Thanks to all of you brilliant scientists for trying. I’m a liberal arts guy who can read. Alarmed by the odd articles on climate years ago, I read further, Hansen, McKibben, etc. Started a local chapter of Citizen’s Climate Lobby, which still advocates for the best policy: escalating carbon tax. I built super-insulated house for my family with sufficient solar panels not only for house but also to power electric car. Lived in it for fifteen years then sold that and retrofitted a conventionally built house with extra insulation, heat pumps for everything, and max solar panels. Wrote innumerable articles for local paper trying to educate other lay people like myself.
Thirty years into the above advocacy, at age 77, I don’t regret those efforts. I always understood my early adoption required millions of others to follow suit, and hoped for snowballing public awareness to marshall political will to demand the massive government policies commensurate to the task.
I condemn Gates’s recent writing for not foreseeing it would be intentionally over-interpreted by the same-old denial forces. We can chew gum and ride a bike simultaneously.
For a brief moment my hope escalated with Biden’s attempt to bring government along. Now dashed by everything Trump.
Can the problem be located in the alarming statistics on reading levels, comprehension of science and history? Yes, but worse than that, given the surely brilliant billionaires content to frolic around the sub-Cro-magnon president.
Civilization has always been an artificial construct, an attempt to rise above Man’s inborn tendency to Nature, Tooth and Claw. In 2025 in America, the question seems not to be how much longer will civilization last, but rather when did it die?
We often treat 2100 as if it were the finish line for climate goals, but it’s really just a modeling milestone — convenient for policy, meaningless for the planet. If we haven’t reached net zero by then, the world will keep warming; and even if we do, the deep ocean, ice sheets, and ecosystems will continue to bear the effects for centuries. The year 2100 will mark not the end of the story, but the beginning of Earth’s long response to what we set in motion.
Money is a future claim on energy, and we can’t manufacture (whole system supply chain) renewables without high energy density fossil fuels so we need to analyse with this bedrock insight or be misled.
That is very unlikely to be true in the medium term. Today we still use fossil fuels to manufacture renewables, but every day the fraction diminishes, and we can expect it to go to zero or close in due course as the system decarbonises. There will still be hydrocarbon feedstocks for plastics for a long time, but that's not 'fossil fuels' (that are burned for energy).
Nonsense. Just because some fraction of high energy density diesel can be replaced with low energy density batteries which are 60 times heavier than diesel (i.e. under 2% of the energy density of hydrocarbons) doesn’t mean we can ”expect it to go to zero” because the engineering reality will prevail.
This is because we can’t mine in remote locations hauling billions of tons of rocks or farm on soft soil when the haulage trucks and ploughing tractors’ weight is half battery c/w diesel. All electric mining and agriculture would be net energy sinks and so would never be an economic possibility.
What if we just start with moving electrons in and out of batteries on slabs instead of extracting (ongoing energy consumption), processing (ongoing high energy consumption), transporting (compare the mass of molecules to electrons) and burning (all that waste heat) fossil fuel on fixed sites? We can deal with the hardest mobile application requirements later. Any objection there?
And if the energy to move machines around using batteries is close to free (in the economic sense), would that change your calculation of how "efficient" combustion engines are in those applications? How much does it cost to keep tanking up those combines? And for those "remote locations" the fuel takes longer to get where it is used.
Why is thermodynamics coming up when the issue is whether technology that can get and store energy from the wind and sun is more cost-effective than extracted, processed, transported and combusted fossil fuels for a given application? Fossil fuel is not required to produce electricity (that powers EVs, computers, high speed rail, heat pumps, elevators, aluminum smelters, arc welders, production lines, etc.).
So there are applications where [fossil?] liquid fuel might be used longer, or indefinitely. There are still stage amps that use ye olde tube technology. I saw magnetic core memory in a robot controller in 1980. Leeches are good for managing pooled blood in re-attached fingers.
How much energy to send effectively massless electrons down a cable versus how much energy to transport hydrocarbon molecules. How much energy lost as waste heat versus directly transferred via electric motor? How much coal is burned to power oil refineries?
You write “Fossil fuel is not required to produce electricity (that powers EVs, computers, high speed rail, heat pumps, elevators, aluminum smelters, arc welders, production lines, etc.).”
But you fail to mention the whole manufacturing supply chain to build the machines that can harvest low energy density solar energy flows, you rely on, from mining raw materials to build wind mills and solar panels, then balance and store their electricity outputs into real world electricity grids, let alone to then mine and manufacture all the end use machines!
Agreed. Renewables does and will rely on the use of fossile energy. There is simply no source of energy that is even close in bang for the bucks and portability. A sad fact.
Nice reasoned analysis of the Bill Gates climate memo, Zeke. One thing unaddressed here is Roger Pielke Jr.’s critique of Gates’s explanation for the recent downward revision in heating projections (less about actual emissions and more about changed scenarios?).
I’d also like more discussion of what I call “malmitigation” and Geoff Dabelko et al call climate-policy backdraft (where rich-country anti-fossil international investment policies harm historic low emitters): https://linkedin.com/video/event/urn:li:ugcPost:6980216494831853568/
But it’s a refreshingly constructive piece. And you're spot-on here:
“Our inability to have nuanced discussions about these matters is detrimental to the broader societal discussion about serious issues like climate change. The portrayal of climate as an all or nothing problem coupled with the US’s thermostatic politics (where control of government commonly switches between parties) is a recipe for a lack of clear long term action on climate or any other big societal problem that gets caught up in the politicized culture wars.”
Thanks Andy! I'd note that while Roger is right that some of the apparent progress we have made is associated with always-unlikely scenarios (e.g. RCP8.5 being the 90th percentile of no policy baselines at the time it was developed), Gates uses older IEA projections rather than RCP8.5 as his starting point for where we thought we were headed, which is more reasonable.
Ultimately the question of what would have happened in the absence of policy on climate change is the realm of subjective counterfactuals. Would clean energy costs have rapidly declined in the absence of any government funded R&D or deployment support? Was a world where we increased fossil fuel use through 2100 never possible? I included some of my thoughts on the topic in my recent Dialogues on Climate Change paper: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/29768659241304854
With respect to counter factual futures of climate scenarios, we can do much better than say we can never know.
The scenarios projecting extreme emissions have been comprehensively evaluated by Justin Ritchie (whose work Zeke cites, but also seems to always forget when we have this recurring conversation).
High emissions futures might be conceived of, however that ones that have been developed to date are implausible.
The community is presently working hard to create plausible high emissions futures, but so far are having a lot of difficulties doing so (see ScenarioMIP, to which Zeke is an advisor).
At present, it would be fair to hypothesize that climate policy has contributed to maintaining baseline rates of decarbonization. However, it would be inaccurate to claim that climate policy has altered our trajectory off of high emissions scenarios of the IEA, IPCC, or others of the past several decades. I see the appeal of the narrative, but it is just not true.
Assuming that a past linear decarbonization trajectory would continue in a changing world—regardless of shifts elsewhere in the economy—is, in my view, just as speculative as using a projected counterfactual based on the best available information at a given point in time (as Gates and many others do)
In 2008 we proposed using a frozen technology baseline as one way to clearly distinguished embedded assumptions in scenarios from introduced policy and technological change
It is worth noting that if the world could stay on the linear rate of decarbonization going forward, the world would hit net zero in the ~2070s and be within spitting distance of 2C
Thanks, interesting. My point was that I find speculative to say "policies had no impact because they didn't change the previously observed decarbonization trajectory" - it assumes that that trajectory (your Fig 1) would have continued also without policies. Maybe yes, maybe not.
This is all well and good but I think, maybe more important than the debate about emissions scenarios, we have the growing reality that the earth might be more sensitive to carbon emissions than previously anticipated. See this recent study on aerosol sensitivity: https://phys.org/news/2025-11-cleaner-air-clouds.html
Pretty much exactly what James Hansen predicted, at least directionally. That worries me a lot and at least councils some greater degree of risk aversion. I’m curious what you would say about this issue.
The inadvertent reality the unreal emissions scenarios point out is that decarbonization was, is and will be a waste of time, and a squandering of resources, on a ruinous scale. Not one decarbonization policy has made one bit of difference to the climate or to carbon emissions. As should be expected of a mega-industry that on a net basis is a zero sum grift
With respect to counter factual futures of climate scenarios, we can do much better than say we can never know.
The scenarios projecting extreme emissions have been comprehensively evaluated by Justin Ritchie (whose work Zeke cites, but also seems to always forget when we have this recurring conversation).
High emissions futures might be conceived of, however that ones that have been developed to date are implausible.
The community is presently working hard to create plausible high emissions futures, but so far are having a lot of difficulties doing so (see ScenarioMIP, to which Zeke is an advisor).
At present, it would be fair to hypothesize that climate policy has contributed to maintaining baseline rates of decarbonization. However, it would be inaccurate to claim that climate policy has altered our trajectory off of high emissions scenarios of the IEA, IPCC, or others of the past several decades. I see the appeal of the narrative, but it is just not true.
