Mortality Associated With Carbon Releases Traced to Sources, Per Capita Releases and Deaths Caused.

[NNadir]

The paper to which I'll refer is this one: Bressler, R.D. The mortality cost of carbon. Nat Commun 12, 4467 (2021).

I believe that Nature Communications is the open sourced journal of the Springer/Nature publishers, so anyone can read it and there is no need for me to quote it extensively.

Nevertheless, I'll offer a few excerpts after desultory editorial comments of my own. Feel absolutely free to ignore my comments (particularly if you find them uncivil) and proceed to the paper directly to find out how many humans are purported to die, per American living an average lifestyle, by the per capita carbon releases associated with that (our) life style. It's always a good idea to go the the original source, unfiltered. I do my best to do that myself, go to original sources. Doing so informs my thinking.

My comments:

I am sometimes confronted by some person who thinks the can mutter the word "Fukushima" or otherwise tell me that they once lived near a nuclear plant and - even though, they're apparently still alive and quite healthy enough to be able to mutter insipidly about the appalling ignorance driving their fear - their personal anecdotes how they were scared shitless all the time that something nuclear related would happen to prevent their otherwise certain immortality, this to "prove," for my benefit, that nuclear energy is "too dangerous."

Of course, there are people who are scared shitless by vaccines too, and rational people here and elsewhere around the world find their ignorance and their toxic indifference to reality appalling.

I believe that the position of the overwhelming number of members of DU is that antivaxxers are a scourge on humanity.

If so, I agree, both as a DUer and a human being.

Appalling indifference...

Recently I attended a webinar presented by Andrew Shaw of Imperial College in London on the subject of utilizing modern technology to monitor the polio virus, this one: New, Rapid Sequencing Tools for Poliovirus Surveillance. It contains and references this graphic:



Source: Polio by Sophie Ochmann and Max Roser, Our World In Data.

At the link just provided, one can download that actual data behind this graphic a spreadsheet, and find that in Africa in 1980 there were 35,888 Polio cases and 2016, six.

(I certainly mean no insult to any overly sensitive but oblivious person by providing data, this as I've recently interacted with people who find data insulting.)

There are two polio vaccines, the injectable Inactivated Polio Vaccine (IPV (the Salk vaccine) and the Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV, the Sabin Vaccine). The former is a dead virus; the latter an attenuated, but live, virus.

The latter, being a live virus, is capable of mutation, and, according to Dr. Shaw's lecture, in areas where vaccination rates are very low, and thus the attenuated virus can circulate in fecal matter, the serological type 2 attenuated virus can mutate into a virulent form. For this reason, as of 2016, this vaccine is no longer utilized in Africa, where vaccination rates are low. Dr. Shaw had a slide showing a map of observed cases of vaccine derived polio, all in Africa. I paused on the slide, and crudely counted, by entering the numbers into an Excel spreadsheet, the number of such cases. The number of cases of people who have contracted vaccine derived serological type 2 vaccines according to my count is 374. Dr. Shaw went on to say in his lecture, 70% of infections detected are asymptomatic, 30% show signs of illness but recover without paralysis, and less than 1% have paralytic infections. That works out to roughly 3 people in all of Africa who have contracted polio in a paralytic form from Sabin vaccine mutants.

The Sabin Polio vaccine is not risk free, but it should be clear to anyone who's not a pernicious ignoramus of the Tucker Carlson/Robert F. Kennedy type, that risk of being receiving a vaccine in Africa is vastly lower than the risk of not being vaccinated in Africa. According to Dr. Shaw's map, Uganda had the highest number of cases of vaccine related virus, 59. In 2016, the population of Uganda was 39.65 million, suggesting a risk of 1 in 39,650,000/59 = 1 in 672,000. In 1980, even though presumably some, if not most Africans were already vaccinated, and the population of the continent was 476.4 million (it's more than doubled since then), the risk of contracting polio of a more virulent version than Dr. Shaw described for the vaccine derived form, was 1 in 35,882/476,400,000 = 1 in 13,877. This is 187 times larger than the worst case in Africa, Uganda. Thus, if only the Sabin vaccine were available in Africa, and, if and only if an ignorant and irrationally terrified and self absorbed portion of the population refused to get the vaccine, one would need to a moron or an ignoramus in the irrationally terrified class itself to not be vaccinated.

Fukushima...

Speaking of irrationally terrified people - may I use the word "morons" or perhaps "ignoramuses?" - in which I include the people who tell me how terrible nuclear power plants are because they lived near one and were afraid it would kill them, I often hear from people who want to tell me, "nuclear power is too dangerous."

In response, I often post a link to the Global Burden of Disease Survey, using text I've stored in a Word document for convenience, as follows:

Here is the most recent full report from the Global Burden of Disease Report, a survey of all causes of death and disability from environmental and lifestyle risks: Global, regional, and national comparative risk assessment of 79 behavioural, environmental and occupational, and metabolic risks or clusters of risks, 1990–2015: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015 (Lancet 2016; 388: 1659–724) One can easily locate in this open sourced document compiled by an international consortium of medical and scientific professionals how many people die from causes related to air pollution, particulates, ozone, etc...

Recently I was informed by a correspondent that posts containing references like this are lacking in civility.

One never knows what to say to remarks like that, but, um, well, whatever...

