Can and Should Bill Gates Control Hurricanes?

Comments (8): george n:

Absolutely, you go Bill! While you are at it, how about geo-engineering out all natural functions of our planet. Mechanise all agriculture, mechanise all weather. Manage the entire human population like cattle on feed lots and that should do it. Only Genetically modified foods, only cloned meat products and outlaw all natural medicines and organic native food plants. I want a stable total authoritarian one world government while your at it Mr. Bill Gates! :)

Posted by george n | July 17, 2009 5:10 PM Samuel Charloff:

"With no hurricanes you end up with an extra hot equator and extra hot poles,"

Q: did you mean extra cold poles?

FROM JESSE: Sigh, yes, corrected, thanks. :)

Posted by Samuel Charloff | July 16, 2009 8:06 PM Bryan:

Jesse, so glad you noticed this story circulating around the world today, it certainly did a bit to scare me up a little

I don't know if he can control the weather, on that issue I will resign my time to you..

But as far as whether he should? no.. I don't think he should.

To me this should be simple.. but why isn't it?

I can envision a future when countries use Bill Gates' ingenuis invention to control weather and deprive other nations of water, thus food, and control the world..

I can envision a future when this is used for wrong purposes.. for wrong reasons.

It's a hackneyed statement, but necessary in the face of this news: The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry

Posted by Bryan | July 16, 2009 7:35 PM Emiliano:

No way. Hurricanes play an importante role in heat distribution!!!

Posted by Emiliano | July 16, 2009 6:07 PM Don:

Only one thing worse than being arrogant ..... that's being rich and arrogant. His new liver must have powered up his massive ego. Although I would buy a ticket to watch this wannnbe god give it a try , maybe start with the small things, like parting the Red sea, or walking on water ......... what a hoot ! Bill Gates ... delete ....

Posted by Don | July 16, 2009 5:17 PM Amy Marrero:

At first I wanted to compare this to Ecological burnings. To reduce the impact of wildfire, we use prescribed or controlled burns. By burning off the overgrowth and making fire breaks in a controlled setting with firefighters (or experienced burn folk) on hand, we reduce the fuel that "accidental" fires have to burn. Thereby keeping them from blazing out of control.

Some wildlife relocates themselves, because obviously they know enough to run from fire. And there is minimal negative impact.

Then I thought about that. Ok, so we're going to change the temperature and consistancy of the ocean in certain spots. But the ocean is all connected. I'm not so sure you can isolate one area without impacting a much greater region.

I don't think I'd like to see this type of Playing God. The consequences could be a higher price than the hurricane itself.

Posted by Amy Marrero | July 16, 2009 12:42 PM Fran Rautiola:

Jesse Sounds like another far out wacko idea, like sometime ago there was a idea of shooting polution into the air to stop so called global warming. What about the energy required to run these pumps, where would that come from. How many thousand barges would be needed? Bill Gates is no doubt a smart man but he should stick to computers, mankind can only prepare for weather and not control it.

Posted by Fran Rautiola | July 16, 2009 11:42 AM Jordan Adams:

Well this is an interesting post, but we shouldn't be looking towards mitigating all property threatening hurricanes. Not only do you risk disturbing the natural exchange of heat and moisture around the globe, possibly causing significant long term effects, but this would pollute the oceans with possibly millions, probably billions, of mechanical devices. And lets not forget the amount of money that would be needed for r&d, innovations, production, upkeep, and repair. then in the end would it even work? Large scale weather systems are much more resilient that we like to think. The amount of cooling that would be needed to cover a few hundred square miles of ocean by say, just 5 degrees F, even only the top meter of water, would be tremendous. And pumping up cool water from the ocean bottom would most likely cause a massive turnover, dirty the water, and probably kill most life. Bill gates: i'm sorry but you cannot control hurricanes. Stick to computers.