Guest post by: Indur M. Goklany
In a series of posts (collected here) we saw that no matter how significant climate change may seem when viewed in isolation, it pales in significance when compared with other global problems, at least through the foreseeable future. This is hardly surprising: in the absence of context even the smallest molehill may be mistaken for a Mount Everest.
So how should we deal with climate change in the context of other more significant threats to human and environmental well-being?
The following figure, reproduced from the earlier set of posts, shows the maximum contribution of climate change to global mortality from hunger, malaria and coastal flooding in the year 2085 under various IPCC emissions scenarios. Specifically, it shows that climate change would contribute no more than 4%-10% to global mortality from these factors. The highest such contribution occurs under the warmest-but-richest (A1FI) scenario. [Under this scenario, the average global temperature is projected to increase by 4°C between 1990 and 2085.]
Therefore if we could roll climate back to its 1990 level —which means reducing CO2 concentrations to below that magic 350 ppm number — then the mortality in 2085 from hunger, malaria and coastal flooding would, at most, be reduced by 4%-10% through “mitigation”. [In climate change parlance, “mitigation” means reducing greenhouse gas emissions or concentrations, whereas “adaptation” would reduce damages (or negative impacts) from climate change.]
But what about the remaining 90%-96% of the mortality problem? Annual mortality would still be between 2 million and 6 million, depending on the IPCC scenario employed. The Kyoto Protocol, on the other hand, would reduce climate change by less than 10%. Hence, as a first approximation, the Protocol would, had the US participated and if all nations meet their obligations fully, reduce mortality by less than 1% (= 10% of 10%) in 2085.
By contrast, if we focus on reducing societies’ vulnerabilities to hunger, malaria and coastal flooding through measures that would work regardless of climate change (see bullets below), we would be able to address 100% of the future mortality problem in 2085. Such an approach, which I call “focused adaptation,” could, moreover, bring larger benefits — and bring them quicker, because any significant benefits from emission reductions, regardless of their stringency, will be delayed by decades (due to the inertia of the climate system).
Focused adaptation can be generalized beyond hunger, malaria and coastal flooding if we focus on reducing vulnerability or increasing resiliency to any climate-sensitive problem that could be exacerbated by climate change (see here.]
Another critical advantage of adaptation is that it can capture the benefits of climate change while reducing its costs, whereas mitigation would indiscriminately reduce both the positive and the negative impacts of climate change. That is, mitigation is a double-edged sword, whereas adaptation is a scalpel.
Thus, we saw previously (here) that climate change would reduce both the net population at risk of water stress, and habitat converted to cropland. Both these benefits of climate change would be lost under mitigation. On the other hand, adaptation would more selectively capitalize on these positive impacts.
In addition, focused adaptation would be more economic than emission reduction. The Kyoto Protocol, despite its minimal effectiveness, is estimated to cost around $165 billion annually. [See here.] Although the cost of rolling the climate back to its 1990 level has never been estimated, suffice it to say that it should cost orders of magnitude more. For the purposes of this exercise, in the following I will assume a lower bound of $165 billion annually.
However, results from the UN Millennium Project and the IPCC’s latest assessment indicate that, via focused adaptation, we could:
- Reduce malaria by 75% at a cost of $3 billion/yr. Specific measures include improving antenatal care for expectant mothers in vulnerable areas, developing a malaria vaccine, indoor residual spraying with DDT, and insecticide treated bed nets.
- Reduce hunger by 50% at a cost of $12-15 billion/yr (see here, p. 18, and here) Specific measures could include the development of crops that would do better in poor climatic or soil conditions (namely, drought, water-logging, high salinity or acidity) that could be exacerbated by climate change, and under the higher CO2 and temperature conditions that are likely to prevail in the future.
- Reduce vulnerability to coastal flooding at a cost of $2-10 billion/yr. e.g., through building and strengthening coastal defenses, insurance reform, and improving early warning systems.
