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Bill Gates To Headline Paris Climate Talks
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!
I would have got a frosty, but my Win 98 machine threw a goddam BSOD again!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
This story will generate rational discussion on Slashdot.
I heard that $640 was enough for anyone.
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 doesn't want us to burn diesel, why did He made it so nice to burn?
http://www.the-american-intere...
I heard they tried to get Fetty Wap to headline, but they didn't want to meet his price.
https://youtu.be/wxMZkhWum64
You are welcome on my lawn.
Conservatives who control oil, natural gas and coal seem to wield power and money; are they not elite?
Sure, but you can choose to a certain extent not do business with them. Good luck trying to do that with the EPA.
They should have bombed Syrian oil facilities. That would have been a 2 for 1 - rid ISIS of their revenue stream, and prevent more global warming by destroying the facilities that would bring more oil into the market.
But Gates is on the same page as the people who are on the jihad against global warming. So what's the problem?
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...
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.
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.
The ISIS leader is not about to bomb any Syrian oil facilities. He refused for a long time to bomb any oil transport trucks on the lame excuse that some of the drivers might be civilians! Really?
Haven't y'all figured it out by now?
Right, just don't burn it all at once.
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 eliminating ISIS, they like this conflict because its an excuse for them to kill a lot of Kurds and for a lot of Kurds to otherwise be killed by ISIS. The refugee issue does not concern them, its irritating but they know the US will lose interest eventual and which point they will just have those people killed or drive them back over the boarder. There is a reason they keep them in camps rather than be absorbed into a culturally similar enough place where they could probably successfully integrate.
Meanwhile again primarily because Obama has his nose out of joint not having gotten his way in Ukraine, we have to have some on going feud with Russia. Who actually does have a vested interest in seeing Islamic terror and ISIS dealt within, AND the good sense to realize that there are no good actors. These 'moderates' no longer exist in any kind of useful numbers there if they ever did. There isn't a good reason to pick one radical expansionist ideology over another. Its just a different kind of bad news. Assad actually IS the best of bad choices he is secular and by all accounts was pretty well content to be a big fish in his small pound. Much like Qaddafi was in Libya before we kicked that bees nest over. These people are nasty but containable. The Islamists are not! They seem moderate because the down and out groups are pragmatic they set achievable goals, those in turn sound reasonable to us but the truth is once their power grows so will their ambition. They won't be any less dangerous than ISIS.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
I don't agree that he's an ISIS leader. I think that after his term is over, he will be competing w/ Abu Baqr al Baghdadi for the mantle of Caliph. Which is why he wants ISIS itself routed, but the reputation of Islam to stay intact. Whether or not he is Muslim, I don't know, but I do think that he seriously wants the Caliph's title
Syria does have an oil industry, 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 abandoned him since the sectarian fissures came to the fore since the start of the Arab Spring in Syria, and Hizbullah is up to its nose in helping prop up his regime. One thing that I find bizarre listening to Marco Rubio is the pretension that the Arab Sunnis would be our boots on the ground. The reason ISIS owns that place now is that the Arab Sunnis are solidly behind them - the numbers supporting FSA, al Nusra, Khorasan Group, et al are trivial in comparison. So the idea that Arab Sunnis would help police that area is like expecting Iraq's Shia to protect their Christians, and we all saw where that went.
While I disagree w/ Russia in the Donbass, they are a mixed bag when it comes to this region. They are right that Assad is the best of a bad lot, and have good reasons to support him, other than their own self interests in the region. Their support to Iran however is troublesome, and plays into the hands of those who bunch them w/ Iran and Syria.
Also, the civil war in Syria serves a good end - it ties up ISIS, Hizbullah, al Nusra et al in fighting each other, and when they do that, they are less effective elsewhere. Yeah, there are Jihadi groups worldwide who swear allegiance to ISIS, and ISIS does have a great online recruiting apparatus. However, ending the civil war in Syria just frees up everybody to commit Jihad against the West - whether it's ISIS, Hizbullah (who was very active in Latin America), and other Jihadi operations.
That then leaves the question of the refugees - how does one deal w/ them? Simple - let Turkey know that Europe won't take in their refugees, and arrange to move them to other Arab countries. If they are Shia or Alawite refugees, move them to Iraq, and if they are Sunni Arab refugees, move them to Saudi Arabia. Arm twist Saudi Arabia to take them, maybe in their northern areas bordering Jordan and Iraq, and keep them there until the situation stabilizes. After all, nowhere in Europe or America would refugees find a compatible cultural environment: they'd have to learn new languages, new cultures, and there would be friction w/ local populations already increasingly concerned about more Muslims in the West, which also brings w/ it more Jihadis. Instead, send them to Saudi Arabia, where just about everything is common, and they'd just have to adjust to the cultural variations of the Saudis. It serves the Saudis as well: right now, they have a lot of low skilled labor from East Asian countries, whose people ain't Arab, and often ain't Muslims either. If Syrians go in to replace them, then the Saudis don't have to worry about their population being diluted by non-Arabs, and also get their labor shortages addressed.
Clean fuels would indeed be awesome. Unfortunately when we apply commercial interference and box ticking, we end up with something worse. i.e. replacing CO2 with No2 in the UK, just to meet carbon emissions targets specifically, has been a terrible health blight on Britain's air quality. The road to hell, good intentions and all that.
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, have a negative effect on the actual progress in the field.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org