> But when it comes to preventing the worst effects of climate change, the investments I make will matter much less than the choices that governments make.
How can he stay out of politics, in that case?
The Republican Party aggressively opposes any climate change policy, from research to reduction to mitigation. They aggressively support the fossil fuel industry. The Koch brothers, whose combined wealth is on Gates' scale, spend billions to advocate similar positions. The Fox media network, from Fox News to the Wall Street Journal, push propaganda supporting these positions. (These statements are not partisan simply because one party looks bad. Much of it is factual -- clearly that's the GOP's position -- and if you accept the science of climate change, I think their claims clearly fall within the realm of propaganda.)
There is no media outlet that pushes back or calls any of the above on their propaganda, except those too small to matter, and the Democrats are passive.
The best investments Gates could make for climate change might be a political organization and/or a media network. I can guess why he doesn't, but I'd be interested to know. I wonder if he hoped, like many geeks, that he could avoid it and just do good things.
Surprised that you are getting down-voted for saying the right thing. As I am not American, I never took any interest in American politics. So I was never aware of the right wing propaganda machine - till I subscribed to Wall Street Journal. I was shocked that it's considered to be a "good" newspaper by some - of course, I have cancelled my subscription now - it was the single most important event in my life as it made me extremely liberal and progressive (as a reaction to the pure nonsense produced by the journal).
> I was never aware of the right wing propaganda machine - till I subscribed to Wall Street Journal. I was shocked that it's considered to be a "good" newspaper by some
This puzzles me too, to a degree. Most educated people can recognize the propaganda on their editorial page, and most know, based on Fox News Channel, that the owners have very low journalistic standards and are willing to publish deceit. WSJ reporters even appear as Fox correspondents now (at least, when I watched briefly a few months ago). Why would smart people still trust the WSJ?
To address one counter-argument, the NY Times is not the same; it's editorial page has much higher standards. I don't agree with everything, but rarely to I read blatent lies and propaganda.
I suspect it's simple branding. The "Wall Street Journal" brand carries integrity, and people don't think skeptically about it.
Saying it's branding is a little disingenuous. I like to joke that NYC is just a brand describing a truly shitty city, but that's not really the case. What I've noticed about the WSJ is that a lot of the commentary is primarily business focused. There is very little mainstream media that focuses on business with the quality of the WSJ. It's also sort of like the National Enquirer of the business world; so highly niche entertainment as well.
There are some realities of actually owning/running a business that are hard to understand if you have not done it before. Realities like how cumbersome and obnoxious most government attempts at regulation are, including and especially taxation. I have yet to meet a person, including prominent SV billionaires, who wouldn't give 100% of their money to the gov't if they thought it was spent well and transparently. The reality is that it is not, and these people feel rightly that they are better allocators of capital than the government, and so oppose taxation. In the Hard Thing About Hard things, Horowitz writes that most management books are written by people who have never even managed a hot dog stand. I think that a publication that is so overwhelming supported and favored by business owners even despite it's obnoxiousness at times must have some underlying value. It's probably best not to dismiss it as 'simple branding' just because you can't wrap your head around that position.
> There are some realities of actually owning/running a business that are hard to understand if you have not done it before. ...
Having done it I don't agree. It's a widely used cover story, 'you can't understand X because you haven't done it', a way to avoid accountability or having to make a reasoned argument. We all have directly experienced only a tiny fraction of the world, yet we use our cognitive abilities to understand much more.
I also disagree with your view on taxes and regulation. Our taxes should be higher, certainly more fair (the wealthy sacrifice much less than poorer Americans), and some industries need much stronger regulation, including Wall Street and the medical industries. Finally, government, being a human institution, is flawed; but I have yet to see a business (over a certain size) that doesn't waste money, experience corruption and incompetence, etc. It's a weak argument to simply dismiss serious issues with the unsupported meme that government is somehow relatively incompetent.
Of course many agree with you. Some have good arguments, some are merely self-interested (who wants to pay more or have to follow rules?), many merely parrot what the read in the WSJ. You can identify the latter by the consistent use of the same talking points.
Finally, the condescension is unnecessary. If you have a good argument, people will be pursuaded. The condescension brands everything else you say as part of the same rant, not to be taken seriously.
