Date: 2/18/19 GWPF TV
When the world’s richest entrepreneur says wind and solar will never work, it’s probably time to listen.
HT/GWPF
Date: 2/18/19 GWPF TV
When the world’s richest entrepreneur says wind and solar will never work, it’s probably time to listen.
HT/GWPF
Bill Gates might be misguided in his socialist tendencies, but at least he isn’t a completely delusional enviro-fascist.
No … he is the WORST kind of Socialist … he doesn’t want the peasants to eat cake … HE wants to hog it all for himself. Of course he doesn’t want to live according to the rules he would impose on the little people.
Oh, and BTW … has Gates sent a bonus check to the US Treasury yet? In the amount he feels he SHOULD pay … for being filthy rich? Uh, yeah … typical Socialist. Make the OTHER GUY pay it.
Bill Gates is rich on paper but most of that paper wealth he has donated to charity. Like many of the Tech Billionaires a directed charity. He supports with money both disease reduction in 3rd world and nuclear power. He’s smart and sees solutions, he’s not an idiot.
Those donations are tax deductable. He either has to pay tax on his income, or donate it to charity. Net result, his tax accountant make sure Bill comes out with just as much money.
YUP.
pointed that out myself many times to others.
this is the ONLY time I have agreed with a word hes said.
age of miracles not yet past , obviously;-) lol
age of miracles or simply the stopped clock principle.
People who say that charitable deductions somehow result in rich people having more money in the end simply betray the fact that they themselves do not donate to charity. Go make a donation and then do your tax math. Spoiler; you’re out more money than if you had simply paid your tax.
The tax savings is only about 1/3 of the total contributions.
Bill Gates used a charitable trust in the late 90s to pull out $200M in profits, paying about 4% tax and fees (mostly fees) (From the book Perfectly Legal by David Cay Johnston).
The existing foundation – the money wasn’t pulled out but the only requirement is that it pay out 5% in charitable contributions every year. Note that this doesn’t prevent the foundation from growing its assets through outright investment. If said foundation can grow more than 5%, then the donated funds actually increase.
Little people get money back from charitable donations given away in the form of a tax credit which yields back at the donater’s highest tax bracket.
The uber wealthy get full control and use of all of their money from charitable donations without paying hardly anything, percentage wise, by using a charitable trust.
The Clinton trust(s) are a good example of this, albeit the trusts are used to launder existing income.
C1ue … excellent point, and don’t forget those exceedingly well compensated pro athletes who virtually ALL create their own personal charitable foundations to launder, er donate $$ to the less fortunate. Sorry, call me cynical about the craftiness of their highly paid accountants.
And then there’s … Bono. Who specializes in dodging taxes on all his U2 earnings.
And don’t get me wrong … I LOVE the wealthy and wealth! I am not bitter or jealous of any Billionaire in the slightest. I just have no patience for certain uber-wealthy telling ME to pay higher taxes to assuage guilt they have over their largesse. Unless they walk their talk, and independently donate their “extra”, “excess”, wealth to the government tax collector… they can all just STHU!
For every $3 you donate, you can cut your taxable income by $1. So let’s say you made $1000. You would pay tax on that $1000. Now let’s say you give away $600. You now pay tax on “just” $200. Of course, you also only have $400 as well. Yeah, that evil rich guy, giving away most of his wealth, and then still paying taxes on what’s left… Terrible!
“…So let’s say you made $1000. You would pay tax on that $1000. Now let’s say you give away $600. You now pay tax on “just” $200. Of course, you also only have $400 as well…”
Why would you only pay tax on $200 and not the full $400? Come on.
Windmill math works better than that. Tell me more about these magical tax tricks.
Charitable foundations are the uber wealthy’s multi-generational tax avoidance strategy. Simply a way to pass on your money and avoid taxes while still controlling your money after your demise. It is no accident that descendants are often running these foundations. Usually with healthy stipends.
Monster is dead on the button above!
Sounds to me like a lot of people here are jealous of Bill Gates.
As an example of one of the problems, AFRA, http://afra.co.za/ will tell you that the Gates Foundation’s efforts to inject modern agriculture goes against private farms and small land owner’s best efforts. The have lots of labor, and only donated money. They prefer to have assistance in working with what they have.
I honestly do not care what BG does with his money per se regardless of the of structure of that wealth. It is irrelevant.
And just because he donates to a charity but does not make him a moral or ethical person. It just makes him an activist.
er… the guys that hog all the money, they aren’t socialists…
Tell that to Zimbaweans.
Notice the element of envy in griff’s comment.
It doesn’t matter that it’s Bill’s money, he earned it.
Bill is still “hogging” it.
Tell that to the Cubans and Venezuelans.
Of course not, griff. We all know that socialism has never been tried. Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, Ceaucescu, Honecker, Krushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, Chavez, Maduro, Putin, and Xi. None of them socialists. When they live(d) like kings while the poor were deprived or starved, it was something else, not socialism. Not an inevitable outcome of socialist policy. No sir!
Corbyn and AOC will finally get it right. This time for sure! Am I right, griff? Do tell.
The only Socialist/Leftist leader I can think of that did not hog the money was Adolf Hitler. He made his fortune the honest way through the sales of his political manifesto and copyrighting his image on the Reich’s postage stamps so he got royalties on every stamp sold. Made him millions of Reichsmarks.
Good points, Rich, but you’re addressing a box of rocks.
beng135, that’s very insulting. You owe a box of rocks an apology for the comparison to Griff.
