Health
The health effects of global warming and climate change have been well known for decades. as the 1995 IPCC chart shows.
The actual problem is atmospheric GHG pollution with severe environmental health impacts and risks impacts. How ever this is not how the issue is being addressed.
The populations in Africa and lower latitude regions have always been recognized as most vulnerable to all these impacts, and it has been assumed that the wealthy industrially developed nations would be able to cope with the less severe impacts affecting their populations.
Extreme weather events that are already increasing from global climate change, are the most damaging to human life and health.
The most climate vulnerable regions are already suffering negative effects on crop yields (IPCC 2014 AR5).
With records to water security climate change is increasing both droughts and floods, and large lakes are drying up- e.g 2016 Bolivia's second largest lake).
Forty per cent of the worlds population rely on the spring melt of Himalaya glaciers for their water supplies. 2012 research found that these glaciers are melting away faster than had been thought.
2016 research found that Climate change deteriorates water quality in the Himalayas affecting 40 percent of world's population
CLIMATE SYSTEM EMERGENCY INSTITUTE
The health and human rights approach to climate change
The UK-based Climate and Health Council
2014 Climate Change Risk Management American Meteorological Society
2009 CARE Humanitarian Implications of Climate Change
Mapping emerging trends and risk hotspots
2012 DARA Climate Vulnerability Monitor
400,000 lives lost per year from climate change
2012 IPCC Special Report Risks of Extreme weather disasters
2012 World Risk Report (environmental health)
March 2014 The Lancet From public to planetary health: a manifesto Manifesto PDF
Small children are most vulnerable to the climate change health impacts. 2017 paper Pollution from Fossil-Fuel Combustion is the Leading Environmental Threat to Global Pediatric Health
Feb 2018 WHO Climate Change and Health
June 2015 Climate change health risk is a "medical emergency", experts warn- University College London's (UCL) Institute for Global Health.
June 2015, The Lancet, Health and climate change: policy responses to protect public health
May 2015 World Medical Association Health must be given higher priority in climate summit say physician leaders
August 2014 Global Climate And Health Alliance Declare climate change a global public health emergency, and take urgent measures to address it.
Statements from the Medical Profession
Research
by date
7 Aug 2020 Why deforestation and extinctions make pandemics more likely
13 Mar 2020 Changing rapid weather variability increases influenza epidemic risk in a warming climate
6 Jan 2020 Climate change brings the specter of new infectious diseases
30 Jan 2020 CAPE Canadian doctors link fracked natural gas to cancer and birth defects
Lancet Nov 2019 Ensuring that the health of a child born today
is not defined by a changing climate
June 2019 Fracking Health effects compendium
June 2019 WHO air pollution and climate- top health threats.
June 2019 Acads The imperative of climate action to protect
human health in Europe
19 June 2019 Academies Air Pollution & health
2 April 2019 Effects of fossil fuel & emissions removal on public health
J. Lelieveld, PNAS
28 March 2019 Global expansion and redistribution of Aedes-borne virus transmission risk with climate change
Nov 2018 Lancet Countdown SPM
31 July 2018 Climate Extremes and Global Health, V Ramanathan
16 March 2018 Climate change promotes the spread of mosquito and tick-borne viruses
Dec 2017 Pollution from Fossil-Fuel Combustion is the Leading Environmental Threat to Global Pediatric Health
Aug 2017 Lancet Comprehensive climate change risks Europe
IPCC AR5 2014 Health Chapter
Exec Summary The health of human populations is sensitive to shifts in weather patterns and other aspects of climate change (very high confidence). These effects occur directly, due to changes in temperature and precipitation and occurrence of heat waves, floods, droughts, and fires. Indirectly, health may be damaged by ecological disruptions brought on by climate change (crop failures, shifting patterns of disease vectors), or social responses to climate change (such as displacement of populations following prolonged drought). Variability in temperatures is a risk factor in its own right, over and above the influence of average temperatures on heat-related deaths. Biological and social adaptation is more difficult in a highly variable climate than one that is more stable.
Until mid-century climate change will act mainly by exacerbating health problems that already exist (very high confidence). New conditions may emerge under climate change, and existing diseases (e.g., food-borne infections) may extend their range into areas that are presently unaffected (high confidence). But the largest risks will apply in populations that are currently most affected by climate related
diseases.
Thus, for example, it is expected that health losses due to climate change-induced undernutrition will occur mainly in areas that are already food-insecure. In recent decades, climate change has contributed to levels of ill health though the present worldwide burden of ill health from climate change is relatively small compared with other stressors on health and is not well quantified. Rising temperatures have increased the risk of heat-related death and illness. Local changes in temperature and rainfall have altered distribution of some water-borne illnesses and disease vectors, and reduced food production for vulnerable populations.
If climate change continues as projected across the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenarios, the major changes in ill health
compared to no climate change will occur through:
• Greater risk of injury, disease, and death due to more intense heat waves and fires (very high confidence)
• Increased risk of undernutrition resulting from diminished food production in poor regions (high confidence)
• Consequences for health of lost work capacity and reduced labor productivity in vulnerable populations (high confidence)
• Increased risks of food- and water-borne diseases (very high confidence) and vector-borne diseases.
