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.
You’re welcome, RSC
I’m glad that we agree
When writing prose
I’m too verbose…
Well, back to rhyme for me
===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle
Richard
I have been polite to you. You have been rude to me. IMHO, you reduce your scientific credibility through the use of terms such as ‘stupid’, ‘troll’ and ‘verbiage’.
Your position, if I am correct, is that you are 100% certain that there is no evidence at all that there is an antrhopogenic impact on climate, Changes in terrestrial hydrology, changes in land cover, the Asian brown cloud, ozone gases, aerosols, soot, greenhouse gases have had, and will have, no impact at all. None.
My view is that there is some but that the question is how much.
Howskepticalment:
At October 20, 2012 at 3:06 pm you say to me
You are not “correct”. You have (deliberately?) put words in my mouth.
Of course humans affect local climates in several ways; e,g, cities are warmer than their surrounding countryside. But there is no evidence – none, zilch, nada – that any human activities have a discernible effect on global climate.
If you think you have some such evidence then provide it to the IPCC. $billions have been spent each year for decades in attempt to find such evidence and – to date – none has been found. But much evidence which refutes the AGW hypothesis exists.
Your trolling this thread with unsubstantiated, long-winded assertions and misrepresentations of the views of others is annoying. And I cannot be more ‘polite’ about your behaviour than that.
Richard
Kd
[From this sort of filtered, distorted output, “howskepticalment” and others have gotten the idea that there is an impending crisis, that the reality of massive food increases (due in part to CO2) are harbingers of food shortage, and that the pleasant (for humans) biosphere of recent decades portends doom for us all. Earth’s billions of years of feedback be damned!]
I disagree with your assumptions. I find your discussion of the impact of atmospheric CO2 concentrations oversimplied and reject, in passing, your putdown view about how I synethesize information and misinformation.
I do not understand your reference to a ‘pleasant biosphere for humans.’ There is not an ‘impending’ crisis. We are in the midst of a global food security crisis. Therefore your term ‘harbinger’ does not apply. Millions of people starve to death every year and hundreds of millions more suffer hunger. Not a pleasant biosphere at all. I doubt whether the addition of the two billion individuals being forecast by demographers will alleviate the situation.
You raise the issue of atmospheric CO2 concentration as if it is the sole criteria for determining the value of prevention or adaptation in relation to the specific issue of food security. As it turns out I have some practical experience here. For example, there is a greenhouse tomato farm a few towns along the road which pumps CO2 enrichment into the hothouse. I have had a look at it. The production improvements are great, providing the additional nutrients are provided.
But crops are potentially constrained by a variety of factors, not just by atmospheric CO2 concentrations: genetic potential, availability of key nutrients, water, sunshine, heat range, seasonality (eg frost limits), weather events (eg cold snaps, heat waves), farming techniques, availability of pesticides, etc, etc.
IMHO, the debate about the impact of CO2 enrichment of crops is essentially irrelevant to food security in all but highly specialized situations such as greenhouses. Any open field growth impact of current changes to CO2 atmospheric concentrations are entirely over-ridden by a number of other trends: the global destruction of groundwater aquifers, nutrient availability, the loss of soil extent and soil quality, capital costs, energy costs, and desertification.
These are, in turn, being offset by improvements in irrigation efficiency, GMOs, cheaper energy, and massive increases in farm subsidies. I raise the latter because the way to integrate the pros and cons of atmospheric CO2 concentrations on food security is by integrating the impact on price, not by cherrypicking a physiological impact on plant growth. Just to remind you: in our pleasant biosphere, food price is what is starving people.
I raise these issues because I note the proponents or opponents of certain positions routinely present that prosition in black or white terms as if the outcomes are all good or all bad. Many of the posts in this string provide examples of this. The way in which you raise the productivity benefits of atmospheric CO2 concentrations is another such an example.
IMHO, BTW, the over-use of phosphorous leading to global phosphorous shortages will be the single most important limiting factor on food security over the next two centuries. I have had numerous discussions with crop scientists and they simply shake their heads when I raise the topic with them.
