Guest essay by Eric Worrall
When he isn’t dissing “representative democracy” for its failure to address the climate crisis, urging ordinary people to accept higher green energy utility bills because the sacrifice is worth it, or spending quality time at his beachfront mansion, Bill Gates advocates for more money to be spent on climate research, in the hope that someone out there will discover the magic energy solution which has eluded his personal efforts.
Bill Gates just released a plan for US leadership on climate change, including $35B in funding
Jonathan Shieber @jshieber / 4:39 AM GMT+10•December 4, 2020
Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft and one of the world’s richest men and most prolific philanthropists, has just released a broad new plan on how the U.S. could take the lead in the fight against climate change.
“[We] need to revolutionize the world’s physical economy—and that will take, among other things, a dramatic infusion of ingenuity, funding, and focus from the federal government. No one else has the resources to drive the research we need,” Gates writes.
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Gates calls for a dramatic $25 billion boost in spending that would bring clean energy research spending to $35 billion a year (in line with medical spending from the government). Gates notes that this could lead to the creation of more than 370,000 jobs while boosting a clean-energy agenda.
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“This is the most important thing the U.S. can do to lead the world in innovations that will solve climate change,” Gates wrote.
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Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/03/bill-gates-just-released-a-plan-for-us-leadership-on-climate-change-including-35b-in-funding/
What does Gates think the USA should do with all that climate research money? How does Bill Gates think the USA should up its game on climate research?
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There is a better way. To reduce duplication, focus the government’s efforts, and get the most innovation out of every dollar of funding, we should create a new organization: the National Institutes of Energy Innovation. This the most important thing the U.S. can do to lead the world in innovations that will solve climate change.
Creating these institutes wouldn’t be an exercise in simply moving boxes around an organizational chart and hoping for a better outcome. We actually have a model for setting things up in a better way, and evidence that it produces results. That model is the National Institutes of Health.
The NIH is the largest single funder of biomedical research in the world, and its impact is simply mind-blowing. Scientists supported by the NIH have mapped the human genome, resulting in tests or treatments for dozens of genetic diseases. They have helped cut deaths from heart disease by two thirds in the past 50 years. Since 1980, NIH-supported research has contributed to the discovery of more than 150 new drugs, vaccines, and novel uses for existing drugs. The Gates Foundation’s work in global health simply would not be possible without the countless advances made by the NIH.
Why is the NIH so successful? It has a clear and specific mission. It has apolitical leaders who let independent researchers follow the science, rather than political staff who change priorities every few years. It’s organized in a way that empowers each of its separate institutes and research centers. And it has strong bipartisan support from policymakers and the public.
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Read more: https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/How-the-US-can-lead-on-climate-change-innovation
Yep, Bill Gates solution to the climate innovation crisis is centralisation and bureaucracy. In no time at all the regimented teams of well funded renewable energy public servants will be pouring out world changing green energy innovations, to liberate us all from fossil fuel.
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I wish Bill would truly give all his money away and go back to his fortress of solitude in Seattle. Move on Bill.
I may start sending him my electric and gas bills to pay, and maybe those of my neighbors.
He really needs to have something to do. Is he so LAME that he can’t even write a note in handwriting, but has to print like 1st grader?
I went back to printing in College and the only thing I write is my signature. It started when I was using Fortran coding forms because Fortran of the 60’s was column sensitive. Writing just doesn’t work when everything has to be lined up. Next, when I was reviewing my class notes, I realized I couldn’t read my own handwriting. At that point I started printing and continued to do so.
From what I understand, Cursive isn’t being taught in some schools so printing may be the only way my hand written note can be understood by the younger generation. Maybe I was ahead of the curve or maybe Gates understands his audience.
O.K. Bill, you front the first 4 years, Bezos the next 4 years and I might consider buying in on the tax
Bryan A
December 5, 2020 at 10:21 am
Seems more like Billy is putting in short public notice all concerned about his and his palls circus platform soon running out short of
35B Dollares to keep running the gig.
