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.

Comments

wildfires?

[ralphsiegler]

Maybe someone should tell the prez that the extent of wildfires is much less than pre-20th century levels

Re:wildfires?

[itzly]

That doesn't mean it's not a reason for concern.

Re:wildfires?

[Noah Haders]

LA resident here. We're in a middle of a drought that's worse than the great depression dust bowl. My house is basically surrounded by kindling right now. the risk from wildfires is extraordinarily high. there were really bad fires last summer and there was a steady drizzle of ash onto the entire city. I would say that climate change is threatening my health.

Re:wildfires?

[Anonymous Coward]

You assume AGW is the cause for the current drought.

Previous to the California "dry spell", climatologists were saying that AGW would make Calif WETTER, not dryer.

Your claim is based on erroneous assumption.

GIGO.

Re:wildfires?

[sycodon]

Because Climate Change stopped the controlled burns and built houses in wildfire prone areas.

And worse than the Dust Bowl? I'm afraid not.

Most of California's problems are caused by California.

Re:wildfires?

[Nyder]

LA resident here. We're in a middle of a drought that's worse than the great depression dust bowl. My house is basically surrounded by kindling right now. the risk from wildfires is extraordinarily high. there were really bad fires last summer and there was a steady drizzle of ash onto the entire city. I would say that climate change is threatening my health.

No, your stupid choice to live in a Hot area that has a history of water problems.

I live in Seattle, I am not surrounded by kindling, it's nice and green around here. I choose to live in a place that doesn't have a rich problem And by rich problem, I mean have a small portion of the population wasting most the water, either on lawns, pools or stupid products like Almonds that use a large amount of water and give a better profit then real food.

See I choose not to be a dumb fuck and live in a state that is going to fall in the ocean if it doesn't burn to death before then. And because I choose better then you, I am going to make fun of you for your stupid fucking decision. Granted we did a shortage of water this year, it's not going to affect me or my neighbors at all. Why? Because we understand that there are times when having a green lawn is stupid, mainly during water shortages.

But whatever, you choose to live in LA and now you are paying the price. And by paying the price, I mean the rich are fucking you in your ass so they can use your tears to keep their lawns green.

Re:wildfires?

[Noah Haders]

Actually, we do have records going back to 1500 and even earlier. They're called "tree rings". The North American Drought Atlas collected tree ring data from across the US to understand tree growth patterns over the last 200 years. See, when there's a big drought, trees don't grow much and their rings are close together. When it's a good year the tree grows a lot and rings are farther apart.

So yes, there's a historical record, and yes, this drought is really really bad. Also, this drought isn't over yet so we don't know how bad it will continue to be. The drought to-date is a 500 year drought, but by the time it ends, it could be a 2000 year drought!

Obama's point is that the effects of climate change are being felt right now and are directly impacting human health. So while a warmer period (a couple degrees) doesn't necessarily hurt health wildfires caused by drought caused by climate change does.

This point is extraordinarily relevant because it ties into the current EPA coal court case going on. The case states that EPA exceeded its mandate. EPA is supposed to regulate pollutants that harm people's health. The coal people argue that even if climate change is real and may have an impact in hundreds of years, CO2 emissions are not harming people's health today and so fall out of the EPA mandate. Obama is saying otherwise.

-Andrew

Re:wildfires?

[Rinikusu]

Our chicks > your chicks.

Re:wildfires?

[bmajik]

So I agree entirely with your sentiment, except I chuckled when you wrote that you live in Seattle.

What's funny about that is Seattle is also full of rich dumb people that make dumb decisions.

If you've done the Seattle underground history tour, you know that Seattle basically sunk into the sound long ago. The whole city history is replete with stories of stupid people that fought nature and lost.

Recently, the highway 99 project comes to mind :)

Re:wildfires?

[Penguinisto]

Tree rings, for starters. There are species of trees that have lived that long, at least one of which happens to be in California (look up the Bristlecone Pine - there are two verified trees that have lived well beyond 5,000 years and counting). It wouldn't be too much to take a core sample and do some checking. Relatively thin rings mean drought years, fat ones mean wet years.

