By Andy May
Bill Gates just published a new book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster. He begins his book with the assertion that “To stop the warming and avoid the worst effects of climate change—and these effects will be very bad—humans need to stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.” He continues that every country will need to change its ways and every activity in the modern lifestyle involves releasing greenhouse houses, so every person must change. He then warns us that if we keep on living the way we do, the impact of all of this will be catastrophic.
Following this, Gates explains that over 800 million people in the world do not have electricity and cook and heat their homes with wood or other combustibles. He reminds us that income, health, and prosperity are all dependent upon energy consumption, the more energy we consume, the better off and healthier we are.
These are the two problems he is addressing; poverty and the fear of some catastrophe caused by our greenhouse emissions. He argues we emit 51 billion tons of CO2-equivalent greenhouse gases per year and must reduce this to zero. Later he admits this is impossible and he means “near net zero.” He also admits that wind and solar will not work because they are intermittent and battery backup for them is too expensive.
He was encouraged to sell his investments in fossil fuel companies, but he did not think it was fair to tell the world’s poor that they could not have the cheapest energy available. He decided at that time, that the only solution was to make clean energy cheaper than fossil fuels. Fossil fuel energy is a five trillion dollar per year industry and the basis for the world’s modern economy. However, regardless of his conclusion that the poor need fossil fuels, he divested from oil and gas, but admits it was an emotional personal decision, not a rational decision.
By 2015, Gates noticed that private investment in clean energy was drying up. The return on investment was low, negative in some cases. Solyndra went bankrupt in 2011 and Gates lost $50 million on a cellulosic ethanol company. Making matters worse, government energy company (clean or otherwise) regulations and paperwork are overwhelming and expensive. So, Gates contacted some other wealthy people and formed Breakthrough Energy, a philanthropy to invest in private clean energy research.
Gates tells us that during the COVID pandemic, a million people died, tens of millions were put out of work, and all nonessential travel was halted, yet, greenhouse gas emissions only went down 5%. He was shocked at how small the reduction was after such an event. He came to realize how difficult getting to zero was, this was not going to be a matter of driving and flying less.
In chapter one Gates explains why he believes we need to get to zero emissions. He makes his first mistake In the very first paragraph. He claims that 20% of the carbon dioxide emitted today will still be in the atmosphere 10,000 years later. This not true, the average lifetime of fossil fuel CO2 in the atmosphere is only 4 to 5 years and the half-life of CO2 emissions is only 3.5 years (Poyet, 2020, pp. 20-21).
Gates’ explanation of the greenhouse effect is the popular one, which is physically incorrect. He says greenhouse gases “trap” heat like a greenhouse, or a car parked in the sun. The main reason the car and greenhouse get hot is they restrict air circulation. If you open a window in either one, they will get cooler. The atmospheric greenhouse effect is different than a greenhouse, for a better explanation that is physically correct, see here.
Later in Chapter 1, Gates explains why he thinks greenhouse gas emissions will lead to a climate catastrophe in 30 to 50 years. He believes that temperatures will rise 1.5 to 3 degrees by 2050 and 4 to 8 degrees by the end of the century. He doesn’t specify units, but presumably he means degrees Fahrenheit. Gates imprecision when discussing climate science is not encouraging. This reader gets the impression that Gates has not studied the science in any depth, his knowledge of the topic seems very superficial.
His discussion of what will happen if temperatures warm over the next century are the conventional litany of more extreme weather, more droughts, more floods, etc. But it is well known that weather has not become more extreme, droughts and flooding have not become worse, and might have lessened in their severity. For sure, weather related deaths and losses, as a percent of GDP, have declined in the modern era as shown by Dr. Roger Pielke and others. You can read more about serious studies of weather-related disasters over time here.
Gates believes that global warming will cause sea level to rise and this will cause a catastrophe. Sea level has been rising since civilization began, as can be seen in Figure 1.
In Figure 1, Robert Rohde shows us that the rate of sea level rise was much faster in the past and is quite moderate today, roughly 2 to 3 millimeters per year or less than a foot (30 cm) per century. Sea level changes have happened throughout Earth’s history and will always happen. Humans have always adapted to them successfully, and we fully expect humans to adapt in the future. For a more in-depth discussion see here.
Gates claims that higher temperatures and more CO2 will limit the geographic range of animals and plants and reduce food production. He thinks that overall food production will drop in the future due to climate change, growing seasons will shrink, and food prices will rise.
In fact, the evidence tells us the opposite. As explained here, net primary plant productivity has increased over 20% since 1961 and 70% of the growth is due to more CO2, most of the rest is due to an increase in arable land and longer growing seasons due to higher temperatures. Dr. Craig Idso has calculated that the additional productivity has added $3.2 trillion to the world economy. The evidence tells us that Gates and his source, the IPCC or the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, have it backwards.
Gates goes on to say that fish and animals will be less productive in warmer temperatures, which is the opposite of what occurs in nature. Fish and animals are less productive in colder times and in the winter than they are in warmer times during the summer. Studies have verified that the summer months in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres are more productive than winter for fish and animals (Sigman, 2012).
Gates then goes on to list numerous catastrophes predicted by IPCC computer simulations. He ignores the data and relies only upon computer simulations of what might happen in the future. Worse the IPCC simulations he relies upon are fed the output of computer climate models, thus Gates is using models of model output to tell us what he thinks will happen in the future. Data all around him is saying the opposite, but he believes the models of model output. Bill Gates is a very bright person, why does he confuse computer simulations with reality?
It is well known that the climate models used by the IPCC do not match observations. In fact, Ross McKitrick and John Christy have shown they fail a critical test in the middle tropical troposphere. The tropical region between 20 degrees north and 20 degrees south is their chosen test area, this is where all climate models predict the middle troposphere will warm faster than the surface. Yet, every model fails to match observations in this region. The recent BAMS (Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society) State of the Climate Report (Blunden & Arndt, 2020) contains the graph shown in Figure 2.
In Figure 2 the heavy red line and red boxes show the average model temperature increase from the IPCC climate models. The range encompassing all models is shown with dashed red lines. The heavy green line is the average of observations over the same period and individual observations are shown with light blue, yellow, green, and purple symbols. All climate models predict excess warming in the boxed region between 9.2 km and 11.7 km (300 hPa and 200 hPa) altitude if greenhouse gases are a factor in global warming. Yet, as shown in Ross McKitrick and John Christy’s 2018 paper (McKitrick & Christy, 2018), in this critical region, the models do not overlap the observations if the greenhouse gas effect is included in the model. If the greenhouse gas effect is excluded from the model, the models match observations. McKitrick and Christy tell us that this test invalidates the climate models, and shows they are exaggerating the warming impact of greenhouse gases.
For our purposes here, we need to understand that observations do not support Gates conclusions. His conclusions are based solely on faulty model predictions. Gates believes that global warming will raise mortality. But, the data show clearly that weather related deaths are decreasing extremely rapidly today and there will be far fewer deaths due to cold in a possible warmer future than any excess deaths due to warm weather.
We believe that adapting to climate change, as humans have always done, is the best approach, Gates disagrees. Mitigating the release of greenhouse gases, as Bill Gates suggests, should only be attempted if it is shown that greenhouse gases are the cause of dangerous global warming. Ross McKitrick and John Christy have shown that this speculative idea is likely incorrect (McKitrick & Christy, 2018).
In the next chapter Gates emphasizes the importance of fossil fuels today and how difficult it will be to displace them with a new energy source. Fossil fuels are the basis of our economy and prosperity. Gates observes that to replace them, the new energy source will have to be cheaper than fossil fuels and just as easy to transport and use. Gates also believes that the change he wants will require new technology, taxes, and government mandates.
In Chapter 3 he shows us where greenhouse gases come from. The top sources are making cement, steel and plastic (31%), electricity (27%), farming (19%), transportation (16%), and heating, cooling and refrigeration (7%). Then he introduces the concept of “green premiums,” which is Gates’ name for green energy subsidies and carbon taxes. He is in favor of both.
In Chapter 4 he discusses electricity. He notes that in the United States we only spend 2% of our GDP on electricity, which is amazing considering how dependent we are on it. Electricity is 200 times more affordable today than it was 1900, it is so cheap because fossil fuels are cheap. Fossil fuels provided 62% of the electricity used in the world in 2020. Gates estimates that the U.S. could reach his goal of net-zero emissions by increasing the cost of electricity 15%. This seems too low compared to other estimates, see here and here for more details. Germany has been trying to achieve a 60% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and currently pays three times the U.S. rate for their electricity.
Gates discusses various ways to make electricity, but all are far too expensive or too intermittent to be practical, except for nuclear. There are some promising new nuclear options under development that may replace fossil fuels in the future, but nothing, except conventional fission that can be used today. The regulations and permitting required to build nuclear power plants are so onerous as to effectively make them impossible to build.
Chapter 5 discusses products that are made from fossil fuels, like cement, fertilizer, plastic, and steel. Making these products produces the largest amount of CO2 as mentioned above. Yet, we will not stop using any of them, in fact, Gates estimates that as the world becomes more prosperous, we will likely need much more of them. There may be no way to make these products without emitting CO2, but Gates discusses some interesting technologies that can reduce the CO2 produced. One interesting fact, all the newer technologies he discusses use much, much more electricity than we use today.
In Chapter 6 Gates discusses fertilizer and how important it is but does not mention CO2 fertilization, which seems a contradiction. He also recommends biofuels, but complains about deforestation, which is a byproduct of producing wood pellets to replace coal in powerplants. We find it odd that Gates and many others distinguish between burning fossil fuels and burning wood or other biofuels. Most biofuels produce more actual pollutants, such as oxides of nitrogen and sulfur than fossil fuels and at least as much CO2. Why the CO2 from biofuels is somehow different than the CO2 from fossil fuels escapes this author’s understanding.