This guy does nothing for free… rather his services and efforts are grotesque in cost.
Quite sanguine in collecting… even when in investing looks so much so innocent and philanthropic.
Will make the most heartless loan shark seem even at the worse,
like your very own genuine loving caring brother.
cheers
2 bone anchors in rt shoulder made my already bad handwriting look like alien spores trying to attach to your body.
so I print always.
That’s acceptable. What’s HIS excuse? Didn’t get out of kindergarten, maybe?
I feel a bit snarkey tonight, y’see.
Please sign this petition to have the Gates’ criminally investigated: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/we-call-investigations-bill-melinda-gates-foundation-medical-malpractice-crimes-against-humanity
I read the petition. Can I interest you in an alminium hat?- handy for keeping “Biotmetic tracking” devices from working?
His fortress in Seattle has 95 WINDOWS—sorry I had to say that.
We’ve been told that green jobs pay for themselves. If Bill believes this, he should be urging for private organizations to fund the research. There’s no need for taxpayer money for applied research.
How about a private organization like the Gates Foundation?
Further, if this research is needed, it shows that “renewable” energy is deficient in meeting present needs.
Gates has commented several times about the deficiencies of current “renewables” technologies. It’s one of the reasons why he is a big supporter of nuclear power.
I say tax Billy Bob Gates at 125% and give that money to xhis National Institutes of Energy Innovation. Then wait for all the free energy that flows from all the magic this agency generates from the ether!
Another “idealist/elitist” who has not a care in the world and he thinks diverting taxpayer money to renewable energy research is a good thing. It is rather obvious Bill Gates is not at all a deep thinker or understands critical thinking. No rational person would consider renewable energy rational. Perhaps we ought to turn-off Bill Gates energy to his estate on Lake Washington and he can lead the way with green energy. Use solar, wind and battery storage to run your household. And by the way, while your at it, Bill Gates curtail your global flying and reduce your carbon footprint. Bill Gates has no idea that average workers cannot afford to pay for his pipe dream.
oh he probably knows
he just doesnt care!
since he swapped to OWN the disc of your programs moved to buy loaded and buy again n again
pay for mail
pay for office etc
the mans raking it in
all his “philanthropy” gets him huge tax rebates
he doesnt lose in any way
man makes my skin crawl
The United States of America has spent over $40 Billion since 1990 on Climate Change, does he really think another $35 Billion this late in the game is going find anything new?
I’ll give him credit for his dedication to philanthropy (of course after his wife pushed him into it several years ago after Forbes listed their charity giving as zero ). He seems to have done a lot of good in several areas. But, his belief in “Global Warming” just shows his technical incompetence. He’s another one of those left coast billionaires that continually express their “belief in science” without having the foggiest idea of what science is.
Baal Gates’ “dedication to philantropy” whaaaat?
Last I checked, he caused an epidemic of microcephalia by vaccination, as well as surges in polio, cancer, death, infertility…..
Name one single thing this man actually GAVE the world
GMO seeds to African farmers that cannot afford the chemical support for those ‘wonder crops’ and end up losing their land to ‘financing schemes’ they were carefully not explained the full repercussions of. Farmer suicide ebcause of GMO contracts was the leading cause of suicedes worldwide just the other day, probably still is.
He promotes the Covid hoax for personal gain and agrandisement, causing what will probably end up in a suicide spree eclipsing the farmers of India.
He sponsors gender equality propaganda in societies not industrialised enough, causing cultural trauma and religious dissent.
He SELLS school network software that spies on the children.
He gives away ‘free’ vaccines that contractually trap unsophisticated governments into privatising their health industry.
His father started the wholesale industry in unborn baby harvesting, which he heartily cexpanded internationaly.
He has publically stated that 300 million people is all his earth needs.
Philantropist my backside!
Referring to yourself as being paranoid is the only accurate thing you have written
What? No way did this man become the world’s richest on intellect.