Was gonna add Hitler, but Buckeyebob beat me to it. Always annoys me when people fall for the “Hitler was a right wing blah blah” trope. Have one look at Strength Through Joy and tell me he wasn’t a Communist rat like all the rest.
Certainly correct that Hitler was a socialist, albeit national socialist rather than international socialist. I omitted him only to avoid muddying the waters with pointless argumentum ad hitlerum.
If you Putin is a socialist you need remedial classes.
Tax levels in Russia are a US Republican’s wet dream. Putin could run easily as a Republican for Potus if he were allowed legally.
There is nothing socialist about sovereign wealth funds. They are identical to multibillion dollar philanthropic trusts or US hedge funds. All Putin has done is ensure that Russians for generations to come can benefit from the century of oil and gas exploitation.
Putin is more capitalist and a better financial manager than any US President since Clinton.
You Americans want to loot the Russian economy and Putin will not let you.
Nor should he.
Of course you’re right as always Rhys, Putin worked for the KGB as a double-agent capitalist roader. When he said that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest disaster of the twentieth century, he was just kidding.
Your reflexive anti-Americanism betrays your pathetic but well-founded inferiority complex.
Fascinating how griff’s mind works. Or should I say doesn’t work.
He actually believes that rich people can’t be socialists.
Then again, compared to the other things that griff believes …
Only rich people can afford to be socialists – like Tony Benn in his pomp.
Griff the created wealth trough there ingenuity and hard work. They have hogged nothing.
They refuse to hand it over to people like griff. As far as griff is concerned, this is hogging.
It is not entirely jealousy. Part of it is resentment. He did not really earn all of it. He abused his monopoly power to extort licences for a new copy of windows when you merely upgraded an old computer and according to the data the old licence should have covered the changes but did not. The total lack of any redress made many I know give up and just pay up. I know that for me it means he made at least twice the profit he should have done, more if you count the fact the first one had genuine development costs while the second copy was just pure profit. The third set of changes may or may not have been within the licence rules and I am giving him the benefit of the doubt in saying twice.
I didn’t give up.
I got the Penguin.
Windows was never a monopoly. Not even close.
MarkW
85% of all installed operating systems on the planet is a defacto Monopoly. When Novel and Digital Research were touting better products sooner, plans were made to convince the public there was something “wrong” with those systems.
When Apple was dying and breathing its last, they were rescued by MSFT with a pile of cash so as not to fall afoul of the anti-monopoly laws in the USA. So, yeah it was not 100%, but it was so close that had Apple closed, MSFT would have been broken up like AT&T.
@Crispin
Novell Netware was a network protocol (IPX/SPX) not an Operating System like CP/M.
Microsoft has not done much original work, most (if not all) of their products were either bought or or outright stolen from other companies. They do have a lot of money and very good lawyers.
Can you actually document any of those claims against MS? I’ve tried, but they always end up with a friend of a friend had a brother who knew someone who worked at a company that cleaned the floors in an Apple store.
@MarkW
Way back in the day (early 80’s) I helped develop software which emulated the CP/M and MS-DOS systems. The emulation allowed the product to run over the current networks and allowed things like a V: drive on a VAX, networked bi-directional machine control and many other things, like encapsulating a non-routeable protocol like IPS/SPX over another network like DECnet or NetBios or Banyan Vines, etc. The product was very much before it’s time.
Needless to say I am quite familiar with what goes on under the skirts at many different levels on quite a few OS. The main thing which saved MS was their IBM relationship and IBM publishing their PC BIOS. At any rate, MS refused to provide any information which would help products like this as it was direct competition. I can understand that. What they did for Windows, however, was to steal the DEC VMS OS (they poached the developer) and implement it as NT. When TCP/IP (the Internet) became popular, MS ripped off the Berkley BSD package (as many others did).
The code is still used in the current product, not much has changed except the eye candy.
Griff, wealth is not stagenate it’s created, if wealth was simply hogged then we would all still be living in caves, you can thank the private markets and industries for all of the wealth in the world that we now share to all our benefit. It’s the socialist of the world that destroy wealth and return us to the “fare” system of poverty that people like you advocate.
He could give money to the government but leaving it in his hands probably means it is being spent more productively than if he gave it to the government to spend.
‘Hogging the cake’ is a common misconception. He isn’t eating his money, burning it, or destroying it in any way. He is directing how it is used, distributed, and invested.
The ONLY issue is who decides how the wealth that he amassed is used; Gates, who created the wealth, or governments? It is important to note the word ‘created’. What he did was create more wealth for everyone including himself. He did not take wealth from anyone. His vision improved the lives of all, increased productivity, allowed us to do more with less.
So back to the question: would you rather he decide how best to use that wealth or governments? I don’t think it’s even debatable. Governments have a lousy track record in creating wealth. That’s not their role.
Money is never destroyed, it just changes State. 🙂
Griff must have graduated from the same economics program as AOC!
One of the main things that Progressives “know” that just ain’t true is the “zero sum game” assumption; that for every million Bill adds to his fortune , there must be a corresponding group of folks who in total are that much less wealthy.
Just yesterday I heard a Dem politician who lamented of someone : “He earned that off the backs of hard working middle class people”.
