h/t Dr. Willie Soon; According to Bill Gates, if we don’t mend our evil ways the equator will be uninhabitable, except when temperate regions will freeze, and forests and coral reefs will die.
Losing time against climate disaster
Juan Siliezar
Harvard Staff Writer
DATE February 24, 2021…
“There are points at which when the corals die off, they never come back,” Gates said. “This is acidifying the ocean, and all the aqua ecosystems die off as that acid level goes up. As forests dry out, they are subject to both fires and infestations that kill all the trees, so you get a lot less trees. As the sea level goes up, the beaches go away.”
…
Without changes in global practices, “It’s going to be essentially unlivable at the Equator by the end of the century… [leading to] the instability of hundreds of millions of people trying to get out of those regions where a lot of the world’s population is, and particularly the poorest in the world,” he said.
…
Read more: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/02/in-online-harvard-talk-bill-gates-warns-of-environmental-perils/
Poor Bill. For what its worth I think he really does care, but it seems like he is suffering in a hellish prison composed of his own ignorance.
Why do we know Bill is wrong about the corals dying and trees all burning away, and the equator becoming uninhabitably hot, if we release a little anthropogenic CO2?
Because none of this happened last time CO2 levels were slightly elevated.
Paleo-climatologists know that far from being abnormally warm, the world is currently enduring the Quaternary Glaciation, a period of unusual cold which started 2.58 million years ago. Only four other comparable cold ages have been identified in the entire paleo-climate record.
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Bill Gates’ first book blew the Internet off as a fad of no use; seems his credulity pendulum has swung the other way with global warming.
ActiveX in the IE Browser was a terrible idea. But to be fair other parties were doing stuff which was at least as stupid. In the late 90s I tried and failed to dissuade people from building a web browser Java applet which talked directly to a bank database, using a web facing SQL interface to update accounts. The system was killed off shortly after going live.
The security must have been a mess
They never talked about it, but my guess is something bad happened, very shortly after the system was switched on.
Whenever I see his name I always remember this gem from the 90s (it’s just a joke – obviously never happened). Part of the irony is that we now do have the “General Protection Fault” (the highly informative ‘Check Engine’) light (#6) and we do press the Start button in our cars to turn them off (#10).
It serves as a reminder of what we lived (and still do, to some extent) with day to day with our computers thanks to Microsoft’s QA and Dev processes.
“Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated: “If General Motors had kept up with the technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon.”
In response to Bill’s comments, GM issued a press release stating: “If General Motors had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:
Billy…the poster boy for nerd….bought a Porsche 959….an expensive car that required very expensive mods for US regulations since it was built for Europe only…..his mug shot in Arizona for speeding in the car is a classic with him grinning and likely thinking I could buy this whole police Dept.
IT’S WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT!!!
again……
Joe Biden may not be the only one who’s brain is showing the rigors of age
Ole Joe didn’t even know his war department bombed Syria
“…the corals die off, they never come back,” Gates said. “This is acidifying the ocean…”
More proof that rich does not mean smart. He can’t even get the ‘settled science’ right. The neutralization (“acidification”) of the ocean is supposed to cause coral to die, not the other way around.
Watch “Pirates of Silicon Valley”. Funny movie, I think Wozniak had a lot of input into the script.
What Bill has is he doesn’t give up, ever. This can be a real asset, except when people like him get something wrong, in which case it becomes an impediment to understanding. But he can be persuaded he is wrong, it just takes a few years sometimes.
Given his huge investments in everything ‘green’, I expect he’ll keep doubling down until he’s the only one left holding the bag. Poor Bill. He’ll probably be left with only a few $billion to dry his tears with.
I think he’ll pull out of the green investments if he loses enough money. Self made billionaires make mistakes, but they are rarely completely stupid when it comes to being rich.
Now if only Baal was a self-made billionaire, instead of a lucky stooge handed everything (including his daily script) on a platter. If he loses money on anything, he just organises another subsidy by taxpayers. Like with vaccines, the biggest subsidy con I have ever heard of.
He’s a dangerous, hypocritical ignoramus. How does he think beaches form?
Most of the circumference of the Equator is over water (Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic oceans). Due to evaporation and formation of thunderstorms (as posted by Willis Eschenbach), sea surface temperatures in tropical areas rarely exceed 27 C. Most of the warming in recent decades occurs at high latitudes, not in the tropics.
