Second Short Quiz – Grading Bill Gates Pass/Fail & A thru F

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johnkarls
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Second Short Quiz – Grading Bill Gates Pass/Fail & A thru F

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The First Short Quiz was a “reading guide” for our focus book.

This Second Short Quiz is an “ex post facto” guide for grading our focus book.


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A. Framing/Analyzing Properly The Solutions To Global Warming – Military Force or Economic Self-Interest

A-1. Does Bill Gates recognize that The Paris Climate Accord exempted China and India, the world’s two largest carbon polluters, from taking any action until 2030? And that the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 (the predecessor of The Paris Climate Accord) did the same thing?

A-2. Does Bill Gates recognize that China has, for decades, been bringing on line a new monster-size coal-fired electric-generation plant every week?

A-3. Accordingly, does Bill Gates recognize that military force would probably have to be employed to force China to adopt any climate-control measures that adversely affect its economy or lower the standard-of-living of its citizens?

A-4. Does Bill Gates stoop to making the argument that if America spends the money to develop a climate-control technology, it can earn licensing fees from the rest of the world?

A-5. After heading a company (Microsoft) that exported so many jobs to China while capturing virtually all of its worldwide profits in tax-haven subsidiaries to such an extent that its more-than-one-TRillion dollars trapped in tax havens had caused stock analysts to value Microsoft stock as a bank rather than a software company -- why does Bill Gates with all that knowledge of, and experience with, China and its notoriety for simply stealing technology rather than paying licensing fees to obtain it, think (or at least want his readers to believe) that China would “turn over a new leaf”?

A-6. So why doesn’t Bill Gates focus on whether climate-change solutions would be cheaper or more expensive than oil & gas and, therefore, whether military force would have to be employed to compel other countries to adopt them or whether other countries would freely adopt them as a matter of economic self-interest?


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B. Progress Report on Climate-Solution Technologies

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B-1. Solar and Wind

B-1-A. Have either solar or wind been cheaper than oil & gas?

B-1-B. Accordingly, have solar or wind ever been able to exist without massive governmental subsidies and/or without governmental mandates?

B-1-C. What does Bill Gates think are the prospects for either solar and/or wind ever becoming cheaper than oil & gas?

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B-2. Hydrogen

B-2-A. Does burning hydrogen (2H2 + O2 > 2H2O) produce any carbon?

B-2-B. Does burning hydrogen release tremendous amounts of energy (think Hindenburg Dirigible Disaster of 1937)?

B-2-C. Did both Europe and California invest heavily two decades ago in a “hydrogen highway” comprising zillions of hydrogen re-fueling stations? Did a lot of automobile manufacturers tweak their gasoline engines to run on hydrogen with BMW even offering a model that could run on either gasoline or hydrogen depending on local availability during long-distance trips?

B-2-D. Has the lack of development of Europe’s and California’s “hydrogen highway” been due to the costliness of obtaining hydrogen? In other words, has historically the only method of obtaining large quantities of hydrogen been electrolysis of water (2H2O > 2H2 + O2) which requires as much energy as is available when the hydrogen is burned (2H2 + O2 > 2H2O)?

B-2-E. On 8/19/2019, did Proton Technologies (a Calgary Alberta-Canada corporation) make a presentation to the Goldschmidt Conference announcing that it had invented (and obtained patents for) a method of obtaining vast amounts of hydrogen economically which involves injecting oxygen into reservoirs of heavy oil and tar sands, and into coal seams in order to separate the hydrogen from the oil/tar/coal thereby enabling the hydrogen to float to the surface through hydrogen filters that will trap behind all remaining material including carbon for sequestration in situ?

B-2-F. Do our calculations indicate the Proton Technologies method of producing hydrogen is approximately 50% of the cost of oil & gas products with an equivalent amount of energy?

B-2-G. Did we launch on 11/13/2019 one of our Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mail campaigns to the Assistant U.N. Secretary General for UNEP and also to the Director General of the UN’s Worldwide Intellectual Property Organization entitled “Saving Global-Warming Solution From Being Killed”?

B-2-H. Was the point of our 11/12/2019 e-mail campaign that there are zillions of owners of oil & gas (think Saudi Arabia) that might like to kill the new hydrogen technology and that could offer Proton Technologies (or its shareholders in a corporate takeover) much more than they could hope to earn from deploying the hydrogen technology – but would be a “drop in the bucket” from the viewpoint of a Saudi Arabia in preserving the profitability of its tremendous oil & gas reserves?