The “zero sum game” is a common misconception. Wealth is created by labor – creating something of value to someone else. Inspiration (inventing something new) expands the number of valuable things in the world. So if you invent something, put work into perfecting and marketing it, and a lot of people perceive it has value to them, you will become wealthy. No theft is necessary, nor do you need to exhaust any natural resources (think of software, music, or other entertainment/art forms). This is the basis of a free market system. Collectivist systems destroy the incentive to invent new things because they remove the rewards (wealth). It is human nature to expect to benefit from your efforts in proportion to their value to society at large. Collectivist systems deny this very obvious property of humans, and is one of the reasons they always fail.
This is how the economy can keep growing while using fewer resources.
Much new wealth is in the form of things that lack form.
Music, games, computer programs, phone apps, etc.
jtom, thanks. I try often to tell people that wealth is not necessarily “stolen” as so many socialists and young people believe, that it very often (especially in the US) is created. I remember living in Russia–which is undoubtedly the richest country in the world for natural resources–yet their people are among the poorest for a developed nation–why would a rich country be so poor? Because collectivism destroys the very thing in our nature that would have us create things–you have to be a follower, do what you are told, no incentives to create anything, just go along to get along. It’s difficult to get folks to see this principle because the idealism seduces them–they want to be “good” and “sharing” and “caring” so they embrace what looks good on paper and makes them feel good when they say it. Living it reveals the truth–which I did when I lived in Moscow–boy did that open my eyes. I used to see how the thinking and oppression destroyed people and I am so sad that we can’t teach this to our fellow citizens–but apparently we can not. We’ll have to do what Russia did and go about 79 years in virtue signaling society until it collapses–then the young people will know there is something better but they won’t know it is and be floundering like the current day Russia. It breaks my heart.
Maybe, just maybe some in the msm will realise that the Green Blob are utterly incompetent in technical knowledge and in the ability to ‘do the nubers’ on propositions. THat speculative scumbags in the finance sector are happy to sell anything at all to any schmuck that comes along just makes the total effect worse.
Here in Oz the virtue signalling states are just waking up to the fact that the capacity of a solar/wind driven power supply system has to be more uniform and that means out into remote areas rather than with the main network capacity being concentratted along corridors from the carbon/nuke power plants to the main industrial demand hubs and of lesser capacity. There are no highways and byways in such an arrangement just a network of freeways.
As someone recently wrote, the rural areas used to have backroads and ‘bush tracks’ now they all have to have a highway or a freeway. And the cost for all this “cheap” electricity?….
hmm but you notice just where all the ghastly birdshredders etc are going?
yes OUR rural areas outta sight for the most part of the majoroty of those who want them(city plebs)
and those areas are where some of our rare protected birds live to make it even more sad/funny.
and of course we ruralmugs pay higher costs for supply due to lower populace etc(claimed) as the reason for ripping us off..meanwhile all those alt power eyesores need a whole new system strung to carry the power OUT of our areas to the cities.
I like that word “nubers”–we ought to give it a definition.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/12/31/bill-gates-backs-advanced-nuclear-power-to-solve-the-climate-crisis/#comment-2573283
I wrote this on Bill Gates blog one year ago – he is slowly coming around to reality on energy, but still regards increasing atmospheric CO2 as a problem. It is not a problem.
Regards, Allan
https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Energy-and-Civilization
Bill wrote:
“The main disagreement I have with Smil is about how quickly we can make the transition to clean energy.”
Bill, I really like your work on malaria and on vaccines – I probably like a lot of other things you are doing too.
But Bill, I have spent my career in energy and have studied global warming alarmism since 1985 – you are an intelligent man, but it appears that you are being ill-advised on climate and energy.
Below is reference to a primer on the subject – take your time, study it, and contact me via my website if you want to discuss.
The term “climate change” is so vague and the definition is so changeable that it is NOT a falsifiable hypothesis. It is therefore unscientific nonsense. The term “catastrophic human-made global warming” is a falsifiable hypothesis, and it was falsified long ago – when CO2 rose sharply after ~1940 while temperature declined from ~1945 to ~1977. As my co-authors and I wrote in 2002, “the alleged global warming crisis DOES NOT EXIST”.
Current forms of clean/green energy are not green and produce little useful (dispatchable) energy. All they do is destabilize the grid and drive up energy costs, which increases Excess Winter Deaths among the elderly and the poor. Sure there may be better forms of energy out there – but current “solutions” are costly fiascos, due primarily to intermittency. My co-authors and I wrote this conclusion in 2002, and since then tens of trillions of dollars of scarce global resources have been squandered on green energy nonsense.
[end of excerpt]
Wow. Allen it may have been you that changed the mind of a very influential person. Thanks for your effort.
Thank you James.
I don’t know what changed BIll’s mind on energy, but it is a good thing he did.
Now if he would only reverse his opinion on global warming… 🙂
Exactly. There is nothing wrong with the climate and there is nothing dangerous having more, much more CO2 in the atmosphere. Less CO2 would be the dangerous part.
Humanity only prospered because we knew how to create more energy with less and less work.
You are correct Robert. “Less CO2 would be the dangerous part.”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/02/19/climate-alarmism-is-still-bizarre-dogmatic-intolerant/comment-page-1/#comment-2747817
[excerpt]
BTW, don’t worry about it getting a bit warmer – if you need to worry about something, worry about it getting a bit colder.
_______________________________________________
I wrote the following on this subject on 18Dec2014, posted on Icecap.us:
ON CLIMATE SCIENCE, GLOBAL COOLING, ICE AGES AND GEO-ENGINEERING:
[excerpt]
Furthermore, increased atmospheric CO2 from whatever cause is clearly beneficial to humanity and the environment. Earth’s atmosphere is clearly CO2 deficient and continues to decline over geological time. In fact, atmospheric CO2 at this time is too low, dangerously low for the longer term survival of carbon-based life on Earth.
