14 ms·

Stanford gets $1.1B for new climate school from John Doerr

192 points by jbredeche 4y ago

rdtwo 4y ago
What do your do with a degree in climatology? It’s not a good idea to get these odd degrees as they are not good for signaling to potential employers.
- BobbyJo 4y ago
  If it's from Stanford, pretty much whatever you want. So, basically, investment banking or data science (those are still two separate jobs right?).
  - ensan 4y ago
    "If it's from Stanford, pretty much whatever you want." That not true at all. The name of the university can only get you so far. For example, if you have a climate-related degree, can you really compete with Stanford CS majors for a SDE job? Or with ME majors for a product design position? IMO if you get into Stanford and can pay for the degree, it would be a waste to spend it in a major like that unless you're really passionate and have very specific goals. "So, basically, investment banking or data science" Well, those are definitely not "whatever you want".
    - deleted 4y ago
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    - usmannk 4y ago
      > if you have a climate-related degree, can you really compete with Stanford CS majors for a SDE job For this specifically: Yes, depending on your extra curricular activities and interests. And if it was a graduate degree, then yeah almost certainly.
    - BobbyJo 4y ago
      > if you have a climate-related degree, can you really compete with Stanford CS majors for a SDE job? Thankfully there are fewer Stanford CS majors graduating than there are SDE jobs available.
- MR4D 4y ago
  How would that be any different than the people who get a degree in Petroleum Engineering (aside from the audience they are signaling) ?
  - rdtwo 4y ago
    It’s a bad choice too better to generalize in chem e
- ensan 4y ago
  Ironically, I suspect a lot of them might end up in fossil fuel companies and do greenwashing R&D.
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  It actually does make more sense to pursue a physics degree with an emphasis on fluid dynamics (atmospheric and oceanic circulation being of great interest to future climate forecasts), or a chemistry degree with an emphasis on analytical measurement and kinetics (global elemental cycling, particulate dynamics, oceanic and atmospheric chemistry all being similarly important), or a biology degree with an emphasis on ecology and biochemistry (changing species distribution, methane biochemistry etc.). This all goes under the rubric of 'planetary sciences' of which 'earth system science' is a sort of special case. Also means you could work at NASA on Jupiter's moons etc.
  - geoalchimista 4y ago
    Most people pursuing a degree in physics would be more interested in core physics problems (quantum computing, particle physics, cosmology, etc.) than in climate change. Perhaps it is more difficult to motivate physics majors to turn to climate science than to teach climate scientists physics (since only a subset of physics is needed, mostly fluid dynamics). Otherwise, universities would have climate science in a physics department.
- elpakal 4y ago
  In grad school I pursued (at the time it was considered experimental) a minor in "Sustainability Management". This was like 10 years ago and there was nowhere near the amount of stuff happening in the space then as there is now - it was basically "how do we get corporations to reduce their emissions? LOL good luck" and "how do large scale renewable energy projects make it? Only gonna happen with government help". I was a little disappointed with it at the time but I'm really happy that the field has awoken and that tech is getting involved - I would love to see how "higher" education in that space has changed. > What do your do with a degree in climatology? I write code, ironically. I'm in the camp that believes degrees aren't _totally_ about what you learn but more about advancing your reasoning and thinking skills and learning how to interact with people (not to say you don't learn anything in school, you definitely do but IMHO it largely depends on what you study).
mitchbob 4y ago
Archived: https://archive.ph/2022.05.04-155800/https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/04/climate/john-doerr-stanford-climate.html https://archive.ph/2022.05.04-155800/https://www.nytimes.com...
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melling 4y ago
We are burning incredible amounts of coal 40 years after we started talking about climate change. I believe around 40% of global electricity is from coal. We keep waiting for the windmills and batteries to solve the problem, while kicking the can down the road https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/03/more-than-40-countries-agree-to-phase-out-coal-fired-power https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/03/more-tha...
- cyberlurker 4y ago
  The amount of energy we use is expected to increase in 30 years. The percentage of that from coal is expected to go down. Great, right? No, we are basically on a path to burn the same amount of coal in the future (but a larger percentage of our energy will come from other sources). I’m not a doomer but we aren’t taking this issue seriously at all. The policy solutions exist but the political power isn’t there. I’m starting to think our best chance is a technological leap in carbon capture.
- MR4D 4y ago
  > kicking the can down the road When I was a kid, I remember my uncle introduced me to a guy he worked for who had made his initial fortune way back. It turns out that he bought a company that sold inner tubes for car tires, and when the automakers first moved to tubeless tires, the business owner wanted to sell. So, my uncle's friend bought him out cheap, and then targeted all the buyers of the new cars with tubeless tires. Apparently, the new car buyers didn't trust the tubeless tires yet, and the first place then went was to my uncle's friend to get tubes for their tubeless tires. The lesson here is that change is hard, and as humans, we aren't very good at it. My guess is that humanity will be kicking the can down the road for quite awhile.
- deleted 4y ago
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ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
nitsky 4y ago
Is investing in a university endowment the best way to put $1.1B to work combating climate change? How about investing in companies developing clean energy technologies?