Howskepticalment quotes and my comments:
And right there you have it. The increased CO2 in the atmosphere has, according to the FACE experiments and in-laboratory work, increased the growth of productive crops on the close order of 15%. This means about a one-in-seven increase in food production, independent of other augmenters such as improvements in fertilizing, plant breeding, and mechanation of farming. Thus, about one extra billion people are being fed from the increase in CO2 alone.
In addition, the cold 1970s, which inspired a very early gathering of climate scientists (in a symposium hosted by the FBI, greatly concerned about the impacts of global cooling) finally abated, and temperatures have begun to return to a “climate optimum” (though not as warm as in earlier, happier times in human history. This added warmth has also increased crop production.
Tornado counts are dropping, hurricanes are calming (though these seem to operate on about a 40-year cycle, and the drop won’t likely be forever), and droughts are nowhere near as severe as during the middle portion of the last century. It is instructive to read that FBI document from the gathering, and look at the litany of recent climate disasters they cite!
Imagine how many more people would have starved to death this year had we not been living in our current pleasant climate period.
Incidentally, I did not intend my comment as a put-down. Many reasonable people have been taken in the same way; it is hard to avoid such a perception given the media (and now government) dominance of the idea of catastrophic global warming.
You imply, but do not state, that the extra CO2 has little or no effect without extra nutrients. Had you explicitly said this, you’d have been incorrect. Many experiments have shown that increased CO2 in the range of a century ago to a few centuries from now improves plants’ ability to make use of existing nutrients. None show otherwise. To get to such notions, they have to include things like “well, droughts will be worse and thus the net increase will be negative” or “ozone will be worse” or similar incorrect assumptions.
That plants in enriched CO2 can actually use more nutrients, if available, is simply a force multiplier. But of course, the carbon in CO2 is itself the major nutrient. You may consider reading FACE experiment discussions with a careful eye to get past the politically correct. Here, for example.
Oh, yes! Global warming catastrophism indeed has a body count, as they say. Carbon taxes and regulation are reducing the use of inexpensive energy in food production, raising the price. And the manic overemphasis on biofuels, logic be damned, diverts foodstuffs to soi-disant “green fuel,” also raising prices of course. The result is food shortages and food crises from those in poverty not being able to afford blithe catastrophism; it literally takes their food away. Similarly, cheap fossil fuel power is denied to them, as it is not sufficiently “green” — so those in poor nations are still stripping rainforests for fuel and dying from indoor cooking with unsafe materials.
Catastrophists are killing people for the sake of “the planet” — a rather bizarre and misguided notion, in my opinion, but demonstrably true.
===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle
Keith DeHavelle:
re your comments on biofuels in your post at October 20, 2012 at 4:47 pm you may be interested in my paper at
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/biofuel_issues.html
Richard
Kd
I accept your statement that you were not trying to put me down. But then you cannot let it go: ‘Many reasonable people have been taken in the same way;’ This sort of stuff is a blight on rational discussion. I notice that you use the pejorative term ‘catastrophists’.
Let’s for the sake of discussion accept the FACE results as read, rather than as contested. Let’s also, for the sake of discussion, assume that human forcings will have a signficant impact on climate.
My original points stand:
(1) CO2 is only one input and treating the impact of CO2 in isolation from other inputs is too limited a way of assessing the impact of atmospheric CO2.
(2) the biosphere is not pleasant when millions of people starve every year.
(3) phosphorous rather than climate is likely to be critical limiting factor when it comes to food security over the next two hundred years.
You raise some additional points:
(1) crop growing weather, compared to some previous decades, is good right now.
It depends on your time frame. There have been worse growing conditions, globally. There have been better growing conditions, globally.
Northern hemisphere commodity crop production this season was well below average, mainly due to low rainfall and high temperatures. All that CO2 with nowhere to go. Fortunately, the GMO outputs meant that some corn crops did much better than traditional corn varieties would have done under the same growing conditions. It remains to be seen whether southern hemisphere exporters are able to pick up the slack. They will pick up the good prices, but probably with less grain. Regardless of what happens with spring rains from here on in, we already know that there will not be record production.
