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.
Re:Can You Spot the Difference? (Score:1, Insightful)
Gates is also a *very* smart guy, and he's one of the greatest philanthropists in the world today. Your one-dimensional depiction of him isn't all that accurate.
Re:Can You Spot the Difference? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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.
Re:Can You Spot the Difference? (Score:1, Insightful)
He sounds more like a lobbyist than a sage omen of caution like Einstein was.
Green technology is totally socialized in the United States. A company can't compete without lobbyist. Perhaps without the lobbyists we would be MORE companies competing instead of the government picking which technologies succeed. Think about how many research dollars are wasted on lobbyist.
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)
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..
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.
Re:We're on the wrong track. (Score:3, 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.
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 array the size of the entire state of California. And compared to space-based solar, wind power is a joke.
People need to figure out that there are only two viable sources of energy: burning carbon-based fuels, or nuclear. And nuclear probably means fission. It's entirely possible that fusion will never happen because of the insane engineering practical challenges that we haven't even started to try and deal with. We aren't even far enough along to hit those brick walls.
But we keep looking for the magical energy fairy to solve our problems...
talk about PC! (Score:1, Insightful)
These guys are just a bunch of politicians trying to get in front of the trend. If they knew what goes on in their own businesses they would be warning the President (for all the good it would do) that of the top 30 companies in the world, most or all have discovered significant intrusions from China and other places, should reasonably assume there are more yet to be discovered, and that the US government should get off it's fat, dumb, sleepy, behind before it is hit with a hack attack that will make Pearl Harbor look like kids playing with cap pistols.
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.
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
Re:Can You Spot the Difference? (Score:3, Insightful)
.... 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?
Re:We're on the wrong track. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Can You Spot the Difference? (Score:3, Insightful)
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 they really have that equity? Is it tied up in their current business?
Personally, I think it's a pure money grab; but there are likely underlying reasons. Many countries ARE subsidizing their green energy companies, sometimes quite hugely.
Personally, I look forward to the day that solar water heaters come standard on homes below the mason-dixon line, when a selling point in new developments are the solar electric panels that reduce utility electric down to near nothing for the average user.
The problem I have is that ancillary install costs tend to outweigh the electricity produced. They tend to run around a dollar per watt for a retrofit. Mounting brackets, wiring, inverter, etc... Which is why I concentrate on new builds.
Solar scales down well, wind scales up well - a big turbine is much more efficient, provides power more stably, and costs less per watt for both install and maintenance. Even then, the industry is so heavily subsidized it can be hard to find costs - but I tend to get figures around $1-2 per watt there. Not bad.
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.
Re:What? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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:2, Insightful)
Re:We're on the wrong track. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Can You Spot the Difference? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think a comment like that needs to be backed by some references.
Re:Can You Spot the Difference? (Score:3, 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.
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...
Re:I support the "Paris Hilton" program (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Can You Spot the Difference? (Score:3, Insightful)
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 do much easier an convenient to just complain about them.
Yes we should just ignore how he got where he did and what it has cost us just because he donated some of it.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Can You Spot the Difference? (Score:3, Insightful)
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...
Re:Can You Spot the Difference? (Score:1, Insightful)
Gates gives most of his money to the people who actually need it most.
Gates puts money into funds & foundations and tells them how to invest it and then gives the earnings to companies. Each country is told specifically how to spend that money and it's almost always American companies that country has to pay that money to for something specific like vaccines. Gates doesn't give money to countries. He gives them a promise that a bunch of money he invests in America pays dividends out to them so that they can buy things from American companies.
It's good but it's not this get down on your knees and worship greatness you speak of.
Socialized R&D - Privatize profits (Score:2, 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.
Because they want Government to finance the R&D (socialize the risks and costs of R&D) and then let the private sector reap the rewards - just like what was done with the banks.
America: risks, losses and costs are socialized: profits privatized. It's only for folks who are connected. For you and me, the peons, we get the bill but not the profits. Not even the jobs because you know this shit will be made over-seas.
Re:We're on the wrong track. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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.
Re:Can You Spot the Difference? (Score:3, Insightful)
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 meeting was clearly a result of large corporations trying to find ways to have the government pay for some of the research that they'd like to do, but are finding a hard time justifying in terms of short term profits. Not that this is a bad thing, but it's hardly the heroic stand taken by Einstein in his letter to FDR.
I think we should devote more funds to alternative energy research. I think that our dependence on petroleum based energy will bite us, hard, in the coming decades and we must make efforts to reduce that dependence. I think it's a valuable use of public funds, in no small part because the nature of research will likely result in a short term money sink until it's viable to commercialize. This is exactly the sort of research that large corporations have a very hard time justifying to stock holders no matter how much individuals inside the company may want to see it happen. Despite that, I don't see the comparison between a bunch of companies that want to invest in alternative energy trying to get the government to pay for it, and the dire warnings of a lone scientist trying to get the government to understand a threat it could barely even envision.
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...
Re:Can You Spot the Difference? (Score:2, Insightful)
Pfft, my grandmother gives a greater percentage of her net income than Gates does, and she didn't spend the last 20 years holding back the computing industry so she could make a buck.
Who is the better person?
Re:Can You Spot the Difference? (Score:3, Insightful)
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:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Can You Spot the Difference? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Can You Spot the Difference? (Score:3, Insightful)
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 longer has that much draw. In fact, with the recent economic boom in China and the decline in America, many Asian immigrants in the west have moved to China for opportunities. Their government actually is offering some nice intensives for talents to 'return to the motherland', and people are taking the offer. Besides, as the US Freedom(TM) getting raped and eroded day after day, the human right gap is becoming much smaller than it was 20 years ago. You can keep siting cultural revolution and Tienanmen over and over, but the fact is, those horses are deader than dead, yes they are significant historical lessons, but there is not much use keep beating on them trying to milk more propaganda mileage
So don't kid yourself that you can cause a mass exodus of top scientists just by dangling a green card over them. Like many things this day and age, a big wad of bank notes would likely fare much better.