By Andy May
This is the first of seven posts on the potential costs and hazards of human-caused global warming and the impact of humans on the environment in general. The IPCC WGII AR5 Technical Summary, defines “hazards” on page 39:
“The potential occurrence of a natural or human-induced physical event or trend or physical impact that may cause loss of life, injury, or other health impacts, as well as damage and loss to property, infrastructure, livelihoods, service provision, ecosystems, and environmental resources. In this report, the term hazard usually refers to climate-related physical events or trends or their physical impacts.”
Do humans harm the environment? If we assume humans are causing most of the current global warming, is the warming dangerous? If we are dangerous to the environment, should we limit our population in some way? If global warming is potentially dangerous, and we assume human CO2 emissions are the cause, would we be better off to adapt to the human-caused global warming and continue using fossil fuels, or do we need to stop using fossil fuels to limit emissions? We will consider these issues here and in future posts.
In this post, we will deal with the more extreme claims. Some claim humans are dangerous, we breed too much, we use too many resources, we are an existential threat to ourselves and the rest of the world. So, before we get into the economics and hazards of climate change, let’s discuss these so-called “existential” threats.
Can global warming destroy the Earth?
A common assertion is that global warming is an existential threat to humans and the Earth in general. This is often explained as the Earth will become like Venus, with a surface temperature of 464°C (or 250°C as Stephen Hawking once incorrectly asserted) and barren of life. James Hansen once called this the runaway greenhouse effect. The truth is that neither the Earth nor Venus are “runaway.” Further, the Earth has oceans and Venus has almost no water. 99.9% of the Earths heat capacity and thermal energy is stored in our oceans. Less than 0.1% of the Earth’s thermal energy is stored in the atmosphere. The Earth’s surface has five times more stored thermal energy than the surface of Venus. We have a lower surface temperature, because the thermal energy is nearly all in the oceans and they have an enormous heat capacity. The Earth’s oceans alone store much more thermal energy than the whole surface of Venus at a temperature of 464°C. If our oceans continue to exist, there is no way our planet’s surface could reach a dangerous temperature. They would have to completely boil away, and the water vapor would have to be ejected to outer space. No greenhouse gas could ever accomplish that.
Thought experiment: if the atmosphere could somehow reach a temperature of 1,000°C, lose none of the thermal energy to outer space, and transfer all of it to the oceans; the temperature of the oceans would increase one degree. This is the easiest way I can think of to explain the temperature buffering effect of the oceans. For another, more complete, description of how the tropical oceans limit the surface temperature of the Earth to a maximum of 30°C, see Newell and Dopplick, 1979 or the discussion here. Atmospheric temperatures, especially the temperature of the atmosphere at the surface (basically the lower 2 meters of the atmosphere) have very little impact on long-term (meaning decades or longer) climate. Attempts to measure the average surface temperature (the HADCRUT database, GISTEMP, etc.) are useful, after all we live on the surface; but using them to measure the impact or severity of global climate change is like measuring the impact of a bomb blast by counting the ripples in a tea cup in a basement TV room 100 km away. The ripples may be related to the blast, but you are too far away from the main event to be accurate. The oceans cover 70% of the Earth’s surface and contain nearly all the thermal energy, the focus should be on them.
The Oceans are key
Ocean temperatures are indeed rising. But, we only have good global data since 2004 and only to a depth of 2,000 meters. The average ocean depth is 3,688 meters. If we assume the temperature at 3,688 meters is about 0°C, which is not unreasonable since the average temperature at 2,000 meters is 2.4°C, then we currently see 0.0031°C of warming for the oceans per year to that depth. If this continues (it won’t) then it would take 1,000 years for the surface temperature of the Earth to increase 3°C, hardly alarming. See figure 1. More on the JAMSTEC ocean temperature grid here.
Figure 1 (data source: JAMSTEC)
In future posts, we will discuss the economic costs of mitigating warming by reducing or eliminating fossil fuel use versus adapting to the warming. In this post, we will discuss human impacts on the environment in general. Humans are part of nature, we may have evolved naturally or been created by a supernatural being when the Earth was created, either way we are a part of nature. Deepak Chopra has discussed the “Gaia hypothesis” and wonders if we are a cancer on the Earth. David Attenborough has asserted we are a plague on the Earth. In this essay, we examine this idea. We need to get past the idea that man may be an existential threat to man, before we discuss the economics of global warming. Much of this discussion depends upon point-of-view. Do we take the humanist view that our actions should help mankind? Or is some sort of metaphysical “Gaia” god-like creature supreme and mankind must take second place and serve Gaia? We have not met this Gaia creature and are fervently in favor of the humanist view. We will argue our points as a humanist.
Economic growth, prosperity, health and the environment
“In general, we need to confront our myth of the economy undercutting the environment. We have grown to believe that we are faced with an inescapable choice between higher economic welfare and a greener environment. But surprisingly and as will be documented throughout this book, environmental development often stems from economic development – only when we get sufficiently rich can we afford the relative luxury of caring about the environment. On its most general level, this conclusion is evident in Figure [2], where higher income in general is correlated with higher environmental sustainability.” Lomborg, Bjørn. The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World (pp. 32-33).
