By Bjørn Lomborg (via his Facebook page)
About a quarter of all deaths in the developing world comes from mostly easily curable, infectious diseases.
The biggest environment problem, by far measured in human deaths, is air pollution.
Global warming, which creates a lot of attention, is on an entirely different and smaller level. The World Health Organization estimate (a very maximal estimate) is about one-fortieth of the deaths from air pollution. Even if you assume all deaths from floods, droughts and storms, the number is an even smaller two-hundredth of air pollution.
And no, the number of deaths from global warming won’t increase, but more likely decrease over time, as many infectious deaths will disappear because of increasing wealth, and because fewer cold deaths will increasingly outweigh increasing heat deaths.
Source: Communicable deaths and air pollution deaths from Global Burden of Disease, doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(12)61766-8.
Infectious diseases are about 10m of 52.6m global deaths, and 9.2m of 39.7m developing world deaths.
Air pollution lies between 3.5m and 6.9m (indoor and outdoor air pollution is somewhat overlapping, because indoor air pollution contributes 16% to global outdoor air pollution, and because there is no good estimate of how close most people stay to homes when outside). Here, just using the mean, which is likely an underestimate.
WHO global warming estimate is 141,000 deaths (http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs266/en/). Lower estimate is just 28,266/year for the past decade , using estimates of deaths from flooding, droughts, heatwaves and storms, and assume they’re all from climate change, (http://www.csccc.info/reports/report_23.pdf).
Long-term development of deaths from Richard Tol’s chapter for my upcoming book, How Much have Global Problems Cost the World? A Scorecard from 1900 to 2050 (http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/economics/economic-development-and-growth/how-much-have-global-problems-cost-world-scorecard-1900-2050).
For now, see the estimates from Bosello et al. for 2050 showing global warming *saving* about 850,000 lives (1.76m saved from cold, vs 820,000 more dead from heat), http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800905003423.
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Air pollution lies between 3.5m and 6.9m (indoor and outdoor air pollution is somewhat overlapping, because indoor air pollution contributes 16% to global outdoor air pollution
The indoor/outdoor distinction isn’t that meaningful, because in warmer climates, where gas or electricity isn’t available, people cook outside, precisely because of the smoke.
I was recently in central Myanmar in the pre-monsoon season, where most cooking is still done using open fires. Everywhere there was a thick smoke haze, so thick that the blue sky and clouds were completely invisible. The sky varied from dirty white to a darkish grey.
The solution to air pollution deaths is energy infrastructure; electricity from power stations and piped or bottled gas.
I’d add, distribution of simple gas stoves and bottled gas would save many thousands of lives, and help save forests currently being cut down for firewood.
It’s not generally appreciated that when electricity (and in some places piped gas) were introduced in the developed world, their main use, apart from lighting, was to replace fires for cooking.
umm,
it is about taxation.
I think you nailed it. The leftists sense that the AGW carbon scare is collapsing so it is time for them to do what they do best – blur two completely different topics together to regain some traction, in this instance: CO2 and air pollution. And why not? They do this often and it sticks because of the brain dead media herding the sheeple into easily manageable groups. Sowing the seeds of confusion seems to be an easy payoff for the climate scoundrels.
We have seen CO2 often referred to only as “Carbon”. We have even seen the clueless and useless media interchange carbon monoxide with carbon dioxide. The Supreme Court and EPA and countless leftists have already set the stage for CO2 classed as a pollutant, so naturally they want to complete that meme. What is astounding is that we don’t have to go back too many years to remember a time when such a comparison would be considered grounds for clinical insanity, I mean in our very own lifetimes. CO2 was in every fire extinguisher. It was what we wanted to breath in a paper bag when our fingers went numb and lips tingled. Most importantly it was that magic plant food. They embarked on quite a trek here to demonize this particular gas.
Let’s not forget how often they pull this stunt. One of the popular defensive memes they parroted during Climategate was blurring the difference between public and private, as in email discussions by taxpayer funded scientists stored on taxpayer funded computers. Frankly, the entire AGW hoax lies in blurring the difference between weather and climate because now every rainstorm or dry spell now shows up as climate change, regardless of timescale. It is reflexive Alinsky-esque propaganda. It’s what they do. It’s all they know.
But it’s certainly nothing new. If we set the DeLorean time circuits to almost any year say between 600 AD to 1600 AD we would easily find their counterparts screaming that ‘the sky if falling’ or ‘the end is near’ or ‘Repent sinners! God is angry’. If a comet was visible in the sky for a few days any event that occurred during that period would be correlated to it. Plagues, bad weather, crop failures? Sacrifice a few cattle, slaves, or witches, whatever was handy during that particular century. So now we have CO2 appearing in the sky and once again we are asked to repent. Nothing has really changed has it?
