Well, it's a double-edged sword, isn't it?  If there was no profit incentive then there would be no Internet, no cell phones, no flat screen TVs, no GPS, no wireless data, no online forums, no ability to call 911 if your car breaks down and you are stranded, no ultrasound scanners, no CAT scanners, no MRI scanners, no ability to collaborate with your peers in real time all around the world, no free online access to knowledge, no iPads, no iPods, no digital video compression, no mp3 music, no fiber infrastructure for transmitting high-bandwidth data, no home PCs, no four-terrabyte hard drives, no digital photography, and tens of thousands of other things that people take for granted every day.

Quote from: MileHigh on December 10, 2015, 05:26:54 PM
Well, it's a double-edged sword, isn't it?...

It sure is and the blade is sharper on the side of greed/profit. Just don't get suckered into the "save the planet" marketing scheme is all I'm saying.

If they want to cut emissions we could do it now. He has a video where they talk about the millions that already don't have access to basic electricity and water. That will not change as there is no profit in helping poor people. Clean energy will help slow down the destruction a little but not stop it. Cleaner energy will be spent on barges like the 5 hours energy billionaire wants to do in order to suck our oceans dry with desalinization devices to satisfy human consumption. Without population control we only exchange one environmental disaster for another.

China slowed down the rotation of this planet with their huge dam and I'm sure ours haven't helped. I'm not surprised the earths magnetic field had gotten weaker. Slow down a dynamo, which the earth is, and something funky just might happen. Last I heard, if you slow down a dynamo, they don't put out as much electricity/magnetic field. And the damn thing only provides 1.7% of china's energy demand which is pointless.

From ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Gorges_Dam )...
"The dam was expected to provide 10% of China's power. However, electricity demand has increased more quickly than previously projected. Even fully operational, on average, it supports only about 1.7% of electricity demand in China in the year of 2011, when the Chinese electricity demand reached 4692.8 TWh"

You need to rethink desalination plants.  If they can be powered with clean energy then they will have zero negative impact and only a positive impact.  You can turn the desert into arable land.  There will be no problem with "sucking the oceans dry," even if you have 2000 desalination plants working, that's the part you need to rethink.

A billionaire like Bill Gates looks for balance.  He expects a return on some of his investments, and on other speculative investments or simply giving away money he does not expect a return.  I am sure many of the renewable or clean energy projects will fail to produce results, others will.

The outlook for the future is positive.  We have technical problems that can be solved and the world slowly but surely is transitioning to clean and renewable energy.  People in the Third World want access to the same energy that people in the West take for granted.  With the right technologies that can take place without destroying the planet.

These barges or what ever is floating in the sea will be powered by gas guzzlers just as they are now for the forseable future. There is already detectable levels of murcury in the ocean, enough to make you think twice before eating tuna, but thousands of barges in the ocean won't make polution worse?

A billionaire like Bill Gates gets a lot more than just a return on his investments.

We are 10 years into a global drought with no foreseeable end. Global fresh ground water is all but gone. Over population that no one is going to stop. The earths magnetic field is getting weaker and may not just be the result of a flip. Yah, we got some technical problems all right.

I'm sure people in the Third World may want access to the same energy that people in the West take for granted. The west is spoiled and consumes much more than others in terms of its population. Giving the same gluttony to third world countries doesn't exactly help the situation.

But then again overunity doesn't exist. You can't get more out of a system then you put into it. We have all been shown a magnet doing work to help make a rotating motor more efficient yet the magnet is said to be doing no work. Overunity doesn't exist and the future is bright? Up is down I guess. Now back to our regularly scheduled program.

P.S.- On an unrelated note I thought I might mention that any cloud cover over the L.A. area has been a noticeable red color for at least a few months now which I have never seen before. Sometimes a little faint like tonight and other times unmistakably red. Red as in a redish pink color and it's way past sun down. I'm sure it's a minor technical issue

Let's imagine the year is 2035.  Suppose you have flat desert with a lot of sun and very little rain very close to the ocean shoreline.  There are many places in the world like that.  You have cheap and efficient solar cells.  You have a giant machine that takes a giant spool of solar cell panels, like a big rolled up carpet, and just lays it on the desert floor.  Work crews do a minimal amount of support work to connect cables and stuff like that as the giant machine lays the carpet of solar cells out on the desert floor.  The giant spools of solar panels are made in a factory and then delivered in the cargo holds of ocean-going supertankers or on super container ships.  Imagine over an area of say five square kilometers you lay down a carpet of solar panels.  Imagine that say 60% of the surface is solar panels when you factor in all other surface overhead.  So that means you have three square kilometers of solar panels.  The philosophy is to make a relatively low tech dumb solar cell farm with no solar tracking, no energy storage, very low maintenance, etc.  However, you have a very very large array of solar panels.

All of that power is fed to a water desalination plant on the ocean shoreline.  I am not going to crunch the numbers, but I wonder how much fresh water could be produced with a setup like that.  Enough to supply water to a population of 100,000?  500,000?

Don't be surprised if mega engineering projects like that happen over the next 25 years.  You have to think big and stay positive.

Personally I don't give much credence to global drought/global warming/global cooling, etc, etc.  The media is way too hysterical when it comes to things like that.  There was a "mini ice age" in the 19th century and we are all still here.