Perhaps the Great Microsoft Genius has never heard of the Intertropical Convergence Zone, where the northeast trade winds from the Northern Hemisphere meet the southeast trade winds from the Southern Hemisphere, causing frequent thunderstorms near the Equator. This zone of frequent thunderstorms shifts northward to about 10 degrees north during Northern Hemisphere summer, and southward to about 10 degrees south during Northern Hemisphere winter, and is near the Equator around the equinoxes. These thunderstorms tend to cool the oceans under them during the period of maximum sun angle near the Equator.
The part of the Equator that passes through Africa is mostly savanna, with alternating dry and rainy seasons, and wildlife frequently migrates in search of water. The southwest coast of Africa (just north of the Equator) has a wet climate, which becomes drier as one moves north and inland into the Sahara. But the land near the Equator has a cooler climate than the Sahara, due to sea breezes that bring rain over the land near the coast.
Part of the Equator passes through or near the islands of Indonesia, which have a humid but not terribly hot climate, with alternating wet and dry seasons.
The southern tip of India and the island of Sri Lanka are just north of the Equator, but the (Northern Hemisphere) spring and summer bring monsoons that temper the heat, while the autumn and winter are relatively dry.
The part of the Equator that passes through South America has a wet climate in the Amazon basin east of the Andes (due to trade winds), and a cooler, dry climate west of the Andes, (due to the Pacific Humboldt current, and high elevation of the Andes, some of which are snow-capped).
So where is the evidence that the Equator will become unlivable, if most land areas of the Equator are not really hotter than neighboring areas to the north or south? The Sahara desert (north latitude) has a hotter climate than equatorial Africa or the southwest coast, and the Outback of Australia (south latitude) has a hotter climate than equatorial Indonesia.
You’re absolutely right. I live by the sea on the edge of the tropics, the temperature here very rarely goes above 35C / 95F, because we’ve got a big air conditioner next door. Just a few miles inland temperatures regularly reach 100F in Summer, but of course the Pacific Ocean and all the other tropical oceans are still a vast drag on peak temperature for inland regions, even if being more distant from the ocean they get a little warmer.
My original draft of this essay included Willis’ explanation, then I figured, keep it simple. I think the paleo argument is the antidote to Bill’s alarmism.
Eric, but then at those places a few miles inland from you, the numbers are swapped –
humidity at your place is 100, temp 35
while temp inland is 100, but humidity is 35
I’m used to it Mr., to me both temperatures feel pleasant. I start shivering and putting on layers, when the temperature drops below 70F.
You’d be amazed how nice it is to get up in the morning and be able to walk outside, to almost never have to worry about the cold. Saves a bundle on heating bills.
Born & raised in Brisbane myself Eric.
In the last millennium though.
Worked & lived around the world many times since then.
So many climates to see changing 🙂
Does that make me a dinosaur?
Ha 🙂
I agree about the paleo.
I do tend to think that some of what Steve has described is a somewhat oversimplified and leaves out important details of the various climate zones.
In particular, while it is very true that proximity to water moderates temperature regimes, it is also true that moisture in the air does the same thing.
Deserts are hot in the daytime because the air is dry, and dry air has a low specific heat. But it also gets cooler at night than regions that have equal insolation but higher humidity.
Humid tropical locations do not get as hot as dry air regions during the day, both because of the air having a higher specific heat, but also because places with humid air will on average be cloudier than those with dry air.
Moisture is the most important factor, and a warmer world is necessarily more humid overall.
Moisture in the air moderates temperature due to having a higher specific heat, and because it allows the formation of clouds, and because these clouds then tend to drop precipitation. Moist ground tends to be vegetated, and plants and trees also have a moderating effect on the temperature, and also tend to conserve moisture in the soil by several mechanisms. They shade the ground, and they reduce runoff, and they cause the formation of soils with a greater ability to hold water.
Areas adjacent to the warm wet climates near the Equator tend to be hot and dry because the air that rises in the ITCZ is descending in those regions, and the air is depleted of moisture by the rain that falls from those thunderstorms. It is then heated and dried out (absolute humidity remains constant, but warmer air can hold more so the relative humidity decreases dramatically) by compression as it descends to the ground surface from aloft.
