Gates and MS Don't See Eye-To-Eye On CO2

Sam Machkovech writes "Bill Gates's speech at last week's TED Conference centered on 'moving to zero-carbon energy, and our need to reduce CO2 emissions 80% by 2050.' His choice of subject was an abrupt turn from The Gates Foundation's typical humanitarian topics, but he insisted that energy innovation is crucial to his Foundation's goals. A move by Microsoft today proves that Gates's old company has less interest in that carbon-neutral goal — Microsoft has begun campaigning against a bridge redesign that would result in more bus and transit options for commuters between Seattle and the company's homebase of Redmond, WA."

Comments

Devil's advocate

[Manip]

The changes Microsoft made to both Windows Vista and 7 have resulted in more CO2 savings that most other efforts combined. I am of course talking about the default and recommended power settings in Windows along with the "best practice" guidelines given to their corporate partners. Microsoft has also added support for power saving features to Windows ahead of what the hardware and or drivers in the market offered...

Re:Devil's advocate

[ShakaUVM]

>>The changes Microsoft made to both Windows Vista and 7 have resulted in more CO2 savings that most other efforts combined.

Which is really sad, since the overall effect is quite small.

If we'd gone nuclear since the 70s, we'd have met every CO2 target out there today, and we wouldn't be having all this annoying debate. Well, we'd be having some kind of annoying debate, but not so much over CO2 production.

I watched that talk by Gates a few days ago, and he has an interesting design for a nuclear reactor, that basically would work like burning a candle - "burning" starts on one end of the nuclear log and proceeds down the log until 50 years later, when you pop it out and put a new log in. The little bit of waste left over could be put into a new log, and it runs on unenriched uranium, which makes fuel a lot less expensive, and a lot more available. It could all be a pipe dream, but it would be great if they could get it working. Given that Gates can bankroll all the R&D out of his deep pockets, I'm cautiously optimistic about Terrapower.

The sad thing is that environmentalists have a sort of knee jerk reaction every time they hear the word nuclear, even though it is the only power source that is cheap, safe, and good for the environment. The only people who oppose it are the ignorant (Nuclear Power means Nuclear War!) or people who think life would be AWESOME if we could all go back to living in caves.

Re:I, for one, am shocked...

[MozeeToby]

nobody puts money into malaria research except for philanthropic reasons

Oh I don't know, they can't very well buy MS products if they're dead now can they?

In all seriousness, why is giving '3rd world kiddies' free access to your companies software cynical? Ok, yes you can make the argument that you're trying to indoctrinate them, but isn't it more likely that Bill Gates genuinely believes that MS products are some of the best available and that the kids should have the best available products? Especially since, given his contacts, the software can be had at little to no cost? Not every act of a millionaire is duplicitous, it seems to me that he's just trying to do the most good possible. His opinion of the software may be wrong, but I doubt that he is conciously trying to brainwash the developing world.