Rick Raw: Bill Gates Having Delusions of Grandeur by Claiming to Stop Hurricanes

By Rick Grant Commentary rickgrant01@comcast.net

Bill Gates is the undisputed richest man in the world. His money is making so much interest, he can’t possibly spend it all. In June, 2006 Gates resigned as CEO of Microsoft to devote his time to philanthropic endeavors through his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He and his wife Melinda travel in their private jet to countries in Africa and other poverty stricken regions of the globe to personally supervise programs to help these people work their way out of poverty and starvation.

Of course, Gates retained his position as non-executive chairman and majority stockholder. His personal wealth is in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Naturally, a man in his position feels great responsibility to engage in research and explore any dream, however ambitious..

Recently, Gates and his hand picked scientists submitted patent applications for a technology to reduce the danger of hurricanes by cooling ocean temperatures ahead of the storm. No doubt, Gates was thinking about the terrible aftermath of hurricane Katrina, that practically wiped out New Orleans. Four years after the storm, New Orleans is still in recovery, with privately funded building projects in progress.

But the quiet submission for patents set off a firestorm of skepticism among prominent meteorologists who applauded Gates noble idea, but doubted his giant barges of cool water, which would cool the ocean surface ahead of hurricanes, would make that much difference in either weakening the storm or stopping it.

Wake up and feel the wind, Gates, "you can’t mess with mother nature!" Yes, Gates must be looking for new challenges into which to put his time and money. So, perhaps Gates was feeling God-like to conjure up such a grandiose idea. "I’m the king of the world," therefore I can control the weather. It’s absurd.

"The enormity of it, in order to do something effective, we’d have to do something on a scale that humans have never really done before, said Gabriel Vecchi, a research scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Exactly how would Gates’ hurricane bashing method work? According to the documents sent to the patent office, 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 under the sea.

Hurricane guru, William Gray, who has been studying and predicting hurricanes for 50 years said, "The problem is the storms come up so rapidly, you only get two or three days warning. It’s very difficult to bring up enough cold water in this time frame to have much of an effect."

Hell, Gates has enough money to drain the Arctic Ice Cap and send it down to the Caribbean to thwart the mighty storms. Come on Billy Boy, get off your high horse and get real. For years, plenty of scientists have tried various methods of seeding hurricanes to make them less dangerous. It failed. Hurricanes have a mind of their own. Once they get established, it’s futile to stop or weaken them.

Gates should let mother nature handle the weather, and forget this preposterous idea. One has to wonder–has Bill Gates developed a God complex? Well, he has more money than God, but he should stick to philanthropy as a noble use of it.