Gates’ patent claims pre-empted by my 2005 “Hurricane Stopper” post

Flopping Aces ^ | 07-17-09 | Alec Rawls

[Starman417]

Bill gates just filed a patent on a scheme to unplug hurricanes by surrounding them with fleets of pump-boats bringing cold water to the surface:

Having posted this idea four years ago myself, I have to admit it's a bit wacky. On the other hand, Hurricane Katrina devastated a substantial chunk of my country, so anything that MIGHT be able to slow these monsters down ought to at least be talked about.

The Gates scheme is lumbering and passive. My Hurricane Stopper is agile and active, giving it a better chance of being practical. My idea was to have wind-turbine powered jet-boats suck their propellant water from the cold depths and spread it around in the hurricane's path. Think of barge-like wind-farms, big enough to ride out hurricane seas.

Downsides: Might not be possible to build a wind-farm barge capable of riding out hurricane winds and seas; would kill a lot of birds and fish; possible ill effects from changing the temperature gradient in the Gulf, if used on massive scale.

Gate's scheme is similar to mine in that it also uses the hurricane's own energy, but it does so passively. He would dot the Gulf with giant tubs, ballast-regulated to ride so that hurricane seas would lap over the edges of the tubs, raising the water level in the tub above the surrounding sea level. Gravity would then drive the water in the tub down through a drain in the bottom that extends down to the cold depths:

At whatever rate the waves lap over the top, the same amount of water should flow out the bottom. But is it really possible to in this way get the warm top-water off of the cold water below?

The patent claim is that when the top-water gets pushed down to the cold depths, it pushes the cold water up, but will it? How can cold rise through warm? It seems more likely that the warm water exiting the drain will float back up, but not all the way because it has been cooled by its exposure to deep water, with the warm top-water continuing to sit as a lid on the cold water below.

[Islander7]

Two words to be aware of:

Unintended consequences

[Young Werther]

The October 2004 Scientific American contained an article by Ross N. Hoffman entitled "Controlling Hurricanes."

The author suggested that if we were to orbit giant mirrors into orbit so that we could focus solar energy we could modify weather patterns. By shining a spot in front of a hurricane you could cause it to bend it's trajectory so that it would miss the US and head up into the mid Atlantic area between Greenland and Iceland and Ireland where it would loose its energy and just dissapate into a tropical rain storm.

Imagine if there were a series of brush fires along the Pacific Coast. The mirror would focus in the area between Hawaii and California. Clouds would form as the seawater is evaporated. the winds would send the clouds eastward and voila rain puts out brush fires.

On this 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing we might look Ad Astra to find solutions for Ad Earth!

[infidel29]

Line the gulf coastline with windmills, blow away hurricanes and generate clean energy at the same time, what could be better!!?

/sarc

[HangThemHigh]

Not that I think either idea has a snowballs chance in Hades of working, but sucking cold water to the top definitely seems like a much better idea. I suspect that with Gates’ contraption, the hurricane would be long gone before the cooling took effect.