Guest post by Indur M. Goklany
I have a new paper in Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, which asks the question, Is Climate Change the Number One Threat to Humanity? This is threshold question to which many who believe global warming constitutes an existential threat to humanity would answer in the affirmative, although as the paper points out, there is no analysis that supports that conclusion. This paper provides an analysis that attempts to answer this question. It is built on previous efforts that have tried to answer this question.
The paper has been peer reviewed even though it’s labeled as an opinion piece. Unfortunately, the published version requires a subscription. An earlier draft can be found here.
It was written at the invitation of Professor Mike Hulme, the journal’s Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Myanna Lahsen, another editor, and, I presume, the Editorial Board. It was to be paired with a paper by Tim Flannery, which would take an opposing viewpoint. [I don’t know when, or if, Dr. Flannery’s paper will be published.]
Considering the tribal nature of much of the debate surrounding global warming and the general unwillingness of, for lack of a better word, “warmists” to engage in a dispassionate exchange of views, it was very courageous of the editors not only to invite me but, what’s more, to actually publish my contrarian piece after they had read it!
There were at least three reviewers, and the process itself was very fair and professional. The exchanges with reviewers did, indeed, help sharpen the basis for my conclusions. Also, Mike and Myanna, recognizing that I was offering a perspective contrary to most of their readers’, allowed me more space than probably would have been afforded to others. To me, this indicates a genuine desire for a discussion of a contrarian viewpoint as opposed to a cosmetic, pro forma effort, which is what the IPCC process sometimes seems to resemble.
I thank Mike, Myanna, the Editors, and the reviewers for their professionalism, open mindedness, and, in fact, the entire experience. Although I’m no longer unbiased, they have, IMHO, done themselves — and their journal — proud.
ABOUT THE PAPER
Abstract. This paper challenges claims that global warming outranks other threats facing humanity through the foreseeable future (assumed to be 2085–2100). World Health Organization and British government-sponsored global impact studies indicate that, relative to other factors, global warming’s impact on key determinants of human and environmental well-being should be small through 2085 even under the warmest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scenario. Specifically, over 20 other health risks currently contribute more to death and disease worldwide than global warming. Through 2085, only 13% of mortality from hunger, malaria and extreme weather events (including coastal flooding from sea level rise) should be from warming. Moreover, warming should reduce future global population at risk of water stress, and pressures on ecosystems and biodiversity (by increasing net biome productivity and decreasing habitat conversion). That warming is not fundamental to human well-being is reinforced by lower-bound estimates of net GDP per capita. This measure adjusts GDP downward to account for damages from warming due to market, health and environmental impacts, and risk of catastrophe. For both developing and industrialized countries, net GDP per capita—albeit an imperfect surrogate for human well-being—should be (a) double the current U.S. level by 2100 under the warmest scenario, and (b) lowest under the poorest IPCC scenario but highest under the warmest scenario through 2200. The warmest world, being wealthier, should also have greater capacity to address any problem, including warming. Therefore, other problems and, specifically, lowered economic development, are greater threats to humanity than global warming.
Approach Used. The paper:
(a) Compares the global impacts of global warming through the foreseeable future against the impacts of other factors on key determinants of human and environmental well-being in order to gauge whether the negative impact of warming on these determinants exceeds that due to the other factors.
(b) Checks whether human well-being, as measured by net GDP per capita for developing and developed countries through the foreseeable future (and beyond) is projected to be lower under the warmest scenario (per the IPCC’s Special Report on Emission Scenarios, SRES) than under the cooler scenarios.
Foreseeable future is optimistically considered to be 2085-2100 — “optimistic” because future impacts depend upon emission scenarios which are driven by socioeconomic assumptions and projections which arguably “cannot be projected semi-realistically for more than 5–10 years at a time.”[1]
The key determinants of human and environmental well-being that I examine are:
(a) Human health, based on impacts on mortality via hunger, malaria (a proxy for tropical vector-borne diseases), and extreme weather events,
(b) The global population at risk of water stress, and
(c) Ecological impacts, based on net biome productivity (a measure of carbon sink capacity), habitat lost to cropland, and loss of coastal wetland.
The future global impacts of global warming on key determinants are derived from the Fast Track Assessments (FTAs) sponsored by the British Government.[2],[3],[4] Most of the FTA authors also co-authored various chapters of IPCC’s Second, Third and Fourth Assessment Reports. They include, for example, Martin Parry (Chairman, IPCC Working Group II during the preparation of AR4), Nigel Arnell (lead author, LA, water resources chapter, AR4), Robert Nicholls (coordinating LA, coastal systems, AR4), and Sari Kovats (LA, human health, AR4). Not surprisingly, the FTA reports get substantial play in the IPCC reports. I note all this only to emphasize that, from the perspective of those enamored with the consensus, the provenance of my estimates ought to be impeccable.
