How Bill Gates Is Funding the Fight Against Climate Change (cbsnews.com) 236
Bill Gates was interviewed tonight on the CBS News show 60 Minutes about his efforts to combat climate change:
The good news is Gates believes it's possible to prevent a catastrophic rise in temperatures. The bad news? He says in the next 30 years we need scientific breakthroughs, technological innovations and global cooperation on a scale the world has never seen.
"I got to participate in the miracle of the personal computer and the internet," Gates tells them at one point. "And so, yes, I have a bias to believe innovation can do these things." CBS points out that Gates has already invested $2 billion of his own money into green technologies, plans to spend several billion more, and in 2016 recruited Jeff Bezos, Mike Bloomberg and nearly two dozen other rich investors for the billion-dollar "breakthrough energy ventures" investment fund.
But the newscast clarifies the scope of the task. "He is talking about innovations in every aspect of modern life — manufacturing, agriculture, transportation, because nearly everything we now do releases earth warming greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere..."
Quoting some of the highlights from CBS's report:
"I got to participate in the miracle of the personal computer and the internet," Gates tells them at one point. "And so, yes, I have a bias to believe innovation can do these things." CBS points out that Gates has already invested $2 billion of his own money into green technologies, plans to spend several billion more, and in 2016 recruited Jeff Bezos, Mike Bloomberg and nearly two dozen other rich investors for the billion-dollar "breakthrough energy ventures" investment fund.
But the newscast clarifies the scope of the task. "He is talking about innovations in every aspect of modern life — manufacturing, agriculture, transportation, because nearly everything we now do releases earth warming greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere..."
Quoting some of the highlights from CBS's report:
- No one thinks much about cement and steel, but making it accounts for 16% of all carbon dioxide emissions... So one innovative company Gates has been pouring money into is CarbonCure. They inject captured carbon dioxide into concrete...
- Because cows account for around 4% of all greenhouse gases, Gates has invested in two companies making plant based meat substitutes, Impossible foods and Beyond meat. But farming the vegetables used to make many meat alternatives emits gases as well, so Gates is also backing a company that's created an entirely new food source. "This company, Nature's Fynd, is using fungis. And then they turn them into sausage and yogurt. Pretty amazing..."
- Gates isn't just looking to cut future carbon emissions, he is also investing in direct air capture, an experimental process to remove existing CO2 from the atmosphere. Some companies are now using these giant fans to capture CO2 directly out of the air. Gates has become one of the world's largest funders of this kind of technology.
- But of all his green investments, Gates has spent the most time and money pursuing a breakthrough in nuclear energy — arguing it's key to a zero carbon future.
So Bill Gates is gonna save the world? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So Bill Gates is gonna save the world? (Score:5, Funny)
At least all our expensive Windows licenses of the past are going to safe the world. What a boon! Who needs taxes when you can buy Windows licenses to do the same?! Amazing how this is working out. *lol*
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I've listened to Gates talk about climate issues, and I have to say... he doesn't come across as the most educated person on the subject.
Still, any money put into new tech development is good money.
Re:So Bill Gates is gonna save the world? (Score:5, Interesting)
I just looked into CarbonCure, as I'd never heard of this company before. The notion seemed weird to me, as "injecting CO2 into concrete" is generally something you want to avoid, because that converts the cement into calcite / limestone, which lowers the pH, which causes it to stop passivating the steel, the steel rusts, expands by an order of magnitude, and spalls the concrete out. My thoughts were... is this an alternative cement (such as magnesium-based cement)? Is it for non-steel rebar (e.g. FRP)?
No. It's something different, and neat, but also not much of a carbon sequestration solution.
CarbonCure is about creating a quick-setting concrete. They inject a tiny amount of CO2 - 0,2% of mass of the cement, which is in turn just a small portion of the mass of the concrete. This creates calcite microcrystals which act as nucleation sites for subsequent hydration.
So... they are "sequestering CO2"... but only tiny amounts relative to the amount of concrete produced.
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Thank you very much for providing the additional detail. It just goes to show that those who are creating alternative solutions, are thinking ahead and not simply creating bad-but-profitable solutions to replace other horrible-but-profitable solutions.
Humans will ultimately pay a very high price, where profit is the only thing that matters.
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I think we have been addicted to Disney ans Star Trek Serial Style Story Narratives to a point where it has skewed our judgement.
The Good Guy doesn't always win.
The Bad guys isn't normally fully evil.
There isn't layers and layers of misdirection going on.
There isn't always a fix it all solution just within a few weeks of its problems.
There is no Happy Ever After.
The world isn't perfect, just like there isn't any one single cause to Climate Change, There cannot be just one solution. Solar Panels, and Elec
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Just a friendly comment about the joke in your end of posts signature, why would Democrats run scissors against rock when it's paper that beats rock?
