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.
No worries, at first it will lock up and you’ll need to reboot. Then you’ll get the blue screen of death. The ships will then go through numerous iterations to work out the bugs, and they will then lock up and you’ll have to reboot. Then you’ll get the blue screen of death…..
If it were in operation today, I wonder if the folks of south Texas could file a class action lawsuit against such a scheme. They (and the lakes) need the rain. I’m hoping that a small one blows in south of Corpus and then turns north along I-35.
He would have better luck taking the *cold* from LNG shipments and using that to cool the ocean surface water. Louisiana and Texas import LNG, which is then vaporized using surface ocean water. The ocean surface becomes somewhat cooler in this process.
Not a new idea, been around for several years. No patent available.
Dr. Roy has a new post on how climate models work…
How Do Climate Models Work?
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/07/how-do-climate-models-work/
Is it a contest? Which con artist will surpase the other one contest. It’s the contest where non-sciense based ideas can drive political descision and extract the most money from governments and people. In the lead is Al Gore. Let’s see if Bill’o will get ahead.
As a victim of Vista-I see no good coming of this…
Some of the above comments are priceless..
I used to claim neurosis was not contageous. It is now spreading by contact in the global warming community. Symptoms include hand wringing and loss of sleep.
Hey Anthony, how about these New World Order goons over at the Rockefeller Foundation? Global warming will lead to the collapse of civilization!?! Who are they kidding? How do they expect people to buy into this nonsense? Do they really think everybody is that gullible? Here, it is the middle of July and it can’t even reach 80 degrees here.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/the-planets-future-climate-change-will-cause-civilisation-to-collapse-1742759.html
I’ve just invented a huge paddle that we can stick in the middle of The Pacific ocean and turn anti-clockwise. Or clockwise.
I would prefer a Linux system.
The good news is: We stopped hurricanes.
The bad news is: The eastern US coast is now in draught and killed half the fish.
Mr. Burns? or a Homer moment?
The obvious solutions to the legal issues are to use a corporation based outside the Americas and operate outside territorial waters.
As to the effects of altering ocean temperatures, nobody knows. Nobody knows the effects of what has been happening, much less other changes.
And I don’t doubt that this design can pump water down, although I don’t know how much. Thought experiment: If you doubt the concept, assume that the water inside the collector is only one inch above sea level. The weight of that inch of water becomes the downward force. If you’ve seen a small river barge, you know a similar structure has a square footage which is a significant fraction of a football field. Oceangoing barges are larger. So assume the collection container will have a large number of square feet of surface area. If the pipe going down has a diameter of one inch, the weight of many square feet of one inch of water will be pushing into that tiny pipe. There should be quite a bit of force available, so water will indeed go down. The question becomes how much larger it can be made while still forcing water down… and the additional issues of whether it would have the desired effect and fewer undesired effects.
If you just lose the left/right, conservative/liberal false paradigm, strange ideas like this mean there’s more to this story than meets the eye. This appears to be a hair-brained scheme so that should send up a red flag warning that there is a far different intent linking “beneath the surface” and that does not include gaining from insurance fees or patent infringment suits –those were far too easy for you to guess. Does anyone here think BIll is a liberal? Al (Occidental Oil) Gore? The true liberals and conservatives are the sheep (baa, that means you and me) they corral to argue over whose philosophy is the true philosophy while they inact their actual goals by deception.
I have a better idea than Gates: Build better houses! The 200 year old plantation houses in the New Orleans area are falling down from neglect but they appear to have weathered the hundreds of hurricanes. Our two by fours are now 1.5″ x 2.75″ and chipboard has replaced sturdy lumber. They appear to have a building code in Florida that is transplanted from two of the “Three Little Pigs”- Imagine putting an extra $5,000 into your home – say a few small I-beams in the structure, anchor your roof. You will save more on insurance, especially if a hurricane sweeps in and you can avoid the deductible.
Joel Shore (19:53:03) :
neill says:
Real Clueless: It’s gonna be bitch-ass cold for a decade or more.
I think it takes a bit of work to go from a pause in the warming to “bitch ass cold”.
Joel, I’ve seen you on this site many times before and I judge you to be an intelligent fellow, if a bit zealous about AGW (or maybe you just like to be contrary). You are rather full of yourself, and I detect a tiny bit of coming down on the AGW issue. Tell me if, in your heart, you don’t agree that you find the hiatus in warming “hypothesis” exceedingly disingenuous if not desperatelfy convenient a straw to grasp. At least admit that CO2 isn’t so mighty a juggernaut as it has been billed for 20 years. Or couldn’t you just admit to being a bit disappointed. It certainly is clear that even the AGW people supplement their models by looking out the window from time to time and this comes across as the closest to an admission that the science isn’t quite settled that we have seen so far from your side. Its hard to just let them save face here, though, after so much name calling and villification of opponent scientists as evil deniers.
pyromancer76 (20:29:44) :
on being anti conservative because they lay back and enjoy the fruits…. This fellow Gates and friend Buffett are forking over what? $75B to help solve problems that the UN hasn’t been able to do anything with for 60 years, largely because of their socialist nonsense. From a little drop-out with an idea and a garage for a factory he deserves some respect. I’m sure he has paid more taxes than he would have in your socialist world (plus the taxes of his million employees) where you take away money that should be put to work and earn the kind of stake that can help the world. Oh and he was a big part of the revolution that gave the world the ability to communicate like this at will. I wrote to the Nobel committee telling them to start giving prizes to the deserving, like Gates. Old Alfred himself was a capitalist who would roll over in his grave if he saw the Norwegian socialist nonsense that his endowment is being spent on. (Monday mornings, especially a cold one in July get me going I guess – 17C (63F) the high in Ottawa, Canada today)
Jimmy Haigh (07:59:59) :
I’ve just invented a huge paddle that we can stick in the middle of The Pacific ocean and turn anti-clockwise. Or clockwise.
