Author Topic: Saving us from Hurricanes (Read 3920 times)

wdyasq · « **on:** July 16, 2009, 01:44:15 AM »

I ran across this article:

http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/07/bill_gates_of_microsoft_envisi.html

Now, I've sailed across the Gulf of Mexico. That was in the early 80's. I'm assuming it is at least the same size, or near it. Those trips took about a week then. A good 'Trawler' style boat can motor across in about 3 days. But, it is still a bit larger than say, you local swimming pool.

Maybe they dined on too many beignets and café au lait in New Orleans and couldn't get served lunch or something. They DO need to rethink this project and take a big dose of reality (Neither thinking or reality have anything to do with Redmond ... or NOLA).

On another note, I've heard Windows has a stable operating system. (Their servers run LINUX).

Ron

dnix71 · « **Reply #1 on:** July 15, 2009, 08:29:48 PM »

Arrrgh. Messing with nature like that is big risk. Hurricanes are a heat dump engine. If they don't form, there will be unintended consequences. My father told me we just should not live some places. The Spanish got to Florida first. They settled St. Augustine and Tampa because those were the only two places that didn't get direct hits from tropical storms.

The French on the other hand, settled Haiti and New Orleans.

TheCasualTraveler · « **Reply #2 on:** July 16, 2009, 05:39:37 AM »

I celebrate Hurricane season each year with a party on June 1st (actually May 31st this year, Hurricane season Eve) and by sending Happy Hurricane Season greeting cards to all my friends. Hurricanes are an act of nature to be respected, and are also very easy to guard against. Most all of the damage I see in Florida from storms is from poor building and poor maintenance. Storms are an act of nature, if you don't build to withstand them, it's not the storms fault.

I assume the idea of the floating tubs is more on the order of, "I wonder if it would work" rather than a serious attempt to control nature.

spinningmagnets · « **Reply #3 on:** July 16, 2009, 07:32:49 AM »

Nature is such a large complex interlinked system. If cooling the surface water in the Gulf results in fewer and milder hurricanes, that sounds good, but...

El Nino is an unseasonably warm Christmas (El Nino is "the baby boy") which puts a lot more water vapor from the ocean surface up into the jet stream to to spread it it around, resulting in a very wet spring.

There is a big fight brewing that crosses state lines and will draw in federal intervention. Water supplies are shrinking and and city/county/and state officials are fighting over the scraps. When snow falls in Utah and Colorado (snow = time-released water) how much of it belongs to California, Arizona, and Nevada?

You must secure a certain volume of water rights before a contractor can build a (profitable) housing tract. Large contractors make political contributions (and also build second homes for the politicians "parents", who put the home in a non-taxed trust for the kids)

Fewer and milder hurricanes might also mean less rain/snow. Selfish and short-sighted farmers in Utah and Colorado want snow-melt for "crops" when the growing population in the Peoples Republic of California still desperately need to expand their municipal golf courses.

Airstream · « **Reply #4 on:** July 16, 2009, 09:38:03 AM »

What a complete waste of money - well, what a bonanza of tax write offs for the wealthy when a Cat5 sinks the fleet. If* it even worked to a small degree all it would do is reduce not eliminate the terminal force of the storms when they make landfall and then everyone involved would get sued in a class action suit for the benefit of the same folks that colonized (pun intended) the "super-dome" in the last serious storm.

One thing that needs defining would be how the mixing affects the Mississippi outflow that contributes to a stagnant warm layer with lower oxygen content over a huge swath in the Gulf each summer. Maybe California should claim the fresh-brackish water after if reaches the 3-mile limit and use their incredible wealth to send it up Pickens pipeline and on to SoCaland...

Madscientist267 · « **Reply #5 on:** July 16, 2009, 10:17:45 AM »

He wasn't satisfied screwing up mankind with a busted operating system and forcing our hands in using it, now he wants to "Play God" with the gulf of Mexico?

I say the hell with it, let him try, but only because I think it will all be nothing more than a complete waste of time and money. There won't be enough effect to have any positive effects, so the negative is likely to be minimal too. Besides, he needs to put some of that blood money back into society somehow; why not waste it on a pointless project such as this?

Now to point out the fatal flaws (as I see them, at least) with the project itself:

Everything in physics is working against this - Convection being the biggest player. I see how they intend to 'force' the water down, but I can't see it happening to any appreciable (more accurately useful) amount. The idea is that the waves ride higher than mean level, breaking the levee of the tub, and providing a column of water that can exert pressure on the tub's "drain", forcing it down. Problem with this is, there's an insane amount of pressure at the bottom of the ocean. Add this to the fact that the water at the bottom is colder and more dense, and it's going to win the fight, and isn't going to be persuaded to leave the tube by the warmer water above it.

Second, why would you need a tube to bring the cold water back to the surface. Again, physics would do this for you. Even if you could force the warm water down hard enough, you're displacing the water at the bottom, and so it has nowhere else to go but toward the surface.

Third, how many of these things (not to mention how big they would each have to be) would it take to actually put the smallest ding in the surface temp? I like one of the comments someone made in the post - something to the effect of "it's like expecting a dime size hole in the ground to prevent someone from walking past it."

