Secure How To Avoid A Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have And The Breakthroughs We Need Crafted By Bill Gates Manuscript

read by Bill Gates and Will Wheaton

As we moved towards a zero carbon future,
were still allowed to eat toast,

There are some things we little us can do to help:
, conserve water
. reduce, reuse, recycle
. choose sustainable
. plant a tree .
. but .
"we have every reason to worry"!!!

With International cooperation and education,
Bill Gates is still hopeful we can save the planet, "This is urgent work, We are at the same point today with climate change as we were several years ago with pandemics, Health experts were telling us that a massive outbreak was virtually inevitable, Despite their warnings, the world didn't do enough to prepare and then suddenly had to scramble to make up for lost time.
We should not make the same mistake with climate change, "

As much as I dislike Windows, I've always admired Bill Gates for what he managed to create, and most of all, for his philanthropy.
And because of that, I was curious to see his point of view regarding climate change,

And he did his job right, There are a lot of info on all the factors that affects climate and leads to carbon and not only acumullation.


All data are structured in separate chapters, and everything is explained on everyone's understanding, It's not exactly a science book, more likely its purpose is to raise awareness about this Damocles' sword which is about to fall on our heads.


I think it's a great introduction into what climate change means, factors involved and possible solutions, Most data are focused on the US, but there are some from around the world as well,

For those who are more than familiar with the subject will not be a groundbreaking reading, but it gathers numbers and statistics which are usually found from a lot of different sources, and here you have them all together.


All in all, it was an interesting read, His vision is aimed on new technologies to help with this planetary problem, but I have found him a bit too optimistic, in regard to governments and their response to various solutions.
In any case, we could all benefit from visionary and dedicated people like him, whose investments and involvement are a great asset for all of us.
I wish there were more like him in these times,

gtgtgt ARC received thanks to  Penguin Press UK Allen Lane, Particular, Pelican, Penguin Classics via NetGalley ltltlt Ravings of the Globalist Trotsky Urban Yoda:

He claims thatof the carbon dioxide emitted today will still be in the atmosphere,years later.
This is not true.

Gates believes that global warming will cause sea level to rise and this will cause a catastrophe.
Wrong sea level has been rising since civilization began,

He thinks that overall food production will drop in the future due to climate change, growing seasons will shrink, and food prices will rise.
In fact, the evidence tells us the opposite,

Gates then goes on to list numerous catastrophes predicted by IPCC computer simulations, However it is well known that the climate models used by the IPCC do not match observations,

Gates observes , the new energy source will have to be cheaper than fossil fuels , also believes that the change he wants will require new technology, taxes, and government mandates.

He introduces the concept of “green premiums,” which is Gates name for green energy subsidies and carbon taxes.
He is in favor of both,

Goal of net zero emmision Almostbillions of people exhale COevery day ! Germany has been trying to achieve areduction in greenhouse gas emissions and currently pays three times the U.
S. rate for their electricity.

He discusses products that are made from fossil fuels, like cement, fertilizer, plastic, and steel, Making these products produces the largest amount of CO, Yet, we will not stop using any of them, in fact, Gates estimates that as the world becomes more prosperous, we will likely need much more of them.


Gates discusses fertilizer and how important it is but does not mention COfertilization, which seems a contradiction.


of our electricity comes from fossil fuels, but Gates is hypothesizing that we can eventually make electricity without fossil fuels.
. lol.

Biofuels will be important for ships and aircraft in Gates transportation plan, But, as he admits, biofuels are not environmentally friendly,

Gates would also like the world to consider nuclearpowered ships, even though it could be dangerous,

He does not mention that additional COin the atmosphere makes most crops much more drought resistant, since with additional available COthey need much less water per pound of growth.


He briefly discusses the impact of destroying the fossil fuel industry, which supports more than ten million jobs in the United States.


Gates admits that trying to get to zero emissions byis impossible, But then he offers the equally impossible goal of, Exxon projects that oil, gas and coal will supplyof the worlds energy in,

His writing is a plea for governments to grab more power and take over ever larger parts of the private sector so they can force the public to help them destroy the fossil fuel industry.
He calls for action by “all levels of government, from local transportation planners to national legislatures and environmental regulators.
”

