Bill Gates on climate change: Planting trees is not the answer, emissions need to be zeroed out to avoid disaster
- Reference: 1613502398
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/02/16/gates_climate_change/
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This is a different Bill Gates from the author of The Road Ahead back in 1995, in which as CEO of Microsoft he tried to persuade the world that his company realised the importance of the internet. This is Gates the philanthropist; and he has set himself the not small task of presenting “a plan for eliminating greenhouse gas emissions.”
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His starting point is that planning to reduce emissions is futile. “We have to get to zero … unless we stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, the temperature will keep going up.” What are consequences of failure? Frightening. Gates is matter-of-fact but firm in assertions such as “if the temperature rises by two degrees Celsius, coral reefs could vanish completely, destroying a major source of seafood for more than a billion people.”
Is he worth listening to? It is a valid question, not least because he himself says, “my carbon footprint is absurdly high,” and that “I can’t deny being a rich guy with an opinion.” He is also a celebrity though; and a celebrity who says he thinks “more like an engineer than a political scientist” is something to be treasured at a time when the world is plagued by opinions that are influential but ill-informed.
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Microsoft's Bill Gates defrag is finally virtually complete: Billionaire quits board to double down on philanthropy [3]READ MORE
A chapter entitled “Five questions to ask in every climate conversation,” is a good one. Do not be conned by things like “equivalent to taking one car off the road,” he says. There are 51 billion tons of greenhouse gasses emitted annually, what is the percentage reduction a proposed scheme offers? “Technologies that will never exceed one per cent should not compete for the limited resources we have for getting to zero,” he writes.
Gates also sets out a table of activities that generate emissions. The biggest category is making things (cement, steel, plastic) at 31 per cent, then electricity with 27 per cent. Plants and animals account for 19 per cent, with travel at 16 per cent, although the last year has trimmed this somewhat, and with heating and cooling generating seven per cent of emmisions. “Getting to zero means zeroing out every one of these categories,” he opines.
Each one gets a chapter in the book, with some data on the current state of play, and proposals for eliminating emissions. Gates does not always have a concrete solution.
Cement, used everywhere in vast quantities, is a problem, he notes. In the materials chapter he writes that “Of all the materials I’ve covered, cement is the toughest case of all … limestone plus heat equals calcium dioxide plus carbon dioxide.” He resorts to proposing carbon capture and using materials more efficiently.
Follow the money
A key issue is the conflict between lowering emissions and business economics. It is no good running a business with zero emissions if what you make is too expensive to sell versus “dirty” alternatives and the business goes bankrupt.
Therefore Gates focuses on what he calls the “green premium,” how much more the green alternative costs. If the green premium is low or even negative, adoption should be immediate. If it is high, it is problematic and only government intervention can enforce or incentivise its use.
Should we plant more trees? “It has obvious appeal for those of us who love trees, but it opens up a very complicated subject ... its effect on climate change appears to be overblown.”
The questions Gates asks include how much carbon dioxide a tree can absorb, how long will it survive, what would have happened to the land if the tree had not been planted, and where is it? Trees in snowy areas cause more warming than cooling, writes Gates, because dark things absorb more heat. Trees in tropical forests cause cooling because they release moisture which becomes clouds. “Trees between the tropics and the polar circles are a wash,” he says.
When we remove trees, “you disturb the soil … and it turns out there’s a lot of carbon stored up in soil … that stored carbon gets released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide,” writes Gates. Therefore, planting a tree to replace one that has been cut down does not neutralize the impact.
The most effective strategy is to “stop cutting down so many of the trees we already have, he says. He also writes that “you’d need somewhere around 50 acres’ worth of trees planted in tropical areas to absorb the emissions produced by an average American in their lifetime.”
Time to get clean
A recurrent theme is the need for clean energy. “Electrify everything, and get the electricity from a power grid that’s been decarbonized,” writes Gates.
He looks at a number of potential sources of emission-free energy, and is ( [4]unsurprisingly ) a fan of nuclear. “No other clean energy source even comes close to what nuclear already provides today … nuclear power kills far, far fewer people than cars do,” he writes.
What can individuals – as opposed to governments or perhaps billionaires – do to make a difference? It is import because many us shrug and think “not much,” and therefore not much gets done by anyone. One tactic is putting pressure on politicians, Gates advises.