In addition to mitigation and focused adaptation, there is another approach to dealing with climate change.
Developing countries are generally deemed to be most vulnerable to climate change, not necessarily because they will experience greater climate change, but because they lack adaptive capacity (that is, financial and human capital) to acquire and use the technologies necessary to cope with its impacts. Hence, another approach to addressing climate change would be to enhance the adaptive capacity of developing countries by promoting broad development, i.e., economic development and human capital formation, which, of course, is the point of sustainable economic development.
Advancing economic development and human capital formation would also advance society’s ability to cope with all manner of threats, whether climate related or not (see here and here). The costs and benefits of sustainable economic development can be garnished from literature on the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which were devised to promote sustainable development in developing countries. The benefits associated with these goals — halving global poverty; halving hunger, halving the lack of access to safe water and sanitation; reducing child and maternal mortality by 66 percent or more; providing universal primary education; and reversing growth in malaria, AIDS/HIV, and other major diseases — would exceed the benefits flowing from the deepest mitigation. Yet the additional annual cost to the richest countries of attaining the MDGs by 2015 is estimated at 0.5 percent of their GDP, approximately the same as that of the ineffectual Kyoto Protocol.
Hence, we have a choice. We could over the foreseeable future:
- Spend $165 billion annually on the Kyoto Protocol to reduce mortality from hunger, malaria and coastal flooding by less than 0.4%-1%, while marginally increasing the population at risk of water stress, and reducing habitat available for the rest of nature.
- Spend much more than $165 billion annually to roll back climate to 1990 levels and reduce mortality from hunger, malaria and coastal flooding by less than 4%-10%, while substantially increasing the population at risk of water stress, and reducing the amount of habitat available for the rest of nature.
- Spend about $34 billion annually on focused adaptation to reduce mortality by 50%-75% from the three above-mentioned risk factors without increasing either the population at risk of water stress or the habitat lost to cropland. [Details can be found here.]
- Spend $165 billion annually on broad economic development to garnish benefits greater than what can be obtained through rolling climate back to 1990 levels, or even focused adaptation.
- It shows that through the foreseeable future, adaptation — whether it is focused or based on broad development — is far superior to mitigation. Either adaptation approach will provide far greater benefits than even the deepest mitigation, and at a lower cost. And these conclusions hold regardless of the choice of discount rate, or fanciful scenarios beyond the foreseeable future.
This, of course, doesn’t necessarily mean that there is no role for mitigation, particularly in the long term. But in the short- to medium-term, that role shouldn’t include heroic emission reduction measures (see here).
Table 1: Costs and benefits of various mitigation and adaptation approaches. Note that figures in red indicate that the policies in question would make matters worse. Source: Goklany (2009).
This is similar to the argument that Bjorn Lomborg has advanced for several years, and it makes a lot of sense.
And if we are really in for global cooling, putting our money into solving truly solvable problems will be money much better spent.
What if the “Climate Change” is a Maunder or Dalton type Solar Minimum? We are fools if we do not look at that scenario…
Indur,
Focused adaptation absolutely does the most good for the most people, but how does Al Gore make money from this plan?
Mike
A warm planet doesn’t seem so bad considering these figures, assuming we’ll even see an end to the current downtrend of temperatures since 2003.
More CO2 is good for the planet as well and coal is not evil, in fact my state is going to have a new coal plant built to provide power and the greenies in return get 2 oil plants decommisioned and big wind farms built because of the power infrastructure that will be built because of the ‘Coal’ plant.
You are assuming (mistakenly I believe) that dealing with threats to human and environmental well-being is the goal of the alarmists.
I like the idea of “focused adaptation” because that works on a known problem in a straightforward manner. I fail to see how controlling emissions will, say, produce clean drinking water, in any meaningful way – if at all.
Such issues as you highlight were not being very well attended to in the past. So how is it that if we spend $$$B to
“… roll climate back to its 1990 level ”
…and damage the economies of those nations that have the wherewithal to help (including private and corporate), anyone expects things to improve?
