From UMEA UNIVERSITY
Climate change could risk progress in health — or be a global health opportunity
The threat climate change poses to human health is possibly so great that it could wipe out health progress over the past 50 years. But getting to grips with climate change could also present major opportunities for global health. Details can be found in a major international research report published in the journal The Lancet.
‘Impact of climate change on global health could be enormous, not only through the direct health effects, but also because of reduced social stability if people are forced to move or flee,’ said Peter Byass, professor of global health at Umeå University in Sweden, who has been a senior adviser to the work of the Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change.
‘Meanwhile, we know that mitigation and adaptation around climate change can have positive health effects, for example both by reducing emissions and improving dietary habits. Effective climate action may actually prove to be one of the greatest opportunities to also improve global health that we have ever had,’ says Byass.
The work behind the report, published this week by the journal The Lancet, involved a number of European and Chinese climate scientists, environmental scientists, natural scientists, social scientists, medical and health scholars, engineers, energy policy experts, and others.
The report shows that the direct health effects of climate change are linked to increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, especially heatwaves, floods, droughts and storms. Indirect impacts come from changes in infection patterns, effects of emissions, uncertainty regarding the availability of food, and hence malnutrition. Health effects can also be linked to people involuntarily forced to leave the affected areas or movements of people planned because of impending changes in living conditions. Increased incidence of conflict is also a factor that the report highlights as a threat to global health.
But global efforts to reduce emissions can achieve positive co-benefits for health. The report highlights a number of such points. These include reduced consumption of fossil fuels leading to lower incidence of respiratory diseases, as well as people walking and cycling more, which both reduce emissions and lower the incidence of obesity, diabetes, coronary heart disease, and stroke. Even the consumption of red meat, the production of which is not very climate-friendly, is expected to decline and also bring health benefits as a result.
The report proposes a new independent global action plan ‘Countdown to 2030: Climate Change and Health Action,’ with the formation of an organisation to monitor and report every two years to the UN on how links between health status and climate change are affected. The organisation would also report on progress towards reduced emissions, measures to promote health and to reduce the vulnerability of populations, and to create sustainable health systems with low carbon emissions.
‘Overall, a strong international consensus is needed to create a global economy in which we minimise carbon dioxide emissions. This in turn presents an opportunity to improve human health. Measures recommended in this report are particularly important for populations in the world’s poorest and most vulnerable areas, which are also currently most affected by climate change,’ says Maria Nilsson, researcher at the Division of Epidemiology and Global Health at Umeå University, who is one of the report’s main editors.
‘The health community has responded to a wide range of serious health threats over time; examples would be efforts to reduce smoking and the fight against HIV/AIDS. Now more efforts are essential in response to another major threat to human health and the environment: climate change. Shifting to a sustainable society is economically possible and would also provide health benefits,’ says Maria Nilsson.
The Lancet Commission report will be an important resource for talks on climate change on global health during meetings connected with the UN Climate Change Conference, COP21, held in Paris from 30 November to 11 December, 2015.
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Read the report in The Lancet: http://www.thelancet.com/commissions/climate-change
Additional press material from the journal: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/f8sa29hs65cwdjq/AACQCq161bLaHjc4hvI_8uB-a?dl=0
Like Grimwig, I heard this on the Today programme, and was appalled at the ignorance or laziness of the interviewer in not challenging (or even gently questioning) at least some of the unjustifiable claims being made. Is there any way to get a transcript of this exchange?
Perhaps the BBC was trying to atone for allowing airtime for a contrary viewpoint in their recent interview with Bob Carter, which led to an entertainingly indignant uproar from the general direction of The Guardian and their impartial friends at the Grantham Institute.
I wonder why we cannot just™ eat dirt ?
why should we have to wait for a plant to do its thing ?
Peter Byass and his cousin Jack Myass would be in a lot of trouble in Sweden if the weather got a bit warmer. They would be run out of town for trying to stop it warming.
“climate change…could wipe out health progress over the past 50 years”
And an alien invasion could wipe out all life on Earth. I guess the key word here is “could”.
Or “A Carbon tax could ruin the economy and hurt the poor”. Is the key word here also ‘could’?
WHAT FANTASTIC COMMENTS!!!
I work up to this tripe on the BBC and felt so incensed that I wrote my own article.
But now I realise that more or less everyone feels the same way about these jerks.
it is incredible that in a subject like medicine which is supposed to be sceptical and evidence based, that such utter evidence free drivel can get onto the public airwaves as if it is the view of all doctors.
I read a few years ago that by now Southern Europe would be inundated with refugees trying to escape from the tropics because of drought, famine, disease and pestilence, The West needed to take action to prevent this happening by reducing “emissions” of CO2 into the atmosphere, which continues to this day. Meanwhile refugees flood Southern Europe to escape certain death, but it has nothing to do with climate, the cause is ISIL,Taliban, Al Quiade, Oko Bakama (the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse does spring to mind) and all the other abhorrent murderous thugs operating in the Middle East and North Africa.
