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.
Roger: “…and we all sing kum-ba-yah. (I made up that last part about singing…”
I’ll try to break this to you gently, Roger. Kumbaya *is* part of the plan. Even as we converse the White House is working on a directive that will require the recitation of at least three verses per day by every American.
Believe me, I’m as gutted about this imposition as you are, but we all have to make sacrifices for Holy Mother Earth, and aesthetic preference is simply no excuse not to participate in this sacred communal activity.
On the positive side, those with elitist musical tastes might be able to secure permission to pay for a proxy to perform the service.
In the meantime, after me: “Something’s warming, Lord…”
If you liked that skecth you must dust down your record turntable and buy the vinyl version of ‘Monty Python and The Holy Grail-Executive Version’. Full of some of the best material the team wrote.
It’s a pleasure and all part of the MH service 😉
I’m afraid you’re wrong (again). I knew exactly what you were trying to say, I was merely reversing your proposition, thus presenting a more accurate picture of the situation.
Errr, so what about the Romans? Marvelous race the Romans………….
Only the very wealthy Romans had plumbing, and their lead pipes may have contributed to their fall. Their life expectancy never approached our lofty numbers.
Public sanitation costs money. A lot of money. That is why many Third World countries still lack it. Cheap energy is what enables many, many life saving, and life extending technologies. Life expectancy followed the labor saving technologies enabled by coal. Google “coal” to see how it was regarded a hundred years ago.
By the way, If the Romans had had access to coal, gasoline and the internal combustion, we would still be speaking Latin. Sorry Mary, that one don’t fly either.
Here’s one:
Coal is a portable climate. It carries the heat of the tropics to Labrador and the polar circle; and it is the means of transporting itself whithersoever it is wanted. Watt and Stephenson whispered in the ear of mankind their secret, that a half-ounce of coal will draw two tons a mile, and coal carries coal, by rail and by boat, to make Canada as warm as Calcutta, and with its comfort brings its industrial power.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
The degree to which a society can support people in the sciences, engineering, military, business, arts, and (yes) government is directly related to the amount of surplus resources available, once the basic needs of the population (food and simple housing) are taken care of. It was the utilization of fossil fuels, principally coal, that leveraged human effort, made the industrial revolution possible, and created the conditions we see today, where only a small percentage of the population is engaged in providing the basic necessities of life. It is somewhat simplistic, but the evolution of culture can be seen as the evolution of energy utilization (see the works of Marvin Harris).
For us to eschew the use of coal, of which we still have plenty, without an economical substitute, and to do so on the highly dubious ground that CO2 emissions present a hazard for the future, would be the height of self-destructive folly. For the next century, the growth of the American and world economies is going to depend on increasing the amount of energy we generate, from every source, especially coal.
/Mr Lynn
Mary, the Romans had slaves.
Mary Hinge
I have asked you and Joel nicely several times before on what basis you believe global temperature data back to 1850 has any scientific validity. If I ask you nicely again can you explain how a tiny number of unreliable, random, constantly chaging stations should be used to underpin what is supposed to be a scientific theory? Thank you.
TonyB
the solutions are so easy: stop industrialization. oops! that already happened, it’s called global recession. humans should take a hint about their activities and in general, get smarter about living on the planet earth.
Before responding to Ben Lawson (14:33:17; 20:20:50), I must thank Sunsettommy, April Coggins, anna v, Mike Bryant, Chuck Bradley, Mr Lynn, Stefan, and others who either came to my defense or tried to educate Ben by pointing out the errors in his ways, etc.
Ben Lawson’s suggestion that improvements in public sanitation, medicines, nutrition, education, etc. may have a better fit to improvements in life expectancy than coal usage or CO2 emissions, may or may not be correct — more on this below — but his claim that I claimed a correlation or causation between coal usage or CO2 emissions is simply incorrect. Specifically what I said was that
But let’s not belabor the nuances of the English language, and turn instead to the broader issue of the proximate causes of the increases in life expectancy. To quote from the original post:
The above makes no claim that either coal or CO2 usage is the proximate cause – that’s an inference that Ben Lawson jumped to on his own. But it does claim that whatever agencies caused it, they were “enabled” by coal/fossil fuel use.
What precisely do I mean by “enabled”? Let’s elucidate in the context of some of the possible causes of higher life expectancy listed by Ben.
First, Ben mentioned sanitation. And I agree it’s an important factor. In fact, I would lump it with safe water (because one of the major functions of sanitation is to reduce water contamination so that it is more fit for human consumption or human contact). But what enables sanitation and access to safe water to consumers?
