Bill Gates Says We Need More Entrepreneurs Like Elon Musk To Take on Climate Change (cnbc.com) 192
Bill Gates said the world needs more entrepreneurs like Elon Musk to take on climate change. In an interview with CNBC, he said: I think what Elon's done with Tesla is fantastic. It's, you know, probably the biggest single contribution to showing us that electric cars are part of how we solve climate change. We need a lot of Elon Musks, including... ones who work on these super hard categories. [...] Elon's done a carbon capture prize, which is an amazing thing. I think he should be very proud of what he's done.
Except . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
If they could get Musk to stay the frack away from the gigantic energy suck of Bitcoin it would help.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
bitcoin transfers are facilitated by mining which is the source of the power draw.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Except . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Transfers themselves involve a shitton of computing with everyone syncing ther wallets to the blockchain. Also, there are no bitcoins to buy without paying somebody's "mining".
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Except . . . (Score:3)
Actually there is a technical reason. If mining used less energy, then it would be cheaper which would mean more people would be mining, which would result in slower coin issuance which gets you back to the current problem. Mining uses so much energy because Bitcoin mining is essentially a competition.
In fact, the way to reduce the current consumption is for mining to become unprofitable such that fewer people mine.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
What? Tesla didn't invent "a means of renewable energy that can solve the world's energy problems and get us off fossil fuels while not leaving us with large quantities of heavy metals and other toxins being dumped into landfills".
Re:Except . . . (Score:4, Interesting)
Li-Ion batteries can be easily recycled. There are many US companies that do it. In fact, the problem the companies have is getting the raw input (used batteries) which is limiting the reach of the recycling.
And even older batteries are finding new life in the "reuse" category in things like home battery storage - the batteries may not be good enough for vehicles, but home storage can certainly reuse them. And reuse is better than recycling. (It's Reduce, Reuse, and then Recycle).
Battery recycling is a thing - and while primary cell recycling is mostly a joke, secondary cell recycling is actually quite doable. The car lead-acid battery is about 99% recovered these days, and consumer Li-Ion and Li-Poly has an extremely high recovery rate - all the toxic parts are recouped, it's only things like the plastic pouches and such that are difficult.
Need to get rid of single used batteries. (Score:2)
And only sell rechargeable and reusable batteries only.
Re: (Score:2)
So what happens when nobody in 10 years time wants LiIon batteries because theres some new battery ?
Yeh we all know recycling works, thats why theres no plastic in the oceans.
Re: (Score:2)
Stop talking bullshit and talk reality.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
outside of arguments that by purchasing Bitcoin he's helping to fuel the demand for mining it.
You seem to be implying that this isn't an obviously valid argument.
Of course he is fueling demand for mining.
If people stopped buying bitcoins, the price would collapse, and the mining would stop.
Re: (Score:2)
If they could get Musk to stay the frack away from the gigantic energy suck of Bitcoin it would help.
I agree. If he wanted to invest into digital currencies, fine. But there are alternatives that don't have the energy cost of a whole nation associated with them. Nano for example, does not have the computationally expensive crypto concept that slows down the entire network and is a waste of resources.
Also if we could get him (Score:2)
Re:Except . . We need some (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Is that what Q told you?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I do wonder, however....why Gates, a guy who started a very successful software company, and pretty much had his whole career in the IT field...is suddenly a quotable "expert" on everything ranging from worldwide climate issues, to pandemics and how to best deal with
Re:Except . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
The guy is incredibly intelligent, extremely well-read, and works closely with leading researchers in a wide variety of fields. He's about as close as you'll come to encountering an actual polymath in these days. He's personally friends with some of the smartest people on the planet, and they all comment on his wide variety of interests. Even with something as off the wall as sewage processing, the manager of the Olympia sewage plant told me that Gates knew more about their industry's operations than almost anyone who worked there (I had asked his opinion about one of the Gates Foundation projects).
Re: Except . . . (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Except . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
Because he's putting his money where his mouth is, to the tune of investing billions into fixing the world. He may not be an expert in everything, but he has hired a large number of experts and put them to work on pandemics and climate change.
