Bill Gates is heading a $1 billion venture fund to combat climate change

Point out news stories, on the net or in mainstream media, related to polywell fusion.

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Maui
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Re: Bill Gates is heading a $1 billion venture fund to combat climate change

Post by Maui »

Regarding gates' causes, yes, I find it upsetting that people of the mindset of choff and pbelter take offense to him spending his own money to address problems he is worried about. Maybe you don't believe in AGW. Maybe you don't believe those at risk of disease should concern us (at least compared to our own prosperity) but how can you fault someone for spending their own money on solving the problem. Maybe you think his concerns are misplaced, but certainly his heart is not. Ridicule is not deserved.

I also think it is interesting that prosperity is being invoked, when in both causes it is prosperity and even life that is at risk. Because it is not our personal prosperity and lives at risk, it is improper to have concern?

One other point on AGW. Let's just pretend the debate is completely balanced-- one group of "experts" say it isn't happening, the other group say it is. If "prosperity" is at risk for future generations, wouldn't the prudent move from a divested perspective be to examine the potential risk and potential solutions and put in place at least the ones that don't unduely threaten our own precious prosperity? Seems incredibly selfish to completely brush off the argument on one side and that it's only the prosperity of future generations we should risk, not our own.

This is certainly not to say we should cripple ourselves financially to erase all risk of AGW. In terms of public spending, though, the reality is the current modest investments are already making a big impact. There are other measures such as caps that might be even more efficient yet. And we certainly should consider, as RERT has suggested, exactly how bad the consequences of AGW will be. I'm certainly not convinced it's catastrophic. But I'm also not going to settle for accepting the advice of groups that claim the vast majority of scientists are conspiring against us to advance leftist governments on the issue. Let's have reasoned discussion, shall we?
Last edited by Maui on Sun Jan 01, 2017 2:17 am, edited 2 times in total.

paperburn1
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Re: Bill Gates is heading a $1 billion venture fund to combat climate change

Post by paperburn1 »

A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow.-MIB
I am not a nuclear physicist, but play one on the internet.

choff
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Re: Bill Gates is heading a $1 billion venture fund to combat climate change

Post by choff »

I will repeat myself, try farming in Greenland using the same crops and techniques as the Vikings, see how it works, simple experiment. Same with every other crop grown in the northernmost regions of Europe and China during the MWP. If you can do it, then I will say global warming is real. If you can't, it's complete horse$hit.

They did actually grow a few tiny grains of Barley in Greenland using modern techniques, then they wrapped it in Plastic immediately to keep it from mold. Nothing like feeding a population of 6000 without import, without electricity or engine power.

Thing is, if people 1000 years ago could adapt and thrive in a warming world, how are we such over-challenged wallflowers.

Every kid in N. America gets a dose of environmentalism drummed into his head starting from kindergarten, it's been going on for at least two generations of K through university and now they have anxiety problems as adults. Even with advanced degrees it's the new gospel replacing Christianity, in fact the smartest people are often the most sensitive and vulnerable to the brainwash. If it seems like crazy people are skeptics, maybe that's because the mind control program only works on normal people.

As I said before, SIMPLE EXPERIMENT, if you want to complain about my skepticism, directly address the SIMPLE EXPERIMENT.

As for Billy boys deep concern for our health.

http://www.sfaw.org/newswire/2014/11/13 ... s-vaccine/
CHoff

NotAPhysicist
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Re: Bill Gates is heading a $1 billion venture fund to combat climate change

Post by NotAPhysicist »

Wonderful to see how this is rumbling on after the break, not that I expected it not to but still..

Anyway, as a sort of aside this should prove interesting: http://arstechnica.co.uk/science/2016/1 ... mns-is-on/

This is a libel case being brought by climate scientists about repeated attacks on them in the media - the gist being that if you have been cleared of wrong doing by multiple independent investigations and the overwhelming expert evidence is with you then people don't get to call you corrupt without a) stating it as purely opinion (instead of imply it as just true) or b) having some convincing new evidence.