Fourth, Gates is an idiot technologically anyway. An excellent BS artist, salesman, and marketeer he may be, but technology and Gates should never be in the same sentence, unless he is being discredited by said sentence.

Ideas like this are a dime a dozen - How many have each of us come up with back in the days of choking on a bong? Most of us grew out of it, and subsequently realized just how flawed those ideas actually were. The big difference here is, this one got published. Why? Because it's Gates, and I'm sure he got "under the desk" somewhere to have his idea heard - it undoubtedly worked!

Someone once said, "In a world without fences, who needs Gates?"

Don't even GET ME started... LOL

Steve

tanner0441 · « **Reply #6 on:** July 16, 2009, 11:37:43 AM »

Hi

You have to take your hat off to the Guy who sold Gates the idea... He has fallen for his own selling scam. He has bought into an unproven idea, just drawings and a should do sheet.

Maybe the idea was sold to him on the first of April and it took four months to get to out the door.

Amused..

Stonebrain · « **Reply #7 on:** July 16, 2009, 12:06:55 PM »

Ha ha,

pushing the warm water(that want to go upwards) down and that powers a generator that pumps the cold water upwards.

Smells overunity,not even good for the newbie section.

I wouldn't be surprised if bill gates can make money from the 'idea'

That's his strong point,making big money from scrap.

cheers,

stonebrain

SparWeb · « **Reply #8 on:** July 16, 2009, 12:54:23 PM »

Why can't I come up with hare-brained ideas like that, and sell them to insanely rich people?

Ungrounded Lightning Rod · « **Reply #9 on:** July 16, 2009, 02:23:22 PM »

There is a big fight brewing that crosses state lines and will draw in federal intervention. Water supplies are shrinking and and city/county/and state officials are fighting over the scraps.

There are ALWAYS water rights fights in progress. (I recently got sued by the US government and an indian tribe because somebody in a US attorney's office mistakenly added everyone with a residential well in eastern CA and western NV to a suit. B-b )

But it's very perceptive to notice that reducing ocean evaporation to control hurricanes potentially violates the downwind water rights.

(It will be interesting to work that out, though. A hurricane is a big vacuum cleaner sucking moist air toward itself and forcing the water out of it - releasing the heat of evaporation which powers the storm. Fighting them by selectively reducing ocean evaporation may actually INCREASE rain/snowfall on nearby land because keeping the hurricane from sucking out the moist air may help more than reducing the evaporation hurts. Meanwhile the precipitation they cause when they go onshore and drag ocean moisture with them is too rapid to effectively capture.)

Madscientist267 · « **Reply #10 on:** July 16, 2009, 02:33:50 PM »

LMAO That would serve him right... hahaha I'm gonna have to follow this a bit just because I'd like to see it get 'stuck to the man' - the man... ROFL

Besides, just like computers, hurricanes are a beautiful thing. Does he have to ruin those too? Sigh...

Steve

Ungrounded Lightning Rod · « **Reply #11 on:** July 16, 2009, 02:35:35 PM »

Nope. You run a heat engine on the temperature difference and get more than enough power to pump the water.

It's a variant on this trick, already in use: Pump up deep, cold, nutrient-laden water near a midocean island. Run the heat engine on that versus the hot surface water near the island to get a bunch of electric power for the island (and to run the pumps). Then dump the warmed deep-ocean water into a big fish farm, creating an algae bloom for fish food.

This is one of the reasons dumping nuclear waste in the ocean, with the expectation that even if it leaks it will have decayed to safe levels before the very slow deep-ocean currents carry it to an upwelling, is a bad idea.

A problem for Gates' scheme: If it gets tried in a place where a deep volcanic vent has carbonated the water it might cause a catastrophic, self-perpetuating "turnover" - on a scale to poison continents rather than villages and create REAL and MAJOR human-generated global warming.

Ungrounded Lightning Rod · « **Reply #12 on:** July 16, 2009, 02:40:18 PM »

I bet you can come up with plenty of hair-brained schemes. But you can't sell them to rich people because you aren't enough of a fool to miss obvious problems and aren't enough of a psychopath to convincingly lie about their practicality. B-)

Madscientist267 · « **Reply #13 on:** July 16, 2009, 02:41:48 PM »

You're not "big" enough... Not very many people are, plain and simple. The publicity he doesn't naturally accrue, he can buy...

Madscientist267 · « **Reply #14 on:** July 16, 2009, 02:44:35 PM »

Wow, yeah hadn't thought about it that way... those carbonation eruptions are supposedly some VERY nasty events...

DamonHD · « **Reply #15 on:** July 16, 2009, 02:45:43 PM »

I think you must have slept through "dot com". I got some very nice hourly rates, thank you, without participating in too many 'enterprises' directly. B^>

Rgds

Damon

Stonebrain · « **Reply #16 on:** July 16, 2009, 03:28:24 PM »

ok,

it's the solution for most of our problems,why not,it might be.

Anyways ifever it is,it's good idea to 'own' the idea,don't you think so.

