Bill Gates ant-hurricane patents

[Modelworks]

For any that haven't seen it , Bill Gates has filed a patent for a method of slowing/stopping hurricanes.

Text:

The basis for the modification plan is to use multiple specially-equipped ocean vessels to essentially lower the temperature of the Gulf Stream water surface, by pulling deeper, colder water up into the mix.

The temperature decreases rapidly with depth, for example, as much as 20 degrees Celsius with an additional 150 m (500 ft) of depth. This area of rapid transition is called the thermocline. Below it, the temperature continues to decrease with depth, but far more gradually. In the Earth's oceans, approximately 90% of the mass of water is below the thermocline. This deep ocean consists of layers of substantially equal density, being poorly mixed, and may be as cold as -2 to 3.degree. C.

Microsoft founder Gates and a dozen other scientists and engineers have a patent pending for deploying such vessels, which they say would collect water through waves breaking over the walls of the tub. Some variations have the water moving through turbines on their way down, which would in turn generate electricity to suck up the cooler water.

As many as 200 vessels could be placed strategically in the predicted path of a hurricane, and they could be designed to be reused or to sink in place and decompose underwater. The vessels could be moved into place by towing or by dropping from airplanes.

A second patent application describes how part or all of the cost of building and maintaining the hurricane-killer ships could be raised by selling insurance to coastal residents whose risk would be reduced by using the new system.

So they would place boats in the area where the warm water exist and pull cold water from below to the surface. That would lower the energy the hurricane can use to become stronger or maybe even stop it.

How viable is this ? Wouldn't it take a crazy amount , even 200 seems too low, of boats for something like this to work ? I would have laughed it off , but Gates is putting his name on it, so maybe he knows something we don't ?

 

[Gibsons]

Link to patent.

The idea of using waves to provide the pumping power is pretty cool imo, very simple.

I agree with you that a big problem is you'll need massive amounts of boats/stations to really affect things.

Finally, there are some parts of the U.S. that are somewhat dependent on hurricanes to provide rain. I'd love to see one blow up my way about now. But hopefully a small one.

 

[mutz]

maybe even stop it.

yeah, stopping an hurricane won't be a smart thing (and probably something no one should mess with),
the idea is to calm it down a bit,
lets say from stage 4-5 to stage 2-3.
the idea seems to be quite good actually, it's not only about Atlantic storms but might be even usable to slow down others maybe typhoons, Pacific storms, they talked about Tornadoes too.
they say, that global worming is having a great impact on these storms growth,
if you'll open wiki on the list of atlantic hurricanes which reached level 5, you'll see that there were less than one each year - years on years off -at previous years,
4 at 2005, and 2 at 2007.
some scientists fear they might reach even hypotetical level 6!
you got this graph here:
http://nofreewind.com/files/us_major_hurricanes.jpg
also, there was another guy, having such idea,
he answers some related questions regarding this project and the one he has,
http://www.wunderground.com/bl...ment.html?entrynum=122
just closed most of the tabs about it recently,
he's called cyclonebuster, you can try searching for his posts.
found:
he's quite enthusiast about it,
maybe he's got something to say:
http://www.techflash.com/microsoft/50385622.html
@Patrick McNulty.
p.s - if storms got such strenght from only few degress of global worming effect,
maybe this amount of boats is what is enough to cool it's path.
don't forget, that thermoclin level is about 20 degrees lower than see level at 200m deep,
if they got some 200 boats working 24 hours a day few days before the storm arives,
and at not too far away distance from the beach, maybe they would be able to slow it down a bit,
they say, a typical hurricane is about 300 miles wide,
if you got 200 houndreds boats covering that area, they can each be spreaded on a 1.5 - 2 miles clusters, or be running cooler lines..
the gulf stream by wiki, is about 100 km wide..
if it means cooling it, some of it, cooling the core that these winds are being carried upon, then,
you'll have to gather some information about the area that each boat covers,
the estimated covered area needed to slow down such mass of wind,
the distance from the shores which is estimated close enough not to allow these storms to rereach they're full possible speed capacity and the strategy which this all maneuver lead,
they probably thought about it quite a bit, ran models etc.
as you said,
these guys doesn't seem to like wake up one morning saying lets boat the ocean and stop these terrible winds :laugh:.

 

[CycloWizard]

It seems like it could work, though I would have to think about it a lot more to decide how much water they'd have to move to be effective. My immediate concern is that, if powerful enough to slow/stop a hurricane, it will probably also be powerful to have dramatic effects on things like ocean currents and other weather patterns. This could lead to generating a long-term problem with a quick and dirty solution.

