New climate forcings discovered: Girls Education, Pill, changes weather

Funny how the answer to everything always turns out to be a pet lefty cause?

TO STOP CLIMATE CHANGE, EDUCATE GIRLS AND GIVE THEM BIRTH CONTROL

Robyn George Andrews has a paradigm shaker: if we could just keep girls in school, and give them contraception — droughts, floods and nasty storms will go away. I wonder if condoms are better than the pill for climate control?

Andrews seems to think that if we could somehow just sneak teachers with emergency girls schools into Rwanda et al, the atmosphere on the Third Rock will right itself and achieve the stable ideal weather that it never had. Too bad about the boys though. As it happens, in Rwanda, they’re slightly more likely to miss out on school than girls are (88% of boys, versus 90% of girls attend primary school). If we could just fix that gender bias…

Nevermind about Rule of Law, endemic crime and corruption, and a complete lack of infrastructure, if the girls had studied The Sociology of Myley Cyrus (at Skidmore) they’d be too busy tweeting about twerking to overpopulate the planet and generate hot spots and cold holes in the atmosphere.

But Andrews seems to have missed the real and devastating implications of female education

On Earth, the more we educate women, the higher our emissions are. I graphed UNDP and World Bank statistics, and the trend is stark:

Carbon emissions per capita, Years of Female Education. Graph. UNDP, World Bank.

There’s no hope for Earth if we keep educating women.

 

Give women more than five years schooling, and the planet is facing a crisis. It’s simply impossible to keep per capita emissions below 2 Mt.

Perhaps someone had better let Andrews know, or maybe he does, (he is really a satirist, right?)

Andrews was unashamedly bowled over by a Project Drawdown. That group thought up 80 possible ways to save the world and managed to put a random number ranking beside each one.

Ranked in order of carbon emissions locked down by 2050, the usual suspects made the list. A moderate expansion of solar farms (number 8), onshore wind turbines (number 2), and nuclear power (number 20) would all save tens of billions of tons of equivalent carbon dioxide emissions. Increasing the number of people on plant-rich diets (number 4) and using electric vehicles (number 26) are effective carbon-cutting measures often proposed by climate hawks, and rightly so. The top spot went to managing refrigerants like HFCs, which are incredibly effective at trapping heat within our atmosphere.

There are 19 things above nuclear power? Like solar farms? Vegetarian diets?

He is effusive and passionate, like a very literate twelve-year-old:

But two lesser-known solutions also made this most practical of lists: the education of girls (number 6) and family planning (number 7). This is a stunning revelation, …

The link between the education of girls and a smaller carbon footprint isn’t as intuitively obvious as, say, phasing out fossil fuels. But dig a little deeper, and the evidence is overwhelming.

Though someone can take one correlation and run a bit far:

It’s clear that getting more girls into school, and giving them a quality education, has a series of profound, cascading effects: reduced incidence of disease, higher life expectancies, more economic prosperity, fewer forced marriages, and fewer children.

If only holding her chemistry book could stop her getting cholera, or being kidnapped.

It’s farcical that this isn’t forming a major part of the debate over climate change mitigation. It’s not entirely clear why this is the case, but I’d suspect that regressive societal attitudes,…

Farcical I tell you! Those regressives who think there is more than one variable controlling the climate, or our culture.

8.6 out of 10 based on 53 ratings

32 comments to New climate forcings discovered: Girls Education, Pill, changes weather

  • #
    DMA

    Jo
    Your graph tells the story. It is the presence of abundant, affordable, reliable energy that solves the problems of poverty. We have the answer and means to nearly eradicate the poverty that prevents better education. If CO2 needs to increase to achieve this goal we should weigh the price it will have against the benefits. In my analysis there is no evidence that increased CO2 from fossil fuels has a measurable negative effect on human well being or the environment.

    200

    • #
      Geoff

      CO2 can be used with hydrogen to make methane.
      Hydrogen can be made at about 10% of the current cost using new technology.
      Its less expensive to make methane using hydrogen and CO2 than drilling for methane. The problem is a system whereby CO2 is captured. The simplest capture method is to oxidize carbon from coal, methane or oil, in an oxygen rich CO2 environment like a GE gas turbine.

      All of the above is proven.

      However, the Climate scam is about the money and who gets it. Solving problems (even when they do not exist) does not help the scammers.

      20

  • #
    sunsettommy

    Beginning to wonder if CO2 the super Molecule also created the Milky Way Galaxy too, since it created everything in it, including liberals.

    111

  • #

    The problem with the contraception argument is that it is ultimately wrong. People stop having so many children a generation or two after the infant mortality rate drops. In richer economies, the birth rate drops when children change from being a necessity (to do the chores when young and to look after the parents in old age) to a luxury. That is a permanent (but I would claim usually rewarding) burden.

    130

    • #
      diogenese2

      Kevin, another way of putting it is that bearing and raising of children makes a huge demand on the productivity of the parents. If their economic productivity is very low (at subsidance level) then the economic cost is much less. Whereas if you are a University Don with a six figure salary, the cost is huge. Hence the distribution that Jo highlights. Unquestionably through education and empowerment of women the end of grinding poverty is in sight. Already the global fertility is 2.5 per woman. Replacement rate is 2.1 . The greatest of the two drivers of the global warming narrative is almost defunct. The second is resource depletion. This is also receding.

      130

    • #
      sophocles

      Birth rate drops when cost of shelter inflates beyond being affordable on a single income.
      The rest isn’t rocket science.

      10

  • #
    Roy Hogue

    The pill vs. condoms. I never in my wildest dream thought I would see that discussion in connection with climate change.