On your comment that climate policies have been limited to the maintaining of a baseline decarbonization.
One of a few inaccuracies in the Gates memo is his claim that renewables are responsible for lowering the global CO2 projections:
“Now, just a decade later, the IEA’s forecast has dropped to 30 billion, and it’s projecting that 2050 emissions will be even lower.
This progress is not part of the prevailing view of climate change, but it should be. What made it possible is that the Green Premium—the cost difference between clean and dirty ways of doing something—reached zero or became negative for solar, wind, power storage, and electric vehicles.
Gates is just another techno-optimist who doesn't want to understand the full impact of climate. The best, most accurate climate scientists now show with 95% certainty that doubling CO2/CO2-e will result in +4.8°C (+/-1.2°C) - which we're currently on track to do in the mid-2060s.
We've passed +1.5°C and we're going to hit +2.4°C around 2040, and +3.0°C around mid-2050s, no matter what we do because of systemic momentum, aerosol reduction, albedo crash, carbon sink collapse, and the fact that we're still mitting record amounts of CO2, CH4, NOx and the F-gasses, and feedback loops that are accelerating and tipping - and will ALL tip by +2.4C.
Tragically, Gates, Musk, Andreesen, Theil, Zuckerberg, et al have the power, resources, and scientific background to help humanity to make massive transformations and transitions - but they'd have to admit they screwed up and give up their techno-optimist dreams and get super practical and real about the existential threat facing human civilization, humanity, and life on Earth before it's too late.
Jonathan Wood Logan exemplifies exactly the type of mentality that Gates is pointing out. I'm not sure how climate communicators don't understand this, and thus cast blame on Gates himself rather than taking some responsibility themselves, but the total distortion is counterproductive and deeply disturbing. In fact, it’s only since Gates’ memo that I’ve noticed more nuanced discussion emerging from the usual voices, and for that, we owe him credit. Initiatives like Covering Climate Now, which aim to make climate a part of every story, are in reality undermining objective perception and fostering a kind of collective delusion, zealotry, and catastrophe fetish. Kids in the global north literally believe they have no future based on exposure to classroom materials. How on Earth can citizens make rational decisions under such conditions.
So you disagree with Dr Hansen's team's findings, and you think applying the conservative precautionary principle is "a kind of collective delusion, zealotry, and catastrophe fetish"? Also, how is my castigating Gates' wildly inaccurate and horribly irresponsible position not taking responsibility myself? What specifically is the "total distortion"? You make some fairly abrasive and remarkable claims. How about backing them up?
People preconditioned for catastrophe fetish have indeed latched onto Hansen's analysis. Regardless, if Hansen is right and consensus is wrong, no amount of GHG cuts will reach temperature targets. In this respect, temperature targets may not be a useful metric of success in our collective goals of continuing the unprecedented trend of human progress, wellness, and health that we have witnessed over the past century. Obviously, framing communications in terms of human existence being on the line does actually eliminate any possibility of nuance in dialogue, and so removing this aspect can only be beneficial. It is only since Gates' memo that the usual talking heads have remembered to mention that this isn't about existence yes or no, but how the curve of human wellness may be bent slightly downwards relative to its existing practically vertical trajectory in the 10,000 year scale of human civilization.
This “existential threat” nonsense is the cover for utopian climate activists to push a massive wind, solar, battery agenda. If the framing is existential, then lies are OK, waste is OK, and the fear-mongering will continue to encourage wasteful policies such as the uncapped, un-targeted IRA subsidies, sucking resources out of global development and pragmatic long-term low-carbon solutions such as nuclear power.
Gates is pushing back against the delusion that the Global North will coerce? bribe? the developing world into skipping fossil fuel development. What they need is gas plants for a stable grid and water pumps, and 20 lb propane tanks so that women and girls don’t spend hours every day gathering firewood, deforesting subsaharan Africa, and die by the millions of indoor air pollution from wood and charcoal smoke, not just in the bush, but in major African cities.
I've noted an institutionalized myopic slant to your editorial. Since you are under professional constraints to tame your messaging, I'll fill in the gaps, albeit without illustrations since the platform doesn't support them in the comments.
The gap in your analysis stems from treating the climate crisis as a proxy for the polycrisis. It's not.
"Gates is right to note that climate change “will not lead to humanity’s demise”, but I’d suggest that this represents a bit of a straw man. Outside a fringe community of climate doomers there are few who think that climate change could realistically threaten the extinction of the human race (though some folks need to be a bit cautious about throwing around the term “existential threat” willy nilly). As the climate scientist Steven Schneider was fond of saying, for climate change “the end of the world and good for you are the two lowest probability outcomes”."
Climate scientists insist on scientific objectivity while relying on the politicized IPCC as their guidepost. Need I remind you that the oil barons ran the latest COP? I shouldn't have to.
The IPCC has consistently underestimated the damage from climate change. Even today, we are at the 1.5C threshold for the past 2 years that IPCC climate scientists characterized as 'safe' and that the IPCC originally predicted wouldn't happen for at least another decade, if at all, because we were making progress on our voluntary goals.
1.5C is not 'safe', despite us not even having the 20 years of temperature history required by the IPCC to conclusively demonstrate that the long-term trend in average temperature has crossed that threshold. A mere 2 years of blip temperatures is enough to convince everyone with open eyes that the climate crisis is already here.
My own amateur modeling of compensated sea surface temperatures indicates that the elusive unmodeled portion of 2023 warming likely came from supercooled polar water vapor after Hunga Tonga. I've mentioned this to you and other climate scientists repeatedly, asking you to take a closer look at my Twitter timeline for hints rather than relying upon unvalidated atmospheric modeling that ignores the admittedly problematic underestimation of polar amplification, but you all have collectively ignored me. The likelihood of analyzing this possibility with scientific rigor is fading now that even our satellites are under attack from budget cuts while the data repositories I'm using for my model become less available and reliable.
Hunga Tonga isn't a convenient denialist talking point. It's a warning that compounding rare natural climate variations with anthropogenic climate change is a recipe for unpredictable disaster. Hunga Tonga likely perched us upon that 'safe' 1.5 threshold for 8 years, from 2023 straight through 2031, costing trillions in damages and delaying all of our mitigation efforts as we re-align financing toward adaptive strategies.
Meanwhile, Covid-19 has become a pervasive disabling lethal pandemic that persists long after liberal western democracies declared it over. We've backed down our mitigation efforts there too by largely ignoring clean indoor air efforts, masking, distancing, isolating, and testing, instead relying upon adaptive immunity via a leaky vaccine that doesn't stop the spread and threatens to weaponize SARS2 in a similar manner to Marek's and other feedlot pathogens.
Anti-vaxx sentiment is growing even as governments collectively sigh while defunding even our paltry vaccination efforts. The right wing government of the United States grudgingly held a long Covid symposium with only one masked participant, then immediately forgot all about its lofty goals afterward.
The cost is more than just financial. New generations are being born with pervasive developmental disabilities as existing younger generations are dropping dead of heart attacks in alarming numbers. The right wing blames the carnage on vaccines instead of the virus that is likely a lab leak despite the desperate attempts of China and the US to pretend otherwise. Our best and brightest future climate scientists will be recruited from a pool of brain-damaged zombies by establishment adults who already have pervasive brain damage themselves from this horrific disease, as imaged and clinically recognized in multiple peer-reviewed studies.
Anyone who thinks that people will solve the polycrisis while afflicted with intensifying brain damage from ongoing infections by each new variant is fooling themselves.
"The portrayal of climate as an all or nothing problem coupled with the US’s thermostatic politics (where control of government commonly switches between parties) is a recipe for a lack of clear long term action on climate or any other big societal problem that gets caught up in the politicized culture wars."
Liberals in western governments have driven development. The capitalistic imperative of enlightened self-interest is cultivated by the scientifically educated rational elite. In the US, Democratic presidents have created twice as many jobs as Republicans from FDR to Trump 45, comparing peak cumulative jobs. Ignoring the peaks, the ratio is two and a half times as many jobs created. Democrats have also controlled majorities in Congress for twice as many months as Republicans over the same time span.
Democrats run the show. They take donations from the same oligarchical ruling class as Republicans, and then blame their congressional failures on Republicans while hiding behind the Parliamentarian. If that unconstitutional mechanism for stymieing progress isn't available, Democrats spoil their own majorities by farming out the 'bad guy' defector status to select Democratic candidates in safe districts.
It's the same story globally. Liberals in western nations always find a way to promote 'all of the above' energy policy along with every other polluting yet profitable technology, and do it far more effectively than ideologically-driven and ineffective conservatives.
In fact, liberals in the US especially go out of their way to court conservatives. Hillary Clinton backed Trump in the 2016 primary because she assumed his fascistic populism would repel independent voters. Kamala Harris refused to distance herself from Biden's genocidal funding of Israeli aggression even after voters were denied a Democratic primary.