In Chapter 7 he discusses transportation, which produces 16% of the CO2 humans emit to the atmosphere. The only thing that can eliminate those direct emissions is switching to electric cars. Currently that makes little difference since 62% of our electricity comes from fossil fuels, but Gates is hypothesizing that we can eventually make electricity without fossil fuels. So, he compares a Chevrolet Bolt to a Chevrolet Malibu. Taking everything into account, the Bolt, which costs $16,000 more than the Malibu, costs 10 cents more per mile to operate. This is a serious amount of money to most people. Gates speculates that in the future the differential will be smaller, perhaps through government subsidies, taxes, or mandates.
Biofuels will be important for ships and aircraft in Gates’ transportation plan. But, as he admits, biofuels are not environmentally friendly. They require a large amount of arable land; they raise food prices and require a lot of fertilizer. Further, the CO2 emitted when they are burned is identical to the CO2 emitted by fossil fuels and biofuels produce more dangerous pollution. The hypothesis that biofuel CO2 will simply go back into another plant, seems a bit silly, since the fossil fuel CO2 can also go into the same plant, and without cutting down a valuable tree or turning food into ethanol.
Gates would also like the world to consider nuclear-powered ships, even though it could be dangerous.
In Chapter 8 Gates suggests switching from natural gas heating to electricity so that when electricity is switched from fossil fuels to other green energy sources, all heating and cooling will be fossil fuel free. He also encourages the use of heat pumps where practical.
In Chapter 9 Gates discusses methods to adapt to climate changes. He makes a point that in todays world, foreign aid to the poorest countries is being rerouted into climate areas. Gates does not want money for vaccines, health and nutrition rerouted to green energy. In this, he has this author’s full agreement. It is very unfortunate, but for political reasons less money is being spent helping the poor in the third world adapt to climate changes, it is instead being diverted to green energy.
Gates also discusses various new crops being developed by agricultural companies that increase yields for third-world farmers. Oddly, he does not mention that additional CO2 in the atmosphere makes most crops much more drought resistant, since with additional available CO2 they need much less water per pound of growth.
Chapter 10 is a plea for more government intervention in the private sector. Gates also wants more government R&D money. This author is opposed to this idea and believes that government funding of scientific research has corrupted science. The author has discussed this topic in much more detail in his book, Politics and Climate Change: a History (May, 2020c). Gates is also a believer in government subsidies to “guide” the public to fossil fuel free energy.
He briefly discusses the impact of destroying the fossil fuel industry, which supports more than ten million jobs in the United States. These high paying jobs will be replaced with much lower paying jobs in the green energy sector or in the service sector. He mentions this but offers no solutions.
In Chapter 11 Gates admits that trying to get to zero emissions by 2030 is impossible. But then he offers the equally impossible goal of 2050. Exxon projects that oil, gas and coal will supply 76% of the world’s energy in 2040 in their 2019 Outlook for Energy, how that can get to zero by 2050 is beyond this author’s understanding. Most of the rest of Chapter 11 is a plea for governments to grab more power and take over ever larger parts of the private sector so they can force the public to help them destroy the fossil fuel industry. He calls for action by “all levels of government, from local transportation planners to national legislatures and environmental regulators.”
In Chapter 12 he asks that all individuals lobby their governments and employers to help in this crusade to destroy the fossil fuel industry.
Concluding remarks
Bill Gates is obviously a bright person, he built Microsoft and was a great innovator. But this book is disappointing. Gates has clearly not studied climate science, he just assumes the IPCC reports and models are correct. Then he accepts their health and economic projections, built with climate model output. He does no due diligence. If he ran his business like this, he would not have succeeded.
So after blindly accepting, the consensus position on climate science he then proceeds to tell us what we must do to combat his hypothesized scourge of climate change. Later he implores the governments of the world to unite in forcing us to do what he wants.
In this author’s opinion, this is a very shallow look at a complex topic. It is more of a propaganda pamphlet than a serious book. Bill Gates should do his homework next time he writes a book. This book is not recommended.
Works Cited
Blunden, J., & Arndt, D. S. (2020). State of the Climate in 2019. BAMS. Retrieved from https://www.ametsoc.org/index.cfm/ams/publications/bulletin-of-the-american-meteorological-society-bams/state-of-the-climate/
May, A. (2020c). Politics and Climate Change: A History. Springfield, Missouri: American Freedom Publications. Retrieved from https://www.amazon.com/POLITICS-CLIMATE-CHANGE-ANDY-MAY-ebook/dp/B08LJSBVBC/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3POS1QGAQ2C2X&dchild=1&keywords=politics+and+climate+change+a+history+by+andy+may&qid=1609414686&sprefix=Politics+and+Climate%2Caps%2C186&sr=8-1
McKitrick, R., & Christy, J. (2018, July 6). A Test of the Tropical 200- to 300-hPa Warming Rate in Climate Models, Earth and Space Science. Earth and Space Science, 5(9), 529-536. Retrieved from https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018EA000401
Poyet, P. (2020). The Rational e-Book. Patrice Poyet. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/347150306_The_Rational_Climate_e-Book
Sigman, D. M. (2012). The Biological Productivity of the Ocean. Nature Education, 3(10). Retrieved from https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/the-biological-productivity-of-the-ocean-70631104/#:~:text=Higher%20chlorophyll%20concentrations%20and%20in,(Figure%204a%20and%20b).
So, unannounced, Facebook today decided to put the brakes on content sharing in Australia … no content from WUWT can be shared. These are very dangerous times ahead.
Like Tony Heller recently said, “One hundred years ago, Bolsheviks took over and destroyed a country. History repeats itself.”
This is probably part of the big tech fight against the Australian Federal Government recent idea of legislating usage of news articles by facebook and google.
It will be wonderful when Facebook faceplates. Maybe it will be sooner than later.
Actions like this will speed the fall by driving people to other platforms. They are destroying themselves because of their arrogance.
i DON’T USE FACEBOOK NOR DID I FIND WUWT ON IT.
SO I’M SAFE I GUESS
WUWT or skeptical sites not the issue or target.
https://technology.inquirer.net/107858/facebook-blocks-news-content-in-australia-as-it-blasts-proposed-law
This is the Australian government calling Zuck’s bluff.
FBook argue they play a vital part in allowing information – filtered by fact checkers of course – to spread. The Aust Government argues that FB is taking the hard work of others in order to claim all the ad revenue for themselves. People read the headline and opening paragraph, go ‘oh… Something Must Be Done’ and move on with their lives. The original authors of the articles never get the click bait dollars because anyone with an attention span short enough to believe five minutes on FBook will… sorry… puppies playing in the snow video!!!
What we are seeing is Zuck trying to be a big strong arm man flexing his muscles, but in reality his bluff has been called. People who only used FBook for news are now going to simply stop consuming new or go to the effort of finding news from other sources.
Best thing is the annoying adds don’t appear, yes I know about adblocker but it has other impacts
This is equivalent to book burning in Nazi Germany in the ’30s.
Good! The more irrelevant they become the better
Anthony Watts has warned us, and I for one am listening. Only preapproved opinions are compatible with the expanding communo- tech movement.
I was wondering when that would start.
“Nothing is more frightening than ignorance in action.”
-Goethe
…and, god help us, Gates has just demonstrated his ignorance.
Thank you, Andy May, for wasting your time reading Gates’ tripe so the rest of us don’t have to.
You are very welcome. The Goethe quote is quite appropriate, Thanks.
“Gates tells us that during the COVID pandemic, a million people died, tens of millions were put out of work, and all nonessential travel was halted, yet, greenhouse gas emissions only went down 5%. He was shocked at how small the reduction was after such an event.”
As 95% of co2 is natural he means the 5% of the 5% half of which goes into the oceans.
We would need 20 years of cumulative covid style lockdowns to begin to make a dent in our rate of increase
tonyb
and the ‘dent’ would be imperceptible. Gates’ ignorance is vast and deep.
Andy, do you really think “…government funding corrupted science…”, or was it corporate funding that has corrupted scientists and determined the track of their sciencery? Government funding gave us nuclear power, a man on the moon… Corporate funding gave us gender studies, covid “not-vaccines” and global warming.
But then again, you seem to think Billy-Bob da Patch is a genius. Don’t you think a genius would know at least as much about basic fluid dynamics and geo-orbital influences as the most humble of readers on this site?
I don’t know who ties his shoelaces, but your entire review repeatedly showcases the man’s idiocy. IF he is indeed a man… he is one of the best examples of might-be-reptilian on the world stage!
That was just half joking.
I think you got it pretty much backwards. Corporations are part of the free market, which is what has led to America having the highest standard of living in the world. Governments are what are oppressing the rest of the world right now, by resisting free market economies. Governments that are either corrupt, or overbearing with taxes to fund their fantasy energy sources are the problem, not the free market. Spain and Gemany’s failed attempts to provide “renewable energy” come to mind. I give the French government a lot of credit for being 80% reliant on Fission reactor energy, despite public fear of meltdowns.
Corporate funded science MUST come up with real world applicable results or it is of no use to then corporation. Government science is, in most cases, intended for propaganda and aquisition of paower. Actual real world applicability is not needed.
Many thanks for your patience and for informing us.
The problem is that Gates is not ignorant, IMO. He’s a spokesman for all those Skull and Bones types who see the population issue as a chaotic threat to their positions of wealth and power, and if he has to be a grand purveyor of deception à la Joseph Goebbels, then so be it. Anything justifies saving his own/their own skin.
Gates is not ignorant, he is fully aware of his CAGW lies and gross exaggerations. It’s all about advancing his eugenicist globalist agenda, which has run in his family for at least one generation, through the implementation of a government control grid where nearly all our activities will be metered, regulated and taxed.
His rise and that of Microsoft is not accidental, as portrayed in Silicon Valley lore, he was an insider who benefited from his mother’s ties to the IBM board.