 

[Cogman]

I'm of the opinion that it won't work. its true that if you decrease the surface temperature of the water that you would decrease the ferocity of the hurricanes. However, this method will have a very localized effect. Not to mention the fact that the moment they pore the water onto the surface, it will pretty much shoot straight down into the cooler depths. Yes, it will warm up some (and cool off the surface a bit) but I don't see the effects being very dramatic with just 200 ships. The gulf is very big, it would take a lot more to actually have some marked effect.

But, if gates is willing to spend his money, I'm all for it .

 

[mutz]

it seems not to be specifically specified, though if they'll be using large hoses the effect might be too poor..
but, if they'll mix the water at the depths with water or air, the mixture will create a much larger effect,
imagine you fill up a bath with water, put a 30 degrees heater not too far away from the surface and spread ice at the bottom,
then you install a small pump which blows air or water underneath, the effect of the rising air/water could be much greater and expanded then pinpointing hoses of cold water above.
seems like the underneath turbulence will create a "vector" effect, reaching much larger areas at the top.

 

[bendixG15]

Lawyers would love to see someone screw with the weather........

 

[soccerballtux]

Hopefully in his wisdom he is patenting it so nobody else can do it (so we won't kill ourselves).

 

[blahblah99]

The guy can run a company and code, but apparently doesn't understand the laws of thermodynamics.

 

[CycloWizard]

Originally posted by: blahblah99
The guy can run a company and code, but apparently doesn't understand the laws of thermodynamics.

How does anything proposed violate laws of thermodynamics? Certainly something like this is possible in principle, even if the numbers are off - it's just heat and momentum transfer.

 

[Modelworks]

Yeah I think it is doable, but the scale is just mind boggling.
It is like the idea of using fans to move hot air to colder climates. Yes it is possible if you could build something on that scale, but doubt it is practical

 

[Rubycon]

SSTs have a direct correlation on integrated kinetic energy (IKE) potential of a tropical cyclone. We're talking about the heat derived from high insolation across many thousands of square feet of ocean surface. How much energy is it going to take to run many pumps on vessels scattered throughout the waters to accomplish this?

Yes it is known when a storm follows in the wake of another intensification is hampered due to the churning of the deeper and cooler waters to the surface. Of course a large storm has enormous kinetic energy!

There are many other factors which inhibit the formation and intensity of tropical systems. Strong trade winds over the Atlantic cool SSTs by a few degrees which really hampers activity. (2006 vs. 2005) Another is Saharan dust from storms blowing off western Africa...

As someone else mentioned - legal issues. Sure once its known that people are screwing with the weather and a major storm strikes a populated area the lawsuits will ensue. Definitely sounds like a bad idea to me.

 

[mutz]

then what shall you do? just let it happen?
you'll probably have to wait for the whole world to cool down which might take decades.
will u let some portions of the planet be blown away by these level 5 winds?
think that if u slow down such storms at about - lets say 2 levels - , the remaining energy might not be sufficient enough to generate the earlier level 5 somewhere else,
then it could be somehow absorbed.
the main concern, is that each storm such as these might slow down the development of an entire area..

 

[Rubycon]

The price of interaction could be far worse than doing nothing. I do not suggest doing nothing but again that has worked for all these years. If people stop building vulnerable structures right on the beaches you would not have as much of an issue. They also have housing that's hurricane and storm surge resistant but it's ugly. (basically like living in a water tower!)

And again with thousands if not tens of thousands of ships out there pumping water there is huge operating cost as well as an effect. Remember the equation has to be balanced and what we do on the left has consequences on the right!

A mid sized ship (non nuclear) may be able to generate 30 megawatts of power. If 20MW is dedicated to pumping how many ships are needed to make a difference? 1000? 10000? 100000? A BIG storm that was once a CAT5 now weakening but spread out and with CAT3 winds (Think Isabel and Ike) has a HUGE storm scale integrated kinetic energy. 30 even 200MW (think nuclear powered aircraft) pales in comparison.