    However, I think anyone who has ever used condoms would tell you they are not better than any other method for several reasons I won’t mention.

    But in the end, the discussion is fruitless and a waste of time. The men and women eventually get together and do what comes naturally. If it’s not while they’re still called girls and boys then it’s a little later but one way or the other it happens.

    If only a little forethought got put into all this, just think of how much better off the whole world would be. But ignorance and stupidity reign supreme.

    91

    • #
      Graeme No.3

      Roy Hogue:

      Not so. I propose storing CO2 in condoms thus saving us from the predicted horrors of Global Warming©.
      Thus CO2 could be segregated and stored until future technology finds a use for it.
      All I need is a few million to set up a laboratory and staff to test the idea, and possibly develop a gas impermeable condom (which would be coloured green).
      A few million a year for 35 years should be enough, and would hardly add to the huge amount being wasted on the scam. Then all I would need is an an acronym for the process – PPR preventing premature release?

      90

      • #
        Roy Hogue

        Graeme,

        When your grant comes in give me a call. I’m sure I can think of some creative ways to, shall we say, advance you research.

        I’ll bet we could make millions and probably set a world record for red thumbs while doing it since there are always those disapproving souls around when it come to condoms and everything that goes with them. I’ve already got one red one just for starters.

        By the way, that’s not such a bad idea considering that these warmers think of CO2 as a disease and condoms are sold as a disease prevention measure, in fact pushed as such, at least here in the states.

        50

        • #
          sophocles

          Hey! You could use that sequestered CO2 to do something really exciting!
          You could grow plants!

          As for the Red Thumb: it’s just a Drive By. Everyone gets an RT from that RT-er.

          10

    • #
      Rod Stuart

      I propose to construct a VLC (very large condom) for the purpose of controlling those coronal mass ejaculations they are talking about.
      A VLC could be guided into place by one of those musky smelling SpaceX Falcon Heavies, and slipped over the sun without its even noticing.
      Enron Musk will require a few squillion of course, and even the loose change would satisfy me. After all, it’s only money. Someone else’s.

      70

  • #
    TdeF

    Surely this would be much more effective than 350,000 giant windmills which have done nothing for CO2 levels.

    100

    • #
      Tdef

      Also the exploding population of China produces more CO2 from exhaling people than Australia’s entire industrial output.

      Forget coal. People are the problem! Get rid of the people and the world will be saved. For whom? Ah. The Greens.

      160

      • #
        diogenese2

        Tdef; the PRC current exploding below replacement rate (2.1). That of Australia is 1.77, you randy buggers!

        40

      • #
        sophocles

        TdeF said:

        Get rid of the people and the world will be saved.

        That’s what they’re trying to do!
        World population is nearly 8 billion. The planet is going to get speed wobbles and fall over. It’s overpopulated!

        Actually, 8 bil really isn’t very much. All the urban population problems are caused by flawed land tenure and economic strategies. Easily fixed but impossible.

        10

    • #
      joseph

      “It’s not what windmills can do for CO2 levels, but what CO2 levels can do for windmills”.

      140

  • #
    el gordo

    Not wishing to make too much of it, but when Beijing scrapped the one child policy there was a boost in coal use. This must be indicative of something.

    https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/china-production-and-consumption-of-coal-to-20152.png

    30

    • #
      el gordo

      To clarify, it wasn’t scrapped until 2016, but they had previously introduced a fudge factor.

      ‘In 2007, 36% of China’s population was subject to a strict one-child restriction, with an additional 56% being allowed to have a second child if the first child was a girl.’ wiki

      40

    • #
      Graeme No.3

      el gordo:

      Obviously “baby, light my fire” doesn’t translate that well into Chinese.

      20

  • #
    Ruairi

    All school girls had better watch out,
    When the Climate Patrol is about,
    In case they might marry,
    Some Tom, Dick or Harry,
    Causing climate-change, storm, flood and drought.

    210

  • #
    robert rosicka

    Mock as much as you want , ridicule as you will but if Mrs and Mr Flannery and Mr and Mrs Mann had of practised birth control and quite a few others especially from BOM the temperature would be cooler and Co2 levels would be less right now !

    130

  • #
    AndyG55

    I guess you could say that some girls just can’t help being HOT !!

    Particularly a good looking , well-educated one, like …. 😳

    60

  • #

    Number one way to save the world is to abolish all academic courses with the word “Studies” in their title. Number two way is to ignore anyone with a top-down theory of how to save the world. Number three way is to turn off all the tanning lamps at Bilderberg and Davos so we can clearly distinguish the Undead from the living.

    World saved!

    110

  • #
    Tom

    Your graph clearly shows the solution – get rid of all females and the problem is solved! It’s surely obvious from the data, and what could possibly go wrong with this approach?

    [This is another one for which I can see no reason for it’s getting caught in moderation. But since it did get caught I’ll have the chance to ask, did you consider the plight of your hostess on this site, one Joanne Nova, winner of best science blog awards and the preeminent force in the battle against the global warming alarm and most definitely female?] AZ

    10

    • #
      Tom

      Just to be clear, I was trying to make a lame joke to highlight the absurdity of Th

      20

    • #
      sophocles

      Tom, another solution is to tithe the men. Men are expendable. Women can then do as they like and run everything, with just a few men restricted to brothels and baby creation centres.

      Tithe: leave one in ten alive. (Opposite of decimate.)

      20

  • #
    pattoh

    A Light Bulb Moment!

    Now we know why that benevolent altruistic George Soros is sending so many boatloads to Europe – to lower the education statistics & save the planet!

    A Cunning Plan!

    40