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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."
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."
I only have one thought...
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
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.
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.
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.
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
Yep. Better do just that. We already have enough problems, heating up the bottom of the oceans as well as the top will really screw things up. Stuff up conveyor currents and half the world dies.
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
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
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
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.
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!"
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.
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?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
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?