from Noel Wauchope

I am happy to see my article up, however I did make a big mistake in the first line.

The David Aeurbach article was not in the Saturday Paper. It was in Slate http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2015/12/mark_zuckerberg_s_hacker_philanthropy_can_we_trust_it.html

I think the time is here to accept their money even if they have underlying motives.
Some things will turn up that can be monitarily exploited but that can be all good to.
No exclusive rights as to ownership should be entered into.

One would hope that the money might go to positive uses. But how much better if it went to implementing the existing truly clean technologies, rather than being distracted into research - and particularly, into research into dirty nuclear technology.

After all, this is about tax-payer money.

Noel
Look, I understand where you got this stuff about affordable solar power and so on, but there are serious problems. If you hunt around you'll find articles about Indian villages rejecting attempts to install PV panel projects.. they want "real" electricity (ie conventional). You'll want to check out why they are doing that.. Alternative power simply cannot replace conventional power at the moment, hence the need for research.

'Tax payer money', Christinamac?

Actually, it appears that it is NOT about tax payer money. The billionaires can invest their money into whatever schemes they wish.

This type of philanthropy sometimes does destabilise public efforts and changes the research agendas with no public or political oversight. There have been multiple complaints about how the Gates Foundation program has affected public efforts in disease control in Africa with a focus on technological solutions rather than public or community solutions. However they have come up witjh some pretty good stuff that wouldn't have been funded publicly.

But maybe they are learning, maybe not.

That being said, I very much disagree with Noels view that their money should be spent on deployment of existing technologies. Research dollars are very difficult to obtain from public funds for truly blue-sky research. Spending the money on implementation requires a long-term commitment from governments and the public and private philanthropy would only reduce this commitment and be a very short-term thing. A few billion dollars may seem a lot, but it really isn't when you spread it over multiple countries and years. A few billion concentrated and spent on a focused research effort however leaves advances in knowledge and a legacy for future generations. Implementation efforts for existing technologies leaves future generations with aging infrastructure.

They should be able to research whatever the hell they want. In fact this is the kind of money that SHOULD be diverted to research to aid countries that cannot afford to fund their own.

Also, money that goes into deployment of existing systems should come from the public purse in the countries that need them, to ensure public ownership.

Noel, I know that you are scared about them researching nuclear technologies, because that is what you always write about, but it seems that is not all they would be researching and they could come up with something pretty good.

They want to spend their money on developing knowledge for the future? I say let them at it.

Noel, this article assumes that you know what to do in order to fine-tune the climate, while simultaneously not causing detrimental effects that would outweigh the supposed benefits of the proposed action.

You don't.

This fact completely invalidates your argument.