IBM is the secret to Bill’s wealth. IBM made the first PC for small businesses and needed an operating system. Bill was second on their list – the first name blew it so the IBM guy visited Bill in Seattle at his tiny microsoft company. Bill did not actually have an OS but knew someone who did and he rushed acoss town and offered the guy $20k for it without telling him about IBM. IBM made a deal with Bill and foolishly did not tell him that it must be an IBM exclusive. Bill proceeded to license the OS to all the other companies who followed IBM’s lead in the new PC biz. If I could talk to Bill for about 10 minutes, I would ask him how he knows that CO2 is something we need to reduce?
Clearly his answer would be: “The IPCC says it, so it must be true.”
The true early genius behind MS success was Paul Allen.
IBM thought that the IBM PC was not able to be cloned because it had a patented IBM chip in it….Compaq Computer proceeded to reverse engineer the chip and the race was begun….IBM flat missed the fact that all the software writers wanted one OS to make things simpler and since IBM established that microsoft was their OS even if it was not the best….all the rest is history…..call it IBM’s multi trillion dollar mistake.
I’m quite sure the PC used an Intel chip, not an IBM chip and Compaq, along with many other manufacturers, used the same Intel chip. The Zilog Z-80 was a competing and more capable instruction set compatible chip used by many companies as the industry grew.
There’s more than one chip in a PC.
But the chip that executes the instructions in the OS is the CPU chip. The other chips work at the command of the CPU instructions and are pretty much irrelevant to the OS. Any IBM proprietary chips in the first PC would have made no difference whatsoever to OS choice. There were also plenty of alternatives to support chips and an IBM proprietary chip would not have made making a “clone” with those alternatives difficult.
He got help from his mother who was a member on several corporate boards. She talked up Billy’s company to the IBM board chair who “encouraged” IBM execs to talk to the kid. Sounds like she was an activist board member for social causes, too.
Gates is a shrewd opportunist. Another big opportunity was DEC losing Cutler to MS and bringing with him what would become Windows NT and the beginnings of the rest of MS’s OS, after Gates realized that the DOS-based Windows 3 was too limited and they didn’t have the talent to build better. The early versions of other products, including MSOffice (Word and Excel), were borrowed or stolen from competitors.
Microsoft made many people in this region very wealthy. Most of them think they were personally responsible for Microsoft’s success. A small number were. The quote above from Goethe is very appropriate.
They also spawned the multi-billion dollar malware industry by delivering buggy software riddled with security holes.
And despite the stories about Garry Kildall and Digital Research not taking IBM seriously it is almost certain that, due to his mother’s influence, Bill was the only choice for the OS. Remember that at the time, IBM didn’t think the PC would amount to anything. They were confident in the future of the mainframe business. Sending a few bucks to a board member’s kid for a minor project expected to fail wasn’t even a blip in the financial statements.
You could also add atmospheric humidity to the list of what is not happening. Humidity is supposed to be increasing because of CO2 but it is not. It is decreasing.
But nothing proves global warming like icicles hanging from a Texas ceiling fan. AOC says the GND will solve all these problems.
Nothing like more frozen windmills to make up for the existing frozen windmills. AOC is a typical big government zealot. If a government program doesn’t work you need to make it bigger.
Yes, she is clueless.
If “Idiocracy” is listed in a dictionary, it should have a picture of AOC as an example. Along with the idiots that voted her into office.
AOC is denying reality and she wants us to deny reality, too.
She says the problems in Texas are caused because there are not enough windmills and solar in Texas.
She has to double-down on “renewables”, she has no choice, or she has to accept that windmills and solar are not going to be a big part of her Green New Deal going forward.
AOC better study up on nuclear power generation. It’s in her future. It’s the only viable way to reach her CO2 goals.
Reader’s Digest version of the above:
Bill Gates is an uninformed busybody with no specific knowledge and an inborne emotional compulsion to control people.
He wants everyone else in the world to do things he would never consider doing himself for even a New York Minute.
He has nothing original to say on the entire topic which is the subject of his book.
And he is a big giant @$$%#@& who oughta just shut the hell up and leave everyone alone because whatever he says, nothing he asserts is because he cares even a little about any of us.
No mention of vaccinations?
Gates is the second largest contributor to the WHO and a regular attendee at the WEF in Davos – he’s up there with all the Great Resetters.
He has no specific knowledge, and nothing original to say.
What he has is money and a compulsion to control others.
I am certain that there are several people who are WUWT regulars (authors and commenters) who have a far better understanding and more knowledge on subjects such as immunology, virology, and epidemiology, than Gates has ever bothered to acquire.
Whether he is simply lazy, or whether he does not possess the either the acumen or the aptitude for such learning, is unknowable from afar.
But the fact of it is clear enough.
Gates is getting old. Paul Allen is dead. Gates is ‘too smart’ to believe in God or the afterlife, so he is trying to find meaning in his life before his own death. So his religion of choice is Global Warming. Gates pretends he will be mankind’s ‘Savior’. Yep … garden variety god-complex. As his buddy Obama asked … “how much money does a man need?”. Well, all of Gates money hasn’t satisfied the hole in his soul. The very human hole that needs to find meaning and purpose in the universe. Gates will “save us” … by punishing us. By making us eat FAKE meat. By giving every human ‘subject’ penance … an eternal season of Lent and tithing to his Global Warming collection plate.
Gates is 65.
Actually had to look that up. He hasn’t really aged well. I assumed he was older.
Ditto.
He’s a carrot top and their skin does not age well especially if it’s seen too much Sun as he obviously has .
I think you hit the bull’s eye Kenji! Certainly inside the magpie!
Cheers
Mike
Well, Obama found out how much money he needs after his presidency ended. He is still on a quest, I suppose
Back in the early 80s, I was a ghost writer for a Bill Gates magazine article. I suspect a ghost writer may have written much of this book.
Good point.
Writing a book is a difficult skill to acquire.
I doubt he has that skill, or the patience required to carry it out.
When you start with a scientifically-unfound hypothesis, everything else you argue from that premise is a dust in the wind.
There is NO scientifically-strong evidence that increases in average atmospheric CO2 concentration above the current level will cause ANY warming of Earth’s surface and atmosphere.
Most significantly, Wijngaarden and Happer present the scientific evidence that atmospheric CO2 at its present concentration level is very close to—if not already—saturated in its ability to contribute any additional “greenhouse gas” feedback to Earth’s surface temperature (related discussion and link to pre-print at https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/10/26/study-suggests-no-more-co2-warming/ ).
The preponderance of evidence is the Earth’s atmospheric CO2 concentration level increases lags surface temperature increases at all time scales.
The preponderance of paleoclimatology evidence is that Earth has experienced significantly warmer (by 5-10 °F) surface temperatures than today, independent of CO2 concentration.
The preponderance of recent scientific evidence is that Earth has undergone two significant periods of decreasing global surface temperatures, from about 1940-1975 and from about 1999-2015 despite atmospheric CO2 concentration levels continuing to smoothly increase during these intervals.
During the Holocene, the warming since exiting the last glacial period, Earth temperatures have actually cooled off since peaking (the “Holocene optimum”) and increasing atmospheric CO2 levels have not yet caused Earth to exceed that peak of roughly 9,000 to 5,000 years ago.
There is MUCH, MUCH more that Bill Gates should learn.
My bad . . . typo in my first sentence: should be “unsound“, not “unfound”.
Alternate reading: “unfounded”
: > )
Why equivocate. There can be no doubt that the “greenhouse effect” is pure fantasy. The average temperature of Earth’s surface is the result of two powerful thermostatic control processes that set water/sea ice interface to -2C and ocean warm pools to 30C. The distribution of water over the globe and high heat content of the mixed layer means the average surface temperature becomes the mean of the two extremes; 14C. The risk is always on the downside because the tropical Atlantic is so narrow relative to its polar extents.
You can believe that or some utter BS about the surface being 33C warmer than the average radiating temperature of 255K because there is a “greenhouse effect”. Who dreams up this utter tripe.
So powerful temperature regulating processes working across there tropical oceans and two polar oceans doing exactly the same thing or some finely tuned energy balance taken grossly out of kilter by a minuscule addition of CO2 – pull the other one it plays jingle bells.
You do a disservice to humanity when you suffer ignorant clowns by equivocating over what is obvious to anyone whose ears are separated by more than mush.
Please, don’t be shy.
Tell us how you really feel!
Happer for sure nailed it. Still, he could not take the heat in the Trump Admin. They even tried to impeach a private citizen! Will we see impeachment of Happer?
There is no limit to the insanity!
“When you start with a scientifically-unsound hypothesis, everything else you argue from that premise is a dust in the wind.”
That describes the entirety of the alarmist’s climate science. They start out with an unsubstantiated assumption and go from there. So nothing they find is substantiated because it is built on an unsubstantiated assumption.
Unsubstantiated In = Unsubstantiated Out
Hard to tell whether Gates sees an opportunity with the climate scam or thinks he is actually doing good. He probably thinks he is making up for some of his less than ethical behavior in the past. He’s now gotten past the point of no return. He will continue pushing climate nonsense rather than admit he was wrong.
I have no problem with the general description of “trapping heat”. While not exactly like a greenhouse, certain gases do absorb IR radiation from the planet’s surface and redirect it back towards the surface. CO2 is one of those.
It’s what happens next that is missing. A good analogy is the overflow drain on a typical bathroom sink. You can have the faucet on and shut the main drain and the sink will not flood your bathroom. The water simply follows a separate path to the same destination.
The “trapped heat” follows a similar path. The high heat capacity of the surface prevents the daily trapped heat from significantly altering the temperature of the surface which absorbs it. This prevents the air above from warming more than a trifle and the humidity from increasing due to a temperature rise. The dew point remains almost constant. At night the “trapped heat” will radiate away just like the heat from the sun. The dew point defines the amount of energy that will remain. It is the same independent of the “trapped heat”.
