Part I: Ranking global warming among present-day risks to public health.
Guest essay by Indur M. Goklany
There seems to be no limit to the hyperbole surrounding climate change – and that’s no hyperbole. Numerous politicians have informed us over the years that climate change is one of the most important problems facing mankind. In fact, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called it the defining challenge of our age.”
But is it?
I answer this question in a paper just published in the refereed section of Energy & Environment.
A 2005 review article in Nature on the health impacts of climate change estimated that 166,000 deaths were “attributable” to climate change in 2000. This estimate was derived from a World Health Organization (WHO) sponsored study that even the study’s authors acknowledge may not “accord with the canons of empirical science” (see here). But I will accept this flawed estimate as gospel for the sake of argument.
In the year 2000, however, there were a total of 56 million deaths worldwide. Thus, climate change may be responsible for less than 0.3% of all deaths globally (based on data for the year 2000). This places climate change no higher than 13th among mortality risk factors related to food, nutrition and environment, as shown in the following table.
Specifically, climate change is easily outranked by threats such as hunger, malnutrition and other nutrition-related problems, lack of access to safe water and sanitation, indoor air pollution, malaria, urban air pollution. And had I included other risks to public health beyond environmental, food and nutritional factors (e.g., HIV/AIDS, TB, various cancers, etc.) then climate change would have ranked even lower than 13th.
With respect to biodiversity and ecosystems, today the greatest threat is what it always has been – the conversion of land and water habitat to human uses, i.e., agriculture, forestry, and human habitation and infrastructure. See, e.g., here.
Climate change, contrary to claims, is clearly not the most important environmental, let alone public health, problem facing the world today.
But is it possible that in the foreseeable future, the impact of climate change on public health could outweigh that of other factors?
I will address this question in subsequent blogs.
| Risk factor |
Ranking |
Mortality (millions) |
Mortality (%) |
| Blood pressure | 1 | 7.1 | 12.8 |
| Cholesterol | 2 | 4.4 | 7.9 |
| Underweight (hunger) | 3 | 3.7 | 6.7 |
| Low fruit & vegetables | 4 | 2.7 | 4.9 |
| Overweight | 5 | 2.6 | 4.6 |
| Unsafe water, poor sanitation | 6 | 1.7 | 3.1 |
| Indoor smoke | 7 | 1.6 | 2.9 |
| Malaria | 1.1 | 2.0 | |
| Iron deficiency | 8 | 0.8 | 1.5 |
| Urban air pollution | 9 | 0.8 | 1.4 |
| Zinc deficiency | 10 | 0.8 | 1.4 |
| Vitamin A deficiency | 11 | 0.8 | 1.4 |
| Lead exposure | 12 | 0.2 | 0.4 |
| Climate change | 13 | 0.2 | 0.3 |
| Subtotal | 27.6 | 49.4 | |
| TOTAL from all causes | 55.8 | 100.0 | |
Priority ranking of food, nutritional and environmental problems, based on global mortality for 2000. Source: I.M. Goklany, Is Climate Change the “Defining Challenge of Our Age”? Energy & Environment 20(3): 279-302 (2009), based on data from the World Health Organization. Note that malaria isn’t ranked in this table because deaths due to malaria were attributed by WHO to climate change, underweight, and zinc and vitamin A deficiencies.
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I am so depressed.
Just returned from a visit with my aunt. She is 76 years old.
I know she leans far left politically and therefore tried to focus on family gossip and not the current agenda to move the country in directions that I find troubling.
Silly me. After an hour of small talk I mentioned my interest in the reluctance of solar cycle 24 to get rolling and the possible implications for the AGW thesis.
Oops.
Through gritted teeth she demanded that our country has got to ‘go green’ and that it’s fine with her if they use the global warming scare to achieve this end. She openly acknowledged that the planet was not warming. Cat was out of the bag. It’s the first time anyone has openly admitted to me that they approve of this colossal scam in order to achieve their Utopian fossil-fuel-free, job creating ends.
The AGW crusaders aren’t helping their cause when they insult our intelligence by calling CO2 “carbon.” That is done by the warming propagandists because it is easy to think of carbon as being dirty. Apparently many people forgot what they learned in high school chemistry, which is that the properties of compounds are totally different from the properties of the separate atoms that bond together to form them. In fact, it would make as much sense to call humans “carbons” as it does to call CO2 “carbon.” It is general knowledge that CO2 is not a health hazard even in concentrations many times that of the total CO2 content of the atmosphere, of which the anthropogenic portion is a few parts in a million.
