Google, Microsoft tackle climate change as IBM seeks cancer cure Three of the technology industry's largest companies today harnessed their resources to some Big Problems. Google and Microsoft have both signed up to US president Barack Obama's new Climate Data Initiative, an effort aimed at “bringing together extensive open government data and design competitions with commitments from the …
They could be working on basic wireless communications to provide news, disaster alerts, and education to our impoverished fellow humans across the planet, and save many lives.
They could work on providing cheaper energy that'll allow others to have clean water on tap, even hot water, and refrigeration that preserves food and medicine, and many other things so common to us that we in developed countries have been demanding them as rights our governments must provide, and save many lives.
Instead they've decided to kiss O's fanny*. So many ways to help so many now, to strengthen them for doing as evolution demands and making them better able to adapt to what will come later... And instead they decided to keep President Executive Order extra happy. What a waste.
*Note: If you think there's a UK/US difference in the meaning of that word that should be noted, check what the Big O's done in the Ukraine, Middle East, etc. Usage is correct either way.
IIRC, Google partly owns the biggest solar energy power plant of the world...
Ivanpah in the Mojave Desert, California, US, federal land. "The project - which counts NRG Solar, Google and BrightSource as equity investors - is currently the largest solar plant under construction in the world."
However, Ivanpah has been blinding pilots. Considering the harsh punishments for shining lasers in the general direction of aircraft in the US, you'd expect prompt corrective action lest people get killed, eh?
Nah, the authorities sat on the reports. But then in February many news outlets noted the place fries flying birds. With the news of the too-bright Google-backed facility out in the open, shockingly suddenly the problem was officially noticed, and within weeks BrightSource got the complaint, which they are required to be addressing today, in fact.
BTW, Bloomberg recently reported Google has invested more than $1.4 BILLION in "clean energy". Between assorted controversial tax incentives, and also government mandated "green energy" use, helps them get about 10% returns.
Heck, Motley Fool reports Edison International is paying about a $0.20/KWH premium for the Ivanpah electricity.
Google is making very good money by supporting government supporting "green clean energy" with government then supporting Google.
Yeah, when I am dying of Malaria I'll be glad of WiFi.
I hope you're not thinking global warming will somehow increase malaria. As the Beeb reported in 2010:
Climate change will have a tiny impact on malaria compared with our capacity to control the disease, a study finds.
Noting that malaria incidence fell over the last century, researchers calculate that control measures have at least 10 times more impact than climate factors.
Research leader Peter Gething from Oxford University described the climate link as an "unwelcome distraction" from the main issues of tackling malaria.
The paper, by scientists in the UK, US and Kenya, is published in Nature.
...
Bed nets, good drugs, mosquito controls like draining marshes and swamps; these will all be better for combating malaria than diverting those resources into combating climate change.
Maybe you could tell us what YOU'RE doing to change the world before complaining other people aren't doing it right?
Frankly, if you knew me, you'd know I have such a minimalist existence, rarely using more than I absolutely must, that I fail to see how much more "changing the world" I can do.
Now if you literally meant change the world, well, I'm so minuscule I doubt the planet even knows I'm here. My lifetime contribution either towards or against global warming is dwarfed by a single volcano fart.
But generally speaking, I change the world by being a smiling face and a helping hand. Seriously. Try it, it works wonders.
Judging by the comments here and elsewhere, it's clearly unsettling for those with a certain agenda that major corporations are publicly accepting that global warming is a serious concern and are prepared to put their money where their mouths are. The CEO of Apple even told investors complaining about their policy of building and using renewable sources of energy that it was the right thing to do, and they should sell their stock-holding if they didn't like it. It would be far more sensible to get out of fossil fuels, because those corporations are going to have to leave much of their products in the ground.
Judging by the comments here and elsewhere, it's clearly unsettling for those with a certain agenda that major corporations are publicly accepting that global warming is a serious concern and are prepared to put their money where their mouths are.
Judging by the comments here and elsewhere, many people have trouble publicly accepting that major corporations are investing their money to generate serious profits by taking advantage of government initiatives to combat global warming, as it's clearly unsettling to consider profit-driven organizations will do such actions from something other than kindness and compassion from the bottom of their corporate hearts, from the depths of their warm fuzzy corporate souls.
They also have trouble publicly accepting it is they who will fill those corporations' coffers by paying both higher energy costs and the higher taxes that support those government initiatives.
It would be far more sensible to get out of fossil fuels, because those corporations are going to have to leave much of their products in the ground.
So who's going to force the Russians to stop pumping their natural gas, or the Iranians their oil, or stop the Chinese from digging up their coal?
Heck, can you make Mexico stop pumping, or Venezuela?
"Corporations" that you can pressure are far fewer than you want to admit. Whole countries are supported by the selling of fossil fuels. The most you can accomplish is the decimation of the economies of those who go along with you and abandon using cheap fossil energy, each one being an object lesson teaching those remaining to not succumb. For economies based on the selling of fossil fuels, well, what government would invite revolt by crashing their own economy?
If you can't get the big sharks to cooperate, what's the purpose of forcing the minnows to swim in a row? Besides making it easier for the sharks to eat them, that is.
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