Net GDP per capita for each IPCC SRES scenario is estimated by subtracting from the GDP per capita in the absence of any global warming the equivalent losses in GDP per capita from warming due to market, health and environmental impacts, and risk of catastrophe. The specifics of these calculations are detailed here. I have attempted to be conservative at each step:
(a) Through 2100, the GDP per capita in the absence of warming is taken directly from the assumptions used to construct each IPCC scenario. Undaunted by the fact that the IPCC scenarios only extended to 2100, the Stern Review provided estimates through 2200.24 [An obvious example of economists treading where even fools would not dare.] My estimates for the unadjusted GDP per capita, however, assume lower economic growth than the Stern Review.
(b) Damages from warming are based on the Stern Review’s 95th percentile (upper bound) estimate. But the Stern Review’s central estimate “lies beyond the 95th percentile—that is, it is an outlier.”[5] That is, the damages of warming that I have used are based on an upper bound estimate from an outlier. Moreover, the Stern Review’s central estimate, like other studies, overestimates the costs/damages from global warming partly because it does not fully account for increases in future adaptive capacity (see below).
Thus, the net GDP per capita estimates used in the paper should be lower bound estimates.
This paper does not address hypothesized low-probability but potentially high consequence outcomes such as a shutdown of the thermohaline circulation or the melting of the Greenland and Antarctica Ice Sheets, which have been deemed unlikely to occur in the foreseeable future by both the IPCC and the US Global Change Research Program, among others.[6],[7],[8]
Systematic Biases In Global Warming Impact Studies. The paper notes that global warming impact studies systematically overestimate negative impacts while simultaneously underestimating positive consequences. The net negative impacts, therefore, are likely to be substantially overestimated. This is because these studies fail to consider adequately society’s capacity to adapt autonomously to either mitigate or take advantage of climate change impacts.[9],[10]
This violates the IPCC’s methodological guidelines for impact assessments, which require consideration of autonomous or automatic adaptations. These adaptations depend on, among other things, adaptive capacity, which should advance with time due to the assumption of economic growth embedded in each IPCC emission scenario (see Figure 1).9,10,[11],[12] However, these advances are rarely accounted for fully in impacts assessments. For example, the FTA’s water resource study totally ignores adaptive capacity while its malaria study assumes no change in adaptive capacity between the baseline year (1990) and projection year (2085) (see here).9 Consequently, the assessments are internally inconsistent because future adaptive capacity does not reflect the future economic development used to derive the emission scenarios that underpin global warming estimates.
Figure 1: : Net GDP per capita, 1990-2200, after accounting for the upper bound estimates of losses due to global warming for four major IPCC emission and climate scenarios. For 2100 and 2200, the scenarios are arranged from the warmest (A1FI) on the left to the coolest (B1) on the right. The average global temperature increase from 1990 to 2085 for the scenarios are as follows: 4°C for AIFI, 3.3°C for A2, 2.4°C for B2, and 2.1°C for B1. For context, in 2006, GDP per capita for industrialized countries was $19,300; the United States, $30,100; and developing countries, $1,500. Source: Ref. 42.
Another source of systematic overestimation of net negative impacts is introduced because impact assessments generally ignore increases in adaptive capacity because of secular technological change. Secular technological change results from the fact that over time:
(a) Existing technologies becomes cheaper (or more cost-effective), and
(b) New technologies, that are even more cost-effective, become available.9,10,12
Long-term projections that neglect economic development and secular technological change often overstate impacts by an order of magnitude or more.12,[13]For example,the FTA’s malaria study assumed static adaptive capacity between baseline and projection years (1990–2085).[14] Applying the same assumption to project U.S. deaths in 1970 from various water-related diseases—dysentery, typhoid, paratyphoid, other gastrointestinal disease, malaria—using data from 1900 implies freezing death rates at 1900 levels. But, in fact, from 1900–1970 they declined by 99.6%–100.0%.12 Similarly, because of the increase in adaptive capacity globally, global death rates from extreme weather events have declined by 98% since the 1920s.[15]
Despite the systematic overestimation of net negative impacts, my paper uses the FTA results without adjusting them downward.
RESULTS
Results of the analyses are summarized in the last two subsections of the paper. Following is a lightly edited version of these. Note that footnotes have been dropped, figures have been renumbered, and I have “bolded” certain words and phrases.
Synthesis of impacts on key determinants of human and environmental well-being
Regarding human health, the World Health Organization’s latest (2009) study on Global Health Risks provides estimates that indicate that global warming is presently outranked by at least 22 other health risk factors (Figure 2).[16] By 2085, despite using impacts estimates that tend to overestimate net negative impacts, warming is projected to contribute less than one-seventh of the total mortality from hunger, malaria and extreme weather events even under the warmest IPCC scenario (Figure 3). Thus, global warming is unlikely to be the most important health risk facing mankind through the foreseeable future notwithstanding claims to the contrary.[17],[18]
With respect to water stress, despite massive population growth, the share of global population with access to safe water and improved sanitation currently continues to increase, and deaths from drought have declined by 99.9% since the 1920s. In the future, water-stressed populations may increase, but largely due to non-climate change factors. However, warming, by itself, may reduce net water-stressed population (Figure 4). Aggressive mitigation to limit the global temperature increase to 2 °C, may, moreover, increase net water-stressed population, relative to either the “unmitigated climate change” case.[19]
Figure 2: Ranking global public health priorities based on mortality (right hand panel) and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) lost prematurely (left hand panel) in 2004 for 24 health risk factors. The total length of each bar indicates the magnitude of deaths or lost DALYs globally to the specific health risk factor. For developing countries, the ranking of global warming is unchanged, whereas for industrialized countries, it would rank second last on the basis of deaths, and 4th last on the basis of lost DALYs.