This entire circulation pattern forms the basis of the weather patterns on the entire planet, and is the primary circulation pattern of the atmosphere.
This leg of global air circulation is called the Hadley Cell. Geographic features prevent the resulting climate zones from being cleanly defined belts, but the general pattern of A climate zones sandwiched between the dry B climate zones is very evident in a global view.
The Koppen climate zones, and the primary circulation patterns of the Earth:
And the resulting global average surface temperatures:
Climate skeptics who are also advocates of nuclear power must recognize that the nuclear power industry in the US is counting on the issue of climate change to keep itself from being forced out of the energy marketplace by an unholy alliance of natural gas interests and the wind & solar interests.
Bill Gates wants four billion dollars from the US Government to build his first prototype TerraPower nuclear reactor. His company has already been chosen for partial government support worth several hundred million dollars.
Gates will say and do what ever he has to say and do to get the government support he wants. As will every other private sector interest attempting to build a 4th Generation nuclear power plant in the US.
OMG, a nuclear reactor from the Windows stable.
What could possibly go wrong !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
fred250: “OMG, a nuclear reactor from the Windows stable. What could possibly go wrong!”
In creating TerraPower as his nuclear reactor project corporation, Bill Gates has assembled a highly competent team of nuclear technologists to research and develop the TerraPower SMR design. Gates wouldn’t have gained support from the federal government if he hadn’t done this.
However, if the new SMR technology is to eventually see commercial scale realization, having a competent team of nuclear technologists developing the basic 4th Generation technology isn’t nearly enough. That part of the overall task is only one-quarter or less of the total work scope.
When the time comes to build the first commercial scale 4th Generation plant, the project team must also include an experienced engineer-procure-construct contractor (an EPC), an experienced nuclear plant operator, a knowledgeable customer paying for the project, and last but not least, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as both an independent project oversight monitor and a project participant to the extent that current law allows.
It is best to do what NuScale has done and that is to enlist all of the people and the organizations who will eventually be constructing and operating the plant early on in the planning for the project. For the NuScale SMR design, the EPC is Fluor, the plant operator is Energy Northwest, the customer is Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS), and the NRC is of course the NRC.
If I’m developing new technology, thing one is proof of concept. Period.
Even when new technologies develop to the pilot plant stage, they can still be blind sided. I’ve followed a number of developing energy technologies and none of them has progressed past the pilot plant stage. An example would be Aquion Batteries, backed by Bill Gates.
Betting the farm on unproven technology is foolish.
See my response to KcTaz below.
I appreciate your comment but what in the world possessed you to say this?
“Gates wouldn’t have gained support from the federal government if he hadn’t done this?” Have you ever looked at the things that get support from the Federal Government?
KcTaz, read what it is I actually said: “In creating TerraPower as his nuclear reactor project corporation, Bill Gates has assembled a highly competent team of nuclear technologists to research and develop the TerraPower SMR design. Gates wouldn’t have gained support from the federal government if he hadn’t done this.”
In its support for 4th Generation nuclear, the US Department of Energy has been much more careful in choosing who gets federal grant money than it has been for any other kind of energy technology development project.
If it is being done with nuclear, it must be done with an exceptional commitment to project management discipline. TerraPower had to prove to DOE’s satisfaction that it did indeed have the staff and the technical resources needed to deliver the particular flavor of 4th Gen nuclear the corporation was promoting.
Plus, it reiterates my comment that Bill never loses money, because he lives off government subsidies.
Perhaps you’re referring to this: If cars were like Microsoft Windows
commie Bob, that is hilarious!! Thanks.
I have no problem with his plans to support next generation nuclear. Gates’ views on renewables are more difficult to pin down, he was a real fan in 2015, but seems to have cooled off on them lately, though he still expresses support from time to time. I think he can learn by his mistakes, just takes a while sometimes.
Regardless of the many technical and economic issues that going forward with greater reliance on the renewables presents, a public policy decision has been made to add substantially more wind and solar to the grid.
Bill Gates has said a number of times that wind and solar won’t deliver on its promise; and that if we are determined to move to a low or no carbon economy, that decision demands we go with nuclear.