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  Probably not, but it probably is the best way to get a building/department named after you.
- wolverine876 4y ago
  > Is investing in a university endowment the best way to put $1.1B to work combating climate change? How about investing in companies developing clean energy technologies? Why is investing in research at a university less valuable than investing in research in the private sector? HN might have a bias toward the latter, effectively that people should invest more in the HN population.
jollybean 4y ago
They'll build a building and mint degrees, this doesn't seem very Entrepreneurial to me, more legacy naming kind of thing. Would be nice to see hard core innovators do hardcore things. Like solar, nuclear, carbon sequestration etc..
daterdots 4y ago
I am concerned about the incredible concentration of money and resources into a few academic institutions. Obviously Stanford is an incredible school, but I am not sure Stanford will do more with $1B than 10 2nd tier schools would do with $100M each.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > I am not sure Stanford will do more with $1B than 10 2nd tier schools would do with $100M each Absent data, it's difficult to say. There are economies of scale, even if just in experience administering such projects.
  - zbrozek 4y ago
    I haven't checked the numbers lately, so I could be wrong by now. But while I was a student there and for some years after (administrators / (students + researchers + educators)) got worse at a rapid pace. It's hard for me to imagine that Stanford is the best marginal bang for more bucks.
  - scythe 4y ago
    In order to have an economy of scale, first you need scale. But Stanford does not stand out in terms of the size of its faculty or enrollment, certainly not to the degree it does in terms of money. In fact, Stanford has fewer tenured faculty members (832) than UC Davis (1,126): https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/stanford-university/academic-life/faculty-composition/ https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/stanford-university/... https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/university-of-california-davis/academic-life/faculty-composition/ https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/university-of-califo...
    - pmyteh 4y ago
      There are diseconomies of scale too. My experience is mostly of UK higher education, but my feeling is that most universities are a bit too large for their governing structures, and are poorly run as a result.
  - deleted 4y ago
aresant 4y ago
The most encouraging signal on climate to me is that the “money” seems to finally be waking up. ESG policies - backed by data monitoring requirements to combat greenwashing from sovereign wealth funds are real, arduous, and creating business and capital incentives with environmental alignment. Early stage climate tech funds - of which their are many today where there were few even a few years ago - are giving a new generation of entrepreneurs something to focus on beyond monetization efforts. And of course both company and billionaire branding is shifting to the importance of climate, carbon neutral solutions. I take this all much less as a sign of altruism but of market efficiency - a shift towards making “saving the planet”profitable is the only model I believe will ever move the needle. So to that end I applaud this effort - Just signaling viability of a career in the space is a great step in the right direction
- sixQuarks 4y ago
  ESG is a joke. Chevron has a higher ESG score than Tesla. How can anybody argue this is a fair assessment?
  - aresant 4y ago
    ESG scoring agreed is a work in progress currently gameable with greenwashing strategies (carbon credits) What I am referencing is ESG for fundraising at institutional level which is the money that actually drives the world Major pensions are prioritizing selecting managers with legit, objectively good esg policies and road maps with hard and enforceable targets that are tied to compensation
    - sixQuarks 4y ago
      This is precisely the reason ESG should be abolished. It’s driving a huge amount of investment into companies that don’t deserve it
  - hgomersall 4y ago
    ESG stands apart from the various agencies that provide a score. Just because they do a bad job, it doesn't mean ESG is a joke, it just means the scores are a joke.
kwertyoowiyop 4y ago
Tell me you care more about your legacy than actually helping the world without telling me you care more about your legacy than actually helping the world.
- tofuahdude 4y ago
  Why criticize someone for caring about their legacy when they're making an enormous contribution to the public good? Wrong lens. Who cares about his ego when he's making a real impact?
  - ModernMech 4y ago
    A lot of people feel that the fact a single human can amass so much money is part of the problem. It incentivizes people to maximize profit and money over all else, sucking up all available cash they possibly can with little regard to how it's generated and what damage they do in the process. Profits are privatized while losses are socialized. Meaning when they start paying their profits back into the public good, are we talking about a net positive gain for society here, or is it just a form of restitution to atone for the damage they caused?
  - simulate-me 4y ago
    How is donating to Stanford, a private university, making an enormous contribution to the public good?
    - tofuahdude 4y ago
      You can't see how improving educational programs specific to climate change benefits the public?
      - simulate-me 4y ago
        Very tenuous that this specific donation will do that. Most likely it will be used for a building (which requires concrete, a major CO2 contributor), and the rest will go to the university's endowment where it will sit.
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adlfkjlkjalwe 4y ago
- missedthecue 4y ago
  If they just scammed 1.1 billion from John Doerr, they have my respect to be honest.
  - dudeinjapan 4y ago
    In the college admissions scandal, Stanford was a "victim" of fraud... a fraud that caused Stanford to profit millions of dollars.
perihelions 4y ago
