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.
The cold dark ocean depths are not something that we fully understand. I’m not sure it’s a good idea to cause potential damage to that ecosystem that has adapted to having a very consistent, cold temperature in the name of trying to stop the natural occurrence of hurricanes. Why don’t we stop building cities below sea level, instead?
Hurricanes do not exist, they contradict “Greenhouse” theory, heat is safely kept in our “heat pipe” with never ending positive feedbacks, there is no such thing as cooling caused by hurricanes.
In any case we can delete them from our climate models and they just disappear from the screen.
I skipped the technical mumbo jumbo, because this is really a question of economics; assuming Bill ‘hurricane’ Gates really can stop devastating storms, then who pays?
Insurance works because someone pays a premium to protect their property against accidental damage. But in this case the damage will be stopped at source by Bill Gates. Therefore people who haven’t any insurance will still benefit at the cost of those that have paid their premiums. If it is to be financed by governments then which ones? What happens if a hurricane is about to strike the South West but then veers into Mexico, but Mexico has not paid for insurance?
The only parallel I can think of exists in the world of fiction. Who remembers the puppet series ‘Thunderbirds’? For those that don’t, the storyline consists of a billionaire philanphropist who lives with his five sons on a secret island where they monitor the global airwaves listening for calls of distress. Calling themselves ‘International Rescue’ , they then launch into action, save the day and disappear without waiting for either payment or thanks.
Bill Gates, you are the new ‘International Rescue’.
Sorry, WestHoustonGeo, but ideas can’t be copyrighted, and you’ll spend hundreds of millions trying to litigate the licensing fees if you patent your idea- you’re better off buying some delapidated Carribean real estate if you’re sure your idea is a winner.
I think a few megaton nukes 300 feet deep could mix up the water and cool things down much quicker. If hurricanes weaken just going over islands, you’d think this could do the trick just as well…
Rule of thumb for hurricane construction from a friend in Vanuatu:
“Use 7 bolts per square meter to keep siding on in a hurricane.”
How strong was the hurricane?
Don’t know – the hurricane blew away the anemometer!
Some years back, Bill Gates bought 8% of Newport News Shipping and Drydock Company (which was later purchased by Northrop Grumman). The Wikipedia entry for his private investment company, Cascade Investments LLC, still shows Newport News as an investment.
Maybe he’s trying to generate some business?
It’s funny that the AGWiers are always saying that CO2 is bad but methane is even badder and are going out of their ways to get fartless cows. The part about methane being a worse greenhouse gas might be true but we have no idea what effect it would have if it was increased many folds in the atmosphere.
Do they have any idea that if they promote Gate’s idea and start pumping warm water deep in the oceans they might actually unlock enormous amounts of methane frozen as methane hydrates (or methane clathrates) in the ocean floors?
Just to compare, the permafrost reservoir has been estimated at about 400 Gt C in the Arctic, but no estimates have been made of possible Antarctic reservoirs. These are large amounts. For comparison the total carbon in the atmosphere is around 700 GT.
Alysia (11:51:10) :
“Maybe he’s trying to generate some business?”
————-
So does Al Gore !
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.
But can it do both, at the same time? It needs to, just to be sure.
Since the PDO was discovered in ships’ logs of historical salmon tonnage, many other marine and on-shore cycles have been discovered to coincide with oceanic cycles. The main cyclic characteristic of oceanic oscillations are the sea surface temperatures. Artificially changing these temperatures could be devastating to everything from ocean algae and fish, to on-shore big game and trees. Gates’ idea is about as un-green as you can get, far more devastating than the supposed affects of CO2.
And just in case some of you will come back with the idea that the human portion of CO2 has the potential to artificially change SST thus oscillations, it may well figure into the equation, but the degree of change would be overwhelmingly buried in naturally occurring SST noise, just like the Sun’s effect is.
I, for one, fully support Mr. Gates’ efforts. I only ask that he wait to deploy his scheme until after I set up a legal practice throughout the Southeast so that I may sue the living crap out of him each and every time a hurricane makes landfall.
As ridiculous as this story is, maybe it would actually be for the best if someone like Bill Gates took charge of our climate. I mean, given the recent g8 summit, it seems like no one else is ready to try and fix the world’s problems http://bit.ly/e0c7K So maybe, the best option is to punt the ball to Gates and hope he acts intelligently.
” but the degree of change would be overwhelmingly buried in naturally occurring SST noise, just like the Sun’s effect is”
You say that with such confidence. As if you accept everything Leif says as a recieved text from the universe. Proving a negative in a domain as complex as the climate is impossible. Leif has just assumed the ground under his feet for the practical reason that without assuming something, it is almost impossible to make progress. It could still be a dead end. Just sayin.