The fact remains that the first prototype 4th Generation nuclear plants which are so necessary for achieving a greater reliance on nuclear will not be constructed without substantial government assistance.
Those who are now heavily involved in promoting these 4th Generation nuclear plants must demonstrate that their advanced technology can be delivered on cost and schedule.
After what happened with the VC Summer and Vogtle 3 & 4 third generation AP1000 project management debacles, private sector corporations will not become involved in deploying the improved 4th Generation nuclear plants unless the federal government agrees to shoulder some portion of the financial risk for constructing the first iterations of the new technology.
If the first commercial-scale examples of a particular 4th Generation technology are successfully delivered on cost and schedule, then the federal government will step back and let private investors carry the full risk of building nuclear, if they choose to do so.
Eric,at least he is on record as saying AOC’s GND is a “fairytale” and “Why peddle fantasies to people?”
The thought of a nuclear reactor controlled by a Windows OS is somewhat unnerving….
Gates is an example of the great damage done by the IPCC and the climate alarmists in the media. He is supposedly a smart guy. But obviously has done no personal research into what is actually what. So he parrots what he heard. That is what has given the climate scam popular legs.
And it will end badly like the Ditch tulip bulb mania, except the modern equivalent appears to be wind turbines.
If he feels so confident in his prediction, I will bet half of my fortune against half of his that he is wrong.
He may know a bunch about computers ( gut not enough to make programs that work with few problems) and he may know how to market them, but he is no more a climate expert than I am a computer expert.
As one of the richest people on the planet, who made some shrewd business decisions early in the emerging PC era, and became wealthy due to the hard work of his over worked minions … he can afford to “work” from home.
The other 99.999% of us can’t do that.
He also engaged in some really unscrupulous business practices. See what some of his contemporaries have to say about him.
Like they did during the Roman warm, but the trees and corals are all still here in spite of the higher temps then than predicted now?
Use that Giant Brain, Bill. It seems to be atrophying.
I, for one, devoutly hope that Bill Gates lives long enough to be thoroughly ashamed for having fallen for this claptrap.
It never works that way. His type merely picks up a new “cause” and moves on, ignoring the mistakes of the past as being immaterial.
Ahhh, I used to think Bill Gates was smart, now I see he is an evil and deplorable man.
“if we don’t mend our evil ways the equator will be uninhabitable”
Strange that did not occur in the geological past, when global temperature was much higher, polar regions were not glaciated, much of Earth’s land mass was located near the equator, and Life Flourished.
He really is terribly ignorant, unless he is just a complete liar.
It is somewhat unknowable which.
But he seems to be someone who reads alarmist press with 100% credulity and gullibility, and just swallows all of it hook line and sinker.
Worse yet, he then exaggerates the worst parts of the lies told by the most unhinged of the alarmists.
Sadly and incredibly, it seems he is not given to reading what serious and sober global warming advocates are saying, but instead has taken the view of the most ignorant and ridiculous doomsday panic mongers.
Serious scientists know that the temperature in the tropics has been largely constant for hundreds of millions of years, even as the higher latitudes have swung through huge variations in average temperature and rainfall patterns.
He seems unaware that CO2 is only postulated to be able to raise the average temperature slightly, and that the largest parts of the warmista scare story is that this higher temp will cause an increase in atmospheric moisture, which will then raise temperatures even more.
He seems unaware that the climate models that have “predicted” all of this have so far failed utterly to describe what has actually happened instead, as CO2 levels rise.
Or that climate models are unable to model clouds, and as such this most important of factors is only accounted for in the models by parameterization. Which is another way of saying the models are programmed to predict what the people who program them want to believe about the effects of more moisture in the air, how this will effect clouds, and how cloudiness affects the global climate regimes.
IOW, this man has no actual knowledge, and is merely repeating the grave intonations of the doomsday cult of global warming alarmism.
He has bought the lie, and it is a particularly ridiculous lie, of “ocean acidification”.
He has bought the lie that corals die when the ocean warms slightly.
He seems to have no idea how ridiculously contradictory it is to think that a warmer world with higher moisture levels in the air will cause to just “dry up”, and all the trees in them to die.
He seems unaware that that it is bad forestry management practices that have led to insect infestations that kill trees. Suppressing all fires throws forest ecosystems out of balance, which leads to all sorts of problems that do not happen when the normal process of burning rejuvenates forest biomes.
