Can Bill Gates stop hurricanes?

[Rincon]

Can ol' Billy Boy stop hurricanes (http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/08/28/hurricanes.gates.gray/index.html)?

I see how it's supposed to work in theory, but as always with things like this, there's significant danger that the unintended consequences will be as bad or worse as the original problem.

[sandwich]

I haven't read the article, but based from my observations that we've never had hurricanes in Washington, I'd say that it is entirely possible that Bill Gates has stopped any from coming here.

[jyng1]

I'm just trying to think how much water you would have to move and what sort of engineering would be required to do it. Since some of the hurricanes cover vast areas of ocean, I imagine trillions of litres. That's some big pumps.

Just imagine what all that nutrient rich water from the depths would do to the fishing.

[Rincon]

I haven't read the article, but based from my observations that we've never had hurricanes in Washington, I'd say that it is entirely possible that Bill Gates has stopped any from coming here.

Wow, I think you're on to something there: I've got a tiger-repelling rock in my backyard, and- I know this is hard to believe- I have never seen a tiger in my yard!!

*wonders if BG is working on earthquake-preventing rocks*


I'm just trying to think how much water you would have to move and what sort of engineering would be required to do it. Since some of the hurricanes cover vast areas of ocean, I imagine trillions of litres. That's some big pumps.

Just imagine what all that nutrient rich water from the depths would do to the fishing.

Yeah, the scale is hard to comprehend. What I wonder is what effects changing the balance of energy in the environment might have, and whether we as humans could actually control it.

[Hustler]

Seems like an awful idea.

[Rincon]

Seems like an awful idea.

Concur.

[Hustler]

So, a hurricane releases between 50 and 200 TW of power. This is a tremendous redistribution of heat energy, away from the equator. This is heat that is used to power driving winds and heavy rainfall, not to mention a rise in ocean levels in the vicinity of the hurricane, as water is pulled toward the center. If we were to somehow prevent hurricanes, all of this energy would be left to heat up the atmosphere and oceans, which would probably have disastrous consequences.

Consider the average hurricane, a type of tropical cyclone, lasts for about 7 days and produces about 100 TW of power (lowball estimate... it could be as much as 1,000x more than that). So that's about 1 x 10^12 J/s, or about 6.048 x 10^17 J per tropical cyclone. There are about 17 such storms in the Northwest Pacific every year, 10 in the South Indian Ocean, 9 in the Northeast Pacific, 6 in the North Atlantic, 5 in the Southwest Pacific, and 2 in the North Indian. That's a total of 49 such storms per year, for a total heat release of 2.96 x 10^19 J per year. And that's not even counting the smaller tropical storms, which would also be affected, of which the frequency of occurrence is about double. So, we're looking at around 10^20 J of heat energy released every year by these storms.

My question, then, is where does all of that energy go if we start trying to manipulate ocean temperature to get rid of them? That's energy that the rest of the ecosystem presumably uses but, as far as I can tell, it will just lead to rising surface temperatures of the world's oceans, because the hurricanes will be halted before they can bring cold water up from the depths and into the upper layers of the ocean. So, heat will be less effectively distributed in the oceans, and a greater temperature gradient will occur from the uppermost levels to the lower levels. My guess is this would cause phenomena such as the Gulf Stream to become even warmer and make the climate along its path (the Caribbean, the Eastern United States, the North Atlantic, and Europe) hotter throughout the year. So, too, would Eastern Asia, Northeastern Australia, and so on become warmer. These places would experience higher annual temperatures, more thunderstorms, and so on. This is just a guess, of course, and the actual effects could be something beyond our imagination. An example of a mind-blowing consequence would be the Gulf Stream warming the North Atlantic and its environs to the point that glacial ice in that region (Greenland) melts, thereby causing an influx of cold water into the North Atlantic, thereby causing the Gulf Stream itself to die out thousands of miles before it reaches its present terminus, thereby causing Europe to become a frozen tundra like Central Canada is now.

To me this whole scenario seems like the exact kind of mistake that humans have been making ever since we began using technology to shape our environment and alter our lives. We see it over and over in areas as disparate as energy production, food production, medicine, industrialization of just about anything and, of course, giant lasers to carve our names on the Moon. The problem is that we so rarely bother to examine a problem fully and acquire all of the necessary information to make a good decision before we take action. Hurricanes are a problem, and it would be nice to stop them from making landfall and wiping out communities. I agree. But, we really should try to determine if stopping them would be more damaging to even more people by way of manipulating the ecosystem in major and potentially catastrophic ways, and stopping the flow of that much energy is doing precisely that.

[immol8]

I don't think they are trying to propose stopping tropical storms or hurricanes from happening, but promoting dissipation before they hit land. You still have plenty of warm to cool transfer as the storm takes it's path, it just dissipates over artificially cooled water before the shoreline instead of over land.

Although, I don't think the solution of pumping is viable. It sounds very costly and I can't see the government shelling out that kind of cash when storm prediction is so unreliable.

[Hustler]

I don't think they are trying to propose stopping tropical storms or hurricanes from happening, but promoting dissipation before they hit land. You still have plenty of warm to cool transfer as the storm takes it's path, it just dissipates over artificially cooled water before the shoreline instead of over land.

The article proposes stopping the hurricanes while they're still out at sea, which would imply at least several day's worth of energy transfer being stopped. So, even if the amount of energy transfer is only cut in half instead of halted completely, it's still quite a big figure.

[immol8]

The article proposes stopping the hurricanes while they're still out at sea, which would imply at least several day's worth of energy transfer being stopped. So, even if the amount of energy transfer is only cut in half instead of halted completely, it's still quite a big figure.