FYI - Concrete is already a carbon sequesterer. (Score:3, Informative)
Just FYI, but concrete, in the curing process, sequesters carbon dioxide from the air. The slaked lime - CaO - reacts with the water to form CaOH, which, as the concrete cures, becomes CaCO3, among other things. Admittedly, this is a simplification of a much more complicated set of chemical reactions, but the gist of it is that without CO2 in the environment, concrete wouldn't cure.
Yes, a lot of CO2 is release in the process of making concrete - the kiln more or less heats CaCO3 to the point where it l
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1) Modern concrete uses portland cement, not slaked lime. Not the same thing. Slaked lime = calcium oxide, vs. portland cement which is (primarily) calcium silicates.
2) CO2 is not reabsorbed to a meaningful extent during curing. It's absorbed over decades after construction, slowly decreasing the pH ever deeper into the concrete. When it's absorbed to the depth where it reaches the rebar, the passivation layer ceases to protect the steel (see above).
3) The hydration of portland cement creates (again, prima
Re:So Bill Gates is gonna save the world? (Score:5, Interesting)
Bill gates needs to be like Fox News and the other Climate Deniers.
* They have to talk really fast so to make sure they speaking at a rate where you don't have time to let what has been said to sink in.
* Pose statements in form of a question, and do not give the expert the time to answer the question in a thoughtful manner. "WhyDoYouThinkGlobalWarmingIsAProblemButYouCameIntoTheStudioWearingAJacket?" "ItIsBecauseClimateChangeIsn'tAThingAndYouAreLieingToUS,WhyAreYouLyingToUS?"
Often forcing them into a gut emotional reaction making them seem like a crazy wacko.
* Power Words. These are words people can use that stop you from thinking critically about something. Because they are spoken is such authority it makes it difficult to counter it, unless you are well prepared.
Bill Gates isn't the most elegant guy out there. Nor is he a Climate Scientist. However he has a heck of a lot of money that he wants to put into good, thus will normally listen to what the Scientist say (who often will not be elegant speakers as well) and being that it is his money that he will be spending, will probably want to choose the best option for his money.
Bill Gates is not the most educated person on the subject, probably not the most educated person on any subject. However he is known to be an intelligent person use to dealing with experts and weeding out a lot of the scams science from the real stuff.
He has a working prototype reactor (Score:5, Funny)
But what’s holding things up is he is trying to get all it’s operating instructions installed into some sort of “registry”.
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Nerds will save the world.
Bill is just providing the funding.
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I don't believe he can do it personally but I agree with the sentiment that relying on education to change the consumption habits of the populace isn't going to save anything, let alone a planet. Ditto politicians or anything that means that guilty companies have to stop making the quickest money possible.
TLDR; Altruism won't happen, the only hope is technology. Somebody has to come up with machines/technologies to fix things.
Re:So Bill Gates is gonna save the world? (Score:5, Interesting)
Guess we're more fucked than I thought.
Ironcally enough, had the world listened to this man specifically five years ago when he basically predicted this pandemic outbreak, WE (as in the planet) would be a lot less fucked than we are right now.
Yes, we in IT have a LOT to "thank" Bill for, for providing perhaps an excessive amount of "job stability" when it comes to fixing and supporting Microsoft products. That said, it's hard to dismiss his TED talk, or the tens of millions he's pouring into at least opening people's eyes as to the many ways we're fucking our planet, and ultimately the human race.
And of course Greed doesn't want to hear any of his "crazy" ideas that attack entire industries that are profiting off pollution, so I kind of expect Bill to be ignored and dismissed on some of these ideas too, no matter how beneficial they may be for the planet and ultimately humans. Sometimes it takes far more than a billionaire philanthropist to defeat Greed N. Corruption. Sadly, Mass Ignorance usually forces the teacher to hire Hard Way as a consultant. After all, the consultant is always right, and we're gonna learn one way or another.
Re:So Bill Gates is gonna save the world? (Score:5, Insightful)
Bill Gates is responsible for all manner of actual harm done to a plethora of people across the globe. Microsoft under his tenure was ruthless in its actions, often causing misery for those affected. That, and the fact that Windows has held the industry back for years. And now "the saviour", entirely bought and paid for by that misery is apparently here to save us all.
As much as I want to dislike the guy, and would love to see him stripped of his wealth, while he's rich, he can pay for good research, good editing and then gets good platforms on which to speak. I can't deny that he's got some very good points when talking over a range of issues.
My point being, that in a heavily polarised world, just because "the other team" is talking doesn't mean it's instantly wrong. Billy's right on a lot of these points, and we should absolutely adopt a number of the proposed ideas and solutions. I just don't want to give him or his organisation-built-on-the-bones-of-so-many-others credit for it. It's such a shame that he didn't find his "niceness" gene a little earlier in his life - it might make getting his message out all the easier now.