More Ice Ages, which are inevitable unless geo-engineering can prevent them, will cause atmospheric CO2 concentrations on Earth to decline to the point where photosynthesis slows and ultimately ceases. This would devastate the descendants of most current [terrestrial] life on Earth, which is carbon-based and to which, I suggest, we have a significant moral obligation.
Atmospheric and dissolved oceanic CO2 is the feedstock for all carbon-based life on Earth.
More CO2 is better. Within reasonable limits, a lot more CO2 is a lot better.
As a devoted fan of carbon-based life on Earth, I feel it is my duty to advocate on our behalf. To be clear, I am not prejudiced against non-carbon-based life forms, but I really do not know any of them well enough to form an opinion. They could be very nice. 🙂
Best, Allan
And forget about steel. How much energy needs our digital world to work? And it has to be as cheap as possible, abundant and 100% reliable all the time to make it work perfectly and it has to because without it our modern society stops functioning.
What is the ‘carbon’ footprint of a Bitcoin or the government’s or google’s (etc) database centers supercomputers?
Unlike most socialists, he is using his own money, so I have to hand that to him. And he isn’t a OCR type village idiot on this matter. Using simple math and easily looked up data., even a Boston College Affirm Action grad can figure out solar and wind suck for running a mega economy.
Apparently, he is not anti-human, like the Green Mob, and Globalists/Marxists.
Con la Energía Solar y Eólica “no se llega a ninguna parte”.
With Solar and Wind Energy “you can not get anywhere”.
The mystery is not how Gates ‘gets’ what experienced engineers and scientists have known for 100 years.
The mystery is why your elected politician has lost the capacity to listen to the appropriate people, i.e., those who know and have known.
Beliefe Gates or believe Cortez? Why is the choice so hard for so many? Geoff
Politicians are not concerned with truth. Elections are won and lost, power and money is apportioned, not according to what is the truth, or what is best for the submissive population, but according only to what people [can be induced to] believe.
I have met with these men, I have tried to explain the truth, They are simply not interested.
Truth does not win elections or sell product. Bill Gates knows that.The difference is that Bill Gates seems to dimly realize there is more to civilization than selling product.
This will continue as long as people believe in anything but the evidence.
Too true Leo.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/10/06/claim-judge-kavanaughs-adherence-to-rule-of-law-will-impede-climate-action/#comment-2482376
Here is how modern politics works:
The far-left is winning, especially in the developing world, where over 100 countries are pseudo-Marxist dictatorships, based on their leftist phony rhetoric, but are actually just military dictatorships, run for the ruling elite and their armed thugs – see Zimbabwe and Venezuela… and North Korea, Cuba, the Soviet Union countries and many more..
The left gains political power by promising imbeciles lots of free stuff. Then they destroy the economy, create widespread poverty and live like kings atop a ruined state – because you can’t be kings without lots of peasants.
It is really no different in the developed world. Get elected by lazy greedy imbeciles, destroy the economy with fake green energy and other crazy policies, and live like kings on top of a ruined economy, looking down on all the peasants.
To be fair to politicians, they can’t be expected to know about everything. They have to take advice from specialists on some matters, and they also listen to what the public say they want.
The problem in this particular case is that the specialists in wind energy they are taking advice from are also the ones designing and selling the products.
Meanwhile the loudest voices among what seems to be the public are actually the members of NGOs who are being funded by the windturbine industry to promote their products. In reality these people don’t represent public opinion, but they’ve managed to create the impression that they do.
We have a more insidious problem here, in that EU-wide policies are decided by the Council of Ministers, who are not even our elected representatives. These ministers are heavily lobbied by industry, to enact regulations to benefit industry. Our local governments can do nothing but obey these directives. It results in crazy situations where for example a car with a faulty trailer socket is declared dangerous to drive and must be towed home from the testing station. Not hard to figure that these regulations are designed to line pockets somewhere.
Americans often don’t understand why we want out of the EU. That’s why. Corrupt and unaccountable bureaucracy.
IM,
When you write that politicians are swayed by industry, I suspect that you neglect the scale of industry. It is dominated by Giants who make cars, aircraft, military supplies, provide natural resources, pharmaceuticals, food, clothing, shelter. A tiny part of industry fiddles with this climate trivia.
It is the political inability to listen to the right people that is the problem. I have never discovered what motivates these minority of green people spreading laughable bullshit, but they manage to fool some political dupes. Geoff
The wind turbine and solar panal industry is far from small, if not on the scale of car and oil. But the real pushers is the enviro lobbists, who have there own reasons for pushing to replace fossil fuels.
~¿~
Geoff,
Here in the U.S. most of the Green NGOs and even our charities have been taken over by what my sister refers to as Nonprofit Parasites. Once marketing figured out how to properly tug the heart strings of the public and talk them out of their money most NGOs and charities became cash cows to be milked. Add to that the approximately 1.2 billion dollars a year the K-Street lobbyist spend, excluding campaign funds, on schmoozing our elected representatives and it’s easy to see why practically all politicians become dupes.
I’m reminded of what one ex-congressman said when asked why a congresswoman had hit a Capitol policeman with her purse because he didn’t recognize her with her new hairdo. “When you get there, you have so many people throwing money at you and telling you your poop don’t stink it’s hard not to get that attitude.”
I flunked a safety check in Virginia US many years ago because one of the fog lights was out. Most cars at that time didn’t have any fog lights. Yes we have stupid stuff too.
