Part III: Where does global warming rank among future risks to environmental health?
Guest essay by Indur M. Goklany
NOTE: Entire 3 part series is now available as a PDF here
In Part 1 of this series we saw that even if one gives credence to the oft-repeated but flawed estimates from the World Health Organization of the present-day contribution of climate change to global mortality, other factors contribute many times more to the global death toll. For example, hunger’s contribution is over twenty times larger, unsafe water’s is ten times greater, and malaria’s is six times larger. With respect to ecological factors, habitat conversion continues to be the single largest demonstrated threat to species and biodiversity. Thus climate change is not the most important problem facing today’s population.
In Part 2 we saw that even if we assume that the world follows the IPCC’s warmest (A1FI) scenario that the UK’s Hadley Center projects will increase average global temperature by 4°C between 1990 and 2085, climate change will at most contribute no more than 10% of the cumulative death toll from hunger, malaria and flooding into the foreseeable future. It would simultaneously reduce the net population at risk of water stress.
Clearly, climate change would, through the foreseeable future, be a bit-player with respect to human well-being.
Here I will examine whether climate change is likely to be the most important global ecological problem in the foreseeable future.
As in Part 2, I will rely on estimates of the global impacts of climate change from the British-government sponsored “Fast Track Assessments” (FTAs).
The following figure, which presents the FTA’s estimates of habitat converted globally to cropland as of 2100, shows that the amount of habitat lost to cropland may well be least under the richest-but-warmest scenario (A1FI), but higher under the cooler (B1 and B2) scenarios. Thus, despite a population increase, cropland could decline from 11.6% in the base year (1990) to less than half that (5.0%) in 2100 under the warmest (A1FI) scenario. That is, climate change may well relieve today’s largest threat to species and biodiversity!
One reason for this result is that higher atmospheric concentrations of CO2 might make agriculture more efficient, and this productivity increase would not have been vitiated as of 2100 by any detrimental impacts of higher temperatures.
The next figure shows that in 2085 non-climate-change related factors will dominate the global loss of coastal wetlands between 1990 and 2085.
[In this figure, SLR = sea level rise. Note that the losses due to SLR and “other causes” are not additive, because a parcel of wetland can only be lost once. For detailed sources, see here.]
Thus we see that neither on grounds of public health nor on ecological factors is climate change likely to be the most important problem facing the globe this century.
So the next time anyone claims that climate change is the most important environmental problem facing the globe now or whenever, ask to see their proof that climate change outranks other problems.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
bill, why don’t you extend your dataset farther back beyond 1958 and see how it matches up.
CO2 data by year back to 1850 here.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/ghgases/Fig1A.ext.txt
Dr. Goklany,
This is an excellent series of articles. Would it be possible to publish a version that puts all three articles together in a single report? Of course I could do this myself, but you have done such a wonderful job that I would not want to hack it up. I would love to have a PDF to bring with me (and give to the real Chicken Littles of the world).
REPLY: Ask and ye shall receive. Entire 3 part series is now available as a PDF here – Anthony
Bill Illis (07:04:25) :
bill, why don’t you extend your dataset farther back beyond 1958 and see how it matches up.
Yes I looked at doing that but I really needed monthly figures.
I had to either average the years temp or interpolate the co2. Not sure that either of those are valid.
Paul (06:47:48) :
Bill:
Why don’t you also do some digging on the deaths caused by excessively cold temperatures and let me know how that works out. I would be curious to see a comparison.
No figures, but see this from the European Commission:
Deaths during heat-waves have received much media attention in recent years, and yet cold weather is even more lethal. Heart/respiratory diseases and strokes claim more lives in cold weather. Other contributing factors are influenza, social class and per capita gross national product. The main indirect threat in cold weather is carbon monoxide poisoning.
I had the good fortune to attend a Christopher Monckton presentation Tuesday night. It is easy to see why Al Gore is afraid of him. He (Monckton) is a very honest man on a genuine mission to spread the truth.
He didn’t even tell people that he has a DVD for sale on the Science and Public Policy website. He has no connections to big oil or coal. He is obviously isn’t doing this for the money. Lord knows that can’t be said of Gore who stands to make a billion if cap and trade legislation goes through in the U.S. Monckton said during the presentation that Gore told the committee last Friday that if Monckton showed up, he wouldn’t. Gore has been running from Monckton for years. As I said, it’s with good reason.