Figure 3. Deaths in 2085 due to Hunger, Malaria and Extreme Events, With and Without Global Warming. Only upper bound estimates are shown for mortality due to global warming. Average global temperature increase from 1990-2085 for each scenario is shown below the relevant bar.
Figure 4. Population at Risk (PAR) from Water Stress in 2085, With and Without Global Warming. The vertical bars indicate the PARs based on the mid-point estimates of several model runs, while the vertical lines indicate the range of estimates.
With respect to ecological impacts through 2100, global warming might (a) increase net biome productivity, which translates into greater vegetation and net carbon sink capacity; and (b) decrease the amount of habitat converted to human use, which would reduce pressures on biodiversity and ecosystems (Table 1). However, coastal wetlands are projected to be further reduced, but more because of non-climate change factors than climate change (Table 1).
Table 1: Ecological indicators under different scenarios, 2085-2100.
These results also indicate that if climate were to be rolled back and frozen at its 1990 level—something that is infeasible with current technology without also risking rolling back economic development and increasing poverty to levels corresponding to pre-World War II levels—then in 2085, mortality from malaria, hunger and extreme weather events would be reduced by no more than 13%, the net water-stressed population might increase globally, and threats to biodiversity and ecosystems might, likewise, increase.
Thus, in aggregate, while global warming may be important, other factors would have a much greater net adverse impact on human and environmental well-being through the foreseeable future.
Future net GDP per capita and human well-being in a warming world
The above conclusion is reinforced by estimates of future net GDP per capita. Figure 1 [derived using the results of the Stern Review] indicates that net GDP per capita in both developing and industrialized countries should be highest under the richest-but-warmest (A1FI) scenario and lowest under the poorest-but-most-populous (A2) scenario at least through 2200.
It has been shown elsewhere, that improvements in a variety of direct or indirect indicators of human well-being are correlated with GDP per capita.10,12,13 These indicators include life expectancy, infant mortality, food supplies per capita, absence of malnutrition, educational attainment, access to safe water and sanitation, health expenditures, and research and development expenditures. For most of these indicators, the relationship is logarithmic in GDP per capita. Notably, the UN Development Program’s (UNDP’s) most commonly used Human Development Index (HDI)[20]— which was developed as an indicator of human well-being that would supplement, if not supplant, GDP per capita[21]—is also correlated with (a) GDP per capita with a correlation coefficient of 0.74, and (b) logarithm of GDP per capita with a coefficient of 0.94 (based on cross country data for 2009).[22] This is to be expected because not only is the logarithm of per capita GDP (or income) a component of HDI, the other two components are life expectancy and an educational factor, both of which are themselves correlated with the logarithm of GDP per capita.10,13
Accordingly, GDP per capita should itself serve as an approximate indicator for human well-being. And since the Stern Review estimates include losses from market effects, non-market effects from environmental and public health impacts, and the risk of catastrophe, the net GDP per capita shown in Figure 1 should also serve as a useful but imperfect indicator of human well-being that fully considers the effects of unmitigated warming.
In any case, because climate change impacts assessments as a rule do not provide projections of life expectancy and educational factors that could be employed to estimate HDI, future net GDP per capita, despite its imperfections, is perhaps the best one can do for an indicator of future human well-being that also accounts for the impacts of warming.
Figure 1, therefore, indicates that if humanity has a choice, it ought to strive for the developmental path corresponding to the richest scenario notwithstanding any associated global warming.
This should, moreover, have additional knock-on benefits. First, adaptive capacity should be highest under the wealthiest scenario, ceteris paribus.10 Thus, society’s ability to cope with (or take advantage of) any global warming ought to be highest under this scenario. [Note that the upper bound estimates of damages from unmitigated climate change are already factored into the derivation of net GDP per capita.] Second, the health impact of global warming should be least under the richest scenario because this impact is related to poverty, and poverty is most likely to be eliminated—and eliminated sooner—under this scenario. Third, many health risks that currently rank higher than global warming are also poverty-related (Figure 2). More importantly, the cumulative contribution of various poverty-related diseases to global death and disease is 70–80 times greater than warming. But these diseases are also most likely to be eradicated under the wealthiest-but-warmest scenario. Fourth, mitigative capacity should also be highest under the wealthiest scenario.10
Finally, the wealthiest scenario should also have the highest adaptive and mitigative capacities to address not just climate change but any other problem. As shown elsewhere,10,12,13 the determinants of human well-being improve with economic and technological development. The relationship is somewhat more complex for environmental determinants: initially these determinants deteriorate, but then go through an environmental transition after which they begin to improve, with development.12,13 This is why the wealthiest countries generally have a cleaner environment, greater reversion of agricultural lands to nature and, de facto, more stringent environmental protections than developing. Given the projections of net GDP per capita (Figure 1), all countries are more likely to be on the right side of the environmental transition by 2100, particularly under the warmest scenario.
