Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health
A study in Botswana by Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health scientists finds that spikes in cases of life-threatening diarrhea in young children are associated with La Niña climate conditions. The findings published in the journal Nature Communications could provide the basis for an early-warning system that would allow public health officials to prepare for periods of increased diarrhea cases as long as seven months ahead of time.
In low- and middle-income countries, diarrhea is the second leading cause of death in children younger than five years of age, with 72 percent of deaths occurring in the first two years of life. Rates of under-5 diarrhea in Africa are particularly high, with an estimated incidence of 3.3 episodes of diarrhea per child each year and one-quarter of all child deaths caused by diarrhea.
The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a coupled ocean-atmosphere system spanning the equatorial Pacific Ocean that oscillates in a 3-to-7-year cycle between two extremes, El Niño (warmer ocean temperatures) and La Niña (cooler ocean temperatures). The ENSO cycle affects local weather patterns around the world, including temperatures, winds, and precipitation.
Researchers analyzed associations between ENSO and climate conditions and cases of under-5 diarrhea in the Chobe region in northeastern Botswana. They found that La Niña is associated with cooler temperatures, increased rainfall, and higher flooding during the rainy season. In turn, La Niña conditions lagged 0-7 months are associated with about a 30-percent increase in incidence of under-5 diarrhea in the early rainy season from December through February
“These findings demonstrate the potential use of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation as a long-lead prediction tool for childhood diarrhea in southern Africa,” says first author Alexandra K. Heaney, a former doctoral student in environmental health sciences at Columbia Mailman and now a postdoc at University of California, Berkeley. “Advanced stockpiling of medical supplies, preparation of hospital beds, and organization of healthcare workers could dramatically improve the ability of health facilities to manage high diarrheal disease incidence.”
Previously, El Niño events have been linked to diarrhea outbreaks in Peru, Bangladesh, China, and Japan, but until now studies of the effects of ENSO on diarrheal disease in Africa have been limited to cholera–a pathogen responsible for only a small fraction of diarrheal cases in Africa.
Infectious diarrhea is caused by many different pathogens (viruses, bacteria, and protozoa) and meteorological conditions can have a critical influence on pathogen exposures, in particular, those associated with waterborne transmission. For example, extreme rainfall events may contaminate drinking water by flushing diarrhea-causing pathogens from pastures and dwellings into drinking water supplies, and drought conditions can concentrate animal activity increasing the movement of diarrhea-causing pathogens into surface water resources.
Water Treatment Systems Appear To Be Strained
The researchers speculate that centralized water disinfection processes currently used in the Chobe region may be insufficient to deal with changes in water quality brought on by extremes of wet and dry weather, although they caution that further confirmatory studies are needed.
Earlier research by Columbia Mailman researchers in the Chobe region found that cases of diarrhea in young children spiked during extreme climate conditions, in both the wet and dry seasons. A second study reported on a method to forecast childhood diarrheal disease there. Because climate conditions vary from region to region, forecasts for infectious diseases must be region-specific. In other studies, the scientists have created forecasts for influenza, Ebola, and West Nile Virus. During the influenza season in the United States, they publish weekly regional forecasts with predictions on whether cases are expected to rise or fall and by how much.
Insights Into a Changing Climate in Southern Africa
Research into links between climate systems and infectious disease in Botswana also provides insights into long-term changes in weather patterns coming as a result of climate change.
“In Southern Africa, precipitation is projected to decrease,” says Jeffrey Shaman, PhD, co-author and professor of environmental health sciences at the Columbia Mailman School. “This change, in a hydrologically dynamic region where both wildlife and humans exploit the same surface water resources, may amplify the public health threat of waterborne illness. For this reason, there is an urgent need to develop the water sector in ways that can withstand the extremes of climate change.”
###
Shaman is also director of the Columbia Mailman School’s Climate and Health program and director of the Global Consortium on Climate and Health Education. Kathleen A. Alexander, Virginia Tech University, is a co-author. Funding was provided by an NIEHS T32 grant for Interdisciplinary Training in Climate and Health (ES023770) and the National Science Foundation Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems Award (#1518486).
