WATCH: Climate scientists explain what Bill Gates got wrong
An urgent virtual discussion about the billionaire's controversial memo, ahead of this month's global climate summit in Brazil.
Bill Gates ruffled some feathers last week. In a memo titled, “Three tough truths about climate,” the billionaire investor and philanthropist wrote that climate change “will not lead to humanity’s demise,” and that people “will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future.”
“Unfortunately, the doomsday outlook is causing much of the climate community to focus too much on near-term emissions goals, and it’s diverting resources from the most effective things we should be doing to improve life in a warming world,” Gates wrote.
Especially coming from a man who’s spent large sums supporting clean energy, the memo — published just ahead of this month’s COP30 climate summit in Brazil — is generating lots of attention. Science deniers are thrilled. President Trump wrote on social media that “I (WE!) just won the War on the Climate Change Hoax. Bill Gates has finally admitted that he was completely WRONG on the issue.”
That’s not what Gates said; he called global warming a “a very important problem” that “needs to be solved.” But he also made a bunch of claims that left me scratching my head. I found myself wondering: What do actual climate scientists think?
So I emailed some climate scientists and asked if they’d get together and talk with me. To my great delight, they all said yes!
So I’m excited to announce Climate-Colored Goggles’ first live event, co-sponsored by Covering Climate Now. It’s already happened at this point — the discussion took place Nov. 4 — but you can watch the video above, at the top of this page. We had a fabulous group of scientists:
Kim Cobb, Brown University
Zeke Hausfather, Berkeley Earth
Katharine Hayhoe, Texas Tech University
Daniel Swain, University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources
This event was free for all Climate-Colored Goggles readers, whether or not you’re paying for a subscription. But similar events going forward will be available only to paid subscribers.
I’ve also made every newsletter available to all readers so far. I’d love to keep using the paywall as little as possible, but that will depend on lots of folks subscribing to support my work. So please subscribe, if you haven’t already.
Thanks very much.
Questions for the panel. This is long, but the Bill Gates climate memo is far longer.
Why does Bill Gates need more than 5,000 words to make a few simple points?
Seems like the big one is “Relieving suffering in less developed countries should be important, too.” Do you agree? Do you think rich countries, corporations, and billionaires can afford to fix both problems at the same time?
His other big point is “Stop wasting attention and money on climate fixes that won’t work soon, especially for poor countries.” Do you agree? What about so many of his investments with that exact description?
We have the technology now at low enough cost to fix some of his biggest climate villains: Electricity (28%), agriculture (19%), and transportation except for jet travel (about 16%). Do you agree? Why should we invest in anything other than scaling up and removing political and cultural barriers in those areas?
What about the political and cultural barriers to reducing both global climate change and suffering in less developed countries? Gates doesn’t even mention those problems. They are big, serious, and very hard to fix. Breakthrough technology that doesn’t get used doesn’t help anyone.
The rest of these questions are important but much further down in the weeds.
Why do we need 24-hour fission and fusion power when abundant solar and wind can be stored in batteries at far lower cost, far faster, and far safer? Why not pursue much cheaper, much safer enhanced geothermal that also provides 24-hour power? How can you scale multibillion-dollar fission and fusion energy plants enough to make a difference? Note that “small modular reactors” have been expensive failures so far, with no clear path forward. How can less developed countries ever afford these energy sources?
Geologic hydrogen is a “probably not.” Hydrogen has serious, hard-to-solve problems with safe transportation and use while creating more global warming. Leaked hydrogen turns other stuff into greenhouse gases. And hydrogen is very, very hard to keep inside wells, pipes, and tanks. Carbon capture and storage at large scale is in a similar but different box. If we’re not supposed to waste attention and money chasing crazy climate solutions, why is he chasing these?
Gates says “there aren’t enough skilled workers around the world to install” heat pumps. What about companies like Mitsubishi, Midea, and Gradient shipping thousands of heat pumps that fit in a window and plug into a normal outlet without skilled workers?
I appreciate the substantive and nuanced conversation about the Gates letter here. But the part that I can't get over is how predictable the public reaction has been. There is no conceivable universe in which Gates did not know that his letter would be taken out of context by climate deniers and obstructionists to justify their views. He couldn't have thought that people would actually read the whole thing and reach their own conclusions. He can't be that naive, right?