"till I subscribed to Wall Street Journal. I was shocked that it's considered to be a "good" newspaper by some"
What shocks me is that people don't see propaganda in ANY newspaper.
I have studied propaganda and psychology, because it interest me and frankly, because it is very useful for making money with your company. I would recommend watching "The century of the self" for a great overview of the subject before going deeper on what interest you.
Now I find propaganda everywhere. Have you heard the phrase "the land of the free" or "opportunities". It is propaganda. People that have never traveled around the world will hear the phrase and believe it without doubt.
In fact, those phrases are used for the contrary. Every time "land of the free" is used it is for removing yet another freedom, leaving the people with the empty phrase that was true 100 years ago, while removing the freedoms that sustain it one by one.
For example, Obama will talk loud about freedoms, while making it smaller the amount of money you could extract of your own bank account without reporting. He will let police confiscate your wealth if he thinks so(to buy army grade weapons), it will spy on all your communications, harass you on airports, and bail too big to fail institutions with your money.
Yes, the "Liberal" party in Australia are about as "liberal" as the "National Socialist German Workers' Party" were "socialist".
Political parties like "Branding" words with capital letters to words so the original definition becomes blurred, if not directly contradictory to the original meaning.
EDIT: Remove "but" from first sentence. I'm agreeing with @TheSpiceIsLife :-)
Well, it's a little unclear what course of action people are proposing. Political rants aren't that helpful. If people knew they could save a few bucks installing solar they would. Consumers vote with their wallets.
Do we need to make solar cheaper or more efficient, for example? More battery research?
I think the course of action proposed by the comment is that "Political rants are useful", as demonstrated by the political rants that have made climate change as dubious as Evolution or "socialized" medicine in certain communities in direct contradiction of the facts.
Solar is already cheap and efficient enough to be rolled out on a much wider scale than it currently is. It's a bit odd to be standing around and calling for more research when we are not bothering to fully exploit all the research that's already been done for reasons that are mostly political.
As for the consumer being happy to pay, that's why the favourite wonk answer (implemented succesfully in a few countries) is a carbon tax to let the power of the free market do it's magic by accurately pricing in the externalities of carbon (and other greenhouse gasses).
Right now you can find various studies claiming that shutting down coal power stations would save countries billions in health costs, but that's not the kind of "scandal" that makes it into the mainstream media, though every theoretical bird killed by a wind turbine is, strangely.
You can't convince a significant percentage of the population that smoking is unhealthy. That Global warming is a problem, an even larger percentage. A study that shows X is practically meaningless isn't going to be persuasive.
So, if solar is cheap and efficient we're going to need to do a little better at selling it. I don't see real numbers, just the unsubstantiated claim. Plus, I see the claim of a breakthrough on solar cell efficiency every couple of months on HN, which leads me to believe we're still waiting for one.
Actually solar is so cheap right (real prices), that the price of the solar panels themselves (1$/Watt) are only 25-30% of the total installation cost (3-4$/watt). Inverters add onto that but over 50% of the cost is on the "soft" part of the installation (permits and labor). We need to innovate on the labor portion if we want to drop costs even more.
There are genuine solar breakthroughs every couple of months, its just the reporting that is garbled due to being dumbed down to science journalism standards. For example, something breaking a record in the lab doesn't mean its ready to be productized, or that it would be cost effective if it was, but we've got a great pipeline of improvements making their way to market.
It's not a sales pitch, but the people who are investing billions in solar these days aren't hippies, it's big business now, and they're convinced so the brainwashed masses will eventually twig they've been lied to.
You can't convince a significant percentage of the population that smoking is unhealthy, because they've had literally decades of exposure to propaganda persuading them it makes them cool people.
Also, it's physically addictive.
Fossil fuels are much the same. There's an unbelievably vast propaganda and lobbying machine promoting the use of fossil fuels, even though - like smoking - they're killing our civilisation.
This is why good government matters. It can provide a policy balance to destructive commercial self-interest.
And solar is being rolled out, with very good economic results. It's even being rolled out successfully in the UK, which is not the sunniest place on the planet.
In parts of the US it should literally be a no-brainer. But it's not, because most of the rich people who need fossil fuels to stay rich would rather kill it.
It can take about 10 years to recoup the initial outlay on a domestic solar installation, and after that you are actually saving money.
