Comment by hackuser | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hackuser | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> But when it comes to preventing the worst effects of climate change, the investments I make will matter much less than the choices that governments make.

How can he stay out of politics, in that case?

The Republican Party aggressively opposes any climate change policy, from research to reduction to mitigation. They aggressively support the fossil fuel industry. The Koch brothers, whose combined wealth is on Gates' scale, spend billions to advocate similar positions. The Fox media network, from Fox News to the Wall Street Journal, push propaganda supporting these positions. (These statements are not partisan simply because one party looks bad. Much of it is factual -- clearly that's the GOP's position -- and if you accept the science of climate change, I think their claims clearly fall within the realm of propaganda.)

There is no media outlet that pushes back or calls any of the above on their propaganda, except those too small to matter, and the Democrats are passive.

The best investments Gates could make for climate change might be a political organization and/or a media network. I can guess why he doesn't, but I'd be interested to know. I wonder if he hoped, like many geeks, that he could avoid it and just do good things.

Surprised that you are getting down-voted for saying the right thing. As I am not American, I never took any interest in American politics. So I was never aware of the right wing propaganda machine - till I subscribed to Wall Street Journal. I was shocked that it's considered to be a "good" newspaper by some - of course, I have cancelled my subscription now - it was the single most important event in my life as it made me extremely liberal and progressive (as a reaction to the pure nonsense produced by the journal).

> I was never aware of the right wing propaganda machine - till I subscribed to Wall Street Journal. I was shocked that it's considered to be a "good" newspaper by some

This puzzles me too, to a degree. Most educated people can recognize the propaganda on their editorial page, and most know, based on Fox News Channel, that the owners have very low journalistic standards and are willing to publish deceit. WSJ reporters even appear as Fox correspondents now (at least, when I watched briefly a few months ago). Why would smart people still trust the WSJ?

To address one counter-argument, the NY Times is not the same; it's editorial page has much higher standards. I don't agree with everything, but rarely to I read blatent lies and propaganda.

I suspect it's simple branding. The "Wall Street Journal" brand carries integrity, and people don't think skeptically about it.

Saying it's branding is a little disingenuous. I like to joke that NYC is just a brand describing a truly shitty city, but that's not really the case. What I've noticed about the WSJ is that a lot of the commentary is primarily business focused. There is very little mainstream media that focuses on business with the quality of the WSJ. It's also sort of like the National Enquirer of the business world; so highly niche entertainment as well.

There are some realities of actually owning/running a business that are hard to understand if you have not done it before. Realities like how cumbersome and obnoxious most government attempts at regulation are, including and especially taxation. I have yet to meet a person, including prominent SV billionaires, who wouldn't give 100% of their money to the gov't if they thought it was spent well and transparently. The reality is that it is not, and these people feel rightly that they are better allocators of capital than the government, and so oppose taxation. In the Hard Thing About Hard things, Horowitz writes that most management books are written by people who have never even managed a hot dog stand. I think that a publication that is so overwhelming supported and favored by business owners even despite it's obnoxiousness at times must have some underlying value. It's probably best not to dismiss it as 'simple branding' just because you can't wrap your head around that position.

> There are some realities of actually owning/running a business that are hard to understand if you have not done it before. ...

Having done it I don't agree. It's a widely used cover story, 'you can't understand X because you haven't done it', a way to avoid accountability or having to make a reasoned argument. We all have directly experienced only a tiny fraction of the world, yet we use our cognitive abilities to understand much more.

I also disagree with your view on taxes and regulation. Our taxes should be higher, certainly more fair (the wealthy sacrifice much less than poorer Americans), and some industries need much stronger regulation, including Wall Street and the medical industries. Finally, government, being a human institution, is flawed; but I have yet to see a business (over a certain size) that doesn't waste money, experience corruption and incompetence, etc. It's a weak argument to simply dismiss serious issues with the unsupported meme that government is somehow relatively incompetent.

Of course many agree with you. Some have good arguments, some are merely self-interested (who wants to pay more or have to follow rules?), many merely parrot what the read in the WSJ. You can identify the latter by the consistent use of the same talking points.

Finally, the condescension is unnecessary. If you have a good argument, people will be pursuaded. The condescension brands everything else you say as part of the same rant, not to be taken seriously.