References to “carbon pollution,” or “greenhouse gas pollution” are always in the context of wanting to tax CO2 emissions, not the more problematic particulates. Water vapor is by far the predominate greenhouse gas. Why don’t these chemistry-challenged alarmists call H2O “hydrogen,” and urge that we tax the visible “hydrogen pollution” they are always showing coming out of smokestacks and car tailpipes along with the “carbon pollution?” This would be not one bit more idiotic than what the hysterical loonies are actually doing.
Cathy (12:00:09) :
I am so depressed.
Just returned from a visit with my aunt. She is 76 years old.
I know she leans far left politically and therefore tried to focus on family gossip and not the current agenda to move the country in directions that I find troubling…
Through gritted teeth she demanded that our country has got to ‘go green’ and that it’s fine with her if they use the global warming scare to achieve this end. She openly acknowledged that the planet was not warming. Cat was out of the bag. It’s the first time anyone has openly admitted to me that they approve of this colossal scam in order to achieve their Utopian fossil-fuel-free, job creating ends.
_____
Cathy is making an important point about the prevalence of hypocrisy and dishonesty in environmental causes. George Orwell was actually very concerned about this. Those who fabricate an end to justify the means are at the moral level of Machiavelli – not exactly a pillar of morality.
Yes, Malaria is only 1.9% of annual mortalities anyway. Why bother? Reducing CO2 will take care of it.
And while they’re at it, WHO could probably scratch several other unimportant causes of death from the records. Carbon reductions should fix them all:
Childhood Diseases – 2.5%. Pertussis, measles and tetanus account for more than twice the death rates of malaria victims, and they are quite preventable by vaccination.
Diarrheal Diseases – 3.8%
HIV / Aids – 5%
Respiratory Infections – 7.1%
And of course Evan Jones’ observation from above
I hope you submit this to your local and regional newspapers. The real priorities of our Congress are to obtain money and votes. Human welfare? Eh…
“You could fit every human being, shoulder to shoulder, on the Isle of Wight.”
Fact checking time. According to Wikipedia, the Ilse if Wight is 380 square kilometers. That’s 380 million square meters. Using a world population of 6.77 billion, that is 17.8 people per square meter. That means that each person occupies roughly 87 square inches. That is a space slightly smaller than 11 inches by 8 inches. Cozy. Don’t everybody breath in at the same time.
“You could home every human being, with a little garden that can produce enough food to feed them, in Texas.”
More fact checking. According to Wikipedia, the area of texas is 268,820 square miles. That is 172,044,800 acres. Again using 6.77 billion as the world population, we get 0.025 acres per person. At 43,560 Sqaure feet per acre, this is a little over 1100 square feet per person. Assuming that the housing bit is bunk beds and a out house(kind of like a prison cell) we can give living 100 square feet/person that leaves 1000 SF for food production. This is a garden that is roughly 30 feet square. Magic beans anyone?
Robert (13:39:24) : You are not considering building 100 stories buildings so you could have land in excess to feed them all, of course, with texan barbecues of course.. to improve crop production.
Climate change, global warming, birth control, new age ideas, green movements, all these were born out from GREEN, GREEN GRASS, back in the 1960′ s
Robert,
This was posted before, maybe you missed it:
Allowing 6ft x 2ft x 1.5ft per person, this is 18 cubic feet [this is generous].
Multiplying by 6.5 billion gives us 117 billion cubic feet of humanity.
A cubic mile is 5280′ cubed. This is 5280′ x 5280′ x 5280′ feet = 147.2 billion cubic feet.
Humanity occupies substantially less than one cubic mile. Squish them down to a depth of six feet and they could all fit in Texas, as you point out. But it’s a big world, and on average it’s not overpopulated. Not nearly.
[Ants and termites are estimated to occupy just under 10 cubic miles.]
The Earth could very easily have double or even triple the current population with no problem — if contries had responsible governments. People still starve in the world. But the cause is the same everywhere: bad government [compare North & South Korea, Somalia & Egypt, etc.]