That is the way the excess energy is removed. It really doesn’t matter what produces the energy. It could be the greenhouse effect or any number of other factors in our climate. The high heat capacity of the surface prevents small amounts of added energy from increasing the surface temperature thus keeping the humidity fairly constant.
Richard,
The key point is the thermal energy is not trapped, it may be delayed on its way to outer space, but we cannot even be sure of that. If it is delayed, it does warm the lower troposphere by some amount.
It certainly is not trapped!
Given that the lapse rate is controlled by convection, the control on the surface temperature is the average emission altitude. That is the altitude where emission to outer space becomes greater than emission downward plus warming of the atmosphere.
Since the lapse rate probably doesn’t change much as the emission altitude goes up, the surface temperature goes up. When the emission altitude goes down, the surface temperature goes down.
But, there are a huge number of factors that can change. Especially the cloud cover, which dominates the albedo. So the net effect is unknown. The IPCC tend to ignore these complexities.
Don’t think you understood my comment. I was referring to the general process of a GHG stopping the energy from leaving. The rest of my comment was describing that the heat does eventually leave and how that happens.
Andy
Where are you getting this drivel!
Average global surface temperature = {30 + (-2)}/2 = 14C
So simple a grade school child can calculate it. All the rubbish about emission altitude and lapse rate. The surface temperature is thermostatically controlled. The rest follows that simple fact.
We now have the ability to “see” the surface temperature on a daily basis. Always regulates to 30C in the tropical warm pools and -2C at the water/ice interface. Been doing it for at least millions of years. The only variation is that the tropical Atlantic does not always make the grade and the Atlantic goes a little cold:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/2000PA000506
RickWill:
This 30C figure is fundamental. It stems from the water vapour pressure V temperature graph (ex Antoine) where it will be seen that this pressure initially rises slowly but at around 25C it escalates rapidly and at around 30C it tends to go off the top of the graph.
Directly linked to this is the rate of evaporation which occurs at CONSTANT temperature and generates Latent Heat. This in turn due to the buoyancy of the vapor/gas produced is then driven up through the atmosphere for dissipation to space to establish an equilibrium.
This is the explanation for why the oceans never get much above the 30C figure in spite of millions of years of relentless solar radiation. It also explains why this 30C is seen from space with an average 14C? resulting as a global mean temperature.
OK one can dance around all this, invoking many other influences but when it comes to practicalities: for every kilogram of water evaporated at the surface, later to return to earth as rain etc. some 694Watthrs get dissipated to the atmosphere and space. A value that knocks the socks off the purported GHE of around 1.6 Watts/sq.m.
My regards
Alasdair
Alasdair and Rick,
I agree with both of you. It has been known since, at least 1978, that the upper limit on open ocean SST is around 30 degrees. Newell and Dopplick wrote about this in 1978 and 1979:
The above is from a post I wrote almost 3 years ago. https://andymaypetrophysicist.com/2018/05/19/does-global-climate-change-require-a-global-solution/
There has been a lot more evidence posted here by both Rick and Willis lately. But, I’m surprised it gets so little notice. I guess because it completely blows up the idea of “dangerous” climate change. If the maximum ocean temperature is 30 degrees how do we ever get to “dangerous?” The answer is we don’t.
This is interesting, but it is hard to reconcile this with the known variations in the GAST.
We have had glacial maximums and interglacials, climate optimums and Little Ice Ages, Medieval Warm Periods and the Younger Dryas.
Presumably the ice/water interface temp and the max temp of tropical ocean water was the same at all of these times.
What changed in the period between 18,000 and 12,000 years ago, that led to a glacial maximum becoming a period of rapid melt and the onset of an interglacial?
There has probably been some ice near the poles at least some of the time since tens of millions of years ago.
And the 30° limit of ocean temp has likely been largely unchanged even longer than that.
So simple a cave man could explain it…so please do.
Nicholas, The changes take place at the poles. The temperatures at the equator don’t change significantly, ever, as far as I can tell. It is the equatorial to pole gradient that changes. Attached is a photo of estimated equatorial temperatures for the past 600 million years. In the last 30 million years they have changed less than +-1 degree.
Here is the change in the equator to pole temperature gradient. These plots are from Chris Scotese’s writings on climate change. Currently, we are in level “6”, “Ice House.”
The Atlantic has a very short equatorial zone relative to its polar contact. Even today it is not making the 30C control limit:
During glacial periods it maxes out around 26C. That sets the northern land masses into ice accumulation and the lack of river runoff does not allow the North Atlantic to warm up as it does when there is normal runoff. Over time, the cool water spreads south to the south Atlantic. Even Antarctica cools adjacent to the Atlantic. Eventually it makes a slight impact on the eastern Pacific. That could be both by cooler water from the Southern Ocean and cooler water across Panama.
This paper gives some neat reconstructions of tropical ocean temperature during glacial episodes:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/2000PA000506
Tropical Atlantic down to 26C. Increased 26C zone in Pacific but still makes 30C. Indian Ocean hardly impacted.
Antarctica cools but much cooler adjacent to the Atlantic than the Pacific Ocean.
When you consider the clear sky radiating power of ocean surface at 303K, there is not much excess heat input without cloud absorption. So despite the regulating limit of 30C it does not take much drop in insolation before the 30C is not achieved. At aphelion in 2021 the ToA peak insolation will be only 1270W/sq.m. That means the average ToA insolation at zenith over the tropical Atlantic is only 406W/sq.m. That corresponds to a clear sky radiating power of only 26C. Fortunately there is some cloud absorption that reduces the OLR but it is on a knife edge of going cold. The cloud builds rapidly once SST reaches 26C but the cloudburst is anaemic compared to what happens at 30C.
“The only variation is that the tropical Atlantic does not always make the grade…”
This part has me wondering.
What does “make the grade” mean in this context?
And “The only variation…”?
That is the only thing that ever varies?
Seriously?
The only variation is that one part of one ocean does not always “make the grade”?
Seems like the world has been wasting a lot of paper on a lot of textbooks.
Everything else is drivel and rubbish?
Everyone who has spent years studying various related subjects has merely wasted a life, because the truth is a 1st grade arithmetic problem?
I have had little in the way of patience for warmista that think the entire state of the atmosphere, the literal thermostat of the Earth, is the concentration of a gas that exists at less than half of one tenth of one percent of the air.
I promise you, it is nothing like simple.
The Earth is not stuck at the average between two values.
Nicholas, For longer term changes, see here:
Earth’s Ice Ages | Andy May Petrophysicist
Basically the North Atlantic has been short changed when it comes to energy balance. It has a lot of ice covered land and water along its northern ice contact and it has a relatively narrow equatorial zone. As I pointed out just above in reply to another question, right now it is only making 29C in its hot spot. During aphelion in the middle of the boreal summer, the ToA peak insolation will be only 1270W/sq.m. During perihelion the tropical ocean in southern tropics gets 1460W/sq.m so a massive difference.
Heat from the Pacific contributes to heat uptake of the Atlantic Ocean through deep currents and via the southern ocean and heat input as well as less salty water into the Arctic Ocean that keeps the Gulf Stream going. Bering Strait is a very important stretch of water for conditions in the North Atlantic.
I linked to a paper just above that gives reconstruction for the tropical ocean temperatures during glaciation. Atlantic goes cold – other tropical oceans not so much.
Oceans also give up heat to land through air currents and rainfall. Most rainfall over land comes from ocean evaporation. Water evaporated from the ocean is heat given up by the ocean. The resulting precipitation over land is from heat released over land that reduced OLR while the precipitation was forming; essentially reducing the radiating power from clear sky conditions to emissions from the cloud level. The North Atlantic has to service a lot more cold land than the two other tropical oceans.
For comparison, the ice contact and equatorial zones for the tropical oceans are:
Pacific 9,400km ice and 16,600 equator
Indian 5,500km ice and 6,200km equator
Atlantic 8,700km ice and 6,300km equator
Taken together the totals are 23,600km ice and 29,100km equator. As more ice forms, there could be more ocean surface contact with sea ice at -2C than ocean at 30C. The average surface temperature drops. The risk is always on the downside.
The ocean mixed layer that transports most of the heat varies in depth from less than 100m to over 300m (essentially a thin shell with very high heat capacity). This layer stores and releases nearly all the heat that keeps the climate energised but the atmosphere has a vital role in driving the ocean currents and limiting the tropical SST to 30C. The atmosphere is also essential for heat transport from oceans to land.
Andy,
One thing to keep in mind is the speed of light.
Even at the reduced speed of light through air, the delay is still on the order of microseconds at the most.
“The dew point remains almost constant.”
The are photos of Earth’s disk (taken from Earth orbiting spacecraft) that sometimes show a near absence of clouds and that at other times show cloud coverage over 50% more of the imaged surface.
Water can condense (i.e., form visible clouds) at temperatures as low as -30 °C (ice clouds) and as high as around +20 °C (ground fog).
You seem to have assumed I was talking about the entire planet. I wasn’t. I was referring specifically to the situation where energy is absorbed by the surface from the GHE. Single photons. Due to the heat capacity of the surface that energy has very little impact on the temperature which means the dew point in the area where the absorption is occurring remains unchanged.
He single-mindedly wants to reduce the world population. It would be in his interest to limit access to health fortifying foods that would allow people to increase their family size etc.
It appears I’m not getting my thoughts expressed very well. The biggest problem skeptics have in the climate debate is we cannot answer one simple question … how does the added energy from CO2 back radiation avoid warming the planet?
The back radiation been scientifically measured. It’s real.
Skeptics do a lot of hand waving (see Andy’s initial response). I’ve done it many times myself with hypothetical feedbacks. But, our arguments have not been able to conclusively answer that very basic question. This is why alarmists are winning. They have physics on their side.