Anyway, as I say, be interesting. If they win then presumably the conspiracy crowd will go on about it all being a (further) conspiracy. If they lose (which kind of hinges on free speech and what constitutes libel so is quite possible) then they will say this vindicates their conspiracy belief - rather than saying something about libel laws.

From my perspective I'm not a huge fan of locking down open discussion with libel cases, this seems to happen far too much to block journalist (or scientists) from reporting uncomfortable findings in medical and other domains. That said, there does have to be a point where you can't just say any kind of rubbish you want and get away with it - especially without that being stated as opinion. So, hmm. Win or lose I don't expect this to contribute anything too useful to the climate debate though, in the win case, it might mean people have to be a bit more careful about brushing aside most of the science community as corrupt. Which I'd say isn't a bad thing, but then I would say that...

charliem
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Re: Bill Gates is heading a $1 billion venture fund to combat climate change

Post by charliem »

Until just a few years back I thought that fusion was the only kind of energy that could realistically substitute fossil fuels.

I'm glad to have been proved wrong. Renewable energy sources are getting there as we speak.

Now, that could be bad for fusion. If it takes (as Maui stated, and I concur) more than a decade to become commercially available, it is going to have to compete, not just with fossil fuels, but also with already fairly well established renewables. Unless fusion is reeeeeeally cheap (doubtful), the sunk capital and almost zero cost of operation of those renewables is going to be an obstacle to their replacement for fusion.

That is going to delay the adoption of fusion power further ... Ouch.

There are still certain applications where fusion will probably dominate easily, like oceanic vessel power plants, or even spaceships, but in electricity generation it is going to be a long fight.

It is not difficult to imagine that by the end of this century renewables and fusion could share domination over the energy markets, the first being the preferred source for utilities, because of its centralized nature, and the latter for the (many?) citizens that, after having tried it, like their energy independence, and for now underdeveloped nations that, as in the phone business, jumped the stage of building a national land [distribution] network.

And if fusion doesn't get cheap enough, of course, it will never be used for anything but a few specialized uses, like military or space applications.

One thing I disagree with Mr. Gates. I'm doubtful that developing fission tech further is the best use of his money. In my opinion, given the incredibly strong [sometimes irrational] public opposition to anything nuclear, even getting people to accept fusion is going to take some convincing; getting them to accept another, better, safer, form of fission would be a much tougher nut to crack, maybe impossible. A pity, but a reality, I'm afraid.
"The problem is not what we don't know, but what we do know [that] isn't so" (Mark Twain)

charliem
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Re: Bill Gates is heading a $1 billion venture fund to combat climate change

Post by charliem »

I forgot, for anyone interested in learning a bit about the innumerable ways in which the human mind "misfires" when trying to reason, I highly recommend these two books. They are not fairly technical so you don't need any training in psychology to follow them and, as I said before, they can be an eye opener:

Irrationality: The Enemy Within, by late British psychologist and researcher Stuart-Sutherland

Thinking, Fast and Slow, by psychology researcher and Nobel Prize in Economics Daniel Kahneman

Because the first step to fix a problem is recognizing there is one :wink:
"The problem is not what we don't know, but what we do know [that] isn't so" (Mark Twain)

ladajo
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Re: Bill Gates is heading a $1 billion venture fund to combat climate change

Post by ladajo »

Now, that could be bad for fusion. If it takes (as Maui stated, and I concur) more than a decade to become commercially available, it is going to have to compete, not just with fossil fuels, but also with already fairly well established renewables.
Yes, this is part of my reasoning to lay out an incremental and overlapping plan (and stick to it).

Right now: We can get off our butts and build better fission plants, even working towards distributed power while doing it. If we can escape the self-imposed massive bureaucracy and hype of the anti-nuclear useful idiots, we could be bringing new plants on-line in two years (or less). For every fission plant, be it pebble bed, improved PWRs, etc., that is another coal, gas, oil or other carbon plant offline.

