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Pushing for green energy and good deeds with the current administration makes me fear for the health of Bill Gates... is he running out of time and considering

by dsign 8y ago

Pushing for green energy and good deeds with the current administration makes me fear for the health of Bill Gates... is he running out of time and considering desperate options? ... now that I think about it, we all are running out of time ... :-( ...

dsign 8y ago
... write to Congress, today!!...
jjoonathan 8y ago
Nuclear energy is spurned by many (most?) self-styled environmentalists. That alone could win it favor in this administration. If Republicans could be persuaded to "own" it and Democrats could be persuaded to go along with it, we might just wind up doing something good for the planet. That's probably optimistic, but there's a lot more hope in that idea than in fighting a pitched battle about solar panels, China, and "clean coal" in the current political climate.
- cazum 8y ago
  This is the most cynical, but probably the most pragmatic perspective. I'm not a fan of Gates, but if this is his gameplan, I'm all in. If we can ditch coal and fossils for nuclear, we'll have a new set of problems, but nothing as dire as "12 years before we all cook to death".
- jkravitz61 8y ago
  Nuclear has such a terrible reputation, and rightfully,people will always have legitimate complaints about it. We can never fully guarantee that a plant is free from the potential of catastrophe, not to mention we still don’t have a great solution to nuclear waste other than bury it in a mountain. It’s definitely a lot better than slowly suffocating ourselves by injecting hydrocarbons into the air, but we really need a revolution not evolution in energy.
  - yellowapple 8y ago
    Pretty much every other viable source of power - renewable or otherwise - is just as bad once you factor in all the externalities. Solar panel manufacturing ain't exactly pollution free. Nuclear would give us more time to solve those problems in an economical and scalable way. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
  - smsm42 8y ago
    Nothing is ever free of a potential for trouble. Solar panel could fall from the roof and hit someone over the head, and I'm sure that happened already, but nobody makes a huge deal out of it. Nuclear incidents are made huge deal of. It's a fight between Jane Fonda and Edward Teller, and Fonda is winning because a movie actress is apparently more trustworthy in a questions of nuclear energy than actual nuclear physicists. It's a highly irrational approach and it's way past time to come back to rationality on it - yes, nuclear plants can be dangerous, but the risks can be managed as all other risks are and the benefits of working nuclear industry are huge, especially compared to burning hydrocarbons, which is how we still get the majority of energy.
    - jkravitz61 8y ago
      Sure, but a very bad nuclear incident (accidental or not) could more or less kill millions of people pretty quickly. Obviously hydrocarbons will kill more than that, but the optics of a nuclear catastrophe are in my opinion far worse than global warming which to many people is pretty abstract.
      - jjoonathan 8y ago
        That's really the crux of the issue. Nobody cares if a thousand or two additional jobbers die falling off of roofs while installing solar panels, but if one person is exposed to sub-lethal quantities of radiation, everyone cares.
      - smsm42 8y ago