What I have described above answers that question. About 99% of the energy gets radiated away at night. I described the basic physics why this occurs. If skeptics start spreading this idea we will change the entire debate. Now the skeptics will have physics on their side.
It’s always possible I’m missing something and my description of the processes taking place is wrong. Many will ask … why hasn’t someone else thought of this before? If that’s the case I’d like to understand the science better. However, if I’m right, this is the argument that destroys AGW.
To put it very simply, the reason the CO2 back radiation is not warming planet Earth is 99% of that energy is radiated away every night.
You are missing the fact that convection changes to neutralise radiative imbalances because such imbalances alter the lapse rate slope thereby altering the speed or pattern of convection.
No Stephen, I have used that particular hand waving argument many times. It simply does not come into play once you understand what I have uncovered.
It turns out that convection doesn’t kick in because there is no significant additional warming of the surface when you increase CO2. With 99% of the temperature rise gone the argument is unneeded. Maybe that’s why it has never been detected.
My observation not only removes the need to invent feedbacks that reduce warming now, it essentially negates 99% of the entire claimed 33 C greenhouse effect. Skeptics, including myself, have been accepting it is real. The only part that is real is the downwelling radiation. It turns out that energy is almost all removed each and every night.
Andy was right when he mentioned the adiabatic lapse rate. That is the feature of the atmosphere that creates most of the 33 C of warming.
Turns out GHGs are needed in the atmosphere to allow it to warm and radiate at an altitude above the surface, but the physics is not what is claimed by climate science. The ALR is a physical part of the atmosphere and is only a function of the amount of energy available and the gravitational field. Adding more CO2 as humans are doing now does not change either of those two parameters.
Richard and Stephen,
“The Greenhouse Effect” is such a poorly defined concept, it is very difficult to discuss. The fact that it is misnamed doesn’t help. I do like the idea of including nighttime in the discussion though.
The problems in many discussions is everyone is focused on the surface. This is where the atmosphere is not in radiative equilibrium, plus it is a tiny fraction of the total thermal energy. I wish we could use something more stable to measure “global warming,” if there is such a thing.
The mixed layer is the best, or maybe the whole troposphere. We need something big to detect long-term changes. The S/N ratio of surface temperatures is off the charts. And Rick Will is right, there is an upper limit on ocean surface temperatures. Surface temperatures only change in the higher latitudes.
Andy, I agree it is the mixed layer that sets the temperature of the planet. However, as long as climate science continues to ignore the loss of energy each and every night, they will manufacture some warming from the addition of GHGs.
They have incomplete physics and as long as that is the case their models will show increasing GHGs cause warming. If they added this night time energy loss to there models and include the ALR as a physical part of the atmosphere, then there models would work much better.
What I’m pointing out is they have the science wrong (I had it wrong too). The only way to win this debate is to demonstrate the proper science.
Mr Gates, like similar alarmists (e.g. Al Gore), stand to make a LOT of money from their investments in green energy (e.g. Gates and Terrapower, Gore and carbon credits). I wonder if there is a connection?
From Andy May’s careful review above it looks like Bill Gates’ new book is actually a major work of fiction, and rather more like a compilation of propaganda and selections from a Warmista pamphlet. Buying it and reading it could be a serious waste of time and money.
Gates is a 💩
Not quite as big of a 💩 as Kerry but certainly up there in smelliness.
I disagree with this…
We can only get to net zero by 2030 through Chapter 11… 😎
I suppose that’s better than Chapter 7.
“In Chapter 6 Gates discusses fertilizer and how important it is but does not mention CO2 fertilization,”
CO2 is way more than fertilizer, it is an essential component of photosynthesis. Water plus CO2 and Sunlight yields simple sugar. That is the basis of life on Earth.
Life on earth is dependent on two chemical compounds,
H2O and CO2, and one of them is in short supply.
Hey . . . it’s not just plants that need some CO2.
“Carbon dioxide is essential for internal respiration in a human body. Internal respiration is a process, by which oxygen is transported to body tissues and carbon dioxide is carried away from them. Carbon dioxide is a guardian of the pH of the blood, which is essential for survival.“ —source: https://www.lenntech.com/carbon-dioxide.htm
You did not quite say so, so I’ll mention that CO2 concentration in the blood triggers automatic breathing. It’s a big deal.
Steve Case
But you see,
In terms of climate, CO2 is far more stable than H2O as a compound for life on earth.
It “rains” constantly with quasi no variation, almost same “amount”, regardless of CO2 concentration in atmosphere.
It is the CO2 emission that properly varies over time and impacts the CO2 concentration… not the CO2 sink.
Life on earth depends on the CO2 that comes down and not on the CO2 that goes up or is up there… and that CO2 is always constant and almost non variable in amount… especially when compared to CO2 emission or CO2 concentration variation.
The atmospheric CO2 concentration variation has as much effect or impact in the greening of the planet as it has in warming it.
cheers
“In terms of climate, CO2 is far more stable than H2O as a compound for life on earth.”
Huh?
Paleoclimate proxies have revealed that throughout the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods (i.e., the Mesozoic era of Earth’s history) there were global average atmospheric CO2 concentration levels that were continuously in the range of 3 to 8 times higher than todays value (that is, in the range of 1200 to 3000 ppmv).
Many people would not consider a variation of 3:1, let alone a variation of 8:1, as “stable”.
Gordon A. Dressler
Thank you for the reply, appreciated.
But got to say, completely outside of the scope and the means of a conversation between us, as we both in a different dimension of reality.
You speak and argue about an AGW Earth, based on the climateriat science, while I argue by very basics of physics knowledge of a non AGW Earth.
Waste of time for both of us to further converse about the issue.
Please do keep believing in the 1200-3000ppm stupidity.
Pretty childish, as far as I am concerned.
Pretty much a dumb thing, to even slightly contemplate it as with some resemblance of rationale there.
Any way, good luck mate with your belief on fallacies.
cheers
Gates should be cancelled .
But the twitter ,google, facebook etc hierarchy want to believe its true what he says .
Please! From a skeptics viewpoint, no-one should be cancelled. That would be playing straight into the hands of the ‘cancel culture’ folk. Let comments stand (provided they are not illegal) or fall on the basis of the argument put forward. Even idiots should be given the opportunity to explain & defend themselves.
Sorry , left the ,sarc off first line .
Nobody should be cancelled , but tell that to those that do the cancelling .
As that guy from “Bachelor” found out. Just objecting to someone else being cancelled is enough to get one cancelled.
Excellent and fair critique. Thank you for a rational discussion and the references to the scientific literature.
Shellenbergers book “Apocalypse Never’ seems a far better book and recognises that in the next 50 years the only game in town is nuclear if we want to reduce CO2
tonyb
My take on Bill Gates is he knows Climate Change is a scam on humanity and a scientific fraud. But Bill also understands the Arc of History, and he probably has concluded Socialism, come communism, is on ascendancy in the West now.
So He knows also climate change is the Left’s new religion and path to power. Climate Change is the religion they are using to control People to bring a Communist-style political system take-over to western Democracies. That Progressive totalitarianism mindset totally surrounds him in western Washington.
When you have the kind of money he has, writing and publishing a book with team of ghost writers and a technical staff is no big problem.
IMO, this new book is simply his attempt to stay on the Progressive’s “good side” on the climate scam so that when they come with pitchforks to his mansion gates, he can claim he is on their side and show them his self-serving book.
Just like any billionaire oligarch in Russia or tech billionaire in China, you have to stay on the Communist leadership’s good side to not end up in a gulag…. or worse.
Some Historical perspective is needed:
Russia:
Marxist-Bolsheviks under Lenin took over Russia in the late 1910’s. In the 1920’s and 1930’s Lenin, and then Stalin, destroyed all existing Soviet (Russia, Ukraine, Belorus) social structures and sent vast numbers to their deaths in Siberian Gulags or simply to be hacked to death behind a barn or out building. The Wealthy were not spared. Those with wealth were in fact dealt with the harshest, unless they held favor with Lenin or Stalin.
China:
Mao Tse-tung and his Red Communists ousted the democratic Nationalists in the late 1940’s after Japan was defeated. In the 1950’s and into the 1960’s, Mao’s Red Guards and Great Leap Forward destroyed all remaining traditional institutions and decimated any vestiges of power and wealth that might have challenged the new CCP rulers.
US:
The Biden-Harris band and their socailists hidden in plain view in their ranks intend to turn the US into a Socialist dictatorship during the 2020’s. If that happens, then the 2030’s to 2040’s will be the Purge, eliminating Billionaires that Bernie Bots say need to be eliminated. The middle class will not be spared. You and me will be sent to serfdom, our savings (IRAs 401ks, etc) stolen, and energy made unaffordable to all but the politically favored wealthy and government ruling class.
Bill Gates is simply angling to be on the good side of the coming Purgers, IMO, with his Climate Scam book.
There’s been a message delivered by a world leader steeped in “different cultural norms” to congress person Bernie Sanders, who in turn shared it with president Biden*.
Joel
I agree. It’s called playing the game.
My take on Bill Gates is that his ego and hubris would not allow him to write something he didn’t believe in – to be judged by history for eons with the benefit of hindsight. From that I predict he will be judged as a misguided fool.
According to Wikipedia, those killings either never happened, or if they did, they weren’t the fault of communism.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/wikipedia-bias-socialism-pages-whitewashed
In Massachusetts, the Governor’s Undersecretary of Climate Change, Mr David Ismay, was forced to resign last week for being too candid about what the Climate Scam is really all about…
It is about…breaking the middle class of its desire for affordable energy.
Yes!!! He really did said that. And then he had to resign (or be fired) for telling the truth. The truth about what Climate Change policy is not allowed in the Climate Scam.
Mass. Climate Change Undersecretary Resigns After Comments Come Under Fire
https://www.wbur.org/earthwhile/2021/02/11/david-ismay-resignation-baker-admin
Mr. Ismay simply told the truth and that is verboten in the Green’s deception campaign of the climate change scam.
