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

nytimes.com

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

#141

Post by t_mann »

leesec wrote: post #137
t_mann wrote: post #134

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 p…

Look up breakthrough energy. He's investing a lot into climate.

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.

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

#142

Post by bachmeier »

frontman1988 wrote: post #111
bachmeier wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 alternat…

> China, India, Russia, Indonesia, Brazil, and Iran combined produce about four times GHG emissions of the US And? These countries combined have ten times the population of US and still only emit four times that of US. The per capita emissions of West are staggeringly high. Not to forget the west has already developed while these are all developing countries who will pollute more due to their growth phase. The respon…

I'm not telling you not to hold these beliefs. I fully understand that some people do not believe GHG emissions or climate change are a problem. As a matter of "what the data says", most emissions do not come from the US, and with realistic projections for the next 30 years, a much smaller percentage will come from the US. You're absolutely free to hold the belief that China, India, and other countries should not have to do anything to curtail their emissions.

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

#143

Post by hackernewds »

sixQuarks wrote: post #32
aresant wrote: post #13

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 g…

ESG is a joke. Chevron has a higher ESG score than Tesla. How can anybody argue this is a fair assessment?

Why is that not plausible? climate change is not just about emissions. the full life cycle of a battery is pretty brutal on the environment

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

#144

Post by wolverine876 »

nitsky wrote: post #7

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?

> 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.

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

#145

Post by jsmith99 »

t_mann wrote: post #134

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 p…

Look up the Copenhagen Consensus, which is a project that tried to rank interventions: what would you do if you had $75bn to spend on a good cause?

The founder is a controversial figure with niche views on climate science, but the judging panel was solid (lots of Nobel Prizes etc). Global warming barely made the list. It's the biggest priority for us in the west, but billions of poorer people are more interested in tropical diseases, HIV, education, etc.

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

#146

Post by hgomersall »

sixQuarks wrote: post #32
aresant wrote: post #13

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 g…

ESG is a joke. Chevron has a higher ESG score than Tesla. How can anybody argue this is a fair assessment?

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.

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

#147

Post by eevilspock »

daterdots wrote: post #11

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.

I read a great article about Catalytic Philanthropy many years ago. For the irony, I submitted a Stanford hosted copy to HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31265490

Read the first three paragraphs, and then you won't be able to stop.

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

#148

Post by hgomersall »

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?

Tesla isn't going to solve climate change.

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

#149

Post by rmbyrro »

> "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...

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

#150

Post by [deleted] »

rmbyrro wrote: post #149

> "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]
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