Your partisan analysis is shortsighted and ahistorical. The common theme in liberal western democratic republics is how unified they are in promoting economic development at all costs regardless of who is in power.
"A world of unabated climate change will impact the poor most severely. Addressing it requires two strategies in tandem: prioritizing development and poverty alleviation to build adaptive capacity (and human flourishing), and reducing emissions rapidly in middle and upper-income countries to mitigate future climate impacts and drive down the cost of clean energy technologies so they can be more readily adopted by low income countries. Perhaps I’m unduly optimistic, but I think that society should be able to do both."
This analysis is likewise shortsighted. You are ignoring the fact that a collapsing industrial civilization will turn industrialized urban cities into death traps. No one will be spared except those who never industrialized in the first place and rely upon local economies, especially those indigenous societies closer to the poles where industrial civilization has not yet perfused them with global economics and global warming is a net benefit to their agriculture.
Your claim that the poor will be hurt the worst is only valid in the short term, like the rest of your analysis. In the long term, the developed world that relies upon redistribution of resources from rural agrarian communities to urbanized technological communities will be the most affected and worst hurt.
Also, as climate refugees aggregate toward the poles, remember that the available land area shinks precipitously. The globe is a lot smaller at the higher latitudes. This will intensify population pressure not only on humans but on all species that are also migrating toward the poles even now.
I find Michael Mann's critique for more persuasive: https://thebulletin.org/2025/10/you-cant-reboot-the-planet-if-you-crash-it/ including this: "What Gates is putting forward aren’t legitimate arguments that can be made in good faith. They are shopworn fossil fuel industry talking points. Being found parroting them is every bit as embarrassing as being caught—metaphorically speaking—with your pants down and "Such technofixes for the climate, in fact, lead us down a dangerous road, both because they displace far safer and more reliable options—namely the clean energy transition—and because they provide an excuse for business-as-usual burning of fossil fuels. Why decarbonize, after all, if we can just solve the problem with a “patch” later?"
Yep, both the green revolution and the 'polio eradication' project in India were complete disasters which left farmers and people who developed acute flaccid paralysis more dependent on aid than ever before.
Gates fortune is stolen from workers and colonised countries in the first place. The fact that he appears to give some of it back in the form of charity or philanthropy is a joke. He didn't deserve or earn his fortune, he doesn't get any points for giving some of it back especially when this is a way to get tax breaks, force governments to invest in his companies in return for it and to exert greater political control. The poor don't need charity they need to stop being exploited and neo-colonised. https://jowaller.substack.com/p/piss-off-out-of-africa-bill-gates?utm_source=publication-search
It's like a robber takes everything in your house and then says I'll give you back a chair if you promise to buy a cushion from me in return.
PS I disagree with the guardian about giving people vaccines being a good thing;
Here's the sitch -There were 350,000 ‘cases’ of polio globally in 1988 when the Global polio eradication Initiative was launched by the WHO and Gates. However, mass vaccination campaigns in China and India’s national polio campaign did not begin until 1995/6 when the incidence had already fallen (for other reasons) to 49,000 cases globally, so it wasn't GPEI that led to a 99% drop. ‘Cases’ leading to paralysis had already fallen from 50,000 in 1980 to 4,000 in 1995 by the time the program was introduced. By 2008 there were 1600 ‘cases’ globally, though the drop was not necessarily due to the program. Indeed, from a report on the program in India written in 2010 ‘With only 66 cases of WPV infection in 2005, India was seemingly at the threshold of eradicating polio; however, the 10-fold rise in cases of infection by WPV observed over the four ensuing years has put the goal beyond reach.’
Appreciating your perspective on the lack of nuance in our public dialogue, but it is precisely this issue that Gates should have taken into consideration when he set up the doomsday strawman, and urged a shift in resource priorities. The optics were terrible considering his previous how-to-prevent-a-disaster framing, appearing to signal a retreat. That opened the door for the deniers, from the President on down. He should have realized they would not just misread it, but deliberately twist it.
I also appreciated the analysis of where the actual money is spent, and the unlikelihood money diverted from mitigation in the north would go to adaptation and development in the south. Additionally, framing this as a zero-sum game is mistaken when it is clear that vastly expanded resources are needed for all these challenges. If he has to change priorities at his foundation because of the AID cuts, understood. But we need more globally.
Finally, seeming to downplay the horrendous implications of 3 deg. C seems blithe. The increased risk of crossing tipping points in rainforests, polar ice and ocean currents says we cannot de-prioritize emissions reductions in any way. I appreciate Daniel Swain’s short video which hits this point and the general scenario for 3 deg. C. I think it is quite balanced. https://youtu.be/Nd_iYnzEmYQ?si=x6ZMuSo7FIWpqle3. As you point out in this piece, there are also vast uncertainties. Hansen’s recent work on climate sensitivity is notable. And we still don’t understand the recent temperature spikes. Downplaying all this as Gates did is unhelpful.
First; started swearing already- triggered much. What do you think the HIV market is worth? HIV has been around since the mid 80s ‘The global HIV drug market was valued at approximately $32.8 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach around $44.5 billion by 2030, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of about 5.2%. Other sources estimate the market size differently, with figures around $33.92 billion for 2024 and forecasts varying between $46.30 billion and $49.68 billion by 2032’ So 20 years- say on average $20 billion per year thats 400 billion not including research grants, the testing market nor attempts at vaccine development grants.
And this is what you take out of my comment? Hey ho. Trillions is an expression, however,
Bill Gates has allowed pharma to make $80 billion in 2025 globally by peddling totally unnecessary and harmful vaccines. We’ve had vaccines for about 60 years. If $40 billion on average that’s $2.4 trillion so far- not counting profits from drugs for vaccine induced injuries.
Now, what I take from your comments is that you a) don't know what a trillion, b) you don't care about precision and c) tend to be emotional and overly dramatic.
What about the claims that Gates initiative readically increased incidences of "acute flaccid paralysis"?
This is a complex and often-cited claim that requires careful explanation, as it involves the nuances of polio surveillance, the type of vaccine used, and differing interpretations of public health data.
The claim is that the Gates Foundation-backed polio eradication efforts, particularly the mass use of the Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) in countries like India, led to a radical increase in cases of Non-Polio Acute Flaccid Paralysis (NPAFP).
Here is a breakdown of the facts and the context surrounding this claim:
1. Acute Flaccid Paralysis (AFP) Surveillance
AFP is the Sentinel for Polio: Acute Flaccid Paralysis (AFP) is the clinical symptom that poliovirus causes (sudden onset of paralysis or weakness). The Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), which the Gates Foundation co-funds, requires a hyper-sensitive surveillance system that actively seeks out every case of AFP in children under 15.
Non-Polio AFP (NPAFP) Rate: When an AFP case is investigated and tests negative for poliovirus, it is classified as NPAFP. The World Health Organization (WHO) sets a minimum benchmark for surveillance sensitivity: a non-polio AFP rate of ≥1 per 100,000 children under 15 (some recommend ≥2).
Reason for High Rates: A very high NPAFP rate (like those seen in India, sometimes exceeding 10 per 100,000) is often cited by public health officials as evidence of an extremely sensitive and robust surveillance system, which is essential for proving the absence of wild poliovirus. The system is so good at finding paralysis cases that are not polio, it confirms that if wild polio were circulating, it would be found immediately.
2. The Link to the Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV)
The more serious aspect of the claim links the mass immunization campaigns (Pulse Polio) using Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) to the increase in NPAFP.
OPV's Small Risk: OPV uses a live, weakened (attenuated) virus. In extremely rare instances, this weakened virus can mutate as it replicates in the gut and is shed, potentially regaining the ability to cause paralysis. This is called Vaccine-Associated Paralytic Polio (VAPP) or, if it spreads in under-immunized communities, Circulating Vaccine-Derived Poliovirus (cVDPV).
The NPAFP Hypothesis: Some medical researchers, particularly in India, published studies arguing that the aggressive, high-frequency OPV vaccination campaigns (partially funded by the Gates Foundation) led to the high rates of NPAFP. Their hypothesis is that the OPV, or the frequency of its administration, may be associated with an increase in paralysis caused by other non-polio enteroviruses (like Coxsackie or echoviruses) that share similar symptoms.
Correlation vs. Causation: While a correlation was shown in some data between high OPV campaign intensity and high NPAFP rates in certain high-risk states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, major global health bodies generally do not accept this as proof of a direct causal link. The increase in NPAFP is primarily attributed to the massive increase in surveillance intensity, which detects other causes of paralysis (e.g., Guillain-Barré syndrome, other viral infections) that went previously undiagnosed and unrecorded.
3. The Shift to IPV and the Gates Foundation's Response
The Gates Foundation and the GPEI have acknowledged the rare risk associated with the live-virus OPV and have implemented a global strategy to address it:
Global Transition to IPV: Once a region is certified wild polio-free, the GPEI strategy mandates a shift away from OPV to the Inactivated Polio Vaccine (IPV), which is injectable and contains no live virus, eliminating the risk of VAPP and cVDPV. India completed this transition after being certified polio-free.
