Guest post by Indur M. Goklany
In a recent op-ed in the Guardian that WUWT commented on, James Hansen of global warming fame, argued for closing coal fired power plants asserting that “The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains. Coal-fired power plants are factories of death.”
So what’s happened to US life expectancy as the number of coal fired death factories have multiplied and as the climate has gotten warmer?
Figure 1: Data are plotted for every ten years from 1900-1940, 1945, and each year from 1949 onward. Data sources: life expectancy from Statistical Abstract of the United States 2009, and earlier editions; coal usage from Goklany (2007) for 1900-1945, and EIA (2008) for 1949-2007; carbon dioxide emissions for 1900-2005 from Marland et al (2008).
As the above figure shows, US life expectancy at birth increased by 30.5 years, from 47.3 years to 77.8 years, between 1900 and 2005, while coal usage more than tripled. Carbon dioxide emissions in 2005 were nearly nine times the 1900 levels. And, of course, the climate has also gotten warmer (not shown). To appreciate the magnitude of this improvement in life expectancy, consider that the approximate life expectancy in pre-industrial societies varied from 25-35 years.
While the increase in life expectancy is not directly due to greater coal use or CO2 emissions, much of it was enabled in one way or another by the prosperity fueled in large part by coal and fossil fuel consumption, as I have noted in my book, The Improving State of the World: Why We’re Living Longer, Healthier, More Comfortable Lives on a Cleaner Planet. Also recalling the IPCC’s temperature trends from 1900 onward, according to my eyeball analyzer there seems to be a better correlation between life expectancy and coal use (and CO2 emissions) or their logarithms than that between temperature increase (either for the US or the world) on the one hand and, on the other hand, coal use (and CO2 emissions) or their logarithms.
It may be argued that Hansen’s comments pertain to the future, not to the past or present. But to this I would respond that the above figure is based on real data whereas Hansen’s declaration is based on some unknown projection about the future based on unknown, unvalidated and unverified models.
Giving up fossil fuel energy use and, with that, compromising the real improvements in life expectancy and other indicators of human well-being that have accompanied that energy use, would be like giving up a real bird in hand to avoid being attacked by a monster that may or may not exist in the bush, that is, a monster that may only exist in the virtual world.
This doesn’t seem like a rational trade-off.
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Obviously, the decline in life expectancy is being masked by temporary factors and will come back in an ever accelerating manner once we hit a tipping point in the near, but not too near, future. About the same time the Artic is ice-free in the summer.
Didn’t the new administration and the Tom Dashle book (Critical) say that the elderly use too much of the nation’s health care dollar? They suggested that those resources should be redistributed to the younger set that ostensibly has many productive years ahead rather than the resource sucking of late retirement.
If the administration gets it way on the carbon cap and trade front and health care “reform” and universality, who would be tempted to assert a shortened life expectancy was due more to decreased CO2 or to decreased health services available to the elderly?
If the EPA can categorise CO2 as a polluntant then in this virtual world that Hansen lives in we would all have to apply for licences to breath out. So every year you could buy your right to breathe for whatever the current carbon credit exchange rate is.
Then to solve the problem of the elderly, you would cap the number of licences you could buy, say to 60. Anyone who dies earlier than age 60 could leave their spare licence quota to their descendants so that they could live for longer than 60 years.
Now back in the real world, I only have 10 years to go before 60 so I think I’ll go and buy shares in Dignitas in Switzerland! (an Euthanasia clinic).
But the models didnt predict this therefore reality must be wrong
Rossa (00:13:07) :
“If the EPA can categorise CO2 as a polluntant then in this virtual world that Hansen lives in we would all have to apply for licences to breath out. So every year you could buy your right to breathe for whatever the current carbon credit exchange rate is.”
It used to be called “the head tax” now it is the “cap and trade” tax. Considering that a cap goes on the head it must be an improved one! ( as in whoever the cap fits).
I wonder that political advisers to Obama are not reading this and similar blogs. Obama is in a very real danger of being remembered for posterity as the head dancer in a rain dance. Anybody who believes in his potential to improve the US should be advising him to hold his horses on cap and trade for the next few years ( renewable energy goals are fine, imo). What if the next winter is even worse than this one?
