I don't know how it is that I've never seen this John Doerr talk from TED, but I'm glad I finally did:
'I don't think we're going to make it'
Venture capitalist John Doerr shares four lessons on climate change 24
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Posted 1:34 AM on 7 Jul 2008
by David Roberts -
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David Roberts is staff writer for Grist. You can follow his Twitter feed at twitter.com/drgrist.
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caniscandida Posted 6:41 pm
06 Jul 2008
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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Larry9247 Posted 10:00 pm
06 Jul 2008
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BlackBear Posted 10:49 pm
06 Jul 2008
Sadly, I don't share your optimism that this is a flight of fancy. Because I care about our children, I think I'll continue working towards a solution.
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amazingdrx Posted 11:14 pm
06 Jul 2008
With leadership like this we definitely won't make it.
China gets a pass because we can't ask them to "sacrifice" their economy?
Since when is leading green product developnment a sacrifice? Does this numbskull not know that the curly bulbs he is touting were made in China? And the solar panels (which he didn't even mention)?
Everything this feller said was dead wrong. Was every other participant at this conference as wrong?
How do these idiot elites make money? By who they know, not what they know. Promote incompetence, produce failure. Why not just show Vinod's speech DR, it couldn't have been much worse?
So we ought to take his word that any one of the cap and trade bills will be great! Do these people even know what is going on around them? Obviously not.
Tell us that putting this up as a green example was a joke DR. Please.
Just one real idea that Walmart could use? Run that billion miles per year of semi travel on biogas/natural gas instead of oil.
If these morons were paying attention to their interns who do their research for them, they would know that nano technology has found the answer to storing methane as a vehicle fuel.
A chance to reduce oil demand and save our economy so we can invest in real GHG saving technologies (that this moron never heard of?)? Like plugin hybrids and geo heat exchange heating/cooling and solar PV/heat cogeneration and offshore wind/wave/current power and biogas from waste?
How could that help? Hehey.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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MAD MAC Posted 12:01 am
07 Jul 2008
You guys remind me of that Lilliputian character on the Gullivers Travels Cartoon. The one that was always saying "We're never going to make it."
I guess if you want to be an environmentalist you have to be a self-loathing, depressed, pessimistic schmuck.
Victory in Pattani
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billgee Posted 12:03 am
07 Jul 2008
You may be one of the richest and most powerful men in the world but you remain nothing more than an individual in the eyes of nature.
Itll surely come. Where will you be?
We have been given a Global WarNing
Heed it Well
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Biodiversivist Posted 12:14 am
07 Jul 2008
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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gmobus Posted 1:03 am
07 Jul 2008
And what has happened since? What effect did his talk have? How effective is the network of really important people? Now that James Hansen has called for 350ppm as the stabilizing limit for CO2 (and we're at 380+) shouldn't we have mobilized massively by now?
Here is the problem with the entrepreneur's version of solving global warming. It takes energy to do anything. The more you do the more energy it takes. Pretty simple really. If you want to build a million solar panels you will have to expend a lot of fossil fuels to do so. Until solar panels make enough excess (above consumption demand) energy to reproduce and maintain themselves, meaning providing energy inputs to farming (labor) and mining, etc., you will need fossil fuels. This goes for all alternative energy source technologies. Only when the whole alternative energy infrastructure is sustainable and producing the energy needed to run AN economy (and it won't be the one we've got now) will we be carbon neutral.
Don't get me wrong. I like a can-do attitude and the will to make things happen. But it will have to be the right things, not just the things someone wants. The right things will not involve either economics as usual (EAU) or politics as usual (PAU). It will involve massive sacrifice of energy consumption and careful husbanding of what FF energy we have to build the appropriate alternative energy capital while there is still high EROI energy to be had. We have to get our priorities sorted out. I suspect snowmobiles and yachts will not be high on the list. But neither will be traveling 20 miles to work, or even shipping microwave ovens from China.