“Make calls, write letters, attend town halls,” Gates writes, showing again that this is in part a political book. Or “run for office,” he suggests.
As a consumer, there are suggestions to buy an electric vehicle, try a plant based burger, and be willing to pay the "green premium" to stimulate the market. And also don't throw food away: not only does it increase emissions by requiring more food, but also “when wasted food rots, it produces enough methane to cause as much warming as 3.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year,” Gates writes.
“There are things you can do to help avoid a climate disaster,” Gates said in his post [5]introducing the book. There are; but the problems he articulates are such that it is hard to be optimistic. Still, you get the impression that he has done his best to be reasoned, not sensational, and to inform the debate, all of which are good things.
“Those of us who have done the most to cause this problem should help the rest of the world survive it,” he writes. It is hard to argue with that, and a shame it is not echoed by more of his ultra-rich peers.
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How to Avoid a Climate Disaster is published by Penguin Press, ISBN 9780241448304®
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[3] https://www.theregister.com/2020/03/13/bill_gates_microsoft/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2013/07/25/bill_gates_nuclear_firm_plans_hot_salty_push_into_power/
[5] https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/My-new-climate-book-is-finally-here
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[7] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Greta was at least consistent
He's in the "people like me crowd" with John Kerry, LOL (Video to refresh the memory)
https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1357006843441262594
There's a good reason Greta has distanced herself from these old men who just want a higher social clout score.
Love, AC
I think it’s fair to say that nearly every reader of this august website has an absurdly high carbon footprint, and we all need to work hard to reduce it. Renewables have to be part of that, a new generation of advanced nuclear might be another part - and more efficient devices yet another. It’s not enough to have an electric car, it needs to be an efficient electric car.
Furthermore, I’m sorry to say that we also need to reduce the population. How? No idea. Any option is going to be unpopular. War? Pandemic? Definitely not. Mandating a reduced birth rate - 2 children maximum, or a big fine might be the least worst option - but one fraught with difficulty. Answers on a postcard.
There's a lot we don't know
Saying reduced carbon is a safe space today, but we need to have much more diverse and open ended conversations. Science in a world of grant funding and citation rings CAN become an echo chamber distanced from on-the-ground truth (see Taleb on social sciences).
Can we at least ask ourselves...if we really do control the outcome, is a hotter or colder world preferable. Hot is uncomfortable and may have sea level rise. Cold breaks things, machines and crops included. Government programmes typically overshoot their goals, so we need to consider this.
Every technical or biological mitigation will fail without a meaningful reduction in the human population, and I agree that a 2 child limit is the fairest solution provided its fully and fairly enforced and that reliable contraception is treated as a fundamental human right .
Isn't it interesting that not one politician or public figure ever dares to mention it?
Martin, are you saying that I will be forced to have my uterus removed? Are you from the desensitized Uygur region of CCP's reach?
He said nothing of the sort. Way to go trying to demonise him by throwing in that comment about a humanitarian crime.
It’s an absurdly difficult hot potato. And politicians like being elected, indeed, need to be elected to effect change. So, before any such change can be promoted the idea of fewer children needs to become popular or ‘fashionable’.
I think it's self leveling to some extent, as long as everybody's lifestyle is uplifted people forget about having kids...
Ask the Japanese.
Every man, woman, and child on this planet has contributed to a pattern of unethical behavior to the point that it can't be stopped without mass extinction events or a purposeful removal of our species. The only why to stop people opposing population control is to perforate the brain.
"I think it’s fair to say that nearly every reader of this august website has an absurdly high carbon footprint, and we all need to work hard to reduce it. "
One isn't really concerned about the environment unless one projects one's footprint X generations into the future. I'd agree that, not spawning so many kidz = Problem solved.
If Bill Gates is going to talk about climate he has to talk about the rest of the environment too, just to be clear I haven't read his book, only this article so i don't know what else is in it. But, pooh pooing tree planting, while it may be valid in terms of climate to some degree, is still necessary in many places where harvesting and/or forest fires have destroyed trees and the habitats that go along with them.
If we don't address the horrendous rates of extinction that are currently happening as I write this, many of which are due to habitat loss that is not related to climate change, the world's biodiversity is likely to hit a tipping point in the not too far distant future so having arrested global warming will be limited in saving the Earth as it is only one of many things that we need to address.
Personally, I wish someone would follow through on the other side of the story...