B-2-I. Is Bill Gates even aware of the Proton Technologies method for producing cheap hydrogen? Is this inexcusable in purporting to write a knowledgeable book on climate-change when the Proton Technologies announcement was 18 months before Bill Gates’ book was published?

B-2-J. Is Bill Gates still mired in the outmoded belief that the only way to produce significant quantities of hydrogen is electrolysis?


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B-3. Nuclear

B-3-A. Has nuclear always been cheaper than oil & gas?

B-3-B. Have the owners of oil & gas been able to prevent nuclear from displacing oil & gas by preying on the public’s fear of nuclear?

B-3-C. In other words, can the climate-change crisis be largely blamed on Jane Fonda’s and Michael Douglas’ 1979 blockbuster movie “China Syndrome”?

B-3-D. Haven’t the only three significant nuclear accidents in the world’s 76-year nuclear history been the result of unpardonable human actions?

B-3-E. Is Bill Gates an unabashed proponent of nuclear energy even though he doesn’t unduly trumpet his personal appraisal in “How To Avoid A Climate Disaster”?

B-3-F. Indeed, wasn’t Bill Gates the “moving force” behind the 1/14/2019 enactment of the “Nuclear Energy and Modernization Act” and the 3/27/2019 introduction of the “Nuclear Energy Leadership Act” – both supported by a bipartisan group of Senate leaders including two Presidential candidates – Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO)?

B-3-G. HOWEVER, hasn’t Bill Gates been a proponent (and large investor) in uranium-fission rather than thorium-fission even though uranium has NO ADVANTAGES over thorium, and thorium has MANY ADVANTAGES over uranium including its inability to explode and the world’s vast amounts of cheap thorium (e.g., most of India’s “sand” beaches comprising thorium from which a child’s pailful of “sand” can produce all of the energy requirements for one human being’s entire lifetime)?

B-3-H. BTW, is the earth itself a gigantic thorium nuclear reactor? Isn’t this the reason why the earth’s core is 7,000 degrees Fahrenheit – hotter than the sun’s surface? So is it any wonder that molten lava billows out of any fissure in the earth’s thin surface?


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B-4. Harvard U’s Proposal To Seed The Earth’s Atmosphere

B-4-A. Isn’t it well known that large volcanic eruptions will throw into the atmosphere gases and dust particles whose shading of incoming solar radiation can cool the earth for months and even years?

B-4-B. BTW, hasn’t this caused some wags to remark (however, true) that Global Warming can be solved by occasional, small nuclear wars which, of course, will be much more likely if a nuclear-arms race occurs between “The World’s Greatest ‘State Sponsor of Terrorism’” (The U.S. State Department’s long-standing legally-required description of Iran) and “The Gulf Cooperation Council” (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, The United Arab Emirates, and Oman)?

B-4-C. In a similar vein, hasn’t Harvard University proposed seeding the earth’s atmosphere with various substances to achieve the same effect as volcanic eruptions or small nuclear wars?

B-4-D. Wasn’t this approach featured in an interview of a Harvard Professor by the PBS Newshour’s anchor and managing editor, Judy Woodruff?

B-4-E. Was Judy Woodruff apparently so “star struck” by the claim of Harvard University that seeding the earth’s atmosphere COULD BE IMPLEMENTED IMMEDIATELY and COULD SOLVE GLOBAL WARMING COMPLETELY like a thermostat that could cool the earth’s temperature to any desired level – that she failed to ask the Harvard Professor the obvious question of whether Harvard’s “world thermostat” could be adjusted back upwards again if desired/necessary?

B-4-F. For example, what if Pres. Biden succeeds in groveling his way back into the Iran Nuclear Deal which has always guaranteed Iran nuclear weapons by 2030, as a result of which the “Gulf Cooperation Council” (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, The United Arab Emirates and Oman), as widely expected, goes nuclear with weapons from Pakistan, North Korea or a variety of “black market” sources – resulting, as widely feared, in a nuclear war requiring the “world thermostat” to be adjusted back upwards again because of all the particles put into the earth’s atmosphere by the nuclear explosions???