Consequently, the AGW madmen will need to disregard what Lomborg specifically says here because it draws a bright line right where they least desire it. And it makes me wonder if Lomborg also senses their corrupt strategy of blurring CO2 with air pollution and thus wrote this article.
Blade says:
July 20, 2013 at 4:54 pm
Well said.
I’d add the media is complicit in the ‘carbon pollution’ fraud. Every story in the media about CO2 is accompanied by a picture or film of smoke belching from chimneys, or as often as not, steam coming out of cooling towers.
Unfortunately, it seems to be working. I’ve spoken to several people who think reducing CO2 will mean cleaner air.
I certainly agree with Lomborg that we should go for the low-hanging fruit. I also agree that the low-hanging fruit involves clean water, and clean indoor air. From the WHO reference Lance gives above:
Having spent a reasonable amount of time inside the huts and shanties and shacks and mud huts of the global poor, I can assure you that indoor air pollution is a huge problem. You would not believe how many older women I’ve seen with trachoma from constant eye irritation, and that doesn’t even count breathing the stuff.
However, it’s not clear where he’s getting the total numbers. For outdoor air pollution the WHO says:
So that adds up to only 2.8 million, not the 5.2 million he claims.
However, that is a minor point. The billions spent on increasing energy prices push up the numbers of deaths, not down. Lomborg is right, there’s much better places to put our energies than a fruitless battle against CO2.
w.
greran
Don’t disagree. I think nuke plants are one of many options.
Bruce Cobb says:
July 20, 2013 at 11:04 am
Jimbo says:
July 20, 2013 at 10:27 am
How have they differentiated climate deaths as opposed to weather deaths?
Fortunately they don’t have to, as the climatological cognoscenti have now determined that weather = climate.
————————————————————-
See Jimbo, that’s what you get for leaving off the /sarc tag
cn
blackadderthe4th says:
July 20, 2013 at 10:06 am
“…a New Scientist investigation reveals how international agencies failed to make even the most cursory calculations…we found that while there are undoubtedly millions of people…who have had to abandon their homes due to factors linked to climate…’
www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028104.600-searching-for-the-climate-refugees.html”
The full article (april 2011) is here:
http://www.350resources.org.uk/2011/04/28/counting-climate-change-refugees/
In the end, they manage to twist things round in favour of catastrophism:
‘For all this, dismissing Myers’s numbers on these grounds would be too simple, says Brown. There are almost certainly millions of people around the world who have been forced to move, in part to escape worsening climate and rising tides. In his 2008 study he wrote that “predictions of 200 million people displaced by climate change might well be exceeded”.
‘Just because we haven’t counted them or cannot attribute migrants’ moves wholly to climate change does not mean they are not there, Brown says. Rather, ignorance has proved rather convenient for governments keen to avoid their responsibilities. “There has been a collective, and rather successful, attempt to ignore the scale of the problem,” he says.
‘Myers told New Scientist: “It may be very difficult to demonstrate that there are 50 million climate refugees, but it is even harder to demonstrate that there are not.” He sees no reason to change his estimate.’
“Using the Clean Air Alliance method for computing deaths, particulates from country-road usage kills 40,739 people per year, quite the massacre considering there are only about 90,000 deaths from all causes in Ontario each year.”
Looks like a lot of people just don’t realized that they’re already in Heaven, so that they can keep on driving those dusty roads without further risk. Once a friend of mine and I were hiking up some beautiful mountain, when suddenly it came to him: “Hey, how do we know that we’re not in Heaven?”
@Berényi Péter
“If you use dung as a fertilizer instead, burn coal in power plants cleanly and deliver abundant healthy food to homes along with electricity for cooking (or natural gas extracted by fracking from almost anywhere), air pollution (both indoors & outdoors) goes down sharply.”
+++++++
I would like to raise a hand for the ultra-low emissions coal stoves that are being developed and rolled out in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, the most polluted and coldest capital city in the world. They are up to 99.9% lower in PM emissions than the baseline products. For CO they are lower than power stations and for delivered energy cost (compared with a power station burning the same fuel) they are far more efficient (approximately 2.3 times as efficient as a power plant) because the main application is space heating.
