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Obama Says Climate Change Is Harming Americans' Health
HughPickens.com writes: The Washington Post reports on new comments from President Obama, who says global warming isn't just affecting the weather — it's harming Americans' health. He has announced steps government and businesses will take to better understand and deal with the problem. Obama said hazards of the changing climate include wildfires sending more pollution into the air, allergy seasons growing longer, and rising cases of insect-borne diseases. "We've got to do better in protecting our vulnerable families," said Obama. "You can't cordon yourself off from air."
Speaking at Howard University Medical School, Obama announced commitments from Google, Microsoft and others to help the nation's health system prepare for a warmer, more erratic climate. Google has promised to donate 10 million hours of advanced computing time on new tools, including risk maps and early warnings for things like wildfires and oil flares using the Google Earth Engine platform, the White House said. Google's camera cars that gather photos for its "Street View" function will start measuring methane emissions and natural gas leaks in some cities this year. Microsoft's research arm will develop a prototype for drones that can collect large quantities of mosquitoes, then digitally analyze their genes and pathogens. The goal is to create a system that could provide early warnings about infectious diseases that could break out if climate change worsens.
Speaking at Howard University Medical School, Obama announced commitments from Google, Microsoft and others to help the nation's health system prepare for a warmer, more erratic climate. Google has promised to donate 10 million hours of advanced computing time on new tools, including risk maps and early warnings for things like wildfires and oil flares using the Google Earth Engine platform, the White House said. Google's camera cars that gather photos for its "Street View" function will start measuring methane emissions and natural gas leaks in some cities this year. Microsoft's research arm will develop a prototype for drones that can collect large quantities of mosquitoes, then digitally analyze their genes and pathogens. The goal is to create a system that could provide early warnings about infectious diseases that could break out if climate change worsens.
Maybe someone should tell the prez that the extent of wildfires is much less than pre-20th century levels
Is there nothing these people won't blame on Climate Change?
Life is dangerous! There are things out there that can kill you!
This is just one of Obama's (or any president for that matter, this sort of thing is hardly limited to him) attempts at pushing some sort of agenda. In this case, trying to get people to care about climate change.
Warning of the perils to the planet has gotten the president only so far; polls consistently show the public is skeptical that the steps Obama has taken to curb pollution are worth the cost to the economy. So Obama is aiming to put a spotlight on ways that climate change will have real impacts on the body, like more asthma attacks, allergic reactions, heat-related deaths and injuries from extreme weather.
If he can't scare you with tales of the oceans boiling off or Florida turning into (more of) a swamp, then he has to do something else. Think of the children!
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
i went there, and i'm an idiot.
Please use SEOChat.com and ChatButton.com so i can install viruses on your users' computers
I know Obama is trying to call people to action, and is pulling the "Think of the children" routine. However...
Making it a health risk is pushing it. And the climate deniers will point out to these dangers as proof the Climate Change is an invention of the liberals as a means to scare the nation so they can take away our rights.
Yea it sounds stupid to me too... But for climate change, you should keep your expectations on a reasonable prediction, because if it doesn't hold true, then they are going to get you.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Mosquitoes are not limited to warm climates, as anyone who has been to Alaska in the summer can confirm. If the government really wanted to do something about the illnesses these critters spread, they should re-authorize DDT. The "science" that led to the ban was junk, and tens of millions of humans have died needlessly because of malaria infestations which could have been prevented.
Nice to have a president with priorities towards the well being of the citizens of our country, current and future.
In a band? Use WheresTheGig for free.
First thought: Global warming is making allergies and asthma worse, yeah, because there's... more things growing...
Ok wait, how is that a bad thing, again?
(I have severe allergies and asthma. But I live in a time where medication for these conditions has never been more effective or had fewer side-effects. One pill in the morning, carry medications for emergencies, and I'm good. I'm not in a position to complain that the growing season is longer.)
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
But Obama only has another 20 months as President. Nothing is going to prove him wrong in that time, so he can say just about anything he wants, true or not. We live in a world of short news cycles, and even if he says this every day for the next year: as soon as it's out of the news, it's forgotten. There's simply no incentive for a politician to take any long-term stance that s/he has to stand behind.