Gates is megalomaniac and dangerous 'Trotsky' type Globalist capitalism for him more for me, communism for masses have nothing.
Gates imprecision when discussing climate science is not encouraging, Yet , as I observe, Biden in the States and Trudeau government in Canada follow his 'instructions', What a bummer ! It is very easy to dismiss this book upfront as another elitist rant on how we should feel guilty about our consumption or as another idealistic and removed from reality work on the ways in which we can avoid a climate catastrophe.
And to large part, Gates acknowledges this at the very start of the book,
But that would be a huge mistake, Gates cuts through a lot of noise on both sides of the issue coming from the world of global development particularly global health and poverty alleviation with the programs by his foundation, he clearly acknowledges the social necessity of progress and growth, especially in less developed regions.
He is not naive about sudden radical changes in human behaviour, but rather analyses ways that we can preserve the social and economic order for the most part with technological breakthroughs, essentially focused on getting clean energy.
It is then no surprise that the vast of his plan at the end of the book focuses on the ways in which innovation can be funded and then scaled up.
On the other hand, he is uncompromising in the need for both private and public funding for breakthroughs and improvement in technologies that are carbon neutral.
While most of the book is essentially about getting carbonneutral electricity mostly from advanced nuclear fission and hydrogen and then electrifying everything, he gives a large amount of space to issues such as steel and concrete that are hugely underrepresented in the debate about climate change.
If anything, his attention to, if not details then important bits frequently hidden, should make everyone read this great book.


I went through it in two evenings and it is an enjoyable read from a readable take on standard technology policy to his little personal anecdotes and jokes.
Definitely cannot recommend it enough,., rounded to.

First of all, I feel a little bad for Bill Gates, Unlike other billionaires who seem intent on living on Mars, Bill is actually interested in fixing the only planet we have.
So kudos to him give him a break, haters, That said, I really, really wish Bill had written this book as a collaborative effort with people like Bill McKibben or Elizabeth Kolbert or Hope Jahren, if for no other reason than to improve it's style, but also to increase the number of ideas circulating in his orbit.
And why doesn't he reference the fine work done by the Drawdown Project or by the many professors at Stanford and other universities working on possible solutions and quantifying the problem.
Instead, he name checks a book written inby a British professor who died in, It's not a horrible book, but there are more modern, and maybe, probably, better ideas out there in,

Also, I was a little stunned that he said he really didn't begin to believe global warming was a real thing until.
What I realize he was a little busy in the ''s, but still, I learned about the theory of atmospheric warming due to COin my undergraduate chemistry class, and I've been following the literature since then, and following it intently since aboutHansen, NASA, all that jazz really got cranked up in '.
And despite describing the dangers of sea level rise, he makes the rookie error of not noting that one of the greatest problems caused by COin the oceans is acidification of seawater, which eventually could get bad enough to prevent corals building new coral, or sea creatures making shells or carapaces think crabs, barnacles, clams, etc.
And he seems to minimize or not really understand what a general ecological collapse brought on by global warming would mean for us humans.


Okay, so what did I like, now that I'm done carping I like that he simplified things down to the CObudget of Earth hisbillion tons per year number, and breaks it out into its constituent parts by segment: manufacturing things: think steel, concrete, plastic producing electricity agriculture transportation and heating / cooling.
And then he talks about how to address each sector, He takes a logical engineer's approach to the issue, mostly more on that later, He introduced me to an interesting concept while explaining energy production the idea of density of power production, He points out that it takes a lot more space to produce energy from solar or wind than it does from a natural gas powered or nuclear powered electric plant.
It's a good point, but he doesn't consider the counter argument, which is that all that space on the roofs of all those big box stores, or for that matter, residential rooftops, is not exactly in high demand for other uses.
And he doesn't spend nearly enough time on jobs, which could be a huge winwin for green energy,

Gates makes a good point about the need for steady energy production, Unless we are all going to have Tesla Walls to power our homes at night, and even bigger Tesla Walls for businesses and manufacturers, you have to have a way to supply electricity constantly.
In the US, currently we do this mostly by burning fossil fuels, withfrom nuclear andfrom renewables, including hydropower.
So how to reduce the steady power from fossil fuels and replace it with nonCOproducing sources Gates throws out a lot of possibilities modern, safer nuclear plants, geothermal, pumped hydro, but he doesn't take the extra step to do the math that says, "Okay, we can get toof power production with renewables, addfor geothermal and pumped hydro,from batteries, keep thefrom nuclear, and Presto!, you're there!" That would have made me like the book a lot more.
He simply presents a sort of laundry list, unlike the Drawdown Project that actually attempted to do the math in detail.


I'm an engineer and a math minor, and the above noted lack of specificity by Gates was frustrating to me.
This is an optimization problem, and you could, even using today's costs for solar, geothermal, wind, modern nuclear, etc, crank the numbers and come up with an answer including cost and relative contribution from various sources.
You could also get fancy, and project future costs for solar, etc, which are sure to go lower, and get a more refined answer, but Bill didn't do this.
I don't get it he has access to all the resources in the world given his status asth richest man around, and leading world philanthropist, and yet he didn't work the math, or hire someone to work the math to come up with a prescriptive solution that could serve as a straw man for policy makers.
And there are plenty of people who would have jumped at the chance to do that arithmetic,

