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Tough truths about climate

gatesnotes.com

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Re: Tough truths about climate

#111

Post by legitster »

I think one of the most important things the "message" has gotten wrong is that you personally need to make big sacrifices and suffer: Buy a worse/more expensive car. Stop eating meat. Don't use disposable plates. Stop travelling. This is the stuff that fuels reactionaries.

Really the most impactful stuff is at the margins anyway: Whether your electricity comes from coal or solar. How many rare earths can we mine and recycle? Do you have a lawn or xeriscape?

The story here is not really that Gates has changed his mind (he never got rid of his private jet after all) it's the emphasis that doomscrolling is counterproductive.

Re: Tough truths about climate

#112

Post by tzs »

raffael_de wrote: post #80

[flagged]

> @BillGates: Tell us some tough truths about Epstein island!

There's no evidence Gates was ever on Epstein's island, so it is unlikely he has anything interesting to say about it.

The only known connection Gates has to Epstein is a few business meetings.

> But Kudos on acknowledging the growing evidence that the climate change movement is mostly about ideology, money, power and redistributing wealth.

The article did no such thing.

Re: Tough truths about climate

#113

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

"Thirty years ago, when I was running Microsoft, I wrote a long memo to employees about a major strategic pivot we had to make: embracing the internet in every product we made."

The impact of that "pivot" has been catastrophic as we are reminded every time the news reports the damages associated with remotely exploited flaws in Microsoft's software and the public's dissatisfaction with "automatic updates" (i.e., being part of the Redmond botnet), a feeble attempt to "fix" these flaws through a never ending game of whack-a-mole

Re: Tough truths about climate

#114

Post by port11 »

legitster wrote: post #111

I think one of the most important things the "message" has gotten wrong is that you personally need to make big sacrifices and suffer: Buy a worse/more expensive car. Stop eating meat. Don't use disposable plates. Stop travelling. This is the stuff that fuels reactionaries. Really the most impactful stuff is at the margins anyway: Whether your electricity comes from coal or solar. How many rare earths can we mine and…

The personal sacrifice cult was largely put forth by corporations and corporate media insisting on an individual's carbon footprint.

That said, it's somewhat unfair that, say, 1 Australian can have the footprint of 7–8 Indian people. So some changes are good overall, such as eating more vegetables and less carbon intensive meat (which also improves land usage).

I agree with you about other fringe choices, but most people can't control the energy mix of their country. We can advocate for better choices at the high level, which is great news because people have been doing just that.

I do find the positive tone of the climate models a bit worrying: some of the projections still consider permafrost decay to be fatal to most of the human race.

Re: Tough truths about climate

#115

Post by jshen »

Retric wrote: post #92
jshen wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see any progress in terms of the rate of increase in atmospheric co2 over time. https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/...

That graph is well below earlier forecasts. Accurate predictions require more than simple extrapolations which 30 years ago suggested exponential growth. Instead CO2 per capita and especially in terms of GDP resulted in a different story. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita Add in more kids being born in 1985 than 2025 and per capita numbers matter. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-…

Co2 levels are the best metric for progress, and progress would be a steady lowering of the rate of increase. We are not seeing that, and AI's power hunger is likely to make it worse despite all of the positive things you mentioned.

Re: Tough truths about climate

#116

Post by gmuslera »

cameldrv wrote: post #102

Everyone who cares about climate change needs to stop talking about it in C to an American audience. 2 degrees sounds small, but 3.6 degrees F is significant. 3 degrees still sounds reasonably small, but 5.6 degrees F is getting to be a lot. Generally speaking Americans have no idea how much a 2 or 3 degree C difference is in F and so they just hear 2 or 3 degrees F.

More important than that, we are not talking about the temperature you are feeling right now where you are, but global average temperature, and in the context of the 1.5°C over the preindustrial average, we are talking about that average, kept over several years.

What you feel locally is weather, including extreme weather. It can go to extremes in either direction, but with more global average temperature the system have more energy to increase the frequency and how extreme is that weather.

