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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maple MAGA who wrote (1568782)	10/30/2025 1:53:33 AM
From: Wharf Rat	1 Recommendation Recommended By pocotrader Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1569402

What he really said is that starvation due to DOGE cutbacks is a more acute threat than CC. I agree that AGW isn't gonna wipe out the species, but it might kill a few billion by the end of the century. Bill Gates sure picked an interesting day to downplay the threat of climate change — Michael E. Mann (@michaelemann.bsky.social) 2025-10-28T17:19:25.147Z Bill Gates makes a stunning claim about climate change \| CNN Business By David Goldman Updated 5 hr ago In a stunning and significant pushback to the “doomsday” climate activist community, Bill Gates, a leading proponent for carbon emissions reductions, published a remarkable essay Tuesday that argued resources must be shifted away from the battle against climate change. Instead, Gates argues, the world’s philanthropists must increase their investment in other efforts aimed at preventing disease and hunger. Climate change is not going to wipe out humanity, he argued, and past efforts that strive for achieving zero carbon emissions have made real progress. But Gates said that past investments fighting climate change have been misplaced, and too much good money has been put into expensive and questionable efforts. (Rat has said that about some of Gates' projects.) Although Gates said investment to battle climate change must continue, he argued that President Donald Trump’s cuts to USAID threaten a more urgent problem, inflicting potentially lasting global damage to the fight against famine and life-threatening preventable sickness. “Climate change, disease, and poverty are all major problems,” Gates wrote. “We should deal with them in proportion to the suffering they cause.” The Trump administration’s funding cuts, Gates argues, necessitate an immediate and larger focus on investment and resources to support those abandoned efforts. “Although climate change will have serious consequences – particularly for people in the poorest countries – it will not lead to humanity’s demise,” Gates wrote. “This is a chance to refocus on the metric that should count even more than emissions and temperature change: improving lives. Our chief goal should be to prevent suffering, particularly for those in the toughest conditions who live in the world’s poorest countries.” Gates’ shocking essay comes ahead of next month’s COP30, a global summit focused on battling climate change. The Trump administration eliminated USAID, an international aid organization that supplied foreign countries with $8 billion in annual support to provide food and medicine to people who otherwise lack access to those life-saving necessities. Gates denied his new position represents a reversal from his past stances. He said in Tuesday’s essay that the world must continue to support its past efforts to achieve zero carbon emissions. However, Gates told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin in an interview Tuesday that pulling back from climate investment was a “huge disappointment,” albeit a necessary one. It also represents a stark contrast from where Gates had been focusing his efforts and philanthropy, including clean-energy businesses and lobby shops – and a turn from Gates’ tone from just a couple years ago. In a 2023 since-removed Breakthrough Energy essay, for example, Gates noted that most people around the world are struggling with the effects of climate change – a feeling that can be “overwhelming” and necessitates a response with “unprecedented” scale and speed. Some critics argue that Gates’ shift represents a false dichotomy: A significant amount of suffering that Gates now says is a priority is directly or indirectly a result of climate change. “Humans are resilient, and while billion-dollar disasters will become more frequent and devastating, humans will not be wiped from the face of the Earth,” Jennifer Francis, senior scientist at Woodwell Climate Research Center, which studies extreme weather and climate change, told CNN. “However… investment needs to continue to focus on curing the disease (emissions of heat-trapping gases) while also treating the symptoms, which include improving health and hunger, bolstering infrastructure, and preserving ecosystems.” Others believe Gates is missing the broader point. “There is no greater threat to developing nations than the climate crisis,” said Michael Mann, Director, Penn Center for Science, Sustainability & the Media. “He’s got this all backwards.”

To: Maple MAGA who wrote (1568782)	10/30/2025 8:25:44 AM
From: golfer72	2 Recommendations Recommended By John Carragher longz Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1569402

Thats a start LOL!. Now can we get Gates to stop trying to put a needle in everyone's arm? Now that would be really good

To: Maple MAGA who wrote (1568782)	10/30/2025 8:51:07 AM
From: Maple MAGA	2 Recommendations Recommended By longz miraje Respond to of 1569402

Did somebody say Ayn Rand? Why Is Ayn Rand Still So Popular Today? By: Melanie Radzicki McManus Author and philosopher Ayn Rand stands in front of the Grand Central building, midtown Manhattan, in 1957. New York Times Co./Getty Images We all should be a lot more selfish. That was one of author Ayn (rhymes with "mine") Rand's credos. She was also famous for saying we are not, after all, our brother's keeper. And money isn't the root of all evil — but altruism might be. These brief insights into Rand's thoughts and personality make it easy to see why she is either reviled or worshipped by so many. In a recent episode of Part-Time Genius, co-hosts Will Pearson and Mangesh (Mango) Hattikudur look at why Ayn Rand is a political rock star. Will and Mango point out that Rand's fans include Alan Greenspan, the band Rush and Billie Jean King, not to mention Paul Ryan and members of the Tea Party movement. Her books often appear on readers' lists of the ones that have most influenced them. Rand, who died in 1982, is famous for writing the best-selling novels "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged." Both are intellectual and political tomes. She also created a philosophy she dubbed "objectivism," which as Will notes, says, "Man is a heroic being whose own happiness is the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity and reason as his only absolute. Selfish behavior is moral behavior." Rand was born Alisa Rosenbaum in 1905 in St. Petersburg, Russia to a wealthy family that lost everything in the Russian Revolution. As a young woman she came to the United States, where she eventually made a name as a novelist, philosopher, playwright and screenwriter. Her in-your-face words and actions pleased some, but made others squirm. Rand preached that the only goal of government was to protect individual rights. But she did not like to be classified as a conservative or a libertarian. She championed atheism and abortion rights, and even had an open marriage. Ridiculously sure of her writing, she refused to be edited. Ridiculously sure of her ideas, she also made a lot of divisive statements. "In her address to the graduating class at West Point in the '70s, she said, of Native Americans, 'They had no right to a country merely because they were born here and then acted as savages. The white man did not conquer this country,'" Mango says. Later, Rand defended this statement, saying whenever a superior technology meets an inferior one, that society has the right to prevail. She insisted this was not a racist argument. For a while, with the birth of the Tea Party movement, conservatives often cited Rand, and even characters in her novels, because of their pro-capitalist, limited-government views. But it was difficult to ignore her stances on religion, abortion and marriage, nor to reject her lack of compassion. So many instead began simply saying Rand had had a positive influence on them because she got them thinking about the world. And that may be why Rand and her novels continue to resonate with people over the decades. While scholars and critics in general never took her that seriously, " ... ignoring her clearly is a mistake," says Mango. "Millions of people intensely identify with her stories ... She got a whole world of people to rethink their values, and also maybe believe in themselves." Learn more about Ayn Rand in " A Companion to Ayn Rand (Blackwell Companions to Philosophy)" by Allan Gotthelf and Gregory Salmieri. HowStuffWorks picks related titles based on books we think you'll like. Should you choose to buy one, we'll receive a portion of the sale.