La Niña events are being linked to diarrhea in children in Africa?
The real question: It’s the 21st century; why don’t children in Africa have access to clean drinking water?
Regards,
Bob
Indeed. After so many years of pouring billions and billions of dollars into that continent.
PS: The money spent on this study would’ve been better spent on clean water for the children. The agencies that fund these studies have their priorities bass-ackwards.
Happy New Year,
Bob
It’s like trying to prevent water related deaths by watching people drown.
Please God, perhaps some of these scientists could just die off?
Right you are, Bob, and instead of preparing for the diarrhea by buying more hospital beds perhaps they should spend the money on water treatment systems?
Agreed, Bob!
…because it’s all about global warming
Especially the verbal diarrhea.
As the great green blob spurts forth its intellectual diarrhea of climate change, CAGW, global warming, global heating, climate catastrophe, climate tipping point, endless droughts/rain/snow/ice/no snow/no ice and here in Oz the turdspurt du jour of climate change caused DEADLY bushfires, it occurs to me that there is a huge market for mouth nappies. Supersized and recyclable of course.
This one smells of last weeks diaper
ANTERO, COLORADO SUFFERS A RECORD-BREAKING THREE -40F [OR COLDER] READINGS IN DECEMBER
December 31, 2019 Cap Allon
https://electroverse.net/antero-colorado-suffers-a-record-breaking-three-40f-or-colder-readings-in-december/
The mercury bottomed out at -48F (-44.4C) overnight Sunday, December 29 at Antero Reservoir in Park County, located some 76 miles west of Colorado Springs.
That’s likely to be the coldest recorded low temperature in the lower 48 states for the day.
___________________________________
NEW DELHI RECORDS COLDEST DAY TEMPERATURE IN MORE THAN A CENTURY
31 December 2019
https://www.itv.com/news/2019-12-31/new-delhi-weather-india-coldest-day-temperature-more-than-century/
New Delhi recorded its coldest day in more than a century, with pollution levels peaking 10 times higher than safe levels.
India’s capital dropped to 9.4C on Monday, making it the coldest day in 119 years.
___________________________________
Warmists attribute this extreme cold to global warming. Seriously.
Examining the all-time hot and cold temperature records for USA states and Canadian provinces at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._state_and_territory_temperature_extremes
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extreme_temperatures_in_Canada#Provincial_and_territorial_temperature_extremes
Most of the hot records occurred circa the 1930’s – not recently and not due to increasing atmospheric CO2. Another FAIL for the CAGW hypothesis.
Most of the cold records occurred during the global cooling period circa 1940-1977, with some circa 1900.
One cold record for Illinois occurred January 31, 2019. I expect more of these cold records soon due to low solar activity. Hope to be wrong. Cold kills.
Best, Allan
MORE EXTREME COLD REPORTED – BUT NOT IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA
Emails today from my friends Dr M and Dr W
_________________________________
One more news item on cold wave sweeping Bangladesh.
For last ten days or about, cold to very cold weather has swept over NW and central India, low temp at close to zero in The Kashmir Valley and vicinity, New Delhi recorded its coldest December on last Day of 2019, in one hundred years.
We do not see these news items on cold weather in tropical regions and also in the Middle East, in Canadian Media
_____________________________
Subject: [AT LEAST] 50 DEAD AS SEVERE-COLD SWEEPS BANGLADESH
https://electroverse.net/at-least-50-dead-as-severe-cold-sweeps-bangladesh/
[excerpts]
Serving as further proof of our mainstream media’s sickening ‘warm-mongering’ agenda, at least 50 cold-related deaths in Bangladesh, Southern Asia, have gone widely unreported.
Australia’s <20 wildfire fatalities since October 2019 continue to dominate the headlines —as that natural disaster is dutifully following the AGW narrative— and although a local tragedy, the numbers simply don’t compare to the cold-related deaths occurring in other regions of the planet:
BANGLADESH
Recently, at least 50 people have died in Bangladesh as extreme cold weather sweeps the country.
