Google on board global warming weather prediction insurance co., Khosla resurfaces

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2/28/11, "Google backs climate-change weather insurance startup," AFP

"Google on Monday was among investors pumping $42 million into a climate change inspired technology startup that calculates

• the chances of crops being ruined by weather.

WeatherBill launched Total Weather Insurance in 2010 as a way for US farmers protect themselves against being devastated by weather, which

• the US Department of Agriculture blamed for 90 percent of crop losses last year.

""It makes sense to me to take advantage of WeatherBill's automated weather insurance programs that pinpoint the weather conditions expected to affect my land

• and pay me if they happen."

WeatherBill continuously aggregates weather data and runs large-scale weather simulations on its computers....

Those taking part in the startup's second round of funding with Google Ventures included

• Khosla Ventures,

• First Round Capital,

• Index Ventures, and

• Allen & Company.

Total investment in the company was just shy of $60 million.

"WeatherBill is one of those rare companies that has the leadership and vision to apply new technology to an ancient and daunting problem -- weather's impact on agriculture," said

• Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures.*

"Now WeatherBill can help farmers globally deal with the increasingly extreme weather brought on by [imaginary] climate change."

WeatherBill plans to use the money to hire engineers in its San Francisco headquarters and to expand its offerings globally. WeatherBill has about 30 employees.

• "It is a technology company doing some work in insurance," Bill Maris of Google Ventures said of WeatherBill.

"This is going to have a real world impact on agriculture," he continued. "Helping farmers protect their financial futures and

• protecting the global food supply is something we can all be excited with.""

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Reference: 2/15/11, "Plant closure bursts Georgia's biomass bubble," Atlanta Journal Constitution, Dan Chapman

*Billionaire Vinod Khosla recently took millions in taxpayer money, including from a desperately poor Georgia town, promising a green jobs bonanza from a bio-fuel scam. The scam failed, the people are even poorer, and have no hope of getting their money back from him or any of his companies, in this case Range Fuels. The scam was sold during the Bush administration.

via Breitbart, Weasel Zippers