It should be pellucidly clear and obvious that this summer that a season of tragedy is before us, a preventable tragedy, and although many people may be inspired to think of the "season of tragedy" being about the very real tragedy being inflicted on our medical infrastructure by persistent anti-vax rhetoric, I am referring not referring to that but rather to rather the tragedy to the fires and the extreme weather all over the planet.

I live in New Jersey, and have lived in my house for a quarter of a century. Two days ago, F3 tornados were observed in Eastern Pennsylvania, near where I live. After tearing up people's homes and businesses on the Pennsylvania side of the river, one crossed the Delaware River in the exact spot where Washington famously crossed the Delaware in 1776, tearing up the lovely parks dedicated to this historical event. Washington's successful attack on Trenton was actually a rather small and trivial event on a world wide scale at the time, but it was not without vast long term implications. In a quarter of century of living here, until Thursday, the number of F3 tornados passing within miles of where I live was zero. Without engaging in a single Bayesian calculation, I feel fairly secure in attributing it, in the context of a large number of unprecedented weather events all around the world this summer, to climate change. Similar to Washington's jaunt on the icy Delaware, if this "small" F3 tornado in the same spot on the same river is a "small" event, it may have worldwide implications.

I'm not sure how "civil" one should be when discussing unnecessary wholesale deaths , deaths which I attribute to people making the absurd statement that "nuclear power is too dangerous" without making any statement comparing the death toll from air pollution to that associated with the more than half a century of experience with commercial nuclear power.

The paper cited at the outset, which people who find me uncivil may or may not have viewed, extends the death toll beyond air pollution, to heat related deaths.

My working figure from the above for air pollution is between six and seven million air pollution deaths per year, but being "uncivil" I use the higher figure, 7 million, which works out to roughly 19,000 people per day. If the death toll is "only" 6 million, that works out to 16,500 people per day.

What's 2,500 deaths per day between friends?

How many people died from radiation in the big bogeyman event at Fukushima again? Do tell. How many people died from seawater in the same event? Do tell.

What's "too dangerous," nuclear power plants or living in coastal cities where seawater is present? Speaking only for myself, and certainly not for "civil" people, given climate change and sea level rise, I'd go with coastal cities, but that's just me. Perhaps I'm "uncivil" since I'm really, really, really, really not willing to accept - may I use the word "horseshit?" - that horseshit that nuclear power is more dangerous than fossil fuels.

I can count.

If someone, by contrast, can't count, or worse, refuses to count, it pisses me off royally, and erodes any desire I might have to be civil. In my opinion, people who kill other people by the application of ignorance deserve no civility.

By the way, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is not only anti-vax; he's anti-nuclear as well. He's also anti-wind, if, and only if, someone is putting wind turbines off the coast of the Kennedy family compound in which he has an interest, derived not from any wisdom or intellectually respectable work he did to earn it, but by "virtue" of birth. To steal a phrase from Kurt Vonnegut, "He had been born into that cockamamie proprietorship."

Fuck you Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

(See, I lack in civility.)

I'm a very lazy person, and I haven't updated the above cited text to include the latest Global Burden of Disease Survey, that of 2019, published in 2020. It is here: Global burden of 87 risk factors in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019 (Volume 396, Issue 10258, 17–23 October 2020, Pages 1223-1249). This study is a huge undertaking and the list of authors from around the world is rather long. These studies are always open sourced; and I invite people who want to carry on about Fukushima to open it and search the word "radiation." It appears once. Radon, a side product brought to the surface by fracking while we all wait for the grand so called "renewable energy" nirvana that did not come, is not here and won't come, appears however: Household radon, from the decay of natural uranium, which has been cycling through the environment ever since oxygen appeared in the Earth's atmosphere.

Here is what it says about air pollution deaths in the 2019 Global Burden of Disease Survey, if one is too busy to open it oneself because one is too busy carrying on about Fukushima:

The top five risks for attributable deaths for females were high SBP (5·25 million [95% UI 4·49–6·00] deaths, or 20·3% [17·5–22·9] of all female deaths in 2019), dietary risks (3·48 million [2·78–4·37] deaths, or 13·5% [10·8–16·7] of all female deaths in 2019), high FPG (3·09 million [2·40–3·98] deaths, or 11·9% [9·4–15·3] of all female deaths in 2019), air pollution (2·92 million [2·53–3·33] deaths or 11·3% [10·0–12·6] of all female deaths in 2019), and high BMI (2·54 million [1·68–3·56] deaths or 9·8% [6·5–13·7] of all female deaths in 2019). For males, the top five risks differed slightly. In 2019, the leading Level 2 risk factor for attributable deaths globally in males was tobacco (smoked, second-hand, and chewing), which accounted for 6·56 million (95% UI 6·02–7·10) deaths (21·4% [20·5–22·3] of all male deaths in 2019), followed by high SBP, which accounted for 5·60 million (4·90–6·29) deaths (18·2% [16·2–20·1] of all male deaths in 2019). The third largest Level 2 risk factor for attributable deaths among males in 2019 was dietary risks (4·47 million [3·65–5·45] deaths, or 14·6% [12·0–17·6] of all male deaths in 2019) followed by air pollution (ambient particulate matter and ambient ozone pollution, accounting for 3·75 million [3·31–4·24] deaths (12·2% [11·0–13·4] of all male deaths in 2019), and then high FPG (3·14 million [2·70–4·34] deaths, or 11·1% [8·9–14·1] of all male deaths in 2019).