They don't even have a nuclear engineering department! They might as well endow a theology seminary; it's the same category of problem-solving. This is mainly prestige signalling, isn't it? He's a Silicon Valley oligarch, and this is the elite Silicon Valley school. If there's some additional, meritocratic factor specific to Stanford, for this type of billion-dollar gift... what is it? edit: Perhaps it's synergies with their Natural Gas Initiative [0]. [0] https://ngi.stanford.edu/ https://ngi.stanford.edu/ edit 2: That's $1.98 million/year in oil & gas industry funding (adding up the tiers on this pricelist [1]). [1] https://ngi.stanford.edu/content/corporate-affiliates-program https://ngi.stanford.edu/content/corporate-affiliates-progra... - "The NGI Industrial Affiliate Program offers three levels of membership:" - "Sustaining Member ($250,000 per year), Corporate Member ($75,000 per year), and Basic Member ($35,000 per year, available to non Fortune 500 companies)"
- _vdpp 4y ago
  99% of climate change effort is social signaling, the other 1% is engineers and scientists working on more efficient, cleaner technologies. What I see here is lots of money for talks, articles, conferences, and “awareness.” Climate conferences are always held in nice places that you have to fly to. They’d do more for the environment by taking that money and paying people to pick up trash on the side of the highway. Of course, that’s why “climate” is the problem nowadays and not “the environment.” The former is a problem for other people to solve, the latter is a problem you can do something about yourself but requires getting off the couch.
  - bazzert 4y ago
    https://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverwilliams1/2021/11/05/118-private-jets-take-leaders-to-cop26-climate-summit-burning-over-1000-tons-of-co2/?sh=60290ae653d9 https://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverwilliams1/2021/11/05/118-...
  - bachmeier 4y ago
    > 99% of climate change effort is social signaling, the other 1% is engineers and scientists working on more efficient, cleaner technologies. China, India, Russia, Indonesia, Brazil, and Iran combined produce about four times the GHG emissions of the US (and nearly half of all world emissions). Move forward in time 30 years and add in countries with large populations like Pakistan, and it's clear that making alternatives to fossil fuels cheaper is a big deal for climate change. That's not to say the US political situation is of trivial importance, but it's not accurate to say we should ignore everything else.
ParksNet 4y ago
Better to spend $1.1b lobbying for a $100/tonne Carbon Tax. Heck, for $1.1b you could probably just buy a US President or their children.
photochemsyn 4y ago
Stanford's last major foray into this area was "The Global Climate and Energy Project"... a major sponsor was ExxonMobil. As you might guess, that didn't really do much in the way of producing renewable energy alternatives to fossil fuels... more like a green PR initiative. Somehow I don't think oil companies are thrilled about everyone driving EVs and seeing their market share collapse. https://gcep.stanford.edu/about/exxonmobil.html https://gcep.stanford.edu/about/exxonmobil.html I rather doubt this one will be any better. A better option would just be to put $1 billion into a company dedicated to catching up to China on mass-scale monocrystalline PV wafer production for durable, high-efficiency PV panels for both rooftop solar and large-scale installations. Unfortunately neither California's natural gas industry nor the investor-owned utilities are thrilled about that either. Rooftop cuts directly into utility revenue, and replacing natural gas power plants with solar + storage plants makes Sempra and friends very sad. https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2018/04/21/the-weekend-read-chinas-monocrystalline-boom/ https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2018/04/21/the-weekend... The United States is more of a petro-state than most people realize, and a rapid transition to renewables (i.e. 3% reduction in fossil fuel production per year, matched by an equivalent increase in renewable energy production per year) is too much economic disruption to contemplate, it seems - although that is what is needed if you wanted to address the climate problem. American academics are not going to do anything on their own about this, as they don't control the funding.
- bazzert 4y ago
  > The United States is more of a petro-state than most people realize or energy independent, depending on how you want to look at it.
  - photochemsyn 4y ago
    This is one people get a bit confused about: 1) In 2021, the United States imported about 8.47 million barrels per day (b/d) of petroleum from 73 countries. (EIA) 2) In 2021, the United States exported about 8.63 million b/d of petroleum to 176 countries and 4 U.S. territories. The reasons you can't just say, halt exports and halt imports and be 'energy independent' are varied: there's regional demand (oil produced in the Dakotas can't easily get to Los Angeles, etc.) and there's the fact that refineries are built to distill specific grades of crude, you can't just mix-and-match. Nevertheless, the fact that Obama & Biden, with Republican support, lifted the 1970s era ban on crude oil exports from the USA in 2015 is certainly a major factor in the gas price inflation, a fact neither party nor industry likes to see discussed in the corporate media. Real 'energy independence' would come from using sunlight and wind, which cannot be embargoed or manipulated by OPEC etc, as the primary energy source.
basedgod 4y ago
what a collasal waste of money sure, it's mildly better than hoarding the money in his investment profile, and is the tiniest step in the right direction for the moral responsibility of billionaires, but nothing about this is effective by any measure against the timescale and enormity of the problem of global warming did you know that the *entire* nsf budget for the year is only around $8 billion?
olivermarks 4y ago
'Mr. Doerr joins a growing list of ultrawealthy men donating huge sums of money to the fight against global warming. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said in 2020 said he was committing $10 billion of his own money to a new initiative he called the Bezos Earth Fund, and last year detailed how some of the money would be spent. Mr. Bloomberg, the former New York mayor, said in 2019 he would spend $500 million to help close coal-fired power plants. And Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, has put billions of dollars to work on climate related issues through various efforts, including Breakthrough Energy and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Yet some question whether these philanthropic investments can make a difference when it comes to a 'planetary crisis'. I can't help feeling v cynical and paranoid about motives here
