Tech billionaire relying on ‘false binary’ with call to focus less on emissions and more on aid for poor, experts say
  • TheDemonBuer@lemmy.worldEnglish
    581·
    1 day ago

    In his memo, Gates wrote that global warming “will not lead to humanity’s demise”. This misunderstands climate scientists’ warnings, said Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy.

    “I have not seen a single scientific paper that ever posited that the human race would become extinct … it’s a straw man, the way he’s proposing it,” she said. “He’s speaking about it as if scientists are saying that, and we’re not: what we are saying is that suffering increases with each 10th of a degree of warming.”

    The memo from a “very influential person who controls a lot of money” hinges on “inarguably a false binary” between a world where everything is fine and “literally the end of the world”, said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources.

    “In reality, there’s a whole hell of a lot of bad things that can happen in between,” he said.

    Exactly. So many people act like there are only two possibilities: climate change is a hoax, everything’s fine and growth and prosperity will not be affected by global warming. Or climate change is real and it’s going to kill us all. Neither of those two scenarios are likely. We’re not going extinct, but everything isn’t just going to be hunky-dory, either.

    The thing is, no one can tell you exactly where we’ll be by 2100, because that depends on what we do between now and then. If we get our act together and bring down emissions rapidly, we will be in a better spot in 2100 than if emissions remain elevated for longer.

    Personally, I think the most likely scenario is that emissions will stay elevated for a while. I don’t see us decreasing our GHG emissions significantly any time soon.

    • rafoix@lemmy.zipEnglish
      21·
      1 day ago

      We could tell you where we are right now without having to wait for 2100.

      Global warming is causing a lot of yearly destruction that is getting more and more expensive. It is helping create a world where only the wealthy can prosper.

      Hawaii didn’t use to burn but it’s a thing now. California used to have a fire season, it’s all year now. Oregon is a tinder box. Arizona was always an inhospitable hellhole, it still is so that one doesn’t count.

      • corsicanguppy@lemmy.caEnglish
        1·
        13 hours ago

        Consider that effects lag the state, so that what we’re seeing now is from damage we did years ago. Even if we were perfect tomorrow, we still have some warming and suffering to go.

        I have no point other than to buckle up.

    • floofloof@lemmy.caEnglish
      12·
      1 day ago

      Black-and-white thinking is characteristic of the right wing. You can look at any topic and see it with them: COVID, vaccines, climate change, immigration, welfare, the economy, etc. They always frame things as either all bad or not bad at all, and can’t handle shades of grey or multidimensional analysis. They will seize on Bill Gates’s statement to claim climate change is not a problem.

      • Lyrl@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        6·
        1 day ago

        The left isn’t immune: you see similar framing with genetic engineering and nuclear power generation. Rejection of nuance is systemically fertilized in widely consumed right-wing media in a way that the current left-wing media doesn’t, but the underlying psychological susceptibility is common to all humans and not particular to ideology.

        Any improvement needs to happen at the system level, not by villianizing individuals as “right wing, can’t handle shades of grey”.

    • WanderingThoughts@europe.pubEnglish
      2·
      1 day ago

      In reality, there’s a whole hell of a lot of bad things that can happen in between

      And they’ll be blamed on the scapegoat du jour instead of the real inconvenient cause.

  • lIlIlIlIlIlIl@lemmy.worldEnglish
    151·
    1 day ago

    Trash human, we should just eat him to feed and clothe literally every child everywhere. A small price to pay, really

    • Tollana1234567@lemmy.todayEnglish
      2·
      13 hours ago

      finally showed his true colors again, after the “voicing his concern on AI bubble” article. he mustve had investments tied in AI.

  • lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    8·
    1 day ago

    Wait, didn’t he write a book no one took serious about technology solving climate crisis a few years back?