Bill Gates's New Version of the Einstein Letter 407
dcblogs writes "In 1939, Albert Einstein sent 'F.D. Roosevelt, President of the United States,' a letter with a warning about Germany's interest in a new type of energy with potential for use as a powerful bomb. The letter also outlined the competitive threat posed by Germany and steps for improving US research efforts. Last week, Bill Gates, along with GE's CEO and others, met with President Obama to deliver their own message: that of the top 30 companies in the world working on alternative energy, only four are in the US. Similar to Einstein's point and recommendations, Gates and his allies are asking the US to view the alternative energy push as a competitive threat posed by other nations, particularly China, which may be doing a better job in bringing its engineering talent and money to bear on this problem."
Can You Spot the Difference? (Score:5, Insightful)
Einstein warned of a horrible weapon. Gates is warning us that the most environmentally ravaged countries might be developing alternative energy (may god have mercy on our souls, lol).
Einstein acted alone and was not heavily invested in nuclear energy. Gates and his friends are heavily invested in alternative energy sources.
I'm no biographer of either but from what I know Einstein seemed to be motivated by things like the discovery of knowledge and genuine concern for mankind. Gates has (at least historically) seemed to be motivated by profit and money first above everything else with ideals similar to Einstein distantly following that primary motivator. Maybe he's changed but Einstein has always held a more altruistic image in my mind. That tends to happen to people long gone who made staggering advancements. Who knows, maybe revisionist history will see Gates alongside Einstein? But as it stands now, my personal opinion is that the two are not even close.
Bottom line: Einstein was a scientist who made great discoveries. Gates was a businessman who made great sales.
I'm not sold on Gates' motives. He sounds more like a lobbyist than a sage omen of caution like Einstein was.
Re:Can You Spot the Difference? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah its hardly the same. Comparing a letter that warns of Germany possessing a massive advantage in killing to one that warns a few US companies might lose their monopolies is stupid. If they want to advance research into alternative energy why don't they fund it? Without reading the recommendations I'm betting they're along the lines of subsidies, tax breaks & easing restrictions that prevent these companies maximizing profits.
Notice also that this is about alternative energy companies. If they want the US to look into alternative energy try getting the government to sign and ratify the Kyoto Protocol. That would force companies into looking at alternative energy. They're comfortable selling people non-renewable energy while constantly increasing prices due to scarcity so things will never change.
From their webpage they seem to want investment of $16 billion a year in alternative energy. Just the 7 listed on the front page have a combined equity of around $400 billion and yet they aren't willing to use that to fund it themselves.
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a few US companies might lose their monopolies is stupid.
Who says they have monopolies NOW? I think there's two issues here:
1. Due to loss of US competetion, certain products HAVE to be sourced from foreign countries; without the US contendor we have to deal with increased costs and waits.
2. Due to loss of US competition, we 'miss out' on a upcoming technological field. That means that we're out of the running, money going out of the USA, lower economy, etc...
If they want the US to look into alternative energy try getting the government to sign and ratify the Kyoto Protocol.
You mean the one where basically none of the countries with serious goals under it are compliant?
. Just the 7 listed on the front page have a combined equity of around $400 billion and yet they aren't willing to use that to fund it themselves.
Do t
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I think it reasonable to both point out that there are valid points in the company's position, AND point out that it in no way compares to Einstein's letter. There are lots of sound economic and moral reasons that the United States should be investing more money in alternative energy research, including (IMO) public money. Even opponents of doing so probably would not disagree that these reasons exist (even if that person thought there were MORE compelling reasons to do otherwise). Never the less, this
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If they want the US to look into alternative energy try getting the government to sign and ratify the Kyoto Protocol.
The USA signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1998 [unfccc.int]. Ratification is a different matter.
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The US solved the problem by providing asylum to German intellectuals escaping persecution at home. Perhaps the US could use the same approach to attract Chinese scientists.
On the other hand if those scientists are located in the EU, Russian Federation, or India, they're probably happy to stay where they are.