Cold-related diseases have affected 5,998 people in the last 24 hours alone, reports unb.com.bd.
Hospitals are struggling to cope with the surge of people suffering from illnesses such as influenza, dehydration and pneumonia, said Ayesha Akhter, a senior official of the government’s health directorate.
Children and the elderly are as-always prone to diseases such as pneumonia, while those on low incomes, particularly laborers, have been the worst directly affected by the cold:
“I have no choice. I have to work regardless of the harsh weather to feed my family,” said Abdur Rahim, a rickshaw puller in the capital, Dhaka.
“The number of passengers has reduced sharply as people are avoiding going out. It is also getting difficult to pull the rickshaw as I feel like my body is frozen.”
The weather office has forecast intense cold, frigid winds and dense fog persisting for few more days.
REPEATING CYCLES, NOT CO2
The cold times are returning for many of us, in line with historically low solar activity.
Australia’s intense droughts and wildfires are returning, too — again on a sun-driven cyclical loop.
Australia’s once in a century ‘megadrought’, which ran from 1891 to 1903, caused an ecosystem collapse affecting more than a third of the country. The drought occurred within weak solar cycles 12 and 14, cycles very similar to the one we’re currently in, the record-deep solar minimum of 24:
Don’t fall for NOAA’s or the BOM’s politicized, warm-mongering, UHI-ignoring temperature datasets — our future is one of ever-descending COLD and CROP LOSS.
NASA has recently revealed this upcoming solar cycle (25) will be “the weakest of the past 200 years,” and they’ve correlated previous solar shutdowns to prolonged periods of global cooling here.
With solar cycle 25 likely just a stop-off on the sun’s descent into its next Grand Solar Minimum.
From Willie Soon:
In Pictures: India’s homeless bear brunt of record cold
Capital New Delhi broke record for coldest December day in 119 years on Monday, compounding miseries of the homeless.
by Tawqeer Hussain & Nasir Kachroo
1 Jan 2020
://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/pictures-india-homeless-bear-brunt-record-cold-200101071656861.html
Correction to the above link:
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/pictures-india-homeless-bear-brunt-record-cold-200101071656861.html
Willie Soon wrote this morning:
“Yes cold also require seriously consideration and a death is a death is a death; a death of a poor Indian in the slum from extreme cold should demand equal if not similar attention as any other deaths.”
_____________________________
Willie expressed the humanitarian value that is one of the highest achievements of our species – compassion for our fellow man.
_____________________________
No man is an island, alone of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is diminished, even as a promontory were,
even as a manor of thy friends or of thine own were;
Any man’s death concerns me, because I am concerned with mankind.
And therefore send not to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
MEDITATION XVII
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions
John Donne, 1624
“Flush toilets or advanced broadband?”
This was the headline in a Johannesburg newspaper when I was there attending a broadband conference several years ago. The conference was a gaggle of network providers and the communications industry in general, myself included. The headline speaks to the real needs of many African nations. Basic infrastructure like clean water supply, indoor plumbing and inexpensive ubiquitous energy are needed badly. It seems to me the global warming advocates are unaware of these conditions. Think what we could do for people in need with the money spent on trying to prove global warming is an imminent catastrophe.
That is what Agenda 2030 is all about. No different from the New Green Deal. Shuffling money from first world countries to third world under the guise of “Climate Change”
Well, I for one am glad that my President, Mr Bolsonaro, has specifically vetoed any Agenda 2030-related actions from the Brazilian budgetary planning for this new year (and hopefully the next)…
You’re on to it Quill,.. What people are missing is the real reason that those with the globalist mind set choose Africa and places like it, such as Haiti, is that it is really easy to laundry the money taken from the people as taxes and donations. Past results show that for all the billions given it largely disappears with very little to show for it.
The rule for such ventures is always helpful. “Follow the money.”
