Today, we have a pair of California airheads, who are unfortunately elected representatives. First, we have Barbara “Don’t Call Me Ma’am” Boxer, who thinks that carbon dioxide is a pollutant, and then we have Lois Capps, who thinks that global warming is a bigger threat to humanity than AIDS, malaria and pandemic flu.
No one tell Chris Mooney.
I would argue that the CO2 which comes from Boxer’s mouth is prima face a pollutant. She is what the DMV calls a “gross polluter.”
A pollutant is something in the environment that is deemed to be at such excessive quantities or concentrations as to be environmentally harmful.
So anything can be a pollutant.
Lois Capps was quoting a report published in the Lancet which was a collaboration between the Lancet and University College in London. By visiting the following website, you can read the Lancet’s report “Managing the health effects of climate change” for free. Be sure to scroll one page, as the first page is an introductory editorial, after which comes the actual report.
http://www.abuhrc.org/Documents/Lancet%20Climate%20Change.pdf
I report, you decide.
Thanks, Bob, we would never have known that from reading the editorial…
A pollutant is something in the environment that is deemed to be at such excessive quantities or concentrations as to be environmentally harmful.
So you agree with Senator Ma’am that a failure to control CO2 emissions will put kids on respirators?
TItus, the primary added-value of my comment is to provide a link which allows you to ethically obtain and read the report for free and yet not have to register with the Lancet website.
But since you’re in the mood to be critical, think critically: do you think Representative Capps, a nurse, is participating in a war on science by quoting a medical journal?
do you think Representative Capps, a nurse, is participating in a war on science by quoting a medical journal?
When the journal itself is unscientific and engaged in the war itself, yes.
Why, yes, Bob, your defective induction is very convincing, if not irrefutable.
As far as direct effects on human health go, the Senator is talking crap.
For the Lancet, I think there is no need to attribute malevolence when incompetence will suffice. The methodology in the Iraq report can be shown to be flawed, but I don’t it can be shown to be deliberately flawed, and only the latter would be unscientific. For Capps, I don’t know what you want from her, but I generally want nurses and doctors and congressional representatives to pay attention to medical journals – it isn’t perfect, but it beats the alternatives. Naturally, they should keep paying attention since any result is preliminary and quite possibly completely incorrect. That’s all you can ask a layman to do. Capps might be an airhead and/or might be anti-science (I have no idea one way or the other) but not because she quotes the Lancet. It would be amazing if the Lancet was always right, but the Lancet’s results withstand peer review often enough that it is worth quoting.
Argh. By “layman”, I meant “not a research scientist” which would include most practicing doctors and nurses and congressional representatives. Illinois’ 14th congressional district, home of Fermilab, had the rare exception in Bill Foster.
Well, I found it a pretty dubious editorial and article. It’s starts off with two questionable assumptions, viz.:
Climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century.
This betrays historical ignorance. Now that the Black Death is no longer pandemic, the biggest threat to global health has for several centuries been bad economics and bad government. This is the only reason life expectancy in Africa is half what it is in Europe or America. Those folks in Ghana don’t have different DNA from us, nor are they living in a uniquely hostile environment. They just have a different economic and political system which fails to deliver even the elementary things — clean water, proper sanitation, vaccines, basic prenatal and delivery care, a smidge of education on disease transmission — that can lift life expectancy by decades at essentially zero outside cost.
However many might die or sicken or be displaced by the worst Chicken Little predictions of global warmists, they pale into insignificance besides the number of, e.g Asian and African children whose lives will probably be cut short and stunted, physically, intellectually and psychologically, by the dysfunctional and cruel economic and political culture into which they had the bad fortune to be born.
Under these circumstances, fretting about global warming — and proposing to sink $bazillions of First World wealth into ameliorating it — is complaining that Nero’s fiddle is 1/4 tone too flat and doesn’t harmonize well with the roaring flames engulfing Rome, and suggesting that the cisterns of water be emptied so that water-wheel-powered lathes can be used to reshape his violin’s bridge. Really really short-sighted.
And then there’s this:
Climate change will have the greatest impact on those who are already the poorest in the world.