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Ironcally enough, had the world listened to this man specifically five years ago when he basically predicted this pandemic outbreak,
I'd argue that Trump being the US PotUS had more to do with the incompetent pandemic response, than any good Gates could have generated if more US leaders had been listening to him. The reality is that Gates is not at the vanguard of pandemic knowledge, and a good politician would have been taking their cues from experts, not Gates.
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Maybe it wasn't Bill Gates per se but what Bill Gates was up to.
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Christ, what happened to the days when anything positive about Bill Gates would get modded down to oblivion?
I'm not saying I want those days back, it just shows how much /. has changed.
Or perhaps it just goes to show you how wrong you are about humans. As in those creatures just like you and I that can be 100% wrong, AND 100% right sometimes.
Oh, and Bill Gates is no longer CEO. Find someone else to blame already. I mean, damn. How long do you intend to keep that pointless charade going?
Instead of begging billionaires to save us (Score:2)
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No we're not. Think about it for a second.
Blue screens.
Blue planet.
It all makes sense now!
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Guess we're more fucked than I thought.
Indeed. And look, he pushes nuclear. That will both be far too late (if it ever becomes viable again) and cannot reasonably compete with renewables even today.
Traveling Wave Reactor (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't believe anyone is serious about "climate change" unless they are in favor of nuclear power. I do believe Bill Gates is serious about "climate change".
Bill Gates has been promoting the idea of the "traveling wave reactor" (TWR), a new kind of nuclear reactor which, if it works, will be able to burn the nuclear waste made from current-technology reactors. It will also be able to burn thorium and "depleted" uranium. Bill Gates isn't just talking about it; he has invested in a company trying to develop this technology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveling_wave_reactor [wikipedia.org]
Assuming a working TWR can be built, it should completely change the conversation on nuclear power. We are supposed to be terrified of nuclear waste, but we may be just a few years from having the technology to burn it up for energy. (If I understand correctly, the waste from a TWR will be reduced in volume compared to the waste from a conventional reactor; and it will have a much shorter half-life, so it will decay away in a reasonable amount of time.)
There must be people on Slashdot who, unlike me, know a lot about nuclear power. How likely is TWR to be practical?
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Burning nuclear waste [Re:Traveling Wave Reactor] (Score:2)
we may be just a few years from having the technology to burn it [nuclear waste] up for energy.
That technology already exists, and getting it on the market would be far cheaper ....
Just a quick note, the problem isn't burning up nuclear waste. The reason it hasn't been implemented is that classic methods of burning or recycling nuclear waste breeds plutonium, which is something that the authorities don't like because of the possibility of plutonium being diverted by people we don't like to make bombs.
(This is one reason that the thorium cycle is something a lot of people are advocating: it is hard to use the byproducts of the thorium reactor cycle to make nuclear weapons.)
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we may be just a few years from having the technology to burn it up for energy.
That technology already exists, and getting it on the market would be far cheaper than the money taxpayers are already pissing away on fusion research. Molten salt reactors based on the Thorium can do the job.
-jcr
Nope. THTRs are a failure. That is why nobody build any additional ones after the experimental ones never worked well.
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Yes, the best way to fight climate change is to build systems that cost half an order of magnitude more per kWh generated and have decade-long lead-times before you can start generation. (facepalm)
Also, if you're talking about new reactor techs, you can't go from "concept" to "mass production" of reactors in one generation; you're talking decades. And every time you launch a new generation, you reset the lea
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Also not unimportant: the capital investment costs for solar/wind are much lower than for nuclear, so they can be built by individuals (in case of rooftop solar), local cooperatives and small companies. Doing so keeps the financial profits also local.
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Not so much lower as more linear. The cost of a photovoltaic installation is roughly proportional to the power output - you can scale it up into the gigawatts, or down to your pocket calculator. Nuclear power doesn't scale down - even the tiny reactors used in submarines are very expensive. If you want nuclear to be cost effective, you have to build huge.
The same is true for individual wind turbines as well, but you can scale a farm just by deciding how many turbines to install.
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I don't think there will even be that much battery storage in the future. Maybe in a few places where they have specific issues, or to smooth the output of some wind farms a little, but mostly it will just be vast numbers of windmills and people taking advantage of excess generation, e.g. to charge cars or run industrial processes.
As you say, nuclear is dead, it will simply never be able to compete on cost. Also many countries don't want it or aren't allowed to have it due to proliferation concerns.
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Yes, the best way to fight climate change is to build systems that cost half an order of magnitude more per kWh generated and have decade-long lead-times before you can start generation. (facepalm)
Nuclear power based solutions are the only long-term solutions. Does it suck that it takes so long to get started? Yes. Should we have started earlier? Definitely. Does that change anything? No. Also, don't quote energy prices when you have failed to include the costs associated with pollution.
Re:Traveling Wave Reactor (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh come on. To get my country (in North-Western Europe) through the last weekend (-15 ÂC nights), we would have needed more than half the country full of solar panels plus the other half full of pumped hydro storage to get us through the night. There was almost no wind, ALL our marine cables happened to be down and most of the little solar panels we have are on roofs, covered with snow. We would have frozen to death in your imaginary future.