A corollary to this is that if greenhouse gas policies effectively increase poverty, e.g., by slowing economic growth or increasing the prices of basic needs (such as food to adequately fulfill the body’s energy requirements or fuel to maintain safe ambient conditions) then the resulting mortality increases might, given the climate system’s inertia, exceed any reductions in these health effects due to GHG reductions for decades.
A case in point is biofuels. Much of the increase in biofuel production is the result of policies designed to displace fossil fuel consumption, partly due to the perceived need to limit GHG emissions. This has had the unintended consequence of increasing food prices and, indirectly, hunger and poverty in developing countries. The increase in poverty due to increased biofuel production since 2004 in response to such policies is estimated to have increased deaths in 2010 by 192,000 and disease by 6.7 million lost DALYs[23] which exceeds the 141,000 deaths and 5.4 million lost DALYs attributed to warming.16
To summarize, climate change is not the world’s most important problem. Other problems have a larger negative impact on human and environmental well-being. Reduced economic development, in particular, would be a bigger problem, especially for developing countries. And if climate change policies compromise such development, they too can become problems despite the best of intentions. On the other hand, greater economic and technological development would help society deal not only with climate change, but other, higher priority problems simultaneous3ly.
COROLLARY
Although the paper doesn’t explicitly address the issue of whether the global temperature increase (∆T) ought to be limited to 2 °C above pre-industrial, the analyses presented in the paper indicates that human well-being under the warmest scenario (which is projected to increase ∆T by 4 °C above 1990 by 2085) is higher than under the cooler scenarios, despite substantially overestimating its net negative impacts (at least through 2200). Note that the net GDP per capita analysis on which this is based does consider environmental impacts and the risk of catastrophe, courtesy of the Stern Review.
NOTE TO READERS
Finally, I have a request for the reader who my wish to post a question on this blog entry, please read the whole thing, because I’ll only be available sporadically to respond to questions. Thanks.
REFERENCES
[1] Lorenzoni I, and Adger WN. Critique of Treatments of Adaptation Costs in PAGE and FUND Models. In: Warren, R. et al. eds. Spotlighting Impacts Functions in Integrated Assessment Models, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research Working Paper 91, Norwich, 2006, 72–79. See p.74.
[2] Parry ML, Livermore M., eds. A new assessment of the global effects of climate change. Global Environmental Change 1999, 9:S1–S107.
[3] Arnell NW, Cannell MGR, Hulme M, Kovats RS, Mitchell JFB, Nicholls RJ, Parry ML, Livermore MTJ, White A. The consequences of CO2 stabilization for the impacts of climate change. Climatic Change 2002, 53:413–46.
[4] Parry ML, ed. Special issue: an assessment of the global effects of climate change under SRES emissions and socio-economic scenarios. Global Environmental Change 2004, 14:1–99.
[5] Tol RSJ. The Social Cost of Carbon: Trends, Outliers and Catastrophes. Economics—the Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal 2008, 2(25):1–24.
[6] US Global Change Research Program. 2009. Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, Cambridge University Press, 2009. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, page 18.
[7] Goklany IM. 2009. Trapped Between the Falling Sky and the Rising Seas: The Imagined Terrors of the Impacts of Climate Change. University of Pennsylvania Workshop on Markets & the Environment, December 13 2009.
[8] IPCC. Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007, page 17.
[9] Goklany IM. Is a Richer-but-warmer World Better than Poorer-but-cooler Worlds? Energy & Environment 2007, 18 (7 and 8):1023–1048.
[10] Goklany IM. Integrated strategies to reduce vulnerability and advance adaptation, mitigation, and sustainable development. Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change 2007;doi:10.1007/s11027-007-9098-1.
[11] Goklany IM. Discounting the Future. Regulation 2009 (Spring) 32:36-40.
[12] Goklany IM. Have increases in population, affluence and technology worsened human and environmental well-being? Electronic Journal of Sustainable Development 2009, 1(3).
[13] Goklany IM. The Improving State of the World. Cato Institute, Washington, DC, 2007.
[14] van Lieshout M, Kovats RS, Livermore MTJ, Marten P. Climate change and malaria: analysis of the SRES climate and socio-economic scenarios. Global Environmental Change 2004, 14(1):87–99.
[15] Goklany IM. Deaths and Death Rates from Extreme Weather Events: 1900-2008. Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons 2009, 14 (4):102–09.
[16] World Health Organization (WHO). Global Health Risks. Geneva: WHO; 2009. http://www.who.int/healthinfo/global_burden_disease/global_health_risks/en/index.html (accessed May 8 2011)
[17] Costello A, and University College London-Institute for Global Health and Lancet Commission. Managing the health effects of climate change. Lancet 2009, 373:1693–1733.
[18] McMichael AJ, Woodruff RF, Hales S. Climate change and human health: present and future risks. Lancet 2006, 367:859–869.
[19] Arnell NW, van Vuuren DP, Isaac M. The implications of climate policy for the impacts of climate change on global water resources. Global Environmental Change 2011, 21:592–603.