Moral of story…lets spend trillions to end enso instead of a billion for water treatment plants
Correction, “spend trillions of dollars while having no effect whatsoever on enso”
Need I point out…EurekAlert!
Precisely, Bob.
Botswana is one of the few brighter spots in a literally benighted continent. And Chobe is certainly a quite pleasant place to spend a holiday at tax-payers’ expense and maybe do a spot of ‘research’ whilst you are there.
How appropriate that this escapade is headed by a shaman rather than a scientist.
Maybe the Chinese will do something to improve basic hygiene and provide clean drinking water.
The British made a few advances back in Colonial days and Governance in Botswana has been much better than in surrounding countries, but there is still a mountain to climb.
But it is à comparatively small mountain, easy, cheap and with very well known and effective pathways. Unlike trying to control climate, which is where the big bucks disappear into the trouser pockets of the incompetent shamans and their venal backers.
It is enough to build deep wells. Is it cost so much?
To dig wells right requires fossil fueled machines. But not all water supplies are safe, even at depth. Some have many conduits that bring bacteria and parasites in from the surface. To do drinking water (and later, waste water) right over time requires electricity. Africa needs a build out of electrical grids, even to places before there are paved roads.
Until chlorine injection became common in the USA water borne diseases prevailed over all other types because the larger the population, the more likely municipal water is supplied from surface sources. People in these places still drink harmful bacteria and parasites but they’re already dead. Think of it as a delicious and nutritious protein drink.
It was more infrastructure not just better health care that eliminated the threat of cholera in North America, and other diseases besides.
And by electricity I mean real base load electricity, the power to run distribution and filtration plants and whole villages and cities. A full square meal of energy, not the ‘energy happy meal toys’ that are too often envisioned by North Americans as gifts to Africans — a solar panel here or a wind turbine there, to run some tiny apartment fridge in some clinic somewhere, or a single LED light, sometimes. Solutions we could not and would not tolerate for ourselves.
Maybe solar powered ozonizers could help to sterilize water in regions without electricity… You just need air and UV light.
I have a better question. Why don’t children in America and Canada have clean drinking water? example
A quick google will find examples of indian reserves all over the place with drinking water problems. If the same thing happens in a white community, all hell breaks loose. Walkerton
As far as I can tell, safe drinking water is a matter of clues for the clueless. One of my acquaintances, who’s in charge of the water system for a small town, assures me that it’s not rocket science.
When the government’s priority is to give money directly to people through welfare programs so that they do not have to work for a living, you get the results of that type of government, i.e. incompetence.
Reservations as well as Africa are the epitomy of that. Paternalistic liberals giving our tax money to people (corrupt governments both tribal and national) with no accountability.
You can add Flint, Michigan, and every other liberal run City to the list of continued negative results of unintended consequences.
commieBob,
They act as sovereign nations, for starters. Of course the reservation situation in your link – no mention of illnesses or death – is a far cry from the 2,000 illnesses and 6 deaths in Walkerton. Additionally, in the reservation situation, they realized there was an issue and have improvised to get people clean drinking water. In Walkerton, the utility knew there was a potential issue and didn’t care, and the public didn’t know what was going-on. In order to make the situations the same, the reservation would have had to keep supplying people with dirty water and pretended it was safe.
Water that is not “clean” by EPA standards is a totally different level than water in the 3rd world, too.
No, it’s not rocket science to have safe drinking water. But it takes lots of $$$, infrastructure, monitoring, and maintenance.
Some time before the news hit the wire, I attended a tournament in Walkerton. The organizers supplied bottled water, something our association had never done before or since, as far as I can tell. I never thought to ask them about it, but in hindsight it looks like they knew something was up.
As far as I can tell, the provincial government fired all the water inspectors. The provincial water inspector was the only thing keeping the two bozos who ran the system honest. Without the inspector, they did what bozos do best. They should have been charged with manslaughter. They really got off easy. On the other hand, if stupidity were a crime …
One possible reason is that the available resources are targeted elsewhere because of competing priorities. For example: while working in a country neighbouring Botswana I learned that almost all available irrigation capacity went to growing sugar cane for export to Coca Cola in Europe rather than for vegetables to be consumed locally because the more affluent developed worlds self indulgent appetites can pay more than the poorer third world can afford for basic nutrition. Something we in our comfortable lives don’t realize or don’t want to realize.