We would need about 36 nuclear power plants to provide enough power for our record demand peak.
To be complete: if we wanted to do that with just wind, we'd need a string of 30000km of wind turbines while the longest distance within in my countries' border is 334.38km. But we have periods without sufficient wind every once in a while. These happen to coincide with extremely cold periods, when our energy demand peaks.
Aiming for just wind and solar will be an utter environmental disaster that will still not be sufficient by far. It may work in specific countries with a lot of sun (anything closer to the equator) or wind (next to oceans, not just seas) but elsewhere it just won't cut it. It's cheaper to move such countries closer to the equator than to build sufficient wind and solar to solve this problem. Nuclear power based solutions are the only long-term solutions.
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You mean like when nuclear proponents ignore the ecological damage caused by mining of uranite, the least concentrated ore we mine, and where the mine tailings are radioactive waste?
Radioactive uranium is a terrible fuel because it's scarce. However, modern nuclear reactor designs (this type included) do not require such things. This reactor design "fuel consists of natural or depleted uranium-238" [wikipedia.org].
the ecological damage caused by mining of uranite
Since we would only be using natural or depleted uranium (which is highly abundant), if we switched over all our reactors then it would collapse the uranium mining due to lack of demand. The environmental damage of mining would become negligible as a single mine could fuel the world indef
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No, I expect our energy requirements to exceed the amount of power generated by solar panels if they covered every landmass of the planet. It's only like five times higher than what we currently use.
Re:Traveling Wave Reactor (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, the best way to fight climate change is to build systems that cost half an order of magnitude more per kWh generated and have decade-long lead-times before you can start generation. (facepalm)
Facepalm? Understand the ONLY damn reason nuclear has "decades-long lead times" is due to corruption standing in the way of it by putting enough red tape to encircle the planet a few times over, which needs to change. Had that much regulatory red tape been put in front of solar and wind power, there wouldn't be a single solar panel or windfarm in existence today. Not one.
Also, if you're talking about new reactor techs, you can't go from "concept" to "mass production" of reactors in one generation; you're talking decades. And every time you launch a new generation, you reset the learning curve and have to start over.
What the hell are you talking about? We've improved in cars since 2010 too. Doesn't mean we recall every old car and destroy it upon the "new generation" coming out, nor do we tear down nuclear reactors. Design one. Approve the design. Build and run it. Improve the design? Great. Build another one, or retrofit the existing one. It's that simple, so stop taking the lab into the field. How quickly did we take the concept of a wind farm to the field? We've killed people when wind farms fail. I noticed we didn't exactly tear down every one of them and start over. And if your "decades" timeline has anything to do with regulatory bullshit standing in the way, I've covered that too. Change it.
Nuclear has historically had a negative learning curve, which is very unusual with technology: the more we learn, the more expensive it gets.
WHY does it get more expensive? We already know a lot about corrupt regulatory crap standing in the way making it far more expensive. And we didn't start learning or designing nuclear reactors last week. We've literally got decades of data to go on at this point, and someone has to start somewhere. Better now and realize we're going to likely need nuclear power to supplant fossil fuels until we can fully maximize alternatives, and even then I'm not convinced we'll be completely devoid of the need. Nuclear may end up being an ideal source of power off-planet. (start thinking ahead)
We're very clearly heading towards a different situation, which is: renewables are cheap, they're getting cheaper, and there's no obvious bottlenecks to stop this trend in the coming years, if not the coming decade. Battery storage is also on a strong price downtrend. So we're heading to a scenario where solar + wind is overbuilt (with HVDC / HVAC interconnects where needed), 2-4x higher peak capacity than peak demand, with 24-72 hours of storage (the exact details depend on the given location and the exact nature of the price curves over the coming decade).
You trash theoretical calculations for nuclear, and then try and sell this 2-4x higher peak capacity claim? We're not even anywhere close to that. We'll see if any of this theory becomes reality. We already know what kind of power nuclear can provide today. And we know much safer designs. Ironically it's going to take a lot of fossil fuels to sustain millions of solar panels and wind farms. How will you do that in 30 years when fossil fuels start drying up?
Re: Traveling Wave Reactor (Score:3)
If people weren't irresponsible about existing reactors there wouldn't be so much in the way of new ones. But you cannot trust them to be responsible.
Re:Traveling Wave Reactor (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, the best way to fight climate change is to build systems that cost half an order of magnitude more per kWh generated and have decade-long lead-times before you can start generation. (facepalm)
I have great respect for you but you haven't convinced me yet. First, I'm not convinced that nuclear has to be as expensive as it is. Second, I'm not convinced that it will be easy to run everything on wind and solar power.