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Growing up in the tiny island of Taiwan I was taught through out my school year to regard the Chinese communists as the "commie bandits of 10,000 evils".... but that does prevent me from seeing how much China has progressed in the past few decades. The zomgzlolwtfbbqgreencard used to be synonymous with a pass to the garden of Eden, no longe
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Re:Can You Spot the Difference? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Can You Spot the Difference? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Can You Spot the Difference? (Score:5, Insightful)
You really do touch on something important. Energy powers the war machine. For instance, the US strategic energy reserve is for a massive war, not to heat homes in the winter. The current US doctrine is centered around ensuring access to energy resources. The two are linked, they are inseparable. An Army may run on it's stomach but fighter jets fly on fossil fuel. Alternative energy is the key to getting everyone to be better global citizens. Resource wars are a very real thing.
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To expand on this.
It's not only petroleum, it's all the commodities from steel to cocoa.
The elephant in the room that everyone is studiously ignoring while it begins to munch on the Canapés is that 'we' are currently living off several centuries of investment.
In 'the west' - since around the beginning of the industrial revolution, we have been putting down infrastructure that enables us to compete now - somewhat - on a global scale with other countries with vastly lower labour costs.
The somewhat is the
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While I agree with you almost completely, I think it's unfair to judge him based on his motives. Let me put it this way: Imagine yourself 100 years ago, and you had the opportunity to invest in the automobile. Would you do it because you wanted to make sure that cars came around, or because there would be massive profit when cars did come around?
Bill Gates, while motivated by money, is not necessarily evil. The reason he is heavily invested in alternative energy sources is that he KNOWS its coming. He knows
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This isn't altruism, he's not doing it for humanities good. He's not just saying it's a good investment or trying to motivate people into researching alternatives to oil. It's the same business practices as before, scare the govern
Gates is just playing it smart (Score:2)
Re:Can You Spot the Difference? (Score:5, Insightful)
Simply trying to compare Gates to Einstein reeks of arrogance. Gates is a Rockefeller or, at best, an Edison. He's a titan of industry rather than a luminary thinker.
Trying to paint a cut-throat businessman as some sort of visionary is ridiculous and insulting. This is like proposing to have Stephen Hawking at the helm of reconstruction at General Motors..
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This is like proposing to have Stephen Hawking at the helm of reconstruction at General Motors
Then we could have cars powered by black holes!
Re:Can You Spot the Difference? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually you're totally wrong.
Einstein acted alone and was not heavily invested in nuclear energy. Gates and his friends are heavily invested in alternative energy sources.
"The Einstein–Szilárd letter was a letter sent to United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt on August 2, 1939, that was signed by Albert Einstein but largely written by Leó Szilárd in consultation with fellow Hungarian physicists Edward Teller and Eugene Wigner."
Szilárd had a patent on nuclear chain reaction.
Szilárd and Fermi had patent on nuclear-power plant design.
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I'm not sold on Gates' motives. He sounds more like a lobbyist than a sage omen of caution like Einstein was.
Don't forget that Gates is one of the greatest philanthropists in history and at this stage in his life he's probably spent more time and effort on giving money and directing its use to solve world problems in which he has no stake than he has working to make and sell computer software. If prominent American should have some sort of credibility when it comes to altruism, it's Bill Gates.
On the other hand, this meeting isn't a very close parallel with Einstein's letter. That's not because Bill Gates is sin
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Einstein was a genius. Gates is a moron.
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"from what I know Einstein seemed to be motivated by things like the discovery of knowledge and genuine concern for mankind." - the real motiviation behind the "Eistein" letter was Leo Szilard, who wrote the letter and then persuaded his friend Einstein to co-sign it so that it would get noticed. (Einstein had name recognition, Szilard did not, and Szilard knew it). For further reading, I highly recommend The Making of the Atomic Bomb [wikipedia.org], which won the 1988 Pulitzer-Prize for Non-Fiction.
Next Week (Score:2)
Jobs will write a letter warning about the dangers of Flash.
Re:Can You Spot the Difference? (Score:5, Funny)
...Einstein gave us special and general relativity. Bill Gates gave us Bob. [wikipedia.org]
Re:Can You Spot the Difference? (Score:4, Insightful)
Einstein lacked the resources to do it himself, nor did he stand to benefit in the same way Gates does here. Gates may well be right, but when someone owns/invests in a company that does X and tells you we should invest in X, but he does not want to spend more of his own money doing it, it is time to be suspicious.
