Associated Press

Surfers take advantage of the growing waves generated by Hurricane Bill along Folly Beach, S.C., on Thursday. The National Weather Service is warning people to stay out of the water along South Carolina's north coast because of high surf and rip currents.

Associated Press

Hurricane Bill weakened slightly Friday but still threatened the eastern U.S. coast. Both a Roanoke firm and a team working with Microsoft founder Bill Gates have ideas on how to diminish such gales.

Roanoke inventor Ron Blum and The Egg Factory beat a group that includes Bill Gates to the patent office by more than seven years.

Both groups have proposed an ambitious strategy to weaken hurricanes by lowering the temperature of surface ocean waters across a wide swath in the storms' paths.

The strategy submitted by Microsoft's founder and his cohorts made international news last month when its patent applications, filed Jan. 3, 2008, were published July 9.

"I learned of the applications like everyone else did -- in the paper and then it was mentioned on the 'Today' show," Blum said.

The Egg Factory, an innovation-focused company based in Roanoke County, had filed its provisional patent application on Nov. 28, 2000.

Today, Blum acknowledges some satisfaction that The Egg Factory got there before the Gates group. But being first hasn't kept the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office from throwing cold water over The Egg Factory's idea -- a response that clearly aggravates Blum, both as an entrepreneur and as an American.

"The United States already is not on the same trajectory that it used to be in terms of innovation," he said.

The two strategies differ in key ways but are also remarkably similar. No evidence suggests the Gates group knew about The Egg Factory's patent application, which is unpublished to date. Others, including Atmocean, have filed similar patent applications in recent years.

Forty years after Hurricane Camille's remnants killed 153 people in Virginia, four years after Hurricane Katrina killed more than 1,800 on the Gulf Coast, and with Hurricane Bill currently boiling in the Atlantic Ocean, Blum believes The Egg Factory's plan to sap the strength of hurricanes can save lives and property.

How it might work

Warm ocean waters and warm, moist air fuel hurricanes. In theory, an immense volume of cooler water "upwelled" from deeper waters by a fleet of unmanned submarines (or barges, in the Gates case) might turn a giant into a lesser threat.

Samson had Delilah. Might altered surface water temperatures enfeeble hurricanes?

That's how The Egg Factory sees it.

And that's the view also of the group of inventors, scientists and investors that includes Gates as its most famous member.

Under The Egg Factory's plan, the submersibles would be filled with liquid carbon dioxide, explained George Hagerman, a research faculty member at Virginia Tech who has been involved with the Blum effort from the start. As the satellite-guided submersibles are signaled to rise beneath the hurricane's eyewall, the liquid carbon dioxide naturally boils off because of a reduction in pressure, he said -- creating a bubble plume, akin to an air stone in a fish tank -- that carries surrounding cold water to the ocean surface.

The Gates group's plan equips barges with pipes. Wave-driven energy would thrust warmer waters down, creating a "downwelling" effect that would displace cooler waters upward.

Some experts have said that the theory and science is sound but that real-world application would be a daunting and stupendously expensive undertaking with potentially troubling unintended consequences -- such as deflecting hurricanes to someone else's shores and affecting rainfall important to agriculture.

Hurricane expert Stephen Leatherman directs the Laboratory for Coastal Research at Florida International University. He described enthusiasm Friday for the general concept of cool water upwelling as a hurricane mitigation strategy. The physics and science are right, he said.

"I think this is the best idea I've heard of," he said, among numerous notions through the years ranging from reasonable to absurd. "Hurricanes are like steam engines and they get their energy from that top level of warm water."

Key issues would be what volume of cold water would be necessary and how to decide "when you would go after the hurricane," he said.

In an e-mail Thursday, hurricane expert William Gray weighed in. Considered a pioneer in the science of forecasting hurricanes, Gray is a professor of atmospheric science and head of the Tropical Meteorology Project at Colorado State University.

"The idea of upwelling of cold water along the U.S. coast to weaken hurricanes has been around a long time," Gray wrote. "Colder surface water would likely weaken the inner-core maximum winds of the hurricane and the inner-core storm surge, but do little in changing the strength of the outer winds and the overall high water of the hurricane."

He cited several logistical challenges.

Coastal ocean water currents would likely shift the upwelled water to other locations in comparatively short order, he said. Upwelling enough cold water in a period of a few days in advance of a hurricane "would likely not be feasible," Gray said. And, he said, to upwell cold water for a whole hurricane season along the U.S. coast "would likely involve too many people and be too expensive."

That said, Gray added, "But I think some small-scale feasibility trial experiment would be worthwhile."

The patent office apparently thinks differently.

In October 2003, it rejected The Egg Factory's application. The rejection included this sentence: "[A] patent system must be related to the world of commerce rather than to the realm of philosophy."

Blum said he read that line with incredulity and remains mystified by it.

Lawyer William Wells, an intellectual property expert, has worked with Blum for years. He shares Blum's bafflement at the patent office's conclusion.

"In my experience -- and I've been doing this a long time -- they [The Egg Factory] have provided enough evidence to suggest that this is patentable," Wells said.

The Egg Factory plans to "put the case back in front of the patent examiner," Blum said.

But who would pay for such an audacious strategy? According to Blum, the list could include insurance and oil companies, coastal states, businesses and residents, and the federal government.

Many experts warn that a warming climate will produce especially destructive hurricanes, a reality that could build a powerful political force, too.

Gates could not be reached for comment. Susie Rantz, an employee of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said the foundation has no connection to the hurricane effort. She said Gates is an investor in the project.

If Blum's patent application is approved and the plan becomes feasible, how will The Egg Factory's investors make money?

By selling or licensing the technology to a Fortune 500 company.

And what if Gates' clout moves patent officials to grant his group's application and The Egg Factory's keeps blowing in the wind?

"That would be a travesty to Ron," Wells said.

Weather columnist Kevin Myatt contributed to this report.