When he was CEO of Microsoft, he spoke for Microsoft. He may not have had the level of detail knowledge of every one of his employees, but he was kept informed enough that he could speak with authority. This works the same way: experts work for him and report to him, he's the public face of the operation.
Re:Except . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
This could make some sense if all Bitcoin could only be spent on energy, but the moment you spend a Bitcoin on anything else, the financial battery theory shatters and we're back at energy being wasted to run a horrendously inefficient and less traceable Visa/Paypal alternative. It's not a battery if what goes in can't be extracted again - that's a black hole.
Re:Except . . . (Score:5, Informative)
if you don't understand how bitcoin actually contributes to solving the energy problem then i am not sure i can convince you, but you do need to do more research to understand it.
bitcoin effectively works as a financial battery for energy, it can be used for storing the value of under-utilized energy sources like hydro, solar and natural gas from flares, in the financial system. this is a relatively new concept so that people don't get it isn't surprising.
bitcoin's expense of operation is directly porportional to its value. what it will disrupt is existing subsidy markets which are incorrectly defined by politicians instead of markets, to create advantage where none should exist. places which have incorrectly defined energy related subsidy market will need to work to update or eliminate their subsidy plans.
bitcoin doesn't, and won't, use more electricity than global data center use or anything else. it will always be sized to its value by market conditions and the protocol.
This is a poor choice of words that obscures what is really happening.
Power generators have peaks and valleys in their output based on demand. They must be available for the peaks but the valleys are unprofitable. Some are flattening the curve by using the available excess to drive mining rigs as a new source of revenue. Their ability to make a profit on it depends on the cost of the energy produced and the mining cost.
This is not a "battery". While you can use electricity to mine and transfer bitcoins, you can't convert a bitcoin to electricity.
You can only buy electricity from a provider with it.
More energy by definition is being consumed than before, and more CO2 is being generated too.
Re: (Score:3)
bitcoin effectively works as a financial battery for energy
In a trivial and non-helpful way maybe. You could mine BTC, then later use the BTC to buy energy.
That's not the type of energy storage we need, because it doesn't actually store any energy, it throws it away. It ends up not saving energy, but requiring more energy than just saving your dollars and buying energy with them directly.
BTC is immensely inefficient as a financial instrument. A tiny amount of transactions and value currently requires more energy to support than the entire country of Argentina. Visa
Re: (Score:2)
Why can't we instead desubsidize fossil fuels and roads and internalize their social costs into the gas tax and other user fees? Then let people decide for themselves how to get around. Faced with paying their share for the damage cars cause to our health and the environment, more people would choose to ride bikes like in the Netherlands.
Remember, electric cars aren't actually green, they're just less ungreen than internal combustion vehicles. W
Re: (Score:2)
The fanboi is strong in this one . . .
Sequester the ax (Score:3)
I thought Musk had been annoyed by Gates in the past. Sounds like Gates wants to mend fences or something. But he's not wrong.
Re: (Score:2)
As for Musk, he does get stuff done, but I'm very glad he's working on electric cars instead of, say, ruling Italy with an iron fist or whatever else this type of guy might do for fun.
Re: (Score:2)
Gates just wants to hitch a ride to Mars.
Re: Sequester the ax (Score:2)
Read "mend feces". Thought of that South Park episode with Bono (a Musk-alike). Was not surprised. :)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe Gates is trying to annoy Musk even more. Annoying people seems to be what he does best.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Gates is probably pointing out that Musk is doing the mildly easy stuff: engaging in businesses that will definitely be profitable, the only challenge he takes on is "not next year" and "heavy investment", which most investors are allergic to.
Climate change is the "heavy investment" and probably "not for profit" category that isn't so interesting in its yacht potential.
Re: (Score:2)
The rumor was that Gates had a sizeable short position on TSLA. Base on these comments I am guessing he converted that to long.
One Elon Musk... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: One Elon Musk... (Score:2)
Can we annihilate him with Bono, or is that just create aother Jack Black?
savings offset (Score:2)
How much does the recent bitcoin investment reverse what has been done?
