Hurricane experts are throwing cold water on an idea backed by billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates aimed at controlling the weather.
Gates and a dozen other scientists have raised eyebrows by submitting patent applications for a technology to reduce the danger of approaching hurricanes by cooling ocean temperatures.
Hurricanes are fueled by warm water, and cooling the waters surrounding a storm would slow a storm's momentum.
According to the patents, many tub-like barges would be placed directly in the path of an oncoming storm. Each barge would have two conduits, each 500 feet long.
One conduit would push the warm water from the ocean's surface down. The other would bring up cold water where it lies deep undersea.
World reknowned hurricane expert William Gray, who's been studying and predicting the storms for a half-century, also doubts whether the proposal would work.
"The problem is the storms come up so rapidly," said Gray, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University. "You only get two to three days warning. It's very difficult to bring up enough cold water in two to three days to have much effect."
The idea itself isn't groundbreaking, according to Gray, who said it could only be feasible if the barges were put into place at the beginning of hurricane season with the idea that storms will come.
"But you might do all that, and perhaps no storms would come. That's an economic problem," Gray said.
Good thing we're economists.
*Or at least slow it down enough that it becomes much less productive.