What I don't see is that many people are recognizing the fundamental reality of economics -- that energy drives the economy. People seem to split between the cornucopians (a few above) and the doomsdayers (a few above). It's all or nothing. The middle way is to match our lifestyles and aspirations to what nature can actually provide. While we had a huge energy bank account in the ground we could afford to be big spenders, or thought we could. Now that we've spent the easy money we need to be very careful how we invest the rest in interest bearing accounts (alternative energy capital) and prepare to live on a modest income.
Of course, as the price of oil stays above $140/bl or goes past $150, as some are now predicting, the reality of energy-driven economics will start to hit home. If it doesn't then the conversation Doerr will be having with his daughter in 20 years will be about where the next scrap of food will come from.
Question Everything
George Mobus,
Associate Professor, Institute of Technology,
University of Washington Tacoma,
and Professional Student for Life
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Ron Steenblik Posted 2:25 am
07 Jul 2008
His voice and manner of speaking sounds like legendary radio commentator Paul Harvey.
But a nice touch that he got choked up about it.
These are only my personal opinions.
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infp Posted 2:32 am
07 Jul 2008
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MAD MAC Posted 3:25 am
07 Jul 2008
Where will I be? Where I am now. In Northeast Thailand.
Am in the process of making my home / business completely self sufficient. Already off the power grid, working water now. Am building a roof top garden for fun, live close to where my food is grown and bred. I don't know about where you are, so I won't try and speak for you, but here, the sky ain't falling. Rice is growing greener than ever. Food is cheap, and there's plenty of it. I eat almost exclusively local because the quality is good and the costs are very low. I live here on just over 800 dollars a month. Saving plenty of money.
So while the rest of you are whining like little kids about everything under the sun, I'm going to continue improving my home, and enjoying life.
Have a nice day if you possibly can.
Victory in Pattani
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gzuckier Posted 5:18 am
07 Jul 2008
we're too smart to let it happen.
the earth isn't warming.
the warming is due to the sun's changes.
the warming has ended.
the solar system is entirely warming.
the warming will be good for agriculture.
the arctic ice cap is not melting.
the arctic ice cap is melting because of undersea volcanoes.
the earth warms up and cools down for a few million years at a time and it's probably about time for it to switch.
the warming is due to the solar system traversing the galactic plane.
the warming is just an artifact of sloppy measurements.
the carbon dioxide level is not rising.
the rising carbon dioxide level is due to volcanoes.
the rising carbon dioxide level is because rising carbon dioxide follows warming not the other way around.
carbon dioxide doesn't absorb IR in the atmosphere, only in the laboratory.
water vapor is more important than carbon dioxide.
it would be too expensive to stop global warming.
it would be doable to stop global warming but cheaper to just let it happen and deal with it.
we couldn't stop global warming anyway.
it's all the fault of china and india.
it would be a hardship to change our lifestyle.
the enviromeanies won't let us build nuclear plants that we need to stop global warming.
somebody will make a breakthrough soon.
greedy climate scientists pretend there is global warming so that they will get research grants for nothing.
we need more research.
it's all a socialist plot.
socialists could never make the population afraid of anything like terrorism or global cooling, it has to be global warming.
al gore is fat and uses too much energy.
i hope the above conclusive pieces of evidence have convinced you that civilization is not in any threat from AGW.
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Paleocon Posted 7:45 am
07 Jul 2008
Global Warming Fundamentalists.
Often misunderestimated
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sindark Posted 9:34 am
07 Jul 2008
Hopefully, they can shame their friends into not funding and more coal plants.
a sibilant intake of breath
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christophersj Posted 10:05 am
07 Jul 2008
Human induced climate change is a myth
Worldwide temperatures have not increased in over ten years.
Here is the NASA graph that demonstrates global temp rates. You can clearly see that you have stated a lie.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/
By the way, you do know that cigarettes don't really cause cancer, right? You should go buy a pack right now...
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christophersj Posted 10:34 am
07 Jul 2008
[As an aside, I am still skeptical of the negative impacts of switchgrass. I need to see proof that ten years of growing switchgrass, and the petro-fuel it would displace, would be worse than the native grassland of the Dakotas that aren't used for food production. Can anybody provide me with that? I'd gladly change my tune.]
