From the THE EARTH INSTITUTE AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY and the “we need a task force and more money” department comes this ridiculous pandering claim. Gotta love the caveat “Although future trends are difficult to project, climate change may also…“. Yep all this from a small change in temperature less than what one would experience by the annual snowbirds migration.
Study shows how climate change threatens health – Gulf Coast, Northeast and West Coast of US at high risk
Researchers at Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness (NCDP) and the University of Washington have published a new study focused on the public health implications of climate change. The article explores climate change impacts on human health in the U.S. Gulf Coast and has implications for this and other coastal regions that are particularly vulnerable to climate change. The study appears in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (August 11, 2015). The Open Access article is available here: http://bit.ly/1gAVqVe
This new review of available data comes on the heels of President Obama’s announcement of the requirement for reduced carbon emissions by the power industry as part of the Clean Power Plan. The Obama administration has fully acknowledged the human health impacts of the country’s fossil fuel energy production and the immediate need to mitigate and adapt the nation’s energy policies.
Climate variability and change present substantial threats to physical and mental health, and may also create social instability, potentially leading to increased conflict, violence, and widespread migration away from areas that can no longer provide sufficient food, water, and shelter for the current populations. Coastal areas, where a large proportion of U.S. residents live, are particularly vulnerable to impacts of climate change due to hazards such as changing water use patterns, shoreline erosion, sea level rise and storm surge.
According to Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, “The science of climate change and the threat to human and population health is irrefutable – and the threat is evolving quickly.” Dr. Redlener, also a professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health, added, “Unfortunately, we are now at a point where simply slowing climate change, while critical, is not enough. We need to simultaneously develop and deploy ways of mitigating the impact and adapting to the consequences of this environmental disaster.”
Public health impacts in the U.S. Gulf Coast may be severe as the region is expected to experience increases in extreme temperatures, sea level rise, and possibly fewer but more intense hurricanes. Through myriad pathways, climate change is likely to make the Gulf Coast less hospitable and more dangerous for its residents, and may prompt substantial migration from and into the region. Public health impacts may be further exacerbated by the concentration of vulnerable people and infrastructure, as well as the region’s coastal geography.
The new paper provides an overview of potential public health impacts of climate variability and change on the Gulf Coast, with a focus on the region’s unique vulnerabilities, and outlines recommendations for improving the region’s ability to minimize the impacts of climate-sensitive hazards.
“Climate change may amplify existing public health impacts, such as heat-related morbidity and mortality, malnutrition resulting from droughts, and injury and deaths following exposure to floods,” said Dr. Elisa Petkova of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness. “Although future trends are difficult to project, climate change may also facilitate the re-introduction of vector-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue fever to the Gulf Coast and other vulnerable coastal regions.”
Based on this research NCDP’s key recommendations include:
- The Federal government should establish a multi-agency permanent task force on the human and population impacts of climate change, charged with identifying innovative adaptation strategies. This task force should include relevant government agencies, as well as relevant private sector stakeholders.
- Funds should be made available for the simultaneous implementation of adaptation strategies to improve individual, public health system, and infrastructure resilience.
- Adaptation efforts should follow a course set by the Federal taskforce and should attempt to integrate hazard-specific adaptation measures into city, state and regional level emergency management plans, particularly in high-risk regions.
- Further explore the linkage between weather events and infectious disease with an aim to enhance surveillance and intervention efforts.
###
About NCDP The National Center for Disaster Preparedness (NCDP) at the Earth Institute works to understand and improve the nation’s capacity to prepare for, respond to and recover from disasters. NCDP focuses on the readiness of governmental and non-governmental systems; the complexities of population recovery; the power of community engagement; and the risks of human vulnerability, with a particular focus on children.
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Hey! “EARTH INSTITUTE AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY”
Schmutz!! I don’t believe you!
