Bill Gates: climate denier?

Bill Gates: climate denier?

Are we beginning to see the end of climate hysteria? Back in its heyday when all around us were predicting doom and gloom about the climate as an “existential threat” I was reminded of those of us who as children went through drills at school in case there was a nuclear attack from the Soviet Union. Do you remember having to crawl under your desk? How silly was that? Well about as silly as AOC, that great environmental scientist saying back in 2019 that man-made climate change will “destroy the planet” in 12 years if humans do not address the issue, no matter the cost. Oops. 

She was not by herself. As evidence showed otherwise we went from the coming ice age to global warming to climate change to climate crisis to climate emergency and to whatever it is now. But to quote a great philosopher “The times they are a-changing”. Even the most uninformed among us no longer think that the sky is falling, the seas will rise 20 feet (Al Gore) and a carbon dioxide cloud will cover the earth. Even Bill Gates has become a climate skeptic. Gates, perhaps the richest proponent of reducing carbon emissions now says the focus should shift to preventing disease and hunger. He says that climate change is not going to wipe out humanity and that past investments fighting climate change have been misplaced. Glory be! Even that great doomsday prognosticator Greta Thunberg has shifted from the environment to protesting Gaza. Remember when she said “A top climate scientist is warning that climate change will wipe out humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years”? Oops.

The president has called the Green New Deal the ‘Green New Scam.” And he may be right. For all the trillions of dollars spent worldwide there has be only a negligible return and it is certainly not cost effective. Trump’s 2026 budget ends all the funding for the green boondoggles that have made Al Gore and his friends rich at our expense. Europe is the poster child for this folly. Germany in particular has the highest energy costs in the west and the slowest growth. How its people stand for this is the question. And I thought the Germans were smart. They still embrace the Paris Accord and make the appropriate clucking noises at the UN’s annual climate conferences where this year they bulldozed down trees in the Amazon to put in a highway.

Look at all the scare narratives that have proven false. When I was writing for the local daily in Knoxville, no columns elicited more hate mail than my articles on global warming. The paper even devoted an entire page of letters to the editor attacking me for being a climate denier. I was not a denier but a climate change skeptic. I questioned the legitimacy of the climate models with all of their complexity that could not predict next month’s weather much less next century’s. The paper was cheered for firing me for questioning the local health department’s Covid mandates. Apparently as was the case with the climate I was spreading misinformation.

Climate change was the villain for all ills. Hurricanes, wildfires, earthquakes, floods, immigration, a plague of locusts maybe even love bugs were more intense because of climate change.  Scientific data that proved otherwise was refused publication. The climate scientists and businesses kept beating that drum so long as the money kept flowing. The politicians especially loved climate change because it expanded their power and manipulation of the masses. The left loved it because they could put the blame for climate change on capitalism. And even the capitalists loved it because of the trillion dollar honey pot.

I wrote once that I was proud of my carbon footprint. I owned a F-250 diesel, pulled a 41 foot toy hauler, had an SUV and four motorcycles and an ATV. From the howls of the critics, you would have thought that I was the environmental equivalent of Jack the Ripper. I said I thought land could be put to a more productive use than all of those solar panels with their environmental consequences. I hated windmills with their environmental impacts. I said isn’t it strange that the same crowd that embraced solar and wind ignored their negative environmental effects. The left just lashed out at me even more. But yet solar and wind are unreliable and expensive sources of energy. For all the trillions spent they still only account for less than six percent of the world’s energy. Isn’t it time to throw in the towel and admit that cheap energy is what lifts people out of poverty? There may be a place for wind and solar. Maybe in a desert somewhere. But in a time where AI demands more and more energy, solar and wind are woefully inadequate.

But just to set the record straight, I actually do believe in climate change: spring, summer, fall and winter.