Substantially raising the cost of energy is going to directly impact the lives of the 1 billion people who subsist on one dollar or less per day, because energy is generally fungible; when the cost of energy goes up here, the cost will go up in Africa, too. Cap & Trade will just as certainly kill people as a war would. And it could all be avoided.
And will die of lung’s paralysis (Apnea) from that chalky and whitey stuff they inhale…
You won’t believe it: CO2 CURES DRUGS ADDICTION
Abstract: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/3974830.html
I sincerely hope our leaders will be responsive to constituents who ask them to just reallign their priorities.
Environmental and health problems haven’t gone away, even in rich societies, and we know this.
As the WHO mortality figures show, more than 7% of deaths are from respiratory diseases. Especially in third-world countries, the diseases of the respiratory system are aggravated by known pollutants – particulates, sulfur and nitogen compounds. We know the water western city-dwellers are drinking contains new and harmful pollutants that are being introduced upstream.
Mitigating air and water for the usual toxic suspects as well as for the barage of new and worrisome compounds will require constant vigilance and funding which can and should be made available.
CO2 is not the problem.
Bjorn Lomborg’s take on the environmental issue is commendable in its simplicity:
The problem, as I think has been stated here before, is not with environmentalism, nor with moderate environmentalists; it is that politicians and businessmen have hijacked this worthwhile and pragmatically-effective adjunct to all progress, and introduced hysteria in the form of the strawman argument. The most cynical evil of all is the subversion of easily-mitigated problems of human welfare to dollars and votes.
The notion of social conscience was at one time associated as much with the right as with the left. If each arm in turn of a polarized society takes advantage of its tenure to “overreach” and outgrasp its predecessor, it remains for those in the center to bring both arms back into abeyance. Hopefully we all will remember, sooner or later, where our priorites lie.
Mike Nicholson (02:46:10) : “[…] Please correct me if I’m wrong, but from what I read, about 95% of the greenhouse effect is created by water vapour, and that only about 3.6% is created by CO2. Given that only 3.2% of all CO2 is produced by mankind, […] even if mankind suddenly ceased to exist, the effect on the climate would be ludicrously small. Or have I got it all wrong??”
The debate is about change in global temps, so your figures can be all correct yet dismissed as irrelevant (as happens to every inconvenient fact).
The IPCC only attributes about 40% of its projected global warming to CO2 directly. It relies on “feedbacks” from water vapour and clouds for the remaining 60% (c.20%, 40% resp). It is now clear, from recent peer-reviewed papers, that these “feedbacks” are not happening. In fact, absolutely nothing predicted by the IPCC is actually happening.
As this is yet another inconvenient fact, it is of course being ignored.
Wow, only .03 deaths contributed to “CO2 drive the climate” theory.
You would think the population crowd would want that figure higher and protest against any type of CO2 regulation.
But aren’t they the same ones that want to regulate CO2?
A change of minus a few degrees of mean global temperature would be a significant challenge. That is the type of climate change I personally worry about.
News we can’t hear enough:
April 29, 2009
Roy Spencer rips the IPCC and “climate thugs”
“The IPCC has advertised itself to be the most authoritative scientific body for keeping the world informed on man-made climate change. But the IPCC is more of a policy-oriented body that uses cherry-picked scientific research to further its agenda. Their enlistment of most of the world’s leading climate researchers allows them to simply dismiss any other scientists who disagree with them. Their goal has always been to build the scientific case for global warming being man made and damaging, thereby enabling governmental control over the world’s energy supply. The free market will no longer be free.
The IPCC is supported by climate thugs who run the website RealClimate.org where they demonize any scientists who dare to disagree with the “scientific consensus” on global warming. These folks still don’t realize something that even the public knows: “Consensus” is a political term, not a scientific one.
And in the process of achieving their goals, the leaders of the IPCC have corrupted a scientific discipline for their own political, philosophical, financial and career-enhancement reasons. The blame does not lie with the hundreds of climate scientists involved in the IPCC effort. They are largely along for the ride, being assured of continued government funding for research to work on a topic that everyone agrees sounds important— saving the Earth from climate change.
But whereas climatology used to involve collecting and analyzing observations of the Earth in order to figure out how nature works, most climate research money is now funneled into increasingly expensive and complex computerized climate models—which are claimed to be correct simply because they are so expensive and so complex.