B-4-G. And was Judy Woodruff also apparently so “star struck” that she failed to ask the Harvard Professor the obvious question of whether some of the world’s nations would object to seeding the earth’s atmosphere, perhaps leading to military conflict?

B-4-H. After all, didn’t The Russian Federation refuse to ratify The Kyoto Protocol for many years because Global Warming would increase Siberia’s growing season -- until the European Union finally agreed to subsidize Russia’s economic loss? And wasn’t The Russian Federation’s ratification necessary to achieve the minimum number of country ratifications to bring the Kyoto Protocol into effect?

B-4-I. Is Bill Gates ignorant of the Harvard approach?


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C. Modern-Day Malthusian Economics

C-1. Was Thomas Robert Malthus famous for his 1798 “Essay on the Principle of Population” that posited that the earth was only capable of supporting a finite human population? BTW, has the world’s population grown from 0.8 billion in 1798 to 7.9 billion today?

C-2. Was Malthus’ rationale that any increase in a nation’s food production improves the well-being of its population, but the improvement is only temporary because it always leads to population growth? And that the earth only has a limited capacity to produce food?

C-3. Without a nod to Malthus, does Bill Gates posit that global warming is due to the massive amount of carbon in the earth’s atmosphere – much, if not most, of which is the result of the world’s mushrooming human population which has now passing through 8 billion?

C-4. After all, aren’t all those 8 billion human beings all breathing in oxygen and breathing out carbon dioxide? Not to mention the methane (CH4) in their flatulence?

C-5. Aren’t all the animal herds that have been created to help feed those 8 billion human beings also breathing in oxygen and breathing out carbon dioxide? Not to mention the methane (CH4) in their flatulence?

C-6. And what about all those forests and plains containing all those plants that could absorb the atmosphere’s carbon molecules and convert them back to oxygen (6CO2 + 6H2O > C6H12O6 + 6O2)? Haven’t they been destroyed in large part to make way for farms whose plants are destroyed as they are consumed by human beings and their animal herds – rather than left intact to balance the carbon in the earth’s atmosphere?

C-7. After recognizing that much, if not most, of the carbon in the earth’s atmosphere is the result of mushrooming human-population growth, does Bill Gates recognize that the earth’s human population is likely to continue to mushroom? And what that means?

C-8. Has our organization already solved this problem?

C-9. After all, don’t plants use their chlorophyll (the green in plant leaves, etc.) TO USE SOLAR POWER in order to convert carbon dioxide and water into oxygen and sugar (6CO2 + 6H2O > C6H12O6 + 6O2)?

C-10. So why couldn’t nuclear energy, say from small thorium-fission reactors, SUBSTITUTE FOR SOLAR POWER in driving that chemical reaction (6CO2 + 6H2O > C6H12O6 + 6O2) in a food-production factory? And couldn’t such nuclear-powered food-production factories make conventional farms obsolete?

C-11. Would there be any limit to the amount of carbon dioxide that could be removed in this fashion from the earth’s atmosphere???

C-12. So like the Harvard approach of seeding the earth’s atmosphere to comprise a “world thermostat” that can turn down the temperature of the earth’s atmosphere to any desired level, wouldn’t nuclear-powered factories that remove carbon from the earth’s atmosphere be able to do the same thing???

C-13. And if the PBS Newhour’s Judy Woodruff is not “asleep at the switch” when she interviews us, aren’t we ready to tell her that our method of reducing carbon in the earth’s atmosphere is readily curtailed/reversed if desirable/necessary?

C-14. After all, couldn’t the output of our carbon-reduction (food producing) factories be easily be reduced?

C-15. And if all of the output of our carbon-reduction (food producing) factories isn’t needed for human-population growth (even after reductions in the world’s temperature has become too low), would it be so tragic for all the excess sugar had to be stored in a manner that would not adversely affect the environment?


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D. Grading Bill Gates Pass/Fail & A thru F

D-1. What grade do you think Bill Gates deserves for his “How To Avoid A Climate Disaster”?

D-2. Because of all the developments of which Bill Gates seems to be ignorant, shouldn’t “How To Avoid A Climate Disaster” have been published as a loose-leaf service whose components could updated frequently?

D-3. Nonetheless, doesn’t Bill Gates deserve our profound heartfelt gratitude? And a prestigious medal from the U.N., the United States, and the rest of the world’s nations?

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