Nice review, Andy May.
Ironic that Bill Gates, of all people, forgets that Garbage in equals Garbage Out.
Bill means well, but he left out the science.
I wonder what message people will take from the book.
If people come to understand that cheap, available energy is necessary for the well being of all the world’s people, that’s a big deal.
Lots of people seem to accept the very anti human message that the poor of the world shouldn’t have a decent life because of CO2 phobia. If Gates changes that in any way, that would be a very good thing.
CO2 phobia … like homophobia and transphobia … it should be politically incorrect. LOL
I think most people TODAY are totally unaware of the calamity that is about to befall them in the US and Canada as the Bolsheviks play out their climate scam on society.
A few million in Texas got the hint the past few days with their electricity being cut in a freezing cold. But I’m not sure they’ll get the correct message about the climate scam and unreliable energy and how that is at the heart of why they had no electricity.
The MSM is busy trying to discredit those of us who see what is behind the curtain.
The thing that most people are missing with regard to Texas is that the problems of the Texas electrical grid have been generated from several causes, including a current shortage of generation capacity from fossil fuel sources. This is largely because of the virtue-signaling by the Texas Legislature and guys like Rick Perry in the 1990s. Perry was the guy who strongly supported legislative mandates and subsidies for wind power generation in Texas, even as he and other Texas politicians deregulated electric utilities.
At the same time, however, the Legislature continued regulation of electric generation companies (now separated out from control by either the transmission and distribution entity, Oncor, or the retail electric utilities). As a result, there has been an ongoing refusal to enable those companies to make enough money off of any new generation capacity, which creates a strong disincentive to build new power plants in Texas (despite the fact that since 1998, the population of Texas has grown considerably). There is currently no money in building additional new nuclear plants, gas plants, or clean-burning coal plants in large part because of the intrinsic state (and now Federal) regulatory bias in favor of renewable energy.
People should remember the brownouts from a few years ago that occurred during a late spring heat wave when the West Texas winds that usually occur during that time all of a sudden died down and demand for air conditioning ramped up retail and industrial electrical demand at the same time. The environmentalist/warmista/Leftist types all want to sing the praises of wind power and boost their generation numbers when it is convenient to their narrative for renewable energy, but when situations like the present one hit, they want to spin it to say “well, don’t blame wind power, because it is just a small part of the mix.” But it IS still a correct narrative to blame wind power – in no small part – because it has created a complacency and virtue-signaling neglect in the process of making utility and energy policy in Texas.
The problem with people that have made a name and success in one specific field, think that they can pontificate in areas in which they which they have no or limited knowledge. Unfortunately the main stream media which has even less knowledge in most areas spreads the stupidity because of the individual’s reputation.
Propagandists use that phenomenon to their advantage.
See my previous comment concerning Bill Gates and his TerraPower reactor development project, as my remarks were posted on Willis Eschenbach’s recent article ‘Billionaire Sea Level Hype’
If you are Bill Gates and you need four billion dollars from the federal government to build your first commercial scale TerraPower nuclear plant, you will be telling Biden-Harris whatever it is they want to hear about climate change.
Thank you very much Andy. Your book review is a tour de force of scientific scholarship. It should prove to be a very handy reference to inform people of the weakness of the statements and arguments that are regularly trotted out to support the concept that we need urgent advice from on How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.This book review deserves as wide a circulation as possible-including on sites where Bill’s book is sold online. I hope Bill reads your review and reconsiders his position.
In the comments on Willis Eschenbach’s post https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/02/16/billionaire-hype-is-the-best-hype/ it was pointed out that typical of the hypocrisy that is demonstrated by so many of the promoters of incipient Climate Disaster, Bill Gates must not be too concerned about the possibility of sea level rise given his reported purchase of a low elevation island in the Carribean https://www.breakingbelizenews.com/2019/04/27/bill-gates-owns-private-island-in-belize/ and his purchase of a house on the coast of Southern California with “clear unobstructed views of the ocean from the Lounge Room.” https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/real-estate/a32258636/bill-gates-melinda-california-del-mar-home-photos/
Bill Gates has invested in new nuclear power designs, but he downplays those. Why? Perhaps because it’s not cheap enough yet to sell. But if you first wipe out the competition from fossil fuels, then when the SHTF moment comes, you sell them your new nuclear system and you become the boy genius again.
“…The net energy ratio (energy return on energy invested, or EROEI) for biofuels in general, and corn ethanol in particular, is abysmal.
Various studies have estimated the EROEI of corn ethanol at between 0.8:1 and 1.3:1, meaning that we get between 0.8 and 1.3 joules of energy from ethanol for every joule of energy invested in producing that ethanol …”.
https://energy-reality.org/biofuels/
And that is from the Post Carbon Institute that counts the Sierra Club and 350.org amongst its sponsors.
The EROEI is a fundamental measure of the end efficiency and long-term viability of any energy source:
“… Net energy analysis is simply a way of examining how much energy is left over from an energy-gaining process after correcting for how much of that energy — or its equivalent from some other source—is required to generate a unit of the energy in question …”.
http://energy-reality.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/09_Energy-Return-on-Investment_R1_012913.pdf
Bill McKibben ought to get in touch with Bill Gates and set him straight.
On the mention of Microsoft, just recently MIcrosoft, in order to reduce their nett CO2 emissions, purchased the carbon credits for 40,000 tonnes of carbon sequestered into the soil by a cattle farming operation in Australia who did so by changing their grazing practices.
https://www.farmonline.com.au/story/7105542/microsoft-buys-carbon-credits-from-nsw-cattle-operation/
It appears to me that by doing so the 40,000 tonnes of emissions that is being offset in the Microsoft ledger by the purchase of the 40,000 tonnes sequestered in Australia in the southern hemisphere, is in fact still being emitted by Microsoft, I assume primarily in the northern hemisphere where most of the global warming is occurring.
What I am not clear on is, have those emissions now been added to the emissions total for Australia given that both the emissions and the sequestered carbon can only be counted once when the global balance is being calculated?
Is this how the scheme works, or is there a more creative form of book keeping involved?
Just like the 800 year old practice of buying indulgences for sins in the Catholic Church via payments to the Vatican.
So Microsoft purchased 40,000 tonnes of Australian climate, I mean cattle, BS? You’d think a major corporation would do their due diligence and not get scammed like that!
I’ve that link; nice scam
Andy
I hope the book was a gift. It would be sad to think anyone pays for drivel.
Andy,
Thank you for taking the time to slog through this minor work of fiction! It sounds as if Mr. Gates wanted to pad his Progressive street cred more than shed any light on the CAGW debate!
Having just read Michael Schellenberger’s book, and constantly rereading Dr. Patrick Moore’s and Jim Steele’s for reference, it sounds as if there is no need to waste any time or money on this venture! If I want accurate facts and data about climate and the environment I can go to WUWT; and there’s also laughs and groans for the Griffter’s latest nonsense!
It is always sad to see great promise or opportunities wasted! Like Prince Charles marrying Diana, Gates had great possibilities at his fingertips, yet he seems intent on keeping a spot on the anti-human, anti-freedom bandwagon that is the Progressive religions! I would have stuck with developing inexpensive nuclear reactors and clean water for the Third World, but it is hard to see into another’s heart!
This is all about transferring wealth. First and foremost … transferring the wealth from all fossil fuel companies and individuals … to … “renewable energy” corporations and individuals. Secondary to this, is transferring the wealth of 1st world nations to (sorry, for my “archaic” term) 3rd world nations. Finally, the result of this will be energy poverty for the middle class. This CAGW nonsense is simply another means to grind down the middle class between the millstones of global warming taxation and scarcity of electricity and fuels
It seems Bill Gate’s book is not worth reading. Moving on:
“The atmospheric greenhouse effect is different than a greenhouse, for a better explanation that is physically correct, see here.” Had to look. And way down in, the Conclusions and summary….
“In the absence of greenhouse gases, like water vapor and carbon dioxide, a greenhouse effect will still develop and will cause a surface temperature larger than the blackbody temperature. But, there is not enough data to be sure what the GHE would be absent all greenhouse gases. Thus, currently, we cannot determine, at this time, the relative importance of radiation and thermodynamic processes. Even the blackbody temperature itself probably has no real physical meaning.”
It seems there is enough data, I would say a doubling of CO2 could cause zero to .5 C increase in global air temperature. The data is we have almost done 1/2 of a doubling of global CO2 levels. And it’s basically been an immeasurable amount of warming due this increase in CO2 levels.
We had “the Pause”, and could get to point of getting to a “Great Pause”.
The only valid argument which would dispute this, in my mind, is we have been badly measuring global temperature. It hard make the case that we have measured global air very well.
I would say if Bill wants to be concerned global warming, he should spend some of his money, making sure global temperature is measured more accurately. But as others indicated, he is shallow and does not actually have any interest in the topic.
Let’s back up a bit
“Gates’ explanation of the greenhouse effect is the popular one, which is physically incorrect. He says greenhouse gases “trap” heat like a greenhouse, or a car parked in the sun”
It seems global temperature is about trapping heat, but about “trapping heat” if greenhouse or parked car is “trapping heat” but trapping heat where huge amount heat can actually be “trapped”- in Earth’s ocean.
There only a few things more amusing then idea of cold ocean getting slightly warmer as somehow scary.
Greenhouses and parked cars don’t trap heat very long. Whereas with oceans, heat can become “lost”. An ocean can confuse and befuddle heat for centuries, even thousands of years.
NASA {not much better at this than Bill Gates] says:
“More than 90 percent of the warming that has happened on Earth over the past 50 years has occurred in the ocean. Recent studies estimate that warming of the upper oceans accounts for about 63 percent of the total increase in the amount of stored heat in the climate system from 1971 to 2010, and warming from 700 meters down to the ocean floor adds about another 30 percent.”