- UncleOxidant 4y ago
  I too feel somewhat skeptical & cynical... but given the political situation in the US, and specifically the deadlock in the US Senate (filibuster), the philanthropy of billionaires seems like one of the most viable ways towards making progress at this point. It's not ideal, but we don't seem to have a lot of other viable options at this point.
  - olivermarks 4y ago
    @uncleOxidant (great screen name!) Don't disagree but a weak deadlocked 'democracy'. with uberrich globalists making key decisions and funding them is not a good way forward either. The German National Socialists were great 'green' investors in the 1930's, that didn't end well... https://www.amazon.com/Green-Tyranny-Exposing-Totalitarian-Industrial/dp/1594039356 https://www.amazon.com/Green-Tyranny-Exposing-Totalitarian-I...
  - wolverine876 4y ago
    > given the political situation in the US, and specifically the deadlock in the US Senate (filibuster), the philanthropy of billionaires seems like one of the most viable ways towards making progress at this point It's probably not coincidence that the party that serves the power of the wealthy does things in the Senate to shift power to the wealthy.
newaccount2021 4y ago
launchiterate 4y ago
We are going to need all the help in ensuring the planet is habitable for future souls.
crypot 4y ago
This is great news. We need to find a way to stop the runaway global cooling and warm the planet enough to melt the ice caps. A warmer earth will support a much more robust ecosystem, helping to ensure our survival as a species.
11101010001100 4y ago
More evidence that those who know how to make money do not know what do with it.
mtoner23 4y ago
Why does stanford need a billion dollars to do something. Whats the purpose of their endowment?
bayareabadboy 4y ago
Honest, albeit very naive question: Why not start a college? Does he not want the additional headaches and costs, is he playing status games, does he think Stanford could do a better job running this school than him, or some combination of the three
- kogus 4y ago
  In addition to the reasons you have listed, it would probably be a big headache to jump through accreditation hurdles, hire staff, find a physical location, and any number of other problems that would distract from the goals he has in mind.
- boeingUH60 4y ago
  Much harder to start a new successful college than put money in one that's already successful. It takes a very long time to build a successful academic institution (Stanford is 136 years old, MIT 161, Harvard 385, etc.) There's also the prestige aspect. Stanford carries weight in elite circles, so more bragging rights for the Doerr family I guess. It's why many rich people keep throwing money towards elite universities with tens of billions of dollars in their endowments already.
timcavel 4y ago
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boringg 4y ago
It's interesting that KPCB founder is on the climate school - they haven't managed to move the needle on climate. I'll give them their due they did put a fight in the original clean tech VC round but investors got hammered. Now I think they are working on climate tech (rebrand in the investor world) but can anyone correct me if I am wrong? Have they had any big impacts - happy to be corrected here. As I understand it - KPCB early VC gold standard company - made money off tech. I don't want to sound too harsh as KPCB have done some pretty impressive things in the investment world - feels like a green washing or something along those lines.
t_mann 4y ago
One thing that I don't get - if I was in the enviable position to make such donations, the one thing that I'd do is fund a company/foundation with a single goal - capture the maximum amount of carbon (+equivalents, +research into other ways to fixing climate change). There must be something I'm missing because I don't get eg what Bill Gates is doing. He says he wants to give away most his fortune to fix the biggest problems facing humanity - great. And then he's going for Malaria. Not that that's not a great goal too, but climate change really seems like the obvious one to me. I don't get it, climate change doesn't even appear on their list of top causes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundation#Funds_for_grants_in_developing_countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundat... The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation endowment is larger than Harvard's (and slightly more than Musk spent on buying Twitter), with that kind of money they could have moved a lot of things already.
- leesec 4y ago
  Look up breakthrough energy. He's investing a lot into climate.
  - t_mann 4y ago
    Ok, thanks, I didn't know about that. 2B is a very decent amount of money. But it sounds more a VC that invests in highly risky, but ultimately profitable ventures. Carbon capture doesn't even feature in their wikipedia description (It invests in a variety of startup companies that are attempting to commercialize new concepts such as nuclear fusion, large-capacity batteries to store renewable energy, and microbe-generated biofuels). My point is, if you're already willing to donate in the billions, why not use that money to literally pay people to find ways to capture the most amount of carbon, regardless of whether that's ever going to be profitable? 2 billion, let alone 50, will pay a lot of smart people's salaries plus expensive equipment for quite some time.
    - leesec 4y ago
      I mean dive deeper, they are funding carbon capture and currently no carbon capture anywhere close to profitability.
29athrowaway 4y ago
At this point this is equivalent to Scott's Tots. There is not much time left and those who have been already educated need to take action now.
rmbyrro 4y ago
> "Climate and sustainability is going to be the new computer science" This is nuts. I'd bet that, 10 years from now, this donation is likely to have returned less than 5% in value to society. That are so many better ways to use this money to benefit climate and nature in general...
- deleted 4y ago
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dudeinjapan 4y ago
How about a School for Ethical and Sustainable Geoengineering instead?