How? Like mining bitcoin? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, wouldn't exactly call SpaceX "Eco Friendly". Each one of his rocket launches is probably generating enough CO2 to displace the environmental benefit of a 100 electric cars.
Re:How? Like mining bitcoin? (Score:4, Informative)
Each one of his rocket launches is probably generating enough CO2 to displace the environmental benefit of a 100 electric cars.
Since there are 280 million cars in the US, that number is so trivial as to be negligible.
To make any difference, carbon emissions have to be measured against the background of 35 billion tons per year. Even if he ramped up to a million flights per year, the CO2 emissions would still be too low to notice on a graph of carbon emissions.
It's hard to visualize the incredible magnitude of fossil fuel consumption in the US.
Re: How? Like mining bitcoin? (Score:2)
The atmosphere is a commons [Re:How? Like mini...] (Score:2)
That it literally correct, yes.
The carbon useage of one particular individual makes no difference; it is the carbon usage of millions of people in aggregate that matters.
This makes it a hard problem to solve: nobody can point to their individual actions as making a difference. Humans are very poor at dealing with problems where it is the aggregate action of billions of people that matter.
This is known in economics as "the tragedy of the commons". Think of the atmosphere as a commons: anybody can get benef
One of his toys.... (Score:2)
....that there happen to be hundreds of thousands of. And has spurred all other major automakers to follow suit.
Re: (Score:2)
I think he does what he does with an eye towards Mars. Most of his business ventures seem to be geared towards that planet rather than this one. Given that internal combustion engines are a non-starter (ha!) on Mars, transportation will need to be electric. The Boring Company also makes more sense on Mars than Earth: inhabitants will likely need to live underground to avoid radiation.
He seems to be in the business of developing technologies needed for colonizing Mars, and financing them by selling them as c
Re: (Score:2)
Most of his business ventures seem to be geared towards that planet rather than this one. ...and pomang give nating fo beltalowda!
nah (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Let me guess, you're invested in shovel factories and cemeteries, right?
Re: (Score:2)
Nah, he just works at the Mechazilla factory.
Re: nah (Score:2)
No. Condoms.
(Though, RISUG is much mich better, and almost perfect.)
Because it's literally all it takes to stop almost all our problems on this planet. Climate change, environmental destruction, meat factories, resource wars, world hunger, the growing anonymization and hence sociopathy and sociopathic capitalism, you name it.
But interesting, that the first thing your mind jumps to, is mass-murder. So you are that kind of person? ... or voluntary
Let't test this: when I said RISUG, did you assume involuntary
Re: nah (Score:5, Interesting)
The first thing that jumped to my mind is, "What is RISUG?"
There's one way that we're going to see a population reduction in our lifetimes, and that's mass death of hundreds of millions (or more). Not sure how you're going to convince that many people to off themselves.
Of course there's the feel-good solution of "give everyone more education and a Western standard of living and birth rates fall". That's all well and good, until you realize that more than half of the population of the planet lives on less than $10/day. I'm not sure there is enough farmland on the planet to grow enough cotton to give them all two changes of clothing, sheets, blankets, curtains, and upholstered furniture in the next decade. Then there's the meat question, of course everyone could be vegetarians but that's not the "western standard of living" as commonly envisioned by the majority of the world. There also aren't enough cement factories in the world to give people modern housing, and that contributes 15+ percent of anthropogenic CO2 already. The deeper you look the worse it gets.
Which family uses less resources? The family of 3 living in a modern house, cooking with gas or electricity, eating meat several times a week, heating or cooling their home, traveling in private vehicles, or the dirt poor farming family of 10?
Re: (Score:2)
It actually wouldn't help much, see above post:
https://news.slashdot.org/comm... [slashdot.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Well, I guess leave it to the left to go even further left....you now have Ecosexuals [ladbible.com] who don't believe in using condoms, as that they pollute the earth.
So...back to square one?
Re: (Score:2)
Odd that people who are always banging on about wanting fewer people on the planet never seem to volunteer to be part of the fewer.
Re: (Score:2)
You're free to checkout any time you'd like.
...but you can never leave.