[20] UN Development Program. 2011. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about the Human Development Index (HDI). http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/FAQs_2011_HDI.pdf (accessed December 23 2011).
[21] Sen A. Assessing Human Development: Special Contribution In: United Nations Development Programme (1999). Human Development Report 1999. New York: Oxford University Press, 23.
[22] UN Development Program. International Human Development Indicators, 2011. http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/hdi/ (accessed November 26 2011).
[23] Goklany IM. Could Biofuel Policies Increase Death and Disease in Developing Countries? Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons 16 (1):9–13.
24 Stern N. The Economics of Climate Change. Her Majesty’s Treasury, London, 2006.
James Hein says:
October 17, 2012 at 9:17 pm
I shudder to think of the total of this in terms of real lives lost, in particular of children, due to what was missed because global warming and climate change received the funding instead.
===============
The US manned space program has been stagnate for 40 years as a result. The moon missions were cancelled and the budgets reallocated. The telescopes were turned inwards to study “mission earth”. In order to justify the money being spent, they had to find a problem to be solved. AGW was the solution.
A great deal of our modern technology grew out of the space program. AGW has produced windmills, high cost electricity, Kyoto and carbon taxes. The net result has been to drive manufacturing from efficient first world countries (US, EU) to less efficient third world countries (India, China). This has actually increased global CO2. over what it would have been otherwise. The exact opposite of what it was supposed to accomplish.
At the same time this shift in manufacturing has put massive budget pressure on the US and EU governments, bringing both to the brink of financial debt crisis which threatens to plunge the world into economic chaos that will make the depression of the 1930’s look like good in comparison. As in the 1930’s war and death will follow as the countries of the earth try and ward of starvation.
The former Soviet Union collapsed because it placed belief ahead of reality. They put their faith in an unproven economic theory and it brought down their house of cards. Now the same pattern is repeating itself with global warming. Nations are placing their faith in an unproven climate theory and the warning signs are clear. Those that ignore the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.
When you sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind.
I suppose that we must give a reason for warring groups. It can’t be religious, political, and economic differences. Why do we “war”, because it is simpler and less boring to “war [steal]” than it is to grow your own food [and be bored] . Modern irrigation, fertilizers, crops, and techniques will supply food for many times the world’s population; but that is slow and boring. How can I have power, a palace, a jet plane, beautiful women, exotic foods and entertainment quickly unless I steal [includes taxation] ?
Maybe the real reason for the fall of the Roman Empire was that they got “bored” with power! What game does one contrive, when you have it all, to not be bored?
Let us not blame it on human nature, let us blame it all on “climate change”.
Let us say that the Industrial Revolution started around 1850 [advent of the beginning of automated transportation [trains]. The Industrial Revolution [with automation] has a natural ending when all muscle labor has been replaced by computers/robotics. IBM/Intel stated that by 2050, we will have the power of a “human brain” on our desktop [or in our laptop, or our iPad].
Today, a modern farmer in America, using GPS, can start tractor 1 to plow field 1. He can then start tractor 2 to plow field 2, etc. He doesn’t need to even monitor tractor 1 with all of the safeties. Maybe one man can take care of 20,000 acres. When the tractor can drive itself to the field, maybe one man can take care of 100,000 acres. The cows come in and the automated milkers milk them. Yes, we will need maintenance people for a while; until they are replaced.
The simple automation in modern factories has eliminated 75% of the workers, on its way to 90%. Automated retail [Amazon, etc.] will reduce retail workers by 90%.
Maybe “climate change” is the justification for a massive war to temporarily reduce human population. We can then say, “That war was due to climate change”.
The real issue is no jobs, but many more people.
– – – – – –
Indur Goklany,
Once again I am impressed with the strategic skill you implement in posing the issues and also the impeccable logic of your argumentation.
When i’ve read your work over the last decade, I am often happily reminded of the work of Julian Simon.
A profound sense of human optimism is created by you like that created by Julian Simon.
John
The Roman Empire failed due to a variety of problems including: totalitarian government concentrating economic decisonmaking authority into the hands of too few people who were also too incompetent and not accountable for their failures; incompetent military leadership,; the conquests by the Germanic tribes; and the islamic conquests of the Mediterranean agricultural resources and trade route lines of communication; and pandemics. Natural changes in climate exacerbated the other challenges to the empire.
richardscourtney says:
October 18, 2012 at 6:42 am
“Mickey Mouse is anthropormophic.
The AGW hypothesis is about anthropogenic global warming.”
Ha! Thanks Richard – that’s the funniest thing I’ve seen about global warming in a while! 🙂
BTW: From wikipedia
Anthropomorphism … is any attribution of human characteristics (or characteristics assumed to belong only to humans) to other animals, non-living things, phenomena, material states, objects or abstract concepts, such as organizations, governments, spirits or deities.
There are some in the climate “science” community who indeed apply anthropomorphism to global warming. Take this example from the “scholarly” literature (no I am NOT making this up – this is an excerpt from an actual peer-reviewed paper’s abstract!):
Hansen et al., Climate change and trace gases. Phil. Trans. Royal. Soc. A, 365, 1925-1954, doi:10.1098/rsta.2007.2052.
