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.
People like Bill and Warren Buffett are different from you and I – they have more money….and, it seems like the more they give….the more they accumulate – odd, no?
Money or no, it appears that Gates is aging at a faster rate than Buffet. He looks old for his age.
You’re absolutely right. He looks old and frail … and not very healthy. I thought it was just me observing that.
He should put his own spare billions into fusion R&D.
+100
If there is ANYTHING in human history that has been researched and experimented with extensively, to the MAX, it is alterative energy. My goodness: sailboats, wind mills, hydro, geothermal, biomass, burning food (ethanol,) magnetohydrodynamics, billions and billions on fusion power, cold fusion, tidal power, offshore wind which sounds good until you understand corrosion, photovoltaics, gas from garbage dumps, am I missing anything? Oh, and from Jules Verne, you can generate power from wires deep in the ocean, but not much.
Anyone who thinks there is some new source of power out there and we just have not been looking hard enough is a Fricking Idiot, even if he or she is smarter than IBM. Do you know that IBM being stupid gave us Bill Gates AND Ross Perot, who gave us Bill Clinton?
The media listen to this man. I say he should be quiet. He is just another lottery winner….
There is always another energy source, just have to figure out what it is
What it isn’t is already proven, solar, wind etc, proven to have failed
Useless, costly, destructive
Oh really? Fusion will probably be it, someday, but not anytime soon, to recreate the conditions at the center of a star, not so easy. Assuming we can do room-temperature superconductors, and we are getting closer, not close but closer, to those, superconducting magnets will give fusion a fighting chance.
Those who say fusion is ten years out, well we have been hearing that for quite a while. Could be a bit longer yet. Fusion is also the key to interstellar travel. Hope I live to see both…
” …. well funded renewable energy public servants will be pouring out world changing green energy innovations, to liberate us all from fossil fuel.”
It’s already started in Denmark.
“The Danish climate minister closing down the oil industry for good
Dan Jørgensen has agreed the world’s most ambitious climate goal with a promise to cut 70% of emissions by 2030”
“Denmark’s climate minister is fairly certain that the deal to close down the nation’s oil industry by 2050, announced on Friday morning, marks the biggest moment in his career.”
“I think this is probably going to be the biggest decision that I’m a part of in my life,” Dan Jørgensen tells the Guardian hours after the announcement.
I think it will be, also, but not in the way he thinks.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/05/the-danish-climate-minister-closing-down-the-oil-industry-for-good
Infection happens. Its progress (i.e. disease) is correlated with certain comorbidities correlated with age. At least he doesn’t have to wear a mask, which decrease infection by 4% and increase infection by 2% in general use.
Remember: Bill is a college dropout.
Which means exactly zip. I’d rather solve a problem with a dozen plumbers than a collection of every gender studies graduate ever made.
Come on Bill, spend a few minutes a day reading this blog. And also a few minutes a day discussing climate science with some real scientists like Doctors William Happer, Judith Curry, John Christy, Richard Lindzen, and Nir Shaviv to name a few. You might learn something for example, that CO2 is plant food and we need about 3 times as much as is currently in the atmosphere to feed the expanding world population which will reach 10 Billion by the 21st Century. You don’t need 35 B $’s to do that.
Per Wikipedia CO2 is, “Carbon dioxide is also produced through respiration by air-breathing organisms, by forests at night, industrial processes and natural disasters. … Thus, carbon dioxide is one of the most essential elements for life on Earth. It should, therefore, be considered an important friend. Jul 11, 2015”
How about just a few billion for nuclear power generation research? Seems like that is the solution for safe, cheap, sustainable, clean, unlimited, constant, dependable, and CO2 free electrical power generation. Obviously these elite geniuses do not care about CO2 propelled climate change, protecting the environment, or the economic prosperity of the people of the world. Pure stupid hypocrites –all of them.
He needs to fund this himself. And stay away from the Fauci and the Death Vaccine. He’s just like Soros in doing evil.
I am not going to listen to someone who use his non-profit as a tax dodge. People like Bill Gates create a non-profit, donate their money to the non-profit and count it as a charitable donation to pay less tax, and then that non-profit will pay a large salary to the very same person who donated the money. I will start taking CAGW, COVID-19, and renewables seriously when, and only when, the people pushing it start living the way they command us to live.
I wonder how much more we’d have to spend for time travel, cause I’d rather have that.
His statements about the NIH are just unbelievable. Heart disease is an epidemic and life expectancy is falling.
Doctors may be able to temporarily save dying patients at great expense, but the disease is progressive and still eventually kills the patient. The NIH has really made no progress on preventing chronic disease. Half the population has diabetes which causes all of the diseases of old age.
Bill Gates is a computer programmer, not an engineer. It took IBM, Sanyo, and others to actually bring the PC to everyone.
It seems to be only computer programmers and the like that actually believe in CAGW and unreliable wind and solar as an answer to anything.
My guess is that Bill Gates compound has a backup generator running either natural gas or diesel. Let him get rid of his backup power before telling us “little” people we need to depend on unreliable, intermittent power even in the dead of winter!
