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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MartinGAtkins (09:01:12) :
Stefano (05:56:43) :
” 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.”
Gaia had us evolve because the earth was running out of CO2 and needed us to dig it all up again.
Maybe we are on our way to extinction like the dinosaurs.
When I was in college some fifty years ago the following joke went around:
Dinosaurs became extinct because the size of the brain was too small for the volume of the body it had to control.
Homo sapiens evolved.
Homo sapiens +car will become extinct because the brain is too small for the volume sapiens+car.
The long winter evenings must just fly by 😉
We have been over this many times before, you can cherry pick your 2003, why don’t you look at trends? Anyone should know that there will always be variables that cause short term increases/decreases in temperature. Very recently was the La Nina last year, in 1998 there was the El Nino. What is not in doubt by any credible scientist is that the temperature rise from the latter half of the last century has been rapid. Take this graph of trends http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/mean:12/plot/wti/trend/plot/gistemp/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/trend . The last 30 years (picked as this is the starting point of the Wood for Trees temperature index, not ‘cherry picked). You can very plainly see that the trend of the last 30 years was much higher than that from the mid 18th century.
Err…yes they did, in fact it was reported on WUWT in April 2008. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/04/30/a-look-at-hadcrut-global-temps-and-pdo-with-hodrick-prescott-filtering-applied/
Notice the crusial line “Global warming will stop until at least 2015 because of natural variations in the climate, scientists have said. Researchers studying long-term changes in sea temperatures said they now expect a “lull” for up to a decade while natural variations in climate cancel out the increases caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions. “
This is again a clumsy use of a typical tactic used by disputants. By not facing up to the undeniable facts you yourself and your ilk are the ostriches in this debate. As for the ‘hoping for the end of the world’ jibe, that is not only very, very untrue, but counter to what credible scientists are trying to do, that is save the civilised world from the more extreme and unusual weather events nad climate changes that will/are happen(ing) due to AGW.
DJ, and Australia have it wrong. It will not cost $6 per household per week.
California (that state that knows ALL about global warming) has decreed that IT COSTS NOTHING AT ALL, in fact, IT SAVES MONEY to go green. In addition, new jobs are created, the economy roars, and we all sing kum-ba-yah. (I made up that last part about singing. The others are truly part of their claims).
Here are the links:
http://www.arb.ca.gov/cc/cc.htm
Scoping Plan is at:
http://www.arb.ca.gov/cc/scopingplan/document/scopingplandocument.htm
Economic Assessment is here, and see Appendix G:
http://www.arb.ca.gov/cc/scopingplan/document/appendix2.pdf
Those interested can see my analyses at: (and other postings with AB 32 in the title)
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/ab-32-and-electric-power-sector.html
I should note that independent analyses of the Scoping Plan, conducted by economic experts, showed that the Scoping Plan is hopelessly optimistic. But, California forges ahead without any regard to what the experts publicly stated.
And Obama wants the national plan to mirror the California plan.
OT, but provides context for Hakan B’s comment:
I want remind the descendants of Vikings who view this site that the Viking culture was rather primitive until late in the 5th Century. The change came when the some Vikings rowed their boats to Ireland and met St Brendan the Navigator.
Brendan and his monks taught the Vikings how to sail and navigate. This new found mobility unleashed Viking raider/traders on the world to do their thing.
It is noteworthy that Brendan’s discovery of North America is well documented. His voyage was replicated by archaeologists and featured in a film produced and sponsored by the National Geographic Society.
Jeff Alberts (08:52:57) :
You know I didn’t make that up (although it ought to be (SOYbean + LENTil) SOYLENT Corp., the name of the company that manufactured the food pellets in the film “Soylent Green”.
Here’s a review from Wikipedia. WIki sets the scene in the first sentence with a mention of global warming along with overpopulation in the year 2022 as the cause of mankind’s suffering. When I saw that I checked other reviews and none mentioned global warming using instead pollution and overpopulation. Novel was written in 1966, film made in 1973, I don’t think they had global warming in mind. Some Wiki contributor stuck it in!!!
DJ (02:57:58) :
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.
You mean as the Australian government has chosen to ignore its rather modest promise of cuts? They have since shelved cuts “for further study”.
P Folkens (23:55:22) :
“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.”
I have an opinion which may run contrary to this concern. I’m a retired physician (got out while I still have a sense of humor). If denying health care for the elderly starts happening on a grand scale, I expect lifespan numbers to go up. It may be that the healthiest thing for old folks like me is to stay away from doctors as much as possible. Taking bushels of medications and undergoing invasive diagnostic procedures in an effort to make your lab tests approach a statistical ideal is a lousy way to live. Life can be just fine over here on the right side of the bell-shaped curve.
