Lethal Heating: 07/04/17

04/07/2017

Climate Change Is Harming The Health Of Australians

Al Jazeera - Nick Watts*

And it will continue to harm tomorrow and well in to the future.

An Aurizon coal train travels through the countryside in Muswellbrook, north of Sydney [Jason Reed/Reuters]

During the paralysing heatwave of January 2014, Ambulance Victoria, the pre-hospital emergency care provider for Melbourne and rural Victoria state, could barely keep up with demand. Emergency dispatches in the region were up 25 percent above average, as heat-related disease in the metro area spiked five times above normal levels.
After temperatures finally dropped, following the hottest four-day span in Victoria's history, the state government estimated an additional 167 deaths as a result of the heatwave. It would be reasonable to assume these were conservative figures.
Welcome to a warmer Australia.
Over the past half-century, average temperatures across the continent have steadily increased, bringing more frequent heat waves that are longer and hotter than any in recorded history. Such prolonged heat waves are causing heightened rates of dehydration, heat exhaustion, and heatstroke, and worsening existing health conditions like heart disease, and potentially even acute kidney injury. Tragically, children and the elderly are most vulnerable. While human health is the hardest hit by climate change, its impacts are far-reaching, with small and large businesses alike under threat.

In the short term, dirty air makes it harder for a child's lungs to develop, and can contribute to stroke and heart attack later in life.

The effects of climate change aren't unique to Australia, but it does present a unique set of challenges there. Indeed, no country is immune, with climate change threatening to overwhelm the basic health and government services we depend on. The UK government's 2017 national Climate Change Risk Assessment identified a number of "high-risk" priorities, including the infrastructure damage and health impacts expected from flooding and coastal erosion; and again, the effect of rising temperatures on the public's health.
In response to this, many world leaders, have finally woken up to these threats. The Paris Agreement ushered in a new era of international climate cooperation, and even as the United States, the world's largest historical emitter, pulled out of the deal, other economic powerhouses have reaffirmed their commitments to accelerate climate change mitigation. Last year, the UK government pledged to phase out coal-fired power by 2025 and are on track to deliver on this.
Australia, unfortunately, has been slow to act on the reduction of climate warming pollutants and on better preparing the health community to deal with its impacts. Instead, the federal government has worked to strengthen its ties and investments in the coal industry, leaving the health and medical community scrambling to catch up to their international counterparts in addressing climate change and health.
However, a few days ago marked a turning point. Australia has taken an enormous step forward, as a coalition of the country's leading health experts and organisations joined federal parliamentarians in launching a new Framework for a National Strategy on Climate, Health and Well-being for the country.
The Framework provides a roadmap to help policymakers and health authorities address and prepare for the real and present dangers that climate change poses to public health.
It cannot come soon enough.
Across the world, the burning of fossil fuels is harming our health. In the short term, dirty air makes it harder for a child's lungs to develop, and can contribute to stroke and heart attack later in life. Through climate change, the most vulnerable and least prepared in society are most at risk.
Recognising the knowledge gap is one thing, but now the government must follow through and turn these strategic plans into tangible actions. If policymakers heed the advice and tap into the extensive expertise of the health community, Australians will be better prepared, and safer, when the next bushfire threatens a country town or the next heat wave hits.

*Dr Nick Watts is a fellow at University College London's Institute for Global Health. He is the executive director of the Lancet Countdown: Tracking Progress on Health and Climate Change, an independent and multi-disciplinary research collaboration between academic centres around the world at UCL.

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Vulnerable ‘Chokepoints’ Threaten Global Food Supply, Warns Report

The Guardian - Damian Carrington

Fourteen critical bottlenecks, from roads to ports to shipping lanes, are increasingly at risk from climate change, say analysts

A map of global marine traffic on 26 June 2017 at 15.30 GMT. Photograph: Marine Traffic

Increasingly vulnerable “chokepoints” are threatening the security of the global food supply, according to a new report. It identifies 14 critical locations, including the Suez canal, Black Sea ports and Brazil’s road network, almost all of which are already hit by frequent disruptions.
With climate change bringing more incidents of extreme weather, analysts at the Chatham House thinktank warn that the risk of a major disruption is growing but that little is being done to tackle the problem. Food supply interruptions in the past have caused huge spikes in prices which can spark major conflicts.
The chokepoints identified are locations through which exceptional amounts of the global food trade pass. More than half of the globe’s staple crop exports – wheat, maize, rice and soybean – have to travel along inland routes to a small number of key ports in the US, Brazil and the Black Sea. On top of this, more than half of these crops – and more than half of fertilisers – transit through at least one of the maritime chokepoints identified.

The global food trade depends on 14 critical ‘chokepoints’, almost all of which are at risk of increasing disruption

Guardian graphic | Source: Chatham House

“We are talking about a huge share of global supply that could be delayed or stopped for a significant period of time,” said Laura Wellesley, one of the authors of the Chatham House report. “What is concerning is that, with climate change, we are very likely to see one or more of these chokepoint disruptions coincide with a harvest failure, and that’s when things start to get serious.”
The chokepoints are already suffering repeated disruptions, the report found. US inland waterways and railways, which carry 30% of the world’s maize and soy, were hit by flooding that halted traffic in 2016 and a 2012 heatwave that kinked rail lines and caused derailments.
The Panama canal has been hampered by drought, while the Suez canal has been closed by sandstorms and threatened by attempted terrorist bomb attacks. Brazil’s muddy roads are often closed by heavy rain, with 3,000 trucks stranded earlier in 2017, while its vital southern ports have been closed by storms and floods. The only chokepoint that has not recently been disrupted is the Straits of Gibraltar, which connects the Mediterranean with the Atlantic.
The Middle East and North Africa region is particularly vulnerable, the report found, because it has the highest dependency on food imports in the world and is encircled by maritime bottlenecks. It also depends heavily on wheat imports from the Black Sea.