        For killing millions of people quickly, you'd have to use a thermonuclear bomb (Hiroshima bomb killed about 100K people over the period of several months). No nuclear accident has ever happened that done anything like that. Chernobyl accident - where a lot of things went very wrong - killed about 40-50 people. Fukushima Daiichi incident so far has one known victim. To kill millions "pretty quickly", something very extra-ordinary - and probably impossible with current nuclear station designs - should happen, to the term of explosion of most powerful military device purposely built for mass destruction. In other words, you'd have to put an actual hydrogen bomb there - by which time, where you put it is less important. Don't get me wrong - there are dangers in nuclear energetics. And the long-term effects of radiation incidents are still hotly debated. But as you just demonstrated, the dangers are way overestimated in public imagination and discourse. You use as an argument an imaginable incident that is at least five orders of magnitude worse than any accident that ever happened, and that is pretty much impossible given current technology, and are comparing it to very real dangers of the alternatives.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
microcolonel 8y ago
The more effective way to get what you ultimately want is to offer everyone the opportunity to achieve it. Imagine if, instead of making their case to the administration, the advocates of the FIRST STEP Act felt it was sufficient to criticize the administration, and then give up entirely. I see no reason why, with the right pitch, the Trump administration would be especially resistant to an effort like this. It's not as though they oppose certain "green" policies because they're "too green"; they oppose them because they are costly for, and unpopular with, their base. Real people are not your caricatures of them.
- m0zg 8y ago
  You make it sound like First Step Act did not originate within the administration. Jared Kushner was the primary driver of it since day one.
  - microcolonel 8y ago
    Yes, but it enjoyed broad support, and was progressive in substance. The assumption that the Trump administration would be futile to engage with on what could be construed as a "green" cause seems to stem from a broader assumption that they are incapable of, or resistant to, progressive policy. My point is that if you couch it in the same balanced terms, there's no reason why an equally progressive initiative in energy should be assumed to be futile.
    - m0zg 8y ago
      But it was the other way around: _the Trump administration_ (of which Kushner is perhaps the sharpest instrument; I had a media-distorted view of him until I watched some interviews -- dude is super smart) engaged with others in a bipartisan way to make this happen.
      - microcolonel 8y ago
        Certainly, I get that; but I don't see why a similar effort couldn't be conducted from the outside in. Clearly it would work better to convince somebody effective within the administration to champion it, but my point was mainly that they're not inherently that resistant to it.
m0zg 8y ago
What a strange thing to say. Gates has been spending $2B/yr for the past two decades ($28B in total so far) on what I consider to be exemplary philanthropic efforts. Thanks to him millions of people are alive today who would otherwise die of infectious diseases. And he does what he does irrespective of the administration, because he knows it needs to be done, and it's not like he can spend $100B anyway. If anything, it may be easier to pass legislation favoring nuclear under Trump: Trump likes to deregulate, he doesn't care about anti-nuclear "activists", and he understands the role of cheap energy in the economy really well.
bootlooped 8y ago
Nuclear doesn't have the same association with green energy that solar or wind does. For many people, green energy is associated very strongly with their political adversaries' worldview, so they oppose it. Nuclear doesn't suffer from that problem.