Unsupported and a priori unlikely. Climate change is by definition a subtle effect that can only wreak true havoc on the delicate, complex systems of complex, wealthy economies. Does anyone think Neanderthals would be the slightest bit impacted by any plausible climate change change? If the seas rise 1 meter, they’d just move their campground back from the sea a mile or so. Look, Thag, waves coming ashore a little higher than yesterday. Maybe we move tent back a little? If the antelope migrate 100 miles north, he’ll simply follow them, untroubled by moving expenses, immigration law, and delays in closing escrow on his former tent or shocking real estate prices in the new grazing grounds.
It is only complex societies that have things like ports engineered to specific known tidal patterns, or nuclear power plants that can be wrecked by a big wave, or critical power lines that can be knocked down in a storm, or subtle and complex legal and cultural barriers to movement. The more primitive — the poorer, the more agrarian, the more rural– a society, the more likely it is to be resilient in the face of the efffects of climate change. If one is to believe differently in the face of this obvious common sense, there needs to be a sound argument, backed up by facts — not just a bland bald assertion.
Carl, to narrowly address your question about Neanderthals, the report does talk about factors such as heat waves and changed disease vectors which Thag would be bothered by — in other words, whether the report is bunk or not, and whether or not you have a very good point about complex societies, the report covers more than just the change in sea level that Thag could adjust to.
Carl, while I agree with the first part of your comment, there are a few things I think you’ve overlooked in the rest.
“Climate change is by definition a subtle effect…”
While a universal rise in global temperatures of a couple of degrees C wouldn’t be a huge deal, and I think even a metre or so of SL rise over a century isn’t something to get overly excited about (after all, our cities have been rebuilt to such an extent over the last century, the natural turnover of structures and infrastructure over the next would only be slightly affected by expected SL rise), the biggest problem I see with climate change is if the predictions of increases in extreme weather events in correct.
The poorest are more vulnerable to extreme weather events because they’re less mobile than people in the west, and because they’re more dependent on the local production of food.
Your Neanderthal analogy I think is of little use because it works on the assumption of lots of untapped land that the displaced people can move to, that’s not how it is today.
Oh balls, Bob. Thag isn’t super bothered by modest changes in parasitic disease because on the risks to his life are dominated by accident and infectious disease, particularly post-wound. He gets stuck by a horn during a hunt, the wound gets infected, he can’t keep up when the tribe has to shift 10 miles suddenly, and he’s dead, just like that, from something that we’d hardly consider worthy of a trip to the doc’s office, just clean the wound out and bind it up with antibiotic, take the car to work instead of bike for a week.
Subtle changes in parasitic culture, et cetera, can certainly profoundly affect people — modern, sophisticated, rich people — who are used to a life of almost pristine health. But to someone whose normal life is short and brutish, these are minor effects.
I don’t give a damn if the report covers every subtle effect that would profoundly disturb wealthy, sophisticated citizens of a complex society with aspirations to have colonies on Mars, upload their conscienceness to computers, or genetically engineer their children. The proposition that these will hit still harder the goat-herders living in grass huts who randomly die of — and expect to die of — malaria and unsterile childbirth at age 40 is ludicrous.
Let those fools at the Lancet consider instead how to help that situation with their excess wealth and compassion. How do we bring the miracles of 19th century medical and public-health science to the billions in sub-Saharan Africa, India, and Asia? That’s the low-hanging fruit.
But I already know the answer. The ugly historical fact is that the route to that kind of healthy world outcome lies obviously through liberalization of markets and governments, and a direct retreat away from the suffocating paternalism that they hold dear. That fact must be bitter in their mouths, and may help explain their obsessive delight in finding a cause that might, indeed, be amenable to the Let Me Tell You, Peasant, What Is Good For You intellectual feudalism in which they long to participate.
Climate change will have the greatest impact on those who are already the poorest in the world.
I think it is likely. Putting an anchor around global growth, which is what these people want, will result in slower adoption of many things developed countries take for granted. Thag won’t get electricity in his home or a car to commute to better employment as soon.
The poorest are more vulnerable to extreme weather events because they’re less mobile than people in the west,
A profoundly ignorant statement. Who can move across the country on a week’s notice? (1) a father of four with a $500,000 mortgage, two kids in the local high school, a wife with a funny heart condition under treatment by a local specialist, and 20 years of specialization in with one local company, or (2) a spanking-new single healthy college graduate with nothing but $20,000 of debt and a beat-up car to his name?