Hmm. Maybe we could use the moon as the energy source…
Michael (07:58:45) :
“Global warming will lead to the collapse of civilization!?!”
You are right, they are over the edge. On the other hand, the government response to the AGW issue may well lead to the collapse of civilization. Massive deficits, starvation (biofuel production) and grossly missed opportunity due to lack of funds (spent on AGW non-solutions)
The whole idea is harebrained, but worse, as Anthony pointed out earlier, the issue of scale. Just how many BTU’s will go from the surface to the depths? A decent ‘cane transfers a whole bunch of energy, which has to come from somewhere. This scheme might remove a tiny fraction of it. So we go from Category 5 to Cat 4.95 That should help a bunch.
Some years back there was a proposal for a sea-level canal through Nicaragua. Supposedly only a 4 foot difference in water level. Not gonna generate much power with that.
This is about as good as Hubris gets. I wish he’d just send the money to me rather than screw around with Nature in a microscopic and useless way.
AnonyMoose (08:11:34) :
“So assume the collection container will have a large number of square feet of surface area. If the pipe going down has a diameter of one inch, the weight of many square feet of one inch of water will be pushing into that tiny pipe.”
An inch of water in an open barge is not going to have any more pressure to push water down a one inch pipe than an inch of water in a beer bottle. Cover it with a piston and apply force- that’s different.
Do you really think Bill is a true philanthropist? He is working along with the UN —same goal, different means. Foundations are a way for a family to control their fortune far into the future. You just have to appear like you’re doing it for the greater good. (Some good has to be visible, but that is their cover.) These people are not conservative (or liberal) in the good sense that I assume most here are.
Gates patent claims will not hold up, because this idea was actually suggested years ago.
I’m not saying I really thought it was practical, but my 2005 post “Hurricane Stopper” did toss out a scheme for using wind turbine powered boats to follow the track of a hurricane by sucking cold propellant water from way down and using it to jet-boat along with the storm.
Hey, Katrina was pretty bad. Anything that MIGHT be able to stop it ought to be discussed.
http://errortheory.blogspot.com/2005/08/hurricane-stopper.html
Too bad Einstein is not alive anymore. As a former patent reviewer, I would love to see what he would think of this one.
http://msnbcmedia3.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photos/z_Projects_in_progress/050418_Einstein/050405_einstein_tongue.widec.jpg
A)bort, R)etry OR I)gnore…
João
“at first it will lock up and you’ll need to reboot.” lol
Then a huge sign will flash in the sky, which is appropriately blue, saying “General Earth Fault”, and the control alt delete button won’t work, time will stop, and don’t even get me started on what the “core dump” will do to us.
Alec Rawls (09:26:27) :
Manuel Garcia, Jr roughly calculated the amount of energy packed in a hurricane: http://www.counterpunch.org/garcia09052008.html
He conclused that the energy in Gustav must have been about;
“E = 6.944 x (10 to the 17th power) joules.
The energy released by the explosion of 1000 tons of TNT (a kiloton, abbreviated kt) is 4.182 x (10 to the 12th power) joules. So, E = 166,055 kt (or equivalently, 166.05 megatons). The atomic bomb exploded at Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 produced about 15 kt, so the model storm has the energy equivalent of 11,070 Hiroshima bombs. Most of the energy of a hurricane is dissipated as atmospheric turbulence and heating, and friction along the Earth’s surface, only a very tiny portion of it is absorbed by the structures built by humans.
Bear in mind that the energy of the hurricane is spread over a much larger volume than that of a nuclear explosion (so hurricane energy per unit volume is smaller), and it is released over a much longer period of time. But it is of awesome scale, and we are still as powerless before it as were our first ancestors four million years ago.”
You would have a better chance at stopping a hurricane by putting an enormous hydrogen bomb deep under sea and blow all that cold water right in the center of the eye. However, even such drastic attempt would create more damage than the hurricane itself.
Compared to the forces in nature all of humanity can be compared to a single ant trying to stop a bulldozer by stepping in front of it.
“Anything that MIGHT be able to stop it ought to be discussed.”
Cripes! What would it potentially do to the Gulf Stream? I can’t believe you are serious. Don’t you whackos believe in the “precautionary principle”? I personally don’t, but I guess warmies only believe in the PC when it suits them, and disregard it when it doesn’t. Hurricanes are part of the climate balance. A better approach would be to not build along the coasts, and those who do, do so at their own risk. I think that the PC is absurd anyway, since if we started to follow it, we would be violating it, since we never followed it before. But you guys pretend to.
I’m as far from being a scientist as you can imagine, in fact my eyes completely glaze over at some of the stuff debated here.
If hurricanes serve as natural heat release valves for the oceans, and if Gates’ concept could be achieved on a scale to have the desired effect he seeks, by stuffing heat back into the ocean wouldn’t that really just be encouraging the advent of ‘super-hurricanes’, or some such?