Why Is Bill Gates Attacking Climate Science?

"In late October, Hurricane Melissa (that should have been called "Godzilla") battered western Jamaica with 185-mile-an-hour winds. It tossed the roofs of buildings about like splintering javelins, demolished municipal buildings and hospitals, snapped telephone poles like matchsticks, flattened crops, and dumped torrential floodwaters everywhere, leaving $8 billion in damage. That Category 5 storm's unprecedented ferocity was driven by an overheated Caribbean Sea, produced by 275 years of industrial civilization that has spewed obscene amounts of heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually."

"The same week that U.N. officials spoke of an "apocalypse" in Jamaica, American billionaire Bill Gates expressed a certain unease about officials and scientists concerned with climate change who, he thought, were being hysterical. He urged them to chill the hell out. It was an arrogant and manipulative oracle, uttered with all the privilege of the world's 19th richest man. A symbol of monopoly capitalism, his individual net worth rivals the annual gross domestic product of the Dominican Republic."

"Gates rejects the view that climate change "will decimate civilization," insisting instead that it "will not lead to humanity's demise." Of course, no one in the scientific community had argued that climate change would actually wipe out humankind, so he is indeed (and all too conveniently) attacking a straw man. That he resorted to a description of such fallacious relevance shows how intent he is on engaging in a bad-faith argument."

Hurricane Melissa struck western Jamaica with 185-mph winds, destroying roofs, municipal buildings, hospitals, crops, and infrastructure and causing $8 billion in damage. The storm's unprecedented ferocity arose from an overheated Caribbean Sea linked to 275 years of industrial carbon emissions. Bill Gates reacted by urging officials and scientists to "chill the hell out," expressing unease about perceived hysteria. Gates rejected claims that climate change "will decimate civilization," asserting it "will not lead to humanity's demise." No scientific consensus claimed imminent human extinction, and Gates' responses relied on straw-man framing and reflected his immense wealth and elite interests.

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