Figure 2 (Data sources: Environmental Performance Index: NASA, GDP in PPP$: World Bank)
Figure 2, is an updated version of a similar figure in The Skeptical Environmentalist, we have plotted the NASA measure of environmental quality (EPI) for 2016 versus 2016 GDP for most countries in the world. Some of the countries are labeled. The NASA SEDAC environmental productivity index (EPI) is plotted on the Y axis and the World Bank purchase-power-parity dollar (PPP$) GDP for each country is on the X axis. The plot contains points for 164 countries, data was unavailable for many countries and Luxembourg was excluded because of a very high GDP/person ($102,831, EPI=86.6, about the same as Switzerland). A logarithmic least squares line through the data is decent with an R2 of 0.7, even though there are many other factors affecting both GDP and EPI for all the countries plotted. So, generally Lomborg was correct in his 2001 book, the wealthier countries tend to have higher environmental quality. One can also be convinced by visiting developing countries and developed countries around the world. Once GDP/person exceeds about PPP$2,000/person, it begins to become a factor in environmental quality until it flattens out in the high 80s at around PPP$50,000/person.
Disease and health
“In October 1998, Professor [David] Pimentel [Cornell University] published as lead author an article on the “Ecology of increasing disease” in the peer-reviewed journal BioScience. The basic premise of the paper is that increasing population will lead to increasing environmental degradation, intensified pollution and consequently more human disease.” Lomborg, Bjørn. The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World (p. 22).
In a 2007 paper, Pimentel, et al. double down:
“The World Health Organization (WHO) and other organizations report that the prevalence of human diseases during the past decade is rapidly increasing. Population growth and the pollution of water, air, and soil are contributing to the increasing number of human diseases worldwide. Currently an estimated 40% of world deaths are due to environmental degradation. The ecology of increasing diseases has complex factors of environmental degradation, population growth, and the current malnutrition of about 3.7 billion people in the world.”
The “40% of world deaths” in the quote above is from Pimentel’s 1998 paper referred to in the previous Lomborg quote. Lomborg has a lot to say about Pimentel’s 1998 paper. First the “40% of world deaths” is never explained in the paper, neither the total number of deaths nor the number due to pollution are specified in the article. Deeper in the article the reason changes from “pollution” to “pollution, tobacco and malnutrition.” In a later interview he explains that smoking included burning wood in the home, in the third world burning wood in the home kills 4 million people a year and smoking kills 3 million a year. Malnutrition costs 6-14 million lives. WHO (World Health Organization) estimates that that outdoor air pollution kills about half a million people per year, which is 12% of those killed by indoor pollution. So, Pimentel, et al., in both papers, have taken a very small number of pollution related deaths, added smokers, the malnourished, people who cook and heat their houses with wood to that number and have tried to claim they all died due to environmental pollution. Who were the peer-reviewers?
The main claim of the paper is that disease is increasing, this is also incorrect.
“The claim about increasing infectious disease is downright wrong, as can be seen in [figure 3]. Infectious diseases have been decreasing since 1970 and probably much longer, though we only have evidence from some countries … Likewise infectious disease is expected to decrease in the future, at least until 2020. Even in absolute numbers, infectious deaths are expected to drop from 9.3 million to 6.5 million.” Lomborg, Bjørn. The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World (p. 26).
Figure 3, data sources Bulatao, 1993 and the World Health Organization
The data shown in figure 3 are also supported by Murray and Lopez, 1996 and Murray and Lopez, 1997. The blue curve in figure three is from data compiled by Bulatao and published in 1993. The dark gray curve is of data compiled from 186 countries by the World Health Organization (WHO) and published in December, 2016. Bulatao got the trend right, but was a little pessimistic, in reality the rate of infectious disease dropped faster than he projected. So, again, Lomborg was correct in his 2001 book.
“When looking at trends, Pimentel happily uses very short-term descriptions. He looks at the biggest infectious disease killer, tuberculosis, claiming it has gone from killing 2.5 million in 1990 to 3 million in 1995, and citing an expected 3.5 million dead in 2000. However, in 1999, the actual death toll from tuberculosis was 1.669 million, and the WHO source that Pimentel most often uses estimates an almost stable 2 million dead over the 1990s.” Lomborg, Bjørn. The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World (pp. 22-23).
According to the WHO 2016 statistics, there were 1,667,000 deaths due to Tuberculosis in 2000 and 1,373,000 in 2015. This is a drop of 18% in 15 years.
“Equally, pointing out the danger of chemicals and pesticides, Pimentel tries to make a connection by pointing out that “in the United States, cancer-related deaths from all causes increased from 331,000 in 1970 to approximately 521,000 in 1992.” However, this again ignores an increasing population (24 percent) and an aging population (making cancers more likely). The age-adjusted cancer death rate in the US was actually lower in 1996 than in 1970, despite increasing cancer deaths from past smoking, and adjusted for smoking the rate has been declining steadily since 1970 by about 17 percent.” Lomborg, Bjørn. The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World (p. 23).
In reality, the cancer death rate did increase from 1972 to 1990 according to the CDC, but after 1990 it fell dramatically as can be seen in figure 4. The figures shown in figure 4 are age adjusted by the CDC.
Figure 4, Age adjusted death rate due to cancer, data from the CDC.
In this case, Pimentel is correct that cancer deaths increased from 1970 to 1992, even when adjusted for age and population. However, Lomborg is also correct that the adjusted cancer death rate in 1996 was lower than in 1970. It is much lower today.
“In 2002 the World Health Organization concluded that it could not identify the influence of greenhouse gas emissions on health and disease based on existing data: “Climate exhibits natural variability, and its effects on health are mediated by many other determinants. There are currently insufficient high-quality, long-term data on climate-sensitive diseases to provide a direct measurement of the health impact of anthropogenic climate change, particularly in the most vulnerable populations.” Pielke Jr., Roger. The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won’t Tell You About Global Warming (pp. 176-177).