Novel Oral Polio Vaccine (nOPV2): The Gates Foundation has invested heavily in the development and deployment of a novel Oral Polio Vaccine Type 2 (nOPV2), which is genetically modified to be significantly more stable and far less likely to mutate into a disease-causing strain. This is the new primary tool used to stop circulating vaccine-derived outbreaks.
In summary, the high rates of NPAFP are interpreted by the GPEI (and the Gates Foundation) as a sign of successful surveillance. Claims linking the OPV directly to a massive increase in paralysis that is not polio are considered a controversial hypothesis by the mainstream public health community, although they are based on a real phenomenon: the rare occurrence of VAPP/cVDPV from the oral vaccine and the simultaneous detection of many non-polio paralytic conditions due to intense surveillance.
Would you like to know more about the difference between the Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) and the Inactivated Polio Vaccine (IPV)?
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has made polio eradication a top priority, acting as one of the key partners and financial drivers in the final push to eliminate the disease globally.
Here is a breakdown of what the Gates Foundation has done regarding polio:
🎯 Key Actions and Contributions
The foundation's strategy centers on supporting the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), a major public-private partnership.
Massive Financial Commitment:
The Gates Foundation has contributed nearly $5 billion to the GPEI since joining in 2007.
In 2022, the foundation announced a commitment of $1.2 billion to support the GPEI's Polio Eradication Strategy 2022-2026.
They often work with Rotary International, matching their fundraising efforts (e.g., matching $1 from Rotary with $2 from the Gates Foundation for a joint commitment of up to $450 million in a recent partnership renewal).
Vaccine Innovation and Development:
They have heavily invested in research leading to the development and rollout of the novel Oral Polio Vaccine Type 2 (nOPV2). This next-generation vaccine is specifically designed to stop outbreaks of Type 2 variant poliovirus—the most prevalent form of the variant virus—and is far less likely to mutate back into a form that can cause paralysis.
Strengthening Surveillance and Outbreak Response:
The foundation funds efforts to improve polio surveillance, including supporting the establishment of new labs in regions like the WHO African Region. These labs test wastewater samples and sequence viruses, significantly cutting detection times and giving health workers a critical head start on outbreak response.
Improving Immunization Delivery:
They provide technical and financial support to countries to execute high-quality polio vaccination campaigns, especially in the two remaining wild poliovirus endemic countries (Pakistan and Afghanistan) and countries facing variant poliovirus outbreaks.
The foundation supports the integration of polio campaigns with routine immunization systems, ensuring children also receive other essential vaccines (like measles) and strengthening overall national health systems.
Advocacy and Partnership Galvanization:
Bill Gates, in particular, has been a major advocate, using his voice to keep polio eradication on the agenda of world leaders and galvanize financial support from governments and other donors.
If we look at the history of rural electrification in the United States and where unsustainable and unhealthy sources of energy are being used today, it’s clear that development and electrification can (and sometimes must) work together. Providing electricity to Indian villages powered by LPG cylinders will cut their costs and reduce their carbon emissions. Providing electricity to a household using solid fuels to cook… will make them both healthier and wealthier.
You write: “[…] and reducing emissions rapidly in middle and upper-income countries to mitigate future climate impacts and drive down the cost of clean energy technologies so they can be more readily adopted by low income countries.”
When you say rapidly, what period do you have in mind? Do you accept IPCC’s suggestion that we should reduce the global emissions by almost half by 2030?
Moreover, regardless if we can make clean energy cheap enough, do you think it is possible to shift towards clean energy within the period of what you consider rapidly?
Finally, can we replace fossil fuels with clean energy for all the purposes that fossil fuels are currently used?
My understanding of the last two questions is no. However, you may know better.
Global emissions are not going to be cut in half in five years (indeed, they likely increased in 2025), so tying the rate of needed action to that particular goal is not feasible any more.
We can replace effectively all fossil energy with clean energy; there are no particular laws of physics or chemistry that prevent this. The hardest bits are for chemistry but those are a small portion of overall emissions, and even there biological-based carbon can be substituted. Non-CO2 GHG emissions in agriculture is actually the more challenging sector, but those are not energy based.
If you don't mind, I have a follow-up, since you did not clarify what you consider rapid enough (from what I have understood, time is an important factor to consider within this debate, if I may call it like that).
I assume your understanding of how rapidly emissions should be reduced is not determined by how fast clean energy could replace fossil fuels. There are two ways to reduce emissions, either by reducing the amount of goods and services we produce or replace the energy we use to produce them with cleaner energy. Since you focus on clean energy, I assume you think it is possible to reduce emissions within the timeframe of what you consider rapidly by shifting to cleaner energy.
Discussions I've had with various stakeholders in the green transition have told me that this transition could theoretically happen by 2045 (under many, quite unrealistic I would say, preconditions). Nonetheless, do you think 2045 is rapid enough or by that time the impacts of climate change will be too bad? Or, perhaps, do you think that the impacts will indeed be too bad by 2045 but this is not a problem because the transition could in fact happen before that, thus avoiding those impacts?
Based on my analysis while taking many factors into account, we do not have the luxury of time and this is why I consider reducing immediately a big amount of the things we produce to be necessary, until we switch to clean energy and start producing them again. But I may have missed something regarding how fast the transition to clean energy can be or how risky it actually is to keep emitting greenhouse gas emissions while trying to shift to clean energy.
I'd be ecstatic if could get global emissions to zero by 2045. But ultimately (and probably for good reason) I and other scientists are not the ones who determine this. Policymakers and the broader public get to choose, and anything that makes it easier for them to prioritize mitigation (e.g. by reducing its cost) is going to result in a lower temperature outcome.
We can speculate all day about the pros and cons of "reducing immediately a big amount of the things we produce", but its academic since no government in the real world is actually going to do it.
I agree that no current government would be willing to embrace a policy of reducing many of the things we produce at the moment. But governments come and go, at least in modern democracies. If a reduction in what we produce and consume is necessary, or preferable, then perhaps we should try to show that to the broader public so that they choose that. Certainly, it would be easier to choose shifting towards clean energy, and anything that makes that transition easier should be pursued too.
Yes, Gates does indeed set up a false dichotomy because the actions that will address the climate crisis will, of course, also address global inequality and health.
These actions involve lessening the power and wealth of billionaires, like Gates himself, who made their fortunes in pharma, fossil fuels, animal ag (pharma's biggest client), tech, media, finance and arms.
Not only does ceasing to burn fossil fuels reduce respiratory illness and drug markets, it addresses the climate crisis which will affect the poor and the Global south the most.
Not only does educating ourselves about vaccines and adopting a plant based lifestyle, again reducing vaccine and drug markets and improving health; it also addresses the climate crisis by allowing sequestration by the reforestation of 5/6ths of the land currently used to grow food.
Not only does local independent energy production prevent wars over resources it also addresses the climate crisis and improves the lives of millions.
Not only does lessening the power of billionaires address inequality and health it also addresses the climate crisis.
Thanks to all of you brilliant scientists for trying. I’m a liberal arts guy who can read. Alarmed by the odd articles on climate years ago, I read further, Hansen, McKibben, etc. Started a local chapter of Citizen’s Climate Lobby, which still advocates for the best policy: escalating carbon tax. I built super-insulated house for my family with sufficient solar panels not only for house but also to power electric car. Lived in it for fifteen years then sold that and retrofitted a conventionally built house with extra insulation, heat pumps for everything, and max solar panels. Wrote innumerable articles for local paper trying to educate other lay people like myself.
Thirty years into the above advocacy, at age 77, I don’t regret those efforts. I always understood my early adoption required millions of others to follow suit, and hoped for snowballing public awareness to marshall political will to demand the massive government policies commensurate to the task.
I condemn Gates’s recent writing for not foreseeing it would be intentionally over-interpreted by the same-old denial forces. We can chew gum and ride a bike simultaneously.
For a brief moment my hope escalated with Biden’s attempt to bring government along. Now dashed by everything Trump.
Can the problem be located in the alarming statistics on reading levels, comprehension of science and history? Yes, but worse than that, given the surely brilliant billionaires content to frolic around the sub-Cro-magnon president.
Civilization has always been an artificial construct, an attempt to rise above Man’s inborn tendency to Nature, Tooth and Claw. In 2025 in America, the question seems not to be how much longer will civilization last, but rather when did it die?
We often treat 2100 as if it were the finish line for climate goals, but it’s really just a modeling milestone — convenient for policy, meaningless for the planet. If we haven’t reached net zero by then, the world will keep warming; and even if we do, the deep ocean, ice sheets, and ecosystems will continue to bear the effects for centuries. The year 2100 will mark not the end of the story, but the beginning of Earth’s long response to what we set in motion.
Money is a future claim on energy, and we can’t manufacture (whole system supply chain) renewables without high energy density fossil fuels so we need to analyse with this bedrock insight or be misled.