No-one could build anything (not even a parking lot) affordably or quickly while being constantly interrupted by lawsuits. Building something big is expensive, but it happens all the time; we have plenty of big bridges, big skyscraper buildings, etc. But a constant process of "Wait! Stop work! We're being sued again!" over and over has contributed greatly to the crazy expense of nuclear power plant construction.
And why the lawsuits? Mostly because people are afraid of nuclear waste. Could a TWR that turns nuclear waste into energy change peoples' minds?
Also, my understanding is that France built a lot of nuclear generation capacity by approving a design and then building a lot of the same design.
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter9.html [pitt.edu]
https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france.aspx [world-nuclear.org]
We're very clearly heading towards a different situation, which is: renewables are cheap, they're getting cheaper...
You paint a really rosy scenario and it sounds great. I'm in favor of it if it really works. And I'm still hoping that liquid metal batteries will prove practical for grid-scale electricity storage.
https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/getting-a-charge-out-of-liquid-metal-batteries/ [advancedsciencenews.com]
But are you sure that renewables can cover base load all the time for everyone? What about England on a really cold day in winter with poor sunlight and little wind? (If you say solar power satellites, I'll say: sounds great but can we have a proof-of-concept project to make sure it's practical?)
Also, I'm assuming that the people who truly believe in "climate change" (as in: catastrophic, human-caused, alterations of the climate due to production of greenhouse gases such as CO2) won't settle for anything less than a CO2-neutral world. So budget for enough power generation to crack CO2 into carbon and oxygen and make jet fuel and rocket fuel out of it.
Also, to make the environmentalists truly happy, we need enough other renewables to tear out the hydroelectric dams and let the salmon have the rivers again.
And, finally, I imagine humanity spreading out into the solar system, and to do that properly will require nuclear power on spaceships (possibly nuclear engines).
(Although I'm sure we're only about 30 years away from nuclear fusion so maybe our nuclear future can be fusion instead of fission.)
Re:Traveling Wave Reactor (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't believe anyone is serious about "climate change" unless they are in favor of nuclear power.
Couldn't agree with you more. I spend some time convincing our 'green' parties to at least consider or investigate nuclear energy. Seems to be an effort in vein, as they're all stuck in the 80's.
I find it ironic that the people claiming to want to change the world actually made it worse. We have a CO2 problem that's on the scale of almost unsolvable. If you do the math we see that we have to dedicate about 10% of our land arsenal (i live in a small country) to renewables to make it feasible and assuming our energy consumption do not raise.
Production of solar equipment is anything but environmental friendly plus includes aspects of child labor. Nuclear is, by hard numbers, one of the safest forms of energy around, even beating renewables in terms of death toll. Yet, they are blind for all this an stick to the 'we reject nuclear energy in any form'. I cannot take them serious anymore.
I voted green for many years to put climate issues on the political map. Now, it finally is, and they reject the solution that's staring in our face, often claiming 'cost' or 'long realization time' if they cannot counter the other arguments. It's a sad world where people stick to old dogma's instead of thinking twice.
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I agree. When people say we "need"[1] this much storage or we need this many solar panels, their argument is the same as saying that the only way an airline can avoid boarding too many people on the same plane is to fly more planes.
Or the only way eBay can prevent too many people from winning the same auction is to auction more of the same item!
The pro-nuclear, anti-renewables people repeat this same mistake over and over and over, as if repeating it enough will someday make it true!
It's an economics que
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Seems to be an effort in vein
Sure, in that nuclear power is apparently an addictive drug. You can see that it's deadly, and that you can't afford it, but you keep wanting to do it anyway.
Nuclear power is popular for one reason, it satisfies some people's need for dominion over the planet. But it has never fulfilled its promises for cheap, clean power, and it probably never will. If it does, it will be through fusion, not any fission technology. By all means, continue doing the research on that. But every nuclear plant built today repre
Greens for Nuclear Power [Re:Traveling Wave Re...] (Score:2)
I don't believe anyone is serious about "climate change" unless they are in favor of nuclear power.
Couldn't agree with you more. I spend some time convincing our 'green' parties to at least consider or investigate nuclear energy. Seems to be an effort in vein, as they're all stuck in the 80's.
Depends which greens. The ones most committed to fighting climate change are in favor of nuclear energy. https://www.greensfornuclear.e... [www.greens...ear.energy]
https://cgnp.org/ [cgnp.org]
https://www.hcn.org/issues/50.... [hcn.org]
https://www.energytoday.net/co... [energytoday.net]
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Anything that applies to electronics in general applies to solar panels, as they are in effect semiconductors, using rare earth minerals and other mined products. Unless lived under an off-the-grid rock, it's pretty trivial to find resources on the internet to back it. It's a known issue. And no i'm not against the green transition or EV's etc, but the opponents of nuclear seem to be cherry-picking their arguments.
