Climate change health risk is a ‘medical emergency’, experts warn
http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN0P22FG20150622?irpc=932
LONDON (Reuters) – The threat to human health from climate change is so great that it could undermine the last 50 years of gains in development and global health, experts warned on Tuesday.
Extreme weather events such as floods and heat waves bring rising risks of infectious diseases, poor nutrition and stress, the specialists said, while polluted cities where people work long hours and have no time or space to walk, cycle or relax are bad for the heart as well as respiratory and mental health.
Almost 200 countries have set a 2 degrees C global average temperature rise above pre-industrial times as a ceiling to limit climate change, but scientists say the current trajectory could lead to around a 4 degrees C rise in average temperatures, risking droughts, floods, storms and rising sea levels.
“That has very serious and potentially catastrophic effects for human health and human survival,” said Anthony Costello, director of University College London’s (UCL) Institute for Global Health, who co-led the report.
“We see climate change as a major health issue, and that’s often neglected in policy debates,” he told reporters at a briefing in London.
The report, commissioned and published by The Lancet medical journal, was compiled by a panel of specialists including European and Chinese climate scientists and geographers, social, environmental and energy scientists, biodiversity experts and health professionals.…
Senators Introduce Carbon Tax
Last week, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) introduced the American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act. According to the Senators, this bill aims to address concerns regarding climate change, while simultaneously improving economic performance. Specifically, this bill will impose a tax on carbon dioxide emissions.
This tax would be levied at $45/metric ton in 2016 and increase by 2% each year afterward. The tax is targeted at large emitters of greenhouse gases, such as methane, and companies that mine, extract, or import fossil fuels. Over the course of a decade, the Joint Committee on Taxation estimates the total revenue collected would surpass $2 trillion.
The senators plan to use the tax revenue in four ways. First, cut the marginal corporate income tax rate by 6%, from 35% to 29%. Second, provide workers with $500 refundable tax credit against their Social Security payroll tax. Third, increase Social Security, veterans, and disabled Americans benefits by $500, which would be adjusted for inflation going forward. Lastly, the revenue would fund block grants to states to fund programs to help workers of impacted industries transition to new jobs.…
EPA Claims That ‘Global Action’ On Global Warming Will Stop ‘Extreme Weather’
A global agreement to curb greenhouse gas emissions would prevent nearly 70,000 premature American deaths annually by the end of the century while sparing the country hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of economic losses, according to a major government study on the cost of climate change.
Slowing the carbon build-up in the atmosphere would also prevent severe damage to a wide range of critical ecosystems, from Hawaiian coral reefs that support tourism to shellfish beds off the East Coast, said the report released by the White House on Monday.
The report, a five-year, peer-reviewed analysis that assesses the benefits of alternative strategies for dealing with climate change, concludes that every region of the country could be spared severe economic disruptions that would result if greenhouse gas concentrations continue to soar.
The EPA released a report titled “Climate Change in the United States: Benefits of Global Action” which lays out the costs of not reducing greenhouse gas emissions to fight global warming. The report claims cutting emissions would result in billions of dollars in benefits for the U.S. and save thousands of lives every year.
The agency also claims there would be less “extreme weather” if emissions are cut on a global scale. An interesting claim given there is little to no evidence to support the notion that natural disasters are becoming more frequent or intense.
Regardless, the EPA says a global effort to cut emissions would result in about 70,000 fewer people dying from extreme heat and poor air quality in the U.S., less damage from flooding and storm surges on coastal properties and other weather events by 2100.…
Pay climate protection money or else! ‘Inaction on climate change would cost billions’, major EPA study finds
A global agreement to curb greenhouse gas emissions would prevent nearly 70,000 premature American deaths annually by the end of the century while sparing the country hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of economic losses, according to a major government study on the cost of climate change.
Slowing the carbon build-up in the atmosphere would also prevent severe damage to a wide range of critical ecosystems, from Hawaiian coral reefs that support tourism to shellfish beds off the East Coast, said the report released by the White House on Monday.
The report, a five-year, peer-reviewed analysis that assesses the benefits of alternative strategies for dealing with climate change, concludes that every region of the country could be spared severe economic disruptions that would result if greenhouse gas concentrations continue to soar.…
Climatologist Dr. John Christy on Pope: ‘I’m puzzled by this encyclical…I don’t see disasters ahead…The real world simply doesn’t align with the theory’
Christy: I am one of those climatologists who builds datasets so we can measure what the climate system is doing and why. In my reading of the results, I don’t see disasters ahead – the world’s atmosphere has warmed little since satellites began estimating global temperatures and extreme events like droughts and hurricanes aren’t increasing.
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The hundreds of millions of dollars spent to understand the climate system though computer modeling (on which the catastrophic claims are based) have yet to generate results that give us confidence that dangerous warming will occur.
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But what has this “exploitation of the planet” wrought? Simply put – human life, in both length and quality. Carbon is the most affordable and reliable source of energy in demand today, renewables like solar and wind are neither by comparison. This is why over 85 percent of energy comes to us from carbon and why its use is growing around the world. This will not stop anytime soon.
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Greenpeace Co-Founder mocks human extinction claim: ‘We are presently the most successful species on the planet’
Greenpeace Co-Founder and ecologist Dr. Patrick Moore, mocked the new study by Stanford Biologist Paul Ehrlich, notorious for his career of nonstop doomsday predictions. See: New Overpopulation guru Paul Ehrlich Study: Earth enters sixth stage of extinction — and humans are among ‘walking dead’
“As far as humans going extinct what a stupid thing to say when we are presently the most successful species on the planet,” Moore told Climate Depot in an exclusive interview on June 21, 2015.
“That is so 1970s. Ehrlich is pathetic and has been crying wolf for decades. While he pontificated doom for starving millions in the 1970 from his Ivory Tower at Stanford, Norman Borlaug was busy quietly breeding varieties of wheat that ushered in the Green Revolution and gave India and Pakistan a surplus of grain,” Moore explained.
“Now the Gene Revolution is doing the same, and could do much more if the troglodytes would get out of the way,” Moore, the author of the book “Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout,” added.
1972 Article Unearthed: ‘Worse than Hitler’: ‘Population Bomb’ author Paul Ehrlich suggested adding a forced sterilization agent to ‘staple food’ and ‘water supply’Warned of ‘Unpredictable climatic effects’ — Called on U.S. to ‘de-develop’
Moore also challenged the specious species claims about the “eastern cougar.” See: The Eastern Cougar will be officially listed as extinct — almost 80 years after last sighting
“The ‘eastern cougar’ is not a species, it might barely be a variety like so many other eastern and western varieties that were created in North America during the last glaciation as species were separated into isolated eastern and western populations. The barred owl and the spotted owl are perfect examples of this. They can interbreed and produce viable offspring and therefore are not distinct species. Same for the cougar,” Moore said.
“It is a fact that humans have taken a toll on large mammals, especially predators such as tigers because villagers don’t want their livestock and children to be eaten by them,” he added.
Moore has consistently challenged dire species extinction claims. In 2011, Moore described how the “peer-review process has become corrupted” to allow such studies to be published.
Cardinal On Fox Offers Calm Defense of Pope’s Encyclical
http://climatecrocks.com/2015/06/21/cardinal-baffles-fox-host-with-calm-defense-of-pope/…