Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 214 posts

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

#41

Post by _vdpp »

perihelions wrote: post #33

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 wi…

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.

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

#42

Post by basedgod »

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?

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

#43

Post by olivermarks »

'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

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

#45

Post by bazzert »

photochemsyn wrote: post #40

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/abo…

> 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.

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

#47

Post by bazzert »

_vdpp wrote: post #41
perihelions wrote: post #33

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 wi…

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. O…

https://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverwilliams1/2021/11/05/118-...

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

#48

Post by UncleOxidant »

olivermarks wrote: post #43

'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 co…

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.

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

#49

Post by cure »

olivermarks wrote: post #43

'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 co…

Bill Gates also has a $500M short bet against Tesla.

Exactly how big are all those efforts he's allegedly making to do something about climate change?

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

#50

Post by UncleOxidant »

cure wrote: post #49
olivermarks wrote: post #43

'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 co…

Bill Gates also has a $500M short bet against Tesla. Exactly how big are all those efforts he's allegedly making to do something about climate change?

I wonder if he cashed that out in recent days now that his short position is in the money? If so then maybe he doubled (or better) his $500M and he can plow those profits into more philanthropy?
Post reply on HN