Global food commodity prices have been at the high-ish end (but quite volatile) over the past half decade or so. Adverse weather has been only one input to these prices.
I accept your point that bad growing conditions increases global starvation.
(2) AGW policy responses are killing people.
This makes partial sense, provided we bound our discussion to the present and provided we assume that humans will not alter climate significantly. IMHO, biofuel subsidies are killing lots of people right now, and should be stopped at once. However, biofuels are not, as far as I know, widely supported by supporters of AGW theory. In general, it is rent-seeking rural lobbies that support government subsidies for biofuels.
Beyond that, whether prevention would kill more people than adaptation over time, depends IMHO, on the time frame you apply.
On this we differ.
Richard et al, let’s get something straight first, as Richard would agree with. Human’s pollute waterways, cities, by cutting down large tracts of rain forest the clouds go higher, less precipitation. The more people crammed into an area like Bangkock, it’s filthy, with smog, rotting garbage, poor sanitation and disease. But outside those cities, the temps drop as more wind circulates and there are less people. However, when the Nile was dammed in the 1960s at first it finished the Delta fishing industry, increased malaria, and that snail ingestion. Thirty years later the fish industry returned, malaria had been eradicated and they had a vaccination against that water snail. Nature can adjust, but of course the farmers around the Nile spend thousands of dollars on fertilizers, as they no longer have the Nile fertile silt, naturally fertilizing their crops.
I wonder who sells them the fertilizers? Pollution can be cleaned up, but we can’t change the weather.
I am happy that that you are not standing behind an apparent willingness to kill millions of people now on the notion that this might somehow prevent the deaths of more later. This position is advanced by too many.
I use the phrase “catastrophists” because of (1) the treatment by so many, including the core researchers, of this issue as something more important than truth, and (2) the fact that the word “catastrophe” and its variants are so frequently part of the predictions advanced upon society by this core group and its media and government apparatus. It is intended to be a shorthand rather than a perjorative — and to distinguish those that believe that failing to implement “prevention” or “adaptation” of climate change will necessarily cause a catastrophe from those that accept that there was a warming period from the 1970s to the 1990s, which has not seemed to cause significant harm.
I have been included in lists of people who support the global warming “consensus” which might give you a notion of how that consensus might be a little misleading. And I write science for government purposes as my “day job” — you must, by law, be or pretend to be a catastrophist in my profession. That is how corrupt the process has become.
CO2’s effects upon crop growth must be understood in isolation. Only then are you able to reasonably combine this effect with the improved growing seasons, increased arable land, and other improvements in order to judge just how much better food production will continue to be. To suggest that CO2 may be useful by itself but won’t help because conditions are so bad is to ignore a lot of facts, including the point that CO2 increases make plants more resilient and more efficient, better able to use other resources well.
You’ve had a fortunate year: a combination of a mild (and massively overplayed) drought that brought crop production down to one of the best yields ever in human history — but not the top yield this time. Next year, if yet another record yield is achieved, where will you go? There is only so long that the media can hype normal weather variations as “extremes” — and as those lies fall apart, others are being looked at more carefully. I imagine you’ve seen the records of how mild this drought was compared to past decades. We tend to think that yesterday’s events were more significant than last week’s or last year’s, and the hype machine was not engaged even in the 1988 drought, let alone the 1950s and 1930s.
Population increases can outpace even an instant doubling of food supply. The corruption massively evident in African countries, for example, prevents food from getting where it needs to go — no amount of it fixes that. Moreover, the charitable handling of food gifts as done now has created a continent of dependency; we regularly put local farmers out of business. And corruption; the food winds up rotting or (too often) traded for other fungibles such as weapons.
It is green-energy, climate-change-is-gonna-kill-us-all (i.e., catastrophist) folks pushing the biofuel business. Some now recognize that this is foolish and deadly, as you have acknowledged. Is the biofuel bit lobby-based? Certainly — as is windpower, solar power, wave power, et cetera; all transparently political.
