been solved - merely pushed around a bit.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
no
I must call attention to this!
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.
weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
Expect heavy floods and hurricanes in Cupertino and Mountain View. If this madman can't control the OS market, nobody will!
Wait, you're going to try and dope the Ocean with large enough concentrations of water that has been artificially heated or cooled to make a difference in heat-driven condensation?
An OCEAN? The single biggest heat reservoir on the planet?
Good luck. Please dont foot us with the bill. And may the Entropy Ghost haunt your dreams forever!
What really took the money away was the Iraq war (which also gave Osama Bin Laden a free pass). Who is complicit in the Iraq war? Certainly Cheney and Rumsfeld for manufacturing evidence of WMD, but more importantly almost every single person in Congress who refused to read the reports directly (or even the summary put together by "I believe in UFO's" Cucinich). It's not just Republicans, it's also democrats. just like TARP, PATRIOT, suppression of habeus corpus, and many more, both parties are essentially in support of all of it. So in the end it is the fault of the citizens of the US, who have allowed themselves to become the consumers.
It's a new function on Bill's personal edition of Windows 7. The new key mapped in Windows 7 is the ctrl + 'Weather' key, it's between the 'Launch ICBM' key and 'Crash world economy' key.
Apparently the rc for Bill's copy swapped the 'Crash World economy' key with the 'Weather' key last year some time...
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
All you need is some honeysuckle wines or stonecrop bushes! These plants plants make copious quantities of nector and they attract butterflies and honeybees. Everyone knows the butterfly effect, the beating of wings of butterfly in Brazil will affect the weather in Tokyo two weeks later. So with enough of these bushes spread around the globe, we can affect the weather all over the world. Simple Easy as a peach.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Why should tax money from Nebraska have to bail out idiots that live in a flood plane to begin with? If people from Louisiana want to live below sea level, pay for it yourselves.
Far too many people today are paying for insurance that will be of no use to them if they ever need it. Why you ask? Because the coverage can be canceled at the whim of the insurance company. Every time flooding threatens an area of the Midwest, insurance policies are canceled in that area. Same with fires in the Western U.S. Medical insurance has many, many, many loopholes that the insurance companies can use to avoid paying legitimate claims. And in many cases, they just plain refuse to pay. After all, they have more money to spend on lawyers than almost any individual. I could go on, but you get the point.
People should be required to document and demonstrate a working prototype. If they can't do that, they shouldn't be allowed to file a patent on something, because it simply prevents others from exploiting the idea for the next 20 years.
This seems ludicrous. I can't imagine a fleet of ships being able to harness enough energy with current power sources to affect a temperature change to billions of tons of ocean water whether by circulation or thermal exchange of some sort.
Disrupting the atmospheric currents of a tropical depression BEFORE it forms a cyclone seems much more manageable.
I believe there have been a few proposals for doing just this with supersonic aircraft orbiting the eye of potential or existing hurricanes. The coordinated positions of the shock waves on the eye wall would theoretically disrupt the rotation of the storm. Far less energy would be required to form an interference pattern in the rotation that to super heat or pump water from ocean depths.
A patent application filed by Prof. Arkadii Leonov and his colleagues: http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?WO=2008094226 Another: http://mb-soft.com/public/hurrican.html
Of course, we've all seen this work with alien probes visiting trying to talk to whales.
Well aren't you just a little George Bush hater?
First of all, as stated by others the President doesn't write the budget. Congress does. Congress controls the money all the President can due is approve what they send him.
Second, the reason there was no emergency aid after Katrina is not because of Bush. It was because of the governor of Louisiana. The state's have the ultimate sovereignty. The federal government cannot help until it is requested by the states. The governor of Louisiana refused to let the federal government help for quite some time, hence the lack of emergency personnel.
Genesis 11:5 & 6
5 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
6 And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
So, really, the old conservative argument that we could not possibly screw up the planet is contradicted by our own God, in our own Bible. The Almighty evidently has more faith in our abilities than we!