No, not denying that it is happening, I mean starting from the thought experiment that it will not be prevented.
I mean, when did the current climate emergency start? About 35M years ago, at the end of the Eocene. Things got going with a bang (most likely meteor strikes) with the Eocene–Oligocene extinction event and the stable climate of the Late Cretaceous through Eocene Thermal Optimum started to spiral into an ice age. Thousands of species went extinct in the event itself and an unknown number of others must have been exterminated during the most catastrophic climate-related event of the last 100+M years: the glaciation of Antarctica, sterilizing the land surface area of an entire continent.
So, we're going back to the Eocene? OK, that means progressively improved habitability (from a human standpoint) in Canada and Siberia, probable elimination of the relict ice age megafauna persisting in Northern latitudes, elimination of the polar ice caps (North going first), which are not a default state for the planet anyway (most of the time they aren't present).
"Too fast!" you say? Meteor strikes are a lot faster. So is major volcanism. Lots of other extinction as well of course, but then 99.9% of species that have ever existed are already extinct. Are we shaping up to pull off something on the scale of the K-Pg event? Even if we are, that was the genesis of our current mammalian ecosystems, not the dawn of a lifeless desert.
I'm not advocating a position here; it would just be interesting if someone with a bit (lot) more knowledge followed through on this possibility without it drifting off into absurd, histrionic catastrophism about the "end of life on Earth" or some other such nonsense.
So will the Peak District return to being a tropical sea soon?
Nuclear power is a no-brainer
If we want to have cheap, plentiful power with a minimal impact on the environment, nuclear is literally our only option.
Fossil fuels (including fossil methane, AKA natural gas) are obviously out, with wind turbines killing birds of prey as well as bats, and scaring other birds away from their migratory and nesting areas. E.g.: https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1365-2656.12961
Much like wind turbines, PV solar is very low in power density, and a capacity factor or between 10-30%. A significant amount of either requires either good load-following nuclear (which does exist, e.g. French plants and new Gen III reactors), or plentiful grid-level storage (prohibitively expensive). The one thing which PV solar does have going for it is that it can be put on roofs, above parking lots and other areas which have already been settled, unlike wind turbines which will always end up destroying the local ecosystem for at least some species in addition to speeding up the extinction of others.
The first thing which we should stop doing is to disrupt the last few percent of undisturbed nature, and cut down more forests. Not just because this is what leads to more pandemics, but also because the increasing partitioning of 'the wild' means that for more and more species they essentially have no habitat any more.
Over here in Germany nuclear will be fully phased out by the end of next year. Meanwhile we'll have another 18 years of coal, with forests and villages being cleared for more open coal (lignite) mines, as well as for tens of thousands of km of new transmission lines (for the wind power in the north) and wind turbines themselves. It has reached a point where an environmental assessment is no longer even necessary before ripping gaps in forests like the Schwarzwald.
The irony of this all is that we have two groups of 'environmentalists' forming: those who absolutely believe in wind & solar power with no room for alternatives, and those who accept the scientific and economic reality required for humanity and the rest of this biosphere to coexist.
High-density, low-carbon sources of electricity as well as heating are what we need today. As South Korea, Russia and China are showing for the past decades, it's possible to build a new nuclear reactor (VVER, APR-based, even the troubled French EPR) in 5-6 years. For the money Germany has spent on fossil methane and coal plants, as well as wind and PV solar subsidies, it could already have spent two decades building dozens of new 1 GW Gen III reactors and hit net-zero on electricity production and made a big dent in heating-related carbon as well.
Unfortunately, it seems that vested interests and dogma-obsessed 'environmentalists' have banded together to make even backwards decisions like replacing Belgium's nuclear plants with 100% gas official policy, as well as Germany's increasing reliance on natural gas with Nordstream 2 and US fracking gas. It's enough to make any rational person rather depressed about our chances to stave off climate change and mass-extinctions.
> "Cement, used everywhere in vast quantities, is a problem, he notes. In the materials chapter he writes that “Of all the materials I’ve covered, cement is the toughest case of all … limestone plus heat equals calcium dioxide plus carbon dioxide.” He resorts to proposing carbon capture and using materials more efficiently." <
...use Roman concrete instead!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_concrete#Modern_use
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/130604135409.htm
“my carbon footprint is absurdly high"
More Zoom Teams, less Business Jet?