Increased life expectancy is due to medical advances, better nutrition, cleaner, safer workplace conditions and cheap energy. Burning coal does emit some fairly nasty substances (co2 not being one of them), but the benefits have outweighed the disadvantages for us as a species.
The environmental argument is that we’ve got to stop being homocentric and put ‘earth first’. Personally I agree that we should be working to curb pollution, but not that we should use a specious argument about co2 to advance the anti-pollution cause. The environmental baby is in danger of being thrown out with the IPCC-AGW bathwater.
carbon sequestration: soilent green:)
It is shameful that Dr Hansen would appear to want millions and millions of people to die from hypothermia every winter.
We in North America live longer than we ever have and have learned lessons(some forgotten) from the best generation who ever lived. The parents of the baby boomers, who gave their lives and futures to improve the lives of their kids and country. Me being a first Gen X coming out of the 70’s/80’s, the generation that were not hippies, we had jobs, alot of us brought up by our grand parents from broken homes because this generation couldn’t handle responsibility.
We partied on the weekend with recreational drugs, the so called “Weekend warriors”.
My baby boomer divorcee parents where part of the ME generation( they all read books on this self serving psycho babble sheit) that let any dumbass self proclaimed prophet trying to cash in on their own narcissistic generation and start a new belief system. A voiding of true religion, for their own selfish ideology.
And here we are today, them scrambling to stuff that nest egg through speculation in oil and hedge funds, whatever gets them their retirement in the sun.
All failing(like it always does) because someone eventually has to pay they piper in the end , and that would be you and me. That’s why this second generation radical hippy, anti humanists/capitalist are about taxing you to solve imaginary problems, with imaginary solutions, with real money.
Taking real money and investment out from ender our kids, grand kids and maybe even your GREAT grand kids, who will pay and who knows how long for these leaches will feast on the future generations?
That period around 1970 is mighty interesting. Coal is near flat. After the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973 or so, oil use dropped. That’s almost all the carbon source dropping or flat. Yet the CO2 curve continues up… then it has a drop in about 1980-85 when the economy got going again and folks were buying bigger cars again… Somehow CO2 doesn’t seem to be tracking fuel use…
It would be really interesting to see a close up of that interval with real global oil and coal consumption figures rather than hazy memory and eyeball curve fits …
That 30 years per healthy, educated person has added enormous value to western civilisation.
This is where developed countries have far outstripped the 3rd world who desperately need cheap energy to raise their SOL and this cheap energy is being denied them by our newly acquired green policies.
O/T but relevent
Over at Climate Audit http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=5416
is a sorry tale. But apart from the obivous quetion, I am dumbfounded that such basic things necessary to the global warming claim, such as atmospheric hunmidity, are basically unknown to any degree of reliability.
Over here in the UK HMG keeps tabs on what is politely termed “fuel poverty”. Basically, households that cannot afford to just turn up the heat once it gets cold.
A quick glance at page 5 (pdf) shows that around 15% of UK households fall into this category.
I don’t think you need a PhD to work out what happens to these people, many of them pensioners, once the Carbon Cult get their new Gaia taxes.
My guess is that there will be a large increase in the totals as the taxes ripple through the economy – followed by a sharp fall in the first particularly cold winter. Virtual Science meets the real world.
Brilliant. This is one in the eye to all those climaholic $cientologists! Its like those crazy fools were blaming the killer smogs in the UK in the 50s on coal power. But you have wonderfully proven them wrong. Life expectancy goes UP because of coal use. We need to start posting this message everywhere on the internet we find it. Its the same story as DDT all over again. Crazy psuedoscientist claiming a wonderful technology is ‘killing’ the birdies. We ban DDT and millions die…….
E.M.Smith, that would be the period when Natural Gas was taking off.
In the end what everyone would support is a stable world population at a sustainable level of resource consumption per capita.
That will need to involve voluntary reproductive restraint globally.
The only way to get the third world to participate in the tendency of the west to reproduce at less than replacement rate is to provide an economic incentive.
People will only voluntarily have less children if children become an economic drain rather than an economic lifeline.
That means that everyone globally and especially the elderly have to get wealthy enough to change their reproductive decisions.