 

[mutz]

they must have taken that into calculations (they probably wouldn't do it otherwise),
as it was mentioned earlier,
if the gulf stream is only 100km wide, maybe 200 ships working around the clock will be sufficient enough to cool down these a certain area of it,
the price of interaction, might be severe, but might not be that terrible,
you can't realy say "it worked for all these years..".. as a note,
the climate is changing, and angrier storms might arive, this is talking about many human lives, a devestation, Ike and Isabel brought up damage of ~35 billion dollars, they where CAT4-5 which were weakened to CAT2 and took more then 200 peoples lives, this is terrible, this is highly severe,
you probably can't rebuild all the coasts from Virginia to the south of Texas, the caribbeans and on,
you'r point is understandable, but maybe it's worth a try, again,
if you take all the energy this kind of a storm generate, u slow it down a bit, and part of the energy bring up another storm somewhere else at a lighter level, these 2 storms, might not be that of a disaster as the one you hampered,
look at Katherina, over 2,500 people where killed or missing, over 80 billion Dollar in demage, it takes few years just to stabilize the area again.
the basic idea here, is not stoping an hurricane by another equivalent force but rather by tweaking it at the surface it flourish upon.

 

[CycloWizard]

It's not just a question of whether another small storm will pop up somewhere. As I mentioned before, this kind of agitation could affect ocean currents, which in turn could affect climate patterns, ecosystems, and who knows what else. If we could predict these changes, then we could make an informed decision about whether this might be a good idea. However, there is no way that we can predict them with any degree of certainty, so it seems likely that the cure is worse than the disease.

 

[mutz]

If we could predict these changes, then we could make an informed decision about whether this might be a good idea.

yeah that would make everything much simpler..
on the other hand, how distortive would it be to cool a portion of the gulf stream in few degrees?
thats seems to be the main question..
ecological systems does indeed seems to be very vulnerable, and every small change to the climate/rain/food suply seems to effect it drastically,
though sometimes this changes accure in a matter of years,
this doesn't seem to be the perfect solution (sorry for not paying attention to your remark before..there wasn't a reasonable answer..),
but indeed, it is taken as both "plan C" as a further possibility and, they'll be able to learn a lot from the affects it'll make.
note, that hurricanes do happen to change drastically during they're course, they go quite sinusoidal, up&down through different effects,
the gulf stream is between 800-1200m deep!
so it seems that cooling the surface a bit, won't crucially affect it's flow, and upper layers could get warmer by sun later on..

 

[A5]

When you cool the surface water, it will begin to sink through the warmer layer below it due to it's increased density. You would have to cool a substantial portion of the column over a large area to remove enough energy to do anything to a storm.

This idea is actually somewhat similar to what hurricanes themselves do. The path behind a major hurricane usually shows cooler SSTs for a few days after passage, with the most cooling being the area directly below the eye. Granted the hurricane doesn't use all of it's energy to move the cold water, but it's something that is beyond our current technology to do on a significant scale. Based on what we can do now, the best solution is to make sure people know the danger of staying during a major hurricane and improve forecasting so that people have more time to evacuate. Better forecasting would also help with this idea if it became feasible.

 

[mutz]

o.k,
lets put it anew,
anyone knows whether they'll hose water on the surface or create turbulence underneath?
how effective would the turbulence be? how hi would it reach?

This idea is actually somewhat similar to what hurricanes themselves do

hurricanes are affected by hot air, by heat, you can see it on wiki pages, showing their paths,
hurricanes cool the water, because they are colder then it, they're full with humidity ,water & colder winds,
i'll add, that hot air coming from the surface, simply turbulence it further on,
the cooling is not the hurricane "did" not by intention, it's a side effect, something that happen due to the hurricane reach.
apart from that,
i'm sorry guys, but we'll have to view the project specs, design and full scheme in order to fully understand it,
we'll have to sit with the producers themselfs on the tables, view the moduls, the stimulations, the entire aspects of it in order to be able
to fully comprehend it, even from the economical point of view - everything.
it happened the same at the OnLive thread,
u can doubt, raise questions, make new ideas, but without fully viewing it, fully seeing all it's calculations and implications,
u'r just sort of out of it..
can't fuly understand,
kind of waisting u'r efforts..
so atleast it seems.

 

[CycloWizard]

Originally posted by: mutz
o.k,
lets put it anew,
anyone knows whether they'll hose water on the surface or create turbulence underneath?
how effective would the turbulence be? how hi would it reach?

This idea is actually somewhat similar to what hurricanes themselves do

hurricanes are affected by hot air, by heat, you can see it on wiki pages, showing their paths,
hurricanes cool the water, because they are colder then it, they're full with humidity ,water & colder winds,
i'll add, that hot air coming from the surface, simply turbulence it further on,
the cooling is not the hurricane "did" not by intention, it's a side effect, something that happen due to the hurricane reach.

