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Tough truths about climate

gatesnotes.com

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Re: Tough truths about climate

#81

Post by tylervigen »

elihu wrote: post #74

> "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 ac…

It's not separate. That would be included in manufacturing, transportation, and electricity.

Re: Tough truths about climate

#82

Post by xtiansimon »

elihu wrote: post #74

> "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 ac…

Ha! And military combat vehicles are exempt from emissions regulations.

Re: Tough truths about climate

#83

Post by mk89 »

balaz wrote: post #57
energy123 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically, the spherical cow mindset of "just police the borders harder" is wishful thinking. The world is interconnected in multiple aspects, not just physical borders. Even if you succeed in immunising yourself from all side effects, your immediate neighbor may not be successful, and the instability can come for you through many mechanisms. Prices of food, breakup of the EU, wars, authoritarianism in your own socie…

One of the reasons the best time to make sure every first-world country is self reliant was yesterday; the second best time is today.

Careful to what you wish for.

Autarky can be often found in 19th century literature. The one we hopefully don't want to have or produce anymore.

Re: Tough truths about climate

#84

Post by czottmann »

Unasked-for meta complaint about the site, not the article itself:

I hate that thing where you visit a blog post (judging from the URL) yet the blog post is seemingly endless (judging from the scrollbar), and when you scroll down you hop into the next blog post (URL just changes).

The scrollbar is useless in that case, I can't gauge the real length of the article. The Gates Foundation has more money than God, maybe spend a tiny little bit of it on a good UI designer, yeah?

Re: Tough truths about climate

#85

Post by RickJWagner »

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…

I agree.

This is the first message I am hearing, “There are more important things than climate change.”

It’s almost shocking to hear it. The cynical side of my mind is wondering if this is the start of a slow pivot for the political masses. Another news item today says that emissions reduction pledges are not forthcoming in new world climate discussions. Perhaps messaging about climate change is evolving.

Re: Tough truths about climate

#86

Post by robocat »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #79
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.

> But the rich will be rich

If you're in a developed country, you are the rich.

Re: Tough truths about climate

#87

Post by tasuki »

czottmann wrote: post #84

Unasked-for meta complaint about the site, not the article itself: I hate that thing where you visit a blog post (judging from the URL) yet the blog post is seemingly endless (judging from the scrollbar), and when you scroll down you hop into the next blog post (URL just changes). The scrollbar is useless in that case, I can't gauge the real length of the article. The Gates Foundation has more money than God, maybe s…

> The Gates Foundation has more money than God, maybe spend a tiny little bit of it on a good UI designer, yeah?

I think it's precisely the problem: they hired an expensive designer, and the designer, for the obscene amount of money they were getting, felt like they had to do something special...

Re: Tough truths about climate

#88

Post by card_zero »

tasuki wrote: post #87
czottmann wrote: post #84

Unasked-for meta complaint about the site, not the article itself: I hate that thing where you visit a blog post (judging from the URL) yet the blog post is seemingly endless (judging from the scrollbar), and when you scroll down you hop into the next blog post (URL just changes). The scrollbar is useless in that case, I can't gauge the real length of the article. The Gates Foundation has more money than God, maybe s…

> The Gates Foundation has more money than God, maybe spend a tiny little bit of it on a good UI designer, yeah? I think it's precisely the problem: they hired an expensive designer, and the designer, for the obscene amount of money they were getting, felt like they had to do something special...

It specially crashes my browser when I try to read it, and specially fails to save to the Wayback Machine (the captures there are blank pages). However I found Gates making what looks to be the same argument on a different site:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/10/06/1124265/bill-gat...

Re: Tough truths about climate

#89

Post by dv_dt »

HK-NC wrote: post #58
kennywinker wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he’s probably right, but to be clear there are billions of deaths that fit into his prediction. Humans living and thriving does not preclude a massive drop in population. It is very hard to gauge what he actually believes will happen based on these words

The plague did wonders for us, didnt it? Of course dead people arent livivng or thriving, but if they leave behind a world that has more job opportunities, housing opportunities, cleaner environments, quality food for less....

There have been historical cases made that the plague was a driver of a series of follow on events that upended the previous order - so people like Gates sitting at the top of the current world order might not want to be so blase about the effects of climate change

Re: Tough truths about climate

#90

Post by snapplebobapple »

energy123 wrote: post #22
Animats wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on where you are in the world. For the developed world, climate change will be annoying but not serious. The US may have to give up on Miami and New Orleans, and build seawalls for New York. Some crops may have to be grown further north. Some irrigation systems will need upgrades. More power will be needed for air conditioning. Those will not seriously damage a society. After all, right now the biggest proble…

> For the developed world, climate change will be annoying but not serious. Spillover of problems like mass migration away from the equator and increase in conflicts.

Thats one of those things that, once it gets bad enough, it will be solved rapidly with automated sentry turrets or similar technology and will turn into an annoying logistics problem of keeping the sentry turrets armed. It isn't correct to point at that as the thing thatcmakes the original statement untrue.
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