Pamela Gray (12:17:05) :
In addition, sending warm water deeper could also increase the rejection of CO2 from the oceans… personnaly I have no problem with that, but I do have major problems with the damage warming the deep ocean might have on the ecosystem and the global environment.
If they consider CO2 as a pollutant, warm water could actually be a worse “pollutant” when put where it does not belong. Have those guys never heard of thermal pollution from Nuclear plants rejecting the warm water in rivers? This is why they now have to cool it down to near river temperature.
The real reason for this idea is to counter the Klingon heat rays beamed toward Earth to play havoc with our weather!
And Buckminster Fuller once proposed giant fans (100 feet tall) mounted on the hills around the LA basin – to blow the smog out to sea. Don’t think Bucky filed for a patent though.
An intellectually over rated billionaire surrounded with honey dripping, obsequious sycophants 24/7 + 1 intellectually challenged, domineering wife + an overpowering desire to become part of, and accepted by, the elite entertainment class’ (he and his Melinda) = The perfect moronic storm
I mean really…
Goodness…Mea culpa on the “crazy and/or evil” comment in my earlier post! I owe an apology to those I offended with that; got a trifle over-defensive, perhaps. Flattened underneath my own over-large shield…Sorry to everyone bothered by that.
Anyway, in response to this post:
Purakanui (00:35:15) :
Ronan
I’d be interested in your evidence for ‘accelerating global warming’.
Well…Simplest answer, graphs like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png From the late 1800s to 1920s-ish, not much going on. From 1920s-ish to 1960-ish, a rise. From 1960s-ish to 2000s, a steeper rise.
…Which is a really simplistic answer, and I’d be insulting your intelligence if I assumed that you had not already seen such graphs before and did not have a different view of what they meant. But that, along with, well, the majority (consensus, I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure from what I’ve read that AGW is the majority view among climate scientists), is why I think the warming is accelerating, and has been for a fair amount of time (in human terms, of course. Geologically a fragment of a moment, but in human terms a fair amount of time). So, yes. That’s the rationale behind my views.
Yes well, I wouldn’t worry about peat bogs locked in the permafrost, once they start to warm dormant biological processes come to life and they start to suck up CO2 rather than releasing it.
Much the same goes for the theory that higher temperatures will cause plants to exhaust nitrogen reserves and fail, both experiment and field observation show it does not happen. For plants including trees, higher temperatures and higher CO2 do them a vast amount of good.
Again the idea that warming would disturb methane clathrates/hydrates is another adsurd ‘O’ level, High School you might say, deduction. It is not the temperature that keeps them stable but the enormous pressure at these depths.
As for Mr. Gates big idea there is an expression for such vain attempts to influence great natural forces which I am too polite to write here.
It is as crazy as Hoyle’s idea of the seventies that we could stave off the impending ice age by pumping warm surface water into the ocean depths to increase the energy stored in the oceans.
And Hoyle was a great astronomer and scientist of his day, not that we ever saw eye to eye, he despised me for being a ‘Big Bang Heretic’.
Still what goes around comes around; windmills, electric cars, energy saving, overpopulation, starvation, not nuclear war this time it seems, but still the End of Days. Won’t happen. Been there, done that and got the T shirt as I think the modern idiom goes.
Kindest Regards
It will work better than Windows.
I don’t think that cooling the waters is a good idea. Colder water means less evaporation. In the eastern US (and I mean mainly east of the Rockies), grassland and forests are the natural habitat, and the farmland there supports food for our nation and much of the world. If you were to cool the Gulf, that would mean a drastic decrease in rainfall east of the Rockies. That would cause a severe water shortage and could be an ecological disaster as forests dry up and turn into grassland and deserts form.
A better thing to do is to learn how to build houses that can withstand such weather events. There are a bunch of new materials such as graphene, nanotubes, and others in the works. Perhaps, we can build houses and cities better to withstand hurricanes.
Hopefully all this madness or foolishness will vanish as soon as it appeared, the next “turn of the screw” is approaching…reason will prevail at the end.
Disillusionist:
As I read your post, you’re saying the G8 should punt “climate change”, which of course is neither manmade nor could we change it if we tried, over to a “useful idiot” like Bill Gates, so the G8 can move along with the stuff they were originally formed to do?
That actually makes a lot of sense, and I concur.
Tornadoes and hurricanes are responsible for much global cooling. Without them the rich tapestry of our weather system would be a poorer place. No-one has to live in zones where these are a problem – offer grants to encourage people to move away from the danger. Same applies to those living on flood plains or near volcanoes or in regions of high seismic activity. Common sense really, if you value life.
As for Bill Gates, looks like he’s away with the fairies…LOL
Wow, this gives a whole new meaning to “blue screen of death” when the operating system for this scheme crashes…