192 points by jbredeche 4y ago

What do your do with a degree in climatology? It’s not a good idea to get these odd degrees as they are not good for signaling to potential employers.

BobbyJo 4y ago
If it's from Stanford, pretty much whatever you want. So, basically, investment banking or data science (those are still two separate jobs right?).
- ensan 4y ago
  "If it's from Stanford, pretty much whatever you want." That not true at all. The name of the university can only get you so far. For example, if you have a climate-related degree, can you really compete with Stanford CS majors for a SDE job? Or with ME majors for a product design position? IMO if you get into Stanford and can pay for the degree, it would be a waste to spend it in a major like that unless you're really passionate and have very specific goals. "So, basically, investment banking or data science" Well, those are definitely not "whatever you want".
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  - usmannk 4y ago
    > if you have a climate-related degree, can you really compete with Stanford CS majors for a SDE job For this specifically: Yes, depending on your extra curricular activities and interests. And if it was a graduate degree, then yeah almost certainly.
  - BobbyJo 4y ago
    > if you have a climate-related degree, can you really compete with Stanford CS majors for a SDE job? Thankfully there are fewer Stanford CS majors graduating than there are SDE jobs available.
MR4D 4y ago
How would that be any different than the people who get a degree in Petroleum Engineering (aside from the audience they are signaling) ?
- rdtwo 4y ago
  It’s a bad choice too better to generalize in chem e
ensan 4y ago
Ironically, I suspect a lot of them might end up in fossil fuel companies and do greenwashing R&D.
photochemsyn 4y ago
It actually does make more sense to pursue a physics degree with an emphasis on fluid dynamics (atmospheric and oceanic circulation being of great interest to future climate forecasts), or a chemistry degree with an emphasis on analytical measurement and kinetics (global elemental cycling, particulate dynamics, oceanic and atmospheric chemistry all being similarly important), or a biology degree with an emphasis on ecology and biochemistry (changing species distribution, methane biochemistry etc.). This all goes under the rubric of 'planetary sciences' of which 'earth system science' is a sort of special case. Also means you could work at NASA on Jupiter's moons etc.
- geoalchimista 4y ago
  Most people pursuing a degree in physics would be more interested in core physics problems (quantum computing, particle physics, cosmology, etc.) than in climate change. Perhaps it is more difficult to motivate physics majors to turn to climate science than to teach climate scientists physics (since only a subset of physics is needed, mostly fluid dynamics). Otherwise, universities would have climate science in a physics department.
elpakal 4y ago
In grad school I pursued (at the time it was considered experimental) a minor in "Sustainability Management". This was like 10 years ago and there was nowhere near the amount of stuff happening in the space then as there is now - it was basically "how do we get corporations to reduce their emissions? LOL good luck" and "how do large scale renewable energy projects make it? Only gonna happen with government help". I was a little disappointed with it at the time but I'm really happy that the field has awoken and that tech is getting involved - I would love to see how "higher" education in that space has changed. > What do your do with a degree in climatology? I write code, ironically. I'm in the camp that believes degrees aren't _totally_ about what you learn but more about advancing your reasoning and thinking skills and learning how to interact with people (not to say you don't learn anything in school, you definitely do but IMHO it largely depends on what you study).

mitchbob 4y ago

Archived: https://archive.ph/2022.05.04-155800/https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/04/climate/john-doerr-stanford-climate.html https://archive.ph/2022.05.04-155800/https://www.nytimes.com...

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melling 4y ago

We are burning incredible amounts of coal 40 years after we started talking about climate change. I believe around 40% of global electricity is from coal. We keep waiting for the windmills and batteries to solve the problem, while kicking the can down the road https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/03/more-than-40-countries-agree-to-phase-out-coal-fired-power https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/03/more-tha...

cyberlurker 4y ago
The amount of energy we use is expected to increase in 30 years. The percentage of that from coal is expected to go down. Great, right? No, we are basically on a path to burn the same amount of coal in the future (but a larger percentage of our energy will come from other sources). I’m not a doomer but we aren’t taking this issue seriously at all. The policy solutions exist but the political power isn’t there. I’m starting to think our best chance is a technological leap in carbon capture.
MR4D 4y ago
> kicking the can down the road When I was a kid, I remember my uncle introduced me to a guy he worked for who had made his initial fortune way back. It turns out that he bought a company that sold inner tubes for car tires, and when the automakers first moved to tubeless tires, the business owner wanted to sell. So, my uncle's friend bought him out cheap, and then targeted all the buyers of the new cars with tubeless tires. Apparently, the new car buyers didn't trust the tubeless tires yet, and the first place then went was to my uncle's friend to get tubes for their tubeless tires. The lesson here is that change is hard, and as humans, we aren't very good at it. My guess is that humanity will be kicking the can down the road for quite awhile.
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ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago

nitsky 4y ago

Is investing in a university endowment the best way to put $1.1B to work combating climate change? How about investing in companies developing clean energy technologies?

