Part II: Where does global warming rank among future risks to public health?
Guest essay by Indur M. Goklany
In Part 1, we saw that at present climate change is responsible for less than 0.3% of the global death toll. At least 12 other factors related to food, nutrition and the environment contribute more. All this, despite using the World Health Organization’s scientifically suspect estimates of the present-day death toll “attributable” to climate change,
Here I will examine whether climate change is likely to be the most important global public health problem if not today, at least in the foreseeable future.
This examination draws upon results generated by researchers who are prominent contributors to the IPCC consensus view of climate change. I do this despite the tendency of their analyses to overstate the net negative impacts of climate change as detailed, for instance, here, here and here.
Specifically, I will use estimates of the global impacts of climate change from the British-government sponsored “Fast Track Assessments” (FTAs) which have been published in the peer reviewed literature. Significantly, they share many authors with the IPCC’s latest assessment. For example, the lead author of the FTA’s study on agricultural and hunger impacts is Professor Martin Parry, the Co-Chairman of the IPCC Work Group 2 during the preparation of the IPCC’s latest (2007) assessment. This Work Group was responsible for the volume of the IPCC report that deals with impacts, vulnerability and adaptation.
I will consider “the foreseeable future” to extend to 2085 since the FTAs purport to provide estimates for that date, despite reservations. In fact, a paper commissioned for the Stern Review (p.74) noted that “changes in socioeconomic systems cannot be projected semi-realistically for more than 5-10 years at a time.” [Despite this caution, Stern’s climate change analysis extended to at least 2200.]
In the following figure, using mortality statistics from the WHO, I have converted the FTAs’ estimates of the populations at risk for hunger, malaria, and coastal flooding into annual mortality. Details of the methodology are provided here.
In this figure, the left-most bar shows cumulative global mortality for the three risk categories in 1990 (the baseline year used in the FTAs). The four “stacked” bars on the right provide mortality estimates projected for 2085 for each of the four main IPCC scenarios. These scenarios are arranged from the warmest on the left (for the so-called A1FI scenario which is projected to increase the average global temperature by 4.0°C as indicated by the number below the stacked bar) to the coolest on the right (for the B1 scenario; projected temperature increase of 2.1°C). Each stacked bar gives estimates of the additional global mortality due to climate change on the top, and that due to other non-climate change-related factors on the bottom. The entire bar gives the total global mortality estimate.
To keep the figure simple, I only show estimates for the maximum (upper bound) estimates of the mortality due to climate change for the three risk factors under consideration.
This figure shows that climate change’s maximum estimated contribution to mortality from hunger, malaria and coastal flooding in 2085 will vary from 4%-10%, depending on the scenario.
In the next figure I show the global population at risk (PAR) of water stress for the base year (1990) and 2085 for the four scenarios.
A population is deemed to be at risk if available water supplies fall below 1,000 cubic meters per capita per year.
For 2085, two bars are shown for each scenario. The left bar shows the net change in the population at risk due to climate change alone, while the right bar shows the total population at risk after accounting for both climate change and non-climate-change related factors. The vertical lines, where they exist, indicate the “spread” in projections of the additional PAR due to climate change.
This figure shows that climate change reduces the population at risk of water stress! This is because global warming will decrease rainfall in some areas but serendipitously increase it in other, but more populated, areas.
The figure also suggests that the warmest scenario would result in the greatest reduction in net population at risk.
[Remarkably, both the IPCC’s Summary for Policy Makers and the original source were reticent to explicitly point out that climate change might reduce the net population at risk for water stress. See here and here (pages 12-14 or 1034-1036).]. Thus, through the foreseeable future (very optimistically 2085), other factors will continue to outweigh climate change with respect to human welfare as characterized by (a) mortality for hunger, malaria and coastal flooding, and (b) population at risk for waters stress.
In the next post in this series, I will look at a couple of ecological indicators to determine whether climate change may over the “foreseeable future” be the most important problem from the ecological perspective, if not, as we saw here, from the public health perspective.
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Important in all this is how we got here, to the 21st Century with a population far in excess of what the Earth supported in non-Industrial society.
The drivers in the extra population support are energy, medicine and pesticides.
All 3 are currently near peak output or effectiveness, or nearing peak.
While we can survive climate change given ample energy, effective medicines and pesticides (you can grow food indoors, get water from desalination) the Earth’s energy reserves are finite in terms of how much population it can support.
Agendas aside, there are still forces in the world that seek to exert total control, as it always was. That is mankinds biggest failure. We have not learned to live with in our means, and the means to endless expansion are finite.
The adversity of resouce exhaustion outwieghs, but is subservient to, agenda.
Climate change has found man before, it will find us again should we fail to change.
We cannot control the Sun, nor can we control Climate.
AGW is just another agenda.
