By David Wojick |September 23rd, 2020|Climate
Bill Gates is throwing several billion dollars at climate change. Mind you he is not throwing it away, because it is mostly venture capital for new energy technologies, which could pay off handsomely without climate change.
Gates can do what he likes with his riches, but he is a leading figure and lately he has become a serious climate change scaremonger. This has prompted CLINTEL to put some hard questions to him, in the form of a registered letter.
On the scaremongering side, last month Gates published an article claiming that climate change will be far worse than the present Covid outbreak. He imagines many millions dying from climate change. The press spread his doomsday words far and wide.
Here are some doomful excerpts:
“I am talking about COVID-19. But in just a few decades, the same description will fit another global crisis: climate change. As awful as this pandemic is, climate change could be worse.“
“I realize that it’s hard to think about a problem like climate change right now. When disaster strikes, it is human nature to worry only about meeting our most immediate needs, especially when the disaster is as bad as COVID-19. But the fact that dramatically higher temperatures seem far off in the future does not make them any less of a problem—and the only way to avoid the worst possible climate outcomes is to accelerate our efforts now. Even as the world works to stop the novel coronavirus and begin recovering from it, we also need to act now to avoid a climate disaster by building and deploying innovations that will let us eliminate our greenhouse gas emissions.”
“If you want to understand the kind of damage that climate change will inflict, look at COVID-19 and spread the pain out over a much longer period of time. The loss of life and economic misery caused by this pandemic are on par with what will happen regularly if we do not eliminate the world’s carbon emissions.”
According to Gates’ Energy Plan, progress is the problem. He puts it this way:
“These challenges are only getting more urgent. The world’s middle class has been growing at an unprecedented rate, and as you move up the income ladder, your carbon footprint expands. Instead of walking everywhere, you can afford a bicycle (which doesn’t use gas but is likely made with energy-intensive metal and gets to you via cargo ships and trucks that run on fossil fuels). Eventually you get a motorbike so you can travel farther from home to work a better job and afford to send your kids to school. Your family eats more eggs, meat, and dairy, so they get better nutrition. You’re in the market for a refrigerator, electric lights so your kids can study at night, and a sturdy home built with metal and concrete.
All of that new consumption translates into tangible improvements in people’s lives. It is good for the world overall—but it will be very bad for the climate, unless we find ways to do it without adding more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.”
As a rebuttal, the CLINTEL open letter asks him these six central questions:
1. How much or how little global warming does mankind really cause on top of the natural contribution?
2. Why does projected global warming exceed observationally-derived warming by more than 200%?
3. Have the large benefits of more CO2 in the atmosphere been properly accounted for?
4. Does the cost of attempting to abate global warming exceed the benefit in the avoided cost of adaptation?
5. What of the tens of millions who die every year because they cannot afford expensive “renewable” electricity and are denied affordable, reliable alternatives?
6. Has history not shown us repeatedly that adaptation to change presents a powerful survival and evolutionary strategy?
Professor Guus Berkhout, CLINTEL President, asks a more personal question:
“CLINTEL particularly blames Bill Gates that he takes advantage of his riches-based fame to frighten the public with extreme modeling predictions (question 2), but does not reassure them with the fact that these scaring modeling results never agreed with observations in practice. ‘Why this one-sided message, Mr. Gates?’”
It will be interesting to see how Bill Gates responds. I urge others to send similar letters to the misguided billionaires who are funding the climate false change scare.
In related news CLINTEL has posted an updated listing of its 900+ international
member scientists and related professionals, all signatories to the World Climate Declaration. They are listed by nationality, with 34 countries listed to date.
Author
David Wojick, Ph.D. is an independent analyst working at the intersection of science, technology and policy. For origins see
http://www.stemed.info/engineer_tackles_confusion.html
For over 100 prior articles for CFACT see
http://www.cfact.org/author/david-wojick-ph-d/
Available for confidential research and consulting.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Amazon is doing the same as Gates with their recent greenwashing advertisement blitz. They crow about their spending on intermittent energy and their carbon neutrality goals, with obligatory images of electric trucks and wind turbines. On another ad, they have one of their “sustainability” (ugh) specialists yammering about what they are doing to save the planet. Of course, such ads are click-bait for their youthful, brainwashed customer base. As for me, I try my best to avoid buying anything through Amazon, especially so with these ads demonstrating that their management appears to be brain dead.
Another question for Bill Gates: If you really believe in catastrophic climate change, why did you recently buy a $43 million beach house?
https://www.sfgate.com/realestate/slideshow/Bill-and-Melinda-Gates-Purchase-43M-Luxury-Beach-201773.php
How does a scientist with credentials but not a high-profile public name get on the list of 900+?
It would be good if WUWT provided information on that. I realize that many people who would like to be on the list have no credentials and their solicitation to be included might overwhelm the administrators. But there are many of us whose names on the list would add weight to the position.
From the article: “All of that new consumption translates into tangible improvements in people’s lives. It is good for the world overall—but it will be very bad for the climate, unless we find ways to do it without adding more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.”
Everything would work out nicely if CO2 was not bad for the climate, Gates says.
Mr. Gates, there is no evidence demonstrating how CO2 interacts with the Earth’s atmosphere. Everything is pure speculation.
So what if you are wrong Mr. Gates, and CO2 turns out not to be a problem? Then we could go merrily on our way, couldn’t we.
There is no evidence that CO2 will do the things you think it will do. It is all a figment of your and others imaginations.
You should use your money to settle the question once and for all. The question has not been settled, although you claim it is an established fact. Yet, if somone like me were to ask you for that established fact, you could not provide it. You know you can’t.
1.5C to 4.5C per doubling of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere? That’s the best you guys can do? Answer: Yes, it is the best they can do. They haven’t refined this figure in decades. Bill wants to build a huge, dire scenario out of guesses like this, none of which have panned out over the decades.
You are assuming way too much, Bill. That’s not scientific.
You are trying to sentence vast numbers of humanity to poverty because of your delusions about CO2.
Yes, you are deluded, Bill. Spend some of your money getting your head on straight.
until he and others of his ilk begin to truly believe and live it will I even begin to be partially persuaded./ Sell your humongous yacht your huge houses maybe then he might become more believable than even the great Greta