I have to applaud the focus on adaptation over mitigation. These changes are happening or likely, now what can we do to adapt. The other response of trying to drastically cut CO2 emissions to avoid or reduce climate change lacks two of the most important pieces of information required to evaluate it. How much does our reduction of CO2 emission mitigate future change, and what is the reduced cost of adaptation? Without knowing those two pieces, the decision to reduce CO2 emissions to 'save future dollars' is a blind guess, and there are a lot of much, much better reasons to reduce dependency on oil from places like the ME.
I know someone is going to jump in and claim we DO know the impact of increasing/reducing our CO2 emissions in the future. I say that the current research papers confirm the opposite, even the IPCC's latest paper. We've done lots of modelling of temperature change, but have badly neglected the energy balance. You know, the actual energy in versus out of the atmosphere that is the ACTUAL greenhouse affect that CO2 functions on. Luckily we started measuring observations by satellite in the late 80s.The ERBS and CERES programs from NASA have given us direct measurements of trends in the overall energy balance at the edge of space. The most direct measurement of global warming that we can have. The summary from each program, has let us find a decade level average energy imbalance, and we've found it is in good or at least general agreement with energy levels measured via Ocean Heat Content observations.
Here's the important bit though. As the IPCC's most recent AR has observed, the satellite measurements show that for the duration of the CERES project, there has been NO TREND in the energy imbalance. The earlier ERBS data showed the same as well. Our satellite measurements have shown significant and very steady trends in energy balance cycling monthly, but the average over the years and decades we've measured is just a steady and consistent average neither shifting noticeably up or down. Meanwhile, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere over that same time have climbed like nobody's business. All our models and expectation for X degrees of warming for so much CO2 kinda hinges pretty heavy on CO2 pushing up the energy imbalance. If it's not, and observations suggest that. We may not need to be so worried as some of the panic ridden crowd wants. That said, we DO still have an annual energy imbalance adding energy to the planet, it just has been adding as much last year, as it did the year before, on back through to 2000. Even though in 2000 CO2 concentrations were lower, the imbalance just hasn't changed. We are thus facing increasing energy(general warming), but thus far our direct measurements can't detect the difference our increasing CO2 concentrations are making.
Before I get citation needed shoved down my throat, here's a peer reviewed journal article published in Geophysical Research Letters. It is comparing observed atmosphere energy imbalance to the CMIP5 model runs. It finds good agreement, but also makes the very notable observation that the energy imbalance trend is dominated by volcanic activity(ie NOT the CO2 levels that are higher than they've been in millenia). Full abstract:
Observational analyses of running 5 year ocean heat content trends (Ht) and net downward top of atmosphere radiation (N) are significantly correlated (r~0.6) from 1960 to 1999, but a spike in Ht in the early 2000s is likely spurious since it is inconsistent with estimates of N from both satellite observations and climate model simulations. Variations in N between 1960 and 2000 were dominated by volcanic eruptions and are well simulated by the ensemble mean of coupled models from the Fifth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). We find an observation-based reduction in N of 0.31±0.21Wm2 between 1999 and 2005 that potentially contributed to the recent warming slowdown, but the relative roles of external forcing and internal variability remain unclear. While present-day anomalies of N in
The late jazz critic Whitney Balliet wrote, "All first-rate criticism first defines what we are confronting."
With that in mind, perhaps the AGW alarmists would be willing to confront popular criticisms of their ideology, as opposed to making the usual straw man arguments.
"Climate Change Is Real. Too Bad Accurate Climate Models Aren’t." would be a good starting place.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Why should China care about California's citizens ? If you want them to make rapid change, you need to offer something in return.
If you're outside the united states, it may or may not be common knowledge but our news media at the behest of our corporate interests have invested a considerable amount of time and effort into insisting climate change is a "controversy" with no clear proof of existance or scientific concensus. So our scientific institutions embarked on a bold quest to insist upon the public that it is a big deal and is being caused by human activity. That didnt go so well, and after considerably more campaign investment and push from large corporations our congressmen and senators as well as random members of state legal communities such as district attorneys began to directly target researchers and agencies conducting research into climate change in a break neck attempt to keep anyone from knowing about this or attempting to understand it. Florida for example has an unspoken rule by the legislature that climate change isnt to be so much as used as a phrase in reports, or media events. people have lost their jobs for it and researchers have come under prosecution for it.
