Bill Gates to Control Hurricanes: DOH!

12 07 2009

From the “would you, could you, with a boat department”. Bill goes macro. The Simpsons are cited by patent watcher.

Patent watcher “theodp,” who tipped us off to the filings, says he was reminded of “The Simpsons” as he read through them. “The richest man in the world hatches a plan to alter weather and ecology in return for insurance premiums and fees from governments and individuals,” he writes. “It’s got kind of a Mr. Burns feel to it, no?”

I guess Bill has been talking to the G-8 people and their temperature control ideas. Note to Bill: nature will squish you and your ideas like a bug. In the meantime with ACE values being low according to COAPS Ryan Maue and Steve McIntyre showing cooler temperatures on the SST map for Gulf Coast hurricane development areas, it looks like they may have to wait a year or two to try out their ideas. The idea? Basically, ship mounted pumps to circulate cooler water from below the thermocline to the surface by forcing surface water downward first. Good luck with that. – Anthony

Spoof photo from the New York Post

One force of nature vs. another: Bill Gates tries to stop hurricanes

By Todd Bishop on Techflash

A diagram from one of the newly disclosed Gates and Myhrvold patent filings, depicting a deployment of hurricane-supression vessels in the Gulf of Mexico.

Recent patent filings have shown Bill Gates and his friends exploring subjects as diverse as electromagnetic engines and beer kegs. Now they’re thinking even bigger — trying to stop hurricanes.

Microsoft’s chairman is among the inventors listed on a new batch of 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. Read the rest of this entry »





Ken Tapping: Still no sign of the next cycle

12 07 2009

10.7 flux monitoring station operated by the National Research Council Canada and the Canadian Space Agency

10.7 solar flux monitoring station operated by the National Research Council Canada and the Canadian Space Agency

More on the NRC 10.7 observatory here

JohnA writes in:

Just in case you wondered whether the recent large sunspot indicated an upswing in radio flux from the Sun: I went and asked Ken Tapping.

The answer: http://solarscience.auditblogs.com/2009/07/10/ken-tapping-still-no-sign-of-the-next-cycle/

This could be the first “radio quiet” solar cycle

Previously on this blog, I’d mentioned my skepticism that one decent sunspot marked the end of the hiatus in the solar cycle we’ve seen for nearly two years. It might be my nature, but everybody has been wrong before.

As part of my public duty to actually ask real scientists monitoring the Sun, I wrote to Dr Ken Tapping of Canada’s National Research Council at the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics in British Columbia: Read the rest of this entry »





Quote of the week #14

12 07 2009

qotw_cropped

“Sometimes, we hear that global warming causes cooling. In this case, global warming causes global averageness. In all three cases, it is bad news.”

- Luboš Motl in

UAH global temperature anomaly – hitting the slopes