The people saving the money are the residents of the property, and there is not enough confidence that the presence of solar panels increases the sale price of a property by the amount invested.
So, if you are either a landlord or a first-time-buyer looking to trade up in a few years time, you won't invest in a domestic solar installation. Your money will give you a better ROI somewhere else over that period (e.g. buying your next property).
Therefore, a political solution is probably desired. Something to reduce that 10-year period; something to encourage landlords to install solar; something to encourage first-time-buyers in particular to install.
which is why solar installations need to focus on the industrial scale instead of throwing money at individual home owners, which by the way excludes a significant number of people.
There is zero reason to subsidize home owners installing wind or solar energy however you could get better results by subsidizing their purchase of power generated that way.
There's a few good reasons for residential rooftop solar, particularly in areas where the peak usage and sun coincide (where aircon is used for example).
It not only dampens peak demand (the most expensive to serve) it can also delay the need for grid improvements required to deliver the peak demand. Progressive utilities consider it a win-win.
I'm surprised landlords haven't jumped at the chance to add solar, they seem like exactly the kind of people who would invest up front for a guaranteed payback. I guess there must be some reason why it's not a standard thing, the difficulty of billing the renter for their electric use separately maybe?
What makes you think he's staying out of politics?
Voters don't like the idea of people buying politicians. If the public sees that a politician has been bought, they are less likely to vote for them. So if you're investing in politicians, you don't want to make that information public--that's the quickest way to decrease the value of your investment. Publicly staying out of politics is a smart political move for a person whose primary influence on politics is monetary.
The Koch brothers are a good example of this--the only reason we know that they have been funding Republican and Tea Party campaigns is because of good investigative journalism. They don't go out and announce it. In fact, in interviews they have pretended not to have even heard of the organizations they fund.
It would surprise me greatly if Gates doesn't similarly already have his hands in politics, but the thing Gates has that the Koch brothers don't is soft power[1]. I doubt any major news source will try to write an exposé on Gates' funding of X lobbying organization or Y "grassroots" movement, because most journalists (and people) agree with Gates' goals. Even Fox News would be putting their own goals at risk if they wrote such an exposé, because there's a risk that it would actually bring attention (and funding) to organizations that oppose Fox News' goals.
I agree that's "a" position, but there is much more. By itself, it doesn't explain why they try to defund research, deny the facts, etc.
The only pattern I can find to explain it is that they might see the issue as part of the 'culture war' with liberalism, and so they reject it outright as part of their effort to reject liberalism. (But that's a huge generalization about the thoughts of tens of millions of people.)
Wealth 're'-distribution? So where was the wealth distributed from to start with? It wasn't; by and large it was earned as businesses across the world know very well.
"Trying to combat climate change exclusively with today’s renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach," wrote Google's Ross Koningstein and David Fork in a piece published yesterday in IEEE's Spectrum"
You cannot combat climate change by producing electricity cheaper than coal. If that was the case, the market would find a way not to replace coal, but to consume the extra on top of coal.
> If that was the case, the market would find a way not to replace coal, but to consume the extra on top of coal.
That's not how PPAs and generation works. Nuclear power is already barely viable in the Illinois market (dominated by Exelon) because wind sells its power so much cheaper.
There's a new generation facility coming online near Vegas that's going to be selling solar at around 4 cents/kwh, the lowest price in the nation.
Cheap renewables don't get consumed above existing fossil generation; cheap renewables push out existing fossil fuel generation. For an example, see Germany and how their utilities can barely keep some generation running because they don't get enough revenue with solar dominating during daylight hours.
Solution: Continue to heavily subsidize solar, wind, utility-scale battery storage. Continue to shut down coal plants. Purchase peaking combined cycle natural gas generators, put them into non-profits (because they won't be profitable) to meet the generation gap until enough utility-scale battery storage can allow renewables to be firmly dispatchable resources (they can be relied on to provide power at a constant rate, vs intermittent resources). Profit (or rather, help stop climate change).
This is true. A lot of people don't realize that bulk electricity prices are paid to all generators based on the price of the marginal watt to be scheduled. Natural gas turbines can turn on and off quickly, so they can respond to the market and are usually the ones to provide that marginal watt.
That means when natural gas prices decrease, so do profits for nuclear, coal, and hydro plants.