More than 90%.
How much, more?
I think I would put the number at around 99%
Andy, thanks for the analytical review. It’s always a pleasure to read your work.
What a nutter.
I suspect there is another angle.
Bill Gates acknowledges:-
So what to do?
We all know.
Bill Gates has investments in new nuclear technologies. He could be playing the political long game to get HIS world saving nuclear technologies accepted.
Rebutting some gates generalisations like CO2 causing heat in the air, apart from van Wijngaarden & Happer, here are 2 more references.
https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=99608
Some boxes filled with various gases and heated by IR found no measurable tempoerature rise atrributable to any concentration of CO2 in a box, up to 100% level.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2021/01/17/the-ir-absorptive-characteristics-of-greenhouse-gases-david-coe/
This study indicates saturation of CO2 in its ability to give heat with incoming IR leading to a conclusion that more CO2 in our air will have a trivial temperature effect.
I am waiting for a rebuttal of all 3 of these, but so far not much has appeared. Geoff S
I’d like to see CO2 ppm plotted on a second y-axis on that first sea level rise plot.
Conclusion: Gates is not a scientist and does not understand basic physics.
Did he drop out of education to pursue his project ?
‘Why the CO2 from biofuels is somehow different than the CO2 from fossil fuels escapes this author’s understanding.’
If the plant material burnt is regrown on a short timescale, the CO2 is recaptured.
Burning annually coppiced wood in a boiler on an agricultural estate is renewable… cutting down forest to make into wood pellets and shipping them to the UK isn’t.
Generating heat and power from anaerobic digestion of waste food and agricultural product is renewable. (which is what most German biopower is).
Growing maize for alcohol for car fuel in the US is an unnecessary pork barrel boondoggle. Making diesel from used cooking oil or fuel from grain processed for animal feed is renewable.
Germany set a record for wood pellet production in 2020:
Germany: Record pellet production in 2020 – Global Wood Markets Info
Germany has the largest pellet market in the world. Green=tree killers.
The Industrial Pellet Market in Germany (biomassa.de)
This statement is false – the only question is whether Bill Gates knows it is false or not.
The leading proponents of the global warming scam know they are lying – they’ve know it all along. They are the wolves, and since ~1982 they have been stampeding the sheep for politics and profit. The sheep are Lenin’s “useful idiots”, who fervently believe the warmist lies without ever having done the work to understand them.
The substitution of the term “Climate Change” for the term “Global Warming” was a deceitful trick, used because dangerous man-made Global Warming can be disproved and has been disproved many times, whereas Climate Change is a non-falsifiable hypothesis, which is used to define anything and everything – a total fraud.
This book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster is total billsh!t.
Oh c’mon peeps..
He’s having a variation on ‘Mid Life Crisis’
iow “What Is The Point Of Life Universe and Everything
He’s feeling a bit Lost & Lonely (pay attention Melinda)
So we get the reassurance that he’s *still* in with the In Crowd when he says about CO2 and emissions and thereafter puts in some evidence to demonstrate how genuine he is
And he really is – WHY should he not be.
viz: Concern about sea-level, poor people, pollution etc etc
Be careful of ‘Projection‘. m’kay
But also concern about not-so-poor peeps with concrete steel and fertiliser not least. Again, watch for projection and of course your own selfish greed – wanting to be as rich as he.
So yes, his book is All Over The Place and self contradictory and damn well it should be. The Skeptic Position here is all over the place, don’t be throwing stones in greenhouses.
His book, a book, any book should be mixed/confused because it is:
a) A method of straightening out his own thinking. Surely we all know that THE best way of understanding something/anything, is to try explain it to someone else.
(Sorry peeps, but when it comes to GHGE, THAT is something huge numbers of skeptics have patently never done. i.e. Have never had to explain ‘Entropy‘ )
b) As per here & now, it gets other folks exploring their own thinking and that of others
c) Writing and thereafter selling the book, especially people buying the book, sends him a message that ‘He is loved, he is wanted, someone cares‘
Stuff The Science
That’s all he wants.
A cuddle
Give him a nice review of his book even if you never bought or read it and he’ll drift gently away into the sunset, as will you, and BOTH of you will be happy
Practice on your own wife if you’ve still got one, or has your boring preoccupation with Science and Self chased her away?
Don’t take your selves so desperately boringly seriously – look up Handworth Council
You will make complete muppets of yourselves
Someone needs to tell Bill that the reality is that based on the paleoclimate record and the work done with models, the climate change that we have been experiencing is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control. Despite the hype, there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and there is plenty of scientific rationale to support the conclusion that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. Mankind does not even know what the optimum climate really is let alone how to achieve it. So instead of wasting our money trying to change something like climate that we do not have the power to change we would all be better off if instead we concentrated on improving out global economy and solving problems that mankind actually has the power to solve.
My brother, now deceased, for whom I have great respect had a remarkable intelligence way above mine. However, over the years I witnessed him doing and saying some very stupid things. We had a very close relationship so that did not matter; but made me think that intelligence is not necessarily a guarantee of being right.
I seems well clear that Bill Gates fits that perception.
Hmmm… Gaits seems to be a poor writer.
Not sure he has a career there. Maybe he should learn to code…
.
.
I’ll get my coat 😀
Excellent review, Andy.
Could you post some or all of this review on Amazon?
Already done.
https://www.amazon.com/How-Avoid-Climate-Disaster-Breakthroughs-ebook/dp/B07YRY461Y/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1613666594&sr=8-1#customerReviews
“He also recommends biofuels, but complains about deforestation, which is a byproduct of producing wood pellets to replace coal in powerplants.”
That’s 100% dead wrong. In the American Southeast- forestry has been a huge industry for generations. Long ago they decided that most forestry there should be “even age mgt.”- that is clearcut, plant, thin, clearcut- long before any pellet market. Now, only a trivial amount of the wood cut in these clearcuts goes to pellets. Most goes to sawlog, paper, firewood and other markets. The wood that isn’t good enough for those markets goes to pellets. Before the pellet market- much of this low grade wood was just piled up and burned on site- which is a lot worse than burning it in pellet power plants which have air pollution treatments on the chimneys. And, even though they’re clearcuts- that’s NOT deforestation- which is when the land is converted to another use, like solar “farms” or urban sprawl. Real deforestation happens in the tropics where they convert the land to cattle ranches or palm oil plantations.
There are places unlike the US Southeast Forestry, where deforestation is usual.
Sure, deforestation is common- but claiming that pellet production in the US SE is deforestation is not correct. That forest land is intensely managed- maybe too much for some people- but it remains forest.
Those SE weeds grow pretty fast….
Would you have a buyer for good stickers if I were take the time to establish a good supply?
I will buy billy goats’ book when the unsold remainder of the print run (hopefully that will be every copy) has been pulped and turned into toilet paper. If they print his face on every sheet it’s sure to be a best seller.
Gates is certainly no expert in the climate field, and is likely cultivating the image in an attempt to reduce possible business interference to his software business over the carbon footprint that his server farms have. A footprint rivalling other whole industries for nothing more than downloading the patches to his latest software issues, not to mention lucrative cloud storage of vacation pics. /s
<i>”Gates claims that higher temperatures and more CO2 will limit the geographic range of animals and plants and reduce food production. He thinks that overall food production will drop in the future due to climate change, growing seasons will shrink, and food prices will rise.”<\i>
Is that why he’s buying up thousands of acre of farm land in flyover country and the west coast?
Here’s the money shot:
“By 2015, Gates noticed that private investment in clean energy was drying up.”
Did he not notice that in late 2014 the price of oil went from $120/bbl to $40/bbl? The economics of scarcity that had always driven energy policy were demolished when fracking technology put the U.S. in the road to energy independence. Alternative energy sources like wind and solar lost their economic viability and now only survive because of political drivers, notably Climate Change.
Would you buy a used computer from this man?
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bill-gates-texas-gov-greg-abbott-power-outage-claims-climate-change-002303596.html
I have not read the book, but seems odd that Bill started Breakthrough Energy, then in concert pushes out his latest book and is in the news pushing his agenda. While the “follow the money” motto does not always apply, as someone has to pay for the product, this seems to be an open letter to Government to make his Breakthrough Energy effort worth it.
As the author of this book review points out clearly, Bill Gates doesn’t have the answers, as Bill Gates flip-flops on the solutions. Bill Gates is interested in the R&D, which if the government funds would be a boon for him and his investors.
“Bill Gates is obviously a bright person, he built Microsoft and was a great innovator.”
bIll Gates is neither “bright” nor an “innovator”. As this book apparently demonstrates, he is a scientific ignoramus. And so far as “innovation” he stole or bought (usually through dihonest deals) everythign Microsoft produced. He is a ruthless and unethical businessman, nothing else.
Why is it the the leftist solution to ANY problem or issue involves the people giving up their wealth and individual sovereignty to self-appointed elites? Could it be that these elites don’t really care about solutions for the people, but simply want more power and control over the masses? Well, if it walks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is probably right at home in the Washington swamp.
Excellent review !
At the same time it is frightening how governments in the USA, Canada and in EU listen and follow up Gates instructions. This book is another set of instructions, nothing less, and they will be obeyed. Bill Gates is a dangerous man for humanity.
Bill Gates should know as well as anyone that computer models, like any computer program, will only output what they are coded to output. If the programmer/designer wants climate disasters in 50 years, that’s what their models will say.
“For our purposes here, we need to understand that observations do not support Gates conclusions. His conclusions are based solely on faulty model predictions.”
This really doesn’t give the whole story, does it? The models may well be predicted to much warming in the upper troposphere, but that doesn’t mean the models aren’t skillful in other areas, particularly in predicting surface temperature trends (the surface is, after all, where people live, so there is certainly some value here).