And is the 1990 goal not difficult enough? Consider in Canada the NDP wants to “…reduce Canadian greenhouse gas emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050.” The details of that plan must include some science and engineering I’ve yet to hear about. Unless their plan is to turn everything off and move everyone but the natives and the polar bears to Zimbabwe.
Who is thinking about these issues, other than Dr. Goklany?
Since logic and reason play no part in government decisions, we will probably spend the $165 bil/yr on carbon mitigation. How many deaths will result from what we don’t have money to spend on? The world could be much worse off.
Lost opportunity is a big factor, rather hard to quantify.
Always left out is the FACT that IF we could reduce the CO2 level (which likely would have no distinquishable effect on “climate,) then more people would die due to decreased crop performance than would be saved by any conceivable cooler climate response.
Won’t it be funny if Al Gore, in the middle of a Dalton Minimum, calls for all stops to be pulled to increase CO2 to prevent glaciers from forming in Tenneseee!
This is a very good article, but it understates the costs of CO2 reduction. Assuming that the rise in CO2 levels is the product of industrial activity, which is not certain, to reduce CO2 to 1990 levels, or lower, we must convince China, India and other developing countries to forgo industrialization, which just ain’t never, never, never going to happen. Even if they would, to get back below 300 ppm, the whole world would have to virtually de-industrialize. Rational adults realize what the goo goo greens refuse to acknowledge, that there is no alternative to fossil fuels for the foreseeable future, other than nuclear power. If the world does de-industrialize, a couple of billion people are going to die. It is just that simple.
No only does adaptation make more sense, there is no alternative, regardless of what climate does.
Climate was not invented by man, therefore the children should not be playing with the Swiss Watch of Climate. The children should adapt to the changing time of the Swiss Climate Watch.
Nicht fur Gefingerpoken oder Monkeywrenchen.
The point is that the actions of governments re climate change have already caused deaths, The use of food for biofuel for one. That has resulted in the deaths of 29,000 people a year times 73 counties. I believe that total is 2,117,000 a year. Then we have the number of people a year who die becuase they are driving small cars to get better fuel mileage. That figure is around somewhere. Then the number of people who die every winter from fuel poverty. It astonishes me that the government has the gall to talk about this when they are killing their citizens because they make energy to expensive.
The IPCC has to approve of economic improvement because their purpose is to support the UNFCCC, which states that dealing with poverty is a priority.
http://unfccc.int/essential_background/convention/background/items/1350.php
The left has become far too invested in AGW to abandon it without very clear evidence that the science is wrong. An what I mean here is evidence from people they trust on the left.
Some are beginning to look for the evidence, but as we can see from the daily barrage of stories from the media, most are a long way from being convinced.
It remains possible that a critical mass of converts can be reached before they fully commit to wrecking the western economy, but I am not entirely hopeful.
I keep thinking about Lindzen’s talk in March. He also seems somewhat skeptical that its not too late to stop the AGW train.
OT….but now even Glenn Beck is talking about Anthony.
How reliable are our temperature measurements? Meteorologist Anthony Watts started looking into the quality of the temperature measuring stations across America and couldn’t believe what he found. His report finds that “nearly 9 of every 10 – fail to meet the National Weather Service’s own siting requirements.” Read the entire report
http://www.heartland.org/books/PDFs/SurfaceStations.pdf—and see pictures of some of the worst offenders.
OT (sort of) Ads by Google?
About time, I guess!
I clicked on the http://www.WeCanSolveIt.org it link, does that mean Al Gore sends
money to Anthony?
As the article says, context is everything. 2085 is 76 years away. Go back 76 years and we find 1933. Who in 1933 had any comprehension of the comfort in which the western world lives today?
