Silly Me, It's Not the Trees That Affect Climate Change, it's the Money That Does.
According to self-proclaimed Climate Scientist Gates, planting trees is not following the science when it comes to affecting climate change.
In my last Substack blog I gave a review of the carbon cycle and how photosynthesis performed by trees and algae helps to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Just after posting that blog, I came across this article in Fortune magazine where self-proclaimed leading climate scientist Bill Gates says I’m an idiot.
Source: https://fortune.com/2023/09/22/bill-gates-climate-change-planting-trees-complete-nonsense-oil-gas
At the Earthshot Prize Innovation Summit on September 19, 2023 in New York City, which coincides with New York Climate week, Billy boy claimed he is among the people doing the most for climate change. He also stated that those purporting that planting trees will have an affect on climate change is “complete nonsense.”
“I’m the person who’s doing the most on climate in terms of the innovation and in how we can square multiple goals.”
What is Gates doing to combat climate change?
Not only has he founded the climate investment firm Breakthrough Energy, Gates, who is not a climate scientist, cuts a check for $10 million each year to carbon capture company Climeworks to offset his own carbon emissions.
I wonder how that money offsets his carbon emissions exactly. I guess it’s insulation for the company he gives it. If you have any ideas, please let me know in the comments below.
The brilliant self-proclaimed climate scientist went on to espouse his theory on how climate change works.
Gates said, “Emissions will peak and then start to go down. They won’t go down as fast as we want them to and so the temperature will continue to rise and once the temperature has risen it doesn’t go down very quickly, unless you do massive carbon removal.”
What is this word salad? Seems like VP Harris’s speech writer is moonlighting for Gates now.
But, it’s a good thing we have this expert to help humanity with climate change, after all the self-proclaimed public health expert did a bang up job getting us out of that pandemic we got ourselves stuck in.
Here’s what Gates had to say about deforestation in the Amazon rainforest:
Gates advocated for a strategy that would look to make a palm oil substitute cheaper than palm oil, he told the Times. A policy of just banning deforestation on a certain portion of land would be a temporary measure because it wouldn’t eliminate the overall demand for palm oil. Furthermore, a change in government might simply reverse that policy because the demand for palm oil would remain.
Meanwhile, Silicon Valley billionaire founder Marc Benioff has a plan to plant one trillion trees by the end of the decade.
Gates response to this was, “complete nonsense.” that planting enough trees would take care of the climate problem. “Are we science people or are we idiots?” Gates asked rhetorically.
But what does the science (not Fauci, the actual science) say?
Each year since 2000, forests are estimated to have removed an average of 2 billion metric tons of carbon from the atmosphere. Careful forest management can therefore be an important strategy to help address climate change in the future. Healthy forests also provide a host of other benefits, from clean water to habitat for plants and animals that can live nowhere else.
A study by MIT found that planting one trillion trees would eliminate about 6% of the carbon dioxide the world needs to stop emitting by 2050 to reach the goals set out in the 2015 Paris Accords.
MIT professor of civil and environmental engineering Charles Harvey explains that although it is a good idea for the world to plant many more trees, the truth is much more complicated than assuming more trees can cancel out our emissions. The faster trees are growing, the more carbon they can suck up, which means new growth is not as valuable as a carbon sink as are longstanding forests.
Harvey says, a society could get more bang for its buck by focusing on preserving existing forests rather than prioritizing new growth as a way to offset emissions.
“Planting trees where they aren't is often a good idea, and that will take up CO2,” Harvey says. “But a much more efficient thing to do, to have a larger effect for the same effort, is to stop cutting down trees. It's almost silly to think about [planting a huge number of new trees] while we're just burning and destroying them everywhere, releasing carbon at rates that are much higher than what new growth would take up.”
According to MIT scientists there are three ways to reverse deforestation losses: afforestation, reforestation, and the natural regeneration of forest ecosystems.
What is Gates response to this?
Instead of unproven methods like planting trees, Gates said he prefers carbon taxes as ways to fund future green technologies, in particular carbon capture, which aims to take CO2 out of the atmosphere.
So there you have it from the self-proclaimed climate expert himself, just forget about trees and pay your carbon tax. Money is green after all and I’m certain all that money collected from carbon taxes is really going to help insulate someone’s pockets very nicely.
So, Gates hates trees AND people. Figures.
Gates would be on stronger ground to say there are many scams and self delusions around using trees to reduce carbon. Like paying people to replant areas they just destroyed, only at lower density. But for sure if you plant a trillion trees (is that remotely possible?) you are going to have a huge net impact with that. I also think he has a point that a lower priced palm oil substitute would be more effective than trying to ban people in poorer countries from making a living.