The models are not skillful in predicting surface temperature trends between 1910 and 1950. If they can’t detect natural warming then, How can they be used to estimate human-caused warming now?
The graph is from Chapter 10 of AR5, page 879.
For more the models can’t predict, see here:
https://andymaypetrophysicist.com/2021/02/06/the-problem-with-climate-models/
I came across a comment that used a bathtub as an analogy for the GHE. It was poorly done so I picked up the ball and ran with it. I’m commenting in the hope someone is inspired to come up with something better that 97% of the population can understand.
The GHE is like a bath tub with a partially blocked plug hole. Water from the tap is flowing constantly and the water level rises until the water level is sufficiently high for the pressure to push the same amount of water through the blocked plug per second as coming out of the tap. Add more hairs to the plug hole and it will require the water level to rise so that the flow of water out is the flow of water in again.
The issues are that doubling the amount of hair doesn’t reduce the initial flow by half but by much less. The GHE was originally dismissed because we are well above the levels of CO2 where adding more would make a significant difference. Even now, its claimed that doubling the hair amount in the plug hole from Lisa brushing her hair nearby would only raise the water level by a centimeter. The problem is that 1 cm higher water level will rub much more hair off Con in the bath tub. This will raise the water level even higher, rubbing more hair of Con until this positive feedback raises the level over the lip.
This positive feedback means that doubling the amount of Lisa’s hair in the plug hole (CO2 from emissions) doesn’t just raise the water level 1 cm, but increases the amount of Con’s hair in the plug hole (more water vapour from warmer seas) so it goes up between 2-8 cm, depending on which plumber you talk to.
PS 97% of plumbers insist that you need to do extensive plumbing to alleviate the problem.
Some issues are that for some reason, Con moving in the bath tub didn’t set off a runaway BTE.
The bath tub level rose 0.5 cm after Lisa started brushing her hair, while it also went up 0.5 cm before, so the second water level rise is not evidence that Lisa brushing her hair caused it. It could be something else.
Soon after Lisa started brushing her hair, plumbers said that the water levels dropped 0.5 cm and that this was due to Lisa’s hair plugging up the tap, so extensive plumbing was needed. Other plumbers realised that this was blatantly silly. It can only block up the plug hole so they re-calculated the average water levels from old measurements made on Con’s flabby body, reconstructing what it would have been if taken from a precise line around the bath tub, and the level never went down 0.5 cm. After a few more adjustments to the algorithm, it went up 0.8 cm after Lisa started combing her hair, and only 0.4 cm before.
Some plumbers noticed that the rate of increase in Lisa’s hair in the plug hole was closely correlated to the bath tub level. That suggests that water level controlled how much hair got stuck. These plumbers were soon looking for a new job (while the painter looking on wondered how the hell they could make such precise measurements to see it).
I should mention here that the original BTE proponents wanted Lisa to change from brushing her hair to using their new whiz-bang hair straightener that pulled out no hair, but everybody else was afraid of the radioactive dandruff. They jumped off the band wagon once swampies jumped on and started pushing for compulsory dreadlocks.
Then there are those who suggest that rather than huge changes to Lisa and Con’s lifestyle at huge costs, they should just get a bigger bath tub when it’s time to renovate (it’s an analogy so pulling the hair out of the plug hole is just not feasable. Ok?).
There are those who believe that we heed a hair brushing tax to slow down Lavatory Change (it’s a fancy name for a wash basin), but that Con farting is not evidence of Lisa Made Lavatory Change ie it’s rare but not due to Lisa brushing her hair. These people are also Contrarians (How dare you!)
One last thing. Some amateur plumbers reckon that there is no BTE. Their arguments are actually that the water pressure at the water surface remains unchanged. It’s not the same thing.
Bill Grates, born with a silver spoon in his mouth.
Yes, he achieved in computing, though not with highest quality.
But he and Warren Buffet and others are very disappointing. (I avoid nasty words, for now.)
“He claims that 20% of the carbon dioxide emitted today will still be in the atmosphere 10,000 years later. This not true, the average lifetime of fossil fuel CO2 in the atmosphere is only 4 to 5 years and the half-life of CO2 emissions is only 3.5 years (Poyet, 2020, pp. 20-21).”
Nice to see that climate “skeptics” are still making the same mistakes they were making 10 years ago. That is the lifetime (residence time) of an individual molecule of CO2 in the atmosphere, not the timescale on which atmospheric CO2 equilibriates with the oceans, which is known as the “adjustment time”, which is on the order of 50-200 years. The residence time is short because CO2 molecules are constantly being exchanged with molecules from the oceans and terrestrial biosphere, however that doesn’t affect atmospheric concentrations as it is largely a straight swap. So residence time is totally irrelevant in discussing the future of atmospheric CO2 levels. The first IPCC WG1 report explicitly warns against confusing the two, and yet here “skeptics” are *still* making that basic mistake thirty years later. Even that isn’t the time scale on which levels will equilibriate back to the pre-industrial concentration, which will require the carbon we have taken out of the lithosphere in the form of fossil fuels to be taken back up by the lithosphere through chemical weathering of rocks – that is the last 20% that will still be left after the oceans/biosphere have absorbed the other 80%. Weathering is *slow* and will indeed take thousands of years.
So Bill Gates is right (presumably because he has done his homework) and you are making a basic mistake. Plus ca change…
Dikran Marsupial,
Your reading comprehension is poor,
He explicitly says “will still be in the atmosphere.”
He did not say the emitted CO2 will not be lithified and in a rock, that is, not part of the biosphere. He clearly is not correct. Any CO2 emitted today will be out of the atmosphere in five years.
The IPCC pre-bunked this one thirty years ago. Residence time tells you nothing about the future of CO2 concentrations. Page 8 of the report (page 56 of the .pdf file)
“The turnover time of CO2in the atmosphere, measured as the ratio of the content to the fluxes through it, is about 4 years. This means that on average it takes only a few years before a CO2 molecule in the atmosphere is taken up by plants or dissolved in the ocean. This short time scale must not be confused with the time it takes for the atmospheric CO2level to adjust to a new equilibrium if sources or sinks change. This adjustment time, corresponding to the lifetime in Table 1.1, is of the order of 50-200years, determined mainly by the slow exchange of CO2between surface waters and the deep ocean. The adjustment time is important for the discussion on global warming potential.”
Focussing on the fate of individual molecules, rather than the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations is *at best* ridiculous pedantry, but fortunately “skeptics” have no real scientific skepticism and will swallow it hook, line and sinker, even though this has been known to be a climate myth for > 30 years.
Atmospheric CO2 levels will still be approximately 20% higher than pre-industrial levels for tens of thousands of years. That is what matters, and so Gates’ statement is essentially correct.
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/ipcc_far_wg_I_full_report.pdf
Is that like a little bit pregnant?
The lengths you guys will go to to defend the indefensible is amazing to me!
Yawn, fine if you are happy to ignore the key point, which is that CO2 levels will remain about 20% higher than the pre-industrial equilibrium for tens and thousands of years, simply because it isn’t the exact molecules from the fossil fuels, then it is your choice. If that sort of pedantic evasion is sufficient for you, the irony of calling yourselves “skeptics” isn’t lost on me.
So what? More plants, greener planet, more food. Sounds good to me. More CO2 is better.
The “so what” is that your criticism of Gates was incorrect, but you can’t admit it and revise the article.
Maybe you are not a native English speaker and don’t realize that “so what” is an idom meaning it doesn’t matter. it is in no way an admission of correctness. To break it down:
If Gates were correct [which he isn’t] then it doesn’t matter because CO2 is beneficial.
If Gates is wrong [which he is] then it doesn’t matter because .. well because he’s wrong!
So it doesn’t matter whether Gates is right or wrong even though he IS wrong!
Dikran,
I quoted the book accurately and in context. He clearly did not say what you said and you can’t put words in his mouth.
He either wrote poorly, or he meant that “20% of carbon dioxide emitted today with still be in the atmosphere 10,000 years later”
The article is accurate as it is.
Scientists frequently omit irrelevant details in public communication of science, because it gets in the way of the important message, which is that CO2 levels will remain about 20% higher than the pre-industrial level for tens of thousands of years. The fact that the CO2 directly emitted from fossil fuel emissions will be replaced by “natural” CO2 is entirely irrelevant. It is still fossil fuel emissions that have caused the rise. Yes, he worded it badly, but that is no excuse for trotting out the residence time myth yet again, which has no relevance whatsoever to the subject of future atmospheric CO2 levels.
Don’t trust his opinions about anything.
The state has been sending me e-mails encouraging me to make an appointment and come in to start the vaccination series for COVID-19. The problem is I don’t trust the vaccines they are currently giving. And I sure as hell don’t trust Fauci and the rest of the clowns at the CDC, let alone Bill Gates! So here is what I am going to do and why,
I will wait until Johnson & Johnson’s product is available. I will not get what the state is currently offering for free. The Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines currently being offered are a new type of vaccine and in effect alter a persons DNA and RNA.
The J&J vaccine on the other hand works the way the other vaccines we have gotten in the past do and are not designed to directly effect the DNA and RNA. So though I will probably have to pay for it, I will get the J&J vaccine when it is available.
The new vaccines do not “alter” any DNA or RNA. They contain mRNA which allows the cells to manufacture proteins which will trigger and immune reaction but they do not alter any existing DNA or RNA. The cells and the body cannot create more of the vaccine mRNA so that will disappear after performing the action.
I’m not buying it!
You should probably get a good book on DNA and RNA in cells and how they work. Introducing mRNA into a cell does not and cannot change the cell’s own DNA and internal mRNA is created from the DNA.
I respect Bill Gates. I think that he is wrong about CO2 being a major contributor to global warming, That global warming is necessarily bad and that we should pay steep prices to prevent people from turning cheap energy into work is valuable (my washer and dryer are now cleaning and drying for my family – something that would otherwise require a lot of work of a person).