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.... but he does not want to spend more of his own money doing it, it is time to be suspicious.
I'm not always a big fan of Bill Gates, however given his current investment [discovery.com], how much of his own money would it take to satisfy you?
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How does donating so much of his money and time to fighting Aids help his profit margin?
Because that money is usually tied to buying US patented drugs at stupidly inflated prices. I dont have the link but I read somewhere
that more lives were saved before when they used copies of patented drugs than now with his 'donations'.
but he has donated more of the money he screwed out of us than I think just about anyone.
Fixed that for you.
Funny how people forget about the positive aspects a person possesses when it
Re:Can You Spot the Difference? (Score:5, Informative)
I read somewhere that more lives were saved before when they used copies of patented drugs than now with his 'donations'.
You read something garbled then. The donations do save lives, this is not in dispute. The problem is the cost that they come with. The B&MGF buys the patented drugs, but the drug companies only provide them on the condition that the receiving countries sign treaties with the USA introducing US-style patent laws. This means that the country can then not buy (or locally produce) cheaper, generic, patent-infringing, versions of the drugs. As a (wholly unintentional, of course) side effect, the new treaties also make it possible for companies like, for example, large software firms, to enforce their copyrights and software patents in the countries that have received this aid.
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No one from MS ever held a gun to my head saying I had to buy a DOS or Windows machine. They were just a lot cheaper than the alternatives.
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Gates has spent vast sums of money on various projects - sums that, even for small projects, can dwarf the entire endowment of other philanthropic concerns.
For you to suggest that he's attempting to cash in on this is just absurd. If he wanted to "cash in" he simply wouldn't have "cashed out" in the first place. As much of a dick as he's been in the business world, given his actions in the world of philanthropy, you're an idiot if you think he's trying to profit off of this.
Re:Can You Spot the Difference? (Score:5, Informative)
No, Einstein was the sage even at the time, which is why Szilard got him to sign the letter.
Re:Can You Spot the Difference? (Score:5, Interesting)
Ah, I see you actually know the history!
Leo Szilard may well have been the greatest mind of the 20th century. He was so damn smart most people never heard of him! And he wasn't severely mentally ill, either - the other thinkers of his time (Tesla, for example) were pretty much bonkers.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Uhhh...there is a BIG difference between Nazi refugees and the Mexicans stomping across our border bud. For one thing I doubt Teller and all of his buddies put together could rack up the body count [immigratio...ancost.org] the Mexicans put up. Not to mention we didn't give shit as far as social services go to immigrants back then, much less illegals.
The simple fact is...we're broke. No two ways about it, the cupboards are bare. We need to be taking care of our own people and NOT half of South America. Let them clean up their cesspool political system and fix up their own country. If China could go from being a backwoods to a superpower so can they.
I hate to break it too you, BUT WE ARE A CAPITALIST COUNTRY.
There are no "us" and "them", there's just we.
If they are willing to come here and work for less than you, then that's your problem, not theirs. THAT is Capitalism, my friend. That's what built America into the SuperPower it is today. It isn't the fairytale world some people seem to think it is.
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Re:Can You Spot the Difference? (Score:5, Insightful)
How so?
He seems to tie his donations to governments not competing with the drugs the companies he is invested in sell. The deal seems to be they get some free medicine for guaranteed IP protection.
He also seems to have only started this quite recently, much like Rockefeller and his guilt driven giving.
Re:Can You Spot the Difference? (Score:5, Insightful)
"He also seems to have only started this quite recently, much like Rockefeller and his guilt driven giving."
No self-respecting Slashbot would ever acknowledge the possibility that Gates simply waited until he had the means (capital) to accomplish something more meaningful than cutting a $20 monthly check to Feed the Children.
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Re:Can You Spot the Difference? (Score:4, Informative)
The fact that buy taking his money you are now agreeing to the patents on other drugs. These drugs then are sold and that is how this makes money.
Re:Can You Spot the Difference? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the real truth is that he only met Warren Buffet recently.