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I'm not familiar with the TWR, but there are already plenty of designs out there, that are better than what we have today. Current nuclear reactors are basicaly 1960s/1970s tech. First, because some of them really are that old. Second, because the approvals process is horribly long and complicated, and introducing new tech into it would make it even worse.
I understand that governments want to be safe, and that nuclear accidents have the potential to be really awful. However, the regulatory process has becom
Re: Traveling Wave Reactor (Score:2)
Thorium reactors aren't available today. Also breeder reactors are a proliferation nightmare, too easy to have a small separate part of the blanket to breed plutonium.
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No commercial thorium reactors yet, but a few research models. The Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor was supposed to be online by now and generating useful power, but the project is behind schedule.
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How much is the nuclear industry paying people to shill on Slashdot, and why are they pissing away so much money?
Every story about climate change or energy, one of the first few posts is "we need nuclear power, it's the only solution, nothing else works".
It's not even funny anymore, we have seen that the alternatives do work and that nuclear power is never going to be cost effective or needed. The great hope that nuclear could be the future baseload has failed, and now all the hopes seem to be pinned on mod
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One could say the same thing about the solar industry paying people to shill on Slashdot?
There are multiple technologies that could all displace fossil fuels (plus techniques to reduce energy draw), and they all have people working toward them. Just build capacity in anything not fossil fuels. Get started now. Get whatever is cost-effective in your area. There doesn't need to be a huge pre-debate about globally-applicable solutions. All of the solutions are better or worse in some geographies and scena
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One could say the same thing about the solar industry paying people to shill on Slashdot?
All the people shilling hardest for solar aren't getting paid. I'm one of them, nobody is paying me to promote it. I wish they were, I could use the money.
There are multiple technologies that could all displace fossil fuels (plus techniques to reduce energy draw), and they all have people working toward them. Just build capacity in anything not fossil fuels. Get started now
No. "Do something" is how we fuck things up. We need to do the sensible thing. And so far, nuclear makes no sense. It has significant drawbacks and we could get more for our money elsewhere. Spending money on nuclear power at this point is just wasting money that could be spent getting more renewables online faster.
All of the solutions are better or worse in some geographies and scenarios
Which is why we have power grids. We can
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If you grew up on the 'golden age' of sci-fi the only constants were that nuclear power and robots would free man from the shackles of labour. And that women could be scientists, but only if they were weird and frumpy and worked it in round their house-keeping duties.
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Oh, they do it for free. It's very on-brand engineer ego to think there's an engineering silver bullet and everyone else is just too stupid to consider it.
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New reactor technology won't save the world. At best they may improve and maintain a world we saved through other means. There are *MANY* reactor designs better than shit we have running at the moment, many of the production ready, some of them pilot plant ready, most of them with attributes that make them more desirable than what we already have.
We need to strongly focus on bringing those to production before we consider some pie in the sky future investment in a completely unproven technology that is like
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But TWR doesn't solve the real issue with nuclear power, which is unfortuna
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I favor a more diversified electricity future, in which nuclear may play an increased part. The foundation of that future is an improved grid that can move power from more distant sources. That would allow more flexibility in siting things like nuclear plants and carry power from distant renewable sources to where the demand is.
I don't favor treating nuclear as *the* answer. That kind of thinking leads to crash programs, and crash programs lead to a situation where you depend so much on a particular desi
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Your belief is broken. Any new nuclear tech will take a few decades to become mature enough and _then_ it will take a few more decades to build it in the numbers needed. If it works at all. We need a solution _now_, not in a few decades. Oh, and look, we have one in renewables. And we even have tried and true storage tech to compensate for the wind not blowing or the sun not shining and rivers do not have that problem in the first place. We just need to build more of it.
Betting all on maybe viable nuclear t
wordplay [Re:HEY! DUMBASS! YES! YOU! ...] (Score:2)
All those lovely parts of the world where there are more coups and cops than soups and cups
Wow, I will have to take a moment away from the discussion here to applaud your use of language. That's a magnificent phrase.
(pity that it's just visual wordplay, since "coup" is not pronounced to rhyme with "soup". But a nice phrase all the same.)
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It's about time you brought Kamala and Joe into this (notice the correct spelling?) what took you so long?
Talked to my wife how I'm fighting the climate. (Score:4, Funny)
She said that talk is cheap and got me another beer.
So I didn't burp and I prevented CO2 from being release in the air.
My wife said that all I needed to do is not fart and I will save another extra polar bear cub.
You will explode. (Score:2)
If you don't fart, you will explode.
Also, btw, it's not about saving polar bears. They are doomed. It's about saving humans.
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Humanity is the best thing to have ever happened to Earth so far.
I seriously doubt that. "Modern" man, has only existed for a tiny percent of the lifespan of this planet. And in that tiny fraction of time, we've managed to royally fuck this planet up.
It's pretty bad when you're a shill for not any specific man-made cancer on this planet, but ignorant humans as a whole. Mother Nature, obviously did rather well creating balance before "modern" man came along.