by dsign 8y ago

dsign 8y ago

... write to Congress, today!!...

jjoonathan 8y ago

Nuclear energy is spurned by many (most?) self-styled environmentalists. That alone could win it favor in this administration. If Republicans could be persuaded to "own" it and Democrats could be persuaded to go along with it, we might just wind up doing something good for the planet. That's probably optimistic, but there's a lot more hope in that idea than in fighting a pitched battle about solar panels, China, and "clean coal" in the current political climate.

cazum 8y ago
This is the most cynical, but probably the most pragmatic perspective. I'm not a fan of Gates, but if this is his gameplan, I'm all in. If we can ditch coal and fossils for nuclear, we'll have a new set of problems, but nothing as dire as "12 years before we all cook to death".
jkravitz61 8y ago
Nuclear has such a terrible reputation, and rightfully,people will always have legitimate complaints about it. We can never fully guarantee that a plant is free from the potential of catastrophe, not to mention we still don’t have a great solution to nuclear waste other than bury it in a mountain. It’s definitely a lot better than slowly suffocating ourselves by injecting hydrocarbons into the air, but we really need a revolution not evolution in energy.
- yellowapple 8y ago
  Pretty much every other viable source of power - renewable or otherwise - is just as bad once you factor in all the externalities. Solar panel manufacturing ain't exactly pollution free. Nuclear would give us more time to solve those problems in an economical and scalable way. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
- smsm42 8y ago
  Nothing is ever free of a potential for trouble. Solar panel could fall from the roof and hit someone over the head, and I'm sure that happened already, but nobody makes a huge deal out of it. Nuclear incidents are made huge deal of. It's a fight between Jane Fonda and Edward Teller, and Fonda is winning because a movie actress is apparently more trustworthy in a questions of nuclear energy than actual nuclear physicists. It's a highly irrational approach and it's way past time to come back to rationality on it - yes, nuclear plants can be dangerous, but the risks can be managed as all other risks are and the benefits of working nuclear industry are huge, especially compared to burning hydrocarbons, which is how we still get the majority of energy.
  - jkravitz61 8y ago
    Sure, but a very bad nuclear incident (accidental or not) could more or less kill millions of people pretty quickly. Obviously hydrocarbons will kill more than that, but the optics of a nuclear catastrophe are in my opinion far worse than global warming which to many people is pretty abstract.
    - jjoonathan 8y ago
      That's really the crux of the issue. Nobody cares if a thousand or two additional jobbers die falling off of roofs while installing solar panels, but if one person is exposed to sub-lethal quantities of radiation, everyone cares.
    - smsm42 8y ago
      For killing millions of people quickly, you'd have to use a thermonuclear bomb (Hiroshima bomb killed about 100K people over the period of several months). No nuclear accident has ever happened that done anything like that. Chernobyl accident - where a lot of things went very wrong - killed about 40-50 people. Fukushima Daiichi incident so far has one known victim. To kill millions "pretty quickly", something very extra-ordinary - and probably impossible with current nuclear station designs - should happen, to the term of explosion of most powerful military device purposely built for mass destruction. In other words, you'd have to put an actual hydrogen bomb there - by which time, where you put it is less important. Don't get me wrong - there are dangers in nuclear energetics. And the long-term effects of radiation incidents are still hotly debated. But as you just demonstrated, the dangers are way overestimated in public imagination and discourse. You use as an argument an imaginable incident that is at least five orders of magnitude worse than any accident that ever happened, and that is pretty much impossible given current technology, and are comparing it to very real dangers of the alternatives.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

microcolonel 8y ago

The more effective way to get what you ultimately want is to offer everyone the opportunity to achieve it. Imagine if, instead of making their case to the administration, the advocates of the FIRST STEP Act felt it was sufficient to criticize the administration, and then give up entirely. I see no reason why, with the right pitch, the Trump administration would be especially resistant to an effort like this. It's not as though they oppose certain "green" policies because they're "too green"; they oppose them because they are costly for, and unpopular with, their base. Real people are not your caricatures of them.

m0zg 8y ago
You make it sound like First Step Act did not originate within the administration. Jared Kushner was the primary driver of it since day one.
- microcolonel 8y ago
  Yes, but it enjoyed broad support, and was progressive in substance. The assumption that the Trump administration would be futile to engage with on what could be construed as a "green" cause seems to stem from a broader assumption that they are incapable of, or resistant to, progressive policy. My point is that if you couch it in the same balanced terms, there's no reason why an equally progressive initiative in energy should be assumed to be futile.
  - m0zg 8y ago
    But it was the other way around: _the Trump administration_ (of which Kushner is perhaps the sharpest instrument; I had a media-distorted view of him until I watched some interviews -- dude is super smart) engaged with others in a bipartisan way to make this happen.
    - microcolonel 8y ago
      Certainly, I get that; but I don't see why a similar effort couldn't be conducted from the outside in. Clearly it would work better to convince somebody effective within the administration to champion it, but my point was mainly that they're not inherently that resistant to it.

m0zg 8y ago

What a strange thing to say. Gates has been spending $2B/yr for the past two decades ($28B in total so far) on what I consider to be exemplary philanthropic efforts. Thanks to him millions of people are alive today who would otherwise die of infectious diseases. And he does what he does irrespective of the administration, because he knows it needs to be done, and it's not like he can spend $100B anyway. If anything, it may be easier to pass legislation favoring nuclear under Trump: Trump likes to deregulate, he doesn't care about anti-nuclear "activists", and he understands the role of cheap energy in the economy really well.

bootlooped 8y ago

Nuclear doesn't have the same association with green energy that solar or wind does. For many people, green energy is associated very strongly with their political adversaries' worldview, so they oppose it. Nuclear doesn't suffer from that problem.