Monckton would tear Gore apart in a one on one debate. Anyone who doubts Monckton’s abilities should view Apocalypse? No! which is a tape of a presentation he made at Cambridge.
His presentation Tuesday is still available for free online:
http://yct.tamu.edu/
You can also view Monckton’s review of the 35 errors in Gore’s Sci-Fi Comedy Horror Flick:
An Inconvenient Truth on my website:
http://www.hootervillegazette.com/AlGoreTheater.html
Lord Monckton’s Written works are available by following this link:
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/
OUTSTANDING!! Thank you for the PDF. I apologize in advance for beating what I think is a dead horse, but, am I free to print and distribute it in it’s entirety?
P.S. (Please mod this part out) if you would like to give permission in your reply to my 07:15:40 post, that would be equally good. Of course you could shoot me an e-mail if it is not acceptable … Thanks again!! Craig
Dear Bill and Dennis Ward,
Most of the threads on this post are authored by people who don’t know exactly what is happening with earth’s climate. They have continually asked you to provide substantial evidence to back-up your points and citations. The evidence that you provide to prove your opinions are nothing more that political propaganda.
Our solar system is a dynamic system. It has been changing, and it will continue to change for the next 2 billion years. After that our solar system will cease to exist. It will die and earth will be consumed by our sun.
Don’t use your lifetime as a baseline for earth’s climate. The climate we have now is an aboration in the history of this planet. The level of current CO2 is quite low compared to scientifically derived historical records.
Don’t rationalize, don’t believe political propaganda, read about history, search for provable truth, and finally, understand that the collective knowledge that the human race has to date is a small percentage of knowledge that we have yet to gain. We know nothing.
The people who read your threads on this site are thinking people, they see through your political propaganda delivered with religous zeal.
bill
While you are matching check the cycle 23 maximum against your charts. Note: there is always a delay as the earth is not quite a F1 car. Could these climate events be solar related? PDO and AMO are also in play.
bill:
“[edit] Switzerland
Melting glaciers in the Alps caused avalanches and flash floods in Switzerland.”
Glaciers were growing, sometimes dangerously, in the LIA, and logically they started shrinking in the second half of the 19th century. In Switzerland, where glaciers are measured since 1880, one can see signs like “this glacier has shrunk xxx Meters since (the year) 1900”. But now people are being told that AGW is the culprit (already in 1850 ?)
Dear Dr. Goklany,
Thank you very much for your analysis and conclusions.
I personally think that the time frames are much to big, there is still too much reliance on IPCC forecasts which are unrealistic and most important, little to non consideration is taken into account in regard to technological developments in regard to agriculture and food production.
We already have technologies in place where crops are produced by recycling the water and fertilizer needed to grow the crops.
The most important aspect is that these new technologies dramatically reduce the land are needed. In the Netherlands for example crops are produced in greenhouses
that are build in stores. The effect of this technology is a 75% reduction in land use for the same crop volume.
This is the technology that could bring the world population through a Maunder Minimum but it is in need of preparation time and investments.
This is why the current AGW Scheme is so devastating.
It forces our population to invest large sums of money which are wasted to fight a non existing problem.
The really sad aspect of this is the fact that this huge mistakes of underestimating our technology has been made before when the Club of Rome in the seventees predicted world wide famins within ten years which did not happen because of the “Green Agricultural Revolution”.
I really appriciate your optimistic views but you really shoud add a high value for human kind to solve really big problems.
The negative approach of almost any subject related to population growth and climate alarmism aimed at a reduction of our industrial output and consumption is the biggest scam of all and it should be fought furiously.
Especially because most of the statements are based on semi science and blatant lies.
Francis (05:56:02) :
On more recent data, projections suggest that there will be a Dust Bowl from Southern California to Oklahoma and Kansas.
The dust bowl with higher temperatures in the 1930’s was unrelated to the recent rise in CO2. We will have another one. Watt’s you point.
If we have another ice age or another Little Ice Age, then that climate change will be a serious issue to deal with.
But is warming really a problem? No. Bring it on.
