Bill Gates Wants To Kill Hurricanes, Forever

Ryan Brower

• July 15 2009
• 928 views
• 6 comments

Bill Gates wants to kill hurricanes. He and a group of scientists have a patent pending for “giant ocean-going tubs that fight hurricanes by draining warm water from the surface to the depths, through a long tube. A A second tube could simultaneously suck cool water from the depths to the surface.

Gotta say I’m pretty blown away by this. Trying to control our earth’s weather patterns and override a natural thing? Not to mention the fact that East Coast surfers would no longer have anything to live for.

Hurricanes are going to happen, whether you want them to or not. It’s a natural cycle of this planet. The proposed tubes are also said to help promote ocean floor growth. If you want to help out with that one Bill try developing a new method for coastal erosion other than dredging, which does way more harm than it does good.

East Coast surfers unite, this would be a travesty of great proportions for us all…

Bill Gates doesn’t want us to enjoy the benefits of hurricane season any more. Lame. Photo: English

As reported by Mark Schleifstein for the New Orleans Metro Real-Time News.

If you thought domination of the world’s software market was cool, get a load of Bill Gates’ next technological vision: giant ocean-going tubs that fight hurricanes by draining warm water from the surface to the depths, through a long tube.

A second tube could simultaneously suck cool water from the depths to the surface.

Microsoft founder Gates and a dozen other scientists and engineers have a patent pending for deploying such vessels, which they say would collect water through waves breaking over the walls of the tub. Some variations have the water moving through turbines on their way down, which would in turn generate electricity to suck up the cooler water.

As many as 200 vessels could be placed strategically in the predicted path of a hurricane, and they could be designed to be reused or to sink in place and decompose underwater. The vessels could be moved into place by towing or by dropping from airplanes.

A second patent application describes how part or all of the cost of building and maintaining the hurricane-killer ships could be raised by selling insurance to coastal residents whose risk would be reduced by using the new system.

The hurricane-killing ideas, contained in a half-dozen related patent applications, were made public by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Friday, with Gates listed as one of the inventors on each. The applications were submitted by Searete LLC, a subsidiary of Intellectual Ventures of Bellevue, Wash., and created by former Microsoft executives to both buy up existing patents and develop patent applications for new ideas.

The hurricane-killer system isn’t expected to be rolled out any time soon, however, according to a posting on the Intellectual Ventures Lab Web site.

Paul “Pablos” Holman, whose job title is listed as “hacker,” said the system would be feasible only if other responses to more active hurricane seasons or more intense hurricanes caused by global warming do not work.

“This type of technology is not something humankind would try as a ‘Plan A’ or ‘Plan B,’ ” he wrote. “These inventions are a ‘Plan C’ where humans decide that we have exhausted all of our behavior changing or alternative energy options and need to rely on mitigation technologies.

“If our planet is in this severe situation, then our belief is that we should not be starting from scratch at investigating mitigation options,” he wrote.

For the entire article, head to the New Orleans Metro Real-Time News.