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Bill Gates envisions fighting hurricanes by manipulating the sea

3 points by gscott 17y ago

trafficlight 17y ago
I think it's unwise to screw with something you don't understand. This reminds of the changing attitude towards forest fires. Since the 1900s through the 1980s a lot of time and effort was spent putting out forest fires as quickly as possible. In the 1980s scientists were coming to the realization that forest fires are a critical part of the forest ecosystem. Fire clears out the dead trees and undergrowth allowing new vegetation to grow. I think hurricanes play a similar roll, even if we don't know what exactly that is.
- dazzawazza 17y ago
  I'm not sure people didn't know that forest fires did that. For hundreds of years aboriginal people used fires to manage the land. The idea that we can "control nature" (born of the scientific advances of the Victorians) convinced people that we could build near/in forests that would traditionally get swept by fire every 30 years or so. It's quite arrogant that we still build there! While this does fall into the mad category I'm all up for a little mad thinking if it generates new ideas. The oceans are a great resource that we barely understand.
seldo 17y ago
This seems hare-brained on a number of levels. Firstly, a hurricane involves an absolutely phenomenal amount of energy and area. The typical hurricane is 300 miles wide, covering an area of 280,000 square miles. Even the core (100 miles wide) is 30,000 square miles. How big are these tubs? How much of that area are you going to cover? How many of these things do you need to do that? The idea goes even further off the rails when they start discussing non-hurricane uses, in two paragraphs saying the tubs "could stir up nutrient-rich sediment on ocean floors to promote plant and animal growth in environmentally-degraded areas" but then also "moving nutrients and other material from the ocean floor to the surface to promote growth of algae to trap carbon as a tool in fighting global warming." Stirring up muck from the bottom is either going to feed fish (unlikely) or promote huge algal blooms (much more likely). But not both -- algal blooms pull oxygen from the water, killing fish. It seems more like a crazy scheme drunken students would come up with at 3am than a real invention.

3 points by gscott 17y ago

I think it's unwise to screw with something you don't understand. This reminds of the changing attitude towards forest fires. Since the 1900s through the 1980s a lot of time and effort was spent putting out forest fires as quickly as possible. In the 1980s scientists were coming to the realization that forest fires are a critical part of the forest ecosystem. Fire clears out the dead trees and undergrowth allowing new vegetation to grow. I think hurricanes play a similar roll, even if we don't know what exactly that is.

dazzawazza 17y ago
I'm not sure people didn't know that forest fires did that. For hundreds of years aboriginal people used fires to manage the land. The idea that we can "control nature" (born of the scientific advances of the Victorians) convinced people that we could build near/in forests that would traditionally get swept by fire every 30 years or so. It's quite arrogant that we still build there! While this does fall into the mad category I'm all up for a little mad thinking if it generates new ideas. The oceans are a great resource that we barely understand.

seldo 17y ago

This seems hare-brained on a number of levels. Firstly, a hurricane involves an absolutely phenomenal amount of energy and area. The typical hurricane is 300 miles wide, covering an area of 280,000 square miles. Even the core (100 miles wide) is 30,000 square miles. How big are these tubs? How much of that area are you going to cover? How many of these things do you need to do that? The idea goes even further off the rails when they start discussing non-hurricane uses, in two paragraphs saying the tubs "could stir up nutrient-rich sediment on ocean floors to promote plant and animal growth in environmentally-degraded areas" but then also "moving nutrients and other material from the ocean floor to the surface to promote growth of algae to trap carbon as a tool in fighting global warming." Stirring up muck from the bottom is either going to feed fish (unlikely) or promote huge algal blooms (much more likely). But not both -- algal blooms pull oxygen from the water, killing fish. It seems more like a crazy scheme drunken students would come up with at 3am than a real invention.