I’ll take issue on two points.
In reality the Council consists of the relevant ministers of each of the 28 EU countries, depending on what is on the agenda. So for environmental matters it is Michael Gove and his 27 colleagues, all of them from democratically elected governments. So what’s this “not even our elected representatives” nonsense?
There may be very good reasons for the UK to leave the EU, but at least do it in the basis of the facts not on the basis of myth.
As for your MOT example, I really do think a bit more fact checking before putting finger to keyboard would not come amiss!
https://www.mot-testing.service.gov.uk/documents/manuals/class3457/Section-4-Lamps-reflectors-and-electrical-equipment.html#section_4.10
There are numerous other examples. For example if taken literally, a vehicle in which any one seatbelt is stretched or frayed cannot be driven AT ALL. Not even to a repairer. Even if the seatbelt in question is not required for that journey.
It is also unclear as to whether in the above examples, replacing the trailer socket or seatbelt, both probably a few minutes’ work that the owner could do on the spot, would make it legal to drive the vehicle home. If he were stopped by police after repairing the allegedly ‘Dangerous’ item but before a full retest, would he be breaking the Law? I can’t find any answer to that one.
Michael Gove was a key figure, along with Nigel Farage, in pushing for a vote on leaving the EU. Evidently he knows a bit more about what goes on than most people do.
Newminster, I’m amazed that YOU don’t know these things. I reckon an apology is in order.
The seat belt tensioner that pulls the slack out of a seat belt during an accident uses and explosive charge. It’s not something that an amateur should be tackling. You need special training and equipment to avoid losing a couple of fingers.
If you have a seat belt that needs replacing, you need to take it to the shop.
Pretty certain none of my cars have explosive driven seatbelt tensioners!
Because these days science and politics are mostly mutually exclusive.
Geoff, when we know the answer to that question we will have discovered ths ultimate secret of human nature — and the world will probably come to an end!
Because elected politicians have no power. They are just puppets in the hands of the ones behind the curtain.
Follow the yellow brick road.
Hahahaha … just LOOK at who Americans elect! Maxine Waters? AOC? Whitey Puhleeze! American’s routinely send the worst and the dullest to government. And local government at the city and county level is even worse!!!
It will take a FAMINE … or total economic collapse … or total lack of energy … to wake the people the hell up to their pie-in-the-sky STUPIDITY. Utter stupidity.
Gates’s comments were a little bit inarticulate and confusing, but on the bottom line, he is most clear: we are NOT going to have the kind of post-industrial/industrial and technological economy with all of the prosperity attendant thereto without, cheap, reliable energy. And wind and solar does not and cannot provide that in any respect, even with government subsidies. (Notice the questioner was referring to prices “coming down.” Lol! Only because of massive government mandates and subsidies, like those in Germany where the price of retail electricity is 3 to 4 times what I pay in this country.)
Well said. Larry.
and most of the cost in Germany is ordinary – not ‘green’ – tax. That’s a govt revenue choice. The green component of German electricity bills was reduced last year.
Griff says “and most of the cost in Germany is ordinary – not ‘green’ – tax. That’s a govt revenue choice. The green component of German electricity bills was reduced last year.”
The renewables surcharge went down 9c (2017/18) after increasing from 116c to 688c(2017) in 10 years! (Probably charged as a fixed % so drop represents a slight reduction in some other cost).
That’s almost one quarter of the cost. There are also massive hidden and not so hidden ‘green’ costs in many of the other charges that make up the final cost.
They have the highest cost in Europe, 50% more than the average.
Yeah, a whopping 0.09 cents/kWh. It’s still a 6.79c extra people shouldn’t have to pay.
But wholesale electricity prices rose from 5.71 to 6.18 cents/kWh. I wonder why if renewables are supposed to be so much cheaper than fossil or nuclear?
There’s also an offshore liability levy, which means grid operators must pay damages if they fail to connect offshore wind farms in a timely manner in order to sell the power they produce. Operators can pass these costs on to consumers through this levy. At the beginning of 2018, it amounted to 0.037 ct/kWh. Not much, but it still means that consumers have to pay more when renewables fail. Ridiculous.
This is basically a grotesque reworking of constraint payments – If a conventional station is told to spin up in anticipation of extra demand, but that demand doesn’t materialize, then they get paid for the fuel they’ve wasted. Which is fair enough.
UK wind operators get constraint payments for any time the energy they produce is surplus to requirements. Regardless of reason. Even if connected to the Grid. It’s one of the things that makes windfarms lucrative to landowners.
That’s right, griff. It’s a totally, totally different name for the tax. It’s not that they’re trying to recoup actual costs and hide the fact that those costs are the consequence of the Energiewende. Nope, not that.
Griff = spreader of false ideas.
Was Bill in a Faraday Box during this interview?
The Green mind-control program must have been slackened for this moment of lucidity from Mr Gates.
Yes, “where does concrete come from?” “Where will the steel come from” to make the new economy? Where does a big industrial center or major city get its gigawatt-hours of electricity to run when the sun and winds are absent? How do you keep today’s passenger jets in the sky without carbon-based jet fuel?
Climate scam: A Green fantasy: All the way down.
Good on Mr Gates in finally saying what is reality, and not some green on the outside, anti-CO2 fantasy of socialists who want to confiscate 99% of his wealth for social re-distribution.
He could do a lot of good if he could persuade his fellow multi-billionaires that sometimes the best way to leave a positive legacy is not to fall for the latest fashionable ideas that are in the headlines as the latest way to save the humanity/planet.
