Arguments
Climate Adam - Climate Scientist responds to Bill Gates
Posted on 11 November 2025 by Guest Author
This video includes personal musings and conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any).
Video description
Bill Gates just published a climate think piece that has taken the internet by storm. While conservatives are claiming he's backtracked on climate change, the truth is much more subtle. So what does the Microsoft founder, Gates, get right and wrong about climate change? And why might he be downplaying the risks at a crucial moment for our planet's climate?
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Who would have guessed that Bill Gates has a vested interest in blocking public policy, and policies against cooperative actions to deal with the climate emergency?
Maybe the problem starts with the billionaires who manipulate public opinion, especially in Western countries?
Bbrowett @1 :
Perhaps Gates paying less attention to climate, and more attention to which way the wind is blowing. The wind in the White House.
Agree with Eclectic. Gates, Musk, and Zuckerberg have all more or less downplayed climate concerns and need for strong mitigation or have been suddenly silent on advocating for such issues since Trumps election.
As usual Climate Adam is clear and passionate. I have not read Gates' piece, and I will, but there is an action he is carrying out that relates to his argument, that is not commented on here, so I assume it is not mentioned by Gates. That action is that he has a permit for construction of a mini-nuclear powerplant in Wyoming that is based on uranium fuel and liquid sodium as primary coolant. Mini in this context means base load 345 Mwe, and with a short term (5 hour) peaking power at 500Mwe. Most recent power company nukes run base load at around 1,000Mwe. The Gates company collaborated with Hitachi, which is well established. But this design carries two burdens. First, the attempts to make liquid sodium reactors have failed. France has made the biggest efforts, in the form of the Phenix and Super-Phenix reactors. See wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix). The French designs had the goal of making them fast breeder reactors, that would generate more fissionable material while in operation than they would use up, using various purified natural sources, such as U238 (which is not a reactor or bomb isotope) or wastes from other reactors..Both reactors had serious problems. Among them is the fact that liquid sodium burns spontaneously if it comes in contact with air, so any leaks are potentially diasterous. Then there is the problem that like conventional reactors such reactors will end up with partly used fuel that will have high and low radiation level other elements as wastes that have to be separated and disposed of. One is Pu239, a great reactor fuel and atomic bomb material. So diversion of that is a threat, an easy threat if incoporated in a dirty bomb dispersed with conventional explosives, or an atomic threat if a critical mass can be purified and imploded. Disposal of it and other wastes demands separation from the environment for 10 half-lives, to reach a human-safe level of contact. For Pu239 that means reliable isolation for 249,000 years! Underground isolation in deep tunnels in geologically quiet and dry sites is needed for this and is the current working approach.. Finland is pioneering one, Sweden and France are gearing up. The USA had one designated at Yucca Mountain, adjacent to the underground test site of Yucca Flats, 65 miles north of Las Vegas. George W. Bush approved that, Nevada residents objected, and Barack Obama reversed it. It may have water leakage issues, but no further action has been taken there or or towards another site. So existing wastes (filled fuel rods) are containerized after cooling in swimming pools and are stored in various locations above ground. Other wastes, such as radioactivated structural materials and equipment, are separated and distributed to various "secure" locations. Potentially there is a second method of disposal, that uses a tuned subatomic particle accelerator or specially designed nuclear plant to convert wastes to either very short lived or stable isotopes. There is some work going on in Europe on this, but none in the US. It would be a way of making disposal of the hazards safe more quickly and it desrves serious funding, in order to dispose of slready generated and (possible) future wastes. To carry on generating nuclear power and wastes, even thogh the energy generated is mostly carbon-free, Gates' stated excuse for going nuclear, is irresponsible without safe operations and disposal guaranteed.
[BL] Not really a criticism, but a suggestion. The SkS edit box when writing comments does allow you to use the return/enter key to create paragraph breaks. White space makes it a lot easier to read.