Any philosopher, even any popular author, could tell you that it is posessions and complex relationships that inhibit mobility. He is freest who is poorest and least tied to his neighbors by complex relationships.
and because they’re more dependent on the local production of food.
Right. So here’s Joe the subsistence farmer, who raises yams and chickens in his backyward to eat, and me, who buys all this prepackaged stuff from Albertson’s, living in a region of the country where the natural rainfall is insufficient to support any agriculture — the native Indians gathered acorns for food before the white man came — and couldn’t possibly support even the drinking water needs of 0.1% of the population that lives here (which is why we have massive 500-mile-long aqueducts).
Suddenly, there’s an extreme weather event! The aqueducts are destroyed, truck transportation grinds to a halt, communication over sophisticated cell networks and packet-switched Internet links goes poof, there’s no gas in the local gas station, and my ATM card is now just a piece of plastic. True, I theoretically have $50,000 in the bank and an air-conditioned car — but what is going to happen to me, really?
Meanwhile Joe’s hut gets knocked flat and his chickens are scattered. Bloody hell! After he finds them, he may have to trudge with all his belongings — a bag of seeds, his sharp digging tool — 100 miles, i.e. 5 days’ walk — to somewhere new where his knowledge of how to raise his own food is once again relevant. Poor Joe!
Meanwhile, I’ve struggled up through the rainwater to the closed Albertson’s, but found that more agile looters have taken all the canned goods before me. I’m looking around for a container to catch rainwater and wondering whether if I stick some of the defrosted frozen peas from the freezer into the ground, they’d sprout. I’m not hopeful.
No Carl you hear about the storm before it arrives and get in your car and drive to where it’s safe, you then claim insurance on what was probably little damage done to your over engineered home which was very unlikely to have been built somewhere that was likely to have been at high risk even in an extreme event, because western governments don’t let people build in such places.
Joe has no forewarning, has 6 kids, no car, and they all drown.
Even you must be bright enough to realize that the same scale of flooding that’ll kill 50 people in the US will likely kill 1,000 in Bolivia.
Hey Carl, should we now discuss the relative effects of extreme weather events in the form of droughts? In the US some houses are burnt down in wild fires and some people lose their lives. In poor countries, a few people losing their lives in bush fires doesn’t get mentioned in the media, we only hear about the drought when there are a few hundred thousand people starving to death.
The people of wealthy nations are protected from starvation because they’re integrated into an international system that supports people affected by localised events.
“A pollutant is something in the environment that is deemed to be at such excessive quantities or concentrations as to be environmentally harmful.
So anything can be a pollutant.”
Ok, so where is CO2 the highest?
Do you think it’s highest when you are in a traffic jam on the freeway, or in bedroom while you are sleeping? Or in restaurant while you eating?
Or in meeting? Or at a party?
>>No Carl you hear about the storm before it arrives
… pretty dumb of all the people in Lousiana not to listen to the news.
Did you see Thag’s last FB post about the bbq this weekend? The boar goes on the pit at 4am party starts whenever you can drag your butt out of bed and last till whenever you fall down. You can bring your own beers but Thag has a new batch of home brew ready.
Follow #Thag’sBBQ on twitter for updates.
Hush now, Carl and the rest of you. Don’t you know that Andrew W. and Bob-1 Care About The Poor People more than you do? Also, putting more regulations on business in the US will of course help that farmer in his hut in Africa be safer against the dreaded Glowball Warmulating Monster that would otherwise devastate his crop and knock his hut down. They’re not sure exactly how forcing businesses to raise prices (so they can afford all the new paperwork for the regulations and personnel to process the paperwork for the regulations and downtime for inspections to make sure the businesses are following the regulations) will help that farmer in Africa but putting more regulations on businesses For A Good Cause makes Bob-1 and Andrew W feel good so it has to be done!
I suppose the next rejoinder from Bob-1 and Andrew W will be something like “business owners don’t have to raise prices, they can just sell their mansions and yachts and mistresses and quit buying mustache wax for their mustaches of evil that they like to twirl as they shout “Ah hah!” while stealing candy from babies and flogging their workers” so I’ll just put that here for them. Because everyone knows that all business owners in America already have Too Much Money — if they didn’t they’d be doing a proper job, such as working in academia and cadging for grants.
Mmmm, barbecued boar.