colinmhayes 4y ago
Probably not, but it probably is the best way to get a building/department named after you.
wolverine876 4y ago
> Is investing in a university endowment the best way to put $1.1B to work combating climate change? How about investing in companies developing clean energy technologies? Why is investing in research at a university less valuable than investing in research in the private sector? HN might have a bias toward the latter, effectively that people should invest more in the HN population.

jollybean 4y ago

They'll build a building and mint degrees, this doesn't seem very Entrepreneurial to me, more legacy naming kind of thing. Would be nice to see hard core innovators do hardcore things. Like solar, nuclear, carbon sequestration etc..

daterdots 4y ago

I am concerned about the incredible concentration of money and resources into a few academic institutions. Obviously Stanford is an incredible school, but I am not sure Stanford will do more with $1B than 10 2nd tier schools would do with $100M each.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> I am not sure Stanford will do more with $1B than 10 2nd tier schools would do with $100M each Absent data, it's difficult to say. There are economies of scale, even if just in experience administering such projects.
- zbrozek 4y ago
  I haven't checked the numbers lately, so I could be wrong by now. But while I was a student there and for some years after (administrators / (students + researchers + educators)) got worse at a rapid pace. It's hard for me to imagine that Stanford is the best marginal bang for more bucks.
- scythe 4y ago
  In order to have an economy of scale, first you need scale. But Stanford does not stand out in terms of the size of its faculty or enrollment, certainly not to the degree it does in terms of money. In fact, Stanford has fewer tenured faculty members (832) than UC Davis (1,126): https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/stanford-university/academic-life/faculty-composition/ https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/stanford-university/... https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/university-of-california-davis/academic-life/faculty-composition/ https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/university-of-califo...
  - pmyteh 4y ago
    There are diseconomies of scale too. My experience is mostly of UK higher education, but my feeling is that most universities are a bit too large for their governing structures, and are poorly run as a result.
- deleted 4y ago

aresant 4y ago

The most encouraging signal on climate to me is that the “money” seems to finally be waking up. ESG policies - backed by data monitoring requirements to combat greenwashing from sovereign wealth funds are real, arduous, and creating business and capital incentives with environmental alignment. Early stage climate tech funds - of which their are many today where there were few even a few years ago - are giving a new generation of entrepreneurs something to focus on beyond monetization efforts. And of course both company and billionaire branding is shifting to the importance of climate, carbon neutral solutions. I take this all much less as a sign of altruism but of market efficiency - a shift towards making “saving the planet”profitable is the only model I believe will ever move the needle. So to that end I applaud this effort - Just signaling viability of a career in the space is a great step in the right direction

sixQuarks 4y ago
ESG is a joke. Chevron has a higher ESG score than Tesla. How can anybody argue this is a fair assessment?
- aresant 4y ago
  ESG scoring agreed is a work in progress currently gameable with greenwashing strategies (carbon credits) What I am referencing is ESG for fundraising at institutional level which is the money that actually drives the world Major pensions are prioritizing selecting managers with legit, objectively good esg policies and road maps with hard and enforceable targets that are tied to compensation
  - sixQuarks 4y ago
    This is precisely the reason ESG should be abolished. It’s driving a huge amount of investment into companies that don’t deserve it
- hgomersall 4y ago
  ESG stands apart from the various agencies that provide a score. Just because they do a bad job, it doesn't mean ESG is a joke, it just means the scores are a joke.

kwertyoowiyop 4y ago

Tell me you care more about your legacy than actually helping the world without telling me you care more about your legacy than actually helping the world.

tofuahdude 4y ago
Why criticize someone for caring about their legacy when they're making an enormous contribution to the public good? Wrong lens. Who cares about his ego when he's making a real impact?
- ModernMech 4y ago
  A lot of people feel that the fact a single human can amass so much money is part of the problem. It incentivizes people to maximize profit and money over all else, sucking up all available cash they possibly can with little regard to how it's generated and what damage they do in the process. Profits are privatized while losses are socialized. Meaning when they start paying their profits back into the public good, are we talking about a net positive gain for society here, or is it just a form of restitution to atone for the damage they caused?
- simulate-me 4y ago
  How is donating to Stanford, a private university, making an enormous contribution to the public good?
  - tofuahdude 4y ago
    You can't see how improving educational programs specific to climate change benefits the public?
    - simulate-me 4y ago
      Very tenuous that this specific donation will do that. Most likely it will be used for a building (which requires concrete, a major CO2 contributor), and the rest will go to the university's endowment where it will sit.