Re:wildfires?

[ralphsiegler]

Logic fails you and the person who made your link, many smaller wildfire of the present are nothing like the monstrous natural ones of the past.

Re:wildfires?

[bluefoxlucid]

It means it's a made-up problem. "Climate change is causing wildfires" is a red-herring: a lot of wildlife depends on fires to survive. Some tree seeds don't grow if they're not set fire to first; and the growth and spread of various species of underbrush rely on underbrush clearing every few years, historically done by wildfires.

We have fewer wildfires now due to suppression efforts, which we've scaled back massively because we realized suppressing wildfires is a really fucking bad idea. Global Wargarbling isn't causing wildfires, isn't increasing the amount of wildfire pollution in the air, and isn't threatening people by mechanisms spawned from wildfires.

This kind of spouting makes the President sound dangerously uneducated. We're lead to question more things: what is this lengthening of the allergy season, and how is it different from living in the South? Are we only concerned about half of the United States?

Re:wildfires?

[ShanghaiBill]

That doesn't mean it's not a reason for concern.

It may be a concern, or it may not, but the burden of evidence is on those who advocate spending public money. We have had a lot of alarmism about climate change, and while it has generated short term concern, in the long run it has eroded public support as the alarmist predictions fail to materialize. Advocates of climate change action should stop the shrill rhetoric, and focus on rebuilding their credibility. AGW is a serious problem, in my opinion, but we are failing to address it because the issue has been hijacked by people with other agendas.

Re:wildfires?

[Bartles]

He's no uneducated, he's just anti-science.

Re:wildfires?

[_Sharp'r_]

I have a solution for your CA home water issues.

Ready? Stop voting for Democrat environmentalists.

The science is in. If you divert millions of acre-feet of water to fulfill environmental regulations, you can't use that water for other stuff. If you stop building reservoirs and dams to store water while increasing water usage, you won't have enough water. If agriculture water prices went up enough that the agribusinesses used 12.5% less water, then every residential and industrial user in CA could use 50% more water.

Re:wildfires?

[swillden]

I don't dispute that there are regular droughts, but I'm wondering how that helps to find the cause of this particular one. I don't believe there's a 500-year clock mechanism somewhere that is responsible for triggering them.

You misunderstand what "500-year drought" means. The 500 years is a mean interval between such droughts, not a fixed value. It doesn't mean there's some mechanism that causes a drought every 500 years, or even about every 500 years.

Re:wildfires?

[quantaman]

You assume AGW is the cause for the current drought.

Previous to the California "dry spell", climatologists were saying that AGW would make Calif WETTER, not dryer.

Your claim is based on erroneous assumption.

GIGO.

Do you have citations for that? I did a search for agw predictions california rainfall and the first hit I got (and the only relevant one I saw) was an article about a 2005 paper predicting a very similar drought.

It's only one paper and I have no idea whether it was widely accepted, but if you asked me a few years ago what AGW meant for California rainfall my very limited understanding would have lead me to say less rainfall.

Re:wildfires?

[ralphsiegler]

So you dispute this statement? "While modern times have seen large wildfires, especially in California and Texas in the past few years, the worst fires ever seen in the United States took place over 100 years ago. "

Re:wildfires?

[allcoolnameswheretak]

California is experiencing the worst drought (ever, perhaps). It is so bad, they are starting to ration water consumption. Scientific studies indicate climate change is real (unless you live in the USA), so in all likelihood the severe drought is an effect of climate change. And dry land causes fires easily. Ergo Climate change -> drought -> wildfires.

How is that simple deduction a red-herring?

Re:wildfires?

[quantaman]

It means it's a made-up problem. "Climate change is causing wildfires" is a red-herring: a lot of wildlife depends on fires to survive. Some tree seeds don't grow if they're not set fire to first; and the growth and spread of various species of underbrush rely on underbrush clearing every few years, historically done by wildfires.