“The speculative guesses of WHO formed the basis of estimates released in a 2009 report issued by the Global Humanitarian Forum, a non-governmental organization run by former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan. The GHF concluded that greenhouse gas-driven climate change was presently responsible for 154,000 deaths per year due to malnutrition, 94,000 deaths per year due to diarrhea, and 54,000 deaths per year due to malaria, which when added to deaths from weather-related disasters (which have declined dramatically over the past century) gives a total of 315,000 people who allegedly die each year due to human-caused climate change. A close look at the health-related numbers shows that they are exactly two times the values presented in the 2002 WHO report, which said that the estimates do not “accord with the canons of empirical science.” In other words, the numbers appear to be just a guess on top of the earlier speculation. “Analyses” such as these are what give some areas of climate science a bad name and suggest an unhealthy politicization of research to support favored causes.” Pielke Jr., Roger. The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won’t Tell You About Global Warming (p. 177).
Regarding the health effects of global warming, the IPCC WGII AR5 has this to say.
“Until mid-century, projected climate change will impact human health mainly by exacerbating health problems that already exist (very high confidence). Throughout the 21st century, climate change is expected to lead to increases in ill-health in many regions and especially in developing countries with low income, as compared to a baseline without climate change (high confidence). Examples include greater likelihood of injury, disease, and death due to more intense heat waves and fires (very high confidence); increased likelihood of under-nutrition resulting from diminished food production in poor regions (high confidence); risks from lost work capacity and reduced labor productivity in vulnerable populations; and increased risks from food- and water-borne diseases (very high confidence) and vector-borne diseases (medium confidence). Impacts on health will be reduced, but not eliminated, in populations that benefit from rapid social and economic development, particularly among the poorest and least healthy groups (high confidence).”
Clever wording makes this quote mostly true, but very misleading. As we will see, global warming may increase heat-related deaths, but cold-related deaths will be reduced by a much larger amount. This is because there are more cold-related deaths in the world than heat-related deaths. We have already shown above that infectious diseases and cancers are decreasing. In addition, malnutrition or “under-nutrition” is also decreasing at a rapid rate. Thus, the models that were used to make these projections have yet to be validated. As we have seen often in IPCC reports, they report anything they can think of that is negative about climate change and completely ignore anything positive, no matter how well documented.
Life Expectancy
Since 100% of us die of something, perhaps a better measure of human health is average life expectancy which is currently 71.5 years globally. According to Dong, et al., 2016, Nature, life expectancy globally is increasing, see figure 5. According to The Lancet (Landrigan, et al., 2017) environmental pollution is responsible for 16% of global deaths or nine million premature deaths globally. 92% of these premature deaths occur in low and middle-income countries.
Figure 5 (source: Dong, et al., 2016, Nature)
There is also a correlation between fossil fuel use and life expectancy in the developing world, as you can see in figure 6.
Figure 6 (from Epstein here.)
Not only are people living longer they are also living better lives:
“That is all very well, say pessimists, but what about quality of life in old age? Sure, people live longer, but only by having years of suffering and disability added to their lives. Not so. In one American study, disability rates in people over 65 fell from 26.2 per cent to 19.7 per cent between 1982 and 1999 – at twice the pace of the decrease in the mortality rate. Chronic illness before death is if anything shortening slightly, not lengthening, despite better diagnosis and more treatments – ‘the compression of morbidity’ is the technical term. People are not only spending a longer time living, but a shorter time dying.” Ridley, Matt. The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (P.S.) (p. 18).
“We live longer, but have we only been given more time in which to be ill? The answer has to be: absolutely not. We have generally become much healthier during the past centuries.” Lomborg, Bjørn. The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World (pp. 54-55).
Figure 7 (Data source: Murray and Lopez, 1997)
In figure 7, we see that the developed world has the longest life span at birth and the smallest percentage of their lives spent as disabled. The data are from Murray and Lopez 1997, table 4. The disabilities shown on the Y axis are severity adjusted. As people become wealthier and as they use more energy, they not only live longer, but they live healthier lives. The idea that people in the pre-industrial era lived happy, healthy lives in harmony with nature is nonsense as explained by Princeton historian Lawrence Stone in The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800:
“The almost total ignorance of both personal and public hygiene meant that contaminated food and water was a constant hazard … The result of these primitive sanitary conditions was constant outbursts of bacterial stomach infections, the most fearful of all being dysentery, which swept away many victims of both sexes and of all ages within a few hours or days. Stomach disorders of one kind or another were chronic, due to poorly balanced diet among the rich, and the consumption of rotten and insufficient food among the poor. The prevalence of intestinal worms … were a slow, disgusting and debilitating disease that caused a vast amount of human misery and ill health … In the many poorly drained marshy areas, recurrent malarial fevers were common and debilitating diseases … [and] perhaps even more heartbreaking was the slow, inexorable, destructive power of tuberculosis … For women, childbirth was a very dangerous experience … [and finally] there was the constant threat of accidental death from neglect or carelessness or association with animals like horses – which seem to have been at least as dangerous as automobiles – or elements like water …” Lomborg, Bjørn. The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World (p. 55).
Technology exists to control both air and water pollution and it is rapidly spreading to poor and middle-income countries. In the U.S. where the technology has been used for decades, air pollution has decreased 70% since 1970 according to the EPA. Fewer than one-half of all people had access to clean water in 1990 and now over 65% do according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2013.
