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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From DJ’s article: “Thermal inertia, the fact that it takes up to a century for carbon dioxide put into the atmosphere to have its full climatic impact, means that there is a further 0.6 degrees of global warming in the pipeline”
Hilarious. Now if we could learn how to capture “thermal inertia” then maybe all of our energy problems would be solved.
In the midst of all the changes in AGW understanding obama’s official global warming envoy (a lawyer from the clinton era) is insisting on finalizing our US policy in 9 months toward the global effort on climate change. I put the keynote address on the air vent. It didn’t seem to make big news but it’s the first concise layout of the intended US response to global warming over the next 4 years.
Stephen Wilde (02:55:33) wrote: “That will need to involve voluntary reproductive restraint globally.”
Or, Stephen, we simply wait for the normal levelling out that comes when the standard of living of those currently breeding rather freely reaches a western level when birthrates seem to fall naturally to the stage where folks are not even replendishing themselves.
There is generally a nice balance in natural things which does not require the numb hand of government to derail; and even when that inept hand does intervene, time will mostly consign it to the halls of infamy.
It’s a big, wide, wonderful world we live in. Celebrate it.
I don’t understand why most of the loonies out there praise Algore, he’s not trying to reduce the CO, he’s just making money out of it.
Create an imaginary enemy, then claim that you can destroy it, but you will need money = taxes.
anna v (00:42:19) :
If anyone in the White House is readings blogs like this one, they’re doing it just to disparage them. The people behind Obama don’t care a whit about the facts. ‘Climate change’ is just an excuse to push for aggressive tax-and-control legislation, which unless it can be stopped in the Senate, is what they’re going to get.
/Mr Lynn
pkatt (01:15:24) :
carbon sequestration: soilent green:)
should be: soylent (SOYbean + LENtil).
You’re right, thas been noticable since winning the award, many of the guest posters have been very poor, it will soon get back to normal I’m sure once Anthony has finished his station review. The constant right-wing agenda and political mud slinging being spouted by many of the ‘new’ people has been tedious so will welcome a return to good science based posts
I can see Logan’s Run becoming a reality at this rate, except it will be 50-60 not 30 for the chop, that’s me putting the trainers on then! Heat = Life, Cold = Death, it’s rather simple really. Why do so many Brits head off to Spain over the winter periods, & I wonder why so many retire over there, it must be all that cold wet weather they keep getting. It’s our Florida chaps!
If Hansen believes that CEOs of Oil/Gas/Coal businesses & any other denier should be put on trial (presumably a show trial like the good old communist days & the Nazi show trials too before them) for crimes against humanity & the Earth, then surely those who clamoured for the blanket ban on DDT via flimsey evidence, heresay, & outright distortionate lies, (to my knowledge DDT was subsequently found to evenutally be innocent of all charges against it), then IMHO they should stand trial for their culpability in the deaths of millions of men, women, & children of the Third World, who have died because they couldn’t kill the maleria bearing mosquito through a lack of DDT! It cuts both ways Dr Hansen so be careful what you ask for, you may just get your wish.
Well, there is not any direct relation between coal use and life expectancy. Most of the improvement in average life expectancy over the past couple of centuries or so is a direct result of (a) improvements in public sanitation (no more open sewers), and (b) reductions in childhood mortality. There was a time (and it still obtains in the underdeveloped world) where a high percentage of children would not live to adulthood.
Clearly an industrialized society with a large surplus of energy can afford to devote resources to public health, mitigation of childhood diseases, and (most recently) elder longevity. Fossil fuels, including coal, have given us that large surplus, which the Algoracle and his Alarmist acolytes are now attempting to eliminate. The relationship between coal and life expectancy is not causal, but enabling.
/Mr Lynn
Actually CO2 needs to be increased. While some might claim that ‘Jurassic Park’ was pre-emptive climate-denier propaganda from Big Oil, it is generally accepted that for 100,000,000s of years the climate was stable at 2-5,000 ppm of CO2 and an extra 5-10C. During this time the biosphere seems to have been extremely healthy, since animals the size of the big dinosaurs need a lot of food.
Thus anyone who believes increasing CO2 will lead to runaway heating either isn’t aware of the fossil record, or they are simply too lazy to think before they speak.
Given that in the last million years we have gone down into Ice Ages colder than now, then recovered to warmer than now seems to show clearly that CO2 is irrelevant to whatever sets global temps.