We have fewer wildfires now due to suppression efforts, which we've scaled back massively because we realized suppressing wildfires is a really fucking bad idea. Global Wargarbling isn't causing wildfires, isn't increasing the amount of wildfire pollution in the air, and isn't threatening people by mechanisms spawned from wildfires.

This kind of spouting makes the President sound dangerously uneducated. We're lead to question more things: what is this lengthening of the allergy season, and how is it different from living in the South? Are we only concerned about half of the United States?

Another interpretation is that particulates from wildfires were a major health hazard pre-20th century, but no one cared because there were a million major health hazards. Since then we've gained the ability to strike a proper balance between fire suppression and controlled burns for ecosystem management. But now climate change means dryer, less healthy forests that make fire suppression much more difficult. Thus wildfire pollution is becoming a larger problem than it has been for recent history.

Re:wildfires?

[bluefoxlucid]

Empirically, we have fewer wildfires than historically; those we do have are less severe than historical wildfires. The worst wildfires come after a wet season, as there's more vegetative growth to dry out and catch fire. These are known.

Your argument is that some theoretical connection between dryness and fire exists, and so there must be more fires now because there's a drought. You're ignoring the real facts, including counts of wildfires and the severity of those wildfires, as well as wildfire behavior.

Someone also mentioned tree ring cores indicate a major drought every 500-ish years, so the current drought is probably the worst in about 500 years, but not necessarily the worst drought ever. 500 years is a long time, though.

Re:wildfires?

[budgenator]

Global climate trend since Nov. 16, 1978: +0.14 C per decade
March temperatures (preliminary)
Global composite temp.: +0.26 C (about 0.47 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year average for March.
Northern Hemisphere: +0.41 C (about 0.74 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year average for March.
Southern Hemisphere: +0.10 C (about 0.18 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year average for March.
Tropics: +0.08 C (about 0.06 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year average for March.
February temperatures (revised):
Global Composite: +0.30 C above 30-year average
Northern Hemisphere: +0.43 C above 30-year average
Southern Hemisphere: +0.16 C above 30-year average
Tropics: +0.01 C above 30-year average
(All temperature anomalies are based on a 30-year average (1981-2010) for the month reported.) ....
Neither Christy nor Spencer receives any research support or funding from oil, coal or industrial companies or organizations, or from any private or special interest groups. All of their climate research funding comes from federal and state grants or contracts.
UAH Global Temperature Report: March 2015 – down slightly

And just what do you suppose is driving this Climate change, it's hard to accept that it's temperature when there is so little difference in it.

Re:wildfires?

[Magius_AR]

The difference is that there is well-documented evidence of climate change and its damage, and not of your made-up example.

Not true. None of the claimed very expensive fallouts of climate change have come to fruition. So they remain mere speculation. Even if you can prove global warming is occurring, you can't prove the damage. For all you know, the beneficial outcomes could outweigh the negatives. It's all speculation.

Re:wildfires?

[riverat1]

... in the long run it has eroded public support as the alarmist predictions fail to materialize.

Perhaps the problem is the hyperbolic overstatement of predictions by climate science denial leaders or even unscientific people on the alarmist side rather than the actual predictions of scientists. I find most of the actual scientific predictions to be on the conservative side.

Re:wildfires?

[riverat1]

You assume AGW is the cause for the current drought.

Previous to the California "dry spell", climatologists were saying that AGW would make Calif WETTER, not dryer.

Your claim is based on erroneous assumption.

GIGO.

A recent study by the University of Minnesota and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute found that while the amount of precipitation wasn't unusually low for a drought the intense heat was. That causes increased soil and plant evapotranspiration leaving the soil dryer making the the worst drought in the past 1,200 years. The intense heat is easier to connect to AGW.

Re:wildfires?