Warren Buffet is as rich as Bill Gates but is a genuinely nice (and humble) guy. He lives in a normal house and drives a normal car (until it wears out!)
OK, he owns a Gulfstream jet, but let's not hold that against him, he's the biggest philanthropist in history and he's had a big influence on BIll Gates over the last decade.
Re:Can You Spot the Difference? (Score:5, Insightful)
You do not appear to be aware of the impact of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gates_foundation [wikipedia.org]
Saying that Bill Gates is one of the greatest philanthropists alive today is an opinion that is shared by many individuals. For 16 years now he and his wife have worked hard and funded significant projects in health, human services, and education across the globe.
When you are one of the richest men in the world, money is no longer a driving concern, Legacy is. Do you think Bill Gates wants to be remembered as "A rich man who's corporate leadership drove Microsoft to become a household name", or as "A philanthropist who helped to usher in an age of carbon free power generation". 70 years from now, will we think of him as a visionary who paved the way for vast technological advances, or will he be relegated to history as just another rich guy?
I would hazard a guess that he would blow his savings, sell his mansions, and unload the stocks if it meant he could have the kind of name recognition and positive connotation that Einstein has now, half a century after his death. And in order to achieve that state, he's going to have to do some extremely impressive and good things.
Lets hope that his work in alternative energy is one of them.
-Rick
Re:Can You Spot the Difference? (Score:5, Insightful)
In addition, the fact that Warren Buffet thought that the Gates Foundation was doing such a good job that he has them handling his money too makes me think that they are probably pretty good at what they do...
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Gates is not the philanthropist you think he is, look at some of the strings that come attached when his foundation offers something... It's never a no strings attached donation of cash.
Re:Can You Spot the Difference? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think a comment like that needs to be backed by some references.
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Dark cloud over good works of Gates Foundation [latimes.com]
In a contradiction between its grants and its endowment holdings, a Times investigation has found, the foundation reaps vast financial gains every year from investments that contravene its good works.
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Holdings Outperforming S&P 500 Handily [seekingalpha.com]
It is also overweight Healthcare, Consumer Staples and Industrials. The Foundation is underweight Telecom, Consumer Discretionary and Energy, and it has a 0% weight in Technology, Utilities
Re:Can You Spot the Difference? (Score:4, Informative)
Ooooookay, let's start by exploring just waht a "foundation" is. The applicable definitions would be:
a : funds given for the permanent support of an institution : endowment; b : an organization or institution established by endowment with provision for future maintenance
(emphasis added)
In other words, a foudnation is precisely an organization that has an endowment of seed money, invests that money, and uses income from such investment to do some sort of work (in this case, charitable work) perpetually. Typically some of the investment income is reinvested in the foundation (rather than 100% of the income going to do work), as this helps ensure perpetual operation and can even cause the foundation's strength to increase over time.
An organization that doesn't invest, but rather does its work directly with the money it takes in from donors or other revenue streams, is not a foundation.
So pointing out that the foundation invests in profitable things and therefoer concluding that it's a tax scam is entirely misguided. If you want to distinguish a charitable foundation from a tax scam, look for an outbound revenue stream into the founders' pockets. If you have evidence of that, then there's something to talk about.
Your first link represents a dillema that every successful investor with a diverse portfolio has to deal with. Your second and fourth links only show that they are good stewards of their seed money. Your third link is such trivially emotional crap that it barely deserves comment.
Bill always expected to give away his money (Score:5, Interesting)
In 1994, Bill Gates gave an interview to Playboy. He stated then that he was going to give away his money. In it he says:
PLAYBOY: Does your net worth of multi-billions, despite the fact that it's mostly in stock and the value varies daily, boggle your mind?
GATES: It's a ridiculous number. But remember, 95 percent of it I'm just going to give away. [Smiles] Don't tell people to write me letters. I'm saving that for when I'm in my 50s. It's a lot to give away and it's going to take time.
PLAYBOY: Where will you donate it?
GATES: To charitable things, scientific things. I don't believe in burdening any children I might have with that. They'll have enough. They'll be comfortable.
http://beginnersinvest.about.com/od/billgates/l/blbillgatesint5.htm [about.com]
Re:Can You Spot the Difference? (Score:4, Funny)
"I'll throw out the inflammatory and un-referenced accusation. YOU prove it for me!"