Google "location based marginal pricing" to learn more.
The changes are not occurring purely because the renewables are getting cheaper and cheaper, but also because of (whisper it) benign regulation of the grid and air quality etc., which prioritises renewable and disincentives dirty coal power.
I approve of your solution (though with a carbon tax I'm not sure that wind and solar need subsidies any more), though I'm not sure why the peaker gas plants need to go non-profit. They already get paid lots of money for short periods operating on an intermittent basis, so it's only a minor modification of their current business model. And if you have a specific dollar value on their use (including a portion for carbon production) then you have a ready made business model for utility-scale storage technologies to replace and a finincial incentive for the tech to be developed.
> coming online near Vegas that's going to be selling solar at around 4 cents/kwh
The big problem there is that they'll sell you that energy when they have it, not when you need it. Production is really becoming cheap with renewables; storage is the real problem (and a very big one).
Correct. I mention utility-scale battery storage for that very reason. Until you have utility-scale battery storage, you burn natural gas to make up the difference. Faster response time than coal or nuclear, less carbon output than coal, easier to move across the country, no radioactive waste to store onsite "temporarily" for decades.
Hydro could help, but in places with almost no water (California/Nevada), it can't be relied on.
1. adjust the rules regulating the market (e.g. price greenhouse gas emissions correctly)
2. introduce a tax on advertising to discourage unnecessary consumption
3. ensure the price of products and services includes full life cycle costs of disposal and pollution
4. replace the whole "economic growth" philosophy with something else that is consistent and reconcilable with planetary ecological limits
5. encourage non-coercive measures to discourage population growth (e.g. access to contraception, family planning, give women increased options for education and employment), particularly in the more affluent countries which have very high per-capita environmental footprints
6. discourage population growth as above, and provide increased economic opportunities, for people living in less affluent countries, since people are able to move between countries to seek better opportunities for themselves. Or instead invest in the rather less ethical "Fortress $(countryname)" approach to keep out the people unfortunate enough to be born in the wrong part of the globe.
Tangentially, you may be interested in Donella Meadows' "Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System" [1].
As an aside from the discussion of capitalism versus other economic systems, Cuba provides a historical case study of a society that didn't collapse after experiencing severe shortages of fossil fuels. See e.g. [1].
1. Adjusting the rules regulating markets sounds a lot like governments picking winners, which they are notoriously bad at. Also, What is the correct price for greenhouse gases?
2. See 1 above
3. Seems like a sound idea, probably very difficult to determine the correct price of pollution per above.
4. What are the planetary ecological limits? "Replace the whole [whatever] philosophy" is a good example of expecting everyone to agree, which is probably impossible.
5. The more affluent countries tend to have lower birth rates already (a few bordering on being below replacement rate, Japan for example IIRC) probably because they have better access to things like education and contraception etc. So it seems lower birthrates tend to correlate with higher per capita environmental footprints, probably because the same things that cause lower birthrates also cause higher standards of living. Maybe the solution is to simply increase the birthrate, thereby decreasing per capita consumption. Maybe that's the wrong metric to focus on. What a mess.
6. As above.
Sometimes I think it would be better if solutions were as simple as enumerating a list. But what's the fun in that. Heaven forbid problems could be solved so simply, then what would we do.
One thing we can be certain of, probably, is that whatever changes we implement will have unintended consequences. So maybe the solution is to do nothing in an effort to avoid the unintended consequences, thereby leaving us to deal with the obvious consequences of business as usual, whatever they might be. What I'm implying is: maybe the GOP have got it right. Wouldn't that be ironic.
This comment was heavily inspired by P.J. O'rourke, I highly recommend his books. Politics hey, what a circus.
NB: I don't necessarily agree with anything I write, so don't hold me to it.
I agree with much of what Gates writes, but at least in Europe this is more or less common sense. Although there is a lot of inertia, and there could be much more government-funded research, we are slowly getting there - not by presidential decrees, but through a slow process of expert groups, democratic decisions, and small innovations.
But it all is offset by the fact that as these 450 million people are trying to reduce their - arguably high - footprint, at the same time 2-3 billion people are in the process of getting access to the same energy resources that we are trying to get away from. And half of the world's biggest polluter's population is voting for a party that is so far off common sense that their horrible example could continue for decades.
