Last week, Bill Gates published a 17-page memo on his personal website that critics said pitted climate and public health efforts against each other, when they should instead be working in tandem.

Monday night, speaking at Caltech in Pasadena, Gates doubled down, brushing off the critiques that came from across the ideological spectrum, including from climate scientists and President Trump.

Stressing that philanthropic resources are finite, Gates said he’s shifted some of his efforts from preventing climate change to reducing human disease and malnutrition in a world that he said will undoubtedly become warmer.

The United Nations’ 2025 Emissions Gap Report, published on Tuesday, says it’s likely that by 2100, global temperatures will have increased between 2.0 and 2.4 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels. Gates said he believes that number will be closer to 3 degrees Celsius.

“The real measure there is all the things we’re doing to help the most vulnerable people on the planet,” he said. He went on to say that he wants to refocus on scientific innovation that will remove climate-change-related costs — what he called a “green premium” — from technology to address hunger and sickness in the poorest countries in the world.

Climate scientists raised concerns about Gates’ memo released last week, arguing it inaccurately isolated the challenges of disease and hunger from climate change. “They are not separate problems, they are problems being exacerbated by this very issue,” said Katharine Hayhoe, a leading atmospheric scientist who studies climate change, in a forum Tuesday afternoon with other scientists.

At Caltech, in front of over 1,000 people — a mix of mostly students and professors — Gates expressed frustration with climate scientists who critiqued his memo as erroneously downplaying the potential impacts of climate change.

“What world do they live in?” he asked at one point, arguing that his critics were not taking into account that you could do more to save lives by spending money to address disease and other issues than by investing in reducing carbon emissions.

“It’s a numeric game in a world with very finite resources,” Gates said on Monday night. “More finite than they should be.”

Gates also rebuked Trump, who he said made a “gigantic misreading” of the memo in a Truth Social post last Wednesday that suggested Gates was no longer a climate change believer.

“I’m a climate activist, but I’m also a child survival activist, and I hope you will be too,” Gates told the crowd at Caltech. “That’s the best way to make sure that everyone gets a chance to live a healthy life, no matter where they’re born or what climate they’re born into.”

The billionaire said that his shift in focus to human health is intended to support poor countries that typically receive aid from the U.S. and other rich nations, at a time when the U.S. has backed away from such largesse. The Trump administration in July paused most foreign aid payments, which make up just about 1% of the national budget, but which researchers at the nonprofit Center for Global Development have found save some 3.3 million lives worldwide.

At Caltech, Gates also discussed technologies he supports to mitigate climate change, including nuclear fusion reactors and geo-engineering.

Gates’ critics within the climate science world say he is focusing on the wrong things. “He’s sort of perpetually downplayed the importance of the clean energy transition with the technology we have in favor of promoting some future tech,” said Michael E. Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania. It could take decades for some of those technologies to be implemented at scale, said Mann. “We don’t have decades to address the climate crisis.”

It’s been two years since a Santa Cruz sea otter, known as 841, garnered international attention and celebrity by attacking surfers and their surfboards as the human wave-riders alley-ooped over the waves of the legendary Steamer Lane.

It’s happening again.

This time, the identity of the otter is unclear. That’s because while 841 (who was born in captivity) carried a light blue tag on her right flipper, this otter is naked.

Experts say 841 could have chewed off her tag, or it could have broken off on its own. Otter flipper tags are designed to last an animal’s lifespan, but research shows they don’t always last so long.

It’s also possible this is an entirely different otter who may have watched 841 in the past, and is adopting her curious and bold behavior. It could be a relative. Or it could be this otter just has a similar surfboard appetite and hostage-taking drive.

On Thursday afternoon, roughly three dozen surfers were lined up to catch waves at Steamer Lane — just below the Santa Cruz coastline’s cliffs near the city’s iconic lighthouse and surfer statue.

Mark Woodward, a Santa Cruz-based social media influencer and dedicated 841 observer and chronicler, said he wasn’t sure whether this was 841, or someone different.