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This is quite possibly the stupidest thing I've ever read in my life. How many broke ass philanthropists do you know? How many middle class, family providing philanthropists do you know? How many struggling worker philanthropists do you know? All these people may do good works or contribute to charity when they can but a philanthropist's life is moving large sums of their money around to places where he or she feels it can help people.
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The question on the table is which people are being helped when the money is moved around. Those people may not be who you think they are.
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What? (Score:5, Funny)
What is this, a planned economy? Why is Bill Gates is begging for communist government help?
Obviously, the free market will just solve this problem on its own, in the process continuing to make America the greatest nation in the world.
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Bill Gates is a communist? I have to admit, I never saw that one coming.
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The free market is great for some things, not so great for others. Table top cold fusion? Sure. A 27 kilometer in circumference particle accelerator? Not so much. Some projects require the expertise and products from many companies from many different industries. No single company or coalition of companies would be able to pool their resources to accomplish something like the LHC.
You are simply railing against the free market and are looking for any angle in any story to do such.
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Btw, while the government money is probably the largest source of funding fo
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Retread? (Score:2, Interesting)
China and India? (Score:2, Interesting)
So outsourcing is working and now Gates wants to bring it back to the US?
Wasn't he one of the ones who pushed for outsourcing?
*Joking for those who can not tell*
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Does that mean we're third world now?
We're on the wrong track. (Score:5, Insightful)
Wind energy this, Solar energy that. It's all fantasy dreamed up by hippies. It may or may not be able to meet a high percentage of our energy needs at some point in the future.
Nuclear power is here now. We know it works. We know it's safe, if done right. Sure, it's expensive, but if we'd invested a few trillion in nuclear power over the last 30 years ago we'd have ended up saving a shitload on foreign wars, cost to the environment from oil spills and pollution, etc...
At the rate we're going now, nothing will have changed 20 years from now. Instead, we need to start building nuclear plants and investing in research on portable power like fuel cells so we can use that nuclear power outside of the main power grid.
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Wind energy this, Solar energy that. It's all fantasy dreamed up by hippies. It may or may not be able to meet a high percentage of our energy needs at some point in the future.
Wind and Solar will never meet a high percentage of our energy needs, at least not in the foreseeable technical future. People simply don't understand the scale of which modern society uses energy. I figured out not too long ago that to convert the world to solar power, using generous assumptions, it would take a space-based solar
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The problem with nuclear power is it doesn't solve anything. It still ties you to federal and corporate interests. Solar and wind power can free you from both. If every new home in the US was mandated to be built with solar shingles we probably wouldn't have this discussions
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Who said or/or? I said wind and solar will possibly never meet a high percentage of our energy needs, not that they can't be part of the solution. Nuclear most certainly can, though of course at a high cost right now. Yet all I seem to here are hippie politicians talking about wind and solar.
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People need to figure out that there are only two viable sources of energy: burning carbon-based fuels, or nuclear.
Not really, no. There's just burning carbon-based fuels, for any situation you could possibly think of where wind and power aren't viable I can think of a couple where nuclear is a non-starter.
What people need to figure out is that there can't (and doesn't have to) be an "one size fits all" solution to the energy problem, and that investing in only one in detriment of all others will invariably lead to somebody, somewhere, getting royally screwed.
You're right that nuclear fission is the best option right no
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People need to figure out that there are only two viable sources of energy:
Rainbows and unicorns?
Re:We're on the wrong track. (Score:5, Insightful)
All good experts talk about an "energy mix"- any over-dependence on a single source of energy is just asking for trouble- be it market volatility, or resourcing troubles, or whatever.
Solar seems particularly enticing as a micro-generation source. Photovoltaic cells have zero moving parts making them perfect for domestic use, by people who don't want to be on active maintenance alert. If every house in the country had a set of solar panels, that's a whole lot of energy being generated. You're completely right that it won't be 100% of what's needed, or even remotely close, but it still replaces a good swathe of power plants.