Andrea, my point was that Rand is definitely treating Lois Capps unfairly, is probably treating the Lancet unfairly, and that the Lancet report on climate change is available for review. Note the total disconnect with any of the things you are saying about me.
gbaikie, I don’t see your point, CO2 wouldn’t be a pollutant by that definition in any of those instances.
reader, if you’re referring to Hurricane Katrina, most people did flee New Orleans, if they hadn’t the death toll would have been much higher.
wodun, see you there.
Andrea: Hey, can someone translate Andrea’s ramblings? Something about mustaches, monsters, yachts and mistresses. Possibly the Poor Wee Thing has some nightmare fantasy about me being a big mean lefty ogre that wants to end the free market system, in which case she’s got my politics just a bit wrong, actually rather a lot wrong.
No Carl you hear about the storm before it arrives and get in your car and drive to where it’s safe
And my 30 million neighbors…? Do you imagine we all get in our cars and drive out of harm’s way, along the 300-lane highways FEMA parachutes into place?
because western governments don’t let people build in such places.
Like the below-sea-level parts of New Orleans? Like the lovely flats along the Missisissippi where you can see the river from your front yard, “safe” behind a Corps of Engineers dike and “insured” against loss by FEMA? Like the folks driving on the elevated “over-engineered” I-880 in Oakland during the Loma Prieta earthquake? Like the houses in the Marina district of SF, built on (no doubt “overengineered”) landfill, which liquifed during the same quake?
Even you must be bright enough to realize that the same scale of flooding that’ll kill 50 people in the US will likely kill 1,000 in Bolivia.
Well, in the first place, this is hardly a linear or simple correlation. The same scale of flooding will kill far more people in China than in Mongolia, because it takes a certain level of improved technology to crowd people into dense cities below dams. The same electrical blackout caused by, e.g. the same storm will do much more damage in 21st century Japan, where electricity cools the nuclear power plant cooling pumps, than in 1820s New York City, where it powers very little of life-and-death importance.
Secondly, loss of life is certainly one measure of the social impact of “extreme weather” events, or global warming, whatever. But is it unique? Hardly. So how about you, soi disant bright person, ponder the fact that the same “scale” of flooding (whatever you mean by that) will do $billions more damage in the US than in Bolivia. By that measure the social impact is worse here. How will you reconcile these conflicting observations? Which is a bigger impact, the loss of 50 lives or $50 billion in assets? What if it’s 1 life and $100 billion? What if — and here we come to the nub of the matter, for observant folks who might be looking over your shoulder — what if that $50 billion includes the assets necessary prevent a loss of 500 lives next time?
See, one of your essential logical errors here — I daresay duplicated by the smug Lancet editorialists — is that you are unthinkingly extrapolating from one rare disaster to a global and permanent change. (That’s what “climate change” is all about, right? We’re not talking localized or temporary problems.)
Because the United States can recover from one Katrina every 10 years faster than Haiti, for example, you naively think the United States could therefore weather five Katrinas a year, every year, forever, better (e.g. with a smaller fractional change in its standard of living). But that’s wholly unjustified. The wealth reserves and communication structure that allow a powerful concentration of resources to deal with a catastrophe are utterly dependent on there not being simultaneous catastrophes elsewhere, and on catastrophes being rare. In short, the ability of a wealthy country to cope well with local (in space or time) disasters by efficiently concentrating its wealth says nothing about its ability to cope with a general negative change in circumstances.
Or, to put it another way, the ability of a well-fed person to skip one meal without harm says zip about how he’ll cope with a permanent state of semi-starvation. There is good reason to think that the person who is used to a meager diet is going to do better in the lattter case.
The people of wealthy nations are protected from starvation because they’re integrated into an international system that supports people affected by localised events.
Exactly. Now ask yourself how you are going to twist the definition of “climate change” so that it can be considered a “localized event.” I’m sure you can do it, Andrew.
“And my 30 million neighbors…? Do you imagine we all get in our cars and drive out of harm’s way, along the 300-lane highways FEMA parachutes into place?”
Carl, evacuations from areas threatened by hurricanes are nothing new, it doesn’t require 300 lane highways.
over the next century it’s probably a good idea to upgrade weather defenses. Sometimes such defenses will fail, nothing is certain when it comes to weather.