If you want to live better and longer, trade your uncomfortable dining room chairs for comfy swivel office chairs. Sit down with your family at meals, talk and laugh, find out what’s going on in each others’ lives. Have a glass of wine, and just enjoy each other while you still have each other. Push your worries aside, and listen to what people are saying. Take your time. Hold your opinions until asked. Notice what good people your family members are, and what that really means.
I’m not convinced that doctors can make you as an individual live a single day longer than your “allotted span”, but never forget: we can surely prolong your dying.
Henry
Apparently, the only government which takes this graph seriously is China’s. While we scale back our coal industry, they are accelerating development of theirs. CO2 control in the rest of the world is pointless without their cooperation, and will only result in China becoming the dominant power. Don’t we have enough economic problems without Cap and Trade?
RJ Hendrickson (10:26:20) :
Amen! And they have the whole conventional pollution thing to deal with yet before they start thinking about co2.
Oh I know. I saw it when it originally came out in the theaters. I would have been about 11. Seen it a few times since, great movie, if a bit (ok a LOT) dated.
Enjoyed and heartily agree with your philosophical comments.
Reminds me of the eulogy from the film “Being There” which ends “… and no accountant can audit life in our favor.” [or close to that anyway].
Mary Hinge (09:50:50) :
You seem to really believe this:
As for the ‘hoping for the end of the world’ jibe, that is not only very, very untrue, but counter to what credible scientists are trying to do, that is save the civilised world from the more extreme and unusual weather events nad climate changes that will/are happen(ing) due to AGW.
If I were starting my studies now, I think I would go into biology and gene studies. There is something in repetitive human behavior that calls for programming in the genes. Take the rain dances, for example. Many cultures have something similar. Greek culture has church litanies praying for rain, not so colorful as rain dances.
I am sure that humans controlling the weather by controlling CO2 emmissions belongs to the rain dance gene.
Mary Hinge thinks s/he knows exactly…
Do you simply invent things as you go, MH? Like saving the ‘civilised’ world?
click1
click2
click3
Who exactly are these “credible” scientists presumably saving the world from your fictitious extreme weather events, and from entirely natural climate changes? Can you name them?
And please provide empirical evidence that AGW is significant enough to be measurable. If you can do that, you’ll be the first. Otherwise, you’re simply another frightened person needlessly alarmed by non-existent “what ifs,” such as entirely natural weather events and normal, natural climate changes.
Mary Hinge:
“Get thee to a school” – a school where they teach analysis and where they encourage you to understand data sources and production. That woodpress graph you offered to show that “the trend of the last 30 years was much higher than that from the mid 18th century” is quite meaningless. If you would look at the warming trend from about 1910 to about 1940, you would find a similar rapid increase. In a fluctuating line, you can expect to find periods of rapid growth. It is quite meaningless to say that the last 30 years have been faster than the long term trend unless the previous trend had been monotonic. And there are many reasons why one would expect increases in the last thirty years: on land, there are micro siting issues in addition to UHI. Also, land use changes impact changes to the positive direction. Moreover, those thirty years are characterized by positive phases of the PDO and AMO. (Some would also point out that solar energy in various possible ways positively impacted temperature in this time frame although I think that issue is far less clear.) And, please observe: I am a believer that the CO2-induced warming effect in laboratory experiments will still be true to some extent in the chaotic real atmosphere. But so far, we lack evidence that the feedbacks will be positive and that the CO2 impacts will swamp natural variation. (For the record, I’m not confident that we have an accurate handle on the long-term Global Mean Temperature, but this GMT term is commonly used in AGW discussions, so I use it in this post.)
As far as life expectancy goes modern plumbing has contributed a significant percentage of the gains.
http://plumbing.1800anytyme.com/info/history_of_plumbing.php
Particularly important was the 1876 publication of George Waring’s landmark book, The Sanitary Drainage of Houses and Towns, along with various other books and articles explaining how to correctly design plumbing systems that worked the way they were supposed to. And thus began the good life as we know it today. Famed physician-writer, the late Dr. Lewis Thomas, former Chancellor of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, wrote in 1984: “There is no question that our health has improved spectacularly in the past century…One thing seems certain: It did not happen because of medicine, or medical science or even the presence of doctors.