Bob ==> Absolutely right. The Clean Water issue is HUGE and is the MAJOR CAUSE for early childhood deaths in all less-developed countries.
1. Heatlh care providers in these less developed countries should NEVER have a short-fall of medical supplies necessary to treat cases of life-threatening diarrhea — the treatment is simple if one has the supplies. The cost of these supplies, from a Developed Nation viewpoint, is trivial. [ There is, in my opinion, a very nasty truth behind why these simple cheap supplies are not provided by the international community in the needed quantities. ]
2. The PROBLEM is lack of reliably safe clean drinking water — and weather has a big effect on drinking water supplies when the people are depending on iffy wells and drinking from streams and lakes.
Weather will always happen, thus the cases of life-threatening diarrhea will not go away — until the people are provided with clean drinking water.
Hand-pump water wells can solve this problem on a village/neighborhood level — but they must be done properly to a high standard or the effort is wasted. I have personal experience with wells in the Dominican Republic — but I had to sell the local women on the safety of the water produced by publicly drinking from the well myself– if I would drink it, they figured it was really safe. To see a crowd of village women weeping with joy over clean safe water gushing from a well, hand-pumped by a five-year old boy and girl, was very rewarding.
“To see a crowd of village women weeping with joy over clean safe water gushing from a well, hand-pumped by a five-year old boy and girl, was very rewarding.”
I’ll bet it was. Good for you, and them.
Our politicians should focus their efforts more on clean water for people instead of wasting time and resources on a non-problem like human-caused CO2.
I can recommend this traditional Swedish hand-pump model. It is made from cast iron and has been manufactured continuously for nearly 200 years:
It is incredibly reliable and very nearly indestructible and eternal. Paint it every decade and replace the leather flap in the valve about once a generation and it will easily last a century. This pump model probably did more to eradicate cholera in Sweden than all doctors and scientists put together.
And it costs a couple of hundred dollars.
Thank you Bob,
No surprise that cooler weather equals wetter weather, and water supplies get contaminated during flooding.
Why is this avoidable slaughter of children still happening? Here are my related thoughts from 2009. If a fraction of the money squandered on global warming alarmist falsehoods had been spent on simple clean water and sanitation systems, this slaughter of innocents would no longer exist.
This may be no accident – the neo-Malthusians view Africa as their personal “killing fields”.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/06/dealing-with-climate-change-in-the-context-of-other-more-urgent-threats-to-human-and-environmental-well-being/#comment-116940
stumpy (21:27:41) :
The money spent on Kyoto IN A SINGLE YEAR is sufficient to bring clean water and sanitation to every person on earth AND OPERATE THESE SYSTEMS FOREVER; these two factors alone would massively extend the lives of those in the third world and considerably reduce deaths, particularly infant.
***********************************************
If i recall correctly, the source for this statement was Bjorn Lomborg, several years ago, at the time of his first Copenhagen Consensus.
I’ve added significant corrections in CAPS.
Good comments Stumpy – thank you.
***********************************************
To put this issue into perspective, in the decades that we have been obsessed with the false crisis of Global Warming, as many as 50 million children below the age of five have died worldwide from contaminated water – equal to ALL the people who died in the Second World War.
Catastrophic Humanmade Global Warming is the BIG LIE of our time, and speaking the truth on this issue is an ethical and professional obligation.
I think we know enough from the satellite and surface data to state that Earth’s climate is insensitive to recent increases in atmospheric CO2. There has been no net global warming since 1940 – a full PDO cycle – in spite of an 800% increase in humanmade CO2 emissions.
We do not even know for certain that humanmade emissions are the cause of increased atmospheric CO2. We do know that at time scales ranging from years to hundreds of thousands of years, CO2 trends LAG, do NOT lead, temperature.