Kevin: “I thought Bill Gates concluded that renewable energy could contribute only a small fraction of our energy needs and that nuclear power was essential.”
Choosing wind, solar, and nuclear over natural gas as a replacement for coal is strictly a public policy decision.
Left to its own devices, the power market in the US would shift decisively towards gas-fired generation. It’s the most profitable means of generating large quantities of electrical energy 24/7/365 while also being far less damaging environmentally than is coal. Assuming that fracking continues to be allowed in the US and that construction of the necessary pipeline capacity for supporting new gas-fired plants is approved and permitted.
Bill Gates is a major investor in Terrapower, a traveling-wave molten salt reactor design. IMHO, we will not see true commercialization and an initial deployment of this kind of reactor technology in a commercial power plant until the mid 2030’s at the earliest. That’s fifteen years away assuming no snags develop.
As are many other advocates of nuclear power in the United States, Bill Gates is counting on ever-rising prices for electricity to support the steep capital costs inherent in the nuclear technology he advocates.
As Bill Gates well knows, as advocates of other new reactor designs well know, steady penetration of the power markets by wind and solar is an essential part of raising the price of electricity to levels which can comfortably amortize nuclear’s high capital costs over the long time frames necessary to pay off those new plants.
Bill Gates is proposing a Molten Sodium Reactor. Yes I said Sodium, not Salt. The molten salt in the system will be used as an energy storage bolt-on alternative to Lithium batteries. From the two attached YouTube videos, it is very clear that this reactor design is a replacement for the methane powered jet engines electric turbines which provide backup to green energy, creating the illusion that green energy is reliable.
One of the objectives of this technology is to kill the Molten Salt Reactors and a future of save and inexpensive nuclear power.
US to Build Two New Advanced Nuclear Reactors
https://youtu.be/T43Od94e3HM
Bill Gates’ Nuclear Startup Unveils Mini Reactor Design Including Molten
https://youtu.be/ptJ8-NfNc90Sal
Michael Ronayne
Terrapower changed its reactor design and is now molten Sodium as coolant. See my post, with two videos, which should be in this comments section.
In an oxygen & water vapor atmosphere, how fast can you run?
Michael Ronayne
Yes, you are correct. TerraPower now has three reactor technologies under development:
Natrium Reactor and Integrated Energy Storage
Molten Chloride Fast Reactor
Traveling Wave Reactor
How soon will these new designs reach true commercialization? IMHO, it will be the mid-2030’s at the earliest before any of these three technologies will be seen in commercial operation.
In your list #3 is also a component of #1. There are only two reactor designs: (1) traveling wave with molten sodium as a coolant and (2) molton salt reactor, which from recent press releases appears to be dead in Bill’s universe. I am very disappointed. Let’s hope the leaders in India and Indonesia will not make the same error.
I do find the use of molten salt as an energy storage solution VERY interesting. It is very similar to Solar Towers, without the environmental devastation. Like Data Caching in networks , you need to apply it to the correct project.
It appears my original post is in Moderator Limbo.
Michael Ronayne
Bill Gates is proposing a Molten Sodium Reactor. Yes I said Sodium, not Salt. The molten salt in the system will be used as an energy storage bolt-on alternative to Lithium batteries. From the two attached YouTube videos, it is very clear that this reactor design is a replacement for the methane powered jet engines electric turbines which provide backup to green energy, creating the illusion that green energy is reliable.
One of the objectives of this technology is to kill the Molten Salt Reactors and a future of save and inexpensive nuclear power.
US to Build Two New Advanced Nuclear Reactors
https://youtu.be/T43Od94e3HM
Bill Gates’ Nuclear Startup Unveils Mini Reactor Design Including Molten
https://youtu.be/ptJ8-NfNc90Sal5
Michael Ronayne
To a progressive, the solution to every problem is more government.
Even problems that were caused by government in the first place.
“/u/ this is billclinton’s wife, hillary… can’t you tell!
(MAKINGUP FROM HOUSE)”
cheers
Bill Gates – I will take you seriously when you foot the first year’s $35,000,000,000 cost out of your wealth.
I think one of the things Bill doesn’t really understand is the concept of energy density, and the difficulty of harvesting energy from low density sources, per the Second Law.
Perhaps if he suddenly got to sell his products for only a few cents instead of hundreds or thousands of Dollars, then he might start to understand the economic consequences of moving away from fossil or nuclear fuels.
“This is the most important thing the U.S. can do to lead the world in innovations that will solve climate change,” Gates wrote.
OK boomer.
Bill Gates believes in climate change so much that he bought a seaside home for $43 million in San Diego county this year. A 10 foot sea level rise would be a real problem there. Maybe he plans a really big sea wall aroundit? Or hopes to get a big tax write-off?
https://www.realtor.com/news/celebrity-real-estate/bill-and-melinda-gates-purchase-beach-house-in-del-mar/
A second rate programmer and University drop out who got lucky.
An indictment of our celebrity dominated governments.
The sad decline of successful nations into Totalitarianism.
Gates should pay off the first year himself and see what he can accomplish with his money.