Grain is loaded into a ship’s granary, in Mariupol, Ukraine. Photograph: Oleksandr Khmelevskiy/Alamy

In 2010, a severe heatwave in Russia badly hit the huge grain harvest, leading the government to impose an export ban. As a result, prices spiked in 2011 and this was a significant factor in the Arab Spring conflicts. Other factors were important too, said Wellesley, but she said: “At the start, it was about the price of bread.”
The risks posed by the chokepoints is rising as the international trade in food is growing but also because of global warming, according to the report. It says climate change is bringing more storms, droughts and heatwaves which can block chokepoints and also damage already ageing infrastructure. But it is also likely to fuel armed conflicts, which can also shut down the bottlenecks.
Other countries especially at risk from disruption are poorer nations reliant on imports such as Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Sudan, as well as richer nations like Japan and South Korea, according to the report.
China is also a major importer but it has done the most to mitigate its exposure to chokepoint risk, the report found. It has diversified its supply routes, for example building a railway across South America to lessen reliance on the Panama canal. Chinese companies also own and operate ports around the world.
The report recommends increased global cooperation to plan for food supply crises and more investment in crucial infrastructure. Wellesley said: “The straits of Hormuz [which Iran has threatened to close] is a really interesting example of where the energy sector is sitting up and taking notice – the food sector should be doing the same. Those same countries that rely on Hormuz to export their oil rely almost entirely on the same strait for their food supply.”

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Hawking Says Trump's Climate Stance Could Damage Earth

BBC - Pallab Ghosh

Stephen Hawking says that US President Donald Trump's decision to pull out of the Paris climate agreement could lead to irreversible climate change.

Prof Hawking said the action could put Earth onto a path that turns it into a hothouse planet like Venus.
He also feared aggression was "inbuilt" in humans and that our best hope of survival was to live on other planets.
The Cambridge professor spoke exclusively to BBC News to coincide with his 75th birthday celebrations.
Arguably the world's most famous scientist, Prof Hawking has had motor neurone disease for most of his adult life. It has impaired his movement and ability to speak.
Yet through it all, he emerged as one of the greatest minds of our time. His theories on black holes and the origin of the Universe have transformed our understanding of the cosmos.
Prof Hawking has also inspired generations to study science. But through his media appearances what has been most impressive of all has been his humanity.

'Great danger'
His main concern during his latest interview was the future of our species. A particular worry was President Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement to reduce CO2 levels.
"We are close to the tipping point where global warming becomes irreversible. Trump's action could push the Earth over the brink, to become like Venus, with a temperature of two hundred and fifty degrees, and raining sulphuric acid," he told BBC News.
"Climate change is one of the great dangers we face, and it's one we can prevent if we act now. By denying the evidence for climate change, and pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement, Donald Trump will cause avoidable environmental damage to our beautiful planet, endangering the natural world, for us and our children."
The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) also highlights the potential risk of hitting climate tipping points as temperatures increase - though there are gaps in our knowledge of this topic.
In its Fifth Assessment Report, the IPCC authors wrote: "The precise levels of climate change sufficient to trigger tipping points (thresholds for abrupt and irreversible change) remain uncertain, but the risk associated with crossing multiple tipping points in the Earth system or in interlinked human and natural systems increases with rising temperature."
When asked whether he felt we would ever solve our environmental problems and resolve human conflicts, Prof Hawking was pessimistic, saying that he thought our days on Earth were numbered.
"I fear evolution has inbuilt greed and aggression to the human genome. There is no sign of conflict lessening, and the development of militarised technology and weapons of mass destruction could make that disastrous. The best hope for the survival of the human race might be independent colonies in space."
And on Brexit, he feared UK research would be irreparably damaged.
"Science is a cooperative effort, so the impact will be wholly bad, and will leave British science isolated and inward looking".
I asked him what he would like his legacy to be.
"I never expected to reach 75, so I feel very fortunate to be able to reflect on my legacy. I think my greatest achievement, will be my discovery that black holes are not entirely black."
"Quantum effects cause them to glow like hot bodies with a temperature that is lower, the larger the black hole. This result was completely unexpected, and showed there is a deep relationship between gravity and thermodynamics. I think this will be key, to understanding how paradoxes between quantum mechanics and general relativity can be resolved."
When asked if money or practicality were no object, what his dream present would be, he said it would be a cure for motor neurone disease - or at least a treatment that halted its progression.
"When I was diagnosed at 21, I was told it would kill me in two or three years. Now, 54 years later, albeit weaker and in a wheelchair, I'm still working and producing scientific papers. But it's been a great struggle, which I have got through only with a lot of help from my family, colleagues, and friends."

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