Actually, a LOT of info has only come up in the last 12-24 months that Doerr doesn't have in this talk. Think about it. Plug-in hybrids were not even announced as a 100% sure thing from Toyota and Honda. We didn't know their factories were being upgraded for sure.
Doerr is from the business world and invests money for people. He wants a profit and he wants change. The fact that he got up on stage to scare CEOs is a good thing. The general impact was positive.
He also chums up with New York Times columnists Thomas Friedman. This 2006 video interview where Doerr sits in for Charlie Rose and interviews Friedman is a classic. They really sound the alarm.
http://www.charlierose.com/shows/2006/05/22/1/a-conversat ...
Oh and about Wal-Mart. Since this talk Wal-Mart has announced a lot more (like with its truck fleet, ect). Its easy to hate Wal-Mart, and with good reason. I could make the whole list right here. But you have to really think about the HUGE volume of everything they do. If they paint their roofs white or reduce fuel use by 10% or whatever, its HUGE. It is a gigantic chunk just because any change gets done millions times. And the possability of connecting to the average uninformed consumer through Wal-Mart is huge. Wal-Mart put compact flouresents on the map of popular culture, my friend, not Sierra Club. But of course they need to do more...duh!
And in the end, Doerr's talk isnt for you or I, Amazndrx, its for the business world, who do not always have these kinds of "externalities" on their minds. Now a few more do.
-Christopher S. Johnson
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MAD MAC Posted 12:08 pm
07 Jul 2008
I do believe that flooding the atmosphere with CO2 and pollutants can't be a good thing and we should work to reduce them. However, I am not of the camp that says doom is imminent and imminent now if we don't radically change our entire socio-economic system. This problem requires a measured approach that is well thought out.
Victory in Pattani
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Jason D Scorse Posted 12:26 pm
07 Jul 2008
I teach environmental economics and blog at http://www.voicesofreason.info.
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christophersj Posted 12:41 pm
07 Jul 2008
I does beg the question, though, why was it so much colder at the turn of last century? There appears to have been a cycle that lasted quite a while where the temperatures were dropping almost, not quite, as fast as they are rising right now. I would be curious as to what the cause of that was..
Good question. Climate scientists ALWAYS leave room for other forcing agents on the climate. The mainstream theory goes like this:
Even though more and more CO2 will have a correlate of increased global average temperature, other forcing agents like volcanoes, El Ninio, La Ninia, particulate pollution, ect., can mask or hide those effects for a period of time, but once that temporary event is over, the CO2 cause will be there waiting, and stronger than ever.
A classic example of this is Mt. Pinatubo eruption in 1991.
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christophersj Posted 12:43 pm
07 Jul 2008
This was an EARLY 2007 talk intended for CEOs and businesspeople. Not environmental economics professors in mid 2008.
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MAD MAC Posted 1:15 pm
07 Jul 2008
Victory in Pattani
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christophersj Posted 1:38 pm
07 Jul 2008
Check out this video at TED of David Keith and spewing sulfuric acid into the upper atmosphere.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/david_keith_s_surprisi ...
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amazingdrx Posted 2:24 pm
07 Jul 2008
Look at this blog and others from 2007 Chris. We knew this stuff way back then. Sure a few confirming studies came out more recently.
But people on the cutting edge knew all this, knew of working plugin hybrids, solar pV/heat cogeneration, geo heat exchange. And the huge problems with fuel farming, geothermal, and cap and trade.
Entrepeneurs are on the edge, they need to know the very latest information. This guy and most of TED do not seem to be well informed at all.
Is this mass delusion or laziness? Or just acceptance of conventional wisdom.
I hate to hurt the feelings of the rich and powerfull, but they need to rise above their ignorance, and really really fast. This is survival, it kind of supercedes politeness.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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robertogreen Posted 2:24 pm
07 Jul 2008
and GROWING SHIT TO FUEL CARS IN BRAZIL? forgive my hyper-ventilation, but what exactly do you think will be cut down to plant all that sugar? may i suggest the amazon?
this whole speech is ultimately risible. doerr should apologize to his daughter for being such an asshole.
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