He did it by acquiring CPM from Gary Kildall under false pretenses, who BTW passed away penniless. I’ll bet that this guilt is the driving force behind his foundation …
The sloppy work of MS did spawn another big business opportunity, which is the multi-billion dollar anti-virus market whose sole purpose was to remede the failures of DOS/WINDOS. This has its parallels to ‘green’ energy, which is yet another unnecessary cost to society.
Yep… We all know Gates/Allen did nothing but con and steal. They stole intellectual capital, got sued, settled out of court – result: no judgment. They stole Word Perfect, Lotus, Boreland, Sun Microsytems, Java, and plenty other – got sued, settled out of court – result: no judgement. Nothing MS has or does is legitimate. IBM handed DOS to these two clowns. Gates father was a eugenicist, like father, like son. Gates the pedo friend of Epstein. Gates thinks he is a god. Uses his stolen billions to fund vaccines that do permanent harm…sterilizing girls, delivering polio to otherwise healthy young. Oh by the way, he thinks it should be mandatory YOU receive his vaccines… paid for by the public tax payers. Otherwise, he is a nice guy.
Bill Gates should fund it on his own. He’s rich enough. Dang asshat.
Gates is covering the huge carbon footprint of his server farms with virtue signalling bucks. Bezos is following Gates lead for his company footprint in air transportation of made-in-China techno-baubles, Branson in air travel….they know the ecolytes won’t bite the hand that finances their activities….
Speaking of server farms, I noticed “green” Google is building one adjacent to a 1.7 GW gas fired power facility outside of Midlothian, TX. I wonder if they will plant trees around it to carbon compensate and grow the largest urban forest known to Mann.
It’s not worth the money. The critical flaw with “renewable” energy sources rests with two points: 1) we can’t prevent clouds from making photovoltaic sources unpredictable, and 2) we can’t make the wind blow constantly in order to prevent making wind turbine sources unpredictable.
The money would be better spent on building nuclear power plants. Something known to work.
Here you go:
1 – No breeze or wind, no turbine blades turning –> NO ENERGY GENERATED
2 – No sunshine (night time, cloudy day, fog, snowstorm, rain, tornado, whatever) –> NO ENERGY GENERATED
It’s that simple. My electric bill is very reasonable. I shudder to think what will happen to it under this blankety-blank’s ideas.
It’s worse. The wind has to blow within range. Also, they are a veritable blight on the environment, not limited to gauntlets for birds, bats, etc. Renewable drivers, disposable converters. Gray energy.
I say we can avoid a “climate catastrophe” by doing nothing. Prove me wrong.
I love how there is always an upside to government spending, never a downside. Notwithstanding the fact that sending money to Washington and then having it trickle back out is the most inefficient way to fund anything, what about the negative effects of increased taxation to pay for this or increased borrowing which leads us closer to the time when the US dollar goes the way of the Zimbabwe dollar?
Cooling. Warming. Change. Undeniable. Unfalsifiable. A renewable cause for redistributive change.
When someone can pack the energy density, utility, transportability, low cost and safety of liquid hydrocarbon fuels into some new molecule, we will have solved the energy crisis. Suggestions?
UO2 pellets.
Is there an energy crisis now?
When I can purchase gasoline at $1.70/gallon to meet my transportation needs and heat and power my house for a few dollars/day, I don’t see it. That’s not to say that the threat of stupidity doesn’t exist.
Gates must first prove that this will work and is economical by spending (squandering?) his own money on the research before expecting the taxpayer to contribute.
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Rita Mae Brown
A simple check of the numbers show that Renewables can’t do the job when they are scaled up. Yes, if you have an isolated cabin, solar might be a good solution when compared to dragging a power line in from 50 miles off but if the connection is only a few feet, the grid is the way to go. We have had around 70 years experience with atomic power and understand it pretty well. Pallo verde provides power to Arizona and California with the only down side of finding cooling water. Up to now they have been using recycled waste water but now there is another demand for that, they are looking elsewhere for water.