Much of the credit should go to the plumbers and engineers of the Western world. The contamination of drinking water by human feces was at one time the single greatest cause of human disease and death for us; it remains so, along with starvation and malaria, for the Third World type Countries. Typhoid fever, cholera and dysentery were the chief threats to survival in the early years of the 19th century, mainly in New York City and highly crowded and populated areas, and when the plumbers and sanitary engineers had done their work in the construction of our cities these diseases began to vanish.”
Dr. Thomas also said, “One of my key points is to criticize our country’spolicy of building high-tech medical facilities in underdeveloped countries. What would benefit the Third World much more is decent plumbing.”
I would add that the chlorination of our drinking water was a large part of it too…
Mike Bryant
Jeff Alberts (10:49:51) :
It is a shop-worn idea, “man mis-uses earth, suffers consequences” but the idea that some contributor to Wiki felt it necessary to blame global warming updates it to a certain extent. I thought Edward G. Robinson was great in this film, evidently his last.
Smokey (11:08:26) :
So can you and your ~snip~ explain why temperatures are rising now, when all the indicators you and your minions spout out would mean the earth should be cooling rapidly?
Amongst the theories put forward on this site to explain why the earth should be cooling are low sun spot numbers/ solar minimum; -ive PDO; ENSO, whilst not a La Nina is very close. All of these should, according to what has been said on this site, be causing the earth to cool….it isn’t, so can you explain why this is happening?
I am trying to remove the image from my mind of an ostrich doing a rain dance! Take your head out of the sand and you might enjoy better rhythm.
Mary Hinge,
We’re not going to drink your Climate Kool Aid.
Forget it.
C’mon! You seriously believe we can regulate the climate by adjusting a few ppm of one single (small) climate factor? That’s utter crackpot science.
You people scare the living bejesus out of me, truly.
And you’re also scaring the financial markets. Have you been watching the world stock markets? They got no confidence in you social engineering crackpots. It’s nothing less than WAR ON BUSINESS.
My view is that 33% precent drop in the stock market is far worse for humanity than the 33% CO2 increase we’ve had.
Anthony’s graph proves it. I’m sorry but you kooks are really out to lunch on this issue.
E.M.Smith (01:37:17) :
That period around 1970 is mighty interesting.
Look at the period circa 1987. That’s when the speed limit increased to 70 mph. I can’t recall the figure, but it increased oil consumption immensely.
DJ (02:57:58) :
in the Australian context amounting to just $6 per household per week…. Similar results through the peer reviewed literature which you choose to ignore.
Actually, we know exactly what it will cost in the U.S., and you’re way off.
In Obama’s budget is a plan to raise $650/yr billion with cap and trade. Assuming 300 million population gives $2166 per person. Average houshold size around 3.5 gives $7583. Guess you missed that.
Yet another cheap tactic, don’t you have any relevant arguments rather than this misinformation?
Your sort of logic is fresh out of Monty Python’s ‘Sex is more fun than logic’!
Anthony’s graph proves what? Your argument is the worst sort of logic, for those who don’t know the Monty Python sketch about logical fallacies etc, here it is http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~rafe/sexlogic.html
Mary, please. When you start with a false premise, then your conclusion is false.
The planet’s temperature is flat to cooling. It is not warming:
click1
click2
click3
Have we now reached the point where climate alarmists simply state their opinion that there is continuing global warming, regardless of the facts?
Pierre Gosselin: “My view is that 33% precent drop in the stock market is far worse for humanity than the 33% CO2 increase we’ve had.” You are right, but
Humanity is too many: These figures will be restricted to the greenier countries. You get everything already: A “convenient” armageddon, and even not one but several “anti-christs” :).
Smokey, LALALALA I can’t hear you. LALALA, I still can’t hear you.
Smokey (13:10:30) :
Try and look at the picture prior to your cherry picked date graphs.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl
Notice how the temperature varies along the upward trend, sometimes its down sometimes its up. There was a short term cooling trend in the late ’90’s but the temperature kept going up. Eyeballing the graph you can see we are coming out of the La Nina induced cool spell, temperatures are indeed up.
Just to show you what I mean about ‘cherry picking’ notice the date line discrepancies on the icecap graph. A simple check with the graph shows it only goes to mid 2008, not the 2009 it suggests.
Mary, please. When you start with a false premise, then your conclusion is false.
Um, no, this is not true, Smokey. False premises can lead to correct conclusions (not that hers is). Of course, a false premise followed by a correct conclusion in no way makes the premise any less false. There is a brief article on it at the Wiki if you wish to head over there.
Mark