Bill Gates To Headline Paris Climate Talks 93
theodp writes: The NY Times and others report that Bill Gates will announce the creation of a multibillion-dollar clean energy fund on Monday at the opening of the two-week long Paris Climate Change Conference. The climate summit, which will be attended by President Obama and 100+ world leaders, is intended to forge a global accord to cut planet-warming emissions. The pending announcement was first reported by ClimateWire. A spokesman for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation did not respond to a request for comment. Let's hope it goes better than BillG school reform!
Denied! (Score:2, Funny)
I would have got a frosty, but my Win 98 machine threw a goddam BSOD again!
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Thus, having Bill Gates open up the talks where a bunch of Really Smart People tell us they're going to increase the weekly chocolate ration to 20g from 30g is strangely apropos.
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AGW won't necessarily imply chocolate rationing.
As the current cacao-growing regions become less productive, new regions might become suitable for planting.
Requiring, of course, foresight from confectionery corporations to take a long term view of agriculture...
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AGW won't necessarily imply chocolate rationing.
No, but the Orwellian nature [newspeakdictionary.com] of anthropogenic global climate non-constant change warming does.
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Aren't all these climate talks the political/economic equivalent of a BSOD?
These talks are mostly meaningless. The last big climate agreement was the Kyoto accords, and in the following years, the countries that had refused to sign/ratify collectively reduced their carbon emissions by more than those that did sign up. Signing an agreement to do something is very different from actually doing it.
Re:Denied! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Denied! (Score:4, Informative)
"The countries that have refused to sing/ratify"
Who are they?
The US (signed, but never ratified)
Canada (ratified, then withdrew in 2011)
Andorra
South Sudan
Palestine
The Vatican.
"collectively reduced their carbon emissions"
Ok, I'll ignore the minnows (I assume I can ignore the CO2 emissions of Andorra).
The idea is to reduce emissions from the 1990 base line, so how have the US and Canada done?
Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in te United States increased by about 7% between 1990 and 2013. [epa.gov]
and. looking at the graph, emissions rose steadily to 2008 then fell quite a bit. Seems causing a major economic downturn is the way the US cuts its emissions, not fracking.
And Canada? Same story, rose from 600 megatonnes C to 700, steady rise 'till 2008, sudden drop, then a slow rise since 2010-2011. [ec.gc.ca].
"by more than those that did sign up".
Well, no. The EU and Russia have reduced their emissions since 1990, Japan has very slightly increased them, but nothing like the emissions growth of the US or Canada.
Looks like you need to do a little more reading.
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The US (signed, but never ratified)
Canada (ratified, then withdrew in 2011)
Andorra
South Sudan
Palestine
The Vatican.
One of these is not a country.
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One of these is not a country.
Woosh.
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It's all fun and games til the Vatican pollutes the world with their heavy industrial sector.
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Sorry, I don't have a big enough spoon.
Oh Boy (Score:4, Funny)
This story will generate rational discussion on Slashdot.
Re: Oh Boy (Score:2)
the fact they have lost the world populations attention singing the climate change hymn won't stop them getting together to drink $100k bottles of wine and patting themselves on the back at what a good job they are doing controlling us and getting more and more people to pay them taxes and otherwise submit to their control.
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Wasn't Gates teaming up with the Chinese a few years back to look into thorium energy? [the-weinbe...dation.org]
It seems like he's one of the few people setting up money dedicated to basic research in energy.
Multimillion dollar fund? (Score:3)
I heard that $640 was enough for anyone.
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I hope his travel in France is powered by Diesel (Score:1)
Diesel is solar power done right. It is solar power in its most efficient and usable form. All those biomass that generated oil deposits didn't die for nothing. They transformed solar energy into oil so we don't have to pollute our rivers by making the solar panels, or to beg for China's mercy in order to make wind turbines, or to bury the homes of countless wildlife under water.
Diesel is clean, efficient, and it creates jobs. It's patriotic to use diesel-powered electricity. It's the American way.
If God
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Right, just don't burn it all at once.
Well, look what he can do with windows 10 (Score:1)
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Except, there is little oil and little petrol processing facility in Syria. The valuable stuff is in Iraq. Which for political reasons we can't bomb. We have to maintain the face that the current Iraqi government is something besides Iran's puppet and that the Iranians are any less radical and dangerous than ISIS. Because Obama has a legacy to protect.
Then there is the problem of our "allies" like Turkey who buy that oil and fund ISIS. The Turks are not our friends. They have no real interest if elimi
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Syria does have an oil industry [wikipedia.org], albeit nowhere near the magnitude of Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, et al. The thing that ISIS has control over and that Obama had refused to bomb was the facilities in Syria. While Iraq does have oil facilities, much, if not most, of that falls within Kurdistan, which is still not in ISIS hands.
That said, I completely agree w/ you that the Turks are not our friends, and that there are no good allies in the region. Assad is the best for now - Hamas and Islamic Jihad have aba
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pro-tip: Bill arrived at high monetary holdings for reasons other than his "climate management" skills.
And you arrived at your Anonymous commentary of his activities through zero skills.
Didn't read the rest, because see above...
