Joe Romm: “Even Gates was fooled” (Doomism at Penn)

“Bill Gates has been rightly slammed for his anti-scientific memo calling for shifting our focus away from ‘near-term’ emissions cuts. Tragically, that shift could cause the very doomsday scenario he dismisses.” (Joe Romm, below)

Doomism is alive and well at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media, despite Michael Mann’s advice to the contrary. It exists in the person of Joe Romm, Mann’s colleague. Maybe the two need to meet to figure out how to alarm but not be alarming….

“Gates is wrong,” Joe Romm reports. “Global warming could well ‘decimate civilization’, but his ‘strategic pivot’ would make catastrophic warming far more likely.” Doomster Romm continues:

Bill Gates has been rightly slammed for his anti-scientific memo calling for shifting our focus away from “near-term” emissions cuts. Tragically, that shift could cause the very doomsday scenario he dismisses.

Gates: “People will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future.” But scientists are much better at foreseeing the future, so we know that taking his advice will sharply boost chances for catastrophe.

By catastrophe, I mean 4°C (7°F) warming or more by 2100—warming so rapid and hellish, there was a “scarcity of any scientific literature” on it until nearly 2010. This possibility seemed to have faded in recent years as nations rushed to make major climate reduction pledges after Paris in 2015.

Yet, it was never off the table. We just fooled ourselves into thinking that lofty goals of 1.5°C or “well below 2°C,” repeated like mantras—coupled with a clean energy revolution—were enough to avoid the worst. Even Gates was fooled.

The predicament is our fault by our “inaction” (as if the suite of government mitigation policies were not tried and failed). Romm continues:

But despite pledges of “net zero” emissions by midcentury by every major nation, none of the top 10 emitters has policies and actions in place that would keep warming by 2100 below 3°C.

The world’s top scientists found in their 2023 IPCC assessment: “The continuation of policies implemented by the end of 2020 leads to global warming of 3.2°C by 2100.” In June 2025, Climate Interactive modelers projected 3.3°C (6°F) warming based on existing policies. And these are business-as-usual projections—NOT worst-case scenarios—although the UN called such warming “catastrophic.”

Yet there’s a good chance the climate is much more sensitive to CO2 than people expect. The 2023 report found, “The likely range of equilibrium climate sensitivity has been narrowed to 2.5°C to 4.0°C (with a best estimate of 3.0°C) based on multiple lines of evidence.”

So most use 3°C—but the distribution is skewed. “Likely” means a two-thirds chance. So, 4°C or higher is very plausible. Indeed, the IPCC can’t “rule out … values above 5°C.”

But surely we can do better than existing policies? We can—but we choose not to. And Gates’ pivot would ensure we don’t. We’ve dawdled through 30 COPs, and emissions are 50% higher than when we began. We have the real solutions, but—overwhelmed by misinformation, false promises, bad actors & bad decisions—they’re not growing nearly fast enough.

Romm concludes:

Gates doesn’t even realize he needs the very rapid emissions cuts he dismisses to claim warming will stay well below 3°C. But if we follow his advice, a catastrophic fate for humanity becomes a very real possibility.

Joe Romm will not put a date or severity estimate on his “a catastrophic fate for humanity becomes a very real possibility.” But he should be reminded: the neo-Malthusian end-is-near rhetoric has grown stale with so many predictions falsified. Yet kicking and screaming he goes, along with Michael ‘Climategate’ Mann at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media.

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Also see “Angry Michael Mann Isolates Himself (climate exaggeration backfires)” August 21, 2025. Other posts on Romm can be found here.

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