Paleoclimate data show that the Earth’s climate is remarkably sensitive to global forcings. Positive feedbacks predominate. This allows the entire planet to be whipsawed between climate states. One feedback, the “albedo flip” property of water substance, provides a powerful trigger mechanism. A climate forcing that “flips” the albedo of a sufficient portion of an ice sheet can spark a cataclysm. Ice sheet and ocean inertia provides only moderate delay to ice sheet disintegration and a burst of added global warming. Recent greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions place the Earth perilously close to dramatic climate change that could run out of our control, with great dangers for humans and other creatures.
—
Hey kids – let’s do the albedo flip!!
“Is Climate Change the Number One Threat to Humanity?”
No, stupidity is.
I think a more appropriate question would be whether climate warming was the 1,387,952nd worst threat, or the 2,754,154th worst threat to humanity.
Where/how do you get these!?
The number one threat to humanity is not global warming. It is those distant aliens who seeded this planet in the first place and come back every few thousand years to tend their garden. Chances are they’ll decide to do to us what they did to the dinosaurs. That means spraying the planet with an advanced form of Weed-B-Gon designed to rid their garden vacation spot of unwanted weeds and pests. Or they may choose to genetically engineer humans with a special gene that will compell us to tend their garden without regard for our own welfare. Hmmm, maybe that “environmentalist gene” has already been introduced into the population. /sarc
You wrongly presume “Global warming will increase the frequency of such global pandemics,” whereas the historical evidence indicates colder temperatures increase the occurrence of pandemics while warmer temperatures decrease the rate of pandemics. You neglect to note the reality that Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is a barely perceptible or measurable effect with practically no material contribution to natural climate change or natural global warming, or provide any credible scientific evidence to demonstrate otherwise. Instead you presume to DICTATE the existence of a problem which science indicates almost certainly does not exist and continue on to DICTATE an impossible solution to the nonexistent problem. Having played the role of a DICTATOR in creating a nonexistent problem, you proceed to advocate the destruction of the very economic infrastructure Humanity uses to adapt to the environment and prevent the otherwise natural occurrence or unnatural occurrence of pandemics. It can be fairly argued that you are advocating the wholesale destruction of tens of millions of human lives by the destruction of the infrastructure required to support those human lives. You threaten this mass destruction of humanity because you are too lazy, too arrogant, and too negligent to learn and understand the science under discussion before advocating such mindlessly destructive policies.
I’m not any sort of economist or socialist, so I can’t make any significant comment on those aspects, but I am a biologist and an environmentalist, and there are some things that I don’t agree with this article. First off, it seems you’re ignoring the indirect effects climate change has on human welfare; the heat isn’t killing anyone, but the expansion of deserts into previously arable land forcing farming communities to poverty very well could be. Climate change and global warming is certainly going to result in an intensification of the weather cycle (increase in the frequency of floods and extended drought periods) will undoubtedly effect humans in various ways. This intensification will make water scarcer as it will be much more difficult to store as it arrives in large amounts in a short period, simultaneously increasing erosion and runoff. The biodiversity, also, is more likely to decrease. It is true that the productivity is projected to increase, but due to the differential fixation of carbon dioxide by different plant species, the increasing concentrations of this gas should result in a competitive advantage of certain plants over others and ultimately excluding them from their ecosystems. An example of this is bush encroachment on Savanna regions. The loss of biodiversity has many implications on the wellbeing of humans, especially in poor areas where ecotourism is driven by high levels of biodiversity.
Dr. Lurtz says:
October 18, 2012 at 7:47 am
“Maybe the real reason for the fall of the Roman Empire was that they got “bored” with power! What game does one contrive, when you have it all, to not be bored?”
Personally, I think that emperor Constantine put the largest nail in the Coffin when he declared Christianity as the official religion.
The empire was based on slavery. And the most cruel methods to keep the slaves on place. Remember the story of Spartacus? When they crusified, 6000 slaves along Via Appia?
You can’t do that, and be a Christian at the same time.
The World Isn’t Flat says:
October 18, 2012 at 9:32 am
All of your pronostications are suppositions with no observational proof that any of these things are 1. happening or 2. causally related to any human activity. The climate is always changing and will continue to do so with or without people. Nothing short of depopulation will have any effect upon what insignificant contributions, so far unproven, man has had upon the climate.
Correction “prognostications”.
The World Isn’t Flat:
At October 18, 2012 at 9:32 am you say
the expansion of deserts into previously arable land forcing farming communities to poverty very well could be.
Historically I see no correlation in your study when compared to real history. Humanity thrives in warmer climates. Compare warmer periods to the little ice age. Our modern technology is not up to par to live well in the coldest places on the planet, such as Antarctica, where as Palm Springs, or Las Vegas we are functionally adapting to. A casino sin city with all the entertainment trappings in the middle of any warm desert can be dealt with, but not the cold dry deserts. Too simple???
‘Climate change’ represents no threat to humanity, as it is the normal state of things.