“Note that as recently as 1990, under half the world had “improved sanitation facilities.” The increase to two thirds in only a few decades is a wonderful accomplishment,” Epstein, Alex. The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels (p. 148). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
And
“The rich have got richer, but the poor have done even better. The poor in the developing world grew their consumption twice as fast as the world as a whole between 1980 and 2000.” Ridley, Matt. The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (p. 15).
And
“Roughly eight out of ten American households had running water, central heating, electric light, washing machines and refrigerators by 1955. Almost none had these luxuries in 1900.” Ridley, Matt. The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (P.S.) (p. 16).
And
“Today, of Americans officially designated as ‘poor’, 99 per cent have electricity, running water, flush toilets, and a refrigerator; 95 per cent have a television, 88 per cent a telephone, 71 per cent a car and 70 per cent air conditioning.” Ridley, Matt. The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (pp. 16-17).
In some ways, the poor in the U.S. are better off than King Louis XIV of France in 1700, the richest man of his day.
Is the environment deteriorating?
Perhaps somewhere, but:
“In Europe and America rivers, lakes, seas and the air are getting cleaner all the time. The Thames has less sewage and more fish. Lake Erie’s water snakes, on the brink of extinction in the 1960s, are now abundant. Bald eagles have boomed. Pasadena has few smogs. Swedish birds’ eggs have 75 per cent fewer pollutants in them than in the 1960s. American carbon monoxide emissions from transport are down 75 per cent in twenty-five years. Today, a car emits less pollution traveling at full speed than a parked car did in 1970 from leaks. Ridley, Matt. The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (p. 17).
Prosperity
People now live much longer and better lives than 100 years ago. Conveniences, such as artificial light are much cheaper today:
“[Consider] how much artificial light you can earn with an hour of work at the average wage. The amount has increased from twenty-four lumen-hours in 1750 BC (sesame oil lamp) to 186 in 1800 (tallow candle) to 4,400 in 1880 (kerosene lamp) to 531,000 in 1950 (incandescent light bulb) to 8.4 million lumen-hours today (compact fluorescent bulb). Put it another way, an hour of work today earns you 300 days’ worth of reading light; an hour of work in 1800 earned you ten minutes of reading light.” Ridley, Matt. The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (P.S.) (pp. 20-21).
In the mid-1800s a stagecoach ride from Paris to Bordeaux cost a month’s wages, today a train ticket is 10 Euros. In 1840 transporting a family of four along the Oregon trail from St. Louis, Missouri to Oregon City, Oregon cost $23,373 in 2016 U.S. dollars and it took 4.5 months to make the trip. Yet, today the car trip is only $1,052 and the 4-hour plane trip is only $1016.
We benefit from what Matt Ridley calls the multiplication of labor. Each of us works at one job, producing one thing; but we purchase goods from all over the world that involved the labor of thousands of people. We can do this because of fossil fuels, modern transportation and win-win capitalism where both the buyer and the seller profit from each transaction.
Consider this story:
“Kelly Cobb of Drexel University set out to make a man’s suit entirely from materials produced within 100 miles of her home. It took twenty artisans a total of 500 manhours to achieve it and even then they had to get 8 per cent of the materials from outside the 100-mile radius. If they worked for another year, they could get it all from within the limit, argued Cobb.” Ridley, Matt. The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (P.S.) (p. 35).
500 man-hours of skilled labor to make a suit! In the U.S. the labor costs alone would be over $5,000. Compare a modern woman in Paris to King Louis XIV, who had 498 servants preparing each meal:
“[A] woman of 35, living in, for the sake of argument, Paris and earning the median wage, with a working husband and two children. You are far from poor, but in relative terms, you are immeasurably poorer than Louis was. Where he was the richest of the rich in the world’s richest city, you have no servants, no palace, no carriage, no kingdom. As you toil home from work on the crowded Metro, stopping at the shop on the way to buy a ready meal for four, you might be thinking that Louis XIV’s dining arrangements were way beyond your reach. And yet consider this. The cornucopia that greets you as you enter the supermarket dwarfs anything that Louis XIV ever experienced (and it is probably less likely to contain salmonella). You can buy a fresh, frozen, tinned, smoked or pre-prepared meal made with beef, chicken, pork, lamb, fish, prawns, scallops, eggs, potatoes, beans, carrots, cabbage, aubergine, kumquats, celeriac, okra, seven kinds of lettuce, cooked in olive, walnut, sunflower or peanut oil and flavoured with cilantro, turmeric, basil or rosemary … You may have no chefs, but you can decide on a whim to choose between scores of nearby bistros, or Italian, Chinese, Japanese or Indian restaurants, in each of which a team of skilled chefs is waiting to serve your family at less than an hour’s notice. Think of this: never before this generation has the average person been able to afford to have somebody else prepare his meals.” Ridley, Matt. The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (pp. 36-37).
Louis XIV, the Sun King, had 498 servants prepare his meals; yet, he was not as rich as the modern Parisian woman. This woman has the products of thousands of workers at her fingertips in any grocery store or restaurant.
In summary, humanity is far better off today that we have ever been. Using fossil fuels, modern transportation, and communication technology we have built a world-wide system of trade that allows each of us to benefit from the labor of thousands of people around the world. This has drastically reduced poverty. It is also true that more affluent countries have less environmental pollution, with cleaner air and water, than less developed countries. This is true, even though richer countries burn more fossil fuels.
Conclusions
“All in all, it must be said that mankind’s health situation has improved dramatically over the past couple of hundred years. We live to more than twice the age we did just a hundred years ago, and the improvement applies to both the industrialized and the developing world. Infant mortality has fallen in both developed and developing countries by far more than 50 percent.” Lomborg, Bjørn. The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World (pp. 58-59).