All this makes me pessimistic that mankind can fix the problem in my lifetime, and I will have to tell my daughter: i'm deeply sorry. We screwed up.
A breakthrough in innovation seems to be our only chance.
About 10 years ago a new company appeared, with great promise for a clean-energy future. With the awkward name XsunX, their goal was to produce what they called "power glass" ... a type of glass that contained barely-visible solar cells and wiring. Tie it appropriately into a building's electrical system, and viola! a window becomes a power generation source.
The notion was that since the modern aesthetic is glass skin for large buildings, then why not let that new skyscraper in London, NYC, Houston, etc generate some of its own power from the acres (yes, acres) of glass covering its exterior?
The solar cells would be less efficient for a variety of reasons, and most windows wouldn't face direct sunlight all day, but these inefficiencies would be countered by volume: the entire building would be covered in solar cells.
Fantastic idea! And ... it fizzled. The XsunX website still exists, but you have to find really old press-release PDFs buried within to find any mention of Power Glass.
Use the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, though, and you'll see their website years ago focused almost entirely on Power Glass and its promise.
I'm really impressed not only at Gates' actions post-Microsoft, but that he makes the effort to explain them in such an accessible and public way. I think that's a really positive step and others in a similar position could learn from him.
Yeah, I hate Windows and IE as much as the next techie, but Bill Gates is a great man -- period. I'm a fan. In his early days, he was just thinking business is just a game, so he was kind of ruthless in his business practices. But now that he has already made it, it's great to see his true colors and how deeply benevolent he is. I'm going to start following his blog posts on renewable energy.
No, we don't need clean energy innovation. And that's a problem.
Right now, there's an oil glut and a natural gas glut. The US may be self-sufficient in energy in about four years without even trying. The fear that fossil fuels will run out in the near term is gone. This has taken the pressure off the need for alternative energy.
There is still the need to do something about the GHG’s we are dumping into the atmosphere. This large uncontrolled geoengineering experiment may not go so well given the current usage of fossil fuels.
I'm fairly well convinced that farming is a much more significant geoengineering experiment, but not a peep out of the CO2 folks about that. Are you sure that one or the other will definitely have good or bad effects? Can you explain the logic if so?
Farming is a massive geonegineering experiment, but it was one that was run many thousands of years ago. It has changed the entire planet, but the difference with our more recent GHG experiment is one of scale. We massively underestimate the effect that all these GHG will have. On top of this we are only about 10% of the way into the GHG experiment - the world will not be a pretty place once we get to 1200 ppm CO2.
> Farming is a massive geonegineering experiment, but it was one that was run many thousands of years ago.
Industrial farming at scale is much newer than that. This is like claiming that GHG is from "many thousands of years ago" because people made wood fires back then.
> It has changed the entire planet, but the difference with our more recent GHG experiment is one of scale.
Yes, and if you asked me for a guess I'd say the scale of the farming "experiment" is much greater. I'm interested to hear reasons you believe the opposite is true, not just an assertion.
> We massively underestimate the effect that all these GHG will have.
We do? Are you saying that you understand the true future effect of one change to a very complex non-linear system?
> On top of this we are only about 10% of the way into the GHG experiment
Similar to the last point, but this should be followed by "according to [Researchers'] model" and not left as a plain assertion.
> the world will not be a pretty place once we get to 1200 ppm CO2.
Please name the model or whatever logical progression you are using to arrive at this idea, too.
Industrial farming at scale is much newer than that. This is like claiming that GHG is from "many thousands of years ago" because people made wood fires back then.
Actually most agricultural land clearing did happen many hundred to thousands of years ago. People have proposed that all the carbon released by this activity did have an impact on the planet and this prevented us from re-entering another ice age. I am not too sure how much evidence supports this hypothesis as the amount of carbon released was relatively low until we started burning fossil fuels in the last century.
Yes, and if you asked me for a guess I'd say the scale of the farming "experiment" is much greater. I'm interested to hear reasons you believe the opposite is true, not just an assertion.
The effect of farming has probably had more impact to date on the planet, but it is not as large as what the GHG experiment will have on the planet if we do nothing.
We do? Are you saying that you understand the true future effect of one change to a very complex non-linear system?