That is very unlikely to be true in the medium term. Today we still use fossil fuels to manufacture renewables, but every day the fraction diminishes, and we can expect it to go to zero or close in due course as the system decarbonises. There will still be hydrocarbon feedstocks for plastics for a long time, but that's not 'fossil fuels' (that are burned for energy).
Nonsense. Just because some fraction of high energy density diesel can be replaced with low energy density batteries which are 60 times heavier than diesel (i.e. under 2% of the energy density of hydrocarbons) doesn’t mean we can ”expect it to go to zero” because the engineering reality will prevail.
This is because we can’t mine in remote locations hauling billions of tons of rocks or farm on soft soil when the haulage trucks and ploughing tractors’ weight is half battery c/w diesel. All electric mining and agriculture would be net energy sinks and so would never be an economic possibility.
What if we just start with moving electrons in and out of batteries on slabs instead of extracting (ongoing energy consumption), processing (ongoing high energy consumption), transporting (compare the mass of molecules to electrons) and burning (all that waste heat) fossil fuel on fixed sites? We can deal with the hardest mobile application requirements later. Any objection there?
And if the energy to move machines around using batteries is close to free (in the economic sense), would that change your calculation of how "efficient" combustion engines are in those applications? How much does it cost to keep tanking up those combines? And for those "remote locations" the fuel takes longer to get where it is used.
“What if we just start with moving electrons” but that takes energy! So no your suggestion doesn’t help the thermodynamics of our predicament.
Is this a joke?
Why is thermodynamics coming up when the issue is whether technology that can get and store energy from the wind and sun is more cost-effective than extracted, processed, transported and combusted fossil fuels for a given application? Fossil fuel is not required to produce electricity (that powers EVs, computers, high speed rail, heat pumps, elevators, aluminum smelters, arc welders, production lines, etc.).
So there are applications where [fossil?] liquid fuel might be used longer, or indefinitely. There are still stage amps that use ye olde tube technology. I saw magnetic core memory in a robot controller in 1980. Leeches are good for managing pooled blood in re-attached fingers.
How much energy to send effectively massless electrons down a cable versus how much energy to transport hydrocarbon molecules. How much energy lost as waste heat versus directly transferred via electric motor? How much coal is burned to power oil refineries?
You write “Fossil fuel is not required to produce electricity (that powers EVs, computers, high speed rail, heat pumps, elevators, aluminum smelters, arc welders, production lines, etc.).”
But you fail to mention the whole manufacturing supply chain to build the machines that can harvest low energy density solar energy flows, you rely on, from mining raw materials to build wind mills and solar panels, then balance and store their electricity outputs into real world electricity grids, let alone to then mine and manufacture all the end use machines!
Sorry but your reply is incoherent. Thermodynamics are the the laws of physics that govern all the processes you cite.
Agreed. Renewables does and will rely on the use of fossile energy. There is simply no source of energy that is even close in bang for the bucks and portability. A sad fact.
Nice reasoned analysis of the Bill Gates climate memo, Zeke. One thing unaddressed here is Roger Pielke Jr.’s critique of Gates’s explanation for the recent downward revision in heating projections (less about actual emissions and more about changed scenarios?).
I’d also like more discussion of what I call “malmitigation” and Geoff Dabelko et al call climate-policy backdraft (where rich-country anti-fossil international investment policies harm historic low emitters): https://linkedin.com/video/event/urn:li:ugcPost:6980216494831853568/
But it’s a refreshingly constructive piece. And you're spot-on here:
“Our inability to have nuanced discussions about these matters is detrimental to the broader societal discussion about serious issues like climate change. The portrayal of climate as an all or nothing problem coupled with the US’s thermostatic politics (where control of government commonly switches between parties) is a recipe for a lack of clear long term action on climate or any other big societal problem that gets caught up in the politicized culture wars.”
Thanks Andy! I'd note that while Roger is right that some of the apparent progress we have made is associated with always-unlikely scenarios (e.g. RCP8.5 being the 90th percentile of no policy baselines at the time it was developed), Gates uses older IEA projections rather than RCP8.5 as his starting point for where we thought we were headed, which is more reasonable.
Ultimately the question of what would have happened in the absence of policy on climate change is the realm of subjective counterfactuals. Would clean energy costs have rapidly declined in the absence of any government funded R&D or deployment support? Was a world where we increased fossil fuel use through 2100 never possible? I included some of my thoughts on the topic in my recent Dialogues on Climate Change paper: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/29768659241304854
We don’t need future counterfactuals to assess progress-to-date on decarbonization.
Here the evidence is unequivocal that the 60+ trend in decarbonization of the global economy has seen no inflection point:
See Fig 1 here: https://open.substack.com/pub/rogerpielkejr/p/understanding-decarbonization
With respect to counter factual futures of climate scenarios, we can do much better than say we can never know.
The scenarios projecting extreme emissions have been comprehensively evaluated by Justin Ritchie (whose work Zeke cites, but also seems to always forget when we have this recurring conversation).
High emissions futures might be conceived of, however that ones that have been developed to date are implausible.
The community is presently working hard to create plausible high emissions futures, but so far are having a lot of difficulties doing so (see ScenarioMIP, to which Zeke is an advisor).
At present, it would be fair to hypothesize that climate policy has contributed to maintaining baseline rates of decarbonization. However, it would be inaccurate to claim that climate policy has altered our trajectory off of high emissions scenarios of the IEA, IPCC, or others of the past several decades. I see the appeal of the narrative, but it is just not true.
Assuming that a past linear decarbonization trajectory would continue in a changing world—regardless of shifts elsewhere in the economy—is, in my view, just as speculative as using a projected counterfactual based on the best available information at a given point in time (as Gates and many others do)
No scenario uses such an assumption
See:
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0091-3
In 2008 we proposed using a frozen technology baseline as one way to clearly distinguished embedded assumptions in scenarios from introduced policy and technological change
It is worth noting that if the world could stay on the linear rate of decarbonization going forward, the world would hit net zero in the ~2070s and be within spitting distance of 2C
Thanks, interesting. My point was that I find speculative to say "policies had no impact because they didn't change the previously observed decarbonization trajectory" - it assumes that that trajectory (your Fig 1) would have continued also without policies. Maybe yes, maybe not.
This is all well and good but I think, maybe more important than the debate about emissions scenarios, we have the growing reality that the earth might be more sensitive to carbon emissions than previously anticipated. See this recent study on aerosol sensitivity: https://phys.org/news/2025-11-cleaner-air-clouds.html
Pretty much exactly what James Hansen predicted, at least directionally. That worries me a lot and at least councils some greater degree of risk aversion. I’m curious what you would say about this issue.
The inadvertent reality the unreal emissions scenarios point out is that decarbonization was, is and will be a waste of time, and a squandering of resources, on a ruinous scale. Not one decarbonization policy has made one bit of difference to the climate or to carbon emissions. As should be expected of a mega-industry that on a net basis is a zero sum grift
Roger - I don’t understand your post as there is a clear decarbonization inflection point in the global economy starting in 2012. Here is the analysis https://carbonalpha.substack.com/p/peak-carbon-when-did-growth-start
We don’t need future counterfactuals to assess progress-to-date on decarbonization.
Here the evidence is unequivocal that the 60+ year trend in decarbonization of the global economy has seen no inflection point:
See Fig 1 here: https://open.substack.com/pub/rogerpielkejr/p/understanding-decarbonization
With respect to counter factual futures of climate scenarios, we can do much better than say we can never know.
The scenarios projecting extreme emissions have been comprehensively evaluated by Justin Ritchie (whose work Zeke cites, but also seems to always forget when we have this recurring conversation).
High emissions futures might be conceived of, however that ones that have been developed to date are implausible.
The community is presently working hard to create plausible high emissions futures, but so far are having a lot of difficulties doing so (see ScenarioMIP, to which Zeke is an advisor).
At present, it would be fair to hypothesize that climate policy has contributed to maintaining baseline rates of decarbonization. However, it would be inaccurate to claim that climate policy has altered our trajectory off of high emissions scenarios of the IEA, IPCC, or others of the past several decades. I see the appeal of the narrative, but it is just not true.
Roger,
On your comment that climate policies have been limited to the maintaining of a baseline decarbonization.
One of a few inaccuracies in the Gates memo is his claim that renewables are responsible for lowering the global CO2 projections:
“Now, just a decade later, the IEA’s forecast has dropped to 30 billion, and it’s projecting that 2050 emissions will be even lower.
This progress is not part of the prevailing view of climate change, but it should be. What made it possible is that the Green Premium—the cost difference between clean and dirty ways of doing something—reached zero or became negative for solar, wind, power storage, and electric vehicles.
Gates is just another techno-optimist who doesn't want to understand the full impact of climate. The best, most accurate climate scientists now show with 95% certainty that doubling CO2/CO2-e will result in +4.8°C (+/-1.2°C) - which we're currently on track to do in the mid-2060s.