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Mother Nature has fucked some shit up too. Like the Permian-Triassic extinction event that wiped out 90%+ of all life. So it's not like we had no examples in history to compare ourselves to. But, I will say if you want a primer on how royally we've hosed over the planet since our climb up the evolutionary ladder, a nice review of how we landed where we are from the days of wandering the savannah to our development of farming, technology and government systems, the book "Sapiens: A brief history of humank
Dear Liza, Dear Liza (Score:2)
Knowing how humans always choose correctly only after having tried everything else first,
What troubles me here, (Score:2)
is that we're looking to technology and science to save us from ourselves. Although tech and science will be necessary to turn AGW around, they're also the primary cause of AGW in the first place. Science and tech are creations of ours and have no will of their own, therefore WE are the cause of global warming, and the buck stops here.
As societies, and as a species, we need to take a long, hard look in the mirror and realize that we have been utterly awful and irresponsible stewards of our planet, and we ne
Innovation? (Score:2)
Microsoft was not innovative. They purchased or stole just about everything of importance. One could argue Gates' genius is knowing what to swipe. It's master freeloading: let others do the R&D and swipe or buy when it proves itself.
Want to save the world? Allow remote work! (Score:2)
Look at the sizable CO2 pollution drop as the result of allowing people to work from home.
Cost: zero.
Benefit: infinite.
Now ask yourself why people are investing in nuclear reactors and cow farts when a simpler solution exists?
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None of the above.
Re:Bill Gates vs. Elon Musk (Score:4, Interesting)
Bill Gates is a man who ran his company like a psychopath on steroid, destroyed or attempted to destroy many competitors and many competing technologies, inflicted Windows and Windows-related utilities upon the world for decades, virtually created the malware economy from scratch, and is now trying really, REALLY hard to buy himself a humanitarian face. And I must say at this point - actions speaking louder than words - he's pretty successful at it.
I'm conflicted about him. I'm old enough to remember what a hateful piece of work he was, yet I must admit he does do a lot of good in the world now, and has been for years.
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Bill Gates is a man who ran his company like a psychopath on steroid, destroyed or attempted to destroy many competitors and many competing technologies, inflicted Windows and Windows-related utilities upon the world for decades, virtually created the malware economy from scratch, and is now trying really, REALLY hard to buy himself a humanitarian face. And I must say at this point - actions speaking louder than words - he's pretty successful at it.
It's rather amazing that you constantly bitch about someone who invented a concept (Windows) that has literally been adopted by every-fucking-one. One would think we would have shitcanned the entire concept if it were actually that bad. Apparently, it's not.
I'm conflicted about him. I'm old enough to remember what a hateful piece of work he was, yet I must admit he does do a lot of good in the world now, and has been for years.
Then learn to stop bitching pointlessly. Between the Snowflake Generation and Cancel Culture, humanity has certainly manufactured enough "victims". No sense in adding more.
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It's rather amazing that you constantly bitch about someone who invented a concept (Windows) that has literally been adopted by every-fucking-one.
That concept was literally invented decades prior, and immediately before Windows was reinvented by Xerox. What the fuck are you talking about?
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It's rather amazing that you constantly bitch about someone who invented a concept (Windows) that has literally been adopted by every-fucking-one.
That concept was literally invented decades prior, and immediately before Windows was reinvented by Xerox. What the fuck are you talking about?
I'm talking about the ones who actually brought the concept to fruition.
Your crazy uncle can have brilliant ideas. Putting them to work, is another brilliant concept that few seem to execute.
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I think it might be guilt. He guided Microsoft through the era of Micro$haft, and became one of the most hated people in the world. He was the very symbol of the corrupt and ruthless businessman. Now he's older though, no longer motivated by the same need to 'win the game' that he felt as a business leader. Now he has stepped down from that role he understands just how despised he was throughout that part of his life - so he is trying to earn redemption by spending his ill-gotten gains upon humanitarian pro
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Who else can afford it? (Score:2)
Billionaires are not the good guys. maybe stop thinking they will save the world.
And who else can afford it?
If they figure out a way to make self-sustaining, growing, profitable industries out of saving the world, great! Then you don't have to steal people's money with taxes to "solve the problem". (And that seems to be what Musk is all about - and always was.)
1) Find a product that heads off the apocalypse while being useful, fun, and profitable for its buyers.
2) Make it and sell it.
3) PROFIT!
4) Rins
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Gates is a ghoul who is trying to conquer humanity. Musk is someone who feels the burden and obligation of his capabilities to advance humanity.
Which one will win, and shape the future of the species?
Neither will win, unless Mass Ignorance starts paying attention to either of them.
Both ideologies will win, if we do.
To put it another way, they're doing a fuck of a lot more than you or I sitting on the couch, bitching.
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Does the sun ever actually shine in Seatle?