So Americans arent stupid about this, but we are easily influenced as our news agencies operate for-profit, and corporations know this. The important thing to remember is that this president, Barack Obama, is the first in a lineage of nearly a dozen to openly come out and say that Climate change is man-made, and is actually hurting people. He can do this partly because he cant run for another term, but also because its always been his position and for us, its kind of a big deal. Its hard to refute fox news or cnn, they'll always have their fanboys, but when the president says hes relying on NASA and science to make these statements, there arent many of us that have a problem with it.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Can we offer them California?
This space for rent, inquire within.
Because if you start exaggerating and making shit up, it makes people listen to you less. The whole "boy who cried wolf" thing. If you keep saying doom is coming and it never comes, well then people are going to quit listening to you even if you are right one time.
Also it leads people to question your legit, non-exaggerated points. I mean after all, if the problem you are talking about really is so bad, why the need to make shit up? Is it really so bad if you have to exaggerate what you say? If you exaggerated this thing, how do we know you aren't exaggerating more?
The best thing is to keep it truthful. No, people won't always be interested in listening or in doing what you ask, but that's life. If you want to have any credibility long term and have hope of being listened to, you need to be truthful. Let people truthfully know the problems they will face and show them when they are facing them. Ya, it'll probably have to get to be a bigger problem before people fix it, that is how humans tend to operate.
Actually, I make $75k/year and have a broad array of skills ranging from multiple IT disciplines to diplomatic, scientific, and psychiatric disciplines, so I'm definitely more qualified than politicians to comment on what climate scientists know.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Well, not bombing their country is a start. That's how America works, right?
Support my political activism on Patreon.
There's a moving picture going on and this conversation is focusing on 1 frame.
The EPA is currently wrapped up in litigation over their legal authority to regulate CO2 emissions. One of the current arguments being put forward by the coal industry lobby is that even if AGW is real, it isn't having any immediate and measurable impact on the health of Americans. If there's no health concerns, then there's no reason fro the EPA to regulate.
So the President goes out and makes a statement, backed up by multiple research papers (someone posted links above if you're interested in digging into them and debating their merit), that say that no, in fact, AGW/AGCC is having a direct impact on the health of Americans.
Out of context, it seems like an odd thing to go on the stump about, but in the context of the EPA/coal industry court battles, it makes sense as the feds are trying to ensure the EPA retains it's legal authority to regulate CO2.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Perhaps another way to say what he did is that communities and their populations have gradually adapted to their local environment by either infrastructure, or by natural "filtering" whereby those who couldn't tolerate local conditions moved elsewhere.
What climate change is doing is changing these "familiar" conditions and creating situations that didn't exist or were rarer before per given spot.
It seems you interpreted his speech as claiming the total "mass" of climate-related problems is increasing. Rather, I interpret it as saying the kinds of problems are being shuffled around from their "usual" spot, catching more unprepared. The total number of cards is roughly the same, but the deck is being shuffled.
Those used to dry weather may now have more floods. Those used to wet weather may now have more droughts. Those used to warm weather may now have more cold days. Those used to cool weather may now have more sweltering days. Etc.
Table-ized A.I.
"Most of California's problems are caused by California."
This. There are droughts, and periods with lots of rain. That's nature, and has diddly-squat to do with climate change.
As for the water problems: You do know that the Sacramento Valley is basically pretty arid, getting between 5 and 20 cm of rain per year. And yet, California has 2000 square kilometers of rice fields in this area, using 7 cubic kilometers of water per year for irrigation. Those are the back-of-the-envelope numbers I come up with based on the publicly available information. The almond groves are also reputed to use a whole lot of water, but I haven't run the number for them.
You can't solve the rainfall problems easily, but if you want to solve the water-availability problems, it's easy: let water be bought and soid like any other commodity. Raising rice in the desert while crying about a water shortage is just brain-dead stupid, and only possible because the cost of the water is kept artificially low by government regulations and subsidies.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
This may be the most relevant post in the thread. It all makes sense if you look at it this way.
Not that politicians have to make sense...
