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Tough truths about climate

gatesnotes.com

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Re: Tough truths about climate

#71

Post by mk89 »

p1dda wrote: post #4

Gates, who is not a climate scientist, not even a scientist, spreading misinformation to try to make money for his investments just like he always does.

He is saying: instead of focusing on climate change which is not killing anyone today, let's focus on vaccines against diseases, which are still unfortunately killing people. Today. Apparently countries are less willing to spend $ for organizations providing vaccines.

Questionable how efficient these orgs are, etc., but data shows that more people than ever are being vaccinated and this helps [0].

You can like it or not, but a vaccine against measles helps more than a solar panel to keep a child alive and costs way less.

[0]: https://www.who.int/news/item/24-04-2024-global-immunization...

Re: Tough truths about climate

#72

Post by silexia »

Bill Gates gets attacked by both the right and the left. But the truth is that he has made huge progress for human welfare in working to eradicate serious diseases as well as by bringing practical solutions to climate issues.

Re: Tough truths about climate

#73

Post by mlrtime »

simpaticoder wrote: post #40

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 c…

>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.

My take on this is that he has thought about this longer than anyone posting here and has the data to back it up... that is there are no other solutions given human nature.

Re: Tough truths about climate

#74

Post by elihu »

> "All greenhouse gas emissions come from one of five sources" > (Graphic shows electricity generation 28%, transportation 16%, agriculture 19%, buildings 7%, manufacturing 30%)

There's another large source of human greenhouse gas emissions that will perhaps be the most difficult to do anything about and which as far as I know we don't have much in the way of hard numbers about, and that is emissions from military activity. Not just wars, but ordinary peace-time training, patrol operations, hauling stuff around, and so on.

Re: Tough truths about climate

#75

Post by mlrtime »

silexia wrote: post #72

Bill Gates gets attacked by both the right and the left. But the truth is that he has made huge progress for human welfare in working to eradicate serious diseases as well as by bringing practical solutions to climate issues.

>Bill Gates gets attacked by both the right and the left.

My first instinct is he's doing something right then... the problem is policy and human nature.

Re: Tough truths about climate

#76

Post by mlrtime »

superultra wrote: post #51

This feels like someone in a marathon deciding to quit because they just ran really well for the last 10 minutes, with the assumption that since they were running really fast there’s no reason to think they won’t keep running fast. It’s deeply flawed logic. The other issue is that while he might be right, the worst and biggest consequences of being wrong will not affect Bill. Or, frankly, anyone reading this comment.…

Right, but he knows this and he's drawing up his knowledge and solutions. You can point this out, but what solutions do you offer? And I'm sure you can paste some articles with solutions, but I mean actual solutions that people would be willing to change for, not hypotheticals.

Re: Tough truths about climate

#77

Post by Ekaros »

Asking people to lower their living standards will not work.

So next best thing is to prepare for future changes with potential solutions now.

This is most realistic approach I can see. Start now developing solutions that then have to be put into place.

Re: Tough truths about climate

#78

Post by mlrtime »

andsoitis wrote: post #3

”Unfortunately, the doomsday outlook is causing much of the climate community to focus too much on near-term emissions goals, and it’s diverting resources from the most effective things we should be doing to improve life in a warming world.” How do we change incentives to be long-term aligned rather than counter-productive, anxious short-termism?

>How do we change incentives to be long-term aligned rather than counter-productive, anxious short-termism?

Easy? You develop technology that makes it win-win for everyone. If you give me a choice to improve my QoL or reduce my cost AND reduce my carbon footprint at the same time, I make that choice.

If I have a choice between reducing carbon footprint, but my QoL goes down or costs go up, I won't choose it.

Re: Tough truths about climate

#79

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

Ekaros wrote: post #77

Asking people to lower their living standards will not work. So next best thing is to prepare for future changes with potential solutions now. This is most realistic approach I can see. Start now developing solutions that then have to be put into place.

Inflation is already lowering the living standards of millions, but without any reduction on ghg. So the most realistic approach is that we have to deal both reduced living standards AND a changing environment. But the rich will be rich, so there's that.
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