Lomborg: Let's get our priorities right

Steve…TB is caused by bacteria.

Lombard presents a false dichotomy. Disease and pollution may be the dominant killers globally, but that has as much to do with poverty as with medicine or replacing open fires with better sources of energy. It is not either deal with energy povery OR climate change, the two are linked.
It is not possible to give the global population access to the same level of resource use of the average US citizen. That would mean increasing fossil fuel use almost tenfold. Quite apart from the logistical impossibility of extracting fossil fuels ten times faster than at present, there is the matter of exhaustion. Fracked natural gas reserves and coal deposits that are predicted to last a twenty five to a hundred years on present rates of usage would be gone in less than ten years. Because further improvement in the energy wealth of the global poor cannot come from fossil fuel use as practised by the US, or even France which gets most of its primary energy generation from non-fossil source, the improvements that will deal with the major killers of the global population have to come from non-fossil source.
The efficient household ovens that burn low grade fuel more efficiently are certainly a step forward. They reduce deaths from air pollution AND reduce CO2 by using less fuel for the same ends. Both goals are achieved in a complementary fashion. Depressing that because it represents an initial capital outlay for the consumer and a reduction in consumption by the producer the free market has not been more successful in spread this simple technological improvement. It seems to be mainly liberal ‘help the poor’ type groups that are involved.
Making the world wealthier to prevent disease and air pollution from open fires will largely depend on increasing access to energy. Even without concerns over AGW increasing energy resources from fossil fuel is not possible. And inherently finite. Whatever method might be successful in lifting those in poverty out of disease and pollution and into an energy rich lifestyle that improves the life of all, it will not involve fossil fuels as it did in the West. Alternative means of generation and use will have to be the dominant part of any such advance.
And that will also as a symbiotic benefit deal with the climate threat from fossil fuel burning.

The ”climate caused death” figures are from WHO and they are fully paid up members of the AGW bunch. Their figures are not to be trusted.

Dudley Horscroft says:
July 20, 2013 at 9:56 pm
Quite a few seem to believe that “air pollution” does not exist, or if it does, it does not kill people
The pollution of which you speak was far worse than anything seen anywhere before or since. I was in London during that smog and the subsequent episode in the autumn of ’62 and, in fact, being the apprentice, was told to walk in front of the lorry for the 2 miles to the depot. Even the smoke in the far east appears not to be quite as bad. However, the ’52 deaths wer real and as always took put the weak and infirm, mostly. I appeared to have suffered no lasting damage as I have outlived all of my familly and they all died from other non related problems.
Air pollution is a very complex subject. Needs a lot more unbiased research.

Note that “air pollution” is NOT CO2, rather ozone, nitrogen oxides, sulphur dioxide, PM10s and other partial combustion products from poorly maintained vehicles/power stations and open cooking fires- and the photochemical smog that often results.

blackadderthe4th says:
July 20, 2013 at 10:06 am
….And the deaths from air pollution? Would that be coal fired power stations,,fumes from internal combustion engines, etc, etc.
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No, it is from cooking and heating over un-vented wood, dung and rubbish fires inside hovels.

Home fires: the world’s most lethal pollution
Smoke from family stoves kill two million people a year
The world’s deadliest pollution does not come from factories billowing smoke, industries tainting water supplies or chemicals seeping into farm land. It comes from within people’s own homes. Smoke from domestic fires kills nearly two million people each year and sickens millions more, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
An unventilated cooking fire in Bhutan is fuelled by yak dung and wood. Smoke from indoor stoves causes cancer, child pneumonia and obstructive pulmonary disease.
A new UN project has now been set up to try to reduce this appalling toll. It aims, over the next nine years, to put 100 million clean cooking stoves into homes in the developing world.
The WHO ranks the problem as one of the worst health risks facing the poor. In low-income countries, such as those in Africa and Asia, indoor smoke from cooking has become the sixth biggest killer. Globally, it kills more people than malaria, and nearly as many as Aids – and far more insidiously than either.
The problem is partly the fuels used, partly the lack of ventilation. Cooking on open fires and stoves without chimneys, using basic fuels such as wood, animal dung, crop waste and coal, emits hazardous smoke that causes irreversible ill health and killer diseases. Small soot or dust particles penetrate deep into the lungs, causing lung cancer, child pneumonia and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Women and children, whose traditional place is in the kitchen, are the the most common victims….

rogerknights says:
July 20, 2013 at 11:05 pm
It’s too bad there are no off-the-shelf rocket stove space heaters available in the US.
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For a wood pellet version see http://www.wisewaypelletstove.com/