My impression is that it was once a very good newspaper, and the inertia of that keeps most people trusting it.

Agreed, NY Times is one of the very few legitimately great news organizations left in the US.

"till I subscribed to Wall Street Journal. I was shocked that it's considered to be a "good" newspaper by some"

What shocks me is that people don't see propaganda in ANY newspaper.

I have studied propaganda and psychology, because it interest me and frankly, because it is very useful for making money with your company. I would recommend watching "The century of the self" for a great overview of the subject before going deeper on what interest you.

Now I find propaganda everywhere. Have you heard the phrase "the land of the free" or "opportunities". It is propaganda. People that have never traveled around the world will hear the phrase and believe it without doubt.

In fact, those phrases are used for the contrary. Every time "land of the free" is used it is for removing yet another freedom, leaving the people with the empty phrase that was true 100 years ago, while removing the freedoms that sustain it one by one.

For example, Obama will talk loud about freedoms, while making it smaller the amount of money you could extract of your own bank account without reporting. He will let police confiscate your wealth if he thinks so(to buy army grade weapons), it will spy on all your communications, harass you on airports, and bail too big to fail institutions with your money.

What shocks me is that people don't see propaganda in left wing publications. Or maybe they do and that's why they vote Republican.

It's telling that in Australia the Republican equivalent is the rather Orwellian named 'Liberal Party of Australia'.

I think it's clear why they are called political parties.

Yes, the "Liberal" party in Australia are about as "liberal" as the "National Socialist German Workers' Party" were "socialist".

Political parties like "Branding" words with capital letters to words so the original definition becomes blurred, if not directly contradictory to the original meaning.

EDIT: Remove "but" from first sentence. I'm agreeing with @TheSpiceIsLife :-)

That was my point exactly, hence the reference to 'Orwellian'.

Yes, sorry, I got your gist. I shouldn't have included the word "but" in the first sentence. Typing too fast.

Well, it's a little unclear what course of action people are proposing. Political rants aren't that helpful. If people knew they could save a few bucks installing solar they would. Consumers vote with their wallets.

Do we need to make solar cheaper or more efficient, for example? More battery research?

I think the course of action proposed by the comment is that "Political rants are useful", as demonstrated by the political rants that have made climate change as dubious as Evolution or "socialized" medicine in certain communities in direct contradiction of the facts.

Solar is already cheap and efficient enough to be rolled out on a much wider scale than it currently is. It's a bit odd to be standing around and calling for more research when we are not bothering to fully exploit all the research that's already been done for reasons that are mostly political.

As for the consumer being happy to pay, that's why the favourite wonk answer (implemented succesfully in a few countries) is a carbon tax to let the power of the free market do it's magic by accurately pricing in the externalities of carbon (and other greenhouse gasses).

Right now you can find various studies claiming that shutting down coal power stations would save countries billions in health costs, but that's not the kind of "scandal" that makes it into the mainstream media, though every theoretical bird killed by a wind turbine is, strangely.

You can't convince a significant percentage of the population that smoking is unhealthy. That Global warming is a problem, an even larger percentage. A study that shows X is practically meaningless isn't going to be persuasive.

So, if solar is cheap and efficient we're going to need to do a little better at selling it. I don't see real numbers, just the unsubstantiated claim. Plus, I see the claim of a breakthrough on solar cell efficiency every couple of months on HN, which leads me to believe we're still waiting for one.

Actually solar is so cheap right (real prices), that the price of the solar panels themselves (1$/Watt) are only 25-30% of the total installation cost (3-4$/watt). Inverters add onto that but over 50% of the cost is on the "soft" part of the installation (permits and labor). We need to innovate on the labor portion if we want to drop costs even more.

There are genuine solar breakthroughs every couple of months, its just the reporting that is garbled due to being dumbed down to science journalism standards. For example, something breaking a record in the lab doesn't mean its ready to be productized, or that it would be cost effective if it was, but we've got a great pipeline of improvements making their way to market.

http://www.nrel.gov/ncpv/images/efficiency_chart.jpg

The recent MIT future of solar report is a good HN-level summary of where solar is now:

https://mitei.mit.edu/futureofsolar

It's not a sales pitch, but the people who are investing billions in solar these days aren't hippies, it's big business now, and they're convinced so the brainwashed masses will eventually twig they've been lied to.