Nah. I’ve had enough of this rubbish: “for our grandchildren”? Heck, since this whole ‘industrial-world-has-screwed-our-kids’ future’ we’ve had Napoleonic wars; Boer wars; Two World wars; the Korean war; a Vietnam war; and the Iraq war (x two) – and two atomic bombs!. Did any of the polis who were gung-ho for these global-changing events think of the ‘kids’? ‘Course not. It’s the money, not the ‘kids’.
Dr. Irwin Redlener is a pediatrician and public health activist who specializes in health care for underserved children, health care reform, and disaster planning, response, and recovery. Sep 26, 2005 – Dr. Irwin Redlener warns that the U.S. is severely unprepared for the avian flu. Americans at Risk: Why We Are Not Prepared for Megadisasters and What We Can Do by Irwin Redlener (Aug 22, 2006).
We should be prepared for every disaster, and live in a constant state of the fear of the unknown .. pardon, the incotrovertible and irrefutable.What a way to make a living!
As you say, George (curious name, no?): keep people in a constant state of fear – and I know it’s been said many times before, but Mencken said it first (afaik):
Never a truer word spoken – especially to those who have not heard it – and whom polis wish would never hear it.
BTW: I guess those who attend Paris COP21 will be in Paris [for the] international temperature enhancing seminars – AKA Parisites (sp? – I know! Groan). It works for me.
“keep people in a constant state of fear”
It’s really “fear theater” with everyone running around pretending to be frightened and pretending that others are frightened in the hope that people do in fact become frightened.
Harry
Mencken may have paraphrased Bierce’s ‘The Devil’s Dictionary’.
I haven’t checked tonight – but the quote
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
looks familiar, and certainly seems similar to Bierce’s style.
AFAIK
Auto
So he makes his living crying wolf even for potential events he is not qualified?
My gast has never been so flabbered, with apologies to the late Frankie Howerd (sadly only Brit readers will understand).
Any panic piece will do in order to justify an all expenses paid trip to Paris later this year, where the max temp will be 10ºC (50ºF) and min will be 5ºC (41ºF). When the Atlantic storms are delivering utterly miserable weather maybe some gravy-train passengers will wish that the global warming/climate change hoax was actually true.
May I have the envelope, please?
…and this year’s award for creative fiction goes to (drumroll) Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness (NCDP) and the University of Washington.
“and may prompt substantial migration from and into the region…”
Should cancel each other out then….
…must be the flat earth christian conservatives taking advantage of lower beach prices /snark
[snip – policy violation, insults -mod]
bobthebear
Burning fossil fuels is the ONLY thing that stands between the starvation and slow death by cold, heat, stress, disease, bad water, no farming and no transportation no food storage and bad food preparation and sanitation of six billions of people worldwide.
The only people “denying” climate change are the government-paid self-called “scientists” propagandizing their global Warming climate scam to justify their 92 billions in climate change money, power, and adulation by their uneducated masses. And by the world politicians and bankers seeking their share of 1.3 trillion in new taxes, and 31.1 trillion in new carbon trading schemes.
Other than that, the rest of your screed is a lie.
“Climate variability and change present substantial threats to physical and mental health, and may also create social instability, potentially leading to increased conflict, violence, and widespread migration away from areas that can no longer provide sufficient food, water, and shelter for the current populations.”
Substitute “Socialism” for “Climate variability and change”, and then it’s accurate. Unlike climate dogma, this truth can actually be verified by historical data.
“Climate variability and change present substantial threats to physical and mental health, and may also create social instability, potentially leading to increased conflict, violence, and widespread migration away from areas that can no longer provide sufficient food, water, and shelter for the current populations.”
WTF? There’s some “mental health”-related issues here, but not what the author is alleging. How much more of this bullshit are we going to have to put up with?
Precautionary Principle:
Since you know you will eventually die, you should commit suicide today.
“Adaptation efforts should follow a course set by the Federal task force”
Let’s ask the Navajo how that’s working for them.
+100
Would this be the appropriate thread to point out that, in its mid winter , the Antarctic appears to have lost ca. 20M sqkm of sea ice compared to the same date last year. Why is no-one mentioning this ? Because it is not a serious issue ?Or because there is no obvious explanation?
