Many climate alarmists are freaking out that Bill Gates, of all climate-obsessed celebrities, has announced that we are not, in fact, all going to die due to global warming. Instead of being happy, they’re experiencing the agony of victory, again, in the face of his memo to the world and especially those flying to COP30 to stop carbon pollution. For our part we are both happy and encouraged. We’d like to say gosh, he must have watched our documentary on energy poverty in Senegal because he suddenly sees that hugely costly and onerous policies to fight “carbon pollution” come at the expense of fixing real problems from disease to, yes, actual pollution. But we’re not among those convinced Bill Gates is paying attention to us personally, for better or worse. So instead we’re happy and encouraged because it’s evidence that, for all people’s failings and foibles, they are mostly logical and virtuous, if sometimes agonizingly slowly. The great strength of open societies, perhaps their greatest strength, is that vigorous debate does get us to the truth. And so we welcome Bill Gates with open arms even if he can’t see them, and anyone else who gets it, suddenly, slowly or slowly then suddenly.

Now to be clear, Gates has not actually said climate change isn’t real, man-made or a problem. All he’s doing is calling for a sense of proportion. For instance, and if he had watched our documentary it would have helped him get to this blinding flash of feeble light:

“If you said to me, ‘Hey, what about 0.1 degrees versus malaria eradication?’ I’ll let the temperature go up 0.1 degrees to get rid of malaria. People don’t understand the suffering that exists today.”

We could ask snidely who distracted them. But instead we want to help him continue in his struggle to achieve that sense of proportion, since he actually also said:

“There’s a doomsday view of climate change that goes like this: In a few decades, cataclysmic climate change will decimate civilization. The evidence is all around us – just look at all the heat waves and storms caused by rising global temperatures. Nothing matters more than limiting the rise in temperature. Fortunately for all of us, this view is wrong. Although climate change will have serious consequences – particularly for people in the poorest countries – it will not lead to humanity’s demise. People will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future. Emissions projections have gone down, and with the right policies and investments, innovation will allow us to drive emissions down much further.”

After quoting much of this remark, Michael Shellenberger turns to Judith Curry who responds, in a podcast with Shellenberger:

“The weakest part of the argument has always been that warming is dangerous. It isn’t really. More people die from the cold than the heat. So this is probably a net benefit globally. Where’s the danger here?”

Where indeed? But one thing at a time. Once you start believing, and saying, that there are better ways to prepare the poor for weather, even the warmer stuff, like making them less poor or less sick, there’s no telling where it might lead. And indeed Climate Home News suddenly switches complaints to:

“The UN is now admitting that the lower temperature limit of 1.5C contained in the Paris Agreement will be exceeded in the coming years – but says efforts should now focus on how to get back down to that level. Its new synthesis report of national climate plans makes grim reading on that front…. The upshot of such low ambition is going to be more severe storms like Melissa, fiercer flooding, hotter heatwaves and longer droughts, with the effects made worse by rising seas. What to do in the face of this grim outlook? There are many ways to protect people, property, infrastructure and ecosystems, to stem the loss and damage from climate change. The problem is that the world has invested way too little in adaptation and disaster risk reduction measures – and the financial toll is mounting.”

Gosh, invested too little in adaptation, you say? Could it be partly because the party line was that adaptation was surrender and we must prevent instead? And were you part of that eerily uniform chanting?

Oh well. Better late than never, as with Bill Gates presumably mulching all remaining copies of his 2021 manifesto How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need with its up-front insistence that we must get to Net Zero or face doomsday. As David Gelles commented sourly in the New York Times:

“Coming just four years after he published a book titled ‘How to Avoid a Climate Disaster,’ Tuesday’s memo appears to amount to a major reframing of how Mr. Gates, who is worth an estimated $122 billion, is thinking about the challenges posed by a rapidly warming world.”

But we comment sweetly that it’s better to move part-way toward the light than to sulk in outer darkness. As for him being rich, well, good on him. Now send us some.

Here it’s especially apropos to consider the response of Roger Pielke Jr., whose work we often cite, praise and discuss including for his emphasis on statistical soundness. But on the climate realist side we do not have rigid dogmas so it does not bother us, let alone lead us to try to excommunicate him, that RPJ sees warming as a more significant issue than we do:

“Yesterday, in his periodic letter to the world, Bill Gates shared three truths about climate change – and shook up the climate discussion. While the longer term implications of his letter are uncertain, early signs are that Gates has injected a welcome dose of climate realism into the discussion. Here are his three truths (and I encourage everyone to read his whole letter): ‘1. Climate change is a serious problem, but it will not be the end of civilization; 2. Temperature is not the best way to measure our progress on climate; 3. Health and prosperity are the best defense against climate change. For most THB readers, these truths will be well understood, even common sense, and will seem neither shocking nor scandalous.”