The time has long passed for Americans to demand that the activities of the IPCC be reviewed. For instance, the IPCC never seriously investigated the possibility that climate change might be largely natural. After all, natural climate variability is its enemy: It distracts from the claim that mankind is now the main driver of the climate system.
The IPCC insists that increasing CO2 due to mankind is the only known reason for global warming. And it is right—it is the only one known to IPCC scientists because they have covered their eyes and ears whenever they are confronted with evidence to the contrary. The IPCC has never asked for government funding of research to see if, just maybe, there are natural reasons for global warming.
And this is where new science is chipping away at the house of cards the IPCC has built for itself. I now believe that the IPCC’s most significant scientific blunder has been its continuing insistence that global cloud cover, the main determinant of global temperatures, always remains the same. For if global cloud cover can change naturally, then global temperatures can also change naturally, and that would open the door to the possibility that global warming is more natural than man made. …
The IPCC’s second major scientific blunder has been its use of computerized climate models as the ultimate authority to answer climate questions. Contrary to our actual observations of the climate system, these models predict that the little bit of warming from the extra CO2 we pump into the atmosphere will be greatly amplified by changes in clouds. But the available satellite evidence of the real climate system, when interpreted properly, shows just the opposite: Clouds tend to reduce warming tendencies in the climate system, not amplify them.
The IPCC knows about this discrepancy between its models and the observations, but their explanation is that the models are right and the observations are wrong. …
If you are wondering why NASA’s James Hansen—the godfather of global warming research—thinks the climate system is hypersensitive to the extra CO2, it is because he ignores the observational evidence from today’s climate system. He instead relies upon speculative and unprovable interpretations of how the climate system was allegedly working hundreds of thousands to millions of years ago. …
It is time for the public to tell our elected representatives to start asking some hard questions about our country’s reliance on the IPCC for definitive answers regarding global warming. The IPCC’s demand to be believed just because it has created the largest infrastructure and the biggest climate models should be tolerated no longer.” “Global Warming Gloom and Doom Cools Off”
http://heliogenic.blogspot.com/2009/04/roy-spencer-rips-ipcc-and-climate-thugs.html
“”” crosspatch (22:45:32) :
Considering that it is estimated that about 2 million children under 5 die from diarrhea every year, I think that “unsafe water” number might be low. Measles kills about 500,000. About the same number die from flu every year.
If we are worried about “climate change” then it means times much really be so good we have no real pressing concerns to occupy ourselves with. “””
Well the proper term for that diarrhea is probably Cholera, which you almost can’t cure, because it has already done its damage by the time the D symptoms develop.
Luckily the treatment is extremely simple and very effective; namely electrolyte replacement. A cholera victim literally cannot drink enough water to stop the dehydration; even if they stuck a running hose down their throat.
But replacing the lost salts etc can bring a child back from the very brink of imminent death; essentially super Gatorade is the ticket. The disease has already run its course but you have to stop the liquid loss due to destruction of the surface layer of the colon cells.
The news that it could get VERY cold in the next two decades is slowly seeping into the heads of state in China and the Mid East Countries.
The linked article http://www.ifpri.org/pubs/bp/bp013.asp speaks clearly of purchasing land in areas (eg Africa) likely to be productive during climate cooling. So far the Press has atributed it to high food proces, but that will soon change.
Then Climate Change will truly be seen as the Defining Challenge…
Just a reminder, the comments are open for the EPA’s CO2 Endangerment Finding.
http://www.regulations.gov/fdmspublic/component/main?main=SubmitComment&o=090000648096894b
J.Hansford (22:08:24) :
Without cheap energy, you cannot produce cheap and plentiful water and food or build effective industry.
Exactly! Probably followed by the fall of civilization.
My great-grandfather came over the Oregon Trail in 1878. He got snowbound in the Wallowa valley, unable to get through the months long blizzard conditions in the Blues at that time and continue on to the Willamette Valley, his original destination. Because of the remoteness of the Wallowa valley and lack of infrastructure to connect area to area, the people of the valley developed their own homegrown industries, eventually shipping timber and lumber, cream, butter, wool, livestock, both on and off the hoof, and flour out of the county and into areas that were timber heavy but farm and ranch poor.