With respect to sanitation, waste water has to be collected, then treated and, finally, discharged. With respect to safe water, water has also to be collected, treated and then delivered to consumers. In most places, collecting and moving water requires an expenditure of energy to run pumps and other equipment (unless one is fortunate to be in one of the few locations where gravity does the entire trick). Energy is also needed to operate many of the processes employed in sanitation and water treatment plants. In the U.S., more likely than not, energy consumption means fossil fuels, and if there were no fossil fuel energy, there would be fewer central sanitation and water treatment plants.
Next, let’s consider nutrition, which I would lump together with food. Indeed without sufficient food, our immune systems would be compromised and mortality would be higher for all age groups. But what makes it possible to grow and distribute sufficient food and nutrition to the population? A short list includes nitrogen fertilizer (remember the Haber Process?), transportation of agricultural inputs from producers to farmers, transportation of agricultural outputs from farmers to the eventual consumers, and farm machinery. Each of these is enabled by fossil fuels. Without them, farmers would not have enough surplus food to meet the demands of the total population, and many more of us would be hungry, malnourished and susceptible to death and disease. Also, absent energy consumption, there would be virtually no fresh produce outside of the growing season which, of course, is a recipe for poor nutrition.
Third, let’s examine education. [I would generalize this to “human capital,” which is indeed a critical factor.] We are all more knowledgeable, although not necessarily better educated (he says with a smile), in part because we have cheap and good lighting at our disposal. Without such lighting (made possible by electricity or fossil fuels such as gas, propane, or oil once we got beyond whale oil and tallow), there would be fewer hours in the day that we could put to good use. Without fossil fuels, primary and secondary education would probably not have been K-to-12 but K-to-15 or K-to-16 to impart students with the same amount of information. Of course, without fossil fuels, chances are that children wouldn’t have either the time or the (personal) energy to get a lot of education, particularly considering all the hours they would have had to spend doing chores, raising crops, cutting wood for fuel, drawing water, feeding the animals that would literally have been the workhorses on the farm, washing clothes by hand, etc. In fact, without cheap and readily available energy, the labor of children would be a critical asset for survival of the family that wouldn’t be allowed to go to waste. Children would be put to work as soon as they could to watch over a goat, feed the horses, lift a bag, or sow a sock. Getting an education wouldn’t be at the top of the “to-do” list for children. [Has it occurred to you, Ben, why child labor, for example, exists in poor agrarian societies, but I digress.]
Moreover, it takes lots of energy to make paper, without which most of us wouldn’t have text books or notepaper which until very recently were absolutely critical to education. Today we may be able to get by through reliance on computers and IT, but that too is enabled by cheap and accessible energy. Similarly, energy is critical to manufacturing lunch boxes that children drag to school, whether they are made of aluminum, plastic or cardboard. Trivial as this may seem, the notion that adequate sustenance is critical to education is a cardinal rationale for the school lunch program. Notably, manufacture of paper, cardboard, aluminum and plastic are among the most energy-intensive industries.
Fourth, let’s consider medicines and, more generally, medical advances. How do the medicines that we consume get to us? That requires transportation (and energy consumption). Did your mother, Ben, deliver you in the relatively safe and clean environment of a hospital? How did she get there, and bring you back? Ever been in a hospital without a physical plant? Would you go to a hospital that lacked electricity? Why do hospitals generally have back-up power in case of emergency? Without readily accessible and cheap energy, access to medicines would be poorer, and medical establishments wouldn’t function as well as they do (or don’t, depending on your point of view).
Virtually anything that one consumes is associated with some energy consumption, if for no reason other than the fact that unless one grows or makes it oneself, relatively cheap transportation is necessarily involved. And even if one grows or makes it on site, energy probably was used in its production. Even our loved ones contain some energy, because they are built from the food they consume, which as already noted, requires energy. Similarly, virtually everything that one does requires electricity or some other form of energy. And in the U.S., energy is and has been for over a century almost synonymous with fossil fuels (barring the portion that nuclear contributes). Hence it’s accurate to say that whatever the proximate causes of the increases in life expectancy from 1900 to 2005, none of them would have operated without ample use of coal or other fossil fuels.
Finally, I should note that there is a relatively good correlation between life expectancy and the logarithm of GDP per capita, as noted in the book, The Improving State of the World: Why We’re Living Longer, Healthier, More Comfortable Lives, etc. And GDP per capita is not unrelated to energy use.
Incidentally, the factors discussed above are noted in that book as significant contributors to the “Cycle of Progress” which enables — that word again — economic development, and increases in human capital and technological prowess that have helped improve our standard of living (including life expectancy).
graph of the effect of carbon on co2 concentration
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jdrake/Questioning_Climate/_sgg/mim1_1.htm
central graph. when ORNL carbon/year is plotted against delta ppm/yr for world co2 there is no relationship
when did anyone ever show that man’s co2 emissions drove atmospheric c02 cencentration? This has all been assumed
Indur Goklany (20:24:13): Thank you, Indur! Gained much to think on from your essay.