One of the greatest threats to humanity is undoubtedly politicians listening to ‘climate scientists’, as the latter’s solution to the non-problem of ‘climate change’ is economic Armageddon, whilst retaining positions of privilege for themselves.
stop worrying abt the carbon
start getting worried abt the cold
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
Your first error is in presuming humans have the ability and actually have been responsible for making the Earth’s climatee warmer. Perhaps you have allowed yourself to be indoctrinated into the false assumption and false belief that Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) exists greater than an insignificant and non-material extent, but that is no excuse for your disregard of the scientific evidence indicating we experienced natural warming and are now experiencing natural climate change with naturally cooling temperatures.
Your second error is in presuming increased planetary temperatures are responsible for the “ expansion of deserts into previously arable land,” when it is colder planetary temperatures which result in the expansion of deserts as a consequence of the cryosphere sequestering water and thereby reducing the water available for precipitation. Increased planetary temperature increases the rate of evaporation and precipitation, which increases humidity, rainfall, and biodiversity.
All of which is exactly contrary to scientific observations of reality. If you think otherwise, you are welcome to find the scieentific evidence necessary to refute the scientific papers and discussions on these same topics in this blog, wattsupwiththat.
Radical changes in biodiversity is a normal result of natural biology. The presence of humans does not change that reality, even when humans have some material or non-material influence upon the biodiversity. The biosphere is not a static object. The biosphere is a very dynamic object. Attempts to assert that humans must somehow take full or substantial responsibility for natural climate change and natural changes in biodiversity are irrational at best and unscientificat least.
Climate Change as the #1 threat? Are you kidding?
Nothing scares me more than the though of a viral epidemic spread by air travel.
A close second is a wheat or corn rust that hits a monocultured grain belt.
Jurgen~ Very interesting idea, will see what I can do! Thanks!
Dr. Lurtz says:
October 18, 2012 at 8:13 am
Let us say that the Industrial Revolution started around 1850 [advent of the beginning of automated transportation [trains]. The Industrial Revolution [with automation] has a natural ending when all muscle labor has been replaced by computers/robotics. IBM/Intel stated that by 2050, we will have the power of a “human brain” on our desktop [or in our laptop, or our iPad].
Today, a modern farmer in America, using GPS, can start tractor 1 to plow field 1. He can then start tractor 2 to plow field 2, etc. He doesn’t need to even monitor tractor 1 with all of the safeties. Maybe one man can take care of 20,000 acres. When the tractor can drive itself to the field, maybe one man can take care of 100,000 acres. The cows come in and the automated milkers milk them. Yes, we will need maintenance people for a while; until they are replaced.
The simple automation in modern factories has eliminated 75% of the workers, on its way to 90%. Automated retail [Amazon, etc.] will reduce retail workers by 90%.
Maybe “climate change” is the justification for a massive war to temporarily reduce human population. We can then say, “That war was due to climate change”.
The real issue is no jobs, but many more people.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch.
http://www.fortmcmurrayonline.com/jobs/welcome.aspx
Being a cross disciplinary student in both social and environmental sciences this paper is both heartening and disheartening at the same time. As social science student, it is good to see that the stressors that affect people such as disease, poverty, shortages of water, economic development issues etc. take precedence over climate change. However, this piece of work is disheartening in that is shades climate change in such a way that it almost makes it seem irrelevant and almost more of a slight issue instead of a real problem. This article, in a sense, seems to sweep climate change under the carpet.
The article also seems to take the good that people are doing in terms of trying to offset emissions and making them seem worse than what they are. Case in point is the biofuel debate, yes it might increase the price of food, but it will lower the amount of GHG’s emitted and it may teach people not to waste the food that they have. A couple of months ago I read that in the UK, almost 4 slices of bread is thrown away everyday simply because the people do not eat the end slices of the bread once its cut. Also we find that certain farmers and corporate will rather dump produce instead of sell it at a discounted rate simply because the produce is not the correct shape, so I think we should be looking at corporate and asking them what they are doing to try and minimalise the wastage of produce as well as what they are doing to offset emissions as well as how are they helping to improve the underprivileged that live in degenerated areas.
Don’t get me wrong, the author of this piece has done a really good job in highlighting and interpreting the data from the ar4 and various other works from the IPCC. I also agree that climate change is not such an immediate problem such as reduced economic development; however climate change isn’t something that can be fixed or mended or put on the shelf because there are definite climate shifts. In Cape Town we are getting colder, dryer summers and hotter summers I mean in the next 20 or so years we should be expecting 40 degree Celsius summers which is very uncomfortable and will definitely hinder economic development then.
It all comes down to how can we adapt or mitigate the effects of climate change now, so that when it does get worse we will have adequate contingency plans in place to help those who are the most vulnerable and those who will suffer the most i.e. the poor.
In my opinion this article highlights the contemporary issues that are plaguing mankind but it will get a lot worse if climate change is swept under the carpet.
There are four main problems in any discussion in relation to prevention v adaptation as over-arching policy settings in relation to anthropogenic global warming theory. I bound my discussion within the next 200 years. I assume that the discussion is loosely based on anthropomorphic global warming trends superimposed on natural climate trends and cycles on the one hand, and natural climate trends and cycles on the other. The four main problems are now discussed.
