Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t James Delingpole – Microsoft founder and entrepreneur Bill Gates has joined the growing ranks of green activists, who think that ordinary people aren’t qualified to choose who should govern them.
According to Gates;
… Those who study energy patterns say we are in a gradual transition from oil and coal to natural gas, a fuel that emits far less carbon but still contributes to global warming. Gates thinks that we can’t accept this outcome, and that our best chance to vault over natural gas to a globally applicable, carbon-free source of energy is to drive innovation “at an unnaturally high pace.”
When I sat down to hear his case a few weeks ago, he didn’t evince much patience for the argument that American politicians couldn’t agree even on whether climate change is real, much less on how to combat it. “If you’re not bringing math skills to the problem,” he said with a sort of amused asperity, “then representative democracy is a problem.” What follows is a condensed transcript of his remarks, lightly edited for clarity. …
Read more: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/11/we-need-an-energy-miracle/407881/
Some other highlights – Bill Gates on Renewable energy;
Well, there’s no fortune to be made. Even if you have a new energy source that costs the same as today’s and emits no CO2, it will be uncertain compared with what’s tried-and-true and already operating at unbelievable scale and has gotten through all the regulatory problems, like “Okay, what do you do with coal ash?” and “How do you guarantee something is safe?” Without a substantial carbon tax, there’s no incentive for innovators or plant buyers to switch. …
On the need for more government;
… Realistically, we may not get more than a doubling in government funding of energy R&D—but I would love to see a tripling, to $18 billion a year from the U.S. government to fund basic research alone. Now, as a percentage of the government budget, that’s not gigantic. But we are at a time when the flexibility—because of health costs and other things, but primarily health costs—of the budget is very, very squeezed. But you could do a few-percent tax on all of energy consumption, or you could use the general revenue. This is not an unachievable amount of money. …
Bill Gates has attracted significant controversy during his career, for example when he accused developers of free software of being communists, when they refused to give Microsoft unfettered rights to exploit their work. Gates has also spent a lot of time in courtrooms defending Microsoft from accusations of sharp business practices, of being a monopoly, of violating anti-trust laws. So to me personally, it is no surprise that Gates’ response to the difficulty of convincing people to accept his point of view on climate change, is to express authoritarian contempt for ordinary people having such freedoms.
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Bill Gates is a problem. Lack of representative democracy is a problem.
States already tax gasoline something like 20cents on every gallon, why isn’t some of that directed to research and development? Well because its already gobbled up in developing politicos and state pensions pockets. Nothing stupendous will come from .gov research even if it does the impact will be negligible without private market investment. Gates just wants everybody else to pay for R&D then he and his buddies come along and reap the profits afterwards, paying for R&D himself is too risky.
oh that’s right, I forgot microsoft never does the R&D, lol!
Is that all? In the UK the tax is about half of the price. More than in France or Germany, and they aren’t oil producers.
In Italy, taxes are almost 60% of the retail price.
Well you guys have been in that boat since about the beginning of time as far as I can tell.
Talk about developing politicos pockets…
Perhaps he’s been working in computers so long that he’s deluded himself into thinking that computer models actually reflect reality.
Win10 and Acer are hardly compatible–upgrade at your own risk. Dual monitors work only in duplicate mode–not extension. Try extension and it quits working in duplicate too. Dilbert has been lampooning MS for decades. They have never been anything but EVIL. –AGF
As soon as this idiot can tell me where we can safely dispose of all those prius, leaf, and tesla batteries I’m not going to worry about natural coal ash.
PC still operating on Windows 7. When it operates. Mostly it sits silent while I use the iMac.
I don’t find anything all that surprising in Gates’ realization of his own superiority. After all, it’s a failing so mundane that it’s epidemic in “Occupy” encampments and most of those folks don’t have much in the way of accomplishments to point to as evidence of their superiority so Gates’ assumption of the same pose isn’t in the least unusual.
It’s the opposite I find interesting. Folks who, having climbed to the top of the economic heap don’t use that as a justification for realizing that their innate superiority in the field of wealth-creation is a justification for the sort of comic book conceits appropriate to the like of Lex Luther.
Bill Gates has feet of clay. One should read Daniel 2:32 and understand what that idiom actually means.
Well, he is perfectly right…
The first part of the sentence being: “If you’re not bringing math skills to the problem”…
Politicians are indeed terrible in math/science. They would sometimes even proudly say it.
So indirect democracy doesn’t work on these issues when politicians are worst than the average Joe in science.
But being unqualified is not a problem in itself…they’re supposed to ask for advice, expertise…Problem is that they’re also dishonest. We can almost always tell if a politician thinks that man-made global warming exists or not just by knowing from which party he’s from…Science has nothing to do with it for them, they’re all about politics.
Ok, that’s it. I will vote with my feet and leave Micro$oft asap.
Linux, here I come!
The new Microsoft campus also looks a lot like the death star. Is this just a coincidence?
Unnatural? What is the natural pace for innovation. How much government assistance was required to create the unnatural pace of cell phone innovation? Or was that natural innovation. Unnatural pace of innovation another meaningless term in climate politics.
Yeah like the switch to natural gas. Like fracking dramatically expanding our access to clean burning, inexpensive energy. Like internet commerce, My goodness without a substantial internet tax, internet commerce might never have occurred, right Bill?
Yes regressive taxes are all good. Wealthy do-gooders that have more money than they know what to do with always like making the low standard of living for the poor even lower. And nothing like a chance to reduce the standard of living for the middle class as well.
If Bill Gates was this stupid and insipid when he was trying to get his PC business going, he would be selling shoes today. However he probably has not become that stupid and just sees climate politics as a good way to get free money/favor from government.