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adlfkjlkjalwe 4y ago

missedthecue 4y ago
If they just scammed 1.1 billion from John Doerr, they have my respect to be honest.
- dudeinjapan 4y ago
  In the college admissions scandal, Stanford was a "victim" of fraud... a fraud that caused Stanford to profit millions of dollars.

perihelions 4y ago

They don't even have a nuclear engineering department! They might as well endow a theology seminary; it's the same category of problem-solving. This is mainly prestige signalling, isn't it? He's a Silicon Valley oligarch, and this is the elite Silicon Valley school. If there's some additional, meritocratic factor specific to Stanford, for this type of billion-dollar gift... what is it? edit: Perhaps it's synergies with their Natural Gas Initiative [0]. [0] https://ngi.stanford.edu/ https://ngi.stanford.edu/ edit 2: That's $1.98 million/year in oil & gas industry funding (adding up the tiers on this pricelist [1]). [1] https://ngi.stanford.edu/content/corporate-affiliates-program https://ngi.stanford.edu/content/corporate-affiliates-progra... - "The NGI Industrial Affiliate Program offers three levels of membership:" - "Sustaining Member ($250,000 per year), Corporate Member ($75,000 per year), and Basic Member ($35,000 per year, available to non Fortune 500 companies)"

_vdpp 4y ago
99% of climate change effort is social signaling, the other 1% is engineers and scientists working on more efficient, cleaner technologies. What I see here is lots of money for talks, articles, conferences, and “awareness.” Climate conferences are always held in nice places that you have to fly to. They’d do more for the environment by taking that money and paying people to pick up trash on the side of the highway. Of course, that’s why “climate” is the problem nowadays and not “the environment.” The former is a problem for other people to solve, the latter is a problem you can do something about yourself but requires getting off the couch.
- bazzert 4y ago
  https://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverwilliams1/2021/11/05/118-private-jets-take-leaders-to-cop26-climate-summit-burning-over-1000-tons-of-co2/?sh=60290ae653d9 https://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverwilliams1/2021/11/05/118-...
- bachmeier 4y ago
  > 99% of climate change effort is social signaling, the other 1% is engineers and scientists working on more efficient, cleaner technologies. China, India, Russia, Indonesia, Brazil, and Iran combined produce about four times the GHG emissions of the US (and nearly half of all world emissions). Move forward in time 30 years and add in countries with large populations like Pakistan, and it's clear that making alternatives to fossil fuels cheaper is a big deal for climate change. That's not to say the US political situation is of trivial importance, but it's not accurate to say we should ignore everything else.

ParksNet 4y ago

Better to spend $1.1b lobbying for a $100/tonne Carbon Tax. Heck, for $1.1b you could probably just buy a US President or their children.

photochemsyn 4y ago

Stanford's last major foray into this area was "The Global Climate and Energy Project"... a major sponsor was ExxonMobil. As you might guess, that didn't really do much in the way of producing renewable energy alternatives to fossil fuels... more like a green PR initiative. Somehow I don't think oil companies are thrilled about everyone driving EVs and seeing their market share collapse. https://gcep.stanford.edu/about/exxonmobil.html https://gcep.stanford.edu/about/exxonmobil.html I rather doubt this one will be any better. A better option would just be to put $1 billion into a company dedicated to catching up to China on mass-scale monocrystalline PV wafer production for durable, high-efficiency PV panels for both rooftop solar and large-scale installations. Unfortunately neither California's natural gas industry nor the investor-owned utilities are thrilled about that either. Rooftop cuts directly into utility revenue, and replacing natural gas power plants with solar + storage plants makes Sempra and friends very sad. https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2018/04/21/the-weekend-read-chinas-monocrystalline-boom/ https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2018/04/21/the-weekend... The United States is more of a petro-state than most people realize, and a rapid transition to renewables (i.e. 3% reduction in fossil fuel production per year, matched by an equivalent increase in renewable energy production per year) is too much economic disruption to contemplate, it seems - although that is what is needed if you wanted to address the climate problem. American academics are not going to do anything on their own about this, as they don't control the funding.

bazzert 4y ago
> The United States is more of a petro-state than most people realize or energy independent, depending on how you want to look at it.
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  This is one people get a bit confused about: 1) In 2021, the United States imported about 8.47 million barrels per day (b/d) of petroleum from 73 countries. (EIA) 2) In 2021, the United States exported about 8.63 million b/d of petroleum to 176 countries and 4 U.S. territories. The reasons you can't just say, halt exports and halt imports and be 'energy independent' are varied: there's regional demand (oil produced in the Dakotas can't easily get to Los Angeles, etc.) and there's the fact that refineries are built to distill specific grades of crude, you can't just mix-and-match. Nevertheless, the fact that Obama & Biden, with Republican support, lifted the 1970s era ban on crude oil exports from the USA in 2015 is certainly a major factor in the gas price inflation, a fact neither party nor industry likes to see discussed in the corporate media. Real 'energy independence' would come from using sunlight and wind, which cannot be embargoed or manipulated by OPEC etc, as the primary energy source.

basedgod 4y ago

what a collasal waste of money sure, it's mildly better than hoarding the money in his investment profile, and is the tiniest step in the right direction for the moral responsibility of billionaires, but nothing about this is effective by any measure against the timescale and enormity of the problem of global warming did you know that the *entire* nsf budget for the year is only around $8 billion?

olivermarks 4y ago

'Mr. Doerr joins a growing list of ultrawealthy men donating huge sums of money to the fight against global warming. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said in 2020 said he was committing $10 billion of his own money to a new initiative he called the Bezos Earth Fund, and last year detailed how some of the money would be spent. Mr. Bloomberg, the former New York mayor, said in 2019 he would spend $500 million to help close coal-fired power plants. And Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, has put billions of dollars to work on climate related issues through various efforts, including Breakthrough Energy and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Yet some question whether these philanthropic investments can make a difference when it comes to a 'planetary crisis'. I can't help feeling v cynical and paranoid about motives here