What are the governments doing about this in real terms? Sod all! We cannot even deport these bastards from UK because of the EU’s Human Rights Act. UK, USA, EU wake up, this is a real threat, climate change is not!
This drivel is as far from science as you can get; it is in fact anti-science. It brings science into the realm of superstition, and attributing things to the work of either gods or witches. And yet it will be an “important resource” for the upcoming COP21 Chicken-Little Holy-Roller Hair-Pulling Clown-Fest in Paris. Of course. Why not. The level of stupid, upon which worldwide energy policy will be based appears to be reaching its zenith. We are succumbing to a new Dark Age; one based on anti-human myths and fantasies.
You know, not screening “immigrants” for diseases which are being introduced into a non-immune population might be a larger issue. Go ask the Island Caribs, if you can find any today.
or parents skipping immunization for their children due to beliefs it causes autism.
I am living in George Orwells’ Animal Farm.
The doomsayers are coming out of the woodwork in order to try to save the failing climate change meme.
There’ll be more of this sort of guff right up to the Paris Christmas Shopping Trip.
Still, only another 6 months to Peak Alarmism. 🙂
‘direct health effects of climate change are linked to increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, especially heatwaves, floods, droughts and storms.’
Oddly CAGW which is what they really mean has not been linked , in a scientifically meaningful sense to an increase in anything and its far clear of of these things are increasing , while reporting of them has increased and the cost and the number of people involved, becasue their more people and stuff , this also has no link to CAGW.
But the whole things seems to be full of such basic fails , but to be fair it is classic climate ‘science’: scary sounding speculations backed up with BS numbers and a ton of model based guess work. And I am sure the authors , having show their commitment to ‘the cause ‘ can look forward to many more grants funds heading their way , which when you consider how PP the work is, means a easy life for them.
It’s too late. Earth has entered its first mass extinction event since the dinosaurs, scientists warn…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/22/earth-extinction-phase_n_7629330.html?utm_hp_ref=green&ir=Green
Climate Change hysteria appears to have wiped out 500 years of intellectual progress.
500 years of intellectual progress has given us deceptive PR firms, FUD marketing and social engineering in the form of attempted group manipulation via mass media.
So climate is bad for health, I presume the temperature data will be changed to prove ” warming ” was the cause of the black death.
The spin needle just broke off and flew out with escape velocity.
So climate is bad for health, I presume the temperature data will be changed to prove ” warming ” was the cause of the black death.
I do hope that climate is part of the referendum on Europe, ir is this off the list.
I wrote a pseudo peer reviewed paper, “Global Warming will increase children’s death from hypothermia”, which shows climate change can lead to a huge number of deaths from here to the year 2300, when co2 atmospheric concentration hits 860 ppm.
My next paper wifi discuss the changes in Inuit body shape induced by global warming.
“The threat climate change poses to human health is possibly so great that it could wipe out health progress over the past 50 years. ”
Hmm, like if we did nothing? Doing nothing would be an extraordinary change from what we’ve been doing since the end of the last ice age and out of character.
I presume the next step from the ipcc is to re-calibrate the temperature data and confirm the black death took place in a warm period in time.
I think its time I too turned up in Paris and let these idiots know that winter kills, not carbon.
“Climate Science” is where the wild things are:
Right outcome, wrong cause. Yes we could undo all the improvements in health adn wellbeing – if we only listen to the fools and destroy moderin industrial society.
I studied a half year at Umea University. I have never met such biased people when it comes to global warming(thats what they called it then) and are extremely leftist. Even in classes, which have nothing to do with climate or politics, like Finance they would somehow talk about their leftist utopia.
Not the mention that the teachers are complete dumbwits.
With the UK government constantly producing negative health reports you have to wonder what is most at risk the budget or the people. The NHS (National Health Service) are constantly producing reports proscribing most elements of human behaviour in a vein attempt to stretch financial resource and the state, compromised by the health unions, cannot innovate to ameliorate the situation. The only answer they have is intrusion into lifestyle issues. In a private scheme you may be advised to stop smoking or drinking but you will not be castigated or have the possibility or threat of having your treatment withdrawn as with the NHS.
We may endow such journals as the Lancet with probity but is any publication beyond the reach of the state? Is there one that cannot be coerced? Recent major world catastrophes have been around not extreme weather but rather extreme earth movements.
Someone remarked that the countryside in Britain seemed to be back on the clock after a couple of years of season drift. This year it was noted that the hedgerows had abundant spring flowers and the cold weather increased the flower’s longevity. We are no closer to planting more trees to use the carbon which the plants seem to be enjoying. It may be that the world’s forests and fallow land are actually the critical factor and the growth of man and his occupation of all lands the tipping point of natural gasses’ distribution.