Cooling the surface water will decrease the evaporation rate by suppressing the vapor pressure of the water. This means less water in the storm. Turbulence, blah blah blah - that doesn't mean what you think it means.

apart from that,
i'm sorry guys, but we'll have to view the project specs, design and full scheme in order to fully understand it,
we'll have to sit with the producers themselfs on the tables, view the moduls, the stimulations, the entire aspects of it in order to be able
to fully comprehend it, even from the economical point of view - everything.
it happened the same at the OnLive thread,
u can doubt, raise questions, make new ideas, but without fully viewing it, fully seeing all it's calculations and implications,
u'r just sort of out of it..
can't fuly understand,
kind of waisting u'r efforts..
so atleast it seems.

The difference is that you assume it works, while those of us who know better are much more skeptical. The burden of proof for someone that wants to play with the weather is certainly on them, not us. The problem with your line of reasoning is that complete understanding of the effects of such a system is beyond the capabilities of modern science.

 

[mutz]

Turbulence, blah blah blah - that doesn't mean what you think it means.

o.k then, please explain,
am willing to learn.

The problem with your line of reasoning is that complete understanding of the effects of such a system is beyond the capabilities of modern science.

yes, indeed that is correct, though it has been said, that they're effort might lead to a much better understanding of this phenomenon dynamics.

 

[CycloWizard]

Originally posted by: mutz
o.k then, please explain,
am willing to learn.

I'll simply say that turbulence is not a verb.

yes, indeed that is correct, though it has been said, that they're effort might lead to a much better understanding of this phenomenon dynamics.

No, that hasn't been said. Nor could this effort do so unless they actually tried it and we just watched the results unfold before our eyes.

 

[mutz]

fine,
i can hardly pronounce it in english,
this is all based upon logic, you don't have to be an hurricane expert or an thermodynamic master to be able to understand it generally,
u got questions,
u never gave answers,

No, that hasn't been said. Nor could this effort do so unless they actually tried it and we just watched the results unfold before our eyes.

it has been said, both in this thread and by few experts,

but indeed, it is taken as both "plan C" as a further possibility and, they'll be able to learn a lot from the affects it'll make.

...
it was suggested by one of the scientists viewing the idea too, his name was moshe almaro or something similiar from the massachusetts technological center,
can't give you further reading as it's out of google.

Nor could this effort do so unless they actually tried it and we just watched the results unfold before our eyes.

you don't have to be a scientist to understand that, that's quite obvious, anyone can understand that if u try something and it fails, u learn a great deal out of it,
next time you'll try it, u come from all sort of different angles, and u'll have better chance to succeed.
ofcourse they'll have to test it, thats legitimate part of the equation!
i'm quite sure to have watched it in one of the sites too,
it's quite redicilously understanable, or either we talked about different subjects cause this note of your's seems to be quite vague..
apart from that,
that's the answer to the question that was raised before:
http://www.nola.com/news/index..._microsoft_envisi.html
that's probably how its going to works,
pumping hot to cold,
cold to hot.

 

[CycloWizard]

Originally posted by: mutz
you don't have to be a scientist to understand that, that's quite obvious, anyone can understand that if u try something and it fails, u learn a great deal out of it,
next time you'll try it, u come from all sort of different angles, and u'll have better chance to succeed.
ofcourse they'll have to test it, thats legitimate part of the equation!
i'm quite sure to have watched it in one of the sites too,
it's quite redicilously understanable, or either we talked about different subjects cause this note of your's seems to be quite vague..
apart from that,
that's the answer to the question that was raised before:
http://www.nola.com/news/index..._microsoft_envisi.html
that's probably how its going to works,
pumping hot to cold,
cold to hot.

So we should shoot first, ask questions later? What could possibly go wrong? :roll:

 

[mutz]

no, no,
stimulation after stimulation, testings, water&air tunnels, whatever etc. you get the best effort solution, and go,
you estimate how it'll go, u can't get it 100% accurate but you can probably get close,
it's been erlier mentioned, about the effects of cooling such protion may lead to, an estimate, they claimed it'll also bring some food from the bottoms,
then after they give it the 1st try, calculating the consiquences +- they'll be probably able to do a much more professional work next time,
basically it seems we speek almost the same, there is no reason to go head to head about it,
i think wel'll have to try,
u wouldn't be flying an airplane if you knew everything about it before,
you probably wouldn't get into space,
sometimes you just have to take risks and trust yourself, trust your knowledge, and go searching in places you'r knowledge corrently can't reach in order to understand more,
if it'll work, and i guess it will, it'll be a great achievement,
both for science and for a better stability through the entire world.