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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

Holy Fuck

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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!

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.

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.)

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.