Gates to Build Weather Machine, Sort Of

July 16, 2009 by Andrew Shriner · 3 Comments
Filed under: Technology 

I love this news item. Bill Gates has filed a patent for a system to neutralize hurricanes. The science goes a little like this: Hurricanes are powered by water vapor evaporated from the water’s surface. The water condenses, warms the air and in the absence of wind shear, a low pressure system forms and wind begins to swirl. The theory is that if the water can be prevented from evaporating, the hurricane’s power plant shuts down.

In collaboration with Nathan Myhrvold, former Microsoft CTO, founder of Intellectual Ventures, and all-around smart guy, Mr. Gates proposes a system that will pump cold water from the ocean’s depths and use it to lower the temperature of the water’s surface. Apparently, reducing the surface temperature by 4.5 degrees at the eye of a hurricane would be enough to deactivate it.

The technical and logistic complexity would surely be high, but the economic and human savings of preventing another Katrina are compelling. But what I like almost as much as the potential to save human lives is the sheer ambitiousness of it all. I have often spoken to friends of my plans to amass a great fortune and then invest it in the development of lightsaber technology, but apparently I’ve been thinking small.

Mr. Gates has certainly proven to be an conscientious steward of his personal wealth. Rather than eating California Condor egg omelets and using the works of Carl Fabergé for target practice, he has been thoughtfully attacking some of the world’s largest problems. That being said, in the future I hope to see his name attached to patent applications for (in order of importance):

  • Lightsabers
  • A Time Machine
  • Warp Technology
  • A way to prevent any more Terminator movies from being made

But for the time being I’ll have to be satisfied that when a butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazon, Mr. Gates may have something to say about what happens next.

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