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Panic ensues. Among the bureaucrats, that is. It is beginning to look like carbon emissions and the resulting temperature rise are becoming uncoupled from economic activity. GNP is going up while emissions remain flat. Natural gas is replacing coal. The Chinese are getting fed up with smog in Beijing. Gas consumption is flat while people drive more and Big Oil can't keep the prices propped up. Etc, etc. And the big government looters have missed the bus. It has all been done by the free market. So the justification for Big Government programs is disappearing. And these people might have to go out and get real jobs.
Have gnu, will travel.
I know a bunch of people whose blood pressure skyrockets whenever climate change is mentioned...
At least when the science doesn't unambiguously support the position they've taken to make their constituents happy.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Congress, you know, the body that passes laws, has explicitly voted to prohibit the EPA from considering CO2 as a pollutant. What we have is an out of control power mad lawless bureaucracy.
This statement is mussing the tinfoil of the denialists and other right-wing nutjobs...I hope he does this some more! Trolololol! >:)
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Looking at my lake level data, my lake is 10.25" higher today than it was on this day last year. This has resulted in the death of countless vegetative organisms that used to enjoy a life of peace and harmony with nature near the former border of the lake.
We must do something about climate change before more life is needlessly lost!!!
He has hurt almost everyone in America far far worse than any environmental changes.
The more I learn about science, the more my faith in God increases.
More claptrap from this deceitful administrations.
No need to insist China do anything, they are most rapidly greening economy on earth. They installed 40GW of wind and solar last year. Their 5 year plan will install as much wind and solar as the rest of the world combined (unless India grows serious about their plan).
"Americans' worsening health"
can be added to http://whatreallyhappened.com/...
(Go to the link to find links supporting every item here)
A (Not Quite) Complete List Of Things Supposedly Caused By Global Warming
Acne , agricultural land increase , Afghan poppies destroyed , Africa devastated, Africa in conflict, African aid threatened, African summer frost , aggressive weeds , air pressure changes , airport malaria , Agulhas current , Alaska reshaped, moves , allergy season longer , alligators in the Thames , Alps melting , Amazon a desert , American dream end , amphibians breeding earlier (or not) , anaphylactic reactions to bee stings , ancient forests dramatically changed , animals head for the hills, animals shrink , Antarctic grass flourishes , Antarctic ice grows , Antarctic ice shrinks , Antarctic sea life at risk, anxiety treatment , algal blooms , archaeological sites threatened , Arab Spring , Arctic bogs melt , Arctic in bloom , Arctic ice free , Arctic ice melt faster , Arctic lakes disappear , Arctic tundra to burn , Arctic warming (not), Atlantic less salty , Atlantic more salty, atmospheric circulation modified , attack of the killer jellyfish , avalanches reduced , avalanches increased , Baghdad snow , Bahrain under water , bananas grow , barbarisation , beer shortage , beetle infestation , bet for $10,000, better beer, big melt faster, billion dollar research projects , billion homeless , billions face risk , billions of deaths , bird distributions change , bird loss accelerating , birds shrinking , bird strikes , bird visitors drop , birds confused , birds decline (Wales) , birds driven north , birds return early , bittern boom ends , blackbirds stop singing , blackbirds threatened , Black Hawk down , blood contaminated , blue mussels return , bluetongue , brain eating amoebae , brains shrink , bridge collapse (Minneapolis), Britain one big city , Britain Siberian , brothels struggle , brown Ireland , bubonic plague , budget increases , Buddhist temple threatened , building collapse , building season extension , bushfires , business opportunities , business risks, butterflies move north, camel deaths , cancer deaths in England,cannibalism, cannibalism again , caterpillar biomass shift, cave paintings threatened , childhood insomnia, Cholera , circumcision in decline , cirrus disappearance , civil unrest , cloud increase , coast beauty spots lost , cockroach migration, coffee threatened , cold climate creatures survive , cold spells (Australia) , cold wave (India) , computer models , conferences , conflict , conflict with Russia , consumers foot the bill , coral bleaching, coral fish suffer , coral reefs dying , coral reefs grow, coral reefs shrink , coral reefs twilight, Cabbage Shortage , cost of trillions , cougar attacks, crabgrass menace, cradle of civilisation threatened , creatures move uphill, crime increase , crocodile sex, crops devastated , crumbling roads, buildings and sewage systems , curriculum change , cyclones (Australia), danger to kid's health , Darfur , Dartford Warbler plague , death rate increase (US) , deaths to reach 6 million, Dengue hemorrhagic fever , depression , desert advance , desert retreat , destruction of the environment , disappearance of coastal cities, disasters , diseases move from animals to humans , diseases move north , dog disease , Dolomites collapse , dozen deadly diseases , drought, ducks and geese decline , dust bowl in the corn belt , early marriages , early spring , earlier pollen season , Earth biodiversity crisis , Earth dying , Earth even hotter , Earth light dimming , Earth lopsided, Earth melting , Earth morbid fever , Earth on fast track , Earth past point of no return , Earth slowing down , Earth spins faster, Earth to explode,Earth's poles shift, earth upside down , earthquakes , earthquakes redux , earthquakes redux 2 , Egypt revolt , El Niño intensification , end of the world as we know it , erosion , emerging infections, enceph
-Styopa
If finding natural gas leaks is important enough to get Google involved, then why am I paid so damned little? I've been doing natural gas leak surveys for nearly 39 years. Google may be able to cover more territory, but I'd bet I'm better than they are. Underground gas leaks don't kill the vegetation (or even discolor it) for a while after they start. I can find them BEFORE they go that long.