Odd that people who are always banging on about wanting fewer people on the planet never seem to volunteer to be part of the fewer.
Odd that the neocon fanatics who hear the phrase "reduce the population" always jump to "let's kill people" rather than "ok, let's reduce the birth rate."
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Wouldn't help much:
https://www.wired.com/story/op... [wired.com]
Most of the damage to the climate was done with a fraction of Earth's current population.
Caltech Commencement Speaker (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Or if you are utterly brilliant, but lacking in fame.
Re: Caltech Commencement Speaker (Score:2)
Recieve that honor from whom exactly?
What are you basing your respect for Caltech on to begin with?
Also, that is the title for the flashy clowns. The ones that actually are wise and valuable, actually teach.
Don Asshole says Flashy Asssholes doing fake-good (Score:3, Insightful)
are good.
News at 11.
Yes, Bill, you feel remorse for everything you did.
And yes, you probably believe Musk is more than just somebody who exchanges money for attention and more money to turn inti more attention.
Fact is though, people only listen to you, Bill, because they want your money.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.
Re: (Score:2)
Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.
Is Gates a wise man? He just bought DOS, hired developer to put Microsoft on it and licensed it to IBM. Is every reseller a “wise” man?
I guess Bill didn't watch The Avengers (Score:3)
Each planet only gets one Avengers team, and each Avengers Team only get one Tony Stark.
Actually you know what? Let's play a fun game.
Let's assume that Elon Musk is Tony Stark, because of the obvious money + technology companies similarity and let's throw the "I don't give a fuck what others think, I know I'm right" attitude into the mix too.
Which Avengers character would Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, etc. be, and why?
Re: (Score:2)
Each planet only gets one Avengers team, and each Avengers Team only get one Tony Stark....
Which Avengers character would Bill Gates,
Doctor Octopus.
Jeff Bezos,
The Kingpin
Richard Branson, etc.
Captain Britain
be and why?
Should be obvious.
Re: (Score:2)
Avenger Characters [Re:I guess Bill didn't wat...] (Score:2)
Not only is it not obvious at all, AFAIK those aren't Avengers characters at all.
They're not Avengers, but the question didn't ask for Avengers, it asked for "Avengers characters". These are all characters who have shown up in Avengers works. (Unless possibly you're only familiar with the movies.)
It's not obvious to you?
Here's Doctor Octopus: https://terrigen-cdn-dev.marve... [marvel.com]
Here's Bill Gates: https://i.insider.com/5e86f171... [insider.com]
Clearly the same person!
Here's the Kingpin: https://static.wikia.nocookie.... [nocookie.net]
Here's Jeff Bezos: https://thumbor.forbes.com/thu... [forbes.com]
And as for Captain Britain...
Re: (Score:2)
Why on earth would you think he cares abou thte planet or humanity ?
Re: (Score:2)
https://editorial.rottentomato... [rottentomatoes.com]
Good luck.
Oh really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh really? (Score:4, Insightful)
But to me the biggest deal is that Tesla led the way in making electrical cars that are not just practical, but desirable. They are also putting a lot of work in the details. Maybe not the fit and finish (still having occasional issues there) but paying close attention to battery conditioning and the car's software, things that many of the other EV makers still don't get right.
Re: (Score:2)
It actually makes sense when you realize that virtue signaling is Tesla's product. The sell a way for the well-off to feel good about themselves without compromising on the luxuries they've grown accustomed to. We all know it's actually "greener" to just telecommute to work, ride a bike, take public transportation/ride share, or make other lifestyle changes that reduce your carbon footprint.
Tesla lets you say "fuck that noise", and keep driving a comfortable couch on wheels at 75MPH down the highway, with
Re: (Score:2)
Tesla received something like 1.4 billion in co2 credits, and showed an overall profit of 0.7 billion.
But let’s not forget that they have been busily building factories in Berlin, in China, another in the USA, or is it two?
I don’t see any other company doing that much for the world, actually. Not even close. Various car companies have promised electric cars, now Tesla has shown it’s possible. Would they have done so otherwise? I truly doubt it.