We've passed +1.5°C and we're going to hit +2.4°C around 2040, and +3.0°C around mid-2050s, no matter what we do because of systemic momentum, aerosol reduction, albedo crash, carbon sink collapse, and the fact that we're still mitting record amounts of CO2, CH4, NOx and the F-gasses, and feedback loops that are accelerating and tipping - and will ALL tip by +2.4C.
Tragically, Gates, Musk, Andreesen, Theil, Zuckerberg, et al have the power, resources, and scientific background to help humanity to make massive transformations and transitions - but they'd have to admit they screwed up and give up their techno-optimist dreams and get super practical and real about the existential threat facing human civilization, humanity, and life on Earth before it's too late.
I'm sad that I'm not one of the "most accurate climate scientists", given that my work suggests a 95% chance of ECS between 2C and 5C ;-)
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019rg000678
Zeke, Just so I understand:
Your analysis lands in a temp increase that is roughly in the same ballpark as Hansen et al or do I misread your comment?
And thanks for your assessmant of Gates latest.
Hansen's projections are more or less the same as the latest generation of climate models (CMIP6). I think it will be a bit below that, similar to the IPCC's assessed warming values but still an acceleration relative to historical warming rates. You can see a discussion of the differences here: https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-why-the-recent-acceleration-in-global-warming-is-what-scientists-expect/
Well played, Zeke! Well played! Glad to learn of your efforts. What do you think of Hansen et al's +4.8°C (+/-1.2°C) assessment?
Jonathan Wood Logan exemplifies exactly the type of mentality that Gates is pointing out. I'm not sure how climate communicators don't understand this, and thus cast blame on Gates himself rather than taking some responsibility themselves, but the total distortion is counterproductive and deeply disturbing. In fact, it’s only since Gates’ memo that I’ve noticed more nuanced discussion emerging from the usual voices, and for that, we owe him credit. Initiatives like Covering Climate Now, which aim to make climate a part of every story, are in reality undermining objective perception and fostering a kind of collective delusion, zealotry, and catastrophe fetish. Kids in the global north literally believe they have no future based on exposure to classroom materials. How on Earth can citizens make rational decisions under such conditions.
So you disagree with Dr Hansen's team's findings, and you think applying the conservative precautionary principle is "a kind of collective delusion, zealotry, and catastrophe fetish"? Also, how is my castigating Gates' wildly inaccurate and horribly irresponsible position not taking responsibility myself? What specifically is the "total distortion"? You make some fairly abrasive and remarkable claims. How about backing them up?
People preconditioned for catastrophe fetish have indeed latched onto Hansen's analysis. Regardless, if Hansen is right and consensus is wrong, no amount of GHG cuts will reach temperature targets. In this respect, temperature targets may not be a useful metric of success in our collective goals of continuing the unprecedented trend of human progress, wellness, and health that we have witnessed over the past century. Obviously, framing communications in terms of human existence being on the line does actually eliminate any possibility of nuance in dialogue, and so removing this aspect can only be beneficial. It is only since Gates' memo that the usual talking heads have remembered to mention that this isn't about existence yes or no, but how the curve of human wellness may be bent slightly downwards relative to its existing practically vertical trajectory in the 10,000 year scale of human civilization.
JAM,
Thanks for criticizing climate doomerism.
This “existential threat” nonsense is the cover for utopian climate activists to push a massive wind, solar, battery agenda. If the framing is existential, then lies are OK, waste is OK, and the fear-mongering will continue to encourage wasteful policies such as the uncapped, un-targeted IRA subsidies, sucking resources out of global development and pragmatic long-term low-carbon solutions such as nuclear power.
Gates is pushing back against the delusion that the Global North will coerce? bribe? the developing world into skipping fossil fuel development. What they need is gas plants for a stable grid and water pumps, and 20 lb propane tanks so that women and girls don’t spend hours every day gathering firewood, deforesting subsaharan Africa, and die by the millions of indoor air pollution from wood and charcoal smoke, not just in the bush, but in major African cities.
I've noted an institutionalized myopic slant to your editorial. Since you are under professional constraints to tame your messaging, I'll fill in the gaps, albeit without illustrations since the platform doesn't support them in the comments.
The gap in your analysis stems from treating the climate crisis as a proxy for the polycrisis. It's not.
"Gates is right to note that climate change “will not lead to humanity’s demise”, but I’d suggest that this represents a bit of a straw man. Outside a fringe community of climate doomers there are few who think that climate change could realistically threaten the extinction of the human race (though some folks need to be a bit cautious about throwing around the term “existential threat” willy nilly). As the climate scientist Steven Schneider was fond of saying, for climate change “the end of the world and good for you are the two lowest probability outcomes”."
Climate scientists insist on scientific objectivity while relying on the politicized IPCC as their guidepost. Need I remind you that the oil barons ran the latest COP? I shouldn't have to.
The IPCC has consistently underestimated the damage from climate change. Even today, we are at the 1.5C threshold for the past 2 years that IPCC climate scientists characterized as 'safe' and that the IPCC originally predicted wouldn't happen for at least another decade, if at all, because we were making progress on our voluntary goals.
1.5C is not 'safe', despite us not even having the 20 years of temperature history required by the IPCC to conclusively demonstrate that the long-term trend in average temperature has crossed that threshold. A mere 2 years of blip temperatures is enough to convince everyone with open eyes that the climate crisis is already here.
My own amateur modeling of compensated sea surface temperatures indicates that the elusive unmodeled portion of 2023 warming likely came from supercooled polar water vapor after Hunga Tonga. I've mentioned this to you and other climate scientists repeatedly, asking you to take a closer look at my Twitter timeline for hints rather than relying upon unvalidated atmospheric modeling that ignores the admittedly problematic underestimation of polar amplification, but you all have collectively ignored me. The likelihood of analyzing this possibility with scientific rigor is fading now that even our satellites are under attack from budget cuts while the data repositories I'm using for my model become less available and reliable.
Hunga Tonga isn't a convenient denialist talking point. It's a warning that compounding rare natural climate variations with anthropogenic climate change is a recipe for unpredictable disaster. Hunga Tonga likely perched us upon that 'safe' 1.5 threshold for 8 years, from 2023 straight through 2031, costing trillions in damages and delaying all of our mitigation efforts as we re-align financing toward adaptive strategies.
Meanwhile, Covid-19 has become a pervasive disabling lethal pandemic that persists long after liberal western democracies declared it over. We've backed down our mitigation efforts there too by largely ignoring clean indoor air efforts, masking, distancing, isolating, and testing, instead relying upon adaptive immunity via a leaky vaccine that doesn't stop the spread and threatens to weaponize SARS2 in a similar manner to Marek's and other feedlot pathogens.
Anti-vaxx sentiment is growing even as governments collectively sigh while defunding even our paltry vaccination efforts. The right wing government of the United States grudgingly held a long Covid symposium with only one masked participant, then immediately forgot all about its lofty goals afterward.
The cost is more than just financial. New generations are being born with pervasive developmental disabilities as existing younger generations are dropping dead of heart attacks in alarming numbers. The right wing blames the carnage on vaccines instead of the virus that is likely a lab leak despite the desperate attempts of China and the US to pretend otherwise. Our best and brightest future climate scientists will be recruited from a pool of brain-damaged zombies by establishment adults who already have pervasive brain damage themselves from this horrific disease, as imaged and clinically recognized in multiple peer-reviewed studies.
Anyone who thinks that people will solve the polycrisis while afflicted with intensifying brain damage from ongoing infections by each new variant is fooling themselves.
"The portrayal of climate as an all or nothing problem coupled with the US’s thermostatic politics (where control of government commonly switches between parties) is a recipe for a lack of clear long term action on climate or any other big societal problem that gets caught up in the politicized culture wars."
Liberals in western governments have driven development. The capitalistic imperative of enlightened self-interest is cultivated by the scientifically educated rational elite. In the US, Democratic presidents have created twice as many jobs as Republicans from FDR to Trump 45, comparing peak cumulative jobs. Ignoring the peaks, the ratio is two and a half times as many jobs created. Democrats have also controlled majorities in Congress for twice as many months as Republicans over the same time span.
Democrats run the show. They take donations from the same oligarchical ruling class as Republicans, and then blame their congressional failures on Republicans while hiding behind the Parliamentarian. If that unconstitutional mechanism for stymieing progress isn't available, Democrats spoil their own majorities by farming out the 'bad guy' defector status to select Democratic candidates in safe districts.
It's the same story globally. Liberals in western nations always find a way to promote 'all of the above' energy policy along with every other polluting yet profitable technology, and do it far more effectively than ideologically-driven and ineffective conservatives.
In fact, liberals in the US especially go out of their way to court conservatives. Hillary Clinton backed Trump in the 2016 primary because she assumed his fascistic populism would repel independent voters. Kamala Harris refused to distance herself from Biden's genocidal funding of Israeli aggression even after voters were denied a Democratic primary.