“Because the United States can recover from one Katrina every 10 years faster than Haiti, for example, you naively think the United States could therefore weather five Katrinas a year, every year, forever, better”
Wow, I was worried that I was being pessimistic, yet you expect an increase in weather extremes way, way beyond my worst dreams, well, if you’re right, that sort of catastrophic climate change could well be a global disaster on the level necessary to cripple that integrated international system that I was talking about. We’re Doomed, Doooomed!
“Now ask yourself how you are going to twist the definition of “climate change” so that it can be considered a “localized event.” ”
I’m still trying to understand your comprehension problems with the phrase “increases in extreme weather events” don’t you understand that weather events, by definition are localised and temporary?
I don’t think you’re an ogre, Andrew W. I think you are a very silly man with a very high opinion of your thought processes, one that does not seem to be justified by what you have revealed of them.
“The people of wealthy nations are protected from starvation because they’re integrated into an international system that supports people affected by localised events.”
Yes, this is the statement that has me scratching my head. The people of wealthy, capitalist nations, and the people of the U.S. in particular, unless I completely misread history, are the ones who protect the people of poorer nations from starvation. If you can pinpoint an instance or two when Americans have been the beneficiaries of food aid provided by this alleged “international system,” I’d appreciate it.
danae, I’m talking about international financial and trade systems rather than aid, and by wealthy, I don’t just mean OECD, but countries with the ability to meet local demand simply by buying what they need from abroad.
Lets say the grain harvest in Belorussian, or Chile fails, the locals aren’t suddenly faced with starvation or reliant on aid, they just buy to make up the shortfall.
“I don’t think you’re an ogre, Andrew W.”
Wow Andrea, that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me!
“I think you are a very silly…”
Ever thought about how you’ve been coming across?
“gbaikie, I don’t see your point, CO2 wouldn’t be a pollutant by that definition in any of those instances. ”
I don’t understand what you mean.
I know that some volcano can create levels CO2 which can kill trees and animals [or people]. But CO2 will put out fires, and if you have high concentrations of CO2 and one burning anything the combustion will make carbon monoxide- which is certainly a pollutant- and what would be important is the levels of carbon monoxide- which in trace amounts can kill you.
So if those instances I gave don’t fit this definition, most sources involving combustion will not fit this definition.
So this narrows the list to include natural sources such volcanos or *somehow* related to the pure CO2 which made for applications such like making carbonated soda or powering such things paint ball guns. Or also uses involving dry ice.
But other than rare pockets concentrated CO2 created by volcanoes, I am unaware of CO2 causing damage or harm to the “environment”.
My first comment was simply to give what I think is a reasonable definition of what a pollutant is, I wasn’t advocating a position on CO2 as such.
Whether CO2 can be called a pollutant in the context of climate change would come down to whether or not the impact of CO2 induced climate change is seen as environmentally harmful, that’s where the crystal ball comes in.
CO2 and climate change? I’m reminded of the story about the guy who fell out of a window on the 85th floor of the Empire State and said “OK so far” as he passed the 40th.
Climate change won’t just have one effect. It’s huge increases in the incidence and intensity of hurricanes. It’s big changes in climate zones, turning previously productive farming zones into deserts. It’s the spread of diseases previously known in tropical hellholes (malaria, yellow fever for example) into Western industrial countries. It’s a gradually increasing incidence of lethally intense heatwaves in places unprepared for them – Paris for example. It’s entire countries (Tuvalu for example) and large areas of others disappearing underwater. It’s wars caused by any and all of the above.
And that’s not as bad as it can get. For an example of really bad – look to the East just before sunrise or the West just after sunset, as appropriate.
But never mind, America – just keep complaining about the price of gasoline reaching half the level Europeans have been paying for years, and keep running those 2-ton piles of iron that get 25mpg and have less cabin space than 3/4 ton Toyotas. Lots of room under the hood, though. Oh, and keep losing blood and treasure in ME hellholes to pay for it.
It’s too bad for alarmists they don’t have (g*t^2)/2 in their back-pockets instead of “hide the decline!” around their necks…
I looked up Tuvalu on the internet. Here is what it is: “It comprises four reef islands and five true atolls.” (Source: Wikipedia.) Okay, it’s basically the tops of a series of coral reefs that happened to be enough above water to grow plant life and support some humans. They’re basically coral covered with a bit of sand, and erosion and subsidence are the natural fate of such things. Tuvalu’s eventual fate of being washed away has nothing to do with any devastating, sudden climactic change. It’s the natural consequence of sandy areas encountering the sea.