“… there has been a 36-fold increase in per capita American production since 1789, and a similar 20-fold British increase since 1756. In 2000 the US economy produced goods and services for an average American at the value of $36,200; at the end of the eighteenth century, an American would have made just 996 present-day dollars. The average Briton had £15,700 in 2000 compared to just 792 present day pounds in 1756.” Lomborg, Bjørn. The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World (p. 70).
Subsequent posts will discuss the costs and benefits of global warming. But, before we get into the economics of global warming, I felt I had to deal with the more extreme “dangerous climate change” claims.
In this post, I have tried to discredit three common assertions made by environmentalists. The first is that man is an existential threat to man and the Earth or “Gaia.” Does our growing population cause more infectious disease? The clear answer is no. Does our economic growth harm the environment? Clearly it does not, prosperity allows us to take better care of our environment. Does our growing population and lengthening life expectancy just make us sicker? Clearly not, we live both longer lives and better lives today. Is the environment getting worse with time? No, in fact it is getting better the more prosperous we are.
Look at the graph in figure 8.
Figure 8 (source: Dina Pomeranz, see Anthony Watts’ post here)
It’s clear that the environment and human welfare are improving as we become more prosperous.
The second assertion is that global warming has the potential to destroy the Earth by turning it into a Venus type planet. This is clearly physically impossible if the Earth has oceans. And, no matter how much greenhouse gases increase, the oceans will still be here. The average temperature of the water in the oceans is between 4°C and 5°C and the oceans have 99.9% of the heat capacity on the surface of the Earth, so surface warming is severely limited.
The third assertion is that humans are breeding ourselves into extinction or starvation. Are humans outstripping the Earth’s resources? No, we are not. Natural resource production and discovery, farm land, and food supply are all growing faster than we are using them. And this will be the case for the foreseeable future.
In the strictest sense, I don’t have to disprove any of these crazy ideas, they are all very speculative and there is no data to support any of them, just unvalidated computer models. But, we hear very notable academics (including Stephen Hawking!) and politicians repeating this stuff all the time. This post is an attempt to inject some reality into the fog of wild speculation.
“[Humans] don’t take a safe climate and make it dangerous; we take a dangerous climate and make it safe.” Epstein, Alex. The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels (p. 126).
We are living in a time of nearly boundless prosperity. The rate of poverty has plunged to unimaginable lows. This is a time when the definition of poverty in the United States is set so high, a poor person in the U.S. would be the envy of any wealthy person prior to World War II. Inequality in the world is at its lowest level ever and decreasing at a rapid rate. People who were born in abject poverty can now become doctors and lawyers. Why we still have doomsayers predicting the end of the world is beyond my understanding.
I agree that objectively, there is no rational measurement of how much humans are ‘helping’ or ‘harming’ the environment. For the most part, the Earth has had to deal with much bigger problems, over time, such as asteroids, comets, or small planets crashing into it. Whatever humans can throw at its mighty bulk will be just quietly smoother away in the fullness of time. What is happening to Earth is usually put forward as being exactly what the writer thinks is actually happening to the Earth caused by humans, not what the Earth thinks is happening to itself. It might not even have noticed our existence yet.
Does the environment harm humans?
All the talk along the theme “humans harm the environment”, whether it’s by CO2 or something else, is just code for “too many humans”. These books changed everything: The Population Bomb and Silent Spring. “Too many babies” and “too many people” are things that can’t be said too directly. The thought is still there.
Recently reading this book (Coyne, J. A. 2010. Why Evolution is True. Penguin Books) I found this gem stuck away in an unlikely place. “It’s important to realize that species don’t arise, as Darwin thought, for the purpose of filling up empty niches in nature. We don’t have different species because nature somehow needs them…… The “clusters” so important for biodiversity don’t evolve because they increase that diversity, nor do they evolve to provide balanced ecosystems. ”
This may be a monkey-wrench in the conceptual gears of an ordered ecosystem, one that can be engineered for homeostasis or GAIA type operations. It seems to be a real science book, although he, as are many well-known evolutionists, is bothered by religion, as in Intelligent Design and Creationism. He has considered such in other works (not seen).
We still don’t know the complete life cycle of most marine diseases, or even how many, and a few papers showing lack of homework are discouraging like Pimentel’s. This one is better–
Lafferty, K. D., J. W. Porter and S. E. Ford. 2004. Are diseases increasing in the ocean. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics. 35:31-54.
There aren’t many marine related diseases humans have had to worry with, but there are a few, again not so well know. Parasitologists/pathologists have known about density effects for as long as there has been a discipline, probably longer.
things fill niches because it is possible for them to do so. if my coyne says darwin attributed intent to this process, i will believe it only when i see the proof.
the idea that ‘survival of the fit’ (or even fittest) has some intention is just nowhere a part of evolutionary theory.
attribution of purpose to things that can not possess intent is called ‘teleology’ and is regarded as high crime and misdemeanor among biologists.
i’ve never seen any evidence that darwin was guilty of this.
mr coyne may have created a straw man or perhaps i missed something. either way, some kind of correction is in order.
“It seems to be a real science book, although he, as are many well-known evolutionists, is bothered by religion, as in Intelligent Design and Creationism.”
Those are no more “religion” than Evolution (the grand origin story kind, as opposed to “natural selection” which is essentially just an acknowledgement that nature can do what humans have been doing for millennia) often is. No matter how much the zealous Evolutionist like to pretend their beliefs are absolutes truths . . Along with the CAGW zealots . .