The situation with fossil fuels is not quite the same, though there are still issues there. States (and countries) allow oil companies tax subsidies to entice them to their tax jurisdiction, as they create literally billions of dollars’ worth of jobs and boost economies. Funding a solar power company because it is captained by people that donated to your campaign, and is expected to produce trivial growth and jobs for the money while providing a mechanism to siphon cash back to your supporters, is just corrupt.
===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle
Kd
I am happy that that you are not standing behind an apparent willingness to kill millions of people now on the notion that this might somehow prevent the deaths of more later. This position is advanced by too many.
My druthers would be none dying of starvation now and none in the future. I could cobble together a set of policies that would deliver that outcome. Given you evident expertise in the area, so, I imagine could you.
I use the phrase “catastrophists” because of (1) the treatment by so many, including the core researchers, of this issue as something more important than truth, and (2) the fact that the word “catastrophe” and its variants are so frequently part of the predictions advanced upon society by this core group and its media and government apparatus. It is intended to be a shorthand rather than a perjorative — and to distinguish those that believe that failing to implement “prevention” or “adaptation” of climate change will necessarily cause a catastrophe from those that accept that there was a warming period from the 1970s to the 1990s, which has not seemed to cause significant harm.
I forbear from using the term ‘ostriches’ because labels neither inform nor improve the emotions.
I have been included in lists of people who support the global warming “consensus” which might give you a notion of how that consensus might be a little misleading. And I write science for government purposes as my “day job” — you must, by law, be or pretend to be a catastrophist in my profession. That is how corrupt the process has become.
What consensus? OTOH, if you are publicly toeing the government line and you look, walk and talk like an AGW consensusist, then it is perhaps not surprising that you have been added to the list.
I was once head hunted for a significant promotion in a government department. I was a leading national policy expert in the area. I told them that I disagreed with the policy settings, and with the values upon which the policies were based and further, that the policies would not work. (They eventually failed). I further pointed out that neither my head nor my heart would be in implementing the policies. No promotion, so it cost my quite a bit of money and put my career on the backburner for quite a while. But I could lie straight in bed at night. I hesitate to say it because it is your business. You are a good writer, IMHO – a better writer than I am. But then English is my second language, so I have a sort of reason. Anyway, maybe you should go and work in an area where you do not have to outwardly conform with government settings, views and policies with which you disagree. BTW, there is legislation which prevents me from discussing any information to which I had access at that time. And also at the time, I would have lost my job had I publicly criticised the government’s policies. This situation applies regardless of the colour of the government here.
You’ve had a fortunate year
Yes. We need a few nice follow up rains here and there and that would be the icing on the cake.
: a combination of a mild (and massively overplayed) drought that brought crop production down to one of the best yields ever in human history — but not the top yield this time. Next year, if yet another record yield is achieved, where will you go? There is only so long that the media can hype normal weather variations as “extremes” — and as those lies fall apart, others are being looked at more carefully. I imagine you’ve seen the records of how mild this drought was compared to past decades. We tend to think that yesterday’s events were more significant than last week’s or last year’s, and the hype machine was not engaged even in the 1988 drought, let alone the 1950s and 1930s.
I followed this season’s US drought, wildfires and crop yields with a great deal of interest. I usually don’t take any real interest in what the MSM says about any of that sort of stuff: it is a waste of time. You seem to know a lot about it and I would be very interested to know your views about the nexus between the areas planted and the total production. I did keep saying to folks here that one of the reasons it was not a disastrous crop was GMOs, but lots of people are impervious to that particular message.
Population increases can outpace even an instant doubling of food supply. The corruption massively evident in African countries, for example, prevents food from getting where it needs to go — no amount of it fixes that. Moreover, the charitable handling of food gifts as done now has created a continent of dependency; we regularly put local farmers out of business. And corruption; the food winds up rotting or (too often) traded for other fungibles such as weapons.
I agree with a lot of this. I would add the general distribution of global wealth and the propensity of wealthier people globally to eat from higher trophic levels as compounding factors to the situation you describe above.
It is green-energy, climate-change-is-gonna-kill-us-all (i.e., catastrophist) folks pushing the biofuel business. Some now recognize that this is foolish and deadly, as you have acknowledged. Is the biofuel bit lobby-based? Certainly — as is windpower, solar power, wave power, et cetera; all transparently political.