If one removes wealth from the elderly to pass it to the young then again more children will be an economic advantage in old age. That is the last thing we need.
Why is there so little logic applied to basic human behaviour when people talk about these issues ?
We need to use a lot more energy of every kind to keep the west wealthy enough and make everyone else wealthy enough for reproductive decisions en masse to get us past the coming population peak as fast as possible. Thereafter global population could well embark on a long term manageable decline.
The more we panic now the more we risk an infinite deferral of that happy scenario with unlimited death and environmental destruction instead.
The decline of this site continues. Playing the person – if its not Hansen is Gore if not Gore its Hansen.
As for a cost benefit analysis – real analysis using scientific methods shows the costs of reducing CO2 are tiny – eg http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/climate-change-wont-wait-for-recessions-end-20090304-8oh6.html?page=2
in the Australian context amounting to just $6 per household per week…. Similar results through the peer reviewed literature which you choose to ignore.
But the Malthusians, Eugenicists and assorted misanthropes actually want to reduce life expectancy. Saves them from reintroducing the real death trains. They spend their lives telling us there are far too many humans (always the other guy though; the assorted misanthropes invariably consider themselves the superior part of the race).
(I reckon, if nature knows best, there are exactly the right number of humans)
I grew up with rows; my parents didn’t get on. But I learnt that when in a row, humans accuse their opponents of exactly what they are doing themselves. All the disasters the AGW/greenie/misanthrope set are warning us about are exactly what we will get if their policies are implemented.
I’m 60 in a few weeks time. If I had to stop breathing I wouldn’t be able to tell the youngsters about the ways I’ve been so dumb over the years. Not that it matters much; they’ll just find their own ways.
By the way, I think I have discovered a new medical condition:
Hansenile Megalomania
AM
DJ (02:57:58) :
“The decline of this site continues. Playing the person – if its not Hansen is Gore if not Gore its Hansen. ”
But these guys set themselves up for it.
Animal 1 to Animal 2: “So what are you then?”
Animal 2: (loudly) “I’m a Wide Mouthed Frog. What are you?”
Animal 1: “I’m a Predator. I eat Wide Mouthed Frogs.”
frog’s mouth shrinks quietly.
$6 Australian Dollars per household per week would support some third world families for a month if not squandered on the vast infrastructure required by carbon trading and the inevitable corruption.
It could push many poor Australian families over the brink of insolvency if accumulated over time.
Who believes the burdens have been properly calculated anyway ?
The burden will not be distributed equally leaving many with a much greater financial burden and many with no burden at all.
Who is to say the costs will not escalate as soon as the requisite machinery is in place ?
Anyone who thinks the whole process will be cheap and cheerful is living a fantasy.
Well, DJ, if Gore or Hansen would ever pry their tails out from between their legs and publicly debate their failed hypothesis, there wouldn’t be a reason to set them straight here.
Rather than being an apologist for people who are alarming the population in order to get an enormous tax increase based on false science, along with a much bigger government, maybe you would like to try and give a credible reason that CO2 needs to be reduced at all.
DJ (02:57:58) wrote: “real analysis using scientific methods shows the costs of reducing CO2 are tiny…”
And some real analysis using scientific methods says we should increase CO2 – hence the debate.
And I suggest on your “playing the man” line that in this case Gore and Hansen are also “the ball”; which is why they get played.
DJ (02:57:58) :
Another good reason why peer review is discredited. A good read for you would be Lomborgs, “Cool It”.
DJ (02:57:58) :
My income will not increase by $20000 as the article suggests, in fact it has declined by 50% these last 6 months.
“In the case of Australia, they showed that a 30 per cent emissions reduction below 1990 levels by 2020 and a 60 per cent reduction by 2030 could be achieved by developing technologies and energy efficiency measures costing $2.9 billion, or an average cost of $290 per household per year. This is based on a carbon tax of $65 a tonne.”
$2.9 billion to develop AND IMPLEMENT by 2030 is totally unbelievable. this would not even cover the cost of a single nuclear energy plant.
DJ (02:57:58) Since the carbon cycle is unknown, “real analysis using scientific methods shows the costs of reducing CO2 are tiny”, is just a WAG.