I screwed up the bolding code, supposed to be a bold E in Evolution, and nothing more. Perhaps the Mod can fix that, like I’ve seen done for many non-censored commenters . . and can leave the spacing in my comment upon approval, please.
Not sure that I’d know a “zealous evolutionist” if I met one in the supermarket lineup.
oh, that’s easy- they’re the ones loading up the cart with freshly butchered xtian babies. 🙂
“Not sure that I’d know a “zealous evolutionist” if I met one in the supermarket lineup.”
Not sure why being able to recognize one in the supermarket lineup is important to you, Mr. Rock . . seems kinda . . tangential so to speak, to me . .
Although he used the word purpose, I don’t think teleology was the question here, but rather whether unfilled niches are already there or are produced, maybe sort of a little like economics, is the pie limited or not. Seems like a fair question. Coyne’s book has some examples of “not so intelligent design,” although don’t think he used the term.
gnomish,
I mean people who have so much faith in the Evolution grand origin story that they consider tangible evidence that life can arise/begin spontaneously (or through experimentation) superfluous to claiming it’s a scientific fact that it can/did. And for whom the absence of any “transition” fossils is no reason to doubt that all varieties of life came to be through a gradual morphing of previous forms, and again assert that it’s somehow a scientific fact that they all did.
In short, it’s a faith based science ; )
” We don’t have different species because nature somehow needs them”
nature has no needs and i don’t remember anything of darwin suggesting that idea.
with respect to game theory- it’s really only since the industrial revolution that some humans have figured out there is anything else but a zero sum game…lol
it may be that most still have not.
anyway- holidays approach- that time of the year when it sometimes happens that we remember that each of us human beans shares our humanity sometimes in some part. NJoY.
HD,
“Seems like a fair question. Coyne’s book has some examples of “not so intelligent design,” although don’t think he used the term.”
If you think about initiating an actual functioning planetary ecosystem for a moment . . I hope you realize that the ideal number of “perfect” creatures would be zero . . by my calculations anyway ; )
john- i beseech you … something something… bowels of christ… something… stfu.
your medieval beliefs are worthy of scientific consideration only by a student of abnormal psychology.
I’m not here to please you, gnomish.
No. We don’t. But Liberalism does. 🤪
There might be a majoy flaw, and honestly I stopped reading after that. Why should the water at the average maximum depth of the oceans have an average of 0°C? Makes no sense to me.
The temperature below 4,000 meters has only been measured in a few spots. It varies from -2 to 2 degrees for the most part. I chose zero because it was in the middle of the measured values and I wouldn’t be too far off. No one really knows, but it is less than 2 and greater than -2 in all likelihood.
I have to disagree here.
While humanity as a species has never been better, a great deal of the rest of the biosphere is significantly worse. The main problem is Global human appropriation of net primary production (HANPP). While with fossil fuels we have increased production, we are still appropriating more and more from other species reducing drastically their population levels.
Anthony D. Barnosky, an expert on the Quaternary Megafauna extinction (QME) is very clear:
“the Industrial Revolution elevated Earth’s carrying capacity for megafauna biomass. However, despite that increase in carrying capacity, ~50% (>90 species) of those megafauna species that persisted so well for the previous 10,000 years have become extinct, critically endangered, endangered, or vulnerable to extinction in the past few decades, including >40% of the megafauna species of mammals in Africa, the only continent that made it through the QME largely unscathed. For mammals as a whole, 25% of the 4,629 species known on Earth fall in the critically endangered through vulnerable categories. This suggests that not only has all of the ‘‘extra’’ carrying capacity been used by humans, but also we are beginning, as happened during the QME crash, to steal from the part of the global energy budget allotted to other megafauna species. We are also going farther and using energy previously allotted to species in even smaller body-size classes. Under business-as-usual scenarios, the inevitable result will be another biomass crash that moves down the body-size classes relative to the QME event.”
Barnosky, A. D. (2008). Megafauna biomass tradeoff as a driver of Quaternary and future extinctions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105 (Supplement 1), 11543-11548.
http://www.pnas.org/content/105/Supplement_1/11543.full
Our species is inflicting a serious damage to the biosphere, and if we continue along this path we will cause the extinction of many species. The impoverishment of their genetic variability is already a serious threat and it cannot be undone.
Javior only needs to look back 65 million years to see what serious damage the biosphere caused resulting mass extinction of many cold blooded species,
The climate cooled and humans that could adapt evolved. In a touch of irony, some humans with too much education write papers to explain why this is a bad thing.
We are responsible for what we do since we have the knowledge of what we are doing and its consequences.
Time will tell Javier. There are a variety of opinions about extinctions out there, Daniel Botkin has a very different view. Further, your source is using qualitative terms like “endangered.” Some large mammals require excessive areas to survive in nature. So do we give them thousands of square kilometers? Or do we put them in zoos or parks? This is a value judgement that must be made. When you speak of serious damage to the biosphere – who decides what is damage? What is the standard? Is it good if everything stays the same and nothing changes? Nothing ever stays the same, right? This is exactly why I said at the beginning I was taking the humanist view, what is good for humanity. Otherwise what is good for the “environment” is a totally subjective opinion. You speak of your ideal environment, but it may not match up with anyone else’s. The ideal “environment” is a personal opinion.
Time has been telling for decades, Andy. We are just not listening. Jacques Cousteau documented during his entire life the degradation of the Mediterranean.