Climate change is the “defining challenge” or “defining enabler” of nearly ANY age if you look back in history. Homo Sapien appeared at about the time of the start of the last period of glaciation. We developed civilization and agriculture during the Holocene Optimum. The Roman Empire expanded during the Roman Warm Period. An eruption of Krakatoa in 535 probably led to the Dark Ages. The Medieval Warm Period brought the Renaissance. The Little Ice Age brought the American and French revolutions.
Our species has not faced a turn from interglacial to glacial before. The impact will be dramatic.
Also, we are but a single volcanic eruption away from mayhem. We basically live “hand to mouth” as a people on this planet. We do not have enough food stored, collectively, to last us through a widespread failed harvest. People around the globe are dependent on food produced in a relatively small area of the planet’s surface. Should we have a repeat of a Krakatoa, there is a good possibility of a failed grain harvest in the US Midwest and Eastern European Steppes.
Unlike a hundred years ago when grain markets were local, today the markets are global. A failed harvest in the US will inflate food prices globally as people attempt to secure whatever supply is available from whatever source. As they bid the prices of these foods up, they will rise out of reach for many. So even areas where the harvest is abundant may find hunger as food is priced out of the reach of many residents or shipped elsewhere to the highest bidder.
Climate always has and probably always will be THE defining challenge of the human existence. We have prospered in this interglacial with its temperate climate, long growing seasons, abundance of food, and access to resources. How we will fare with shorter seasons, summer frosts, resources under a mile of ice, etc. remains to be seen.
Dr. Goklany,
I hope you obtain a large readership for this material. These reports show a massive amount of work. I especially applaud the many comments pointing out the problems of using the numbers – the reservations you mention.
I notice you use the term “climate change” but like the multitude of US State Climate Profiles
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/state_climate_profiles.html
you only consider the several warming scenarios. While your main argument would likely still hold if the world cooled by 4 degrees C., I have read that many think cooling would be more problematic than warming.
I am looking forward to your ecological perspective.
Looking at Table 1. of the methodology it seems that GDP per capita declines with population growth and a cooling scenario. This does seem gloomy as third world per capita income is now rising only to be reversed if a cooling planet is achieved.
Just as well our capacity to control planetary temperature is limited.
In the first chart, isn’t the only difference between the four stacked bars the level of warming? If that’s the case surely all the differences in the bars is down to climate change?
Yet more biased nonsense from the BBC at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8023072.stm. The BBC thinks there is such a thing as a ‘safe’ climate. This latest scare story about dangerous climate change from the BBC is based on climate models and not on science.
Surely the population of the planet is a reflection only of it’s health. Like natural climate variation we will see natural population variation based on how positively we view the future. Temperature and sea level rises, catastrophic weather and droughts will not happen overnight, if it ever happens the population will adjust to match the conditions. The planet is incredibly healthy at the moment and we will see further population rises to reflect that especially as it continues to be so. It will stop when wealth has spread to those who produce large families to support them in old age (or when we can’t grow enough food due to climate “catastrophe”.
Only a bureaucrat living on a planet where 70% of the surface
is water, would make such a stupid assertion. This is at best
a simple engineering problem. Even Rome had a solution
2500 years ago. California put in an aqueduct, and when
it is finally insufficient, Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco
can all desalinate. These people think they live in a static
world, the climate never changes, and if there is not enough
fresh water we’ll all just die. I’m sorry, but it’s time for these
people to get real jobs!
Good work, Mr. Goklany. Any figures coming out of an official New Labour government department have to be treated as suspect. Their track record for producing honest, unbiased information is poor to none existant. It doesn’t surprise me that any contra-indication of adverse climate change has been omitted. After all, it isn’t in N(EU) Labour’s interests (or their prospective Conservative successors apparently) to have us discover that green taxes and carbon credits are nothing short of fraudulent.
At the moment the UK media and government are getting their collective knickers in a twist, not on climate change but on the figures predicting mass deaths from a swine flu pandemic. Another day, another alarmist front page story.
I think I’m detecting a pattern here…
We don’t know if the swine flu is going to be a pandemic any more than we know that the Sun will stay out to lunch for X number of years and freeze our tootsies off.
Did you know, for instance, that West Nile Virus can exist quite well and potently in very cold climates?
We do know that currently there is a virus and there is a global cooldown in progress.
I can tell you that if you inadvertantly drive the wrong way on the freeway, there won’t be enough time for you to react properly. That requires paying attention at all steps along the way.
Ooh, look, a huge meteor! Pretty!
.
>>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.
Fine article, Indur. I look forward to Part III.
And a very good post, crosspatch (23:04:53). [My only quibble: Krakatoa erupted in the 1800’s].