Hmm. I was estimating two days max considering the patent's suggestion of placement http://ipwatchdog.com/patents/US20090173386.pdf and typical hurricane development and path http://tinyurl.com/nth7xv

I am not convinced that it reduces energy dispersal so significantly as to outweigh the potential benefits especially as it is being created as a plan B or C defense.

[Oso Mocoso]

An example of a mind-blowing consequence would be the Gulf Stream warming the North Atlantic and its environs to the point that glacial ice in that region (Greenland) melts, thereby causing an influx of cold water into the North Atlantic, thereby causing the Gulf Stream itself to die out thousands of miles before it reaches its present terminus, thereby causing Europe to become a frozen tundra like Central Canada is now.

You're assuming this would be an unintended consequence and not a deliberate effect. Bill Gates could be something like the real world version of a comic book supervillain. What if he plans to hold Europe for ransom? Once the subcontinent begins to freeze over, I bet a lot of Euros would drift his way. He could make a lot of money on this venture.

[jyng1]

I thought what Bill was intending to do was to promote heat transfer from the surface of the ocean to the depths instead of from the surface to the atmosphere and basically do something that occurs distructively when a hurricane develops. The disturbance of the stratification of ocean temperatures by hurricanes (tropical cyclones) is what leads to their eventual demise as the heat source driving evaporation and instability is reduced or removed. The general increase in ocean surface temperature is what is thought to be increasing oceanic evaporation and therefore moisture in the atmosphere which consquently increases the energy released by latent heat exchange therefore magnifying the energy in storm systems. I thought this was behind the speculation of super hurricanes. So by disturbing the layers of the ocean, he would only be doing what the hurricane does naturally (without the billions of dollars worth of damage).

The distruption of the Gulf Stream is more likely as a consequence of the melting of the Greenland ice cap I would have thought and the consequent ingress of billions of litres of cold fresh water. Shame for England as it provides as much heat as the sun.

The upwelling of cold water from the Humbolt current is thought to be the driving force behind the El Nino/La Nina Southern oscillation. Since warm water is notoriously nutrient deficient, any method of bringing cold water up from the depths would be good for fishing, but cold water breeds high pressure systems, and semi permanent systems resulting from upwelling, such as on the western coast of Peru tend to effect global weather systems (not to mention the sloshing bath tub effect of water travelling from Darwin to Peru).

As global heat transfer is somewhat chaotic I'm betting it will be nearly impossible to determine the effects of trying to interfere with nature on something of this scale. You never know Bill could have the grand plan of regreening the sahara.

[Hustler]

I thought what Bill was intending to do was to promote heat transfer from the surface of the ocean to the depths instead of from the surface to the atmosphere and basically do something that occurs distructively when a hurricane develops. The disturbance of the stratification of ocean temperatures by hurricanes (tropical cyclones) is what leads to their eventual demise as the heat source driving evaporation and instability is reduced or removed. The general increase in ocean surface temperature is what is thought to be increasing oceanic evaporation and therefore moisture in the atmosphere which consquently increases the energy released by latent heat exchange therefore magnifying the energy in storm systems. I thought this was behind the speculation of super hurricanes. So by disturbing the layers of the ocean, he would only be doing what the hurricane does naturally (without the billions of dollars worth of damage).

This may be true if he lines the entire length of the major cyclone pathways with these super-pumps to cycle water up and down. But, the way the article made it sound, it was only going to go as far as necessary to prevent the hurricanes from crossing a boundary, or preventing them from forming in the first place. It seems to me these pumps would not be churning the oceans anywhere near as much as hurricanes do. Now, if the pumps also used marine current power to fuel the pumping mechanism, that might help matters. That would surely sap a lot of heat energy out of the water, lessening the temperature along the current's path, potentially to the point that the excess heat energy left over from the lack of hurricanes would be used up.


The distruption of the Gulf Stream is more likely as a consequence of the melting of the Greenland ice cap I would have thought and the consequent ingress of billions of litres of cold fresh water. Shame for England as it provides as much heat as the sun.

If the amount of heat transported into the North Atlantic by the Gulf Stream increased by even a tiny amount ("tiny" being a relative term when you're talking about a phenomenon that delivers 1.4 petawatts), that would be sufficient to melt the Greenland ice cap, which could then potentially wreck the European climate. Given my feelings about Europeans (http://forums.intpcentral.com/showthread.php?t=27966), though, maybe this isn't such a bad thing.


As global heat transfer is somewhat chaotic I'm betting it will be nearly impossible to determine the effects of trying to interfere with nature on something of this scale.

Yeah.

[bass_n_treble]

I got a better idea: how about people stop moving to coastal cities below sea level?

Just a thought.

"Why is my house on fire?"
It couldn't be because you moved the mouth of a volcano or anything?

[Hustler]

I got a better idea: how about people stop moving to coastal cities below sea level?

Just a thought.

"Why is my house on fire?"
It couldn't be because you moved the mouth of a volcano or anything?

Yeah, because nobody in New Orleans was born there. Everyone moved there. Good call.

[bass_n_treble]

Yeah, because nobody in New Orleans was born there. Everyone moved there. Good call.

Your acute sense of dark comedy is astounding. ;)

[Ellipsis]

The man that brought about Windows given the ability to control one of the most destructive forces in nature? Anyone see any problems with that?

But more seriously: hurricanes are one of nature's many balancing mechanisms, messing with them is not recommended. But someone will have to try... because it would be dam cool.