You can't convince a significant percentage of the population that smoking is unhealthy, because they've had literally decades of exposure to propaganda persuading them it makes them cool people.

Also, it's physically addictive.

Fossil fuels are much the same. There's an unbelievably vast propaganda and lobbying machine promoting the use of fossil fuels, even though - like smoking - they're killing our civilisation.

This is why good government matters. It can provide a policy balance to destructive commercial self-interest.

And solar is being rolled out, with very good economic results. It's even being rolled out successfully in the UK, which is not the sunniest place on the planet.

In parts of the US it should literally be a no-brainer. But it's not, because most of the rich people who need fossil fuels to stay rich would rather kill it.

Gallup poll: "In general, how harmful do you feel smoking is to adults who smoke?"

Responses: - Very harmful: 80% - Somewhat harmful: 16% - Not too harmful: 3% . Not harmful at all: 1%

http://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Prod...

Where is the significant percentage not convinced that it's unhealthy?

It can take about 10 years to recoup the initial outlay on a domestic solar installation, and after that you are actually saving money.

The people saving the money are the residents of the property, and there is not enough confidence that the presence of solar panels increases the sale price of a property by the amount invested.

So, if you are either a landlord or a first-time-buyer looking to trade up in a few years time, you won't invest in a domestic solar installation. Your money will give you a better ROI somewhere else over that period (e.g. buying your next property).

Therefore, a political solution is probably desired. Something to reduce that 10-year period; something to encourage landlords to install solar; something to encourage first-time-buyers in particular to install.

which is why solar installations need to focus on the industrial scale instead of throwing money at individual home owners, which by the way excludes a significant number of people.

There is zero reason to subsidize home owners installing wind or solar energy however you could get better results by subsidizing their purchase of power generated that way.

There's a few good reasons for residential rooftop solar, particularly in areas where the peak usage and sun coincide (where aircon is used for example).

It not only dampens peak demand (the most expensive to serve) it can also delay the need for grid improvements required to deliver the peak demand. Progressive utilities consider it a win-win.

I'm surprised landlords haven't jumped at the chance to add solar, they seem like exactly the kind of people who would invest up front for a guaranteed payback. I guess there must be some reason why it's not a standard thing, the difficulty of billing the renter for their electric use separately maybe?

It's now owned by News corp, same as Fox.

> How can he stay out of politics, in that case?

What makes you think he's staying out of politics?

Voters don't like the idea of people buying politicians. If the public sees that a politician has been bought, they are less likely to vote for them. So if you're investing in politicians, you don't want to make that information public--that's the quickest way to decrease the value of your investment. Publicly staying out of politics is a smart political move for a person whose primary influence on politics is monetary.

The Koch brothers are a good example of this--the only reason we know that they have been funding Republican and Tea Party campaigns is because of good investigative journalism. They don't go out and announce it. In fact, in interviews they have pretended not to have even heard of the organizations they fund.

It would surprise me greatly if Gates doesn't similarly already have his hands in politics, but the thing Gates has that the Koch brothers don't is soft power[1]. I doubt any major news source will try to write an exposé on Gates' funding of X lobbying organization or Y "grassroots" movement, because most journalists (and people) agree with Gates' goals. Even Fox News would be putting their own goals at risk if they wrote such an exposé, because there's a risk that it would actually bring attention (and funding) to organizations that oppose Fox News' goals.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_power

The GOP's position is to not let climate change be the catalyst for wealth redistribution, by any means.

I agree that's "a" position, but there is much more. By itself, it doesn't explain why they try to defund research, deny the facts, etc.

The only pattern I can find to explain it is that they might see the issue as part of the 'culture war' with liberalism, and so they reject it outright as part of their effort to reject liberalism. (But that's a huge generalization about the thoughts of tens of millions of people.)

I think that climate change denial is an example of a cargo cult and that we could learn more about cargo cults in general by studying this one.

Wealth 're'-distribution? So where was the wealth distributed from to start with? It wasn't; by and large it was earned as businesses across the world know very well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com