The Channel Wire

July 16, 2009

All jokes about creating a monopoly on the weather aside, Bill Gates has put together a leading team of scientists that has applied for five patents on ways to slow down hurricanes and make them less dangerous to human beings.

The patent applications, made public on July 9, propose slowing hurricanes by pumping cold, deep-ocean water in their paths from barges. The applications were first requested last year and are "not limited to atmospheric management, weather management, hurricane suppression, hurricane prevention, hurricane intensity modulation, hurricane deflection."

Gates' name appears as an inventor on the applications filed by Searete LLC, which is part of Intellectual Ventures LLC, a Bellevue, Wash.-based firm run by Nathan Myhrvold, Microsoft's former chief technology officer.

According to The Times-Picayune, of New Orleans, the applications envision giant tubs that drain warm water from the surface to the depths of the ocean through a long tube. A second tube would in turn suck cool water from the deep sea. Some variations have the water moving through turbines on their way down, which would generate electricity to suck up the cooler water, according to the newspaper.

"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," according to the New Orleans newspaper.

Gates' interest in controlling weather may have been spurred after Hurricane Katrina ripped New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in 2005. Hurricane devastation averages about $10 billion per year, and Katrina killed at least 1,800 people and caused more than $80 billion in damage.