The bold is mine, of course, uncivilly so.

Let's do math! Females (2.92 million deaths) + males (3.75 million deaths) = 6.67 million human deaths, "only" around 18,250 deaths per day.

Really, it's uncivil for me to exaggerate. What's 750 deaths per day among friends?

Well, there are confidence limits, more about that later. Most good measurement science will include an estimation of the probability of accuracy, based on estimates of precision.

These are epidemiological estimates, and rely on statistical interpretations, and are therefore subject to limitations.

Here's a paper that takes issue with the Global Burden of Disease Survey with respect to the largest single component of air pollution deaths, PM 2.5: Global mortality from outdoor fine particle pollution generated by fossil fuel combustion: Results from GEOS-Chem (Karn Vohra, Alina Vodonos, Joel Schwartz, Eloise A. Marais, Melissa P. Sulprizio, Loretta J. Mickley, Environmental Research 195 (2021) 110754)

Here's some text from the paper:

Previous estimates of the GBD for 2015 suggest that exposure to total PM2.5 causes 4.2 million deaths (Cohen et al., 2017), whereas here we estimate more than double (10.2 million) the number of premature deaths from fossil fuel combustion alone in 2012.

Note that this statement refers to only one component of air pollution, PM2.5. (Particulate mater 2.5 microns or smaller.) It excludes sulfates, ozone, etc...and thus is not the only component of air pollution.

10.2 million deaths from just one component of air pollution works out to around 28,000 deaths per day. What's 9,000 deaths per day among friends?

Not all that long ago, in this space, I was asked about what I thought the death toll from the nuclear accident at Chernobyl might be, the correspondent having heard a figure as low as "50 people" and I referred to a rather famous nuclear accident liquidator, former President Jimmy Carter, to explain the difficulty of obtaining precision and accuracy of these kinds of estimates.

To wit:

President Carter is among roughly 350,000 "liquidators" involved in nuclear reactor "clean ups."

Of course, he had no involvement in Chernobyl, but in the early 1950s, fuel rods at the Chalk River Nuclear NRX Research Reactor in the Ottawa Valley region of Ontario partially melted. (December 1952). It was the first melt down of a nuclear reactor in history of which we know. The experience of the future President nonetheless is rather similar to the experience of the roughly 350,000 Soviet Military Personnel involved in the Chernobyl clean up; it involved short exposure to possibly intense radiation to move highly radioactive components of a failed reactor.

This Stanford under graduate student's term paper describes Carter's experience there: Carter at Chalk River

A CNN piece around the time of Fukushima, when Carter was 86 years old, directly quoted the former President on this experience: Jimmy Carter's exposure to nuclear danger:

"We were fairly well instructed then on what nuclear power was, but for about six months after that I had radioactivity in my urine," President Carter, now 86, told me during an interview for my new book in Plains in 2008. "They let us get probably a thousand times more radiation than they would now. It was in the early stages and they didn't know."

Despite the fears he had to overcome, Carter admits he was animated at the opportunity to put his top-secret training to use in the cleanup of the reactor, located along the Ottawa River northwest of Ottawa.

"It was a very exciting time for me when the Chalk River plant melted down," he continued in the same interview. "I was one of the few people in the world who had clearance to go into a nuclear power plant," he said.

"There were 23 of us and I was in charge. I took my crew up there on the train..."

..."It was the early 1950s ... I had only seconds that I could be in the reactor myself. We all went out on the tennis court, and they had an exact duplicate of the reactor on the tennis court. We would run out there with our wrenches and we'd check off so many bolts and nuts and they'd put them back on.

And finally when we went down into the reactor itself, which was extremely radioactive, then we would dash in there as quickly as we could and take off as many bolts as we could, the same bolts we had just been practicing on. Each time our men managed to remove a bolt or fitting from the core, the equivalent piece was removed on the mock-up..."

(Later President Carter, while President, would walk through the Three Mile Island Reactor while the situation was, excuse the pun, fluid, much to the consternation of the Secret Service.).

I mention this as an indication of how difficult it is to ascertain the "true numbers" associated with the exposure to radioactivity at Chernobyl. President Carter is the oldest of four siblings, and is the only one of them who is still alive. The other three, Ruth Carter Stapleton, Gloria Carter, and "Billy" Carter all died, Ruth in her 50's, from the same disease, pancreatic cancer.

As an advocate of nuclear energy, I could point to this anecdotal evidence about President Carter and make the specious claim that being exposed to a nuclear meltdown, two in Carter's case, the big bogeyman at Three Mile Island included, is a potential way to protect people with a clear familial history of pancreatic cancer, for them to avoid dying from the disease. This of course would be exceedingly misleading, since we really don't know what effect, if any, his participation in the clean ups had on his pancreas cells. It might be that is other three siblings inherited a different set of genes from their parents than he did.

On the other hand, if President Carter were to die at the age of 100, a nuclear opponent could easily claim that he would have lived to 110 if he hadn't cleaned up Chalk River and toured Three Mile Island while its core was melting. Some of them are indeed this stupid.

This points out something about the complexity of your excellent question.