Electricity and indoor lavatorial facilities were features of relatively few homes back then and many of the medicines and medical procedures that contribute to current rates of longevity were the stuff of science fiction. Most modern farming methods were unheard of, modern heating and A/C systems a pure dream only the most starry-eyed could have hoped for and current ability to help those affected by catastrophic natural events would have been laughed out of court.
I have never understood the sense of taking a single backward step in industrialisation in order to ward-off a threat made by computer projections about a time none of us will live to see. The effect on human life of the climate in 2085 will be determined not by the ability to adapt using current knowledge and technology, nor even to adapt in 2085 using the knowledge and technology of that age, but by the ability to adapt as determined by the accumulation and refinement of knowledge and technology as it develops every day, week, month and year between now and then.
We can have no idea at all how people will be living in 2085, but we can be absolutely certain that people will do what they have done throughout time – develop new ways to make life more comfortable in all possible climatic conditions.
Taking any step towards de-industrialisation will, as night follows day, hamper our ability to cope with troublesome future climatic conditions. More worryingly, it will hamper the ability of the developing world more than the developed nations.
All political leaders should have branded into the surface of their desk “your grandiose plan will hit the weakest hardest”. That is an immutable law of political reality and it comes from real life experience not a computer model or a long equation on a piece of paper.
These posts all assume (a) that ‘climate change’ means ‘global warming’; (b) that ‘warming’ has untoward and fatal effects; and (c) as noted above,
Now there are doubtless didactic reasons for meeting the alarmists on their own turf, using their public positions as assumptions. And it is certainly true (bordering on the obvious) that ‘adaptation’ to whatever Mother Nature throws at us in the future makes more sense than (1) trying to predict it and (2) attempting to prevent it (whatever ‘it’ is). But that all assumes that any of the alarmists and their political devotees are listening.
They aren’t listening. Because the ideologues are running the show, the ‘true believers’ who have abandoned all pretense of scientific inquiry (which means, above all, scientific doubt), and while some of their camp followers profess an emotional zeal to ‘saving the planet’, the politicians and bureaucrats who are busy attempting to create tyrannical structures of command-and-control are basically ‘useful idiots’ who see a chance to aggrandize for themselves.
We on the realist side are not going to get anywhere kowtowing to the ideologues and their false assumptions. We have to make it clear to the politicians and bureaucrats that we are not going to give in to the cockamamie schemes which they are proposing to combat ‘climate change’, by stifling economic development with taxes, regulations, and new bureaucracies spreading their tentacles into every aspect of life and business.
We don’t need to adapt, because there is nothing to adapt to—nothing, that is, that we can confidently predict will happen in the next few decades. It would certainly be prudent to work on contingency plans for untoward events: earthquakes, volcanos (especially ones that might affect the growing season), an extended period of cooling—even warming, though most of warming’s effects would be salutary.
There is a vast difference between alarmism and prudence, that cannot be bridged by pretending that the alarmists are right. One is based on ideology and emotion; the other on a calm assessment of the facts, on rationality.
/Mr Lynn
Thanks Mr. Goklany for your points. Let’s all remember it’s not about cost-benefit to the AGW crowd.
Make no mistake, the AGW religion is inherently anti-human. Do a search on GW and population control – like this recent article about a UK “policy” maker:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5950442.ece
When the elites start talking about population we don’t want/need or is “not sustainable”, and you put that together with the irrationality of their treatment of evidence, facts, data…you get the true biggest threat to humanity – “population control.”
Remember, WE’RE the threat in this religion.
The money spent on Kyoto is sufficent to bring clean water and sanititation to every person on earth (so I heard), these two factors alone would massively extend the lives of those in the third world and considerably reduce deaths, particuarly infant.
Sanitation alone is responsible for the greatest increase in a humans life expectancy!
That demonstrates the madness of spending billions of $ on delaying something that “may” be an issue in the distant future by a few years!
There are plenty of real problems on earth that need dealing with right now, lets aim for the easy wins, reduce deaths, increase living standards and deal with “global warming” only if it happens and only if it creates a problem.