Again, from our point of view it is not common sense that climate change is a “serious problem”, at least not man-made climate change. If the glaciers return yes it will be a nightmare, though almost certainly not one we caused. But RPJ is interested in evidence, in logic and in debating ideas not trashing dissenters and we’re certainly right with him there.

Not everyone agrees. He goes on to discuss angry alarmist responses to Gates’ heresy, viz:

“Some examples from the activist media: * CNN: ‘a stunning claim’; * Politico: ‘soft pedals climate’; * Axios: ‘escalates debate with scientists’”.

Along with our favourite: from The New Republic: “we shouldn’t be listening to people like him”. Oh yes? And did you tell us so before Gates switched sides, or do you judge a person’s brain by how well they agree with you not how well they reason? Let’s see, because RPJ then adds the reactions you knew were coming from the climate scientivist crowd:

“Here are a few examples: * Michael Mann: ‘This is horrifying . . . [climate change] represents an existential threat, exacerbating global security threats, threatening water and food supplies, leading to massive damage. . . it’s like a game of soft climate denial bingo’; * Jonathan Foley: ‘I stopped listening to Bill Gates years ago. You should stop too’; * Michael Oppenheimer: ‘[h]is words are bound to be misused by those who would like nothing more than to destroy efforts to deal with climate change.’”

So his opponents are liars driven by evil motives. Come, let us not reason together.

While thus assessing his views, and the views of other people about his views, we should note the argument that it doesn’t matter what Bill Gates thinks about climate because he is not a climate scientist. Not that anyone on the other side was making it back when he was in their camp; that axe is only sharp on one side. But Gates’ views do matter, partly because people did care what they were and do care how they’ve changed, and partly because open societies depend on vigorous debate among well-informed citizens, not the rule of experts, let alone the experts who say.

Since Bill Gates was a software engineer and an entrepreneur there is an argument for listening most carefully to what he says on those topics. But at CDN we vigorously support the intervention of informed lay people in any manner of discussion or debate in which they lack elaborate formal credentials. And while we thought Gates was wrong about things on at least some of which he now thinks he was wrong too, we never thought he was ignorant.

It’s like having a sports star or entertainer weigh in on politics. Especially if they don’t share your political views, it can be tempting to say shut up and sing or play ball as the case may be. But we say that if someone has, through a combination of effort and good fortune, acquired a degree of prominence and admiration, there is something to the classical Greek view that for them to ignore public matters is irresponsible and a sign of weak character. (The Greek word from which we derive “idiot” refers to someone only concerned with their own private affairs.) A celebrity can, after all, give an effective voice to millions who share their opinions but not their prominence.

They can also give idiotic voice to same. So by all means do your homework first and mind your manners. As you should also do if you are not a celebrity. But once you have, don’t focus on credentials or personalities. Pay attention to the arguments.

Yes, arguments. Of course some people persist in referring to the climate “hoax” even when discussing someone’s change of heart, as if nobody could possibly disagree with their opinion once they’ve heard it so they must be lying for sinister reasons. Hence this post:

“Microsoft and every other tech company are sucking up energy and need as much as they can. Bill Gates always knew climate change was a hoax. He wanted us to suffer. But now that big tech needs more energy, they ‘changed their mind.’ Don’t fall for it.”

Others beg to differ, and we are among them. Not least because nobody preaches quite like a repentant sinner, which of course relies on their having been genuinely convinced of the view they have now sincerely repudiated. Of course we know there are liars and grifters out there, but they latch on to major movements, they don’t conjure them up in some back room.

Donald Trump actually managed to have it both ways, with his customary ill grace, posting a comment on Truth Social that Roger Pielke Jr. rightly called “just as over-the-top as the reactions from climate activists”:

“I (WE!) just won the War on the Climate Change Hoax. Bill Gates has finally admitted that he was completely WRONG on the issue. It took courage to do so, and for that we are all grateful.”

That “I (WE!)” sure puts the false in false modesty in a hurry. But we ask: was Gates wrong, or lying? You can’t have it both ways. And we say he was sincerely wrong, and is now sincerely half-right.

We do not say we just won it, not least because it is not yet won. And like RPJ we do not suppose that it was our transcendent brilliance that done it. His own comment being:

“I’ve been asked by several people if I think Gates reads THB or my work – I doubt it, or else he wouldn’t have made a big mistake in his letter suggesting that extreme climate scenarios are today implausible due to climate policy successes. They are implausible because they were always wrong about coal. I’ve never met Gates, but Bill should definitely read THB!”

Indeed. And watch our videos. But meanwhile we note with genuine pleasure and relief that once a man starts to go sane, it’s remarkable what can happen. Including that others may follow in a trickle that becomes a flood. Call it a tipping point.