The coal is ‘low quality’ (in reality meaning having a high hydrogen, high volatiles content) and it can be burned cleaner than any power station in a well suited stove. The recent call by UB City for proposed technologies that ended in May was followed by testing at the SEET Laboratory in Ulaanbaatar. There are 4 qualifying products (over 90% reduction), two of which can give any European power station with electrostatic precipitators and scrubbing a run for their money for a microscopic fraction of the cost per kW. We should not underestimate how well a combustor can be matched to a known fuel. ‘Smoke’ from coal is often (almost always) caused by burning a coal that is not matched to the combustor design.
I know it is a wearying almost lost cause to talk about clean combustion of coal but millions of people depend on it, and they are largely very poor. Further, it is the fuel for which the greatest advances in technology have been made in the past 5 years. It surprises me how easily the rich are willing to take away the energy source from the poor to solve a problem the rich admit they created but that ‘we all have’.
The Lone Ranger: “Tonto, it looks like we’re surrounded by Indians!”
Tonto: “What do you mean, ‘we’?”
Harry Ostrer is doing work on this:
Ostrer has a tremendous interest. He has been lobbying the New York City Council for half a million dollars to buy four gene-sequencing machines for the medical college. They would be used, he says, to analyze genetic risk factors for diseases like prostate cancer or diabetes in the African-American and Hispanic populations that surround the college in the East Bronx. “The council seemed very receptive to my argument, which is that the poorer people in New York should have access to the most modern medicine,” he says.
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Chosen-Genes/131481/
‘Myers told New Scientist: “It may be very difficult to demonstrate that there are 50 million climate refugees, but it is even harder to demonstrate that there are not.”
No doubt Myers’ biggest fear is that we’ll find out where George Booosh has hidden them. Once a few liberals were trying to tell me that Bush had made people disappear, so I asked them how people could disappear and no one would notice that they were gone. One guy got a quick couple of words out, before he realized that he’d better shut up.
It would be an uphill battle, to convince me that “air pollution”, is a major cause of death, world wide.
Water pollution maybe, but that is just a sub category of infectious diseases.
And I am one who can smell a cigarette from 100 yards away. There is only one problem with cigarettes; they just don’t kill people fast enough.
Trying to determine the cause of death, to where a coroner or doctor will sign his name to a death certificate, certifying “air pollution”, as the immediate cause of death, is just plain silly.
“”””””…..Crispin in Waterloo but really in Ulaanbaatar says:
July 20, 2013 at 7:03 pm ……””””””
I’d be interested in an explanation of how “high hydrogen” coal is “low quality”. I would think that ALL Hydrogen would be the highest quality coal of all.
How does the heat of combustion (per mole) of Hydrogen, compare to that of carbon.
Is not methane the highest energy content of all hydrocarbons , or does acetylene somehow beat that out; CH / / / CH ??
1. That “wholly” looks like he’s trying to count as refugees anyone who’s move has been even slightly affected by weather events (which he will similarly attribute to climate if even a slight connection can be made).
2. Why would governments have a motive to conceal migrants’ moves to climate? it would seem like a great way to get themselves off the hook for their distress. No one government can be blamed for global warming. In addition, by blaming climate, such governments could increase the stridency of their demands for compensation from the West.
Greens are also fixated with the idea that there should be “traditional” peoples out there in far flung countries along with unspoilt forests, etc. Greenies have these views because they want interesting places to go to when they holiday.
PS: 3. 50 million hidden refuges sounds impossible—the claim that they’re there but can’t be found sounds like special pleading, similar the “hidden heat in the deep oceans” special-plea.
@Willis Eschenbach
“””””…..Having spent a reasonable amount of time inside the huts and shanties and shacks and mud huts of the global poor, I can assure you that indoor air pollution is a huge problem. You would not believe how many older women I’ve seen with trachoma from constant eye irritation, and that doesn’t even count breathing the stuff……”””””
Well while agreeing with your observation; I would not categorize that as “air pollution”.
Deaths from living in a house full of poisonous spiders or snakes, (crocodiles too) would hardly be “animal pollution.”
Now you did say “older women”, didn’t you Willis ? A person to whom I used to be related, is the only member of her family who ever made it more than half way through their 50s. She’s two decades beyond that, by paying attention to her special risk factors.
George, I’ve heard Lomborg speak on other occasions. This indoor burning stuff is exactly what he means when he says air pollution. He says often that you could save a lot of lives if you could enable people to burn fossil fuels instead of dung or wood.
Quite a few seem to believe that “air pollution” does not exist, or if it does, it does not kill people.