There is no reason to believe any tipping points exists, no evidence for a run-away greenhouse effect and no compelling evidence that we have experienced or will experience any climate outside of natural variation.
The heat wave greatly accelerated the ripening of grapes; also, the heat dehydrates the grapes, making for more concentrated juice. By mid-August, the grapes in certain vineyards had already reached their nominal sugar content, possibly resulting in 12°–12.5° wines (see alcoholic degree). Because of that, and also of the impending change to rainy weather, the harvest was started much earlier than usual (e.g. in mid-August for areas that are normally harvested in September).
It is predicted that the wines from 2003, although in scarce quantity, will have exceptional quality, especially in France. The heat wave made Hungary fare extremely well in the Vinalies 2003 International wine contest: a total of nine gold and nine silver medals were awarded to Hungarian winemakers.[25]
And this is bad? Sweet Cheeks, where’s my corkscrew.
dennis ward,
Perhaps you are unaware that the AGW prediction of more and more intense hurricanes has been shown to false?
No one is suffering from AGW.
bill (06:23:20) :
HAS THE IPCC EXAGGERATED ADVERSE IMPACT OF GLOBAL WARMING ON HUMAN SOCIETIES? by Madhav L Khandekar
“The European summer 2003 heat wave: The heat wave in Europe during June-July of 2003 was an exceptional event and received wide publicity because of a large number of fatalities due to dehydration and heat stress which affected several thousand elderly people in France and elsewhere in Western Europe. Although an exceptional weather event, the 2003 European heat wave was by no means unprecedented and was a result of a persistent upper-level ridge of high pressure over the Continent (see AMS Bulletin, June 2004).
Linking the 2003 heat wave in Europe to human activity is unconvincing and without any merit. Such heat waves have occurred in the past in various parts of the earth and have been triggered by various reasons, most commonly due to an anomalous but not uncommon atmospheric flow pattern. What is of interest here is that just six months earlier, the winter months of December 2002 and January 2003 were unusually cold in many parts of North America, Europe and this unusually cold winter was felt even in the tropical latitudes of Vietnam and Bangladesh where several hundred people died of long exposure to significantly below normal temperatures.
The winter season of 2002/03 over Northern Hemisphere was much more wide-spread globally than the European heat wave of summer 2003. The IPCC authors highlighted the European heat wave as an example of human activity induced EW event, but completely ignored the unusually cold winter season of 2002/03. Also the summer (June/July/August) of 2004 was one of the coldest over most of North America. These and many other recent climate anomalies of cold as well as warm season are most certainly due to natural climate variability and are in no way associated with human activity.”
MULTI-SCIENCE PUBLISHING CO. LTD. 5 Wates Way, Brentwood, Essex CM15 9TB, United Kingdom Reprinted from ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT VOLUME 19 No. 5 2008
MarkM (07:53:11) :
They have continually asked you to provide substantial evidence to back-up your points and citations. The evidence that you provide to prove your opinions are nothing more that political propaganda.
What do you want then, that will satisfy you that global warming is happening and that 10,000s of deaths were caused in Europe during 2003?
Don’t use your lifetime as a baseline for earth’s climate. The climate we have now is an aboration in the history of this planet. The level of current CO2 is quite low compared to scientifically derived historical records.
There is no proof of co2 in the 1000s of ppm. The values are derived from (I think) geocarbsulf models.
Assuming that the model predicts valid co2 levels then the earth during this period was completely different go here and search around – it is interesting.
http://www.scotese.com/pangeanim.htm
You cannot do any comparison of climates before about 50MY ago
Don’t rationalize, don’t believe political propaganda, read about history, search for provable truth,
I do not believe in political agenda I follow no religion I follow no political parties. I have looked at all evidence with an open mind and I believe that on balance AGW is a fact. I now know that there is nothing I could research and post that you would believe unless it shows that AGW is not a fact.
Bill and Dennis,
Please keep in mind that when you view the temperature history from the late 1850’s that it rises from lower left to upper right, but that in no way means that ‘lower left’ was normal and ‘upper right’ is abnormal. In fact it is widely accepted that the ‘lower left’ was an abnormally LOW temperature period over the recent history of humankind and that the rise to the ‘upper right’ is considered a return to more NORMAL temperatures.
