[ippisl]

Life expectancy of a white male at 20 yrs was 62.1 in 1900 , 76.7 in 2004[1]. that's 14.5 years. And that's under somewhat harsher health conditions: more stress, bad diets, pollution and chemicals.

And don't forget what medicine for quality of life. for example the pill.

Other changes that happened in that time span: personal cars, affordable international travel, home air-conditioning, home cleaning automation, the microwave, pre cooked food,walmart prices.

[1]http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005140.html

[rayiner]

The reason I looked at life expectancy at 65 is that it tells you how far medicine has come at addressing the fundamental biological limits on life--the answer is not very far. The premise behind the "technology will solve our climate change problem" is exactly that sort of science that will let us overcome what we now perceive as fundamental limits. It's breaking the sound barrier, not moderate improvements in life expectancy through better treatment of contagious diseases.

The other examples you mentioned don't come anywhere near the sorts of technologies that are necessary, and also happened quite long ago. The personal car was well on its way by 1910--almost a million cars on the road by 1912. The first regular international airline service was in 1919. Buildings were air conditioned starting in the 1920's. Frozen food dates to 1929. There have been dramatic in making these advancements cheaper since then, but they were already quite prevalent more than 80 years ago.

The time scale of global warming projections are not hundreds of years from now. In that time scale I can imagine revolutions in energy technology. 2050 is only 38 years away. For reference, NTT rolled out the first cell network in Japan about 33 years ago. The Xerox Alto came out 39 years ago, with most of the basic elements of modern GUI's: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/10/Alto_Neptune_F...

[sbmassey]

Are you seriously suggesting that health conditions are worse now than in 1900?

[ippisl]

I meant that if we lived in the environment of 1900(most people living in villages in the u.s.?) and use current health and sanitation technologies , we would live even longer.