DJ: Other estimates in the U.S. (here, for instance) show low-income families paying between $750 and $950 per year for the proposed cap-and-trade regime. Higher income families would almost certainly be a good deal higher than that. That is not a “tiny” sum. If you assume it averages $1200/year for a family with median income, that’s 3% of their after-tax income. Maybe you consider that a “bargain”, but you’ll need to pardon those of us who do not. Especially those of us who think this is the most over-hyped “crisis” in history. For us, that’s just $1000 or $1500 or more per year out of pocket and into the hands of government bureaucrats who think they know how to spend our money better than we do.
DJ: The decline of this site continues. Playing the person – if its not Hansen is Gore if not Gore its Hansen.
These are Global Warming’s high priests, and are also the ones most frequently quoted by the mainstream media. That makes them obvious targets.
DJ: … in the Australian context amounting to just $6 per household per week….
Maybe you should break it down to dollars per second, it’ll sound even smaller. And pardon me if I’m skeptical of a replacement of fossil fuel by wind and/or solar only adding $25 (10%) to my monthly electric bill.
It’s very simple:
Energy is life.
Cheap energy is prosperity.
Anyone opposing reducing energy expansion has a death wish.
Are we about to experience a sequel to An Inconvenient Thruth?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/video/2009/mar/02/age-of-stupid-making-of
So, are you trying to tell us that not only do we have to worry about increasing population, (i.e. number of carbon footprint makers) but our longevity (i.e. length of our carbon footprint trails)? Bummer.
Which is in itself already a homocentric stance; we are not humans separate from the planet and separate from Nature. We ARE Nature. Nature is expressing herself through us, another species, another variation, another potential unfolding. Other species grow and hit limits and die out. So Nature evolved a brain and a consciousness which could go beyond blind hunter gathering in a limited resource environment, an intelligence which could invent new resources. Show me a species which can feed on coal and oil and radioactive rocks.
OK, yes, we have to think about resources–and we always have done–but Nature “desires” us to make more use of the planet, not less. And that is Nature developing this potential, as us, we are not anything but Nature. Those who imagine otherwise are stuck in their own personal ideas about wanting the feeling of grass between their toes.
As a French Zen master/teacher put it, “everything is organic”.
Sandy
“Actually CO2 needs to be increased.”
That is about the gist of it. We are at a very long term low in CO2 concentrations. There is not a single known incidence of thermal runaway in the geologic record even with CO2 levels 10-20 times that of today.
The recent biomass surveys seem to indicate a growing amount of land-based plant matter (I haven’t heard of any results regarding ocean based biomass changes) despite the concerns of deforestation. Apparently the deforested land is re-cropped with non-tree vegetation overall. This is ‘corellating’ with a rise in CO2 concentrations of ~35% during roughly the same time period.
The Earth seems to benefit from the increase in plant ‘fertilizer’ and from a very minor increase in temperature over the past couple centuries.
There is so little evidence to the contrary. Why do we pick on CO2 as being ‘bad’? Would we rather have less biomass? Not be able to recover from deforestation? Be colder? Have shorter growing seasons?
@Richard111 (05:41:55) :
Age of stupids making a climatechange film? Somehow calling yourself “Age of stupids” does not look like a bright idea to me, but then if those people where bright they would not come up with such a name in the first place.
“One of my life biggest turningpoints”, there are so much similarities between Sciencetology and AGW.
Mary H, I don’t have a problem with the sometimes weird vitriolic diatribes against the opposite side, IE from you, DJ, or conservatives. And I don’t have a problem with the posts. While I visit this site everyday twice a day, it is not the first site I go to.
Here is my daily routine, twice a day.
Check satellite infrared weather systems at several km distances. Check the jet stream globally. Check ice extent and area globally as well as temperatures at the poles. Check snow pack. Check local weather predictions for several locations and elevations. Check sea surface temperatures globally. Check ozone. Check water vapor. Don’t check CO2 because it tells me nothing. Then I end up here. I do that twice a day. Sometimes I don’t check everything on my list. But I get around to them at least every other day. I never go here first.
Why you might ask? Because I want to form my own opinion about weather patterns and predictions. Tell me, what data sites do you check daily before talking about weather? I can give you my list of links if you like.
Stefano (05:56:43) :
Great post! Thank you.
More evidence of homocentricity:
Area of South Carolina (30,099 sq mi dry land)(5,280 ft/mi)(5,280 ft/mi)/(7,000,000,000 people on earth)=(119.87 sq ft/person)sqrt=
10.95 ft.