If you would like to know, I grew up in Miami, Florida. One of the problems that city is constantly faced with is the fact that the beach is always being washed away by the sea. The solution so far has been to dredge up sand to replace that which has been washed away. Again, this has nothing to do with some mythical devastating climate change that will catastrophically destroy Our Way Of Life. it has been going on as long as I can remember. People who live in parts of the world that are more stable geographically and meteorologically (like England, where global warming hysteria is huge — or these days any large Western city, where people live hermetically sealed up in air-conditioned boxes and don’t have to encounter weather as most people know it) don’t understand how tropical weather can turn on a dime. So when a hurricane forms and heads for their favorite party town (like New Orleans) they freak out and think the world is coming to an end.
One more thing: the hurricane seasons in the Atlantic come in large cycles of 20 or thirty years (I forget which). That’s long enough for people in the low-storm times to forget what hurricanes are like, and to move to storm-prone areas in droves. This is what happened in South Florida – I knew people who would say there would never be another hurricane because “all the concrete would drive them off.” Then Hurricane Andrew hit.
Fletcher Christian Says:
April 6th, 2011 at 11:12 pm
“Climate change won’t just have one effect….”
…but, there is no evidence that any of the following will come to pass.
Fixed that for you. No increase in incidence and intensity of hurricanes. No Tuvalu disappearing underwater.
Fletcher after that post I’d recommend looking in the mirror and slapping yourself in the face really hard a few times. Wake up, Dude!
I was just down in central Florida for a class, my first visit to the state, and I was very surprised by the number of buildings on the exposed eastern beaches. Sez me, if even a category one hurricane comes ashore, evacuation will be more fun than a barrel of monkeys.
There is always climate change going on, but man made causes pale in relation to things such as volcanoes, not to mention that big ball of fire thingy in the sky.
As Rand says, two airheads that happen to be elected officials. We have the government that we deserve.
I would add that the stupid factor is not limited to Democrats, although they seem to be more common in that section of the big government party.
There is always climate change going on,
Yep, climate changes naturally in response to natural forcings
but man made causes pale in relation to things such as volcanoes,
Major volcanic events like pinatubo are easily seen in the global temperature record, their effects last a year or two, their main impact is temporarily reducing temperatures through global dimming, a reduction of the surface insolation because aerosols (mainly sulphates) released by the volcano into the stratosphere reflect incoming light.
not to mention that big ball of fire thingy in the sky.
The Sun’s output is remarkably stable, which is why it’s not considered a big driver in recent climate change. Going back in history there have been occasions in which lower solar activity has been recorded, the Maunder minimum, which happened in the middle on the Little Ice Age, being the most notable example.
The climate changes associated with the Little Ice Age appears to have been uneven across the globe, affecting the North Atlantic to a greater extent than most of the rest of the world. If the Little Ice Age was a result of reduced solar activity, that’s not much of a reassurance that climate forcing through increases in GH gases won’t lead to significant regional changes in climate, changes well in excess of the changes to any global average.
Don: the evacuation routes are pretty well mapped out and since Andrew in 1992 and then the four storms in 2004 (Charlie, Frances, Jeanne, and Ivan — I lived in Orlando then and got to enjoy the first three; Ivan went up to the Panhandle) the state has gotten the routine of getting warnings to people to get out pretty well down. Evacuations of beach communities is always mandatory when a hurricane is about to hit, and they do try to provide transportation for those who really need it (like the homeless and the elderly) but people are expected to be prepared with a plan to get themselves out if they possibly can. But there is only so much you can do and there are still a lot of idiots who think “it won’t hit me, I’m special.”
That being said, most of those big fancy buildings on the waters’ edge were built during the low-hurricane period of the Seventies and Eighties. People got complacent and forgot what storms can do. This is also why there was so much devastation after Katrina — there was so much build-up to be devastated.
Its idiots like Boxer and company that make me support a constitutional amendment that authorizes congress to kick states out of the country (heck I wouldn’t mind having Congress kick my own state, NH, out of the union, but for different reasons).