I refer them to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog which describes the Great London Smog of 1952, In four days about 4000 people EXTRA to the normal death rate were killed. (Extra means that the death rate over those four days was far higher than the normal death rate for four days in early December). This was easily measurable, not a figment of imagination. Subsequent examination showed that the true figure resulting from the air pollution was probably about 6000, and estimates range up to 12000 deaths as a result of the smog. Note the 4000 was additional deaths that occurred during the smog. There was a tail to the increased mortality, which is where the additional deaths are estimated from, the differing figures being the result of where investigators decided the tail disappeared into the natural variability of the death rate.
Low quality coal – with large sulphur and high hydrocarbon content that did not burn well in what were comparatively low temperature domestic fires (compared to power station furnaces) created the problem. i remember seeing the coal bubble and hiss out non-burnt ‘smoke’ in our open fires. Not for nothing was the coal called “bituminous” (or worse, ‘nutty slack’).
Anything in air that is deleterious is ‘air pollution’. Very important are particulates from diesel exhausts, and especially the smallest size particulates. It is believed that the smallest particulates get furthest into the lungs, larger particles tend to be trapped in the trachea and bronchi, where heavy coughing can eject them. When they get to the alveoli, you are stuck with them, metaphorically as well as literally. Many of the compounds in the particulates are known to be carcinogenic – hence undesirable!
George e. smith says:at July 20, 2013 at 8:05 pm
“It would be an uphill battle, to convince me that “air pollution”, is a major cause of death, world wide.” Quite possibly an uphill battle, but, just consider a back of the envelope calculation. Assumptions – total world population 6 800 000 000, and average life span 68 years. Then by simple arithmetic 100 million people die every year. The estimate given by Bjorn Lomborg is that 5.2 million people die of air pollution each year. Hence 5.2% of the world’s population die of air pollution each year. Now, whether this is a “major cause” or not depends on your definition of major.
And just a thought, if you smoke, and you get lung cancer, there is a probability that the lung cancer was due to carcinogenic material inhaled from your cigarettes. By definition, this was “air pollution”. So even though the immediate cause was lung cancer, the root cause for your death was air pollution. Period!
Any sensible view like this one that takes people away from the tunnel vision on CAGW is welcome. There maybe less money, spectacle and votes in it but it is much closer to the truth.
‘Myers told New Scientist: “It may be very difficult to demonstrate that there are 50 million climate refugees, but it is even harder to demonstrate that there are not.” He sees no reason to change his estimate.’
Hey, I’m a climate refugee.
I fled Britain to go and live somewhere with a decent climate !! ie Hotter.
I’m sure Myers is counting me too.
Then there’s all the economic refugees from Poland and the Baltic states that decended into the rest of the EU. All the turkish “Gastarbeitern” in Germany, all the spanish and portugese economic migrants in France.
Without interviewing everyone to see whether they moved because they saw the oppertunity for a better life or because they were overwhelmed by the 0.4 deg C rise in the last 50 years, I guess we’ll just have to guess which is the more likely.
You can prove whatever you want with statistics.
Meyer’s statement that it would be as difficult to disprove his figures as to prove them is a pretty clear admission that his estimates are completely without foundation.
Dudley says: “And just a thought, if you smoke, and you get lung cancer, there is a probability that the lung cancer was due to carcinogenic material inhaled from your cigarettes. By definition, this was “air pollution”. So even though the immediate cause was lung cancer, the root cause for your death was air pollution. Period!”
That’s pretty stupid “definition” of air pollution. That’s called drug taking.
Someone that injects smack and dies from an O.D. does not die of water pollution.
Crispin says: “I would like to raise a hand for the ultra-low emissions coal stoves that are being developed and rolled out in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, the most polluted and coldest capital city in the world. They are up to 99.9% lower in PM emissions than the baseline products. For CO they are lower than power stations and for delivered energy cost (compared with a power station burning the same fuel) they are far more efficient (approximately 2.3 times as efficient as a power plant) because the main application is space heating.”
Very interesting. I was unaware of the numbers. I did not realise that small scale combustion could be cleaner than centralised, large scale plant. Thanks for that information.
Since converting heat to electricity is very inefficient it is an awful waste of energy to convert it back to heat for any reason.
Do these stoves resemble so-called rocket stoves (in which fuel and air come in from the bottom, and there is a secondary combustion chamber where smoke gets burnt)? Does the coal need to be ground into small pellets?
Here’s a link to a DIYer’s how-to rocket stove space heater (more complex and efficient than a cook-stove version): http://www.iwilltry.org/b/build-a-rocket-stove-for-home-heating/
It’s too bad there are no off-the-shelf rocket stove space heaters available in the US.