This is my sig.
Undoubtedly it will result in a Blue Sky of Death :)
And he will laugh maniacally, when the change in nature's cycles creates huge storms that wipe out entire Europe and half of Africa.
If you've been paying attention to history, weather and climate have huge geopolitical and strategic consequences. North Atlantic storms stopped both the Spanish Armada and Nazi Germany from invading England. Weather almost stopped the D-Day invasions. Japan is still a nation because of such a storm: the Kamikaze.
Climactic shifts sparked the movements of barbarian tribes and may have contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire, prevented the early Nordic colonization of North America, and paved the way for the Renaissance.
The ability to prevent or to create a storm would have huge strategic implications. Nations with the resources to wield this sort of weapon could wreak economic devastation on their enemies and be immune to invasion. (And save on the huge cost incurred from such storms.)
I also suspect that global warming is actually desired by some strategic thinkers in the industrialized nations. (But not all. Not conspiracy. Just a part of the oligarchy pushing to exploit coincidence.) Some of the greatest suffering will be visited on up and coming economic powers (India) while the established ones will be able to cope more easily. I think this may be part of the reason why China is building the largest river dam system in the world -- to buffer themselves against shifts in water availability.
And... he's going to use HOW MUCH FOSSIL FUEL pumping all of this ocean water??? hmmm...
..and wants their Star Wars program back. Is there any chance that something like this would work, or has Gates finally cracked?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Is Bill and Nathan going to actually build such a system, or wait until someone else does so and then go after them for royalties. Does these patents cover all methods of decreasing the surface temperature?
davecb5620@gmail.com
I think Billy was a bit tossed and made a prank call to the patent office.
... principles involving heat exchange and thermodynamics, why on earth would anyone ever let them patent such a scheme? That's no more complicated a concept than circulating air from a home through an underground heat sink of stones, which no one would dare try to patent.
Linus better start training now if he's going to defeat Cyborg Supervillain Gates in an apocalyptic showdown on his mobile island fortress.
There's a major flaw in reducing or stopping hurricanes: hurricanes are a major source of water in the southeast. The last few seasons have been quiet, and due to this the drought levels in the southeast are critical (especially in SC).
hopefully this goes through, so if its patented... and Gates comes to his senses... he'll be able to stop people from doing such a STUPID thing
Take an idea that has been around for years and try to claim ownership. Seriously, getting the cold water up from the depths to sap storms of their energy is an old idea. Everything from pumps to nuclear weapons have been proposed.
Bill gates is (incorrectly) alleged to have said: "If GM had kept up with the technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon." To which GM is supposed to have come back with a caustic comeback. Imaginary as this story may be, let's stick with it for a second. What would a Microsoft hurricane look like? Random intermittend freezes? Nagging bogus error messages when in the proximity of Mountain View, California? Would it suck up, slowly, over time, all the humidity from the atmospehere in a huge overengineered barely moving vortex that would come to a grinding halt over time ('time to buy Hurricane 8.0')?
Yes, it's true that there's no place in the US where you're free from the risk of a natural disaster. It's not true, however, that the risks of natural disaster are EQUAL throughout the US. Your house is much more likely to be destroyed if you build on the beach in North Carolina than if you put your house even a few miles inland. No one is saying that you can't put houses anywhere you could have a disaster... that would be stupid. The idea is not to put houses in places where natural disasters are LIKELY. And insurance rates should (and to an increasing extent, do) reflect this.
There's already enough carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in our atmosphere now to warm our planet 0.7 degrees Celsius. What's stopping this temperature rise from being immediate is the worlds oceans acting as a massive heat sink buffering the effect.
If such an effort ever took place it would end up pumping huge amounts of warm water to the cold depths, basically stirring up this huge heat sink. Theoretically it could prove to be quite effective in the short term, but it will only make the problem worse as next year there's more warm water to fuel bigger hurricanes.
