It has been reported recently that Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft, has plans to control the weather.

Unlikely as it may sound, Mr Gates, along with a number of weather scientists in the USA, has filed a number of patents covering inventions to reduce the power of hurricanes. How does it work? Well hurricanes form over the sea and usually can only do so when the sea temperature is more than 26C. So the patents cover ways to reduce the temperature of the ocean in areas where hurricanes are likely to form.

The idea is to do this by deploying a network of barges around the US coast and having them pump warm surface water down into the depths of the ocean, triggering its replacement by cooler water -- too cool to allow hurricanes to form.

Sounds ambitious doesn't it? Of course, just because it's been patented doesn't mean it will work. Or that it will ever get beyond the testing stage.

And there's another thing -- the law of unintended consequences. The weather is a complicated thing, to say the least. It's been well publicised in the UK that our weathermen made some horrible blunders this summer -- and indeed last winter if anybody was paying attention -- with their predictions. And they spend hundreds of millions of pounds each year trying to get it right.

 

So, if Bill succeeds in changing the temperature of the ocean in one place, what happens as a result of all that heat he's moved around the ocean? What else gets affected? 

Bill, if you read this, please comment below!