Question: is it possible to prove that reducing CO2 output or temperature would harm an endangered species or habitat and, having done so, tie the EPA and any carbon legislation up in the courts for years or decades? Whenever environmentalists don’t get their way they turn to lawsuits and tie the issue up in court forever. Why can’t AGW skeptics do the same?
There has to be some species or habitat to latch onto and use to legally block carbon regulation efforts. It seems to me that if there’s any chance that carbon cap and trade will harm a species then we need years, perhaps decades, of environmental impact studies, do we not?
Where are the lawyers for our side?
“Ric Werme (20:52:36) :
OT (sort of) Ads by Google?
About time, I guess!
I clicked on the http://www.WeCanSolveIt.org it link, does that mean Al Gore sends
money to Anthony?”
That’s a great question. I wonder if Anthony gets paid by the click. I am really good at clicking.
Schemes (dreams?) to roll back the climate include “low-carbon” biofuel.
I’ve just looked at an article in Business Week (April 27, pp. 39-42) by John Carey titled The Biofuel Bubble. The theme is whether or not the many startup companies can compete with large companies, and that many will not survive. Thus the term “bubble” in the title.
While interesting in the sense of providing perspective on scaling up biofuel operations – “We’re talking about a fairly substantial transformation of the rural economic landscape…” (Jack Hunter of DuPont), two things struck me. First, the notion that they are going to create low-carbon fuels; and second, that this is going to “be important in the fight against global warming.”
I found this statement on a biodiesel web site.
“A 1998 biodiesel lifecycle study, jointly sponsored by the US Department of Energy and the US Department of Agriculture, concluded biodiesel reduces net CO² emissions by 78 percent compared to petroleum diesel. This is due to biodiesel’s closed carbon cycle. The CO² released into the atmosphere when biodiesel is burned is recycled by growing plants, which are later processed into fuel.” http://www.biodiesel.org/resources/faqs/
This seems problematic to me because presumably the land used to grow switch grass or whatever is already growing something, and that something is currently holding carbon out of the cycle for several or more years as plant litter and organic matter in the soil. Using industrial strength agribusiness to convert to a high yielding yearly turnover of carbon (and CO2) and calling the result “low carbon” fuel seems disingenuous.
Some reports suggest that in general these fuels have a lower energy density (~10%) than current fuel and so more has to be used to get a similar result. All things considered, I’m not convinced there is much to be gained going this route to reduce CO2 emissions (aka fight global warming). Color me skeptical.
There is the possibility that these new biofuels could reduce the USA’s need to import oil and oil products from unfriendly countries. To a point this broadening of the sources of supply seems worthwhile and a plus for our security (or any country’s security). Are these attempts necessary? Not when we have gas, coal, oil, and nuclear options we are not using.
Rachel Carson and her DDT ban killed millions. Using DDT can prevent millions of malaria deaths.
CO2 is plant food, and well fed plants produce more food. Anybody have figures for the “ideal” level of CO2 as a plant food? What if 800ppm CO2 produces 20% more plant growth and thus more food? We know it works in the enclosed greenhouse. What is optimal CO2 for field crops? And how can we get there?
Missing from the chart is the number of deaths from cold. This number will grow as heat becomes more expensive.
If catastrophic heating and cooling a both possible, are we equally prepared to shut down all carbon sources or inject massive amounts of CO2 and soot into the atmosphere?
Hunger? Disease? Inadequate medicine? No, no, no. You can’t control or tax the means of production with those. Find me something to replace AGW that will compell the masses to completely give themselves over to us and deliver an excuse for us to enforce our mandate.
Sheesh!
Eve, you wrote:
That has resulted in the deaths of 29,000 people a year times 73 counties. I believe that total is 2,117,000 a year.
If you can give just One example of someone who died because of biofuels I’ll never post a pro-biofuel comment on this site, again.