Right now: Get serious about fusion research. While ITER will work, at incredible cost, it is still at best a multi-decade path to scaling the plant (and costs) down as it teaches us more about donut plasmas, and plasma in general. Even if we went all in for a proposal, like Polywell, it would still be 5 to 10 years before we would see the first commercial plant (maybe). Basic science is slow and hard, and like it or not, we are still in basic science realm with fusion (including Polywell).

Moving forward: Expand known renewables, like solar, wind, tide, etc. We can seek economies of scale, and also tie this into the distributed network. It is still a win if you are floating fission (and other) plants during high renewable production periods. This strategy is a holding pattern approach that in itself can have singular benefits while we seek the longer term fusion solution.

When (if) fusion comes on line, say two decades from now (not via ITER path), then we can start shutting down/converting fission plants. The spent fuel and byproducts can be mitigated by using advanced fission or new fusion plants to burn them off. (Or we can shoot them into the sun using shiny new EM Drive trucks...)

The long run: Civilization using fusion and renewable sources in a distributed fashion that is now also looking to the stars, and moving out from our one stop death trap home planet. As a species, the only way we can continue is to get into interstellar space (in multiple directions). Eventually, we will need to move to inter-galactic space as well. Or, we can just quit.

The fall back: If fusion does not play out in a reasonable timeline, or ITER is a big flop, we still have the advances made in fission and renewables. Getting off carbon is smart. Harvesting energy in the least intrusive manners to our environment is smart.
The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells. (Hazlitt)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)

ladajo
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Re: Bill Gates is heading a $1 billion venture fund to combat climate change

Post by ladajo »

Oh, and Happy New Year.
The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells. (Hazlitt)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)

Maui
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Re: Bill Gates is heading a $1 billion venture fund to combat climate change

Post by Maui »

Choff, then it sounds like I'm even more in-line with Gates' concerns... as I said at the top of this thread, I think human overpopulation is a bigger problem than AGW. If AGW is an "inconvenient truth", overpopulation is even more so.

But Gates and UN are intentionally lacing vaccines with anti-ferility drugs? Come on choff... don't u tire of such garbage? As someone that purports to be "skeptical", why not apply at least a trivial amount for claims that just reek of garbage? I'd take responding to your arguments a lot more seriously if u didnt throw out stuff like this.

As per Greenland, I think I've been pretty clear that I have no disagreement with examining exactly how serious the potential consequences of AGW. It's a conversation that is difficult to have though, because it's rare to be able to get past whether AGW is happening.

pbelter
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Re: Bill Gates is heading a $1 billion venture fund to combat climate change

Post by pbelter »

So I have been away for few days enjoying New Year parties and when I come back there is a talk about conspiracy theories here coming form the AGW church?

Guys, this is a science forum, if you like to indulge yourselves in the conspiracy theories stuff, I bet there are plenty of other places to do so. Your conspiracy theories may even be true I don't care, but Ockham's Razor says they should not be believed. I am tired of hearing that stuff in the daily news" "Russians rigged US election" or something.

Every I see "conspiracy" in someone's post I just loose interest. Sorry, I can't bring myself to read the rest.

paperburn1
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Re: Bill Gates is heading a $1 billion venture fund to combat climate change

Post by paperburn1 »

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases ... 060514.php

The 1918 flu pandemic, known as the Spanish Flu, killed an estimated 50 million people around the world.

To assess this risk, Kawaoka and his team generated a flu virus composed of eight currently circulating gene segments encoding proteins that resemble the 1918 viral proteins. The resulting 1918-like virus caused flu-like symptoms in ferrets--the best animal model for studying flu virus infection. When the 1918-like virus acquired seven amino acid mutations in a few key proteins, it spread efficiently from animal to animal, suggesting that it has the potential to cause a pandemic.
SO a madman with a CRISPR–Cas9 technique kit and a couple of ferrets could change the population of the world.
TI understand the paper on this has been compartmented so its probably very easy to do.
And just to scre the pants off of you.
http://www.clontech.com/US/Products/Gen ... Ao2Z8P8HAQ
The Guide-it Genotype Confirmation Kit provides a simple method to determine if a given clone has mutations in one allele (monoallelic), both alleles (biallelic), or is unchanged (wild type). Expedite the laborious process of screening a large number of clones for those with the desired genotype.


