Archive for the ‘Bill Gates’ tag
Why Bill Gates is wrong (what’s new?)
Dave Roberts on Grist has this to say about Bill Gates’ recent TED talk:
Gates has burst on to the energy scene with some rather ill-considered thinking. To get a flavor, see his blog post, “Why We Need Innovation, Not Just Insulation.” The idea is that “conservation and behavior change” might get the world to its 2020 or 2030 targets, but to get to 80 percent emissions reductions by 2050 we’ll need fundamental technological innovation. Ergo: we should pay more attention to, and devote more money to, basic science and R&D.
via Why Bill Gates is wrong | Grist.
Roberts goes on and on about why Gates is wrong, and Roberts mostly gets it right. But we can succintly tell you why Gates was wrong:
If you build tight and build right, a building’s energy consumption goes way down.
No innovation required there, just good craftsmanship and a solid work ethic. Alas, those two things are sorely lacking in the U.S. construction trade, and no amount of technological innovation is going to change that.
Population Zero?
At a TED talk, Bill Gates offered this equation:
Total CO2 = World population x Services x Energy of each service x CO2 per unit of energy
And Mark Frauenfelder comments:
The neat thing about an equation that uses only multiplication is that if any of the four factors can be reduced to zero, then you don't have to worry about the other three factors. The total CO2 output will be zero. So which one can we make zero?
via Boing Boing.
Alas, the equation doesn’t quite get the global picture. Even if the damn breeders stopped breeding and human population were reduced to zero (hey, I can dream, right?), there would still be CO2 production from volcanoes and numerous other sources.
Seems as if Bill Gates’ equation is akin to the Windows operating system: a bit of wishful thinking built upon a false premise.