(1) setting a useful time frame to bound the policy discussion.
Any discussion between prevention and reaction needs to be time-bounded. 10 years? 50 years? a century? two centuries? a thousand years? The time horizon of all policy discussions is critical. Quite a few blog comments imply a near-future or present time horizon. A lack of a time horizon renders policy discussions between prevention and adaptation meaningless. Applying the time horizon test, quite a few of the above posts have no meaning. I note in passing that a significant proportion of unfunny sarcastic and useless posts, including some upstring, make senseless assumptions about time horizons.
Adaptation v prevention discussions need to time-bounded.
(2) costing adaptation is extremely difficult and has yet to be done in a comprehensive and convincing fashion.
One example. One quarter of the Netherlands is below sea level. Another half of the Netherlands is a metre or less above sea level. The Dutch are investing heavily in adaptation to proof the nation within a century against a one metre rise in sea level. However, costs for proofing against a two metre rise in sea level are exponential. It is not simply a matter of adding a metre to the top of a dyke. The base and the entire mass of the dyke has to be strengthened, because it is water pressure at the base that is more likely than over-overtopping to cause a breach.
Assuming adaptation and rising sea levels, sooner or later the Dutch economy will be unable to continue supporting these exponential costs. The Netherlands has the world’s 16th largest economy. In terms of costing adaptation should the Netherlands economy be deleted? There would, of course, be massive economic flow-on effects: Rotterdam is europe’s largest port, with around 150,000 vessel movements a year, and ports function badly when under water. The port infrastructure is highly sophisticated and capital intensive. It is also vast – some 40 kilometres long. Theoretically it would be possible to keep raising the wharves, lifting the cranes to new levels, rebuilding the infrastructure that operates the automatic trucks that distribute the containers. In practice this would be very, very costly. In terms of adaptation, how costly?
Another example, but from the other side of the ledger. Malaria costs Africa alone, say, around $30 billion a year and, globally, say, around three quarters of a million deaths. Two well-advanced technical breakthroughs are very likely to defeat malaria: the first is a vaccine, now being trialled. The second is the use of GMO technology to facilitate the mass release of infertile male mosquitoes. The latter has demonstrated in field trials a powerful effect in terms of reducing dengue fever outbreaks by means of dramatic reduction in mosquito populations. (This technology has none of the pernicious, pervasive and long-lasting damage inflicted by DDT but is, nevertheless, being vigorously opposed by anti GMO groups).
Based on these examples, In terms of costing adaptation, how do we factor in the power of human invention?
IMHO, those who argue at low levels of detail that adaptation is cheaper than prevention or vice versa, cannot, therefore, know with any degree of certainty what they are talking about.
This discussion, therefore, can only be at the very highest risk v reward levels. Some examples: at what level of chemical change (and when) will the world’s oceans stop delivering 100 million tons of protein a year? What would the cost of that be? At say, two thousand dollars a ton, the loss of ocean fisheries would take $200 billion a year out of the global economy, before flow-one effects. At what level of sea level rise do 50% of the worlds largest cities become uninhabitable? How many trillions would that cost? Is there any possible technological development that would save the cities from inundation? Is there any possible technological development that would prevent the chemical changes that may affect wild-caught fish stocks? And, if the US has neither the capital nor the political will to replace the 40-50,000 bridges that urgently need replacement where is the capital going to come from for any very large scale adaptation capital requirements?
A related issue is that any climate impacts are not isolated. They sit on top of current impacts. For example, we are experiencing a mass loss of biodiversity at the moment. This is largely invisible to most commentators because it is in the form of the within-species loss of genetic variability that is occurring in most of the world’s species. In some cases this has already contributed to extinction. There being an extinction lag, there are already a significant number of species that will shortly become extinct. The adaptation issue for biodiversity is that climate changes, particularly if rapid, will sit as new and more intensive selection pressures on a biota which is already in the process of becoming genetically depauperate and, therefore, less and less able to adapt to new selection pressures.
Claims for general costings of adaptation to date are over-egged because they are based on assumptions with very low levels of validity and reliability.
(3) issues relating to inter- and intra- generation distribution and re-distribution.
The world currently arranges resource distribution so that some people are very wealthy and others starve to death. Policy responses arising from any climate change may well alter this proportion. Similarly, current generations are capable of using one-off resources so that they become unavailable to future generations. For example, phosphorous is highly likely to become very scarce and very expensive some time within the next two hundred years. Unlike water, we cannot ‘make’ phosphorous. It is phophorous prices that are likely to be the chief threat to the world’s poor. Taking a previous example: much of the 100 million tons of ocean protein is consumed by the poorer half of humanity.
Any general discussion of adaptation v prevention needs to integrate equity as a main issue.
(4) getting right the balance between scientific uncertainty and probability and, therefore, related policy risks and opportunites.
I won’t go into detail here because I assume that every reader of this blog will know the issues.
Otter at October 18, 2012 at 2:03 am
Anyone is welcome to reproduce this article in whole or part. Just give due credit to the author and WUWT. Thanks.