Hurricane Bill

Microsoft founder Bill Gates has turned his attention to controlling the weather.

Five U.S. Patent and Trade Office patent applications, made public on July 9, propose slowing hurricanes by pumping cold, deep-ocean water in their paths from barges. If issued, the patents offer 18 years of legal rights to the idea for Gates and co-inventors, including climate scientist Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

The basis for the modification plan is to use multiple specially-equipped ocean vessels to essentially lower the temperature of the Gulf Stream water surface, by pulling deeper, colder water up into the mix.

All these ideas have major draw backs and ecological consequences that would be almost impossible to anticipate. Controlling Mother Nature is a dangerous game, when one system is modified without consideration of other systems, environmental impacts, and so on. The potential ecological domino affect could be disasterous.