I personally very much doubt that the "death toll" - which involves considerable complexity to discern - associated with Chernobyl is "under 50." I would expect a higher figure, although the figure is nowhere near the figures I was trained to believe would result by stupid journalists, anti-nuke "activists," the curious fellows at the poorly named so called "Union of Concerned 'Scientists'" - an organization I joined at one point in my life without making any reference whatsoever to whether I was a journalist, someone who never passed a college level science course with a grade of C- or better, or whether I was a Nobel Laureate Physicist. No information was required to join; the only thing required was sending a check.

In fact, that the observed results of the accident, the serious study of which led me to leave the class of dumbass anti-nukes and join the class of nuclear energy advocates, played a huge role in my current opinions on the topic, since I compared lazy expectations based on general reading from weak sources, to observed reality from legitimate sources.

This topic is covered by vast scientific literature. I would refer to an excellent journalistic consideration of bias among anti-nukes and pro-nukes like myself, by Mary Mycio, a Ukrainian-American author who traveled to Chernobyl in the early years after the accident to flesh things out for herself: Wormwood Forest A Natural History of Chernobyl (2005) It's not all that technical, but as a social science document, I found it excellent, and on the part of nuclear advocates, I felt a bit chastised myself.

An excellent overview of the scientific consequences, including mortality, is found the "UNSCEAR report" put together by the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation." The tortured bureaucratic name of this committee suggests some level of irony. Here's a link to the 2008 report: Annex D, Health Effects Due to Radiation from the Chernobyl Accident. The list of references to the primary scientific literature starts on page 205 and ends on page 219 in relatively small print.

Of course, anti-nukes completely dismiss this report, since they apparently believe that Chernobyl wiped out Kiev and most of Eastern Europe, in fact, and parts of Scotland.

If it said that two million people died from Chernobyl - it doesn't - I of course, engage in "whataboutism" by noting that millions of people die in a continuous fashion from air pollution, which is also continuously dismissed by faith based anti-nukes in this (and other) space. A recent related post on the subject of Diablo Canyon I made on this site produced, as well I should expect, stupid accounts of the geological faults near the plant, pointing to an unrealized risk being elevated to the obvious effects of climate change in that State.

This is why Ms. Mycio's book is, in my view, a "must read" for anyone considering bias in this discussion.

It is clear to me, nonetheless, that whatever the risks of nuclear energy - and they are very real - these risks pale in comparison to the vast and observed risks of not using nuclear energy.

I could write for hours on the topic of radiation exposure, which has been included in my work over the last 30 years, and may at some point take the liberty of saying more in this space, or at least refer to my earlier writings on the topic, but the question is not, as the anecdotal evidence of President Carter's experience as a "liquidator" in the early 1950's suggests, simply answered.

Thanks for your excellent question. Stay tuned.

The problem with claiming by pointing to Jimmy Carter to prove that liquidating nuclear reactor accidents prevents developing pancreatic cancer is sample size.

It is now believed that the genetic predisposition to pancreatic cancer involves a mutation in the CDKN2A-p16 protein (Cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor 2A), wherein a dominant mutation resulting from the substitution of a deoxyguanosine by thymidine at codon 47, resulting in the substitution of a leucine residue by an arginine residue.

Both of Jimmy Carter's parents died from pancreatic cancer, Lillian at an old age, 85, and Jimmy Carter's father at the age of 58. I note that if both of Jimmy Carter's parents were both heterozygous for the dominant cancer gene, that we would expect the highest probability would be that for 4 children, three would inherit the dominant oncogene, and one would not, precisely the ratio observed among the 4 Carter siblings, one of whom became President of the United States and lived to his late 90's and three of whom died from pancreatic cancer.

So there is at least one completely rational, and even likely, explanation for Jimmy Carter having nothing to do with cleaning up the NRX meltdown and flying in, as President, to tour the reactor building of the melted Three Mile Reactor. On the other hand, Jimmy Carter did not die of any form of cancer, although in the last decade he recovered, after radiation treatments, from a brain tumor.

Go figure.

If we wanted to know whether engaging in nuclear clean ups has an effect leading to surviving a predisposition to pancreatic cancer related to the L16R mutant CDKNA2A-p16 protein, we would need to locate among the 350,000 Chernobyl liquidators a subset who possessed this mutation, and compare them to a subset of non-liquidators also possessing this gene. Note that President Carter might not meet the inclusion criteria for such a study, were he to prove homozygous for the recessive normal gene, which again, given the number of siblings he had, does have a 1 in 4 probability.

The statistical power of the study would be improved the larger the number of liquidators genetically mapped whose health outcome was known. A sample of 100 sequenced liquidators with the L16R mutant CDKNA2A-p16 protein would give more evidence than 10 such liquidators, and a sample size of 1000 would be even better. The larger the sample size, the narrower the range producing a 95% confidence limit.

No one is likely to conduct such a study to find out why Jimmy Carter lived so long; it won't happen.

Recently a correspondent in this space informed me that nuclear energy was "too dangerous" because...um...uranium mines. Perhaps she or he assumed I knew as little as he or she did about uranium as she or he obviously did. As it turns out I wrote about the subject of uranium mining elsewhere, with reference to the scientific literature some years ago: Sustaining the Wind Part 3 about my experience of wandering around Princeton's Firestone Library to read about uranium miners.

