It is not easy to be worried about average temperature increases of a few degrees over the rest of your life if the temperatures you experience change ten times as much every single day.

Consequently, much of the concern around global warming is focused on associated effects, such as the melting of glaciers, sea-level rise, floods, droughts, hurricanes, an increase in the frequency and severity of the El Niño – Southern Oscillation (ENSO), and possible abrupt climate changes, such as the shut-down of the thermohaline circulation (MOC) which brings warm waters and mild climates to northern Europe.

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“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity;
an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.“
Winston Churchill

Last week, Fundación Milenio (FM) presented its Economic Report for the first semester of 2008. The numbers look great, with high economic growth (6.1% for the first trimester), booming exports (58.3% more than same period last year), a rapidly growing trade surplus (117.4% more than same period last year), increasing tax revenues (26.5% higher than last year), falling external debt (31.1% lower than 12 months ago), increasing foreign reserves (55.5% higher than 12 months ago), and an enviable public sector surplus (2.5% of GDP).

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Most humans have a preference for temperatures around 20°C. If the climate is hotter, they use air-conditioners to bring down the temperature, and if it is colder, they use heating systems to increase the temperature.

Except the poor, who cannot afford air-conditioners and heating systems. They just have to accept the climate as it is, and accept the resulting inconveniences in terms of increased mortality and decreased productivity. Especially if they are too poor to move to a place with a better climate.

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Ants are among the most numerous and versatile animals on Earth. They prefer tropical rainforests, but they also manage to survive in scorching deserts, and they survive long, cold winters by hibernating and huddling together in the millions. They don’t have any problems with landscapes altered for human purposes. Indeed, my house appears to be an ant-paradise (probably due to my three kids inadvertently leaving ant-goodies everywhere).

Like us, ants have developed and refined agriculture. They cultivate hundreds of different species of fungus, which are fertilized, weeded, pruned and propagated. They even apply antibiotics to keep unwanted fungus away from their crops. They have also domesticated animals (especially aphids and caterpillars), which are milked systematically for their nutritious excretions (1).

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By: Lykke E. Andersen* 

“In the last 200 years the population of our planet has grown exponentially,
at a rate of 1.9% per year. If it continued at this rate, with the population
doubling every 40 years,by 2600 we would all be standing literally
shoulder to shoulder.”
Stephen Hawking

To most people, the World feels rather crowded, and many people are worried about the impacts that all we humans have on the environment. In this newsletter, however, I will argue that the perceptions of crowdedness are biased – due to crowding.

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“Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get”
Robert A. Heinlein

Between 1905 and 2005, the average global air temperature near the Earth’s surface increased by somewhere between 0.5 and 1.0 degrees Celsius. Climate model projections summarized by the IPCC indicate that average global surface temperature will likely rise a further 1.1 to 6.4 °C during this century (1).

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During the last 100 years, we have experienced four rounds of significant climate change. In 1912, when Titanic struck an iceberg and sunk, the New York Times reported that “Prof. Schmidt Warns Us of an Encroaching Ice Age.” Los Angeles Times the same year: “Fifth ice age is on the way. Human race will have to fight for its existence against cold.”

Global temperatures were indeed unusually cold during the first decades of the previous century (see Figure 1 below), and ice age warnings regularly popped up in the media: Los Angeles Times, 1923: “The possibility of another Ice Age already having started… is admitted by men of first rank in the scientific world, men specially qualified to speak.” Chicago Tribune, 1923: “Scientist says Arctic ice will wipe out Canada.” Read More »

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore jointly won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change”.

I am sure these enourmous efforts were done with the best of intentions, but I am not so sure they are contributing to World Peace. Certainly, a lot of wasteful and harmful policies are being implemented under the guise of fighting climate change.

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Climate change has suddenly become a hot research topic in Bolivia (1). The glaciers in the highlands are melting, the lowlands are flooded, and the government has declared a state of national emergency due to natural disasters. It is a good time to ask how climate change might be affecting the poor Bolivians.

But first let’s check exactly what climate changes we are talking about.

The National Meteorological Service (www.senamhi.gob.bo) provides useful data for 33 different stations across Bolivia. They provide daily minimum and maximum temperatures since 1/1/2004 until yesterday, as well as historical monthly averages for the 1961-1990 period, which can be used for comparison. It is therefore relatively simple to calculate daily temperature anomalies for different parts of Bolivia.

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If people married each other more randomly, poverty levels would be considerably lower than they are now. If we abandoned all current family arrangements and randomly grouped all Bolivians into new families of 5 persons, poverty levels would fall by about 15 percentage points (from the current level of 55% of all households to about 40% of all households). The Gini coefficient measuring inequality would also fall from about 0.70 to 0.55 (1).

But Bolivians do not mix much in marriage. The correlation between partners’ education levels is extremely high at about 0.77, with no signs of falling (2). For comparison, the corresponding number for Germany is 0.52 and for Britain it is 0.41 (3).

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