Bill Gates targets hurricanes

[weathernms]

Microsoft's Bill Gates, one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution, has now set out on a new venture, to fight hurricanes.

 

Bill Gates is attempting to control the weather.

http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-5181-Jackson-Weather-Examiner~y2009m7d17-Bill-Gates-targets-hurricanes

[iNow]

And?

[D H]

Bill Gates is tilting at windmills is a better description.

 

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/research/2009-07-15-gates-hurricanes_N.htm

"By cooling a region in the path of a hurricane (over 60 square miles), models suggest we could knock a half-a-category in wind speed out," says Philip Kithil of Atmocean in Santa Fe, an ocean-pumping firm mentioned in Gates' applications. "All the models indicate the path of the storm would be unaffected."

I suspect that if they cooled a mere 60 square miles the magnitude of the storm wouldn't be affected much, either. 60 square miles is a circle 8.74 miles across. Large hurricanes (and this is the subject at hand) pass over small islands without diminishing in size a bit. How much larger an area would they need to hit? Large hurricanes (and this is the subject at hand) are several hundred miles in diameter, a hundred thousand square miles in area. Hurricanes do diminish somewhat when they cross over Cuba. Let's say they need to cool a 100x100 mile section of ocean: 10,000 square miles, a mere 1/10 of the size of a large hurricane.

 

Cooling just the top 10 feet of the ocean won't be very effective, and the cooling won't last very long. To be effective the cooling needs to be much more pervasive -- say 100 feet deep. Assume a temperature difference of 50 degrees between the surface and the deep waters and assume the goal is to cool the surface by 5 degrees. You need to exchange 1/10 of the total volume to be cooled with deep water. Multiplying these factors, 1/10*100 feet*10,000 square miles is about 20 cubic miles, or 80 cubic kilometers, that needs to be exchanged with deep water. The volume of Lake Mead: 35.2 cubic kilometers. Let's say I'm off by a factor of two. This plan requires transferring one Lake Mead's worth of cold water from 500 feet deep or more with the same volume of hot surface water.

 

More from the article:

The patents envision sail-maneuvered barges, with conduits 500 feet long, pumping warm water down to the depths and bringing cold water up.

 

So, Gates wants to bring up one Lake Mead's equivalent volume of water from the depths and pump the same volume of surface water down to the depths -- with sailboats! Now that is tilting at windmills.

[Pangloss]

Heck, why don't we just fill in the Gulf of Mexico?

 

Who needs that mucky old salt water anyway!