This isn’t the first time that Bill Gates has fancied himself a futurist, as he has even written a book detailing his predictions for the future. I bought that book for $.50 at a garage sale, but found it unreadable- just tedious blather. If I still had the book, I’d check to see if any of his predictions have come about, but alas it went to the landfill, rather than burden some other soul with it at my own garage sale.
More to Mr. Gates recent pronouncements- he’s partially right, a push in basic research might bear fruit, but his call for extra taxation to pay for it all is deleterious to economic growth and the costs for the research could easily be made up from the egregious spending currently underway in support of Green schemes.
Stupidity annoys me and stupidity in high places can kill. That is what happened when environmentalists pushed through a ban on DDT. Millions dead from malaria because of their influence on public decision making. As to Gates, he just got lucky when his mother got to know the IBM chairman through a charity and learnt that IBM needed an operating system. Bill knew just how to get one: buy off a ready made software product that someone had just developed but did not know how to market. That piece of software became the original IBM DOS. The man who created it never got to share in the billions that Gates made from his invention. Talk of robber barons – their machinations never reached up to the level that Bill Gates did. He really is not too smart, though, just lucky. Looks like his luck has run out because he has acquired a true belief that carbon dioxide will cook us all. Give him a chance and he will squander his fortune on this worthless cause. If as a result we are forced to give up fossil fuels it is because his superstition’s nature is to take down the rest of the world with him. If it wasn’t for that I would let them cook in their own juices.
A happened to have access to a transcript from a meeting of the Gates Foundation:
Melinda: “So you mean that these people could be saved from deadly typhoid if they just had access to toilets?”
Advisor: “In our view, that is correct”.
Melinda: “This is terrible Bill, did you hear this? We have to do something…”
Bill: “O.K. but I don’t understand – why don’t poor people just download a toilet onto their 3-D printer?”
Bill Gates is a white-collar psychopath, mentioned as an example in Snakes in Suits – When Psychopaths Go to Work, by Paul Babiak, institutional psychologist and Robert Hare, who developed the PCL used in diagnosis. Gates has been sued by India for criminally negligent vaccine testing on on a vulnerable, uneducated and under-informed population. Gates’ polio vaccination has caused 47,500 deaths above the baseline from non-polio WHO, funded by him, categorizes these deaths as resulting from “non-polio paralysis” and declares Gate’s great success in India. His synthetic vaccines are killing twice the number as would have died from polio.
“In contradiction to the ideals of normal people, psychopaths feel breaking promises and agreements is normal behavior. Not only do they covet possessions and power and feel they have the right to them just because they exist and can take them, but they gain special pleasure in usurping and taking from others; what they can plagiarize, swindle, and extort are fruits far sweeter than those they can earn through honest labor.”
Psychopaths view people as objects whose only purpose is to fulfill their needs – democracy is an absurd concept to a psychopath.
globalresearch 10/13/14
salem-news 9/7/12
Why does ” Let them eat cake ” come to mind every time I hear a liberal elite speak ?
“If you’re not bringing math skills to the problem,”
Math skills are irrelevant to the problem. Critical thinking skills are relevant to the problem, and Bill Gates fails miserably.
Math skills are only irrelevant because they wouldn’t use those even if they had some. Their scientific “opinion” on anthropogenic climate change is purely a consequence of their party’s position on economy/energy/etc…
A bit like some here…total intellectual dishonesty.
How do we reconcile Bill’s statements?
Currently, for lack of a pipeline like Keystone or Northern Gateway, Canada’s oil sand bitumen petroleum is being delivered to refineries by rail. (via Canadian National Railway). Who is the biggest shareholder in CN? G22gle it . I dare ya. “CN largest shareholder”
Bill gates is worth 80 billion dollars. No one who is worth over 10 billion dollars should be allowed to suggest taxpayers pay for something they want done. It should be a law, the penalty for violating is public humiliation, all the major news agencies have to lead with the story of the multi-decabillionaire who wants to increase your taxes to pay for something they think we are all too dumb to know we need. At least Fox news would comply. If gates thinks 18 billion a year for research will do the job then he should spend 18 billion a year of his own money until his net worth is under 10 billion, Then he can talk. I can’t even fathom how someone could feel pinched for cash, like they can’t spend money on something they think is hugely important, if they have over 10 billion dollars. $10 million actually, but l’ll chalk that up to never having been a millionaire, so I’ll mulitply that by a thousand and call it $10 billion.
“progressive” ideology depends on an authoritarian government. So yeah, representative democracy is always a problem for them.
Regardless of whatever else might be said of him, Bill Gates played a big role in changing our world for the better. That he has once again proven his fallibility should serve as lesson to us all- none of us are immune to our own shortcomings, or to the misuse of our own gifts.
gates got the ibm system for some ferial praxis and paid 0.
The so called communists redeveloped the whole unix operating system in their spare time for young people with small money.
queer definition of communism.
Tragic such people think they ‘knew better’.
Hans
Bill, if you don’t like living in a “representative democracy” you can afford to MOVE yourself and your family somewhere where that isn’t a “problem.”
May I suggest Syria? Yemen and Libya have warm climates, too. And no democracy – representative or not – in sight.
Mr. Gates has always been on the far left scale of the political spectrum, though if you think Edward Snowden’s revelations of the NSA’s super surveillance state is shocking, research the Window’s 10 EULA (107 printed pages). Google Windows 10 & Spyware to reveal that installing and accepting the EULA grants Microsoft permission to access any data stored on your PC, including all directories created to store personal and private data! Mr. Gates is the new protagonist of George Orwell’s Big Brother scenario!