While “picking winners” is usually a bad idea for governments, billionaires are not immune either. In fact they have probably picked a winner themselves at least once, and are thus vulnerable to thinking that they always know best. The poor people of the world know that they want cheap reliable energy, not expensive, unreliable green dreams. Helping people to be able to choose for themselves is one of the most noble things Bill Gates could do with his money.
I’m hoping the green socialist-communists like AO-C and Senator Pocahontas who say they want to confiscate 90%+ of these Billionaires’ wealth has finally woken them up to the Green fantasy bubble they have existed in for at least the last 14 years.
Between Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Charlie Munger, and Jeff Bezos those four could bury the green scammer Billionaires of Steyer, Soros, Bloomberg, and the Rockefeller’s about 5 times over.
just wondering how widesread this clip is?
and how many minutes it will take for the warmist sjw types to start a blackban campaign against Gates?
oh they’d be using his products in large part to do so
amusing;-)
Bill Gates is not a scientist, he is not even a computer geek. He’s a businessman, and a very successful one. I am not interested in his opinion, even when there are facts in it. He’s not more qualified to comment on this subject than is AOC, or Hollywood ‘stars’, or other famous people that think they know everything. At least this time he’s on the saner side of the argument.
“He’s not more qualified to comment on this subject than is AOC, or Hollywood ‘stars’, or other famous people that think they know everything”
Anyone can qualify, or disqualify, themselves according to the content of their speech, not the name on their mailbox.
SR
Bill has a lot of money. And money speaks.
So his voice carries far more than most.
And he has done some immense good in 3rd World with he and his boss’s (wife’s) Foundation.
And he has had a lot of time to listen and read to experts since stepping down from his MS executive duties.
He does read voraciously from all reports. And he does now listen and watch video lectures from smart PhD without an agenda. He has become a student of history. A student of economics. He is finally teaching himself the education he missed by leaving Harvard those decades ago.
Maybe, just maybe, now his self-taught education is catching up with the reality around him.
And maybe, just maybe, will his advisors and people around him understand what has been obvious to outside educated folks about the climate hustle for 10+ years (since ClimateGate emails).
If his past stealing of tech can stop the stealing of my money, I am all for it!
Well said Wallaby (pity Wallabies can’t beat All Blacks occasionally).
Well they do, occasionally. So do other nations, very occasionally.
When we start to expect it, then the world will probably have started turning backwards on its axis.
The important point about Gstes saying wind and solar won’t work, is the simple fact he is saying it. The Greens and alarmists consider him to be one of their own. Socialists are us would have him as their centre fold if they ever produced a green dream magazine.
He may well have finally realised, the nonsense put out by the climate alarmists has gone past a joke, and is likely to impact even him.
More celebrities need to speak out before the green stupidity, of banning fossil fuel use goes too far.
You cannot see the Wind and you cannot carry the Sun in a container, so how can anyone control the “source” itself? Nothing has “value” unless you can set a “price” to it. With conventional fuels you can control: access, quantities, use and distribution. One would be better off investing in a “true renewable” and that is …. POOP!!! (including food wastes)
No matter where you go, it’s always around and there is plenty of it!
The microbes or “bugs”(as we say in the wastewater business) don’t care what color you are, what “good” you pray to, how much is in your wallet or your IQ, they just want your POOP.
So, no matter where you go, where there are people (and animals), there is poop!
I do not believe that is Bill Gates. He’s making sense! An impostor, fake?
The 2 Google engineers, Koningstein and Fork ( supporters of James Hansen) had a report on this years ago saying Wind and Solar as presently understood would never work.
This site reported the details on 22 November 2014.
It is no surprise to anyone following the debate but that apparently does not include almost the entirety of World leaders, their political advisors and most of the MSM.
You can easily show this for yourself using figures from OurWorldInData.
Consider any project which has been in progress for over 20 years, has only achieved 1% of its goal, and has been costing the equivalent of two entire Apollo moon programs a year for the last decade. Would you advise continuing that project, or decide that we have tested the idea enough to show that it is not feasible?
Suppose many people thought the project to be essential to the survival of humanity, perhaps we would nevertheless stop and think… are taking the best approach? Might there be more effective ways of going about this?
Even if this were a major aerospace project, say an attempt to start a colony on Mars, I think we would reconsider our approach at this point.
My analysis:
https://iwrconsultancy.co.uk/science/renewables_projections.htm
Bill Gates has turned into Woody Allen. Let’s hope he doesn’t start making extremely tedious films too.
Bill Gates has turned into Woody Allen
His daughters best hope he hasn’t. 😉
For whatever reason its a step in the right direction.. Possibly Bill has finally realised that if the Greens have their way, then even he will go down the Gurgler. .
Perhaps we skeptics may finally have a billioneer on our side who can afford the money to counter the massive Properganda from the Green Blob.
MJE
It is not right to talk about socialism as a totally bad trend because it is a misconception. Left-wing and right-wing views also have positive and negative aspects, which is why alternating management between the Democratic and Conservative sides has developed. In the current state of affairs, the left-wing, completely wrong immigration policy means that traditional left-wing parties may disappear but others come as greens.
Socialism is the belief that if you take money from those who earned it, and use it to buy votes, you can perfect the world.
Socialism is the belief that if you take money from those who earned it, and use it to buy votes, you can perfect the world … and enrich yourself.