Like everything in the Universe, it is just a question of energy. The energy flows through ecosystems from the Sun through plants and microorganisms to animals. As the ecosystems become impoverished with less species and lower number of individuals, less energy flows through them. We appropriate the land and make room for our plants and animals and the rest of the biosphere shrinks. It changes to a less complex state. The treasure of a species is its genetic variability. It is what makes them both resilient and adaptable. As their number decreases their genetic variability gets reduced forever. Even if we let them alone it won’t increase back for many thousands of years.
It is a sad, sad state and one doesn’t have to be a biologist to see what is happening. As the human population expands, it expands its animals and plants many folds, and the rest of the biosphere contracts.It doesn’t do it uniformly. Some species benefit like rats and cockroaches, but the net result is negative.
Philosophical discussions won’t disguise the facts.
Most people think human caused extinctions, such as loss of the passenger pigeon as harming the environment. Massive loss of native animal diversity in the Everglades caused by the proliferation of invasive pythons is another example of harmful change. These were not good for humans (loss of food sources) or animals (other than temporarily for the python).
Good answer Andy; however’…..
“We are responsible for what we do since we have the knowledge of what we are doing and its consequences.”
I was too subtle, let me blunt. It is cause root blame!
Yes we have responsibility. We do our job and protected the environment. There were no consequences.
Some loons writes a root blame paper basically making up stuff.
Children dying when the root cause is poor water quality in an age where we have the technology to prevent it, is something that I care about.
What you are worried about, not so much.
Javier and Kit, The fourth post in my series is mostly about species extinctions and I will answer your comments in it. Thanks very much for the comments. From my point of view, we need to work to keep our water, land and air clean. Beyond that, there is no moral obligation, beyond that, it is a political decision. How important is species X or species Y. Do we value lions enough to take farms away from people? Do we value small pox enough to keep someone sick so the virus can survive? You can get pretty silly in these arguments. More in part 4.
‘Just a look at industrial animal agriculture ‘
Yes is awful, abundant animal protein even for the poor with insignificant environmental impact.
The largest CAFO (confined animal feeding operation) I have evaluated has 90,000 cows near Walula, Washington. In the US, CAFOs are regulated with zero water discharge. Animal waste are recycled to grow animal feed.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Some see a dirty coal plant with a mountain of coal. I see power for a large city including clean drinking water pumped to all the homes.
Poor humans harm the environment. Humans with plentiful energy and food resources protect the environment.
Exactly
I contributed an article “Impacts of pollution on environment: myths & realities” to COMPENDIUM on the occasion of Platinum Jubileee Celebrations of Andhra Pradesh State Centre (1938-2015) by The Institute of Engineers (India), pages 9-16
“Pollution is part o and parcel of growth & development. Pollution impacts environment directly and indirectly. Humans are part of environment. The presence of pollution in the environment causes numerous problems to nature as well as to life forms on the planet earth. Environment is facing two sources of pollution, namely point sources and non-point sources. To control or to reduce point source pollution governments brought in laws & acts as well standards and agencies to monitor them. In the case of non-point source pollution there is no such mechanism as it involves changes in technology which needs government intervention and support”. It dealt:
introduction
environmental issues!!!
pollution issues!!!
industrial revolution
agriculture innovations
transport innovations
new types of waste generation
environmentalissues of concern and remedies
air pollution
stratospheric ozone depletion
ground level ozone
acid rain
global warming
water pollution
health& biodiversity hazards
concluding remarks
Also, contributed chapters to books and articles to news papers/TV discussions
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Continued —
Concluding Remarks
I think technology might have originated from man’s laziness. He didn’t want use his muscle power like other animals to earn living. So he used his intelligence to invent enhancements. Eventually he found that the enhancements did not really reduce his work, it only created a new set of problems which increased his workload. So he invented another technology to solve those problems. But againthat new technology gave rise to a new set of problems and he invented another technology to solve those. The process is going on and on; we call it progress.
I think the real driving force overall behind science is Greed & Power. Looking at the big picture technology overall does not value human life or nature anymore and is very destructive. The majority of the inventions are based on Faulty, Reductionism, and machine-like type of science that likes to control nature and is very much misguided due to the BIG “I” which is Industry. The majority of the greatest Scientists are all working for BIG “B” which is Business which is all about profit. This is why in my opinion technology has surpassed our humanity and has somewhat resulted in the ecological world problems. I am not implying that all Science is bad, I know that Science is vital for humanity to evolve, however it’s like a system out of control and we appear to be devolving instead evolving.
When we want adopt a new technology, we rarely look at its’ long term impacts, both positive and negative, of such technologies on nature and thus on environment. This lacuna is glaringly evident in agriculture. In all these business interests out play the environmental consequences. Sometimes it may not be possible to recover the destruction caused by the technologies particularly those that affect biodiversity. —–
———
Present government thinks development is the primary goal but we argued that such development must environmentally sustainable. Government moving forward by negating this. Huge amounts are being spent to rejuvenate big rivers from the evil pollution but achieved nothing except pocketing the money.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Every single person that is alive today can stand on the land that is the Isle of Wight off the south coast of England. Go and google it and see how small the footprint of that land is. There are people who think that less people than that can change the climate of a planet by burning stuff contributing ~4% of ~400ppm/v CO2.
I meet complete nutters every day on Sydney’s (Australia) public transport system, but what these people claim is crackers, and I am serial.
Wouldn’t that make it tip over or something?
Of course there is no such thing as average environment, but right now it is snowing outside while I am feeling quite Goldilocks. In fact, almost everywhere I go,the environment feels just about right, whereas it used to kill our ancestors quite regularly. It still does in much of the world that hasn’t yet received the full environmental benefits of fossil fuels.
a great deal of the rest of the biosphere is significantly worse.