Actually the effect of adding GHG is very easy to predict - it increases the amount of energy trapped in a concentration dependent effect. What is hard to model is what the precise effect will be and when it will happen. A nice analogy to use is what will happen if you drive your car at 100 mph into a brick wall without wearing a seat belt or having an airbag. You can’t predict in advance what will happen to you, but none of the likely outcomes will be good.
Similar to the last point, but this should be followed by "according to [Researchers'] model" and not left as a plain assertion.
Under the "do-nothing” model (effectively our current model) we just keep burning all the fossil fuels until they are all gone. We do have a pretty good idea of how much fossil fuels we can extract and so it is easy to calculate how much CO2 will be released if we burn them all. Unfortunately all the changes to the model over the last few years is much of the fossil fuels we thought were uneconomic to extract (and so were not counted as being releasable) have proven extractable (i.e. fracking and shale oil).
Please name the model or whatever logical progression you are using to arrive at this idea, too
My model is our current “do-nothing” model where all the fossil fuels that can be burnt will be burnt. The end outcome of this is a CO2 concentration north of 1200ppm. While we can’t predict exactly what will happen if we reach this level we do have a pretty good idea from the past that it won’t be nice.
No. Currently about 50% of the carbon ends up in sinks like oceans and some forests. Unfortunately, these sinks look to be getting full, but even if they are able to absorb 50% of the emissions we are still going to go over 1200ppm if we burn all the fossil fuels.
Actually one of the big worries is that some of the large carbon sinks like the arctic tundra will start warming up enough to result in a non-linear runaway release of GHG. We don’t know if this will happen, but I am none to keen to find out.
the need for energy innovation is a both a short term and long term problem, that extends beyond the availability fossil fuels -- which IMO are best kept in the ground if possible/as soon as innovation permits (http://www.theguardian.com/environment/series/keep-it-in-the...)
Great to see someone else linking to bravenewclimate.com - this is a sorely under-read and under-linked resource.
Also, I used to live in Adelaide where Barry Brook held the Sir Hubert Wilkins Chair of Climate Change. He then moved to Tasmania about a year after I did, thereby fixing our electricity related emissions because Tasmania's electricity is almost entirely hydroelectric.
I'm sure I read last week that Gates had invested 200 million in a software company to more efficiently extract oil and gas, which seems to contradict his stance here.
Can't find the article now, was titled something like "Silicon Valley taking on the Fossil Fuel Industry".
Regardless of whether we burn oil and gas for energy we will still need them for other purposes like lubricants and feedstock for chemical processes, so it doesn't necessarily contradict.
One avenue to explore would be genetically engineering strains of corn, rice, and wheat that have nitrogen-fixing bacteria. This would have the impact of reducing the vast quantities of fossil fuel we spend on the Haber-Bosch process and also free poor farmers from having to spend money on artificial fertilizer.
I am however utterly ignorant of the difficulty of doing this. I doubt this research would be funded by Monsanto or other companies which sell artificial fertilizer.
>I am however utterly ignorant of the difficulty of doing this.
It is very difficult since the symbiotic relationship needed is difficult to recreate - it is not just a matter of introducing a few new genes.
Even doing this would not avoid the need for the Haber-Bosch process. The symbiotic bacteria just can’t produce the amount of organic nitrogen that we need to get into modern crops to have them produce at the level we need to feed everyone. Even crops like legumes which have the symbiotic bacteria are supplied with artificial nitrogen when grown under modern agricultural conditions.
I am glad to see Gates throwing his money and influence in a progressive direction.
> we need to be able to power all sectors of the economy with sources that do not emit any carbon dioxide.
Yes. That said, I think a lot of the optimistic future trajectories for world climate models rely on the assumption of CCS technology permitting negative net carbon emissions later in the century. On the positive side: hypothetically if the technology were to exist we could get away with some emissions; negative side: this technology doesn't actually exist.
> But when it comes to preventing the worst effects of climate change, the investments I make will matter much less than the choices that governments make.
I completely agree. A global price on carbon would help here. It's going to be difficult for clean-energy alternatives to compete with existing energy sources such as coal, that (i) are priced in a way that ignores the negative externalities of greenhouse gas emissions, and (ii) are heavily subsidised. The global economy needs to be appropriately regulated in order to coerce it into doing more useful activities.