It has been recorded that CO2 levels were ~280ppm back in the lower left of the temperature chart and have now risen to ~380ppm at the upper right. Again, 280ppm should in no way be considerd normal especially as we have lots of evidence that the oceans were cooler due to the extended cool period at the time. Since cooler oceans mean more CO2 solubility and warmer oceans mean less CO2 solubility, then it is completely logical that the ‘upper right’ of the temperature curve means that a level of 380ppm CO2 just might be more normal than 280ppm. There is some significant data showing that CO2 levels of 300-400ppm existed prior to this abnormally cool period, again, questioning the assumption that 280ppm was normal.
Before you shout that the 100ppm increase ‘exactly matches the temperature curve’, remember that the most recent calculations show that humankind has put about 3-4% of the total new CO2 in the atmosphere meaning that the other 96ppm did not come from humankind and must have come from somewhere else. The magnitude of the 96ppm addition is so large that it could have come from no known source, but a warming ocean. The numbers are even suprising to me, but that is what the data says as I understand it. (I would enjoy hearing rebuttals to this.)
So it is entirely possible that there is very little contribution of any temperature rise directly or indirectly tied to CO2 increases…at least any anthropogenic origin. If that is the case, many argue that it is nigh to impossible for humans to reduce any temperatures by trying to reduce CO2 concentrations.
And, as I opinioned, today’s temperatures are actually closer to the recent (say 1000 year) average than they were at the end of the 1800’s (the ‘lower left’ of the temperature curve). I think no-one would really want a return to the ‘lower left’ temperatures as it would mean a very large increase in energy consumption necessary to stay warm, a shorter growing season, lower quality of life for those in the populated upper latitudes and a significantly more difficult time in feeding the Earth’s growing population.
Any money spent is much, much better spent in education, medicine, pollution control and food production programs for those who lack rather than what appears to be a totally futile attempt to reduces Earth’s global temperatures by 0.0xx degrees.
All I can say, again, is that this issue of global warming was a well concocted plan made in such a way that it seems to have life of its own, so being propagated as in a chain reaction by the majority of media, only being controlled by “bars” as WUWT which is absorbing any excess “radiation” like this post.
However considering WUWT growth, chances are, THEY will becoming every day more concerned about it. So, hold on!
bill
“What do you want then, that will satisfy you that global warming is happening and that 10,000s of deaths were caused in Europe during 2003?”
I would say that the tens of thousands of deaths in Europe from the heat wave (weather is not climate) was actually caused by state entitled, often childless, hedonists who took off for a month’s holiday at the breezy shore, as they are accustomed to doing, with no regard for their elderly pensioner parents.
I can’t imagine a month off. I can’t imagine leaving dependent elders for that long. I can’t imagine all the doctors taking holidays at the same time. Soon, when our labor uniions take over the US and we become entitled socialists, we could see the same patterns of behavior here.
US cities have PLANS now for heat waves, community networks, cooling centers etc. Maybe Europe does by now too. Still, US cities don’t empty out of workers during August.
Bill:
“PARIS (AP) — The death toll in France from August’s blistering heat wave has reached nearly 15,000, according to a government-commissioned report released Thursday, surpassing a prior tally by more than 3,000”
The temperatures in France at that time were not something Floridians would worry about. But in France it is not normal to have air-conditioning.
The main problem was that the French take their vacations at the same time if possible; so nurses and doctors were not numerous enough in hospitals and old peoples homes. Therefore the patients died in August instead of November.
As de Gaulle once said: Francaises et Francais, aidez-moi. (With cedille of course)
I just sent email to Ron and Jeff (our two Oregon senators) stating that I would work diligently next time to vote them out of office if they voted for cap and trade legislation. I kept the post short, included my misgivings about CO2 and mentioned trade winds and oceanic oscillations as major longer-term weather pattern variation drivers.