UncleOxidant 4y ago
I too feel somewhat skeptical & cynical... but given the political situation in the US, and specifically the deadlock in the US Senate (filibuster), the philanthropy of billionaires seems like one of the most viable ways towards making progress at this point. It's not ideal, but we don't seem to have a lot of other viable options at this point.
- olivermarks 4y ago
  @uncleOxidant (great screen name!) Don't disagree but a weak deadlocked 'democracy'. with uberrich globalists making key decisions and funding them is not a good way forward either. The German National Socialists were great 'green' investors in the 1930's, that didn't end well... https://www.amazon.com/Green-Tyranny-Exposing-Totalitarian-Industrial/dp/1594039356 https://www.amazon.com/Green-Tyranny-Exposing-Totalitarian-I...
- wolverine876 4y ago
  > given the political situation in the US, and specifically the deadlock in the US Senate (filibuster), the philanthropy of billionaires seems like one of the most viable ways towards making progress at this point It's probably not coincidence that the party that serves the power of the wealthy does things in the Senate to shift power to the wealthy.

newaccount2021 4y ago

launchiterate 4y ago

We are going to need all the help in ensuring the planet is habitable for future souls.

crypot 4y ago

This is great news. We need to find a way to stop the runaway global cooling and warm the planet enough to melt the ice caps. A warmer earth will support a much more robust ecosystem, helping to ensure our survival as a species.

11101010001100 4y ago

More evidence that those who know how to make money do not know what do with it.

mtoner23 4y ago

Why does stanford need a billion dollars to do something. Whats the purpose of their endowment?

bayareabadboy 4y ago

Honest, albeit very naive question: Why not start a college? Does he not want the additional headaches and costs, is he playing status games, does he think Stanford could do a better job running this school than him, or some combination of the three

kogus 4y ago
In addition to the reasons you have listed, it would probably be a big headache to jump through accreditation hurdles, hire staff, find a physical location, and any number of other problems that would distract from the goals he has in mind.
boeingUH60 4y ago
Much harder to start a new successful college than put money in one that's already successful. It takes a very long time to build a successful academic institution (Stanford is 136 years old, MIT 161, Harvard 385, etc.) There's also the prestige aspect. Stanford carries weight in elite circles, so more bragging rights for the Doerr family I guess. It's why many rich people keep throwing money towards elite universities with tens of billions of dollars in their endowments already.

timcavel 4y ago

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boringg 4y ago

It's interesting that KPCB founder is on the climate school - they haven't managed to move the needle on climate. I'll give them their due they did put a fight in the original clean tech VC round but investors got hammered. Now I think they are working on climate tech (rebrand in the investor world) but can anyone correct me if I am wrong? Have they had any big impacts - happy to be corrected here. As I understand it - KPCB early VC gold standard company - made money off tech. I don't want to sound too harsh as KPCB have done some pretty impressive things in the investment world - feels like a green washing or something along those lines.

t_mann 4y ago

One thing that I don't get - if I was in the enviable position to make such donations, the one thing that I'd do is fund a company/foundation with a single goal - capture the maximum amount of carbon (+equivalents, +research into other ways to fixing climate change). There must be something I'm missing because I don't get eg what Bill Gates is doing. He says he wants to give away most his fortune to fix the biggest problems facing humanity - great. And then he's going for Malaria. Not that that's not a great goal too, but climate change really seems like the obvious one to me. I don't get it, climate change doesn't even appear on their list of top causes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundation#Funds_for_grants_in_developing_countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundat... The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation endowment is larger than Harvard's (and slightly more than Musk spent on buying Twitter), with that kind of money they could have moved a lot of things already.

leesec 4y ago
Look up breakthrough energy. He's investing a lot into climate.
- t_mann 4y ago
  Ok, thanks, I didn't know about that. 2B is a very decent amount of money. But it sounds more a VC that invests in highly risky, but ultimately profitable ventures. Carbon capture doesn't even feature in their wikipedia description (It invests in a variety of startup companies that are attempting to commercialize new concepts such as nuclear fusion, large-capacity batteries to store renewable energy, and microbe-generated biofuels). My point is, if you're already willing to donate in the billions, why not use that money to literally pay people to find ways to capture the most amount of carbon, regardless of whether that's ever going to be profitable? 2 billion, let alone 50, will pay a lot of smart people's salaries plus expensive equipment for quite some time.
  - leesec 4y ago
    I mean dive deeper, they are funding carbon capture and currently no carbon capture anywhere close to profitability.

29athrowaway 4y ago

At this point this is equivalent to Scott's Tots. There is not much time left and those who have been already educated need to take action now.

rmbyrro 4y ago

> "Climate and sustainability is going to be the new computer science" This is nuts. I'd bet that, 10 years from now, this donation is likely to have returned less than 5% in value to society. That are so many better ways to use this money to benefit climate and nature in general...

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dudeinjapan 4y ago

How about a School for Ethical and Sustainable Geoengineering instead?