> Scientists generally agree that preventing the worst effects of climate change requires limiting the temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius, and that doing so requires the biggest emitters to cut emissions 80 percent by 2050 and all countries to essentially eliminate them by the end of the century.
Indeed!
> These are solvable problems.
Here I disagree. We are not going to limit temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius. We missed that window by a few decades.
It would still be a VERY good idea to limit temperature rise to +3 degrees Celsius, or something, instead of ending up with a world where it is +4 degrees C and still rising.
I recently finished reading the book "Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming" by McKenzie Funk. I am actually more optimistic about the future now: we still have geoengineering options available, such as pumping sulphur into the atmosphere to reduce the amount of sunlight heating the world by a fraction of a percent.
It's worth pointing out, however, that:
* geoengineering gives us a means to partially/completely address one of the symptoms (temperature rise) of the problem, and continue to avoid addressing the causes. other symptoms: nitrogen cycle disruption, species mass extinction, extinction of non-renewable resources, extinction of renewable resources (global fish stocks), ...
* geoengineering options will also cause some climate change, and these changes will not be uniformly or fairly distributed over the world. All things being equal, powerful countries will run geoengineering projects, and as far as it can be predicted and controlled, the climate will be adjusted to preferentially favour the countries running these projects.
* the long-term, large-scale secondary consequences of things we do that seem like a good idea are not always anticipated!
* geoengineering options are akin to patching a highly complex system by adding more complexity to patch a symptom. this requires upkeep and potentially makes the entire thing more fragile.
Geoengineering might make the entire system more complex, but it sure beats the alternative. None of the more viable options that have been proposed have potential side effects worse than what we'll expect if we do nothing. And while it might just be treating the symptoms, it also gives us the time necessary for technological innovations to change the causes of those same symptoms. Electric cars, improved and more efficient power systems (fourth gen reactors, improved renewables, and better battery tech for starters), cleaner production systems, even the eventual benefits of building orbital manufacturing infrastructure will all combine to solve many of the root causes we're struggling with.
What we need is to buy up all the FF energy companies and have them not dig/pump/burn the carbon they control. While the FF industry is large, it is not that large and it would be totally possible to just buy it all up and shut it down.
This approach would have the nice side-effect of removing the economic motivation for climate changing denial and all the anti-science propaganda that results.
Wake me up when we start building fast breeder reactors that recycle nuclear waste [1], and start building large scale thermal depolymerization plants to turn our trash into oil. [2] I also want to know how he think we should address this mini-ace age that it appears I'll be spending half my life in.[3]
>"The expected decrease in global temperature would be 0.1 degrees Celsius at most, compared to about 1.3 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times by the year 2030"
A grand solar minimum would have little to no effect on our warming climate.[1][2] The work this paper is reporting on did not even make any claims about climatic changes, and the impact of a grand solar minimum has been extensively explored in the literature with the conclusion being that it will be a fraction of the anthropogenic warming trend. It's not entirely your fault, that's some pretty bad pop journalism from livescience.
Wind is cheaper than safe nuclear power, so spending a lot on R&D for a more expensive version of Nuclear seems pointless. Nuclear can work well for huge boats and subs, but on land it's extremely expencive and only gained traction through huge subsides.
That space can be used for other things too though such as grazing livestock.
Relatedly, Elon Musk claims that if you cover the area used up by a Nuclear plant with solar panels than you can get equal power production. The actual reactor is small, but the security etc. means that there's a large boundary zone. Plus of course no-one wants to live near one.
How can he stay out of politics, in that case?
The Republican Party aggressively opposes any climate change policy, from research to reduction to mitigation. They aggressively support the fossil fuel industry. The Koch brothers, whose combined wealth is on Gates' scale, spend billions to advocate similar positions. The Fox media network, from Fox News to the Wall Street Journal, push propaganda supporting these positions. (These statements are not partisan simply because one party looks bad. Much of it is factual -- clearly that's the GOP's position -- and if you accept the science of climate change, I think their claims clearly fall within the realm of propaganda.)
There is no media outlet that pushes back or calls any of the above on their propaganda, except those too small to matter, and the Democrats are passive.
The best investments Gates could make for climate change might be a political organization and/or a media network. I can guess why he doesn't, but I'd be interested to know. I wonder if he hoped, like many geeks, that he could avoid it and just do good things.