We already have working designs but could quickly go with fast neutron reactor that can burn the waste from existing reactors. The money spent on renewables could give us thorium reactors which would be even a better solution. To bad it’s not possible to expose just how bad of idea renewables are. The population will have to learn this lesson the hard way and hopefully the deaths caused by this lesson will be few.
We already have people who die in the winter because it cost too much to heat their house and others who die in the summer because of the cost of cooling their house. More will die because the cost of producing and preserving food with go up. Cheap and reliable energy is what makes modern life possible and without it, we will live like people did 150 years ago.
I would love to remove the main breaker on the houses of the people pushing renewable and see just how long it is before they replace it.
Climate schlimate. First, we need a National Institutes for the Defense Against Space Aliens (NIDASA). The US needs to take the lead in the global struggle against space alien invasion, before it’s too late. A branch could also deal with the fight against zombies, werewolves, and vampires. Together, we can do this!
Why doesn’t Bill Gates put his money where his mouth is, and invest that money himself? It’s about a third of his net worth, he’ll never miss that money, and he can even invest the rest after his demise. Elon Musk has been doing that, look at the results he’s getting on Spacex and Tesla. C’mon Bill, lead from the front!
Oh dear … my BS detector just went off.
Bill Gates should stick to computer programming, help out Microsoft.
It is absurd for him to proclaim himself an energy expert.
He went to college, but never graduated.
If he had no money, no one would listen to him.
Al Core is another such charletan
Both travel on PRIVATE planes, spewing CO2 all over the planet.
Here is some food for thought regarding world energy.
WORLD AND US PRIMARY ENERGY CONSUMPTION AND CAPITAL COST
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/world-total-energy-consumption
World energy consumption is projected to increase to 736 quads in 2040 from 575 quads in 2015, an increase of 28%, according to the latest from the US Energy Information Administration. EIA.
See URL and click on PPT to access data, click on to page 4 of PowerPoint
https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/ieo/
Most of this growth is expected to come from countries that are not in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD, and especially from countries where demand is driven by strong economic growth, particularly in Asia.
Non-OECD Asia, which includes China and India, accounted for more than 60% of the world’s total increase in energy consumption from 2015 through 2040.
PARIS AGREEMENTS
China, India, and other developing Asian countries, and Africa, and Middle and South America need to use low-cost energy, such as coal, to be competitive.
They would not have signed up for “Paris”, if they had not been allowed to be more or less exempt from the Paris agreements
Obama agreed to commit the US to the Paris agreements, i.e., be subject to its financial and other obligations for decades.
However, he never submitted the commitment to the US Senate for ratification, as required by the US Constitution.
Trump rescinded the commitment. It became effective 3 years later, one day after the US presidential elections on November 3, 2020.
If the US had not left “Paris”, a UN Council likely would have determined a level of renewable energy, RE, spending, say $500 billion/y, for distributing to various poorer countries by UN bureaucrats.
The Council would have assessed OECD members, likely in proportion to their GDPs.
The US and Europe would have been assessed at 100 to 150 billion dollars/y each.
The non-OECD countries likely would continue to be more or less exempt from paying for the Paris agreements.
SUMMARY OF CAPITAL EXPENDITURES, CAPEX
50% RE by 2050
World CAPEX for RE were $2,652.2 billion for 2010-2019, 10 years
World CAPEX for RE were $282.2 billion in 2019.
World CAPEX for RE would be $24,781 billion for 2019 – 2050, 32 years; compound growth 5.76%/y
US CAPEX for RE were $494.5 billion for 2010 – 2019, 10 years.
US CAPEX for RE were $59 billion in 2019.
US CAPEX for RE would be $7,233 billion for 2019 – 2050, 32 years; compound growth 8.81%/y
100% RE by 2050
World CAPEX for RE were $2,652.2 billion for 2010-2019, 10 years
World CAPEX for RE were $282.2 billion in 2019.
