Climate Files 60 Special / The Gates Equation
This is a special edition of Climate Files of a highly anticipated talk by Bill Gates, who has come up with an equation you see in this graphic. He presented this at the latest TED conference during a short talk on February 12th. This was followed by a short Q&A at TED and on livestream.com. Gates says he’s happy to get Twitter questions, so visit his website and fire off some questions to him.
Gates discussed energy, his “equation”, and his goal in life at the TED conference — getting us to zero carbon by 2050. He feels this is doable in a variety of ways. (These are his ideas and are not necessarily endorsed by myself or by Climate Files, but they are interesting.) He is getting a large amount of criticism from some environmentalists for saying that we need an “energy miracle” and lots of tech development to solve the climate problem. As he defines “miracle”, I mostly agree with his ideas on climate change. (Read an article discussing this here.) He is promoting nuclear power and not just any nuclear power but specifically, a “traveling wave” type of nuclear power, which is being developed by a company called TerraPower.
Is Gates just another T. Boone Pickens trying to cash in? Nope, Gates actually does understand and believe in the importance of climate change and is really seeking zero carbon solutions, unlike Pickens.
If you are wondering what Gates is up to besides caring what happens to the atmosphere, you should know that he is personally investing his own money into these ideas. He is spending quite a bit of thought and some of his great wealth on thinking about not just seeds and malaria, but also zero-carbon energy. Check out another article from last Monday for more on what Gates is doing to promote zero carbon energy. “When we talk about zero climate emissions, we sound crazy. When Bill Gates does it, bankers pick up the phone,” from Alternet.
(This episode of Climate Files is sans commentary from yours truly because I’m on a working break, and the plan is that this podcast will still return to weekly or bi-monthly episodes at some point.)
Download this episode here — it’s a short one — or listen here or subscribe on the right. For an interesting graphic I found of Bill Gates after he left Microsoft, click on more. I wanted to include it for the cover art for the podcast but it needed the equation on it to make sense!
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Climate Files 55 / Drop the Nuke Bias
Being antinuclear is like a religion to many environmentalists. But solving climate change will be a compromise of what is possible and needed. We are not going to get a green utopian world to emerge and solve climate change with windmills. Even environmentalists want to be able to charge their cell phones and laptops. Should we throw it all away, or find out a realistic way to power it all once the coal plants are gone? We should be supporting nuclear plants over CCS any day. The last thing we want to do is spend billions locking in coal for another 50 years, something that could kill us all.
The Clean Air Act is under attack by Republicans with new legislation trying to block EPA again again. You can help save it by contacting your Reps. here.
Some news discussed in this episode includes information on and quotes from the books Storms of My Grandchildren by James Hansen and the Vanishing Face of Gaia by James Lovelock. Hansen’s letter to Obama is here (PDF). The UK must raise its CO2 emissions target to a 42% cut, says a new report. Read why our endless consumerism needs to be replaced with sustainable living here. The story about Bell Labs greening the internet by 2015 is here. There is a lot more in this episode including an audio description of what a thorium reactor is and how it works.
Read another interview with Stewart Brand, whose interview is played in this episode, here at e360.
More info on thorium reactors:
- How a Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) works
- Energy from Thorium blog
- Uranium is so Last Century
Contact CF using the contact form at the top or email CF at news @ climatefilesradio (dot) com
Download this episode here or subscribe on the right.
Music at end: Nuclear Power Plant by Zen Eyes
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Climate Files 14 / Nuclear Power Potential
This episode presents four scientists and environmentalists making the case for the use of nuclear power.
It’s believed by some people that environmentalists should be against nuclear power — I completely disagree. We are trying to find ways to solve and stop climate change, not fight the possibilities and the ideas for doing that. Nuclear power has improved a lot since the 1970′s, and it’s a strong source of nearly CO2-free power. Nuclear energy is not a political issue, it’s just a form of energy, and for the near future at least, a necessary one. There are many environmentalists who are for the development of new nuclear power, Generation IV or IFR — Integral Fast Reactors. This episode discusses nuclear power, why it may be necessary, why new power plants are safer, and why it might be a good source of heavy-duty power for many years to come.