He said the animal’s behaviors and M.O. were almost identical. However, while 841 tended to hang close to the cliffs in 2023, this otter appeared to spend more time a bit farther out — closer to the offshore kelp beds.

He saw 841 last year — tag on — visiting the same waters but keeping her distance from people.

The only otter seen on Thursday was way off shore, floating on its back atop a kelp bed — presumably eating some tasty morsel, such as a crab or abalone, retrieved from the sea floor.

Pelicans glided over the cresting waves, while a harbor seal watched the surfers for a bit before diving under the surface and disappearing from sight.

During the summer of 2023, federal wildlife officials tried to capture 841. They sent out boats, rafts and swimmers. She evaded every attempt and eventually gave birth to a pup, whom she cradled on her chest as she floated atop the water — or placed on top of the kelp as she dived to the bottom to retrieve food. And she stopped chasing surfboards.

Eric Laughlin, spokesman for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is the lead otter-response agency in this case. However, possibly due to the federal government shutdown, the agency did not respond to questions about the surfing-curious otter in Santa Cruz.

Laughlin said the state agency had no plans “to intervene with the sea otter currently interacting with humans in Santa Cruz.”

Research on California sea otters shows that along the central coast, there is “extreme individuality in diet and behavior.” Some of the variation is the result of relatively low food availability, requiring the clever creatures to figure out unique ways of finding and retrieving food.

However, the researchers also noted some behavioral traits seemed to follow family lines, especially those “maintained along matrilines.”

Surfers at Steamer Lane in Santa Cruz on July 13, 2023.

(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

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Otter 841 was born in captivity to a mother who had been captured after spending too much time interacting with people and their watercraft. Since being released into the wild, she has given birth to at least two pups.

According to Woodward, the otter now frequenting Steamer Lane has been actively pursuing surfers nearly every day since Oct. 16, when it bit a surfer named Bella Orduna and stole her board.

Dripping wet and donned in a wet suit, Richard Walston, 55, said he hadn’t had any interactions with the surfer-curious creature — and he’s a frequent surfer in the area.

“Sure, I see otters,” he said. “But they’re so focused on their food, I’m not sure they even notice we’re around.”

Wildlife officials are urging surfers and boaters to keep their distance from this otter, and others — not only will this reduce the chances of an interaction, which could be dangerous for both people and otters, it is the law.

A new report based on government inspection documents shows salmonella is widespread in U.S. grocery store chicken and turkey products. But because of how the pathogen is classified, the federal government has no authority to do much about it.

Farm Forward, an organization that advocates for farmworker rights and humane farm practices, released a report this week that examined five years of monthly U.S. Department of Agriculture inspections at major U.S. poultry plants. It found that at many plants, including those that process and sell poultry under brand names such as Foster Farms, Costco and Perdue, levels of salmonella routinely exceeded maximum standards set by the federal government.

“The USDA is knowingly allowing millions of packages of chicken contaminated with salmonella to be sold in stores from major brands,” said Andrew deCoriolis, the organization’s executive director.

Some 1.3 million Americans are sickened each year by eating salmonella-contaminated food, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most people have only mild symptoms, but others suffer diarrhea, nausea and vomiting. Roughly 19,000 people are hospitalized annually, and an estimated 420 die from the infected food.

Chicken and turkey account for nearly a quarter of all salmonella infections, according to a 2021 government report on food illness.

The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service inspects poultry plants monthly. The new report shows that five U.S. poultry plants exceeded maximum allowable salmonella contamination every month from 2020 to 2024. These included a Carthage, Mo., turkey plant owned by Butterball, a Dayton, Va., turkey plant owned by Cargill Meat Solutions, and a chicken plant located in Cunning, Ga., that is owned by Koch Foods. A Costco chicken producer, Lincoln Premium Poultry, exceeded the standard in 54 of 59 inspections.

“Lincoln Premium Poultry treats the safety of its products as an utmost concern,” Jessica Kolterman, the company’s director of administration, said in an email. “When the United State Department of Agriculture reports are updated and published, they will show that we have enhanced our standing. … We will continue to improve our processes.”