I’m also concerned that the U.S. has depleted its food reserves. I remember maybe 25 – 35 years ago, the Dep’t. of Agriculture drew down its stocks of cheese, grain and other foods, giving them to non-profits, to be handed out. I still remember the recipients’ complaints about the quality of the rock hard [but indestructible and edible] free cheese by the recipients. I guess they would have preferred Big Macs.
It is always a good idea to have plenty of food in reserve. Because the universe issues no guarantees.
“ralph ellis (03:31:13) :
.
>>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.”
You raise some very good points however, Africa is a problem *created* largely by the “west”. African’s did not know what “borders” were until the whiteman arrived. The term “to draw a line in the sand” originated *IN* Africa and it was a white man who said it.
Australia, *also* cannot compete with EU farmers with EU subsidies and, by your logic, that’s not a “western” problem either. What ignorance!
Excerpt from today’s CCNet – enjoy the irony – China and India want climate $billions$ from you and me, Obama is the new GWBush according to Europe, British windmill maker shuts doors, and the Russians say Earth is cooling.
An early Happy May Day to all enviro-lefties out there. May you all compel someone else to pay for your unhappy existence, and find the political means to tell everyone else how to live their lives.
8^)
*****************************
CCNet 67/2009 – 30 April 2009 — Audiatur et altera pars
CHINA, INDIA DEMAND TRANSFER OF CAP AND TRADE BILLIONS
——————————————————
The Obama administration issued a mea culpa today on America’s role in causing climate change, in a move to get the major economies working together on a global warming treaty. The admission by Hillary Clinton at a two-day meeting of the world’s biggest polluters was intended to ease some of the obstacles towards a deal at UN talks in Copenhagen in December.
–Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian, 27 April 2009
India today said it will not accept any cap on its development in the name of climate change. Developed countries simply can’t absolve of their historic responsibilities and talk about current emissions only.
–Business Standard, 29 April 2009
Developing countries called on industrialised countries to commit around 0.5-2% of their GDP to funding mitigation and adaptation measures in poor countries. Moreover, the idea of using revenue from emission allowance auctioning to do so was floated by China, India and Indonesia, among others.
–EurActiv, 29 April 2009
Developing countries generally insisted that industrialised countries should commit to cuts of at least 40% below 1990 levels by 2020.China insisted that it made no sense to talk about long-term targets for all parties before developed countries had agreed to such reductions.
–EurActiv, 29 April 2009
Rich countries, meanwhile, have been slow to come up with concrete proposals. The EU’s stance is that the bulk of such financing will have to come from the private sector and carbon markets, and the bloc is yet to commit concrete sums to aiding developing countries.
–EurActiv, 29 April 2009
International wind-turbine maker Vestas has announced that it will lay off 1900 employees including 600 in the UK. The news was well received by markets, with Vestas raising £700m in a Danish share issue the next day and announcing investments in Chinese plants. It’s a hell of a lot cheaper to make wind turbines in India or China, just like most manufactured goods. So forget about a glorious future of British windmill makers winning orders from around the globe.
–Lewis Page, The Register, 29 April 2009
“Predictions of global warming in the foreseeable future may not be justified.” This opinion was expressed today in an interview with Professor Lev Karlin – the director of the St. Petersburg Hydro-Meteorological University, a regional hub of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
–ITAR-TASS, 28 April 2009
Slightly O/T.
http://joannenova.com.au/globalwarming/skeptics_handbook_2-0.pdf
I’m sure there are a lot of non-scientific readers of this blog and, I suspect, their numbers are growing as AGW scepticism spreads. While they may not fully understand the graphs and jargon that appear on WUWT, this publication will introduce them to the basic facts of atmospheric CO2. It’s informative without being boring.
It would help for them to understand why it is not CO2 that’s the enemy.
There was an article in thescientific american many years ago that showed population curves versus prosperity. When nations reach a certain prosperity per capita, they stop reproducing and even start diminishing in numbers. It was evident that the solution was prosperity for all, and then the human population would stabilize and even start declining.
I would go a further step. Suppose we reach the much expected and continually delayed commercial fusion goal. This will mean unlimited safe energy for the foreseeable future. At the same time, technology and robotics are growing in leaps and bounds making redundant more and more workers at low grade jobs.
In the end, this future stable population will have to learn how to live without the puritan ethic and compulsion of a job. There will be enough food, produced by robots, and enough shelters and clothing, produced by robots, for everybody.
The problem humanity will be facing will be a problem of occupation for the hoi polloi. One could take lessons from the adjustment of the feudal classes to unlimited leisure during the middle ages. Everybody will belong to the leisure class by then, if the world does not destroy itself in the AGW wars that will be sure to errupt once a real cap and trade takes off.
Krakatoa more than one eruption! 535 as well as 1883
As much as it pains me, I’m starting to hope that the alarmists are correct and that GHG is the elephant in the room where climate change is concerned.