Same goes for other "opportunistic" renewables. You might not be able to get 100% of your energy from hydro, but if you've got a good spot for a dam, you might as well dam it and reap the rewards.
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I think you miscounted the number of digits in my user # (and my original one was actually in the 80,000s somewhere back in the late 90s prehistory), but regardless, just because wind has theoretical potential doesn't mean it has a practical potential.
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the hippies can't even agree on their hippie power sources. they hype wind but then fight it because it kills birds or ruins the view at the beach
Re:We're on the wrong track. (Score:4, Insightful)
So... the "hippies" are part of some monolithic organization that meets in a cave every year to decide what they're all required to believe? Just because Catholics and Republicans work that way doesn't mean everybody does...
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It may be relevant to your interests.
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Re:We're on the wrong track. (Score:5, Insightful)
Chances are we'd still intervene in foreign wars for humanitarian and business reasons, for as long as we have the economic and military prominence allowing us to do so.
It's possible that if we had managed to dig up those sums back then we'd have it, we don't really know that for sure but it would've been nice to find out.
Chances are we'll have a mix of wind/solar and nuclear energy - these things arn't fantasies - they work and are cost-effective in some circumstances. Unless these hippes you mention are the kind of hippies that get engineering, physics, and materials science degrees and actually put these technologies into practice, I suspect you're selling those technologies short. The issue isn't that they're not worthwhile, the issue is that since the 50s Americans have been skeptical of long-term thinking and terrified of central planning, leaving us with really lousy infrastructure, a discinclination to improve it, and a community of people who deny reality and work to discredit any studies that show that we fell off the right track when we stopped investing in infrastructure and the sciences and that other countries have surpassed us in many of these areas even when we have the resources of almost an entire continent and a massive population to bear on these problems.
Still, I fundamentally agree with you that we should be investing a lot more in nuclear power - an emphasis on fusion research combined with our standard fission plants in areas not well-covered by something better (not every community has a Hoover Dam) would pollute less and were we to actually have nice ways to transform and store that energy and were our automotive industry to migrate to electic cars, the strategic and economic benefits could be profound.
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Well, I think that's where some portion of those trillions go - research. Breeder reactors, fusion, etc... I don't think we'll have a fuel problem with nuclear.
Maybe our military priorities are wrong (Score:2)
Instead of fighting for a bunch of ungrateful people in the middle east, maybe we should move to nuclear.
The top 5 nations in uranium reserves include Australia, US and Canada.
Gee perhaps the country with the largest army in the world(usa) ought to be protecting the country
with the largest supply of uranium in the world(australia).
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If someone could figure a good way to extract the uranium out of seawater, we'd have supplies to last essentially forever. The Japanese are the only ones I am aware of even working on the problem.
Good times: tell a really antinuclear person who likes going to the beach about how seawater has recoverable amounts of uranium in it.
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Wind energy this, Solar energy that. It's all fantasy dreamed up by hippies. It may or may not be able to meet a high percentage of our energy needs at some point in the future.
A Nice Dream: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=portugal+energy+wind [wolframalpha.com]
Nuclear power is here now. We know it works. We know it's safe, if done right. Sure, it's expensive, but if we'd invested a few trillion in nuclear power over the last 30 years ago we'd have ended up saving a shitload on foreign wars, cost to the environment from oil spills and pollution, etc...
And have more Three Mile Island and Chernobyl spills. No, I think I prefer an oil spill...
At the rate we're going now, nothing will have changed 20 years from now. Instead, we need to start building nuclear plants and investing in research on portable power like fuel cells so we can use that nuclear power outside of the main power grid.
Portable radiation sources! The solution to overpopulation, guaranteed...
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There Mile Island -- how many people died????? How many people die in coal mining each year?
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Yes. Please build a nuclear power plant in my backyard.
Re:NIMBY (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes. I am absolutely for it. It could replace that coal power plant down the way that's spitting nuclear, gaseous, and particulate pollution into the air. If properly built, nuclear power is very safe.
Sure, it costs a shitload of money to build and properly maintain a nuclear power plant but all we're doing now is just pushing that cost into poor air quality, possibly global warming, foreign wars, a high dependence on the ups and downs of oil/natural gas prices, etc...