Sorry, 2 sqkm not 20 , but if the typo made people look,in horror, at the ref page the mistake may be a useful one.
Even if the Earth returned to the +4c temperatures of the Cretaceous, America still wouldn’t be as warm as where I currently live.
Does this mean I’m dying from climate? 🙂
Very interesting study. I see it’s based on the bogus RCP8.5 results. It also lacks a sophisticated system analysis model. If this were a master’s thesis I would give it a pass out of courtesy to the faculty advisor, but I wouldn’t recommend the author for a job.
I live in Guam. The difference between day-time high temperatures and night-time low temperatures ranges from 5 degrees C to 6 degrees C. People here adapted long go.
SO, why is a degree C difference considered alarming by the UN, IPCC, and clmate policy makers? DOn;t know. But the answer is: No reason for ala
As of 0500UTC today the range of recorded temperature on earth is from +50.2C in Kuwait to -77.4C in Antarctica. People are living quite happily and successfully in Kuwait, not so much in Antarctica. So, as you say, why is a degree or two different on the so-called average temperature alarming?
CORRECTION:
“DOn;t know. But the answer is: No reason for ala” TO : Don’t know. But the answer is” no reason for alarm”
A few years ago, I bought a house on a coastal dune lake that opens to the ocean on the Gulf Coast between Panama City and Destin, Fl. I thought I was buying a retirement home, but it appears I may now be the proud owner of future ocean front property bordering America’s newest port. I have actually researched raw historical temperatures and sea levels in my area of the Gulf Coast. Zero change in a century. A few years ago with my son, a high school junior at the time, I visited Columbia. Neither of us could get past the obvious liberalism. I have spent most of my life in the stock market and am a free market capitalist but I now see we need new laws to protect our citizens from unscrupulous university professors and politicians. Is there a movement yet?
“Climate change may amplify existing public health impacts, such as …. malnutrition resulting from droughts, and injury and deaths following exposure to floods,”
Wow, MAYBE more floods, or MAYBE more droughts. That is so specific and well-researched that it just oozes urgency, especially given ZERO major hurricanes in the Gulf region of the US for a decade (its not likely that one will pop up within the next week) and virtually no temperature change for almost two decades. Where can I give money so that a vacuous New-York egg-head can sit in a cube and continue this most impressive and important work?
It’s good to see they covered all bases.
Look at all the weasel words in this so-called research paper: may, expected to, possibly,potential.
“Public health impacts in the U.S. Gulf Coast may be severe”.
“The region is expected to experience increases in extreme temperatures, sea level rise, and possibly fewer but more intense hurricanes”.
“Through myriad pathways, climate change is likely to make the Gulf Coast less hospitable and more dangerous for its residents, and may prompt substantial migration from and into the region”.
“potential public health impacts”
“may amplify existing public health impacts”
“may also facilitate the re-introduction of vector-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue fever”
But note the change in tone when it comes to recommendations:
“The Federal government should establish a multi-agency permanent task force”
“Funds should be made available”
“Adaptation efforts should follow a course set by the Federal taskforce”
“Further explore the linkage between weather events and infectious disease”
In other words, a lot of things may happen, but regardless of the probabilities, we need more government money, and we need it now.
Coastal dwellers on the left coast are under severe threat of a Fukushima-class tsunami when the sea floor decides to flip. Thousands of people will lose their lives because they are better prepared for climate warming that hasn’t happened in 20 years than they are for a recurring seafloor rebound that is decades behind schedule, and which history of previous events is well known. That is sloppy disaster management and a careless disregard for the reason useless bureaucrats are in the positions they hold.
The Darwin Effect
Where is the Data Quality Act when you need it?
So Columbia U has started preparations to move their NYC campus inland? Oh, and the UN building too?
Can anyone tell me what the global temperature SHOULD be? Give reasons for your answer. 🙂
We know that its been a degree or more higher than now for most of the current interglacial.
The only time it was colder was during the Little Ice Age, which we have very thankfully climbed out of, .. just.