[david_thornley]

The problem is agriculture. There is no other use of water in California that is anywhere close. Reducing agricultural usage by 1% would do much more than eliminating flush toilets entirely, and is a much more realistic and desirable goal. If agriculture used 12.5% less water, that would have a big impact. If California wants a 25% reduction in water use, though, agriculture is going to have to take a hit of about 25%.

The other problem is that WSJ opinions and editorials have fallen in line behind Murdoch's party line, and no longer represent any sort of serious thought process. Sad but true.

Holy Fuck

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there nothing these people won't blame on Climate Change?

Re:Holy Fuck

[Anonymous Coward]

No. They were actually blaming the Syrian civil war on climate change.

The fact is, AGW is not the end of the world scenario leftists were hoping for, so they've had to invent reasons to scare the heck out of people just to have the crisis they need to pursue their social, cultural and political agendas.

Simple as that.

Re:Holy Fuck

[erp_consultant]

Bingo. This is nothing more than an excuse to pony up more money for research on "Climate change" or "Global warming"...or whatever the heck they are calling it now. Naturally, the Environmentalists and research scientists love this. Beats getting a real job I suppose...but I digress.

These climate models that this is based on are complete rubbish. There are so many variables that you can make them reach any conclusion you want simply by changing the values you input. We can't even predict an accurate weather forecast more than 10 days in the future. How could we possibly predict what the weather is going to be like in 100 years? Or 50 years? Or 1 year? Or even next month.

Don't take my word for it: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/com...

Have a read at that article.

I'm all for conservation and having more fuel efficient cars and less pollution and all that. I'm all for preserving the forests and ice caps. But let's not pretend that "climate change" is to blame for every drought or hurricane.

Re:Holy Fuck

[weszz]

When I read this... My first thought was he is planning to use this to tax everyone based on healthcare... Which isn't a tax unless you talk to the Supreme Court, then and only then it is a tax for not having health care that the IRS watches... (so it is constitutional)

So if you aren't doing your part for environmentalism, will the IRS tax you on that as a healthcare risk someday?

Sounds crazy I know, but just crazy enough for someone to try.

Re:Holy Fuck

[ckatko]

Just because Green energy douchebags are making money off of a problem, does not mean the problem does not exist.

OH NO!

[ColdWetDog]

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!

Re:OH NO!

[OhPlz]

A nationalized system isn't the paradise you think it is. Just wait until you end up on a two year waiting list because your system is nationalized and there's no incentive for them to do any better, and you have no other options.

Re:OH NO!

[Rockoon]

Paying out of pocket is right out because of how fucking expensive it is in the US to get health care.

Its expensive *because* people dont pay out of pocket.

With insurance the cost of a broken leg and an emergency room visit is $63000, while the cost for the same without insurance is only $1300.

The problem with the collectivist vision is and always will be tragedy of the commons.

Over exaggeration = fodder to the climate deniers.

[jellomizer]

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.

Mosquitos

[TwoEyedJack]

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.

Re:Mosquitos

[Megane]

As I understand it, DDT sprayed out in the open (swamps, etc.) is bad. But DDT that doesn't make it to water (spraying it on the walls of a third-world hut) is just fine. But no, we have to react as though just saying its name out loud once will kill a thousand birds.

Nice to have a president with priorities

[helixcode123]

Nice to have a president with priorities towards the well being of the citizens of our country, current and future.

allergies

[roc97007]

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.)

Re:allergies

[roc97007]

It's too bad James Hansen's original doomsday scenario -- the earth as an arctic wasteland -- didn't come to pass, then.

Re:Over exaggeration = fodder to the climate denie

[aaron4801]

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.

Re:For anything you should keep it reasonable

[Tablizer]

"If you like your allergies, you can keep your allergies."

Possible Misinterpretation [Re:wildfires?]

[Tablizer]

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.

Rice fields in the desert

[bradley13]

"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.

Not as much as he has

[FatherOfONe]

He has hurt almost everyone in America far far worse than any environmental changes.

Bull$h!t!

[gabrieltss]

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!