World CAPEX for RE would be $60,987 billion for 2019 – 2050, 32 years; compound growth 10.08%/y
US CAPEX for RE were $494.5 billion for 2010 – 2019, 10 years.
US CAPEX for RE were $59 billion in 2019.
US CAPEX for RE would be $16,988 billion for 2019 – 2050, 32 years; compound growth 13.42%/y
CAVIATS
The above CAPEX numbers relate to having 50% RE, or 100% RE, in the primary energy mix by 2050, which represents a very narrow area of “fighting climate change”. See Appendix for definitions of source, primary and upstream energy.
1) There are a vast number of systems and activities requiring fossil fuel feedstocks to produce millions of every-day products and services. What would replace these fossil fuel feedstocks? Biofuels would require more than a billion of acres of fertile land.
http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/world-land-area-needed-for-replacing-fossil-fuels-with-biofuels
http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/politically-inspired-marginally-effective-corn-to-ethanol-program
http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/excessive-predictions-of-future-biomass-and-biofuel-consumption
http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/biofuels-from-pond-algae
http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/replacing-gasoline-and-diesel-fuel-with-biofuels
2) Reforming transportation systems and vehicles, and rebuilding almost all buildings, including housing, would be required to reduce their energy consumption by at least 50%. The world fleet of cruise ships and private yachts and private planes would be outlawed?
Any costs (in the US at least $50 trillion) associated with these 2 items are excluded from the CAPEX numbers.
Any costs for on-going replacements of mostly, short-life RE systems, are excluded from the CAPEX numbers.
NOTE: Achieving 100% RE by 2050, as a slogan, sounds attractive. It likely would be not feasible for a multitude of reasons.
World RE was about 100.18 quads, or 15.98% of total energy consumption in 2019, per EIA.
EIA projects world RE at 252.25 quads, or about 252.2 / 910.69 = 27.7% of world energy consumption by end 2050
See table 1A.
See URL, click on PPT to access data, click on page 4 of PowerPoint for inter-active graph.
https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/ieo/
Correction needed: “Bill Gates gives $35 Billion per Year for Renewable Energy Research”
Where does the line form?
If the politicians fund the farce the cronies will walk away from failed projects by the hundreds
Bill Gates’ estimated net worth in 2020 is $118 billion USD.
So, I welcome him putting his money where his mouth is, and contributing the full amount of what he asking of others in order to fund one of his pet projects. He should be able to do such for at least the first full three years, by which time we will all know if that spending made any meaningful impact on climate change™.
Take the lead on climate change, off the cliff that is where it leads. Will he suffer with the rest of us if he succeeds, fat chance of that.
Poor Bill is lost in the jungle of idiocy. There is no climate problem. Hence, there is no need to reinvent the energy industry. Market forces will drive future innovation and replace fossil fuels as they become too expensive.
And his message, “Working from home” says to me that Bill is what this guy says about China:
I thought Bill Gates concluded that renewable energy could contribute only a small fraction of our energy needs and that nuclear power was essential.
The ultra-wealthy are a problem that needs to be addressed. The traits essential to becoming a billionaire are ruthlessness, amorality and all consuming ambition. Along with usually stealing someone else’s idea. When such a person becomes a billionaire, they are now an enabled a person with such traits.
Even many of the supposed philanthropic organizations created by the ultra-wealthy are problematic. Just about every one of them magically transform into agitators for left wing causes such as Rockefeller, Ford, Pew, MacArthur foundations.
Just about every billionaire leans left. Most of the others fund either nutty libertarian or warmongering neoconservative causes.
FU, Mr. Bill.
Hey, how about that idea for coal fusion? It didn’t work before but, maybe if they used a different type of coal, like brown coal, it would. First, you burn the coal and make hydrogen…
Well, Gates seems to get part of the Copenhagen consensus contention that we must spend heavily on R&D to to find the next useful energy source.
Also, this means he admits the current renewable sources are useless.
Coupled with Musk admitting his battery plants need useful solid power instead of the useless intermittent variety, that is a start