The demonstration how ill B.G.'s mind is.

cheers,

stonebrain

RogerAS · « **Reply #17 on:** July 16, 2009, 05:49:58 PM »

This idea could cause a mass extinction. If the deep ocean hydrates were released, which is something on the order of 4 times as effective greenhouse gas as CO2. Warm water suddenly introduced into the deep ocean could easily release these hydrates.

Also the deep ocean has a higher concentration of hydrogen sulfate, a deadly poison. Bringing up enough of the cold deep water to change the surface temperature of the gulf would also bring up this gas. The hydrogen sulphate, now locked in place by pressure, would outgas upon exposure to the low pressure surface. This happened at the Permian-Triassic, the biggest of the mass extinction events, where 95% of all life vanished.

Now let's talk about the effect this would have on sea life. Deep ocean waters are low in oxygen and introducing this water to the surface would be a hazard to life in the water. Not the least of these life forms effected would be plankton. Kill the plankton and you kill the ocean. The gulf is already experiencing dead zones and this would lead to even more such places.

The whole idea is absurd. Let's work to reduce our contribution to global warming and stop the smoke and mirrors bad science.

Ungrounded Lightning Rod · « **Reply #18 on:** July 16, 2009, 09:07:54 PM »

Naw: Lived through it in Silicon Valley. It bought me the Nevada place and perhaps enough to retire on.

Still living it, in fact. The last startup I joined got bought by a company that in turn got bought by a BIG European telecom company to be their future product line. I'm now a non-trivial component of the big third fish in the old food-chain-chase illustration. B-)

Madscientist267 · « **Reply #19 on:** July 17, 2009, 08:19:48 AM »

Bad ideas never stopped Gates before... I suppose having an ego such as his though makes him think he's entitled to such activities, as absurd as they are. Doesn't really surprise me, actually. This is just the next step. Then, when it all goes to $#!+, he'll appoint Ballmer to take over while he stands back and watches from his space condo.

Biased? Me? Naaa, he really is an idiot.

Steve

Bruce S · « **Reply #20 on:** July 17, 2009, 01:54:14 PM »

ULR;

Or worse it starts the methane ice to melt and the REAL green house gases startup :-/!!

Wonder if they know that that spot IS one of the locations that the methane hydrate is located and the stuff is poison to us all?

There has been a ton of real thoughout and was working quite well, water

collection from condensation, for drinking water out in Hawaii. Plus the water was cool enough to get the grape vines to think the seasons had changed and started flowering again.

This stuff is backwards of that.

Cheers

Bruce S

wdyasq · « **Reply #21 on:** July 17, 2009, 06:54:15 PM »

I'm glad we have had this bit of amusement. I've often wondered IF they brought the methane/CO2/HS laden water from the deep and started the separation process, how would it be done. I can visualize the bubbles causing the velocity in the vertical pipe to increase with 'interesting' results.

Of course the gases would come out of the soup at different times/depths. Would there be enough depth to release the gas and have it reabsorb before it hit the surface? Or, would it need to be pressurized a bit more and sent back down?

As some suggested, what would be the result of the higher nutrient level? would it actually be a benefit? Or, would it be a liability.

One of the great things about an education is it teaches one how ignorant they really are. When I was in serious business, I was used by a company to 'save' lost projects. The bad thing about that is the bonuses were paid by how much you 'made' on the particular projects you were assigned. As I seemed to get projects that were in the RED and, most times, was finally able to fight the demons and most times show a profit, I did not feel I had been properly compensated for about 4000 hours a year workload. Work relations with others in parallel positions were not good because I didn't step on toes .... I stomped on feet to get folks attention.

I think that is where a project like this would end. If a really great engineer/problem solver did get it to work, the credit would be taken by the big fish. If it failed, it would be because the 'junior engineer' didn't perform. Of course he didn't follow the directives, he was too busy with the emergencies created!

I'm like the fellow who continued to ask about the bus that left one time zone at Noon ... and arrived 60 miles away at 12:10, "No, I don't want to be on the bus... but can I stay and watch it leave the station?"

Ron

tecker · « **Reply #22 on:** July 20, 2009, 06:18:53 AM »

I think he's been talking to Joan Rivers without a requisite face lift and boob job.

Ungrounded Lightning Rod · « **Reply #23 on:** July 20, 2009, 01:44:39 PM »

I've often wondered IF they brought the methane/CO2/HS laden water from the deep and started the separation process, how would it be done. I can visualize the bubbles causing the velocity in the vertical pipe to increase with 'interesting' results.

That's how they're "fixing" lake Nyos, the one that killed the village in Africa: They put a vertical pipe on floats and started a vertical current by injecting a little air. They got the carbonation-bubble turnover started in the pipe, making a self-powered fountain. With one pipe the gases are released a bit faster than the rate they're added. So now it's like living next to a slightly-stinky volcanic vent, rather than next to a lake the every couple hundred years blasts you with poisonous gasses that spread out faster than you can run.

They plan to add some more pipes to degas the lake enough to make it safe. (It's still unstable so it could turn over again, and if the natural dam bursts or leaks and lets the carbonated water out or drops the lake level and pressure it could turn over even more than last time.)

Article with pictures here.

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Author Topic: Saving us from Hurricanes (Read 3920 times)