Peter Bromberg's UnBlog

Thoughts on Bill Gates' book  For Bill Gates, the case for net-zero is “rock solid”. The science is settled, and he is convinced that “the only way to avoid disastrous outcomes is to get to zero”. For readers already convinced of the “climate crisis” and the imperative to go to “net zero” by 2050, his book holds no surprises. For those more skeptical of popular discussions of climate change, what is most striking is that Gates – among the world’s most celebrated and successful data scientists — is so curiously unaware or indifferent to data that challenges many of the presumptions contained in his book. Thus, for example, while Gates is aware of the low energy density and intermittency of solar and wind power (when the sun sets and the wind does not blow) and the prohibitive costs of batteries to store electricity at grid-scale, he nonetheless finds it imperative that we have policies “to force an unnaturally speedy transition”. Net-zero “requires the US to build as much wind and s...