I've found tens of thousands of underground leaks and tens of thousands of above ground leaks, not to mention saving hundreds of lives along with preventing the accompanying property losses.
You'd think as important as that is, I'd be making well over 100K per year, but I'm far, far below that.
So where's my raise? Can I get a big Federal grant to pay me to do my job?
It may well be a health risk, but I can't imagine it's #1 or even a distant #2 or in the top 5 either. (My guess is nutrition, amount of physical activity and mental/emotional stress level are top 3, far above all others.) Since it's not a top factor and certainly not an easily fixable one, why mention it? It's wasting everyone's time, including ours as we are posting here as a consequence instead of doing something useful. :-)
Too bad the Supreme Court said the Clean Air Act authorizes the EPA to regulate CO2.
They couldn't get "Man made global warming" to stick with the junk science exposed on it. Then they thought they could fool people by changing it to just "Global warming", now they are calling it "climate change" It's all pushed by the same junk science and the same ultra rich that want your money by making you pay carbon credits/taxes to their "carbon credit bank". They are all just sounding gongs.... Hello Al Gore! We have your number mister criminal!
The Truth is a Virus!!!
Irregardless of the cause, the wildfires do pose health risks.
Those who have been lucky enough to avoid one may not understand how much smoke exposure is possible here. During a fire, the roads can be completely jammed, forcing people evacuating to be exposed to high levels of smoke for many hours. Significant amounts of smoke can go right through the air sealing on cars: a good respirator for every family member belongs in one's evacuation kit if one lives in a fire-prone area. After the fire, the smoke can stay in the air at lesser but still potentially dangerous levels for months after the fire.
Nobody really understands what health impacts these two different types of exposure will have, but for some people they could be serious. Just going to work means breathing potentially toxic air throughout the day for months at a time, since most workplaces will not have good air filtering (private residences can use air cleaners, which help quite a bit in my experience). This exposure can potentially cause long term lung damage.
To make things worse, the smoke toxins may interact in a non-linear manner with other airborne toxins present in many workplaces. The cumulative health effect may be considerably greater than the exposure to any single toxin would cause. The safety standards for exposure to things like asbestos (common in many older buildings) almost certainly underestimate the danger thresholds because the standards did not take into account having multiple toxins present in the air at the same time.
It is likely asthmatics and others with existing lung damage will be particularly susceptible to further lung damage.
In all likelihood, though many people may be experiencing long-term work-related injury as a result of breathing toxic air in the workplace following wild fires, this will not be handled by existing laws that protect workers, or agencies such as OHSA. Rather then adding further fuel to the climate change debate -- basically political posturing that does more harm than good -- it would be nice if the president actually did his job and tried to do something about the potential problem of lung damage resulting from breathing toxic air.
If we don't have good test and measurement equipment for determining the impact of fire-related toxins on the lungs, we should be researching what needs to be done to make that equipment. If we don't know how to medically treat lung damage, then we should be researching that. Given that entire communities are affected by this issue, it seems appropriate that the government should have some major role here, rather then relying on every potentially impacted individual paying for their own health care (and any research that may be required to fix problems).