A spokesperson for Butterball said the company “takes food safety very seriously and follows all USDA and FSIS regulations and inspection protocols.” The spokesperson said facilities are subject to rigorous, continuous oversight, and they are “constantly reviewing and improving our food safety programs to ensure we meet or exceed government standards.”

Cargill, Perdue and Koch Foods did not reply to requests for comment. Foster Farms directed questions to the National Chicken Council, the industry’s trade group.

“Consumers should not be concerned,” said Tom Super, a spokesman for the chicken council. He said the report was “unscientific” and described Farm Forward as an “activist organization whose stated goal is to end commercial chicken farming.”

Both Super and Bill Mattos, president of the California Poultry Federation, said poultry is safe when cooked to 160 degrees, and knives, cutting boards and other items that may have come into contact with raw meat are disinfected and cleaned.

“All chicken is safe to eat when properly handled and cooked,” said Mattos, noting that annually “Californians eat more chicken than any other state … 110 pounds per person!”

The report also suggests that the federal government’s standards for acceptable levels of salmonella are unduly high, and potentially put American poultry consumers at risk.

For ground chicken, the USDA allows 25% of samples at a plant to be contaminated. For ground turkey, 13.5%. Chicken parts should not exceed 15.4% of samples contaminated, while the number is 9.8% for whole chickens.

“I don’t know, but seems common sense to me that if you allow for a lot of salmonella, a lot of people are going to get sick,” said Bill Marler, an attorney with Marler Clark, a national food safety law firm.

When inspectors visit a plant, they do not assess the meat’s bacterial load, nor do they determine the strain of bacteria found on the product. They just test for the presence of the bacterium — it’s either there or it’s not.

According to Marler and Maurice Pitesky, a poultry science expert at UC Davis, there are hundreds of strains — or serotypes — of Salmonella. Most are considered harmless, but roughly 30 are known to be potentially lethal to people.

As a result, the USDA inspections don’t give a clear picture about what’s there, Pitesky said.

“When I hear something has salmonella, I’m like, ‘OK, first question: I want to know its serotype. What kind of serotype is it?’ Because that that’s really the relevant piece of information,” he said.

When inspectors find a plant has exceeded the salmonella standard, there is very little they can do except note it. The agency has no authority to enforce the standards.

Marler said in the 1990s, after four children died and hundreds of people got sick eating ground beef contaminated with E. coli sold at Jack in the Box restaurants, the agency decided to classify the bacterium as an adulterant. That designation meant the USDA could stop the sale of contaminated products, or shut down a plant that failed inspections.

He said the beef industry initially pushed back, fearing it would lose money — which it did, at first.

He said the USDA started doing retail testing, “and for a while, it felt like there was a recall a week — you know … 50, 100, a thousand pounds here, a million pounds there, even 10 million pounds.” Eventually, however, companies started testing their products “and coming up with interventions to get rid of it. And you know what? The number of E. coli cases linked to hamburger plummeted.”

He said now he sees a case only once in a while.

“I kind of look at that and think, well, if you get salmonella out of chicken, you’ll probably reduce those cases too,” he said.

Pitesky said that salmonella is notoriously difficult to get rid of. It can be introduced to flocks from wild animals, such as birds, rats, mice and other wildlife. It’s also found in the intestines of chickens, on their skin, feathers and feet, and it spreads among them when they poop, urinate and walk around in shared bedding, etc.

However, Marler thinks it can be controlled.

“Yeah, it’s difficult,” he said. “But you can do a lot of things. And this might piss people off, but you could eradicate flocks with salmonella. They do it in the EU all the freaking time.”

The European Union considers salmonella an adulterant, and require producers to reduce and control it via biosecurity, testing, vaccinations, recalls and occasionally depopulation.

“The fact is, if you make salmonella contamination expensive, if recalls exist and people feel embarrassed that they’re producing food that is making people sick or killing them, they’ll want to change their behavior,” he said.