To wit:

As I prepared this work, I took some time to wander around the stacks of the Firestone Library at Princeton University where, within a few minutes, without too much effort, I was able to assemble a small pile of books[50] on the terrible case of the Dine (Navajo) uranium miners who worked in the mid-20th century, resulting in higher rates of lung cancer than the general population. The general theme of these books if one leafs through them is this: In the late 1940’s mysterious people, military syndics vaguely involved with secret US government activities show up on the Dine (Navajo) Reservation in the “Four Corners” region of the United States, knowing that uranium is “dangerous” and/or “deadly” to convince naïve and uneducated Dine (Navajos) to dig the “dangerous ore” while concealing its true “deadly” nature. The uranium ends up killing many of the miners, thus furthering the long American history of genocide against the Native American peoples. There is a conspiratorial air to all of it; it begins, in these accounts, with the cold warrior American military drive to produce nuclear arms and then is enthusiastically taken up by the “evil” and “venal” conspirators who foist the “crime” of nuclear energy on an unsuspecting American public, this while killing even more innocent Native Americans.

Now.

I am an American. One of my side interests is a deep, if non-professional, reading of American History. Often we Americans present our history in triumphalist terms, but any serious and honest examination of our history reveals two imperishable stains on our history that we cannot and should not deny. One, of course, is our long and violent history of officially endorsed racism, including 250 years of institutionalized human slavery. The related other stain is the stain of the open and official policy of genocide against Native Americans: There is no softer word than “genocide"...

Later on in the same work, I referred to this paper: Radon Exposure and Mortality Among White and American Indian Uranium Miners: An Update of the Colorado Plateau Cohort (Mary K. Schubauer-Berigan, Robert D. Daniels, and Lynne E. Pinkerton, Am J Epidemiol 2009; 169: 718–730)

I continued:

...Of the 779 “non-white” we are told that 99% of them were “American Indians,” i.e. Native Americans. We may also read that the median year of birth for these miners, white and Native American, was 1922, meaning that a miner born in the median year would have been 83 years old in 2005, the year to which the follow up was conducted. (The oldest miner in the data set was born in 1913; the youngest was born in 1931.) Of the miners who were evaluated, 2,428 of them had died at the time the study was conducted, 826 of whom died after 1990, when the median subject would have been 68 years old.

Let’s ignore the “white” people; they are irrelevant in these accounts.

Of the Native American miners, 536 died before 1990, and 280 died in the period between 1991and 2005, meaning that in 2005, only 13 survived. Of course, if none of the Native Americans had ever been in a mine of any kind, never mind uranium mines, this would have not rendered them immortal. (Let’s be clear no one writes pathos inspiring books about the Native American miners in the Kayenta or Black Mesa coal mines, both of which were operated on Native American reservations in the same general area as the uranium mines.) Thirty-two of the Native American uranium miners died in car crashes, 8 were murdered, 8 committed suicide, and 10 died from things like falling into a hole, or collision with an “object.” Fifty-four of the Native American uranium miners died from cancers that were not lung cancer. The “Standard Mortality Ratio,” or SMR for this number of cancer deaths that were not lung cancer was 0.85, with the 95% confidence level extending from 0.64 to 1.11. The “Standard Mortality Ratio” is the ratio, of course, the ratio between the number of deaths observed in the study population (in this case Native American Uranium Miners) to the number of deaths that would have been expected in a control population. At an SMR of 0.85, thus 54 deaths is (54/.085) – 54 = -10. Ten fewer Native American uranium miners died from “cancers other than lung cancer” than would have been expected in a population of that size. At the lower 95% confidence limit SMR, 0.64, the number would be 31 fewer deaths from “cancers other than lung cancer,” whereas at the higher limit SMR, 1.11, 5 additional deaths would have been recorded, compared with the general population.

Lung cancer, of course, tells a very different story. Ninety-two Native American uranium miners died of lung cancer. Sixty-three of these died before 1990; twenty-nine died after 1990. The SMR for the population that died in the former case was 3.18, for the former 3.27. This means the expected number of deaths would have been expected in the former case was 20, in the latter case, 9. Thus the excess lung cancer deaths among Native American uranium miners was 92 – (20 +9) = 63...

Later I went on to point out that 7 million people would die from air pollution in the year I wrote that piece, 2015, but as noted above, it could have been "only" 6 million people. What's a million deaths per year among friends? Since 2015 through 2021, the death toll could have been (2021-2015) years X 6 million deaths per year = 36 million deaths, or it could have been (2021-2015) years X 7 million deaths per year = 49 million deaths. What's 13 million deaths among friends?

Fukushima...

But I'm being uncivil in attempting to discuss air pollution deaths with people who are only interested in uranium miner deaths, aren't I? Where's Robert F. Kennedy Jr. when you need him? Playing "river keeper" on the "White Nile" in Uganda perhaps, trying to "save" people from the scourge of vaccines?

I can count, even if Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his fellow anti-nukes can't.

Counting...

Epidemiological reports like those contained in the Lancet Global Burden of Disease Surveys, three of which are in my files, rely on correlations, that is, reports of concentrations of air pollutants in a particular region and the rates of death of known respiratory diseases and coronary diseases in that same region to produce statistical associations. As is the case with Jimmy Carter, other nuclear meltdown liquidators, people with the CDKNA2A-p16 mutant oncogene, and for that matter, uranium miners, there are many other ways to die besides exposure to a particular risk status, and it is quite possible that other confounding issues may play a role, things like access to health care, nutrition, the ethnic make up of a region, cultural factors, etc...