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Exactly.
You probably don't mean that the way I chose to interpret it, though. The point is oil has a tremendous cost besides just what you pay at the pump.
Taxes (Score:2, Interesting)
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Silly mods. Haven't they heard about this: http://boingboing.net/2010/04/23/microsoft-wins-its-1.html [boingboing.net]
looking for a grant? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand this, the people who wrote this 'letter' to the president are rich, look at the names. So they can start a company to create new energy production facilities etc. but they decide to write to the administration as if it is as urgent as a nuclear weapon about to be created and unleashed by a warmonger. Einstein obviously was concerned about a new weapon that Germany could develop and use to completely dominate the globe, Gates and Co. looks like are hoping for the government to get into yet another money laundering scheme.
If these guys think their ideas are worth a try and may work they should invest their money, they'll be rich beyond their wild dreams (hard to do, considering who they are, but still).
BP is getting billions of dollars from government contracts of all kinds, looks like this new initiative is about the same thing.
Build factories and make your energy generating equipment and see if you can compete with it and deliver something people will buy, why are you trying to involve the administration into this? The only thing that comes to mind is yet another money laundering scheme, a Halliburton/BP level scheme.
Top companies.... = big? (Score:2)
Assuming top companies are measured by how big they/their profits are... Someone remind me why this metric is so important. Surely the smaller companies are contributing too? (obviously for massive prototypes costing billions, you do need a lot of money, of course) I agree with the first post that this sounds like lobbyist talk.
And no I didn't RTFA.
"Breaking News" (Score:3, Informative)
Under Breaking News on BBC: "Barack Obama calls for clean energy push"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/us_and_canada/10313921.stm [bbc.co.uk]
I support the "Paris Hilton" program (Score:2)
Its a fantasy to think that we can run out Hummers off of windmills next year.
Re: (Score:2)
Therefore we should immediately halt all research into anything that isn't oil. Brilliant. "This treatment shows promise for treating leukemia, but doesn't help at all with breast cancer, back to the drawing board until you fucking eggheads come up with a REAL solution." Remember, if something isn't a silver-bullet cure-all panacea, it's totally pointless.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
There was music in that video?
Last stage (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazing. Just five years to go from:
China, they just can make cheap copies of western technology
to
China, they are starting to compete with western products
to
China is ahead on R&D
CO2 will make the sea _what_? (Score:2, Insightful)
You've got to be joking. To see a rise in sea levels, you have to melt land-based ice, of which the only significant volume is on Antarctica. Even the IPCC admits that to see appreciable rise would take over 10,000 years. This is a cruel joke, with us as the punchline.
It's another way to strip people of power sources that enable modern standards of living in the here and now.
We have a real problem. (Score:2)
Industrial civilization has a big problem ahead. It's been 50 years since the last new energy source was invented. (Atomic power and solar cells are more than 50 years old.) And we're running out.
Wind power seems promising, but the available sites are limited. There are four good onshore wind sites in California (Pacheco Pass, Altamont Pass, Mojave, and Montezuma Hills.) Each already has a big wind farm. There are plenty of good sites in the flyover states (from the Texas panhandle north to Canada) but
Futile Attempt (Score:2)
Simple (Score:2)
Cover the moon in solar cells. Beam back the energy. There ya go. :)
Of course, in the requisition process, form 27B/6 would get misfiled so that a senator's son could get a contract, and we'd wind up with the moon covered in windmills.
This is so NOT Einstein's letter (Score:4, Interesting)
First: Einstein's contribution to the letter was mainly signing it - it was really authored by Leó Szilárd with contributions from Edward Teller and Eugene Wigner.
Second: The atomic bomb is a weapon that could only be created by a government and should only be used by a government and is not be provided to others.
Energy technology can be produced by private industry, used by private industry, and will be traded on the free market to everyone. Even if a Chinese company develops the technology, we (and others) will be able to purchase it and benefit from it. On the other hand, the atomic bomb was not going to be sold to China (or Japan, for that matter, who was ruthlessly occupying China).
One could argue that the US government "should play its part" in solving the global externality of greenhouse gas emission by throwing tax dollars at researchers, but that is a different issue.