I am happy to accept your point (without accepting the pejorative framing) if you are saying it applies to the US (I am not sure where you are based). In Australia it is the farm lobby that is pushing the biofuels barrow.
The situation with fossil fuels is not quite the same, though there are still issues there. States (and countries) allow oil companies tax subsidies to entice them to their tax jurisdiction, as they create literally billions of dollars’ worth of jobs and boost economies. Funding a solar power company because it is captained by people that donated to your campaign, and is expected to produce trivial growth and jobs for the money while providing a mechanism to siphon cash back to your supporters, is just corrupt.
In terms of political power, moral equivalence, and the ability to influence (note neutral term), the fossil fuel mob here have always had it all over the renewables. The reason is fairly straightforward: the fossil fuel mob are a dominant industry in Australia. All they have to do is pend $20-30 million on a pr campaign and it is all over red rover for the government of the day. Once again I imagine that this would vary from country to country.
My being counted as part of the consensus is due to my accepting that it has warmed from the 70s to the 90s. That’s all it takes, really — this lumped me in with the catastrophists, due to the structure of the survey questions.
As to the other, I have focused my work on areas other than the environment, but there is no part of the government untouched by the catastrophists. For example, a project I am working on at the moment involves a medical device to be implanted — but even such a device, with power in the microwatt range, must have a complete environmental impact analysis done. My previous work in wordsmithing on a multi-hundred-million-dollar contract with the US government was well accepted, but it too involved all sorts of kowtowing to the notion that carbon dioxide was a horrifically bad, scary substance that my client must commit significant resources toward eliminating.
If you were to say “I will not participate in any activity where I have to agree with or support catastrophists” then you simply cannot work. Want to be a bag boy at minimum wage? More and more jurisdictions are requiring that you cannot honor the customer’s choice of bag — and in some places, cannot use any bags, and must load the customer’s food into unsanitary re-used shopping sacks they provide. A fry cook? Similar constraints have crept into the lowliest kitchens.
I am reminded a bit of the frenzy decades ago to get rid of preservatives. This effort killed people, too. More recently, it is organic food that is all the rage — and the source of a tremendous number of deaths and illnesses due to food poisoning.
I think this is a phase that will pass. But it is not reasonably possible to escape, at this point. I am careful in my wording; it amuses me to write for that audience in such a way that they will interpret the way they expect, but only because of their expectation.
You seem to be a proponent of genetically modified food. We have some common ground here, I think, as I am untroubled by it with adequate safety testing. (Much of our current food derives from the slow version of genetic modification.)
There is a proposal in California to require GMO labeling on food. I actively oppose it, as I’ve written here, because of its bureaucratic and trial-lawyer-supporting provisions more than the GMO aspect.
I will stop cluttering up our hosts’ thread with this rather off-topic wandering. In short, I think that Indur Goklany’s approach is good, and the categorization is correct in essence.
Now back to my medical devices.
P.S. Perhaps you should be thankful that we did not conduct this discussion in iambic pentameter; I am somewhat known for such silliness. At least it holds down my word count. ];-)
===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle
Here’s a possibly relevant WUWT thread from three months ago. It says that a warmer world would be better, except for sea level rise—and that we could afford to adapt to it in 100 years under a Business as usual scenario.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/24/back-to-the-future-paradise-lost-or-paradise-regained/
Kd
Looks like we continue to agree on some things and to disagree on some other things, including the big things. Thanks for the insights along the way.
bushbunny:
Thankyou for your post at October 20, 2012 at 6:24 pm. And, yes, I do agree.
Richard
Thank you richardscourtney, but I have been a climate change skeptic, before Al Gore started his campaign and wanted to convince us that unless we changed to clean energy sources we would all suffer the consequences AGW. Then the academy award and the Nobel prize, I nearly choked.