Then he talks about "making things", mainly concrete, steel, and plastic, and I was surprised to learn how much COthis produces.
He spends a lot of time on "green premiums", i, e. , the cost to make carbonneutral materials, which are interesting, because you learn how relatively cheap it is to do this with steel and plastic, less so with concrete.
And much of the improvement in this area will stem from using carbonneutral electricity, of course,

He talks next about agriculture and the need to reduce red meat intake, which in turn reduces cattle populations, which in turn reduces methane production.
And methane istimes more potent as a warming gas compared to CO, so this is important, and not a joke, as DeSantistypes try to make it because after all, those wacky libs are talking about cow farts! How nuts are they, etc.
. He makes a strong case for reducing red meat intake, which would be good for us anyway, and cutting meat intake in half could reduce global greenhouse emissions by about. maybe more. He also shows how fertilizer causes problems, but he does not highlight the amazing progress made, and jobs created by large organic farms like White Oak Pastures in Georgia.
A huge amount of food could be produced organically which would both reduce emissions from fertilizers and create jobs.
But this is not mentioned instead we get a story about his dad reducing hamburger intake and a pitch for artificial meat, which are possibly not exactly industrialscale solutions.
He makes a pitch to stop deforestation and plant trees wherever possible, and I agree, What needs more emphasis, in my opinion, is creating incentives for people to consume less, and to consume more wisely, because the traditional US consumption model for food cannot be sustained on a global level.
Also, let's stop cutting the trees we have, especially in the Amazon and Congo,

Then transportation is addressed, which turns out to be one of the easier areas to fix, though it depends on solving the energy production problem mentioned above.
Fundamentally, all transportation except longhaul air transport and sea shipment needs to be electrified, and fossil fuel consumption for sea shipments can be greatly reduced.
Lest we forget,years ago all sea shipment was by sail, and there are pilot projects underway to supplement power with sail on cargo ships not mentioned by this book, which instead discusses nuclear powered container ships.
hmmm . what could go wrong, because, you know, big cargo ships never sink, Of course we need to convert to electric vehicles immediately, and that covers a huge chunk of what needs to be done.
I wish he had talked about shifting more freight from trucks to trains, but I'm nitpicking,

Heating and cooling is covered next again, I wish Bill had done more research, He briefly mentions the refrigerants used in A/C units, but he seems to not realize what a big deal those are those refrigerants

are among the most potent greenhouse gases on the planet, and they urgently need to be replaced with less problematic materials.
The Drawdown project points to this as possibly the worst threat in terms of increasing warming, because a these gases are so powerful as greenhouse gases, and b because use of A/C is accelerating exponentially worldwide.
Bill does talk about the need for greater efficiency and increased insulation in buildings, which are a critical first step, and both are lowhanging fruit.


Then adaptation. I wish he had spent more time on COcapture/sequestration technology, because we are going to need it badly because we simply can't get all this done fast enough.
And one of the controversial approaches he discusses is sundimming, through particulate injection into the stratosphere, Here's where a real writer like one of the three I mentioned at the outset might have helped him, because this subject needs to be handled delicately, mindfully, with consciousness of the risk involved.
Gates makes the absolutely valid point that we better figure out how to do the sundimming dance without causing SnowPiercer results, and we better figure it out in less than ten years.
We are a bit like the guy on the third floor of a burning building and the staircases are blocked.
Is the better choice to jump, or is it better to wait for the fire department to put out the fire It's a tough decision.
Update as of June: sucking COout of the air and sequestering it underground is looking a bit more problematic these days, not because it's not possible, but because of the enormous cost of doing it.
So instead, perhaps spend that money on a faster conversion to nonCOproducing transportation, AC, etc,

Finally Mr. Gates talks about government involvement in solutions, and frankly I got the impression he was trying to please everyone, and not anger Republicans in particular.
He would do better to commit a big chunk of his fortune to defeating every Republican lawmaker who continues to scoff at climate change McConnell, Inhofe, and Cruz would be good seats to target, for starters.
Sorry, but it's too late in the day to play nice with idiots who are putting our grandchildren's futures at risk.


So, to sum up, I'm glad Bill Gates wrote this book, If nothing else, it brings renewed attention to the subject, It is a readable, only occasionally boring, book all in all, not bad, I do wish he had made bold, precisely calculated proposals to solve the issues ahead of us, and I wish he had avoided selfpromotion entirely, because that's a bad look for billionaires.
He makes an excellent point about investment to get to carbon neutral by, i, e. ,is tomorrow in infrastructure terms, The big things we build today will still be in use in, so we need to choose wisely now, not in ten years.


In rereading the chapters to do this review, my opinion of the book went up a bit.
I do like the organization of the material, so I would recommend this book, but I would also recommend about five others to supplement it, and I'd like Bill to increase his reading on the subject as well.
He is now a key player, and he needs to collaborate with the really smart people who are working extremely hard to avoid catastrophe.
I hope he will devote his energy and fortune to that, .