Now would be the time to send a quick note to your senators and representatives.
bill (09:19:15) :
I do not believe in political agenda I follow no religion I follow no political parties. I have looked at all evidence with an open mind and I believe that on balance AGW is a fact
I have a question for you which, I hope you’ll believe me when I say, is not meant to be sarcastic. It is simply what makes you think so? Or alternatively, how do you know that? As I have admitted here many times I have no particular expertise in any field relevant to climate, but I have spent a good deal of time exploring this topic and if I had to put forward one conclusion that I had to stand by it would be that people on all sides of the AGW debate seem to know a lot less than they think they do about any of it. Since more of those on the skeptical side seem willing to recognize and admit this, I have found their arguments more convincing, but I may be wrong and I’d be interested in knowing what evidence you’ve seen that caused you to conclude the opposite.
Bill, I cannot believe that the heatwave of 2003 is your proof of global warming. The 15,000 people who died in France died of dehydration. Most of them died in hospital of dehydration. That is saying something really bad about French hospitals but it does not prove global warming. What is interesting is that the people who managed to be admitted into private clinics did not die. (Note to self. leave France rather than be admitted to hospital there)
No records were broken during that heatwave.
Cold related deaths are 20% higher than heat related deaths in every single country. In the UK and Europe, cold related deaths are increasing because of fuel poverty brought on by the carbon tax. More deaths from environmentalism.
Katrina was a hurricane. No increase in any extreme weather event is related to global warming. Two reasons, it is not warming and if it was warming, extreme weather events would be deciining. However, all the proposed measures to protect New Orleans were stopped by the EPA and other environmental groups. The one that would have saved New Orleans was a folding gate that would have stopped the storm surge. That was not allowed by the EPA because it would have interfered with fish sex. According to Greenpeace, the problem was because people insist on living in flood prone areas. Does that make you understand how much environmental groups revere human life? Katrina acccounts for more deaths by environmentalism.
The number of deaths environmentalism is responsible for is way over 100 Million now. The EPA, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club etc should have that on their logo’s.
WE KILL MILLIONS OF PEOPLE. JOIN US.
I just picked up the end of this. I should read it all (and I will). But for now I wanted to add my $0.02.
I always ask whether or not a given catastrophe could have been prevented by lowering CO2. How much CO2 would we have to take out of the atmosphere before we could be sure New Orleans will never get hit by another Cat 3 hurricane? How much CO2 would we have to take out to be sure there would be no brush fires in Australia like this summer? What were the temps in France in summer 2003. Can we lower the level of CO2 to be sure France will never see such temperatures again? The answer is that, at tremendous cost, we could never remove enough. Better to fix the levies and clear the brush.
So far I can’t think of one instance that could be prevented in the future by limiting CO2 that couldn’t be done better, cheaper, and with much greater assurance by other means.
Bill Illis (07:04:25) :
bill, why don’t you extend your dataset farther back beyond 1958 and see how it matches up.
The CO2 vs date curve is a bit lumpy – too many proxies and there is a hump at 1950-ish But here’s the result. Wasn’t expecting this. It’s actually a bit worrying:
http://img373.imageshack.us/img373/2696/hadcrutnhvsco2.jpg
approx 0.01degC per ppm increase.
Dave Wendt (12:54:58) :
I have a question for you which, I hope you’ll believe me when I say, is not meant to be sarcastic. It is simply what makes you think so? Or alternatively, how do you know that? As I have admitted here many times I have no particular expertise in any field relevant to climate, but I have spent a good deal of time exploring this topic and if I had to put forward one conclusion that I had to stand by it would be that people on all sides of the AGW debate seem to know a lot less than they think they do about any of it. Since more of those on the skeptical side seem willing to recognize and admit this, I have found their arguments more convincing, but I may be wrong and I’d be interested in knowing what evidence you’ve seen that caused you to conclude the opposite.
First all prejudices need to be forgotten not all pro-AGW/anti-AGW scientists are frauds. Go to blogs of both sides – which has the science behind it. BELEIVE NO ONE ABSOLUTELY, Check out proxies – glaciers/ice on ice off days/harvest dates/check temperature plots/etc
Not all data showing AGW has been fabricated.
Warmer climate is not going to be acceptable.
Then think of the consequences if your chosen side is wrong
AGW wrong – will cost money to clean up our act and become less dependant on oil. future generations will have more fossil fuels
No AGW wrong – sea level rise, north atlantic conveyor disruption = europe cooler, some places become unlivably hot, some places become desserts. storm increases failed crops. This will take decades to bring under control and a decade is a long time to survive.