But I will say, that we have to be aware that we can change the balance of demand for energy, it is advanced countries life blood to maintain our energy dependent life styles. I recall Sir Mark Oliphants predictions that oil would run out one day, and Australia and all desert regions could capitalize on solar thermal or natural gas. He felt Australia could in the future supply our continent with solar thermal plus if we can learn to transport it, to other countries. The problem being what happens when the sun doesn’t shine at night. Senator John McKay had a talk he is a NSW Greens representative. He did not believe in electric cars, he did not believe in solar panels or even wind turbines. But he did believe in solar thermal generation. I believe one Australia coal generator is switching to black coal as it is less polluting. And another that is switching to a large solar farm combining it with coal or gas electricity generating. In Canada, they use mainly gas I believe, although very very expensive. Having lived in London and traveling from Potters Bar to the City by train, I remember my white petticoat always collected a two inch rim of dirt when they had steam trains. And the big Smogs of the 50s, that killed so many, and in the early 60s London switched to a smoke free zone. Within 10 years the city cleaned up the Thames, and dolphins were seen swimming there. So coal burning is dirty when the humidity near rivers or seas intensifies a SMOG formation. But they burned coal lite instead of black coal, or coke. We have to clean up our farming practices too. Especially in Australia where they used Super Phosphate so dramatically, they forgot that on its own it does nothing but kill off microbiology that naturally fertilizers the soil, providing enough water is conserved. So some chemical fertilizers and insecticides do more harm than good. Enough said now, but having passed my Diploma in Organic Agricultural production, I think I know, that farming practices around the world and in Australia have to be improved to provide us with the food we need and not deplete the soil. And increase soils conservation of water, by adding humus or organic materials.
“winston101 says:
October 18, 2012 at 6:19 am
Adrian,
Spanish flu is a misnomer- the pandemic originated in France in WW1 due to the atrocious conditions livestock were kept in in the war zone, with different species living in cramped and unhygienic conditions.”
I took my reference from Wikipedia, which says
“World War I did not cause the flu, but the close troop quarters and massive troop movements hastened the pandemic and probably both increased transmission and augmented mutation; it may also have increased the lethality of the virus. Some speculate the soldiers’ immune systems were weakened by malnourishment, as well as the stresses of combat and chemical attacks, increasing their susceptibility.[14]”
It doesn’t matter how it started, the potential is there for another pandemic that would spread much faster these days than we might be able to control it.
“JennyR says:
October 18, 2012 at 6:46 am
Adrian Kerton says:
October 18, 2012 at 2:21 am
“Global warming will increase the frequency of such global pandemics, there is a link between the two. That is why AGW is far more threatning.”
JENNYR I DID NOT SAY THAT IN MY POST, PLEASE APOLOGISE.”
I did not associate pandemics with Global warming not even by implication.
MOD please remove this post by JennyR as it is untrue.
Here is my post
“Adrian Kerton says:
October 18, 2012 at 2:21 am
They seemed to have overlooked a global pandemic such as influenza e.g. Bird Flu and Swine Flu which have the potential to reduce the world population by significant amounts. The 1918 Spanish flu took 50 million people, and that is without the social mobility we have today. Not many people travelled by aeroplane in those days.
We also have a rise in antibiotic resistant bacteria which again could easily wipe out large sections of the population.
I think these scenarios are much more serious than the threat of as yet unproven extreme global warming.”
Adrian Kerton:
I understand your reaction to JENNYR at October 22, 2012 at 3:03 am.
You made a good post and JENNYR misrepresented it.
Please try to not be too upset. JENNYR probably does not exist.
WUWT has recently been suffering a severe troll infestation. Some of the trolls may be the same person(s) and others may not be people but merely computer programs.
Their purpose is to disrupt and to defame with the objective of inhibiting debate and discussion which would inform people. Some may also be employed (indeed, payed) to promote special interests (e.g. Big Wind).
You have refuted the falsehood and – hopefully – that will be an end to it. The problem arises when some troll starts stalking you: I was driven off the blogs of Jo Nova and Judith Curry by such targeted trolling. But one such trolling incident by JENNYR is nothing like that.
Please do not let this incident deter you from making future posts on WUWT: JENNYR will have ‘won’ if it does. And your post was good so I want to read more from you.
Richard
Thanks Richard.
Cheers Adrian