Socialists believe they are modern day Robin Hoods who are benefiting the poor by taking from the rich, and thereby perceive themselves deserving to be made rich.
SR
If you want to drive a liberal crazy, remind them that Robin Hood was stealing from the government.
You can call yourself whatever you like, but it doesn’t change the fact that you can’t earn billions of dollars by actually being a socialist.
You can only spend billions of dollars by actually being a socialist.
I’ve seen a lot of socialists who have gotten rich off while holding government jobs.
Bill Gates is in the right race but he’s backing the wrong horse (Traveling Wave).
Rewind the video and watch the whole thing, it’s one of the best presentations out there about the best option, LFTR.
I despaired that this day would perhaps never come — an actual breath of fresh air.
I doubt the AOCene folks will call Gates a climate denier . . . I would call him a climate truther.
Here’s a two-question fill-in-the-blanks test for promoters of the Green New Deal.
1. At night, the sun does not __________.
2. The wind does not blow all the ___________.
The defense calls no further witnesses.
OK, he’s right, but what caused his enlightenment?
It might be that Mr Gates has figured that unreliable/expensive electricity = less revenue for Microsoft.
He is primarily a businessman, albeit a very clever one.
If powering a data centre gets too expensive, deployments of Microsoft goodies (and others) will decline, and so will their revenue.
The mistake is to think the greens ‘want ‘ a modern industrial society from which these energy demands come. In reality they want what they see as a return to some ‘golden past ‘ before ‘evil capitalism and industry ‘
Expect of course it was no golden but for most short , grim and hard .
And an energy supply crisis offers lots of ‘opportunities ‘ to enforce bans on ‘bad environmental behaviour ‘ such has owning motorised personal transport , flying etc
So the inability for renewable to work in supporting a modern society , is a not a bad thing but a ‘good thing’ for them.
The mistake is to think the greens ‘want ‘ a modern industrial society from which these energy demands come
Oh, they want the benefits of a modern industrial society . . . but only for themselves. For everyone else it’s the life of a 17th century serf. Rules for thee but not for me is the name of the game for them.
“In reality they want what they see as a return to some ‘golden past ‘ before ‘evil capitalism and industry ‘ …”.
===========================================
And that’s due to their ignorance of history.
Commerce and trade was the very basis of the development of the city civilisations in the Nile, Tigris – Euphrates and Indus valleys.
Cuneiform record-keeping transactions on clay tablets was the beginning of systematic writing.
I did wonder how long, and what, it would take to snap Gates out of his fog. At least he took the time to rebut the dim bulbs who want everyone to live in the manner of the 17th century, which I do not wish to do.
There is no energy supply crisis. If the pipeline saboteurs could be locked up (including those in politics who encourage them), we could just get on with things. There’s a huge load of water vapor in the atmosphere – I’ve been tracking this for a while, now – and it sticks around in the winter. There is NO crisis, except that which has been manufactured out of whole cloth by people who see it as a cash cow.
It’s a shame that so many people are so easily fooled by a false religion, and it’s driven by the sheer greed of other people.
The computer business of Bill Gates (and Facebook etc.) depends on plentiful cheap electricity and hundreds of thousands of users. Perhaps he has realised a lack of said commodity would hit him pretty hard.
Socialism is bad, pure evil. But conservatism with a social conscience is what makes capitalism so successful. Without a social conscience it leads to revolution and dictatorship as in Russia and China. Unfortunately, many people think conservatism/capitalism with a social conscience is what socialism is like only better and without the rich people. The people of Venezuela found out the truth too late.
Well, that’s my opinion anyway.
Good thoughts, but no matter what Bill Gates thinks or does he could not possibly want for finances.
It appears that he is gaining respect in the practical matters of energy supply, proving that everyone, even the richest bastards, are redeemable. I wish that he would adopt me.
Even if CO2 were a problem the AGW solution would not fix the problem USING THEIR OWN FALSIFIABLE INFLATED NUMBERS.
Bill has to know that. So WUWT?
This isn’t about CO2. CO2 is just another tool for ESTABLISHING ILLEGITIMATE CENTRALIZED POLITICAL POWER.
Who’s in on the scam?
– Leftists of course
– Media (the MSM is the leftist’s propaganda machine)
– Academia/ Education (ditto)
– Science (they will be the brains behind the benevolent rulers after all – and lots of funding requires subjugation of the truth)
– Law (lefties legislating from the bench)
– Entrenched Government (deep state – the home of the left)
– Subsidized Industry (greed and lots of willing compliance)
In other words pretty much all of our civilization’s major institutions.
The camel’s nose isn’t under the tent…the camel is in the tent.
The AMO and PDO and the quiescent Sun and climate cycles analysis all point towards a cooling trend over the next 2 decades. That, and a population resisting higher costs along with a dose of truth might salvage individual freedom.
We must keep advocating for the truth. With some luck we might just come out of this nightmare with some individual liberties intact.
You forgot the drug supplier. The unconstitutional (not) Federal Reserve.
Grid-Level Wind & Solar projects are the 21st century’s pyramids of old.
They’re monuments to the hubris, stupidity and foolishness of ignoble Leftists, who think virtue signaling somehow supersedes economics, physics and logic…
Gates is right, the future is next generation nuclear power, preferably LFTRs, which solve so many problems inherent with nuclear power.
Some 20 years ago two of my colleagues and I, all engineers met Bill Gates and had a short chat. We went with the impression of a kind and considerate person. If I was, by some miracle in his shoes, I have to admit than I wouldn’t be as generous with various medical charitable organisations as Mr. Gates is.
