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
One force of nature vs. another: Bill Gates tries to stop hurricanes
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.
The filings were made by Searete LLC, an entity tied to Intellectual Ventures, the Bellevue-based patent and invention house run by Nathan Myhrvold, the former Microsoft chief technology officer. Myhrvold and several others are listed along with Gates as inventors.
The diagram at right is from one of five related patent applications made public this morning. So how exactly do they plan to stop hurricanes? Here’s an excerpt from the filing that explains the diagram.
Vessel 100 is a tub-like structure having one or more walls 110 and a bottom 115. Vessel 100 may be held buoyant in the water by one or more buoyancy tanks 120 which may be used to maintain the buoyancy of vessel 100 and further may be used to control the height of walls 110 above the water level. Vessel 100 also includes a conduit 125 whose horizontal cross section is substantially smaller than the horizontal cross section of the tub portion 130 of the vessel defined by walls 110. In an exemplary embodiment, conduit 125 extends well below the ocean surface including depths below the ocean’s thermocline.
In most circumstances, most of the sunlight impinging on the ocean surface is absorbed in the surface layer. The surface layer therefore heats up. Wind and waves move water in this surface layer which distributes heat within it. The temperature may therefore be reasonably uniform to depths extending a few hundred feet down from the ocean surface. Below this mixed layer, however, 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.
Therefore, the lower depths of the ocean may be used as a huge heat/energy sink which may be exploited by vessel 100. When vessel 100 is deployed at sea, waves 135 may lap over the top of walls 110 to input warm (relative to deeper waters) surface ocean water into tub 130. Tub 130 will fill to a level 140 which is above the average ocean level depicted as level 145. Because of the difference between levels 140 and 145, a pressure head is created thereby pushing warm surface ocean water in a downward direction 150 down through conduit 125 to exit into the cold ocean depths (relative to near surface waters) through one or more openings 155. In an exemplary embodiment, the depth of opening 155 may be located below the ocean’s thermocline, the approximate bottom of which is depicted as line 160. This cycle will be continuous in bringing warm surface ocean water to great depth as ocean waves continue to input water into tub 130. If many of vessel 100 are distributed throughout a region of water, the temperature of the surface of the water may be altered.
“Many” is the important concept there at the end.
Gates, Myhrvold and associates aren’t the first to propose reducing the ocean’s surface temperature as a means of suppressing hurricanes, said David Nolan, an associate professor of meteorology and physical oceanography at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science.
“Every couple of years there’s a news story that gets picked up for some hurricane-suppression idea,” Nolan said via phone this morning. “They’re all kooky in their own way. Some of them are more plausible than others, but they all face an enormous problem of scale. … You would have to cover an incredible area with this effect to reduce the temperature of the ocean by a significant amount.”
Of course, a big difference in this case is that one of the people making the suggestion is one of the world’s richest men. But don’t look for Gates to fund the deployment of thousands of these vessels. One of the patent filings proposes paying for the equipment through the sale of insurance policies in hurricane-prone areas, in addition to funding from state, federal and local government agencies.
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?”
The hurricane-suppression patent applications date to early 2008, but they were first made public this morning.
These and previous Searete LLC patent filings are believed to result from brainstorming sessions regularly held by Intellectual Ventures, in which Gates has been known to take part. It’s not clear how or when Intellectual Ventures might go forward with any of these ideas.
If the idea weren’t so ludicrous, I’d be worried. A great deal of the Southern part of the country depends on the water that a hurricane brings in to replenish aquifers, reservoirs, etc. That water then is used to grow food, cotton, trees, and so on in addition to watering lawns, flushing toilets and drinking in Atlanta and other major cities.
Bill should stick to philanthropic activities.
As I understand it, would it not be easier to simply reduce the dust coming off of the West Coast of Africa? I thought I read somewhere that the dust coming from dry areas of Africa are what seed the storms kicked off of that continent, primarily Western Sahara. Wouldn’t it be easier just to set up some sprinklers there and keep the dust down?