Your partisan analysis is shortsighted and ahistorical. The common theme in liberal western democratic republics is how unified they are in promoting economic development at all costs regardless of who is in power.
"A world of unabated climate change will impact the poor most severely. Addressing it requires two strategies in tandem: prioritizing development and poverty alleviation to build adaptive capacity (and human flourishing), and reducing emissions rapidly in middle and upper-income countries to mitigate future climate impacts and drive down the cost of clean energy technologies so they can be more readily adopted by low income countries. Perhaps I’m unduly optimistic, but I think that society should be able to do both."
This analysis is likewise shortsighted. You are ignoring the fact that a collapsing industrial civilization will turn industrialized urban cities into death traps. No one will be spared except those who never industrialized in the first place and rely upon local economies, especially those indigenous societies closer to the poles where industrial civilization has not yet perfused them with global economics and global warming is a net benefit to their agriculture.
Your claim that the poor will be hurt the worst is only valid in the short term, like the rest of your analysis. In the long term, the developed world that relies upon redistribution of resources from rural agrarian communities to urbanized technological communities will be the most affected and worst hurt.
Also, as climate refugees aggregate toward the poles, remember that the available land area shinks precipitously. The globe is a lot smaller at the higher latitudes. This will intensify population pressure not only on humans but on all species that are also migrating toward the poles even now.
Reality is so menacing, they prefer hiding behind stupid maga billionaires fantasizing and let their own children face the consequences.
Have to ask who the "they" is here.
I find Michael Mann's critique for more persuasive: https://thebulletin.org/2025/10/you-cant-reboot-the-planet-if-you-crash-it/ including this: "What Gates is putting forward aren’t legitimate arguments that can be made in good faith. They are shopworn fossil fuel industry talking points. Being found parroting them is every bit as embarrassing as being caught—metaphorically speaking—with your pants down and "Such technofixes for the climate, in fact, lead us down a dangerous road, both because they displace far safer and more reliable options—namely the clean energy transition—and because they provide an excuse for business-as-usual burning of fossil fuels. Why decarbonize, after all, if we can just solve the problem with a “patch” later?"
Where does this fascination with Bill Gates come from? First, you should read the article, dear Mr. Hausfather, which appeared in The Guardian a long time ago and has lost none of its accuracy and significance: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jan/27/philanthropy-enemy-of-justice
And then see this: https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2025/apr/03/how-philanthropists-are-destroying-african-farms-video
The super rich can allow themselves any stupid capricho; no democratic Institution may control them; they are a threat to poor people and the planet.
Yep, both the green revolution and the 'polio eradication' project in India were complete disasters which left farmers and people who developed acute flaccid paralysis more dependent on aid than ever before.
Gates fortune is stolen from workers and colonised countries in the first place. The fact that he appears to give some of it back in the form of charity or philanthropy is a joke. He didn't deserve or earn his fortune, he doesn't get any points for giving some of it back especially when this is a way to get tax breaks, force governments to invest in his companies in return for it and to exert greater political control. The poor don't need charity they need to stop being exploited and neo-colonised. https://jowaller.substack.com/p/piss-off-out-of-africa-bill-gates?utm_source=publication-search
It's like a robber takes everything in your house and then says I'll give you back a chair if you promise to buy a cushion from me in return.
PS I disagree with the guardian about giving people vaccines being a good thing;
Here's the sitch -There were 350,000 ‘cases’ of polio globally in 1988 when the Global polio eradication Initiative was launched by the WHO and Gates. However, mass vaccination campaigns in China and India’s national polio campaign did not begin until 1995/6 when the incidence had already fallen (for other reasons) to 49,000 cases globally, so it wasn't GPEI that led to a 99% drop. ‘Cases’ leading to paralysis had already fallen from 50,000 in 1980 to 4,000 in 1995 by the time the program was introduced. By 2008 there were 1600 ‘cases’ globally, though the drop was not necessarily due to the program. Indeed, from a report on the program in India written in 2010 ‘With only 66 cases of WPV infection in 2005, India was seemingly at the threshold of eradicating polio; however, the 10-fold rise in cases of infection by WPV observed over the four ensuing years has put the goal beyond reach.’
Appreciating your perspective on the lack of nuance in our public dialogue, but it is precisely this issue that Gates should have taken into consideration when he set up the doomsday strawman, and urged a shift in resource priorities. The optics were terrible considering his previous how-to-prevent-a-disaster framing, appearing to signal a retreat. That opened the door for the deniers, from the President on down. He should have realized they would not just misread it, but deliberately twist it.
I also appreciated the analysis of where the actual money is spent, and the unlikelihood money diverted from mitigation in the north would go to adaptation and development in the south. Additionally, framing this as a zero-sum game is mistaken when it is clear that vastly expanded resources are needed for all these challenges. If he has to change priorities at his foundation because of the AID cuts, understood. But we need more globally.
Finally, seeming to downplay the horrendous implications of 3 deg. C seems blithe. The increased risk of crossing tipping points in rainforests, polar ice and ocean currents says we cannot de-prioritize emissions reductions in any way. I appreciate Daniel Swain’s short video which hits this point and the general scenario for 3 deg. C. I think it is quite balanced. https://youtu.be/Nd_iYnzEmYQ?si=x6ZMuSo7FIWpqle3. As you point out in this piece, there are also vast uncertainties. Hansen’s recent work on climate sensitivity is notable. And we still don’t understand the recent temperature spikes. Downplaying all this as Gates did is unhelpful.
Gates did not help to combat HIV, he helped to spread progaganda about it that made $millions for pharma https://jowaller.substack.com/p/the-importance-of-intellectual-freedom?utm_source=publication-search
First: Bullsh*t. Second: Trillions? More Bullsh*t.
First; started swearing already- triggered much. What do you think the HIV market is worth? HIV has been around since the mid 80s ‘The global HIV drug market was valued at approximately $32.8 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach around $44.5 billion by 2030, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of about 5.2%. Other sources estimate the market size differently, with figures around $33.92 billion for 2024 and forecasts varying between $46.30 billion and $49.68 billion by 2032’ So 20 years- say on average $20 billion per year thats 400 billion not including research grants, the testing market nor attempts at vaccine development grants.
So, you're saying that you don't actually know what a trillion is?
I can see from your feed that you’re confused about what causes disease- this might help https://jowaller.substack.com/p/lets-hope-the-monkey-pox-nonsense
It’s only 400 billion up till now…who knows.
And this is what you take out of my comment? Hey ho. Trillions is an expression, however,
Bill Gates has allowed pharma to make $80 billion in 2025 globally by peddling totally unnecessary and harmful vaccines. We’ve had vaccines for about 60 years. If $40 billion on average that’s $2.4 trillion so far- not counting profits from drugs for vaccine induced injuries.
Now, what I take from your comments is that you a) don't know what a trillion, b) you don't care about precision and c) tend to be emotional and overly dramatic.
I think you nailed it.
Emotional eh?- I think you meant I don’t know what a trillion IS, then you said you you don’t care about precision.
Anyway I don’t care- you haven’t proved me wrong on vaccines with this silly quibbling.
I'm going to have to push back on Gates,- he did not help to eradicate polio- he helped to increase acute flaccid paralysis 10 fold, nearly bankrupted the government and barely got out of India alive. https://jowaller.substack.com/p/piss-off-out-of-africa-bill-gates?utm_source=publication-search
Propaganda.
No. It's not propaganda. Have you ever looked into polio? https://jowaller.substack.com/p/toxicology-vs-virology-the-rockefeller?utm_source=publication-search
What about the claims that Gates initiative readically increased incidences of "acute flaccid paralysis"?
This is a complex and often-cited claim that requires careful explanation, as it involves the nuances of polio surveillance, the type of vaccine used, and differing interpretations of public health data.
The claim is that the Gates Foundation-backed polio eradication efforts, particularly the mass use of the Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) in countries like India, led to a radical increase in cases of Non-Polio Acute Flaccid Paralysis (NPAFP).
Here is a breakdown of the facts and the context surrounding this claim:
1. Acute Flaccid Paralysis (AFP) Surveillance
AFP is the Sentinel for Polio: Acute Flaccid Paralysis (AFP) is the clinical symptom that poliovirus causes (sudden onset of paralysis or weakness). The Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), which the Gates Foundation co-funds, requires a hyper-sensitive surveillance system that actively seeks out every case of AFP in children under 15.
Non-Polio AFP (NPAFP) Rate: When an AFP case is investigated and tests negative for poliovirus, it is classified as NPAFP. The World Health Organization (WHO) sets a minimum benchmark for surveillance sensitivity: a non-polio AFP rate of ≥1 per 100,000 children under 15 (some recommend ≥2).
Reason for High Rates: A very high NPAFP rate (like those seen in India, sometimes exceeding 10 per 100,000) is often cited by public health officials as evidence of an extremely sensitive and robust surveillance system, which is essential for proving the absence of wild poliovirus. The system is so good at finding paralysis cases that are not polio, it confirms that if wild polio were circulating, it would be found immediately.