When things only lived in the sea man could not have survived on land as the air was toxic. Man came about through the balancing of the atmosphere in our favour when the plants interceded. I would love for more forests to be planted coupled with a concerted effort at world population control but, last thing I heard, Germany is actively seeking a larger population lest its commercial prospects be threatened.
I feel sick already.
In fairness, the Lancet recently published a credible study on Excess Winter Mortality, WHICH IS A REAL AND SERIOUS ISSUE FOR SOCIETY unlike the false global warming scam)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/06/18/is-the-catholic-church-burned-by-the-sun-again/#comment-1967225
Excess Winter Deaths are approximately 10,000 per year in Canada, up to 50,000 per year in the UK and about 100,000 per year in the USA. I have been writing about Excess Winter Mortality since at least 2009.
On May 24, 2015 veteran meteorologist Joe d’Aleo and I published an article entitled “Winters not Summers Increase Mortality and Stress the Economy” at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/05/24/winters-not-summers-increase-mortality-and-stress-the-economy/
[excerpts]
Global warming alarmists continue to over-emphasize the danger of heat and ignore cold in their papers and in stories for the media. The danger associated with this misdirection is that cold weather kills many more people that hot weather.
This conclusion is clearly supported by many studies of populations in a wide range of climates. Examples are provided below from a study of thirteen countries, as well as national studies from the United Kingdom, the USA, Canada and Australia.
Furthermore, this conclusion is not new, but has been known for many decades.
WORLD
Cold weather kills 20 times as many people as hot weather, according to an international study analyzing over 74 million deaths in 384 locations across 13 countries. The findings were published in The Lancet.
http://www.thelancet.com/action/showFullTextImages?pii=S0140-6736%2814%2962114-0
UNITED KINGDOM
A total of about 50,000 Excess Winter Deaths occurred that winter [2012/13] in the UK.
UNITED STATES
Similarly, the USA death rate in January and February is more than 1000 deaths per day greater than in July and August.
In 2008, there were 108,500 ‘excess’ deaths during the 122 days in the cold months (December to March).
CANADA
The Canadian death rate in January is more than 100 deaths/day greater than in August, for the years 2007 to 2011.
AUSTRALIA
… death rates in Australian cities were up to 30 per cent higher in winter than summer.
[end of excerpts]
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Data from The Lancet study supports the hypo that adaptation is the key to survival in winter – and perhaps flu shots when they work. Adaptation includes better home insulation and heating systems, and cheap reliable energy,
The highest death rates attributed to cold weather occur in China, Italy, Japan and the UK.
The next highest group includes Australia, South Korea, Spain, and the USA.
Next come Canada, Sweden and Taiwan.
Brazil and Thailand have the lowest winter death rates.
These death figures are HUGE and daunting – AND THEY HAPPEN EVERY YEAR…
This bleak reality reflects, in my opinion, an egregious error in government climate and energy policy that is costing many lives.
It is hard to believe that anyone could be so foolish as to drive up the cost of energy AND also reduce the reliability of the electrical grid, which is what politicians have done by subsidizing grid-connected wind and solar power.
When uninformed politicians fool with energy systems, real people suffer and die.
Could someone from the warmist camp please explain to me again why warm is bad and cold is good? This only seems true if you are trying to kill people.
The environmental movement, which has promoted this global warming scam and the “green energy” debacle, should be held primarily responsible for this unfolding tragedy.
Cheap. reliable, abundant energy is the lifeblood of modern society. It IS that simple.
Best wishes to all, Allan
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Here is a credible paper from 2002-03
Excess winter mortality in Europe: a cross country analysis identifying key risk factors
J Epidemiol Community Health 2003;57:784-789 doi:10.1136/jech.57.10.784
http://jech.bmj.com/content/57/10/784.full
Table 1 – Coefficient of seasonal variation in mortality (CSVM) in EU-14 (mean, 1988–97)
CSVM 95% CI
Austria 0.14 (0.12 to 0.16)
Belgium 0.13 (0.09 to 0.17)
Denmark 0.12 (0.10 to 0.14)
Finland 0.10 (0.07 to 0.13)
France 0.13 (0.11 to 0.15)
Germany 0.11 (0.09 to 0.13)
Greece 0.18 (0.15 to 0.21)
Ireland 0.21 (0.18 to 0.24)
Italy 0.16 (0.14 to 0.18)
Luxembourg 0.12 (0.08 to 0.16)
Netherlands 0.11 (0.09 to 0.13)
Portugal 0.28 (0.25 to 0.31)
Spain 0.21 (0.19 to 0.23)
UK 0.18 (0.16 to 0.20)
Mean 0.16 (0.14 to 0.18)
The unification of the ACA sect with the climate scare tribe is too irresistible to ignore.