Read chapter 4 on nuclear power from the new book Prescription for the Planet, — “Newclear Power” – by downloading it here. Author Tom Blees has generously decided to put this chapter (pg 117 — 139) on the web to allow a more rapid dissemination of the basic facts about IFR to everyone you know (family, friends, fellow environmentalists, politicians, the media) — so please do pass on the link: http://tinyurl.com/cwvn8n
Also visit the site for the book and download chapter 1. This notification came from a very good spot online for energy information: Brave New Climate.
More on the The Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) project here.
Also interesting: George Monbiot does not reject nuclear power. Neither does climate scientist James Hansen, or UK scientist James Lovelock. Neither does Energy Secretary Steven Chu. If nuclear will be a necessary power source for the future, when can we start building them?
Nuclear Energy Must Power Our Future — an Intelligence Squared debate, and two viewpoints on nuclear energy are in this episode.
The graphic for this episode is from the COP15 logo. You can sign up and submit your thoughts to the UN’s “Climate Thoughts”. A very cool globe of thoughts from all over the world.
Music: Afro Celt Sound System “Dark Moon, High Tide”
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
FN06 / A Criminal Enterprise
Highlights from Powershift09 sending a message to end the use of coal — and as speaker Robert Kennedy put it, coal is a criminal enterprise. What they are doing to mountains and our air is nothing short of criminal. It’s time to take action to stop coal. It’s time for a citizens arrest of coal. Speakers from Powershift09 include RFK Jr., Van Jones and Lisa Jackson; also Bill McKibben and Jimmy Carter in the second half.
The Age of Stupid movie trailer can be seen here.
Interested in the Clean Energy Corp — story link about green jobs from the Environment News Service:
“Clean Energy Corps Proposed to Create Jobs, Fight Global Warming”
In the 2nd half, you’ll hear about why natural gas isn’t such a great fuel, why it’s not “clean” like Pelosi is claiming, and whatever happened to Jimmy Carter’s solar panels, and his dream of clean energy.
It’s not a happy story, but 30 years later, we have another realistic chance at it. And at the end, bits of a speech from 32 years ago, much of which President Obama could be saying today.
Nancy Pelosi’s conflict of interest is her financial interest in T. Boone Picken’s natural gas venture.
From the Wall Street Journal.
WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her husband invested between $50,000 and $100,000 in T. Boone Pickens’s Clean Energy Fuels Corp., which could benefit from legislation the California Democrat favors to boost U.S. use of natural gas.
Nancy Pelosi’s letter about switching the CPP to natural gas: Read the whole thing here.
Pelosi has a conflict of interest with natural gas, being an investor in T. Boone Pickens natural gas company. She’s an investor in natural gas, so she is pushing the use of natural gas on the nation’s capitol, insinuating that it’s “clean” and renewable, which it most certainly is not. She should be installing solar panels instead. — like our president did 30 years ago. The drilling process for natural gas contains the use of toxic chemicals, including Benzene which causes cancer. And get this — the company who perfected this deadly technique was Halliburton.
“Sublette County is the home of one of the nation’s largest natural gas fields, and many of its 6,000 wells have undergone a process pioneered by Halliburton called hydraulic fracturing, which shoots vast amounts of water, sand and chemicals several miles underground to break apart rock and release the gas. The process has been considered safe since a 2004 study by the Environmental Protection Agency found that it posed no risk to drinking water. After that study, Congress even exempted hydraulic fracturing from the Safe Drinking Water Act. Today fracturing is used in 9 out of 10 natural gas wells in the United States.”
And Jimmy Carter’s solar panels–they were removed by the Reaganites, and now you can hear why.
I read much of the story, but you can read the rest of it here.
Download this podcast episode here or subscribe on the right.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