4 of 24 nations have majorities that want a deal (Score:2)
http://www.the-american-intere... [the-americ...terest.com]
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Conservatives who control oil, natural gas and coal seem to wield power and money; are they not elite?
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Whatever gave you that ridiculous idea?
Oil, natural gas, and coal are controlled by government: they are usually mined from government lands under government license.
The companies doing the mining are usually publicly traded, which means that they are predominantly institutionally owned, mainly to pay for things like retirement.
Bill Gates to Headline? (Score:2)
I heard they tried to get Fetty Wap to headline, but they didn't want to meet his price.
https://youtu.be/wxMZkhWum64 [youtu.be]
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He has moved from business to philanthropy. The fundamentals of climate change are irrelevant (unless you are trying to say it's not true, in which case you are an idiot who will ignore the fundamentals anyway). He knows the fundamentals of public policy and fundraising, which is what this is about.
previous attempts have failed / been tokenized (Score:1)
problems (Score:2)
Let's hope it goes better than BillG school reform!
It won't. Bill suffers from the same ego problem that many successful people suffer from - thinking that because you were good at one thing means you are qualified to solving every other problem. But very few people are great in vastly different domains. Even most geniuses stick to at least one area.
Giving money to people who are real experts in a domain and giving them room to find solutions is a hundred times better than coming in as a celebrity and taking over with your own random idea. This can, in fact
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Giving money to people who are real experts in a domain and giving them room to find solutions is a hundred times better than coming in as a celebrity and taking over with your own random idea.
You know that Bill Gates isn't one guy doing all the work all by himself right? He employs thousands of people who are experts in their fields, and they do most of the hard slog. He just sits on top and uses his clout to open doors that wouldn't otherwise open.
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You know that Bill Gates isn't one guy doing all the work all by himself right?
Really? No, that's a total surprise to me.
The point is not who does the work. The point is who decides which path to take. And from what I've seen so far, Bill is anything but a hands-off manager. His education project is the way he thinks it should be done, and his malaria foundation does business with pharmacy companies that he holds stock in.
It might just be that he listens to his experts and then goes on stage selling their proposals as his ideas, but given his history with Microsoft and Windows and DOS
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I'm going to assume you aren't an expert in either education or malaria research, so who are you to say what is right or wrong? I don't know Bill from a bar of soap, but I know he has proven himself clever and successful, and I'll take that over some unknown internet forum poster any day of the week.
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Ironic that the very thing you disparage Bill Gates for you are doing yourself.
I'm running a multi-million dollar monopolistic company that harms technological progress and corners markets?
so who are you to say what is right or wrong?
I know little about education and almost nothing about malaria. So I'm not running around telling people how to run schools or cure people. But I know enough about philosophy and psychology to see your (and not just your) problem in thinking:
he has proven himself clever and successful, and I'll take that over some unknown internet forum poster any day of the week.
Bills success in exploiting the tech industry does not necessarily translate into any other knowledge. A lot of people who were genius scientists had brutally s
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Bills success in exploiting the tech industry does not necessarily translate into any other knowledge.
Bill was/is extremely successful in Business, and those skills are a lot more transferable than a physicist or actor trying to be a politician.
He may not be the most perfect candidate, but I'll take a rich billionaire trying to help educate people and reduce diseases than trying cause trouble (eg Koch, Murdoch etc)
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Bill was/is extremely successful in Business, and those skills are a lot more transferable than a physicist or actor trying to be a politician.
Why? You make a claim with no evidence.
To be a successful physicist, you have to be very smart, have a deep understanding of various topics, good math skills, good memory, good deduction abilities and the ability to find useful information in a flood of incoming data. All of that seems to be good qualifications for politics.
Or maybe not. The point is that this "business success == everything" meme is dangerous, and the fuck-up that our world has become thanks to neocons running the show is more proof of tha
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Why? You make a claim with no evidence.
Running a large software company is a business. Running an education program is a business. Running a medical program is a business. Pretending to be James Bond isn't, nor is solving equations.
To be a successful physicist, you have to be very smart, have a deep understanding of various topics, good math skills, good memory, good deduction abilities and the ability to find useful information in a flood of incoming data. All of that seems to be good qualifications for politics.
If you seriously believe that then I can't help you. Science, Arts and Politics are the most most disparate fields as you can get in life. Business falls under politics, as anyone who has graduated past peon worker, or runs their own business can attest to.
I don't mind him helping education. I just wish he would be humble enough to not think he is a genius who knows how to do it right, because that kind of people, especially in education, are a dime a dozen.
This makes no sense. Do you even understand how the Bill and M
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Running a large software company is a business. Running an education program is a business. Running a medical program is a business.
That's true, but hospitals don't have their MBAs in the operating room, for a reason. In education or medicine or other areas, there is the business side and the topical side.
Science, Arts and Politics are the most most disparate fields as you can get in life. Business falls under politics, as anyone who has graduated past peon worker, or runs their own business can attest to.
They are disparate, but some skills are transferable. I myself moved from IT into business and politics and if I may say so, fairly successfully. Then I moved back, and took some of the things I learnt there with me. Yes, there are new skills you need. But like learning another language, there are also some things that are similar, som