So….. if it were oil and water, and we pumped oil below the water…. um….. it would float back to the surface.
But, assuming we don’t get a lava lamp effect, the water would mix as it trys to return to the surface. This means that to acheive cooling at the surface, it would requre cooling the entre depth to about a few hundred feet down.
I’d like to see that happen. A big Ha HA to them.
Oh Ya…. the best way to cool the surface temperature is to… you guessed it. Make a hurricane: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/images/hurricanes/trmm_sst_med.gif
And shouldn’t the WWF be a little toasted on this one, after all, hurricanes deposit essential nutrients in their paths by flooding wetlands…
While hurricanes do a lot of damage to human structures, many farmers and much of nature farther inland depends on the moisture those storms bring. Shutting down hurricanes could lead to extended droughts in the Southeastern US.
Here’s the 2007 version:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1566898/Scientists-a-step-closer-to-steering-hurricanes.html
here’s 2005’s:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7995-could-humans-tackle-hurricanes.html
here’s Stormfury that ran from 1962 to 83
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Stormfury
and here’s a summary of a couple before that. Thanks to Bill for 2009’s version. I will be waiting with bated breath for the version to follow…
As best I can figure out this pump, it relies on waves to fill the barge to level 140 above mean sea level 145, and this is the head of water that will pump warm surface water down to the cool ocean depths. So it relies on the sea being fairly rough. In a flat calm, it won’t pump anything at all. It will only really do any pumping during stormy weather. i.e. while a hurricane is passing overhead.
So this looks like a really good way of closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.
Before getting too carried away with ad hominem attacks, perhaps we should examine the questions:
1) Is the science sound?
2) Are the economics sound?
1) On hurricane-ocean temperatures, numerous papers are modeling the issue of hurricanes related to higher surface temperatures. So that is a serious scientific issue. Yablonsky and Ginis address the Limitation of One-Dimensional Ocean Models for Coupled Hurricane-Ocean Model Forecasts
Mon. Wea. Rev, 2009 – po.gso.uri.edu They find that 1D models seriously underestimate the ocean upwelling and mixing caused by hurricanes compared with full 3D coupled models. (That raises a separate side question of the degree of error in global climate models caused by such 1D approximations.)
2) With billion dollar losses from hurricanes, the economics and probabilities of reducing hurricane losses should be worth seriously exploring (regardless of global warming projections.) There is a huge difference between reducing hurricane intensity and “stopping” hurricanes.
The article on Lovelock’s proposal for artificial ocean upwelling to control climate overlooks the major benefit that the algae would create a major boom in ocean fisheries.
e.g. Ouchi et al. reviewed Recent Advances of Ocean Nutrient Enhancer “TAKUMI” Project Proc 6th ISOPE Ocean Mining Symp, 2005 – isope.org
If a volume of water is displaced by a wave into a container, the container being buoyant, the extra weight of this water should push the container down, displacing the same amount of water, making the effective head of the contained water zero – thereby rendering the pumping effect null?
And when the ship rides up on the next swell – by their thinking – the water would go the opposite direction – up?
Unless of course the ships are mounted on towers reaching to the ocean bottom, eliminating the buoyancy problem…. hey are those oil rigs still for rent?
Real Clueless: It’s gonna be bitch-ass cold for a decade or more.
“We hypothesize that the established pre-1998 trend is the true forced warming signal, and that the climate system effectively overshot this signal in response to the 1997/98 El Niño. This overshoot is in the process of radiatively dissipating, and the climate will return to its earlier defined, greenhouse gas-forced warming signal. If this hypothesis is correct, the era of consistent record-breaking global mean temperatures will not resume until roughly 2020.”
This is not a test. We repeat, this is a not test of your emergency broadcast system. Like it was last time.
This idea is lamer than, well, just about every stupid idea I have ever heard.
1. The only storms that form in the Gulf are early in the season. Most form in the Carribbean and the Atlantic so what about those?
2. This scheme shows a true misunderstanding of the volume of water in the Gulf not to mention the current flow from the Carribbean and Florida Straits.