Most of the earths land surface is untouched by man, we have a way to go before we ‘degrade’ the planet.
Steve is correct. The untouched parts are infinite. This may be a concept those in NYC can not understand.
Here is an example: https://freecampsites.net/#!914&query=sitedetails
Tom in Florida writes,
“One story family houses limit the population by shear lack of living space.”
Nonsense, there is no lack of space to build single family homes.
Our last apartment was one of those high rise things in China. It was provided by the company I worked for. We had the option of retiring to an x-pat high rise in Hong Kong.
Back in the US we were at a ticket counter. The agent seeing we had come from Hong Kong told us she had lived in Hong Kong. The lower floors of the high rise is not a nice environment.
She made a gesture indicating she had a house with a garage door opener. As did our son in the same city.
My point is that humans make choices. We are not limited by our environment.
+1
“Do Humans harm the environment?” I’d like to twist that. Do humpback whales harm the environment?: each one consumes two tons of herring everyday. The herring run has been at historic lows in southeast Alaska, and every year more humpbacks swim through these waters, so I guess the answer would be yes.
Do sea otters harm the environment?: After they were reintroduced to Southeast Alaska, they have acted like an invasive species. Each bay they colonize is shortly thereafter almost devoid of shellfish, crabs, urchins and other fauna. So, again the answer would be yes.
But do humans harm the environment? Of course, just like lots of other species. But the answer should be quantitative assessments, not dogmatic assertions, and political blackmail.
We certainly clear a lot of land for broad acre cropping and animal husbandry, but also drastically limit the size and duration of wild-fires. I guess the impact having any lasting effect depends on timeframe perspectives. 100 yrs? 1000 Yrs?
Regarding: “In 2002 the World Health Organization concluded that it could not identify the influence of greenhouse gas emissions on health and disease based on existing data:”
Can you explain or interpret more recent WHO statements which say the opposite?
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs266/en/
SkepticalWarmist, the statements do not contradict one another. My WHO statement says it cannot be detected with existing data, which is still true. The one you refer to is model based and a prediction of the future. I for one, do not think the predictions will pan out.
Proof that at low altitude the energy in the terrestrial EMR absorbed by CO2 is ‘rerouted’ to water vapor has been hiding in plain sight. If you are up on the first law of thermodynamics, the meaning of thermal capacitance and a typical graph showing the ‘notch’ in TOA radiation (i.e. http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/schmidt_05/curve_s.gif shown as Fig 1 in my blog/analysis) it is obvious. The notch demonstrates the wavelengths of EMR absorbed by CO2. The first law requires absorbed energy cannot just disappear. Thermal capacitance requires that it cannot accumulate. The only thing left is for the added energy to be ‘rerouted’ to water vapor.
Thermalization is when a photon is absorbed by a gas molecule and the energy shared with surrounding molecules. Because thermalized energy contains no identity of the molecule which absorbed it, the increase in warming from added CO2 can be no more than the ratio of the number of added absorption lines (transitions) to the total number of lines. As determined using Hitran2012, the increase in warming from doubling CO2 cannot be more than 0.48% of the 33 K due to GHE or about 0.16 K.
As WV condenses out, mostly below about 10 km, CO2 comes back into play.
Humans do not harm the environment by adding CO2.
Showing ocean temperatures,
in hundredths of a degree C.,
is ridiculous false precision.
The rest of the article is okay,
but does not support the conclusions,
in the last paragraph:
“We are living in a time
of nearly boundless prosperity.”
My Comment:
How about over one billion people without electricity.
“The rate of poverty
has plunged to unimaginable lows”.
My Comment:
Not with over one billion people without electricity.
“This is a time
when the definition of poverty
in the United States
is set so high,
a poor person in the U.S.
would be the envy
of any wealthy person
prior to World War II.”
My Comment:
Data-free speculation.
Wealthy people used to live in nice neighborhoods,
with good schools, and low crime rates.
They still do.
Most poor people in the US
do not have any of the three.
“Inequality in the world
is at its lowest level ever
and decreasing at a rapid rate.”
My comment: Wrong.
Inequality was lower during the last recession,
but increased considerably since 2009,
along with stock, bond and real estate prices,
In 2017, a small number of men
own a surprising percentage
of wealth in the world
— I can’t remember the percentage,
but it was so large, it stunned me.
I would reply that:
Today represents the the FEWEST NUMBER of people living without electricity EVER.
Today represents the MOST PEOPLE getting MORE FOOD (Thanks solely to fossil-fueled farming, food storage and processing, food preservation, water cleanliness and sewage treatment – all provided ONLY courtesy of fossil and nuclear fuels for power, reliable electricity, steels, plastics, pumps, filters, chemicals and concrete and production. Yes, more need that food, but today’s higher CO2 levels are feeding billions more easily and faster and more productively.
Today’s extremely poor are in political and cultural and moral wastelands – INCLUDING wastelands in the US, France, Germany, the UK, and India and China and South America. They are NOT in those political and moral wastelands of corruption because of capitalism or “rich white men” but because of socialists and evil exploitative men and women of every colour and every race in those cultures and those wastelands. And, of course, the personal choices of those who remain in those wasteland cultures in the west.
My son, for example, made poor choices – continues to make poor choices – and is very poor. My daughter, my oldest son have made very good choices and continue to enforce that discipline of control and good choices. Both are very rich now, much more wealthy than I at their ages.