In order to know the truth about matters scientific, one must have either an inquisitive mind and read a lot, or one must have some scientific education. And at the very least one must have learned to ignore the mainstream press, that is by now simply the public relations arm of a radical political movement.
He knows nothing about any aspect of ecology, physical geography, biology, Earth history, or any other relevant discipline of scientific inquiry. This fact is plainly evident from the things he is quoted as saying.
He has styled himself to be the mouthpiece for a pack of fools, which makes him a fools fool.
And he is now shouting his ignorance loudly to the whole world.
Nicholas, true but his pack is a bunch of very, very rich fools and because of that, we are forced to suffer them. We do not have to suffer them lightly, or gladly, though.
Bill Gates has to be one of the most despised people in America.
Oh, you should see what the rest of the world thinks of the POS…
Bill Gates’ lack of connection to reality continues…
“… The CO2 accumulates like water in a bathtub that’s already almost full, he said. When it hits a certain level, it overflows and, in the case of climate, it tips …”.
That’s a Gates quote from the link.
It’s a nonsensical analogy I have no idea what it means, where does the CO2 overflow to — space?
Is he postulating that the Earth will tip over on its axis?
People’s minds are like bathtubs for knowledge, and people with a tiny bathtub get their mind filled all the way up, and they drown in a sea of ignorance.
See, I can make terrible analogies that are nonetheless better than those of the Great Bill Gates!
Plus mine do not signal that I take myself too seriously for my own good.
If that is the man’s level of comprehension he is clearly deluded.
Eric,
Thanks for pointing out the delusions of the rich and famous! Gates may be in favor of developing nuclear energy, but the rest of his schtick is pure, science denying, carbon dioxide rules the climate claptrap!
I wish someone would point out to him the steady drop in CO2 over the last 150,000,000 years and ask him how he proposes to stop the decline before life as we know it is destroyed! How humanity deals with plankton trying to make kitchen countertops will require some wisdom AND knowledge; his certainty in his own rectitude is not helpful!
I think he’ll figure it out – it took him 4 years to figure out renewables might not deliver, another 4 years and he might begin to suspect some of the more way out climate predictions are nonsense.
Bill Gates does not know what he is talking about. Based on the paleoclimate record and work done with models, one can conclude that the climate change we are experiencing today is not out of character with what has been happening during the Holocene and 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. It is currently not as warm as the past Medieval Warm Period let alone the Holocene Maximum and trees, corals and even polar bears survived these conditions. The previous interglacial period was warmer than this one with more ice cap melting and higher sea levels and trees and corals and even polar bears survived these conditions too. In the past CO2 levels have been more than 10 times what it is today and life flourished and no climate tipping points were ever encountered. I believe that there are plenty of good reasons to be conserving on the use of fossil fuels but climate change is not one of them. A bigger concern has to be how much lower will CO2 levels be during the next ice age. Too low CO2 can snuff out all life as we know it on this planet. Over hundreds of millions of years atmospheric CO2 that plants require has been decreasing. The carbon has become locked up in fossil fuels and carbonate rocks. The burning of fossil fuels has been alleviating the situation somewhat but maybe we should be doing more to free up carbon that has become trapped in carbonate rocks. Adding CO2 to our atmosphere will not affect global climate but will enhance plant growth and hence food production for all animal life on this planet.
Well said!
Bill Gates has 66,000 square foot mansion. Turn it into a homeless shelter.
It’s a 43 million dollar mansion ON THE OCEAN! He just bought it. He must just be so concerned about SLR that he decided to blow 43 million on it so he could be the first one to sacrifice himself to the AGW gods to save planet Earth!
Is bill just recycling predictions from a decade ago.
Why people pay so much attention to this megalomaniac Creten?
Hey!
That wasn’t nice.
Please apologize to Cretins.
Anyone seen my levothyroxine?
Gates is a blithering idiot and also has an agenda. How else could he not know that even NASA has not been able to find any acidification of the oceans and that the coral reefs are thriving. Coral reefs LIKE warmer waters as they can grow further north and south than before. How is that a bad thing?
He may know computers but he is nothing but a propagandist in everything else.
Want to hear a rich genius talk blatant, anti science ignorance?
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/42610/#66063