Re:How about Bill Gates' own carbon footprint? (Score:4, Funny)
From mid-July to mid-August, the weather is glorious.
Here’s a promotional video: https://youtu.be/09tb8luF82c [youtu.be]
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Seattle is as bright as or brighter than half of Europe. [altestore.com]
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What is that supposed to measure?
According to the table it should be sunnier in Great Brittain than in Denmark, Germany or Poland, which just isn't true. Land masses that has other land masses before them from the Atlantic gets less rain, as there is a drop off as it rains on the first areas.
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No need for solar panels. All his energy comes from burning funguseses, sorry, fungis.
Re:How about Bill Gates' own carbon footprint? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yep, lets totally ignore a guy that vaccinated entire countries because of ... solar panels?
I bet you tell people they can't comment on if food tastes good, because they are not a chef. Or if you don't play a sport you can't comment on a bad play.
Grow up.
Re:How about Bill Gates' own carbon footprint? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't see a single solar panel on the roof of his $127million dollar villa?
Putting panels on his villa would be stupid. Seattle is cloudy, and electricity there is mostly carbon-free hydro-power.
The priority for solar panel installations needs to be in places like India, Africa, and Indonesia that are constructing new filthy coal-burning power plants.
So Bill Gates is doing what is sensible instead of silly virtue signaling. You should praise him for that instead of criticizing.
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Seattle's insolation level is about average for Europe. This notion of the sun never shining in Seattle is a myth. Speaking of Africa, eastern Montana is as bright as the Congo [altestore.com].
"The priority for solar panel installations" is "everywhere". Not enough production? Sink that money into factories.
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He is however correct about our 100% green grid, make a move to solar somewhat pointless to an environmentally conscious zillionaire.
Re:How about Bill Gates' own carbon footprint? (Score:4, Insightful)
Speaking of Africa, eastern Montana is as bright as the Congo [altestore.com].
Montana gets 40% of its electricity from hydro, 8% from wind and much of the rest from natural gas.
So installing solar in Montana makes little sense.
The DRC also gets much of its electricity from hydro, especially the Inga Dam on the Congo River. But two-thirds of the dam's turbines are broken, so perhaps replacing those makes more sense than installing solar panels on roofs in Kinshasa.
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So installing solar in Montana makes little sense.
Installing solar in Montana makes perfect sense.
1. Replace all of the gas plants with solar.
2. Use hydro to provide peak power and supplement the solar when it can't meet demand. Hydro is well-suited for load following as it can react quickly to changes in demand.
3. If necessary, convert some of the hydro to provide pumped storage.
Montana sounds perfect (Score:2)
Speaking of Africa, eastern Montana is as bright as the Congo [altestore.com].
Montana gets 40% of its electricity from hydro, 8% from wind and much of the rest from natural gas. So installing solar in Montana makes little sense.
Huh? That makes it sound like installing solar in Montana makes perfect sense. Keep the wind, add solar to make up 52% of the generating capacity, and you've got the hydro as backup.
It's the perfect place for solar; let's do it. Now, how do we do the other 49 states, and the rest of the world?
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I don't see a single solar panel on the roof of his $127million dollar villa?
You need to pack up your telescope and stop stalking him.
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What makes you think solar panels are environmentally friendly ? Do you realy think those chemicals are friendly ? Try walking into a solar panel factory barefoot, try growing tomatos nearby and eatting them.
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Yeah! Try eating a solar panel!
Stupid environmentalists who think they know anything about the real world! /s
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Try walking into a solar panel factory barefoot
This is the quality of your discourse? Try walking onto a shop floor barefoot, a place where OSHA (or equivalent) literally requires closed-toed shoes?
Tomatoes! [Re:How about Bill Gates' own] (Score:2)
What makes you think solar panels are environmentally friendly ? ...Try walking into a solar panel factory barefoot, try growing tomatos nearby and eatting them.
We've had these discussion already. Turns out tomatoes grow very well under solar panels [pv-magazine.com] .
https://www.futurity.org/agriv... [futurity.org]
https://www.treehugger.com/agr... [treehugger.com]
--and, in fact I have been in solar panel manufacturing facilities. They make you put a cover over your shoes, but that's to keep dirt out, not to protect your feet. The floors are cleaner than your house, you could walk barefoot with no problems.
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try growing tomatoes nearby and eatting them.
What a weirdly specific talking point. Good answer.
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So do you hate capitalism?
If not, what are you complaining about?
The rules of our markets and societies imply that some people can lay a billion times more claim to good things that are in limited supply, from houses to yachts. Why shouldn't they likewise be entitled to a disproportionate share of our pollution budget?
The earth has a limited capacity to handle our carbon emissions. But who says we all are entitled to an equal share? It's not as if we share other burdens equally. Awfully suspicious how anony
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So do you hate capitalism?
Yes?
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Wa Wa piss and moan.
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The Gates Foundation only invests in education when there's a profit to be made for something Gates owns stock in.