3. As mentioned above, we need storms to replenish aquifers and lakes.
4. Hurricanes are huge heat transfer machines that the Earth requires to maintain balance.
5. It’s not nice to fool with Mother Nature.
Here’s the link to the last one I mentioned:
http://www.hurricaneville.com/project_stormfury.html
There was a saying back in the ’60s that applies to today:
“To the rest of the world, the United States must look like an insane asylum where the inmates have taken over.”
I know where this idea comes from. Having read the National Hurricane Center’s weather descriptions during past hurricane seasons, I know that they often comment about how a Hurricane passing over a stretch of ocean churns up the water, cooling off the surface layers and making that area of ocean less likely to fuel another strong storm. So, let’s make the assumption — a very big assumption — that this idea can be made to work. We in effect use lots of boats and pumps to replace the action of that first hurricane. Then, as no storms form, those boats will spread the sun’s heat further and further down into the ocean until even deep water is pretty warm. The system becomes more unstable until … oops … we have strong hurricane after strong hurricane forming over the same stretch of ocean because the churning effect of the first Hurricane no longer brings up enough cold water to suppress subsequent storms. Maybe this idea needs a little more thought…
One of the things plaguing the rich is fear. It torments them. Bill Gates succeeded by directing some of his fears to desroy threats.
How much energy does he want to burn to do this? Since they claim is is warming, he could just toss a tow line to the 50 mile chunk of ice they say is breaking free in antartica and drag it up there. Ice floats. To cut the CO2, he could put a lot of masts and sails on the ice sheets and sail them up there. Use some wind towers. They would make for stout spars. Plan b is to build a canal and direct the ice that flooded and moved north southward to the Mississippi. Winnepeg would be happy.
Yeah Dude, we’ll get some like really, really big tubes!
http://garybrandastrology.com/images/Hurricane%20Katrina%20Image.gif
We don’t need any pumps to cool the climate…
Sunday, July 12, 2009
The U.S. Weather Service Says…
By Alan Caruba
Below is a recent post by the U.S. Weather Service. I have added some boldface to elements of the text.
· Due to the unusually cool and wet conditions in June…here are some interesting facts to note:
· This June is tied for the 8th coolest on record. The average temperature was 67.5. (That’s) 3.7 degrees below normal…which also occurred in 1897.
· This was the coolest June since 1958…when the average temperature as 67.2 degrees.
· Below average temperatures occurred on 23 out of 30 days this June…or 75 percent of the month
· Central Park has not hit 90 degrees in the month of June this year. The last time this occurred was back in 1996.
· Central Park has not hit 85 degrees in the month of June this year. The last time this occurred was back in 1916. This has only occurred two other times…1903 and 1886.
· The low temperature dipped below 60 degrees eleven times in the month of June. The last time this occurred was in 2003 when it occurred seventeen times.
· It was the second wettest June on record with 10.06 inches of rain. The wettest June on record is 2003 with 10.27 inches.
· There were 19 days this June where there was at least 0.01 inches of rainfall. This has never occurred in Central Park.
One month does not a climate cycle make, but when one considers that the Earth has been cooling since 1998, it is a snapshot of things to come. Given the recent effort by the Environmental Protection Agency to silence one of its analysts whose report debunked the entire rational for the “Cap-and-Trade” bill passed by the House, it is amazing that the U.S. Weather Service is being permitted by the Stalinist Obama administration to actually report some “interesting facts” that demonstrate that the weather for the U.S. is cooling, not warming.
Now let it be said there is a difference between “weather” and “climate.” The weather, no matter where you are on planet Earth is what is happening in a particular place at a particular time.
The climate is measured in decades and in centuries. Clear trends emerge and they are given names like “ice ages” and the past is broken down in a variety of ages from the Paleozoic era to the Cenozoic, to the Mesozoic, the latter including Cretaceous, Jurassic, Triassic, Permian, Pennsylvanian, and Mississippian. We are currently in the Holocene era, dating from about 10,000 years ago.