In the end it could seal our fate
all those chairs could make a nice dam around New Orleans.
Wow, what a sensational headline!
Another way it could have been: "The evil Dr. Morlock bent on holding the world for ransom"
But then again, maybe Bill Gates may be onto something here. If he can control global warming and weather patterns, we all can worship him like a god, and he can charge us all a fee for bringing rainfall to arid regions and sunshine and rainbows to all the good children in lollipop land.
Lord Bill is my hero ... big sigh
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
Before mucking about in meat space, Bill and friends need to back the creation of weather / climate modeling that is dead nuts accurate. Once you have about 5 years of 90%+ correct predictions on both the macro / micro levels, then start your 'what if' simulations and see if they pan out or not.
Here we have the Obama administration reinforcing the ban on human cloning, but no one seems to care about an attempt to control the weather?
We're supposed to reduce carbon emissions because we don't know what effect it'll have on the environment, but fucking with the weather is just peachy keen?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
You make some excellent points and rebuttals, Good Citizen Bill_the_Engineer, and I would like to add one more subtle one.
Many people project their own thoughts on wishes upon Bill Gates, but those who are familiar with him and the Gates family aren't so fantasy-prone. Gates' driving urge has never been design elegance but amassing a fortune and authoritarian control. Period!
There is a fairly new exchange, the IFEX (Insurance Futures Exchange), based upon catastrophe event-linked futures (hurricanes, tornadoes, etc.). This exchange is owned by Climate Exchange Plc, which is owned by Goldman Sachs and InterContinental Exchange (which in turn is owned by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and the oil companies). The potential for market manipulation is extraordinary - and ever since a Rockefeller complained about conspiracy (Senator Jay Rockefeller and the insurance companies) - believe....believe....believe.....
SIMPSONS did it! SIMPSONS did it!
... so he now tries... the weather??
I'd say Bill has owned it for years!
I wonder if it'd be possible to generate a katrina in the same way, and attack a country!
no, Mr. Jobs, I expect you to die...
Yes, dismissing claims you don't support for reasons other then the claims seems to be the logical path to take "when you can't invalidate the claims".
...thanks.
I have to offer kudos, you did assassinate this guys legitimacy pretty well. I mean an AC on a public internet forum with no reference to qualifications shooting the messenger instead of the message and blah blah blah
The AC doesn't need to provide a scanned copy of his Nobel Prize to point out that the parent was full of it.
Yes, if we can assassinate the credibility of all deniers like this
Credibility is earned, not something you're born with. Climatologists have earned credibility by doing decades of peer reviewed research with a plethora of data. Whereas the ostrich denies only have their fact-free ideology and glittering trivialities - like the canard that some ice sheets are thickening. Conveniently leaving out the fact that it's thinking due to increased precipitation - brought on by warmer temperatures.
One persistent problem for the ostriches is that even when they have something right, they're still wrong.
Your right, the AC can just assassinate the character and qualifications of the person making the claims and never address the legitimacy of the claims at all. In fact, that is what he did. So here we have claims that run counter to the current global warming theory as expressed politically and skipping them altogether seems to be the most legitimate response to you and the AC. Gee, it's no wonder there are so many deniers out there when the claims are ignored and the messenger is shot.
Even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then. But I see what you are saying, we can ignore what the guy claims because he doesn't meet your superimposed standards. In other words, what he says has no credibility because you found a way to diss the man instead of counter what he said. I'm not sure the logic is good, but if that is what it takes to keep your position legit, then by all means, run and gun it.
Yep, and what is the official definition of climatologist, where can we find it, and what were these climatologist called before the position was created? Now I know I lack credibility because I havn't been spouting the same crap for decades, but please answer these questions instead of attempting to ignore them by assassinating my character.
Yes, it's the warmer temps causing it. And how much of that warmth is man made verses natural? Yea, the article posted set some pretty good facts into play and here you are discounting all of them because of something someone else said.
