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."

Comments

Next up!

[AltGrendel]

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.

Re:Next up!

[2.7182]

Actually, I think just about anyone would prefer it to be a skull on a volcano, rather than a face.

Re:Next up!

[Hurricane78]

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:Next up!

[Panzor]

The irony of your username is hilarious.

How will they know..

[Rockoon]

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.

Re:How will they know..

[FroBugg]

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..

[eldavojohn]

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. :)

Re:How will they know..

[Sockatume]

For the curious. I'm not going to sit down and read out the data and figure out the standard deviation, but you're not kidding. You'd have to do this for decades to know how effective it was, and if it turns out to be useless, the environmental cost would have been wasted. I'd hate to be the guy who gets to do the risk-benefit analysis on that one.

Re:How will they know..

[Demena]

If the Atlantic Conveyor fails, instant ice age in europe. Compare the latitude of the major european cities with the same latitudes in the US.

Re:How will they know..

[DrgnDancer]

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:How will they know..

[nizo]

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.

Re:How will they know..

[bberens]

Looks like the EU hit Microsoft with one to many anti-trust rulings.

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope it doesn't blue sky on us.

Oblig. Dennis Miller quote

[Chris Mattern]

"Face it - Bill Gates is a about a white Persian cat and a monocle away from being a Bond villain."

Gulf Stream

[olsmeister]

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.

Re:Gulf Stream

[selven]

No one is saying you don't have the right to build in hurricane territory, it's just that insurance rates will be 10x higher and the government won't help you. So if you want to live in a warm place on the coast, go ahead, just make sure you eat the negative consequences yourself instead of passing them along to the taxpayer.

Re:Gulf Stream

[mlush]

Offer lower rates if the building has been properly built

Re:Gulf Stream

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Nobody likes hurricanes. They cause massive destruction and they kill people. But they are part of nature.

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.

I think a better solution would be to act a little smarter about where we build our population centers,

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.

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.

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:Gulf Stream

[je ne sais quoi]

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 is the chart of the water levels of Lake Lanier, which is Atlanta's only major water supply. The record low elevations line that you see was set last year, which was the second year of a drought (you might recall our governor's response to the drought, which was to pray for rain, aside from suing all of the neighboring states to try to take their water). The big bump that you see in the minimum recorded lake elevations just before September was hurricane Gustav, which essentially saved us from a situation where the lake would have been within 10 feet of a standing pool, and Atlanta gets its water on the outlet of the power generators. In fact, most of Atlanta's problems were because the El Niño shut down the hurricanes into the gulf for a couple of years after katrina. Now that they're back, and the wet weather in general, our water supply is fine for the moment.

Vaporware...

[ghostis]

Great - more vaporware from Bill Gates... ;-)

whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[dtml-try MyNick]

Where is the whatcouldpossiblygowrong tag when you need it?

I don't think there has ever been a more appropriate reason to use it....

Re:So...

[JustOK]

I'd at least wait for the first service pack before I install it on my planet.

The first thing I thought ...

[krou]

Weather man: The sky is lovely and blue today ...
Us: ZOMG! Blue skyz of deathz!

Gates-way to eco-disaster

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Whatcouldpossiblygowrong!

[__aayejd672]

Blue sky of death?

Easy

[mlush]

He just declares flooding as the new international standard

1000 level

[slashdime]

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?

Uhhh oooh

[azav]

GPF in Rainfall.exe. Abort, retry or ignore?

Re:So...

[MindKata]

"wait for the first service pack"

Yes but what other "features" would be in that service pack?
(1) Clouds reformatted into Microsoft friendly format to show advertising for new products.
(2) Rains on Google offices 24/7
(3) Strong winds blows everyone toward huge advertising signs they cannot ignore.
(4) DRM infested sunshine we have to buy from Microsoft.
(5) Thunder storms raining chairs on Linux offices.
(6) Snow flakes spy on us all and then tell Microsoft what we like.
(7) Apple offices found 6 weeks later under mountain of huge hail stones.
(8) Profit.

Having worked in the weather community...

[joedoc]

...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.

Re:Truly Gates now thinks he is God

[Aladrin]

Didn't bother to RTFA, eh? He isn't trying to make warm water cold. He's moving cold water into the warm water via pumps. That's a hell of a lot easier.

Re:Oh, I don't know, but

[nizo]

So people are just imagining the ice that is melting?

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=7738

Now I'm not saying humans are 100% responsible, but you can't deny that ice all over the world that has existed for thousands of years is melting (well I guess you can, if you ignore the sheets of ice turning into water).

How about the animals arriving in the north that have never been seen there before?

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change-and-unfamiliar-species-leave-inuit-lost-for-words-534866.html

Yeah you can deny it all you want, and we can argue all day about the causes (until it is too late for us to do anything about them), but it is indeed happening. Wouldn't it be a real bummer if this was part of a "normal" warming cycle and because of our stupidity we tipped things too far and made the earth uninhabitable?

Re:So...

[maxwell demon]

Microsoft seems to have taken "cloud computing" a bit too literal.

Worse idea than rampant CO2

[Skull_Leader]

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.

NOT A TROLL

[an.echte.trilingue]

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.

Re:Oh, I don't know, but

[nizo]

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:So...

[NeverVotedBush]

I thought the same thing. Mixing up the ocean's thermal layers will help to slow the conveyor currents that warm the higher latitudes and cool the lower latitudes. Lose the currents and areas near the equator bake while countries like England and others that depend on the currents to moderate their climate freeze.

Besides, pumping massive amounts of water will be a huge energy pig causing even more warming.

Hurricanes are like pressure relief valves. All of that excess energy gets sucked out of the ocean during a hurricane and helps to cool them. Mixing up the oceans allows higher average temperatures and it is hard to say what will happen to deep marine life as the heating gets propagated to the lower depths.

I like the idea by Steve Chu - painting roofs white. It's easy, distributed, and can be done on a huge scale. Plus, the roof paints help to seal as well and will protect the roof materials that are now exposed to the sun.

Re:Oh, I don't know, but

[sumdumass]

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".

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 then commenting on how much you respect the paper he wrote by saying it was to good to wipe your dog's ass. And you do all this with less legitimacy then a guy who actually put his name on a paper while using the same tactics that you just decried.

Yes, if we can assassinate the credibility of all deniers like this, we won't have to fix the science or follow/address the questions presented by the denier and we can have our global warming the way we want it regardless of any truths. Perhaps we can even start a religion out of it. Many people already act as if it is one and refuse to answer critiques that point out potential flaws in the theories. We could be more blind then the catholic church when it demanded the sun revolved around the earth. Hell, yea, this new science is awesome because it still resembles science but we don't have to be accurate. All hail the convinced at all costs.