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Tough truths about climate

gatesnotes.com

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Re: Tough truths about climate

#31

Post by grebc »

jshen wrote: post #12
jader201 wrote: post #2

> Although climate change will have serious consequences—particularly for people in the poorest countries—it will not lead to humanity’s demise. People will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future. Interesting and different perspective vs. what many others often say (but that’s one of the points he’s making). I feel a lot of climate articles — and the comments attached to their H…

He says that as if he's certain it can't possibly, even a remote possibility, lead to societal collapse. First, there is no way he can be certain about that. Second, what is an acceptable probability for an existential threat? That's the real question to answer, and he didn't attempt to answer it.

What existential threat to society do people/society really take seriously?

Re: Tough truths about climate

#32

Post by foota »

dagss wrote: post #21

He is mentioning geologic hydrogen as a new energy source. Surely that is a fossil fuel?

It's a fossil fuel, but burning it doesn't produce a greenhouse gas. It's similar to nuclear in the sense that it's a limited resource, but doesn't produce emissions.

Re: Tough truths about climate

#35

Post by fragmede »

p1dda wrote: post #20
Yiin wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you elaborate what part of his post is misinformation and why? I'm no fan of the dude for many reasons, but making money doesn't seem to be on his priority list as of lately

try googling Gates investment climate change

I did, it says Gates has invested in companies and stands to make money. Specifically Breakthrough Energy, a venture capital firm backing clean energy startups, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, his philanthropy foundation. Is it supposed to something about scientists and how he can afford some really good ones to tell him sciencey things about science so when Bill Gates says something sciencey, we should probably pay more attention to it than random HN comment that presented no credentials?

Re: Tough truths about climate

#36

Post by ACCount37 »

It's true. Climate change is not an extinction threat. Never was, and certainly isn't now.

Climate change is the COVID of global natural disasters. Is it worth fighting? Yes. Can you do absolutely nothing about it and get away with it? Also yes. Cue the lackluster efforts.

The "really bad" +4C scenarios still have a death toll larger than that of WW2 - but spread out in time and space, across many decades and many countries. And the most vulnerable countries? The countries that are already on the brink. Climate change is not the "great equalizer" people want it to be.

In those "bad" scenarios, the main source of lethality for climate change is: agricultural failures, leading to local shortages and global price spikes, leading to famine. First world countries can eat a sharp +40% spike in food prices, at the cost of quality of life - but there are numerous countries where such a spike would have a death toll attached to it.

Re: Tough truths about climate

#37

Post by foota »

fragmede wrote: post #28

getting the whole world to agree on climate accords didn't work. we blew past the 1 degree allowance we had budgeted for ourselves, so global action together is off the table. What will work, is extraordinary efforts by smaller groups. There's a lot of hard work by tiny groups and individuals to technologies that don't need the whole world to agree to collective action in order to save the planet. The obvious science…

This isn't far off from their point, albeit without the geoengineering. Reducing the green premium solves the collective action problem.

Re: Tough truths about climate

#38

Post by picafrost »

> So I urge that community, at COP30 and beyond, to make a strategic pivot: prioritize the things that have the greatest impact on human welfare.

Like addressing the exponential growth of income inequality? Unsurprisingly not mentioned at all. Might mean that billionaires have to give up their carbon credit purchases and then how could they be dismissive about their own emissions?

Bill is one of the better ones with his personal capital allocation. He could've just tried to create the fastest sailboat racing team or something. But I find it extremely difficult to take the wealthy seriously when they speak about carbon emissions and climate change. It’s like hearing an arsonist lecture on fire safety.

> 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.

Is this the one that lead to the term "embrace, extend, extinguish"?

Re: Tough truths about climate

#39

Post by Retric »

jshen wrote: post #25
Retric wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

societal collapse != humanities demise. Climate change could do a lot of damage it’s just not extinction level damage. Even large scale nuclear war based on current stockpiles isn’t going to result in extinction.

We're splitting hairs, but that still leaves the question, "what probability of societal collapse do you think is acceptable?

IMO it’s about minimizing harm at this point.

There’s levels of societal collapse, mass migration can destroy the existing social fabric without necessarily being that terrible. Fertility rates being so low means developed countries will likely want large numbers of immigrants.

At the other end stopping all CO2 production tomorrow would result in severe consequences. We can’t transport food to cities without burning fossil fuels. Obviously that doesn’t mean every current use case is worthwhile, but we can’t ignore the short term here.

The good news is we’re actually making a lot of progress on climate change. The electric grid being ~90% very low carbon emissions by 2050 is a realistic goal and would avoid the worst predictions.

Re: Tough truths about climate

#40

Post by simpaticoder »

Gates is making a speculative case that climate change can be (should be) fought with the needs of the global poor at top-of-mind. He acknowledges the apparent zero-sum nature of it: impoverished people face much greater and more immediate threats than climate change, and fossil fuel tech (for example) really does address those urgent threats effectively. He solves this conundrum by speculating that we can have our cake (help the global poor) and eat it too (slow climate change) by inventing new tools and methods.

I hope he's right. I'm glad he's doing this advocacy. By doing so he's fighting two popular opinions, first that climate change is a hoax, and second, that climate change must be addressed even if it means sacrificing the well-being of the global poor. That said, I have grave concerns that Gates is simply wrong, that we cannot invent our way out of both climate change and the suffering of the global poor. His many remarkable mentions of AI do not, in my opinion, lend strength to his argument, nor does his mention of "almost commercialized" fusion. The former being a gimmick, the latter being forever 30 years away. If our hopes rest on tech like that, then we must prepare to be devastated and pick one side of the zero-sum.

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