Yes, Elon is a bit of a dick sometimes. Yes, h
Re: (Score:2)
Why care (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't understand why we put so much clout in the words of Bill Gates and the like. I am pretty sure that Gates is no smarter than anyone here, he's just richer. I'm certain he's surrounded himself with smart people that have helped him succeed and that's why we shouldn't take anything he says without a grain of salt.
Re:Why care (Score:4, Interesting)
I am pretty sure that Gates is no smarter than anyone here,
Maybe, but did you get a perfect score on your SAT? He did.
Re:Why care (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't understand why we put so much clout in the words of Bill Gates and the like. I am pretty sure that Gates is no smarter than anyone here, he's just richer.
Bill gates is considerably smarter than most people here.
Citation: personal experience. I presented my team's work to him twice while I was at Microsoft. He came across as fearsomely clever. He had deep technical cleverness, and also he had "logical + human" cleverness where he is able to listen to how a team or a person presents their case, and can hone in instantly onto any weak foundations.
Why can I judge this? In all honesty, I can't. I'm a nerd not a judge of human ability. But I should say that I'm fairly nerd-smart -- I came 2nd in my year for computer science degree at Cambridge, got a PhD in concurrency theory there, created the async/await language feature for C# that was later adopted in many other mainstream languages too like C++). What I presented to him was my PhD area of expertise, concurrency. He understood new theory well enough in the meeting to draw connections, and he understood the implementation impacts at least as well as I'd expect of a senior engineer on the team, and he saw further than many of them about the larger-scale significance.
I also can't say that Gate's nerd-smartness translates into climate-smartness or vaccine-smartness or third-world-development-smartness. But everything I read from him (and I do read his blog) suggests the same sharp insights there as he applied to when I presented concurrency stuff to him.
Inflictor of Async/Await (Score:2)
I was impressed by your insights, until I came to
> created the async/await language feature for C#
So you're the bastard that inflicted that upon the world!
Threading is hard. It goes wrong. It produces nasty unreproduceable errors. To be avoided unless *really* necessary. The only safe way to do threading is by interacting with an ACID database, which is fortunately what most web applications do.
And you have made it trendy. Every third rate programmer adds as much threading as they can. C# overcomes
Re: (Score:2)
Bill Gates is the guy who thought the Internet and the WWW wouldn't go anywhere. He was trying to sell MSN back then.
That would be the future according to Bill Gates. A walled garden network 100% controlled by MS.
Pivot on Internet (Score:2)
To be fair, once Gates realized his mistake, he did a quick 180 pivot. He took his best people from other projects and created IE. For a long while IE dominated browsing. It prevented Netscape from growing into a threat.
c.f. As he was leaving, and Microsoft completely dropped the ball on Mobile, Search and Social. They should have dominated all three. Especially as Apple kept the iphone software to themselves.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Entrepreneurs? (Score:2)
But the bitcoins (Score:2)
Those bitcoins tesla just invested in are a huge loss for the environment. The environmental cost of mining and confirming transactions is astronomical.
Bill who? (Score:2)
Who the fuck is Bill Gates? I know he has buttloads of money, but how does that make him an authority on, well, everything?
...laura
Meanwhile (Score:2)
Bullshit (Score:2)
Whats going to happen when todays battery technology is worthless in the future from a disposal perspective ?
Whats going to happen to those lovely toxic components in batteries in countries that dont give a shit about the environment ?
Re: (Score:2)
from a proven leader... (Score:2)
Don't worry everyone, I'm sure Bill Gates's humanitarian actions are at least as ethical as his software empire was!
Yup (Score:2)
Musks entire business is built on sucking down public monies, just like Bezos and Branson.
Just ask all the towns, local gov, and national govs who pay millions and more, and get back basically nothing but a freeloader in their location.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh come on. That was funny, not a troll. Dickhead.
Re: (Score:2)
America will die if it gets more rich people taking billions of dollars each year in welfare payments.
Re: (Score:2)
Everybody would be broke if Musk set up a company in your area and he sucked his usual subsidies and donations and other gifts.
Re: (Score:2)
Amazon was talking to the incoming Biden administration before the inauguration.
https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]
Re: (Score:2)