Yes, thank you Indur Goklany. Well written and refreshing to read. Positive themes seem to be getting rarer to find.
I had to sheepishly smile at myself when I noticed something that probably everyone else had already figured out.
For correlation/causation to work in this example, the average life expectancy would have to increase to 142.5 years for the coal increase and a whopping 427.5 years for the CO2 increase.
Of course being mere mortals, our bodies have limitations that even coal cannot overcome.
But it is clear that coal is not a killer, rather the efficient energy that coal produces allows us to live longer, richer lives.
This is true, but the fact that most of us ignore is the fact that the misanthropes don’t care about the improved human condition. Rememeber, we are destructive parasites of the earth to the Gaia worshippers. They want us eliminated, ergo movies and TV shows about what life would be like without humans.
Articles like this enrage the sociopath misanthropists, because they hate all humanity except for themselves.
“Articles like this enrage the sociopath misanthropists, because they hate all humanity except for themselves.”
Truth be told, they probably hate themselves, too. Psychological projection takes care of the rest of it.
“Truth be told, they probably hate themselves, too.”
If they hated themselves, they’d all off themselves to lead the way to a “healthier” planet. Seeing that they refuse to do so implies to my feeble, conservative mind that they hate others but love themselves. Or they think they’ll be spared in any economy-choking carbon free regime.
Indur,
Thanks for the article and the follow up in comments. Her’s hoping that you have much more success with your studies, and that you will be able to endure the slings and arrows that will continue to come your way.
Indur Goklany (20:24:13) :
Excellent post, and good summary of the enormous benefits that cheap and accessible energy bring to human society and development.
If the Luddites demonstrating in DC the other day, not to mention the millions more who are gulled into thinking that just turning off the lights is going to ‘save the planet’, have their way, we will be forced back to the days of back-breaking poverty, poor sanitation, and rampant disease—and the elimination of probably 9/10ths of the human population.
We need to counter these fools. “Drill here! Drill now!” had some brief popularity back during the Presidential campaign when gasoline crested $4 a gallon. But already that is forgotten. We need a political party that will not kowtow to the Luddites, but will campaign forcefully and constantly for more energy, more prosperity, more growth, and the continued evolution of technological man. The Solar System, and eventually the stars, await, but not for the timid.
/Mr Lynn
“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 …”
The above makes no claim that either coal or CO2 usage is the proximate cause – that’s an inference that Ben Lawson jumped to on his own. But it does claim that whatever agencies caused it, they were “enabled” by coal/fossil fuel use.
If there is “no claim” then why do you put them on the same chart? You are simply talking around my arguments.
I have a great appreciation for technology it is various forms and agree that our prosperity is highly dependent on energy resources. The problem is that fossil fuel usage has consequences that may undermine the benefit you so loosely assign to them.
Nothing is either all good or all bad; there are always trade-offs.
For instance, ethanol puts about 50% more emissions into the atmosphere per mile driven than the true “green” fuel, gasoline.
In fact, there is nothing more efficient than fossil fuels for heating and transportation. Coal stack scrubbers remove almost every bit of soot and other pollutants. The only real emission is CO2, which, despite false claims to the contrary, is beneficial to the environment.
We can debate the well known “consequences” of fossil fuels, versus the very real effects of the alternatives that are, in most cases, worse and much more expensive.
Ben Lawson (14:25:19):
“If there is ‘no claim’ then why do you put them [coal use, CO2 emissions, life expectancy]on the same chart? You are simply talking around my arguments.”
Response:
(1) Recall that this all started with Hansen’s claims likening coal use and CO2 emissions to agents of death. What I was doing was pointing out that despite increases in coal use and CO2 emissions, life expectancy had gone up.
(2) Let me repeat, I don’t claim that either coal or CO2 usage are the proximate causes of the increases in life expectancy, but I do claim that whatever agencies caused it, they were enabled by coal/fossil fuel use.
Ben Lawson (14:25:19):
“I have a great appreciation for technology it is various forms and agree that our prosperity is highly dependent on energy resources. The problem is that fossil fuel usage has consequences that may undermine the benefit you so loosely assign to them.”
Response: Sure, fossil fuel usage has some pernicious consequences but, on its face, the continual long term improvement in life expectancy (and many other indicators of human well-being) suggest that the negative consequences are overwhelmed by the aggregate benefit. As Smokey (14:43:33) notes, “Nothing is either all good or all bad; there are always trade-offs.” And in this case despite the trade-offs, humanity is far better off for having access to cheaper forms of concentrated energy. One has to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Finally, note I won’t be around the next few days to respond to any comments. Thanks nonetheless.