And speed matters. The baseline of preindustrial times is because we started the high emissions trend around there, but we reached 0.5°C by 1930-1950, and 1.0°C by 2015-2017. And the first full calendar year that had over 1.5°C over preindustrial times was 2024, but we need more years to average to talk about the same numbers.

Re: Tough truths about climate

#117

Post by cameldrv »

gmuslera wrote: post #116
cameldrv wrote: post #102

Everyone who cares about climate change needs to stop talking about it in C to an American audience. 2 degrees sounds small, but 3.6 degrees F is significant. 3 degrees still sounds reasonably small, but 5.6 degrees F is getting to be a lot. Generally speaking Americans have no idea how much a 2 or 3 degree C difference is in F and so they just hear 2 or 3 degrees F.

More important than that, we are not talking about the temperature you are feeling right now where you are, but global average temperature, and in the context of the 1.5°C over the preindustrial average, we are talking about that average, kept over several years. What you feel locally is weather, including extreme weather. It can go to extremes in either direction, but with more global average temperature the system…

Yes there are a lot of complicated second order effects from an increase in the average, but if you simply told people "We're looking at temperatures everywhere going up by 5.6 degrees on average, all the time", that sounds like a lot. 3 degrees doesn't sound like that much.

Re: Tough truths about climate

#118

Post by gmuslera »

cameldrv wrote: post #117
gmuslera wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More important than that, we are not talking about the temperature you are feeling right now where you are, but global average temperature, and in the context of the 1.5°C over the preindustrial average, we are talking about that average, kept over several years. What you feel locally is weather, including extreme weather. It can go to extremes in either direction, but with more global average temperature the system…

Yes there are a lot of complicated second order effects from an increase in the average, but if you simply told people "We're looking at temperatures everywhere going up by 5.6 degrees on average, all the time", that sounds like a lot. 3 degrees doesn't sound like that much.

The problem is that you don't see the averages. What you see is that in some places for some days the temperature was 40°C over what they used to have in that time of the year (https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/03/24/parts-of...), the heat dome of 2021 should be a good warning (or warming) of the kind of extreme weather that 1.5°C could bring and increase frequency. Or the disruption of the polar vortex bringing extremely cold temperatures.

What you see in your normal everyday life is that things that you were used to are not that way anymore. And that there are some activities (like agriculture) that depend on some stability on weather. At least till we cross another threshold and things not seen in human history start to happen enough to be noticed, but by then it will be too late. What we need is to trust the measurements.

Re: Tough truths about climate

#119

Post by Retric »

jshen wrote: post #115
Retric wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That graph is well below earlier forecasts. Accurate predictions require more than simple extrapolations which 30 years ago suggested exponential growth. Instead CO2 per capita and especially in terms of GDP resulted in a different story. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita Add in more kids being born in 1985 than 2025 and per capita numbers matter. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-…

Co2 levels are the best metric for progress, and progress would be a steady lowering of the rate of increase. We are not seeing that, and AI's power hunger is likely to make it worse despite all of the positive things you mentioned.

CO2 levels tell you nothing about future progress, the legacy of soon to be removed infrastructure built 40+ years ago still impacts it. Meanwhile the vast majority of power brought online in the last decade is ultra low carbon. We know how that story plays out.

AI powered by renewables has ~zero impact on the climate.

Re: Tough truths about climate

#120

Post by jshen »

Retric wrote: post #119
jshen wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Co2 levels are the best metric for progress, and progress would be a steady lowering of the rate of increase. We are not seeing that, and AI's power hunger is likely to make it worse despite all of the positive things you mentioned.

CO2 levels tell you nothing about future progress, the legacy of soon to be removed infrastructure built 40+ years ago still impacts it. Meanwhile the vast majority of power brought online in the last decade is ultra low carbon. We know how that story plays out. AI powered by renewables has ~zero impact on the climate.

I hope you're right, but I'm not optimistic. The demands for power by AI is immediate and extremely large. We can't bring nuclear online fast enough so it will likely keep co2 output high.

Assuming you are right, when would you expect the rate of atmospheric co2 increases to start to decline?

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