Human civilization such as we know it—cities, agriculture, trade—didn’t show up until 5,000 years ago. Suffice it to say this was long before the Industrial Revolution which the Greens blame for a warming that is not happening.
The cooling being seen now reflects the way that, from around 1300 to 1850, much of Europe and North America suffered through a mini-ice age.
Simple logic and common sense suggests, given the very low sunspot activity of late, that we are headed into a similar climate cycle and the low temperatures in June, not seen since as far back as 1867 and 1903 appear to confirm this.
This is why a Cap-and-Trade bill whose alleged purpose is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, blamed for “global warming”, is a complete and total fraud.
Any Congress that passes this law and any President who signs it is engaged is treasonous behavior because it is a massive tax on the use of energy, the single most essential factor for the revival of our failing economy.
From Warning Signs, Alan Garuba, http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/
I have an idea! Don’t build in hurricane prone areas.If you must make sure your structure is strong enough to withstand the problems associated with a Hurricane.
I used to live on the southern Oregon coast. 75 mph+ was a moderate winter storm.
I lived on a bluff about 1/2 mile from the Ocean,I will never live there again. One storm had breakers in the Lagoon between my home and the Ocean.I’ll pu tup with summer thunderstorms and winter snows in NE Oregon any day…
Microsoft “Bloatware” Hurricane Prevention Program v1.0. How many versions will it take to get one that actually works? If we use Windows as an example, many.
I understand the source of winds which leads to the formation hurricanes in the Gulf originate over east Africa.
neill says:
I think it takes a bit of work to go from a pause in the warming to “bitch ass cold”. If the prediction of Swanson et al. is correct, the global temperatures will still remain around the historically high levels they have been at over the past ~10 years…and then will resume an upward trend around 2020.
It is also worth noting that this is a guest post at RealClimate, not a prediction by the site’s authors themselves. I presume this means that they find it at least reasonable and plausible enough to merit a discussion but I don’t think it constitutes an endorsement of the conclusions.
Say this whole scheme gets implemented…
An a Hurricane gets through the “defensive screen” and does a “Katrina” on some hapless burg.
Who get’s sued?
Tell me how these vessels will reduce the total heat flow into the ocean?
All they are doing is making the heat flow more efficient by exposing cooler water to warm water AND cold water to the warm air.
It is the depth of the hot water that drives hurricanes, not SSTs. Its TOTAL heat available.
Just proves that you don’t need brains to make money.
Joel, me boy. You didn’t answer my earlier question on another thread, and instead you came here to defend UnRealClimate. That is a hopeless cause.
But I think that you really, truly believe in CO2=AGW. I don’t think you’re saying what you don’t believe. I respect the fact that you’re purveying what you believe to be real.
But these folks also believed in what they believed in: click
Do you see the similarity between them and you? It’s there, in spades.
Squidly (18:47:24) : Other way around-dust reflects sunlight and cools the surface waters, generally but not completely having the opposite effect on hurricanes. That’s why Sahel rainfall behaves much like the AMO-Atlantic temperature variability has a lot to do with variation in dust from the Sahara.
BUT everyone seems to think that suppressing hurricanes is desirable-not necessarily. The biosphere NEEDS that precipitation. So hurricanes aren’t all bad. Moreover, the are an important part of heat dissipation from the tropics. Hurricanes exist for a reason. THEY AREN’T BAD-they just are.
Tropical cyclones result from several factors. One is the Coriolis Effect from the fact that Earth rotates. The ‘plan’ does not suggest altering this. A second is the imbalance of the energy in the Tropics compared to the amount pole-ward. As a tropical cyclone forms and moves into mid-latitudes energy is redistributed involving both atmosphere and ocean. Assuming this process could be shut down or substantially reduced the energy would be redistributed in some other, unknown, process or it would have to accumulate in the tropical atmosphere and/or ocean –the ‘plan’ seems to be attempt to place it a few hundred feet down in the ocean.
Then we wait. How will Earth compensate?