2. The Link to the Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV)
The more serious aspect of the claim links the mass immunization campaigns (Pulse Polio) using Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) to the increase in NPAFP.
OPV's Small Risk: OPV uses a live, weakened (attenuated) virus. In extremely rare instances, this weakened virus can mutate as it replicates in the gut and is shed, potentially regaining the ability to cause paralysis. This is called Vaccine-Associated Paralytic Polio (VAPP) or, if it spreads in under-immunized communities, Circulating Vaccine-Derived Poliovirus (cVDPV).
The NPAFP Hypothesis: Some medical researchers, particularly in India, published studies arguing that the aggressive, high-frequency OPV vaccination campaigns (partially funded by the Gates Foundation) led to the high rates of NPAFP. Their hypothesis is that the OPV, or the frequency of its administration, may be associated with an increase in paralysis caused by other non-polio enteroviruses (like Coxsackie or echoviruses) that share similar symptoms.
Correlation vs. Causation: While a correlation was shown in some data between high OPV campaign intensity and high NPAFP rates in certain high-risk states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, major global health bodies generally do not accept this as proof of a direct causal link. The increase in NPAFP is primarily attributed to the massive increase in surveillance intensity, which detects other causes of paralysis (e.g., Guillain-Barré syndrome, other viral infections) that went previously undiagnosed and unrecorded.
3. The Shift to IPV and the Gates Foundation's Response
The Gates Foundation and the GPEI have acknowledged the rare risk associated with the live-virus OPV and have implemented a global strategy to address it:
Global Transition to IPV: Once a region is certified wild polio-free, the GPEI strategy mandates a shift away from OPV to the Inactivated Polio Vaccine (IPV), which is injectable and contains no live virus, eliminating the risk of VAPP and cVDPV. India completed this transition after being certified polio-free.
Novel Oral Polio Vaccine (nOPV2): The Gates Foundation has invested heavily in the development and deployment of a novel Oral Polio Vaccine Type 2 (nOPV2), which is genetically modified to be significantly more stable and far less likely to mutate into a disease-causing strain. This is the new primary tool used to stop circulating vaccine-derived outbreaks.
In summary, the high rates of NPAFP are interpreted by the GPEI (and the Gates Foundation) as a sign of successful surveillance. Claims linking the OPV directly to a massive increase in paralysis that is not polio are considered a controversial hypothesis by the mainstream public health community, although they are based on a real phenomenon: the rare occurrence of VAPP/cVDPV from the oral vaccine and the simultaneous detection of many non-polio paralytic conditions due to intense surveillance.
Would you like to know more about the difference between the Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) and the Inactivated Polio Vaccine (IPV)?
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has made polio eradication a top priority, acting as one of the key partners and financial drivers in the final push to eliminate the disease globally.
Here is a breakdown of what the Gates Foundation has done regarding polio:
🎯 Key Actions and Contributions
The foundation's strategy centers on supporting the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), a major public-private partnership.
Massive Financial Commitment:
The Gates Foundation has contributed nearly $5 billion to the GPEI since joining in 2007.
In 2022, the foundation announced a commitment of $1.2 billion to support the GPEI's Polio Eradication Strategy 2022-2026.
They often work with Rotary International, matching their fundraising efforts (e.g., matching $1 from Rotary with $2 from the Gates Foundation for a joint commitment of up to $450 million in a recent partnership renewal).
Vaccine Innovation and Development:
They have heavily invested in research leading to the development and rollout of the novel Oral Polio Vaccine Type 2 (nOPV2). This next-generation vaccine is specifically designed to stop outbreaks of Type 2 variant poliovirus—the most prevalent form of the variant virus—and is far less likely to mutate back into a form that can cause paralysis.
Strengthening Surveillance and Outbreak Response:
The foundation funds efforts to improve polio surveillance, including supporting the establishment of new labs in regions like the WHO African Region. These labs test wastewater samples and sequence viruses, significantly cutting detection times and giving health workers a critical head start on outbreak response.
Improving Immunization Delivery:
They provide technical and financial support to countries to execute high-quality polio vaccination campaigns, especially in the two remaining wild poliovirus endemic countries (Pakistan and Afghanistan) and countries facing variant poliovirus outbreaks.
The foundation supports the integration of polio campaigns with routine immunization systems, ensuring children also receive other essential vaccines (like measles) and strengthening overall national health systems.
Advocacy and Partnership Galvanization:
Bill Gates, in particular, has been a major advocate, using his voice to keep polio eradication on the agenda of world leaders and galvanize financial support from governments and other donors.
If we look at the history of rural electrification in the United States and where unsustainable and unhealthy sources of energy are being used today, it’s clear that development and electrification can (and sometimes must) work together. Providing electricity to Indian villages powered by LPG cylinders will cut their costs and reduce their carbon emissions. Providing electricity to a household using solid fuels to cook… will make them both healthier and wealthier.
Hi Zeke,
You write: “[…] and reducing emissions rapidly in middle and upper-income countries to mitigate future climate impacts and drive down the cost of clean energy technologies so they can be more readily adopted by low income countries.”
When you say rapidly, what period do you have in mind? Do you accept IPCC’s suggestion that we should reduce the global emissions by almost half by 2030?
Moreover, regardless if we can make clean energy cheap enough, do you think it is possible to shift towards clean energy within the period of what you consider rapidly?
Finally, can we replace fossil fuels with clean energy for all the purposes that fossil fuels are currently used?
My understanding of the last two questions is no. However, you may know better.
Thank you for writing the article.
Global emissions are not going to be cut in half in five years (indeed, they likely increased in 2025), so tying the rate of needed action to that particular goal is not feasible any more.
We can replace effectively all fossil energy with clean energy; there are no particular laws of physics or chemistry that prevent this. The hardest bits are for chemistry but those are a small portion of overall emissions, and even there biological-based carbon can be substituted. Non-CO2 GHG emissions in agriculture is actually the more challenging sector, but those are not energy based.
Thanks for your answer, Zeke.
If you don't mind, I have a follow-up, since you did not clarify what you consider rapid enough (from what I have understood, time is an important factor to consider within this debate, if I may call it like that).
I assume your understanding of how rapidly emissions should be reduced is not determined by how fast clean energy could replace fossil fuels. There are two ways to reduce emissions, either by reducing the amount of goods and services we produce or replace the energy we use to produce them with cleaner energy. Since you focus on clean energy, I assume you think it is possible to reduce emissions within the timeframe of what you consider rapidly by shifting to cleaner energy.
Discussions I've had with various stakeholders in the green transition have told me that this transition could theoretically happen by 2045 (under many, quite unrealistic I would say, preconditions). Nonetheless, do you think 2045 is rapid enough or by that time the impacts of climate change will be too bad? Or, perhaps, do you think that the impacts will indeed be too bad by 2045 but this is not a problem because the transition could in fact happen before that, thus avoiding those impacts?
Based on my analysis while taking many factors into account, we do not have the luxury of time and this is why I consider reducing immediately a big amount of the things we produce to be necessary, until we switch to clean energy and start producing them again. But I may have missed something regarding how fast the transition to clean energy can be or how risky it actually is to keep emitting greenhouse gas emissions while trying to shift to clean energy.
Sorry for the long text!
I'd be ecstatic if could get global emissions to zero by 2045. But ultimately (and probably for good reason) I and other scientists are not the ones who determine this. Policymakers and the broader public get to choose, and anything that makes it easier for them to prioritize mitigation (e.g. by reducing its cost) is going to result in a lower temperature outcome.
We can speculate all day about the pros and cons of "reducing immediately a big amount of the things we produce", but its academic since no government in the real world is actually going to do it.
I agree that no current government would be willing to embrace a policy of reducing many of the things we produce at the moment. But governments come and go, at least in modern democracies. If a reduction in what we produce and consume is necessary, or preferable, then perhaps we should try to show that to the broader public so that they choose that. Certainly, it would be easier to choose shifting towards clean energy, and anything that makes that transition easier should be pursued too.
Yes, Gates does indeed set up a false dichotomy because the actions that will address the climate crisis will, of course, also address global inequality and health.
These actions involve lessening the power and wealth of billionaires, like Gates himself, who made their fortunes in pharma, fossil fuels, animal ag (pharma's biggest client), tech, media, finance and arms.
Not only does ceasing to burn fossil fuels reduce respiratory illness and drug markets, it addresses the climate crisis which will affect the poor and the Global south the most.
Not only does educating ourselves about vaccines and adopting a plant based lifestyle, again reducing vaccine and drug markets and improving health; it also addresses the climate crisis by allowing sequestration by the reforestation of 5/6ths of the land currently used to grow food.
Not only does local independent energy production prevent wars over resources it also addresses the climate crisis and improves the lives of millions.
Not only does lessening the power of billionaires address inequality and health it also addresses the climate crisis.
Was patient. Have had enough. Unsubscribed.