What did we use for energy? Most everything was run on work animal energy, wood, oil, coal, and water power. But even that was heavily supplemented with elbow grease. There was even a refrigeration company. They would go down to the rivers and streams and cut ice blocks for delivery to sawdust and straw insulated ice houses. Some families had their own, others shared their’s. The house I currently live in on the weekends still has an icehouse as well as a shelf-lined cellar that could function as food storage tomorrow if I needed it. Beyond that, a bit of cash and the barter system worked quite well to keep a roof over your head, fill everyone’s bellies, put shoes on your feet, and warm clothes on your backs.
We are not too far removed from that time, especially if the cost of energy, in particular, green energy, gets out of hand, and it turns nasty cold. But I’m not worried. When things get tough, there are still people around who will find a way to survive and even thrive in cold, dry landscapes. We are no better than the animals around us at doing that, but they seem to do pretty well. So I’m not worried. Nature will take its course. Grasshoppers will fail to store up food, and squirrels will fill every hollow tree with it. This is just the way life is. There isn’t much you can do to convince grasshoppers to change their habits and prepare for shortages, or cold, or lack of income. And you can’t stop squirrels from getting ready for bad times.
Now I am not one to be the town crier heralding a coming ice age. But grandma always said, even in the blistering heat of summer, “take your jacket with you”. She was a squirrel.
You shouldn’t require three posts to answer the question in the title. You don’t even need three letters, just two, NO. The real “Defining Challenge of Our Age” is the struggle of science and rationality to survive and hopefully prevail against the power hungry ideologues who have discovered that serially creating and exploiting fantasy catastrophe crises is a dandy way of amassing power and control over the rest of us. Unfortunately the forces of science, logic and rationality are beginning to resemble that lonely group of valiant Jewish rebels holed up at Masada with the full power of imperial Rome arrayed against them. In these days the forces of empire include an educational system entirely dedicated to telling its’ students what to think and not at all interested in teaching them how to think. Arrayed alongside we have the legions of “news”,advertising, and entertainment types who are either ignorant stooges or active accomplices in spreading the propaganda that supports today’s chosen “Big Lie”. Like the defenders at Masada the defenders of science find their supplies dwindling as they are systematically excluded from funding and publication of their work. But what they do have that Masada lacked, which will hopefully break the depressing trend of this analogy, is a line of communication to those nascent rebels who are beginning to chafe under the increasing strictures of imperial rule. This site and others like it constitute that line of communication, but unless the readers here are willing to take what they learn and amplify and spread the message, which admittedly can be a maddening and thankless task, I fear my Masada analogy will come to closure with the forces of true science sharing the same fate as that rocky fortress.
I think the modest warming we enjoyed during the last century has been overall beneficial in lots of ways. That’s not surprising, as history teaches us that mankind prospers when the world gets warmer. It’s when the world gets colder that people starve and civilisations fail.
The Nature article mentions malnutrition as a cause of death linked to AGW. About a year ago I found some data from one of the world organisations, it might have been the World Agricultural Organisation. The data, up to around 2005, showed that the global amount of food produced per head of population had been steadily rising. In other words, the amount of food was increasing faster than the population. So much for alarmism. It’s ironic that one factor contributing to this increase is almost certainly that well-known pollutant, carbon dioxide.
It’s also ironic that the Nature summary says: “….and sprawling cities where the urban heat island effect could intensify extreme climatic events”. Oooops, I thought UHI didn’t exist or was entirely insignificant, according to the alarmists. If UHI can kill people, imagine what it could do to the temperature measurements that underpin AGW!
Chris
“How can local (African for example) farmers compete with EU subsidies where imported food is cheaper than locally grown food?”
Simple – they subsidise their own food prices. What, they cannot, you say?
Well the full answer is that Africa is poor and cannot subside food prices, but that is only so because of political and social corruption, and the fact that Africans cannot/will not work as hard or efficiently as Westerners.
By rights Africa should be the richest continent in the world, as it has every resource possible. It has also has had self-determination for thousands of years prior to the Empire and 50 years post the Empire. Yet Africa still cannot feed itself, let alone produce wealth.
And let us not fall into the Liberal trap of saying the Empire held Africa back. The Empire built nearly all of the infrastructure that Africa still uses today, plus installed tried and trusted political and social management structures, so that Africa might prosper.
However – under the Empire, Rhodesia used to feed much of Africa, while under local rule it survives on hand-outs from the UN World Food Program.
The plight of Africa in NOT the West’s problem, it is an African problem.
Blame education and Africans are lazy.
Heavens.