Still, these studies, managed by highly trained and highly competent statisticians have merit, and, accordingly all attempt to quantify the "error bars," that is the confidence limits.

Another point: There is a difference between people who were killed instantly by seawater in the same tsunami that destroyed the Fukushima reactors, than someone who may live 20 or 30 years before dying from what may be a radiation release related cause. A man who drowned on the day of the tsunami at the age of 30, were his life expectancy 80, will have lost 50 years, whereas a subject exposed to radiation leaks at the age of 30 who lives to be 60 will have lost only 20. This is the rationale one sees behind measurements that take this into account by calculating risk in terms of "DALYs" or "Disability Adjusted Life Years," which combines the statistical concepts of "YLL" "Years Life Lost" and "YLD" which reflects years of healthy life lost to disability.

In 2014, an explosion at a plant in Japan for producing trichlorosilane, a highly toxic chemical when inhaled which is used to make, um, solar cells, killing 5 people instantly and injuring 12 others. This was reported, in a rare burst on honesty, by the "solar will save us" press. PV Tech: Explosion at Mitsubishi polysilicon plant in Japan causes deaths

Fukushima...

There is no confirmed evidence that five or more people have died from radiation exposures at Fukushima, although, again, lots of people about whom we couldn't care less died from seawater. Unless they the radiation exposed people were killed instantly, the DALYs would be different even if five radiation exposed people died tomorrow, since it is ten years after the explosion at the nuclear reactors were destroyed by a natural disaster. If 20 years from now, radiation exposed people, unlike former President Carter, got cancer and were disabled by it, the DALYs would also be different than they would be for the 12 people injured in the trichlorosilane explosion.

The world is risky, which is why everyone, me included, has a 100% chance of dying. But the things we buy and the lives we live affect how long other people will live healthy lives, and we should do our best, if we are ethical, we will do our best to minimize - we cannot eliminate - the risks with which we burden our fellow human beings.

I recently had a CAT scan, involving a high burst of radiation. I'm an old, cynical man, embittered by the head up the ass stupidity of people like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tucker Carlson and their fellow trust fund kids, and in fact, my own dependence on my American life style which, to quote Joni Mitchell, "brings me things I really can't give up just yet."

Being old, I don't have many DALYs left to give if my CAT scan, designed to monitor my health, kills me by inducing cancer. I guess Jimmy Carter, who was exposed to large amounts of radiation as a young man, made the same calculation when he had radiation treatments for the brain tumor he developed as a very old man. I accepted the lower risk to understand and address a higher possible higher risk. I don't have many DALYs left to give, but as cynical as I am, I do have fucks left to give. I will never give up caring about the future, even if the future will not contain me.

This involves something called "ethics," even if my ethics do not include being civil to people who don't deserve civility.

We are screwing future generations with our lifestyle, which for many people, involves announcing that "nuclear power is too dangerous" as being something we know all about because we put solar cells on our suburban roofs and as a result are collecting subsidies and saving money. We are mining all the world's best ores chasing after a so called "renewable energy" nirvana that did not come, is not here, and won't come. We are living in fear of something that most of us, myself excluded since I have made the effort to understand it, are incompetent to understand, nuclear energy.

From Madam Curie: I rather like this quote.

Nuclear energy is not risk free, nor does it need to be risk free to vastly superior to everything else. The tautology I often repeat is that "To be vastly superior to everything else, nuclear energy only needs to be superior to everything else, which it is."

Opposing nuclear energy is thus in my unshakable view is as immoral as if Robert F. Kennedy Jr., idiot trust fund kid, would be marching along the banks of the White Nile as a "river keeper" in Uganda announcing polio vaccines were "too dangerous."

Our lifestyle...

Waiting endlessly, with all kinds of tiresome hype, for solar energy to save us, an affectation little different than an ancient Sumerian praying to some invented Sun God to save him, is entrenching the use of dangerous fossil fuels, the use of which is growing, not falling despite half a century of cheering for how solar energy would save us.

It hasn't saved us; it isn't saving us; it won't save us, and it has done nothing, since it is ineffective at addressing climate change, other than to entrench the use of dangerous fossil fuels, notably dangerous natural gas.

Our lifestyle:

It is clear that air pollution kills people in vast numbers, numbers exceeding those killed by the Covid virus. We pay attention to the virus, but not to air pollution, and now we are being forced, kicking and screaming and whining to confront the death toll associated with climate change. Deaths from heat exposure are not new of course, deaths at the outset of this anti-nuke century were discussed previously:

The 2003 European heatwave is said to have killed 70,000 people, upon analysis.

Death toll exceeded 70,000 in Europe during the summer of 2003 (Plus de 70 000 décès en Europe au cours de l'été 2003) (Robine et al Comptes Rendus Biologies Volume 331, Issue 2, February 2008, Pages 171-178.)

We couldn't care less.

Fukushima...

Maybe we'll care now, with forests all around the world in flames because of excessive heat, and people dying when the evaporation of sweat can't save them from extreme temperatures. I can't say.

Ignorance kills, but ignorance persists.

Our lifestyle...