James Cross says:
July 20, 2013 at 2:33 pm
As a Progressive, I take the rare position among my kind of agreeing with Lomborg.
For the life of me I cannot understand how Progressives can misunderstand their own priorities….
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You might want to read these articles. From the Guardian: Eugenics: the skeleton that rattles loudest in the left’s closet: Socialism’s one-time interest in eugenics is dismissed as an accident of history. But the truth is far more unpalatable and The eugenics movement Britain wants to forget and 2004: Why is Royal Society hosting pro-eugenics conference?
Plain speaking by a Fabian Socialist and UNESCO, Huxley and Eugenics
Then go look at the UK’s Liverpool Care Pathway.
Top doctor’s chilling claim: The NHS kills off 130,000 elderly patients every year
60,000 patients put on death pathway without being told
Now sick babies go on death pathway
UK Hospitals Paid To Put Patients on Death “Pathway”
And in the USA
Margaret Sanger:Founder of Planned Parenthood, In Her Own Words

“The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.” ~ Margaret Sanger, Women and the New Race (Eugenics Publ. Co., 1920, 1923)

How eugenics poisoned the welfare state
Former Eugenics Founder of Planned Parenthood to lead President Barrack Obama’s Orginization in North Carolina
I will leave it to you to connect the dots.

Gail Combs says:
July 21, 2013 at 7:24 am
“You might want to read these articles. ”
Amazing finds, Gail! Cameron a Fabian! Ok, there’s no hope left for the UK then.

izen says: @ur momisugly July 21, 2013 at 12:58 am
By the way, the link between CO2 and climate os found in the fossils from the period. As episodes of glaciation started the change in CO2 levels can be detected.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/326/5958/1394.abstract
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That link give this:

….The carbon dioxide (CO2) content of the atmosphere has varied cyclically between ~180 and ~280 parts per million by volume over the past 800,000 years, closely coupled with temperature and sea level….

The problem is C3 plants like trees stop growing at ~180 ppm and certainly do not have the ability to grow flower and produce seed.
As carbon dioxide is plant food and something that is often missing in discussions of CO2 concentration is its relation to altitude. You have trouble breathing at the top of Mount Everest even though the “concentration” of oxygen in parts per million is the same as at sea level. The total density of the air is much less so the actual amount of oxygen available per cubic meter is also much less. The same is true of carbon dioxide. Air density at 1000 meters altitude is about ninety percent of its sea level value, and crops grown at that altitude have access to ninety percent of the CO2 at sea level despite the fact that the “concentration” as usually given (ppm) is the same. Half of the land surface of the earth is above 840 meters above MSL, and the absolute concentration of CO2 there is correspondingly less. This can lead to confusion – or deception.
Remember plants are not dealing with just the % CO2 in the air but with the partial pressure of CO2 that decreases with elevation. – PDF

…While [CO2] does not vary with elevation, CO2 partial pressure decreases in proportion to total atmospheric pressure. Under modern conditions, partial pressures of CO2 at high-elevation sites are 10–30% lower than at low-elevation sites, producing an even more conservative comparison between glacial and modern conditions….

…According to Barnola et al (1987) the level of CO2 in the global atmosphere during many tens of thousands of years spanning 30,000 to110,000 BP were below 200ppm. If this were true then the growth of C3 plants should be limited at the global scale because their net Photosynthesis is depressed as CO2 concentration in air decreases to less than about 250ubar (less than about 250ppmv)(McKay et al 1991) This would lead to the extinction of C3 plant species . This has however not been recorded by paleobotanists (Manum 1991). Link

…Plants use all of the CO2 around their leaves within a few minutes leaving the air around them CO2 deficient, so air circulation is important. As CO2 is a critical component of growth, plants in environments with inadequate CO2 levels of below 200 ppm will generally cease to grow or produce… http://www.thehydroponicsshop.com.au/article_info.php?articles_id=27

As CO2 is a critical component of growth, plants in environments with inadequate CO2 levels – below 200 PPM – will cease to grow or produce. …Plants use all of the CO2 around their leaves within a few minutes leaving the air around them CO2 deficient. Without air circulation and ventilation the plant’s stomata are stifled and plant growth stunted…. https://greenair.com/old/pdf/efs/co2-efs.pdf

….With the advent of home greenhouses and indoor growing under artificial lights and the developments in hydroponics in recent years, the need for CO2 generation has drastically increased. Plants growing in a sealed greenhouse or indoor grow room will often deplete the available CO2 and stop growing. The following graph will show what depletion and enrichment does to plant growth:
GO TO SITE for CO2 vs Plant Growth GRAPH
Below 200 PPM, plants do not have enough CO2 to carry on the photosynthesis process and essentially stop growing. Because 300 PPM is the atmospheric CO content, this amount is chosen as the 100% growth point. You can see from the chart that increased CO can double or more the growth rate on most normal plants. Above 2,000 PPM, CO2 starts to become toxic to plants and above 4,000 PPM it becomes toxic to people….. http://www.hydrofarm.com/articles/co2_enrichment.php

At 180 ppm Class 4 plants (grasses) could possibly survive but would not have the “energy” to produce seed. At 200 pm CO2 trees starve http://biblioteca.universia.net/ficha.do?id=912067 (That link of course has since been purged from the internet – SURPRISE – not).