Every man, woman, and child on earth could be placed on the dry land of South Carolina and would have to take two or three steps to touch his neighbor.
It’s quite correct to say that as the poorer nations get richer their birth rate will drop. Current estimates are that the population will stabilise at about 9 billion round about mid-century (give or take). But we can’t force that except by taking the sort of action that will enable them to improve their own conditions — better access to good health care and above all abundant clean water.
Unfortunately for them the eco-fascists don’t want that for reasons I have never quite fathomed. I suspect they don’t understand the equation.
Two things that will help in the long run are an increase in global CO2 levels to improve crop returns and the use of GM crops designed to produce in unfriendly conditions. I’m in favour of both because I reckon the Bangladeshis have just as much right to live till they’re 80 as I do.
Incidentally, Ms Hinge, since I’m UK-based I don’t have any sort of right/left bias as far as your politics are concerned and nor do I have any connections with Big Oil or Big Pharma or Big Anything Else. But as someone else said above, if Gore and Hansen want to make themselves the ball instead of just the player then they will get kicked.
I don’t know whether Hansen knows exactly how offensive his “trains of death” comment was to Europeans; I expect he does. That’s not just “playing the man”, Ms Hinge; that’s “playing” several million of them and over here we have long memories.
Mary Hinge (04:41:10) wrote:
“The constant right-wing agenda and political mud slinging being spouted by many of the ‘new’ people has been tedious so will welcome a return to good science based posts”
Mary,
As one of the “new” people that you refer to, I enjoy this site because it mixes science with politics. Al Gore and Hansen are political animals who are using so-called science to promote themselves and a destructive ideology through the political process. They don’t care about the science! The right-wing agenda that you wrote about is the counter balance to Al Gore’s, et allia, dangerous ideology which is designed to re-structure our society to a centralized command and control system.
If you are a scientist, put your training aside, and start learning the history of dangerous ideologies, of dangerous economic systems, and of dangerous governments. Learn about the dichotomy of living standards between free-market systems and socialist/communist/marxist systems. Socialism always leads to some form of totalitarianism and very low standards of living, because of human nature; not because of bad intentions. Socialism is a great system, if we could only get it to work!
The science that you promote means nothing when the jack-booted government thugs are banging on your door at 0200 hrs.
Most highly educated people that I know, are experts on the “tree”, but they have lost site of the “forest”.
markm
Coal without a doubt has improved the well being of people and was behind the Industrial Revolution. As the old C&O Railway film “Coal Bin of America” says “Coal is power”.There have been technological improvements with coal usage to generate electricity. I remember reading that back around a hundred years ago several pounds of coal were required to generate a certain amount of Kwh of electricity, by the 1970’s it was down to ounces of coal to generate that amount of Kwh.
Windmills, solar and waterwheels ain’t gonna do it. I mention waterwheels because that is how the very early factories in Waterbury,CT ran their operations. Rumor has it they were able to generate up to 750 horsepower.Now you know why they call the place Waterbury ;and, of course ,they generated their own power with coal later because it was cheaper and better than waterpower.And they didn’t have to build the factories next to the rivers and brooks anymore.
If anyone would care to actually download the McKinsey & Company report cited in the article that DJ referred to, it is available here
http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/ccsi/pathways_low_carbon_economy.asp
Note that the figures seemed to be based on a proprietary model and data base and the report is intended as a business promotion tool. Not exactly “peer-reviewed” science. The rest of the article in The Age seems to be recycling standard “facts”… the “… melting of the Arctic and Antarctic…” is partially based on the Steig et al article in Nature, which the recent IPY report out of Geneva is referring to as well.
DJ (02:57:58) : As for a cost benefit analysis – real analysis using scientific methods shows the costs of reducing CO2 are tiny – eg
The cost analysis of the administration’s cap and trade scheme indicates that it will suck up 4% of the national GDP (at today’s productivity level) from the power companies alone. That cost will be passed on to the energy users — industry and the poor alike. The half trillion dollars that goes to the government from the scheme (not a “tiny” sum) will be applied to the deficit reduction plan. This inefficient movement of capital will have a profound negative effect on the economy. Perhaps econometric methods should be used in the analysis instead of scientific methods. The scientific method is showing the cap and trade scheme will not have an appreciable effect on the climate. The econometric analysis clearly concludes the scheme will be quite expensive. So, on balance, why do it?