Like I said, lets start a religion and make these actions official.
That's what I'm talking about. Even when they are right, you say they are wrong. And judging from your response and the AC who started it, they are wrong because of who they are not because their claims are right. Your parents must be proud of you. I mean being able to deny something that is right because you don't want it to upset your convenient world view. Yea, Advaita must be proud too.
The president submitts a budget to Congress:
You might consider the ocean a giant blue screen of death when Bill Gates gets through with it.
Will become the RSOD or Red Sea of Death.
This whole idea is ludicrous. Gates needs to become another Howard Hughs reclusive. I'm getting too much of his bullshit factor in my life.
The fact that this was even allowed as a patent is wholly crazy. They need to have created and completed/tested. Otherwise it should not be allowed to be patented.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
If they can't figure out how to economically control the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability that Denis Bonnelle has been so worried about, they can give me a call.
Seastead this.
This is nothing new. They've been playing with the earth's weather and atmospheric properties daily for decades using Chemtrails around the globe, and ionospheric heaters like HAARP, of which there are many similar stations spread around the globe. What is new is that the NWO is now openly admitting to the big weather control game and patenting the technology is just a further move to legitimize a giant global shadow industry. Of course the sheeplefied public haven't noticed that they are being sprayed daily, but they really can't be blamed when you consider all the subliminals of chemtrails which have been strategically placed into movies, tv shows, commercials, magazine ads, etc.., to make chem skies seem completely natural. No funny business going on here... We are really living through an Outer Limits or Twilight Zone episode. Except it's all real... Wake up.
First post, but had to comment on the Weather Control portion of this 12yo skit!
http://snlarc.jt.org/detail.php?i=1997011816
Anyone?
the floods in Cedar Rapids, IA?
Bill Gates has applied for a patent on emptying swimming pools using only thimbles...
Hey guys why don't you move to Venezuela? We haven't an earthquake or a tornado in decades, ok we have Chavez, but nothing is perfect...
I think this is the common usage, referring to speculative schemes not necessarily securities related. I also think it makes much more sense that this meaning is what inspired the movie title.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
1st thing that occurred to me was this could cause dangerous unintended consequences. For instance, while hurricanes are destructive to the coastal areas, they bring much needed moisture and rainfall into the main continent. The Gulf of Mexico is a prime example. States in the SW get very hot & dry in the summer and the high pressure prevents moisture from moving in. The only thing strong enough to push that high pressure out is a hurricane. Without some rain during the summer, the land would turn into a dry dustbowl.
In any case, why would you trust manipulation of global weather patterns to someone who thought that 640kB would be more than anyone would ever need?
Gates will end up in the same position as T. Boone Pickens, withrawing in failure after spending $2,000,000,000.00. Everybody knows men cannot cause Global Warming right? OK, so the converse is also True => men cannot do enough cooling to reverse hurricanes. Elementary dear Watson. And as always yes, I do have a system for doing it. However, hurricanes are natural and maybe, just maybe, they shouldn't be prevented. Bill Gates is the one needs to be stopped.
Industrial Age 2 + How-to Stop Malignant Cancers.
Now, he's 53, gave away $40 billion to charity and retired. Remember he's still a genius, the Thomas Alva Edison of his time, and what's he working on? Ways to actually improve the world. Got hurricanes? Let's work on it. Need a way to decrease dependence on fossil fuels? We got that covered. Need a cold beer and no fridge? We can even do that.
I use Ubuntu, but I'd kiss his ass in Macy's front window to be like him.
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
Bill Gates needs to be stopped. I can just see the sky, covered with white letters... Global Blue Screen of Death.
Why do I always have to think about Rube Goldberg if Bill Gates proposes a plan ?
Bill Gates has discovered the "National Geographic" channel .. isn't this knowledge already known to the world !?
Amazing! Why didn't I think of this!?!?!