From the introductory text of the paper cited at the outset, which is open sourced:

The social cost of carbon (SCC) is arguably the single most important concept in the economics of climate change1. It represents the marginal social damage from emitting one metric ton of carbon dioxide-equivalent at a certain point in time2. According to standard economic theory, it represents the price that should be put on carbon dioxide to reduce emissions to socially optimal levels along the optimal emissions trajectory3. The SCC has been highly influential in informing climate policy. For example, regulations with benefits totaling over $1 trillion in the United States have used the SCC in their economic analysis1. The SCC is commonly estimated using climate-economy integrated assessment models (IAMs), which synthesize the state of scientific knowledge to inform policy4,5. Climate-economy IAMs that produce an SCC also project the optimal path of future emissions by comparing climate damages with the cost of reducing emissions.

Despite the theoretical and policy importance of the SCC, many commentaries have argued that current estimates of the SCC remain inadequate5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12. One major line of criticism is that IAMs do not represent the latest scientific understanding of climate impacts. Although substantial advances in climate impact research have been made in recent years, IAMs are still omitting a significant portion of likely damages13,14. Another major line of criticism is that a wide variety of climate damages—sea level rise, extreme weather, the direct effects of heat on productivity, agricultural impacts, and many more—must be monetized and summarized into a single number, and the relative contribution of these damages is often unclear11,13,15. In addition, the magnitude of climate damages is sensitive to subjective choices around the monetization of non-market damages, and, since damages occur over long timescales, the discount rate at which future damage is converted into present value5,10,11,15.

One source of climate damages not updated to the latest scientific understanding in IAMs is the effect of climate change on human mortality. A 2017 National Academy of Sciences report specifically mentioned mortality as a damage source that could be immediately updated in IAMs5. A large body of literature suggests that climate change is likely to have a significant effect on temperature-related mortality16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56. A Lancet report concluded that “Climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century”16. Yet, climate-mortality damages are currently limited in the most widely used IAMs...

A graphic from the paper, reflecting the deaths caused, per capita, by the lifestyles of people in various countries, including that so called "renewable energy" nirvana, Germany, and of course, the US, "us:"



The caption:

Average lifetime emissions are calculated as 2017 carbon dioxide emissions production per capita multiplied by 2017 life expectancy at birth. The error bars show the low (90th percentile) mortality estimates (see “Methods” section for more details on uncertainty). A The 2020 MCC in the baseline emissions scenario is 2.26?×?10?4 excess deaths per metric ton of 2020 emissions in the central estimate. This implies that the lifetime emissions of an average American (1,276 metric tons) causes 0.29 excess deaths in expectation if all added in 2020, the lifetime emissions of an average Indian (127 metric tons) causes 0.03 excess deaths in expectation if all added in 2020, and the lifetime emissions of an average person in the world (347 metric tons) causes 0.08 excess deaths if all added in 2020. B The 2020 MCC in the optimal emissions scenario is 1.07?×?10?4 excess deaths per metric ton of 2020 emissions in the central estimate. This implies that the lifetime emissions of an average American (1,276 metric tons) causes 0.15 excess deaths in expectation if all added in 2020, the lifetime emissions of an average Indian (127 metric tons) causes 0.01 excess deaths in expectation if all added in 2020, and the lifetime emissions of an average person in the world (347 metric tons) causes 0.04 excess deaths if all added in 2020.

A lot of us here complain about China's emissions, because they didn't agree to remain impoverished so we could all prattle on about how "green" we are. Nevertheless, their position on the graphic is ethically superior to ours, even if they chose to pull themselves out of poverty by using the same tool to build their industrial infrastructure that we historically used to produce ours: Burning coal.

Please don't deign to tell me about the solar cells on your suburban roof if you have them. Don't tell me about your solar powered electric car. Just as we, collectively, couldn't care less about 70,000 people killed by heat in Europe in 2003, and people dying this year from heat, I. Couldn't. Care. Less. about your self-declared solar nobility.

I'm not, given my extreme anger at what we have done, inclined to respond civilly.

History will not forgive us, nor should it.

Have a wonderful Sunday.

[Backseat Driver]

1. I think you have provided a succinct argument

ummmm...about that incivility...easy does it--(I'm trying to patiently filter yours out). Man likely first discovered fire burns plant-based carbon long, long ago but also has in-born instincts for pro-creation or not (by disciplined choice) and survival. I have hope, also an element in ancient Pandora's box of tricks, that goes beyond the point where my and others' human energy gets changed whenever by whatever. The stress from anger and incivility is also likely to lessen what time you have to convince others of your argument. We mere humans need the skills "good" scientists bring to the table!

[hunter]

3. My flame suit was forged in the births of the internet and later the World Wide Web.

I've been a permanent cyberspace resident since the later 'seventies.

I was present at the creation of 2BSD.

My worst internet experiences were all fairly mild compared to my middle and high school "Real World" experiences as a kid called queerbait. Occasional harsh words on a computer terminal didn't hurt me nearly so much as bloody beatings. I quit high school to avoid the beatings.

Buckaroo Banzai got this right.

But damn, do I understand the anger.

Humanity is totally fucked in every orifice and the murdered mutilated corpse of our brand new world civilization thrown into a ditch if we can't quit fossil fuels.

I used to be a radical antinuclear activist.

I'm not anymore.

I hope you understand...