We also know that the only significant measured impact of increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations is increased plant growth and drought resistance.
Furthermore, in all probability a slightly warmer world would reduce human mortality, not increase it.
These are my honest opinions, based on several decades of study.
Regards to all, Allan
https://www.cawst.org/
CAWST is a Canadian charity and licensed engineering firm. We address the global need for safe drinking water and sanitation by building local knowledge and skills on household solutions people can implement themselves. We were founded in 2001.
17 years working with hundreds of organizations globally — helping them improve water, sanitation and hygiene in households, schools and clinics
Well that headline is a jaw dropper! What really stopped me is the use of the word “Scientist”. I thought you had to got to school to gain the use of it.
Why is it that that the great researchers always states that the extremes tends to be more extreme, when that is statistically not true?
The rest may make sense, but apparently the good Shaman could not get a support for the research with this crab about the weather getting more catastrophic. That despite the research certainly may be useful in it’s own right, with BS.
Correction:
“with” shout be “without”
How did that happen? No idea!
“Why is it that that”
Maybe the same reason that that happened? 🙂
Articles like this are getting so insidious now that it’s virtually impossible, unless you’re expecting it, to distinguish between real climate change and phony climate change. All deliberate, I’m sure. The mathematics of human-derived carbon dioxide emissions causing La Ninas would be challenging even for people who know that mathematics exists. What chance does the layperson have of not believing that this is caused by hoax-science?
Schist research!
Q. The difference between diarrhea and diagnosis?
A. One you get on your rear.
says Jeffrey Shaman, PhD, co-author and professor of environmental health sciences at the Columbia Mailman School
His research collaborator is Judy Priest. Together they author a number of authooritative articles on climate and health. They are sometimes joined with Dr. Vu Du in studying disease outbreaks in indigenous populations in the developing countries. Their joint papers are regularly cited as Shaman, Priest and VuDu in climate change circles.
/s
Nice identification.
Are you sure about the /s?
Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health?
I’ve always suspected these climate researchers just mailed it in.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=mailing%20it%20in
I’m guessing that if you believe that La Nina events cause diarrhea, and then go looking after La Nina events, you will find more cases….a typical research confirmation bias issue….probably if you ask people who saw “Cats” if they got diaarrhea, there would also be an uptick in stats…..so sh1t research….
occurs in dry and wet years
of course cos its NOT the enso OR the IOD
but the simple fact at both times the waters dirtier , one from groundwater contaminants and the other from concentration of the same as waters dry up
both sorted by chlorine or iodine in the water, and some sunshine or boiling to clear the bugs out, and some decent filters
the poor DO have access to clay charcoal and sand
but have no idea HOW to utilise them
“CICO” *
* Crap In, Crap Out
The dubious hypothesis known as ‘Climate Change’, an unprovable and untestable statement, has created an industry that diverts nearly a trillion dollars yearly worldwide from far more important applications like reliable low cost energy, clean water, sanitation improvements, and economic freedoms to impoverished areas around the planet. These time proven basics of human existence are truly good things for our climate, community and planet. Focus on the basics. Defund the rent seeking and scare mongering that epitomizes the ‘Climate Change’ industry and use the resources to drill and electrify clean water wells.
It’s still the SIX YEAR OLD GIRL,walking five kilometres to a waterhole and having to carry the full five litre container on her head back to the family dwelling. Then heading to school.
Thank goodness the U.N. OXFAM and all those career opportunity NGOs have made such huge improvements in AFRICA.
It is truly gratifying to think that this little girl’s grand children may possibly have a standpipe in the yard.
Most doctors smoke Camel cigarettes. And climate change is a prediction of ordinary events exaggerated in the future.
So, the takeaway is that we need to stop Gaia’s cycles to help the unplanned children. Perhaps the prophecy of [catastrophic] [anthropogenic] global warming is a symptom of planetary and ideological menopause. And, of course, for-profit and non-profit for-profit alike.