Con la energía solar y eólica “no se puede ir a ningún lado”.
Pero todavía se puede lograr un gran respeto.
It is starting to become obvious that wind and solar are not going to be able to power the world. Look at the problems wind and solar are already causing around the world with higher electrical rates and unreliable service. This is slowly being acknowledged, and Bill Gates is one of the latest examples.
There will be more and more calls for going to nuclear power because that is the only reasonable option for those who want a reduction in CO2, and that is becoming clearer to those on the Left who are actually concerned about CO2 and about doing something practical about it.
>>
. . . those on the Left who are actually concerned about CO2 and about doing something practical about it.
<<
The phrase “those on the Left” associated with “doing something practical” would be an oxymoron.
Jim
Indeed those two phrase are pretty much mutually exclusive. never the twain shall meet
When the world’s richest entrepreneur says wind and solar will never work, it’s probably time to listen.
Really? The Seattle papers quote him endlessly, exercising his oh-so-moral authority in all directions and always recommending the State income tax that a great majority of Washingtonians have had to vote down time after time as our moral betters force it onto ballot after ballot.
And how does being a ‘richest entrepreneur’ give anyone credibility in any subject? There are lots of richest crooks who might advise us on applying brutality in climbing to the top, but what do they know about Islamic art or operating a sailboat, and should we listen to him on those subjects?
“…there is no substitute for how the industrial economy runs today…” and that is the scam in a nutshell. As long as people are prospering under Capitalism the Socialist/Marxists can never win because a large middle class will always be content. That is why “they” are pushing “the wealth gap”….. because they know the middle class in the Western world is too large to tear down without dissension in the ranks. What they ignore is once prosperity is destroyed there is nothing remaining to finance “to each according to their need”. AGW will never win the hearts and minds because people are too complacent with their standard of living and unwilling to give it up. If AGW were true …. and it’s not …. people would adapt before giving up the progress developed so far.
Bill Gates could do a better job explaining why the revamped high speed rail to nowhere in California is and was a giant waste of money that could better be used on telecommuting investment, medical research, and community competitiveness projects.
I do not understand the above comments.
Why the comments concerning Gates’ wealth or socialism or which political party he does or does not support.
The Left have started the fight about everything paradigm. No discussion of engineering limitations. No pro/cons and comparison of alternatives.
Did anyone listen to Bill Gates’ video?
Gates is one of the few honest caring people, who has the courage to speak the truth, who is on the side of reason and logic.
Gates states that the general public have crazy beliefs about what ‘green’ power is capable of. He said he does not understand the group madness.
Gates states a fact that it is absolutely impossible using wind and sun gathering to power our countries. He notes that electrical production is roughly 25% of a country’s energy needs.
Gates provides the example of the absurdness of powering a steel plant using batteries or powering Tokyo using batteries.
Sad to say Bill you won’t get through to them because they don’t believe in science and the scientific method anymore and we know whose fault that is. When they stop trusting in science they’ll believe in anything-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/health/medical/this-hospital-is-employing-aboriginal-healers-in-an-australia-first/ar-BBTOReo
You were struggling to put it mildly with their reversion to the Dark Ages but you just have to accept it’s all about feelings nowadays mate and besides you’re just another old school white guy so you don’t count.
Perhaps our day will come again when they can’t recharge their smart-screens and they’re completely lost and looking for answers-
https://www.rt.com/usa/google-renewable-energy-campaign-261/
In the meantime in backup FF generators we trust.
Wow. Finally a die-hard lefty gets it. Wonder if he will be run out of the lefty’s club? He has just committed a blaspheme. As Bill Gates talks about, it is absolutely absurd to think you can do away with conventional energy production and do it all with wind, solar and geothermal. Never in a hundred years with today’s technology. And there doesn’t seem to be anything promising on the horizon that can fix that.
“As Bill Gates talks about, it is absolutely absurd to think you can do away with conventional energy production and do it all with wind, solar and geothermal. Never in a hundred years with today’s technology.”
Why would we use today’s technology a hundred years from now?
We are still using Road, Boats, Manipulator Arms for nuclear processing, Saddles, Horses, Knives, Bows, Guns, Houses, Airplanes, Combustion Engines, Batteries, Leather, Windmills…
These are right at a century old or older…
“We are still using Road, Boats,…”
Yes, but do you know what percentage of roads in the U.S. were paved with asphalt 100 years ago? And how many boats were made of fiberglass and with internal combustion outboard motors?
Even 20 years from now, the majority of photovoltaic cells will probably be produced using roll-to-roll technology, probably involving some type of perovskite.
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/04/progress-to-scalable-roll-to-roll-manufacturing-of-perovskite-solar-cells.html
Footprint question: A huge solar plant is planned for Spotsylvania County in Virginia. 500MW on a footprint of 3500 acres within a 6000 acre site. A document I have seen indicates the footprint for a natural gas plant is about 5% of solar…..so 175 acres? Thoughts??
Depends on quite a few things like the output of the gas plant, but I worked at an old 350 MW coal plant nestled in an area between a river & a ridge including a coal pile that totaled prb’ly a mere ~50 acres. Once thru cooling, so no cooling towers….
Let’s recall, that’s the guy who infamously slipped about his support of that cute “population reduction” thing. So they cannot even get all the major globalist sponsors on board with “Communism minus electrification of entire country” movement.
Here is a much more recent video from Bill Gates about renewable energy. You can tell it’s more recent by looking at the color of his hair! Much more gray now.