Sleep tight my little uberkinder.......
I am not a nuclear physicist, but play one on the internet.

choff
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Re: Bill Gates is heading a $1 billion venture fund to combat climate change

Post by choff »

Maui wrote:Choff, then it sounds like I'm even more in-line with Gates' concerns... as I said at the top of this thread, I think human overpopulation is a bigger problem than AGW. If AGW is an "inconvenient truth", overpopulation is even more so.

But Gates and UN are intentionally lacing vaccines with anti-ferility drugs? Come on choff... don't u tire of such garbage? As someone that purports to be "skeptical", why not apply at least a trivial amount for claims that just reek of garbage? I'd take responding to your arguments a lot more seriously if u didnt throw out stuff like this.

As per Greenland, I think I've been pretty clear that I have no disagreement with examining exactly how serious the potential consequences of AGW. It's a conversation that is difficult to have though, because it's rare to be able to get past whether AGW is happening.
If Gates and a few of his ilk aren't too happy with the election result, I won't be surprised if the flyover states get sick, or sterile after flu jabs.

Your not directly addressing the Greenland Viking farm question, however. Those 1000 year old farms are still under deep snow in the summer. To function at all the earth had to go through a warm era long before the industrial revolution. A warming era far hotter than anything burning all available fossil fuel sources could ever possibly produce. A minimum 5 degrees hotter than present era, more likely 7 degrees hotter year round. Stop fudging the issue, face it head on, or admit that Climate Alarmism is religion and not science.
CHoff

charliem
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Re: Bill Gates is heading a $1 billion venture fund to combat climate change

Post by charliem »

pbelter wrote:So I have been away for few days enjoying New Year parties and when I come back there is a talk about conspiracy theories here coming form the AGW church?

Guys, this is a science forum, if you like to indulge yourselves in the conspiracy theories stuff, I bet there are plenty of other places to do so.
:D
paperburn1 wrote:The 1918 flu pandemic, known as the Spanish Flu, killed an estimated 50 million people around the world.

...a madman with a CRISPR–Cas9 technique kit and a couple of ferrets could change the population of the world.

Sleep tight my little uberkinder.......
:shock:
choff wrote:If Gates and a few of his ilk aren't too happy with the election result, I won't be surprised if the flyover states get sick, or sterile after flu jabs.
Now, THAT was funny. :lol:
"The problem is not what we don't know, but what we do know [that] isn't so" (Mark Twain)

pbelter
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Re: Bill Gates is heading a $1 billion venture fund to combat climate change

Post by pbelter »

charliem wrote:
pbelter wrote:So I have been away for few days enjoying New Year parties and when I come back there is a talk about conspiracy theories here coming form the AGW church?

Guys, this is a science forum, if you like to indulge yourselves in the conspiracy theories stuff, I bet there are plenty of other places to do so.
:D

You find conspiracies theories funny?

Indulge yourself.

hanelyp
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Re: Bill Gates is heading a $1 billion venture fund to combat climate change

Post by hanelyp »

choff wrote:Your not directly addressing the Greenland Viking farm question, however. Those 1000 year old farms are still under deep snow in the summer. To function at all the earth had to go through a warm era long before the industrial revolution. A warming era far hotter than anything burning all available fossil fuel sources could ever possibly produce. A minimum 5 degrees hotter than present era, more likely 7 degrees hotter year round. Stop fudging the issue, face it head on, or admit that Climate Alarmism is religion and not science.
Without denying such historic facts of climate variation before the industrial age, including warmer than current temperatures, carbon climatists have NOTHING. They have to portray "Unprecedented" shifts in climate to induce the panic needed to advance their political agenda.
The daylight is uncomfortably bright for eyes so long in the dark.

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