Come hell or high water, we will be implementing measures to control our emissions.
We will just have to swallow the unpalatable consequences and fallout. If the ‘settled science’ is correct, then we are doing the right thing.
Let us hope that the ‘settled science’ is correct because, otherwise, the best we will get is enormous pain for minimal gain.
At worst and if the predictions of some, that we are at the beginning of a protracted cooling period, come true, then we are in deep trouble!
The ‘Precautionary Principle’ is frequently cited as a wise mechanism to apply to balance risk with action. I agree but not when it is applied unilaterally!
Now that Global Warming has transformed into Global Climate Change where are the figures from the WHO that show the likely effects of a possible Global Cooling?
Where are the recent peer-reviewed studies and computer projections that must be factored into the ‘Precautionary Principle’ to include the possibility of Global Cooling? The last ones are nearly 40 years out of date!
Dress it up however you like, but Climate Change means warming or cooling!
Climate change has changed our pasts. Warming has improved our lot. Cooling has destroyed civilizations. The challenge we face will indeed define our future – Nature may take any fork in the climate road ahead. Why do we only see one?
The West and East and North (Russia) have been involved in African spheres of influences since WW2 at least. Plenty of “aid” is tied up in contracts that are not beneficial to the country. War and corruption has been a perreniel problem. Empire had benefits and downsides.
There is a touch of victim-hood status about some african leaders. But all politicians look to blame others for problems.
IN UK and EU we see more and more how corruption in politicians can fester and grow. It is not a racial thing, nor especially cultural as we have seen corruption grow in our politicians. To do the right thing has been replaced by Do it if it is within the limits of the law. By no means the same thing!
That’s naiive. Africans had borders, but the borders were boundaries they recognized. Westerners redrew the borders in accordance to their whims when they carved Africa into colonies, which often ignored what had been the traditional borders. The Masai knew what constituted their traditional lands, as did the Hutus, Tutsis and all the others. The Zulu Empire was built on conquest. To argue that Africans were one big happy family sharing the continent without regard to borders until Westerners came along is fanciful revisionism.
The UK Met Office has just issued it’s long range forecast for the summer.
“Met Office forecasters said it was “odds-on for a barbecue summer” with warmer than average temperatures and near or below-average rainfall.
And that will come as music to the ears of the millions that have chosen to holiday in the UK.
Ewen McCallum, chief meteorologist at the Met Office, said: “After two disappointingly wet summers, the signs are much more promising this year.
“We can expect times when temperatures will be above 30C, something we hardly saw at all last year.”
The Met Office said that while there may be showers, a repeat of the miserable summers of 2007 and 2008 is unlikely.”
Are these “signs” from the same source that told the Met Office that we were in for a mild winter earlier this year? Should we buy in shrimp and fish for our barbies rather than chicken and sausages? I think we should be told…
:0)
New paper on the relationship between climate and solar influences:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VHB-4V59W29-2&_user=777686&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000043031&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=777686&md5=0c8eb89213c106e78742592035ea99d5
Water stress??, Come on!!. Earth is 71% water!!. Is there around somebody who sells inverse osmosis membranes?, in case you are in a desert..but do you know that most of the rivers in the world send its water to the seas whithout being used at all?, do you know that only by using better technologies for irrigating lands for crops cultivation greatly improves its economy?
And…last but not least, if GWRs. theories were to become a reality, increased temperatures, such as predicted, would originate a new world deluge!
Let me tell you that most of the asparagus you eat in the USA were cultivated on deserts along the south american coast (deserts which, by the way, are what they are because of the COLD Humboldt´s current).
This issue of the “Water Stress”it is but one more of the terrorist´s propaganda, intended and directed to fools and ignorant people, to scare them and drive them to where THEY want to take them: A Brave New World.
Based on what measure?
Here we go again.
“The UK is “odds on for a barbecue summer”, with no repeat of the washouts of the last two years, according to Met Office forecasters.
Temperatures are likely to be warmer than average across the UK, topping 30C at times.
Rainfall should be “near or below average” for the three months of summer, the forecasters say.
However, they warn that heavy downpours cannot be ruled out.
Chief meteorologist at the Met Office, Ewen McCallum, said a repeat of the wet summers of 2007 and 2008 is unlikely.
“After two disappointingly wet summers the signs are much more promising this year,” he said.
“We can expect times when temperatures will be above 30C, something we hardly saw at all last year.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8026668.stm
Are these people sane? Here in NW London, it’s a grey sky and 15 degrees Celsius. The BBC weather site no longer displays temperatures. It uses colours, mainly green and orange and no key to interpret the temperatures. Is this a ruse to prevent the public taking them to task in October, because numbers were not declared?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/weather/