In addition to their implications for climate change, essentially all the important climate-altering pollutants (CAPs) other than carbon dioxide (CO2) have near-term health implications (very high confidence). In 2010, more than 7% of the global burden of disease was due to inhalation of these air pollutants (high confidence).
The capacity of the human body to thermoregulate may be exceeded on a regular basis, particularly during manual labor, in parts of the world during this century.
In the highest Representative Concentration Pathway, RCP8.5, (business as usual) by 2100 some of the world’s land area will be experiencing 4°C to 7°C higher temperatures due to anthropogenic climate change If this occurs, the combination of high temperatures and high humidity will compromise normal human activities, including growing food or working outdoors in some areas for
parts of the year.
The most effective measures to reduce vulnerability in the near term are programs that implement and improve basic public health measures such as provision of clean water and sanitation, secure essential health care including vaccination and child
health services, increase capacity for disaster preparedness and response, and alleviate poverty (very high confidence).
Extreme weather events increased by global climatge change are the most damaging of impact ctaegories to human health and the crops.
However in general the IPCC assessments treat human health as seperate from extreme weather, and these impacts are not assessed in combination.
Therefore IPCC extreme weather should be considered first, as in the 2012 Special Report below. Also Page
Environmental health risk assessment of total pollution health impacts by SOURCES Climate change should be assessed by an environmental health risk assessment, not only by a climate change assessment. The IPCC refers to risk but does not in fact apply risk to the assessments.
Industrial energy pollution
As is well known Fossil fuel energy production causes deadly health impacts from air pollution as well as from climate change. While deaths from global climate change are estimated in the hundreds of thousands, deaths from fossil fuel air pollution are estimated to be three million a year (IEA 2016).
Global climate change increases air pollution, so as global climate change increases so will the millions of deaths. Gasoline combustion by vehicle exhausts increases the risk of cancers, particularly affecting children. Coal in particular increases the risk of cancers and also emits mercury which is a neurological toxin.
Fossil fuel air pollution is a cause that increases the risk of respiratory disease, cardiovascular disease, cancers, neurological disease, diabetes, and adverse outcomes of pregnancy.
Industrial age food production pollution
A large source of methane emissions is the livestock meat industry. Methane is exhaled by ruminant digestion. Meat is also a large the cause of human disease. Meat increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, colorectal cancer and type 2 diabetes.
Paper Climate Impacts Responses 2016 Environmental Health Risk Assessment to Correct Climate Change Policy-making Failure, International Conference on Climate Change:Impacts & Responses.
WHO 2018
2017 The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change PDF
2009 The Lancet Managing the health risks of climate change
Greenhouse gas emissions can be conveniently be broadly divided into two large sources. The main one is carbon combustion for energy. The other, not far behind it when including deforestation for the livestock to meat industry, is food production. Increasingly the research is showing that the two big factors in the chronic degenerative diseases of the industrially developed world are fossil fuel air pollution and are less than healthy diets.
The impacts of global climate change on human health comes under the discipline of environmental health risk assessment and management. This differs from the IPCC and other climate change assessments in that the pollutants from the sources of the greenhouse gas emissions are included along with the greenhouse gas emissions. From the environmental health perspective by far the greatest damaging human health impact is from fossil fuel air pollution, which the research says will be increased by global warming and climate change.
The two main sources of air pollution's damaging effects on human health are ground level surface ozone and particulate matter. Surface ozone is produced as a chemical reaction from fossil fuel air pollutants catalyzed by solar warmth. Therefore surface ozone increases with global warming. It is highly irritant to the respiratory tract. The research is showing that surface warming and air circulation effects will increase the adverse effects from particulate matter.
“Ground level ozone is formed through photochemical reactions that involve nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO), methane (CH4), and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the presence of sunlight and elevated temperatures. Therefore as temperatures rise, many air pollution models project increased ozone production, especially within and surrounding urban areas. It is highly irritant to the entire respiratory tract. "There is observed evidence that tropospheric ozone increases in extreme heat, resulting in air pollution mortality” (IPCC 2014, 728-729).
There is evidence that global warming and climate change will increase the adverse impacts of air pollution pollutants in general. (Future global mortality from changes in air pollution attributable to climate change, Raquel A. Silva 2017 https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3354) (2014 above Impact on human health of climate changes Massimo Franchini) (Occurrence and persistence of future atmospheric stagnation events Daniel E. Horton https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2272)
Climate change is not assessed according to environmental health impact and risk assessment, which would include all pollutants from all sources of greenhouse gases.
Fossil fuel air pollution While today deaths from global climate disruption are in the hundreds of thousands, deaths from fossil fuel air pollution are at least 3 million (WHO).
2019 VIDEO Planetary Health: The Future is Now
Fossil fuel air pollution is killing millions every year. J. Lelieveld, 2 April 2019 PNAS Effects of fossil fuel ..emission removal on public health
IPCC 2018 1.5C Report
WHO 2019 Top health threats are air pollution and climate change
Key Paper 2019
Effects of fossil fuel and total emission
removal on public health and climate