It’s still the little girl carrying the five litre plastic container to the waterhole.Filling it up and bringing it home balanced on her head. (See water charity TV ad).
This after decades and decades of “grate” work by the UN,OXFAM etc. Hopefully this little girl’s granddaughter may have a standpipe in the yard. Can you remember when charities meant what it said on the “tin and not just a good career move.
Funny, I would link diarrhea to the wrong kind of bacteria. Keep people from ingesting it and you won’t get diarrhea.
Actually, African children do not have funding for safe drinking water which is the major cause of diarrhoea or cholera. They do not need money for proper toilet and sanitation. But more and more funding is required for fake climate change research. Climate scientists and businessmen having interests in similar research have an endless desire for money. They leave no stone unturned to squeeze every bit from the poor nations.
And I thought it was because my gastroenterologist told me to eat more fiber.
A case study in cannot be reasonably isolated from the environment a la Green solutions.
Is this an early April fool’s joke? The content appears to be like the effluent of the disease.
I’m having an issue trying to keep all the things that cause climate change separate from all the things climate change causes, is La Niña causing diarrhea or is it diarrhea is causing La Niña???
I guess you can link anything to climate science and ignore the real problems. So sad this cult has taken so many lives with their fake science.
If we apply Climate Science logic it’s the diarrhoea that causes the ENSO.
If the greens have their way, Africa will remain a not to be developed continent forever.
A “link” is the squishy, un-quantifiable, non-scientific term often used by the press to scare/stampede the public into precipitous acts, by implying correlation and to further imply causality (which is at least quantifiable). But need it be said again that correlation ≠ causality?
It need be said again – and again, and again, and again. In particular with respect to CO2 and temperature, since blaming rising atmospheric CO2 for rising temperature is like blaming umbrellas for the rain.
“ La Niña is associated with cooler temperatures, increased rainfall, and higher flooding during the rainy season. In turn, La Niña conditions lagged 0-7 months are associated with about a 30-percent increase in incidence of under-5 diarrhea …”.
“ … long-term changes in weather patterns coming as a result of climate change.
“In Southern Africa, precipitation is projected to decrease …”.
So they have got it backwards.
Apologies if someone has already made this observation – I haven’t read all comments.
I expected to read ‘Scientists link Climate Change to increased diarrhoea’. Reading “Scientists link La Niña climate cycle to increased diarrhoea” at least attributes it to something real. Contributing the Grant to improving drinking water in the affected areas would have done more good.
Botswana is a rather odd choice of country for this kind of research. It is just about the only country in Africa I would not class as a “$hithole”. They however have problems with their main (coal-powered) power plant at Moropule which was built by a chinese firm, and has proven to be very unreliable.
Backwards indeed. Cooler temperatures, more diarrhea.
Global warming, less diarrhea.
But global warming is supposed to be catastrophic.
Cancel their funding and donate it to clean water supplies.
What a load of sh1te.
Sometimes, you read a headline, or the first para of a report of news story, and just have to close your eyes for a while and see if sanity has been restored when you open them.
Alas, all too often, it has not.
CAGW and the whole PC/intersectionality/politics of identity thing has provided many opportunities to practice this exercise.
Seen a report the other day that linked the Indian Ocean dipole with climate change but I read no further .
well the IOD does affect our climate
its dropped away now so monsoons coming
meanwhile africa copped it full on and some spots have 3005 or more rain than normal floods from sudan downwards i gather
while we dried out and are now burning
“Scientists link La Niña climate cycle to increased diarrhea”.
Oh no!!!
I’m sh*tting myself now…….
I’ll get my coat…
La Nina causes more rain.
Lack of proper sanitation system and lack of safe drinking water causes more contamination during periods of high rainfall. More contamination of drinking water means more Cholera and Diarrhoea. Hence more rainfall is strongly correlated with similar waterborne diseases in poor countries like Africa. Put funding on safe drinking water in Africa rather than fundings on all dubious climate-related research which are meant to find relations to the climate in every bit.
Put fundings in the right hand and to whom who deserve those the most.