[NNadir]

4. I have advanced this argument for decades now, and...

...as the "shit hits the fan" as they say, after having been subject, over the decades, to the kind of abuse that might have been launched by "why don't we just inject bleach" boy, as a result, it's rather difficult to engage in patience with the preternaturally stupid.

The voice with which I address the piddling objections to nuclear energy is exactly equivalent to the voice many people here use to address to anti-vax types.

Anti-nukes and antivax people both kill and injure in the same way. They raise anecdotal and rare events to the level of everyday events in order to justify their irrational fears of subjects about which they are completely ignorant.

There is an argument, to which I object, that we need to coddle ignorance and be nice to the ignorant in order to convince them to educate themselves. Long experience teaches they won't do it. Over the years I've had thousands of arguments addressed to me in which I've related a FACT, only to be told, "I don't care about your facts because you're not nice!"

Should I fall on my knees and beg people to think clearly?

What would happen if we begged Trump to think on our knees? He absolutely loves his ignorance and is proud of it. So it is with antinukes.

I'm an old man. My life is winding down. I am ashamed that my generation, from which so much ignorance has been spewed despite amazing amounts of information being available, is leaving a burned world.

I have done what I could, and in a sense, am still doing what I can. But I cannot plead with ignorance to dissolve itself. My post is full of facts. If people reject the facts because I'm tired of being asked to kiss their asses and say so, it says exactly who they are and what they're about.

History will not forgive us nor should it.

[eppur_se_muova]

2. Interesting (if grim) paper, and fascinating info about Carter's experience. nt

[John ONeill]

5. Thank you

for the information on pancreatic cancer. My dad died of it when he was 69, and I'm now 66. I'd never heard of it before he was diagnosed - I suspected he might have hepatitis, because he looked a bit yellow, but it was the tumour blocking his bile duct.
I've been conducting a long running net war on 'Skeptical Science' climate website about whether nuclear is dangerous, expensive, or necessary. I keep things polite, to avoid getting slung off the site, but I suspect only me and the resident defender against nuclear shills bother reading it.

[NNadir]

6. Well, it's important to keep in mind, that although she ultimately died of pancreatic cancer...

...Lillian Carter did live to be 85 years old, I believe outliving all of her children save the former President.

I do not know enough about the etiology of pancreatic cancer to say whether the L16R mutation in the CDKN2A-p16 protein is a necessary cause of it; it seems likely one could get it from other causes.

If in fact, your father did have this mutation, assuming that he was heterozygous, and your mother didn't, you would only have a 50% chance of inheriting the L16R mutation. It does seem that the Carter family had two heterozygous parents, Jimmy senior and Lillian, and I would guess that Ruth, who died first, would be the 1 in 4 who was homozygous for the cancer gene, and that Billy and Gloria were heterozygous, and that Jimmy was the 1 in 4 who was completely recessive. Of course, it doesn't have to be this way; there was a probability that all of them could have been either homozygous L16R or all L16L (1 in 256 either way), but their family history does encompass the most probable outcome.

I would advise to be aware of the risks; don't obsess, but keep them in mind. I have outlived both my parents considering the age at which they died, and I count that as pretty good.

I have always thought that the worst energy decision of the 20th century was Jimmy Carter's cancellation of reprocessing as a "moral example," but on reflection, the way it played out in spite of the bad reasoning behind it, it was probably for the best.

An American nuclear recycling plant under construction in the 1970's and 1980's would almost certainly have been a Purex plant which would have had enough cause for the dumb-assed anti-nukes to engage in paroxysms of very dangerous selective attention relating to danger, much as they have done at Sellafield and La Hague, both plants having nonetheless saved lives.

The best thing President Carter did for nuclear energy was to live a long, and frankly magnificent life. He had flaws, but as a human being, he was one of our country's finest moral examples, poor decisions on nuclear energy notwithstanding.

Within 8 years of his Presidency, the Democratic Party put up an Ed Markey kind of anti-nuke, two years after Chernobyl. By this time I had personally changed my mind on nuclear energy from anti-nuke to pro-nuke and although I voted for Dukakis, it was painful to do so.

The real worst decision in energy in the 20th century was cancellation of the IFR, not because I think that sodium cooled fast reactors are even remotely close to being the best option for the fast spectrum, but because the IFR recycling chemistry was innovative and vastly superior to Purex. And...although I'm not a FLIBE kind of guy...the reprocessing of molten salts was also superior to Purex.

I've worked out to satisfaction of my own mind anyway - I'm dumping these ideas on my son before I die (and hopefully will live long enough to complete it) - a system of fuel reprocessing that contains both, with a healthy dollop of membrane driven type separations.

My generation - your generation - grew up under the specter of nuclear war MAD (mutually assured destruction) school yard testosterone driven puerile threats, and we thus refused to acknowledge that what is true, that the world cannot survive without nuclear energy. Many of us - certainly not me, certainly not you - focused on the small risk of wholesale death at the expense of the very large, and rapidly growing risk of vast death and destruction as a result of climate change, and of course, deaths from chemical air pollution.

Although Al Gore was a "renewables will save us" kind of guy, by bringing the very real issue of climate change to the public eye, he did nuclear energy a service as well. Reality has a way of penetrating into serious issues, and it very true that without nuclear energy as the primary source of energy - I would argue, except for special cases the only source of primary energy - there is no hope, zero probability, of saving what's still left to save.

Thanks for your comments.

Be well.