Al Gore Touted Harvard Study: Elevated CO2 Levels Directly Affect Human Cognition
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/10/26/3714853/carbon-dioxide-impair-brain/
Via Joe Romm:
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In a landmark public health finding, a new study from the Harvard School of Public Health finds that carbon dioxide (CO2) has a direct and negative impact on human cognition and decision-making. These impacts have been observed at CO2 levels that most Americans — and their children — are routinely exposed to today inside classrooms, offices, homes, planes, and cars.
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Carbon dioxide levels are inevitably higher indoors than the baseline set by the outdoor air used for ventilation, a baseline that is rising at an accelerating rate thanks to human activity, especially the burning of fossil fuels. So this seminal research has equally great importance for climate policy, providing an entirely new public health impetus for keeping global CO2 levels as low as possible.
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Significantly, the Harvard study confirms the findings of a little-publicized 2012 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) study, “Is CO2 an Indoor Pollutant? Direct Effects of Low-to-Moderate CO2 Concentrations on Human Decision-Making Performance.” That study found “statistically significant and meaningful reductions in decision-making performance” in test subjects as CO2 levels rose from a baseline of 600 parts per million (ppm) to 1000 ppm and 2500 ppm.
Both the Harvard and LBNL studies made use of a sophisticated multi-variable assessment of human cognition used by a State University of New York (SUNY) Upstate Medical University team, led by Dr. Usha Satish. Both teams raised indoor CO2 levels while leaving all other factors constant. The findings of each team were published in the peer-reviewed open-access journal Environmental Health Perspectives put out by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, a part of NIH.
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The new study, led by Dr. Joe Allen, Director of Harvard’s Healthy Buildings program, and Dr. John Spengler, Professor of Environmental Health and Human Habitation at Harvard, used a lower CO2 baseline than the earlier study. They found that, on average, a typical participant’s cognitive scores dropped 21 percent with a 400 ppm increase in CO2. Here are their astonishing findings for four of the nine cognitive functions scored in a double-blind test of the impact of elevated CO2 levels:
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NASA has also observed CO2-related health impacts on International Space Station (ISS) astronauts at much lower CO2 levels than expected and has identified a mechanism by which CO2 levels could affect the brain, as I will discuss in Part 2.
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All of this new research …
‘Literally too hot for human survival’ – Climate change COULD soon push Persian Gulf temps to lethal extremes, report warns
A scientific study released Monday warns that at least five of the region’s great metropolises could see summer days that surpass the “human habitability” limit, with heat and humidity so high that even the healthiest people could not withstand more than a few hours outdoors.
The report in the journal Nature Climate Change says booming cities such Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha could cross the threshold by the end of the century, if planetary temperatures continue to rise at current rates. Not far behind is the Saudi holy city of Mecca, a destination for millions of Muslim pilgrims every year.
On the hottest summer days, inhabitants of those cities could experience a combination of heat and humidity so high that the human body is no longer capable of shedding the excess heat through perspiration, according to the report’s authors, a pair of scientists from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Loyola Marymount University.
“Our results expose a regional hotspot where climate change, in the absence of significant mitigation, is likely to severely impact human habitability in the future,” the authors write in the study.…
US CONGRESS TO INVESTIGATE NOAA’S TEMPERATURE ADJUSTMENTS
(Also see: A new record ‘Pause’ length: Satellite Data: No global warming for 18 years 8 months! )
The head of a congressional committee on science has issued subpoenas to the Obama administration over a recent scientific study refuting claims that global warming had “paused” or slowed over the last decade.
Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology and a prominent congressional skeptic on climate change, issued the subpoenas two weeks ago demanding e-mails and records from U.S. scientists who participated in the study, which undercut a popular argument used by critics who reject the scientific consensus that man-made pollution is behind the planet’s recent warming.
Smith’s document request to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ordered the agency to turn over scientific data as well as internal “communications between or among employees” involved in the study, according to a letter Friday by the House committee’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (Tex.). Johnson accused Smith of “furthering a fishing expedition” by looking for ways to discredit NOAA’s study, which was published in June in the peer-reviewed journal Science.
“It is a disturbing trend for the legitimacy of this committee,” Johnson said in the letter to Smith. She linked the subpoena to previous requests by the committee’s Republican staff seeking information about NOAA’s climate researchers, which Johnson called “a serious misuse of Congressional oversight powers.” Noting that NOAA routinely publishes supporting data for its studies, Johnson said Smith had “not articulated a legitimate need for anything beyond what NOAA has already provided.”
Smith, responding to Johnson’s letter, said the subpoena was not “harassment” but “appropriate constitutional oversight.”
“This scandal-ridden administration’s lack of openness is the real problem,” Smith said in a statement released by his office. “Congress cannot do its job when agencies openly defy Congress and refuse to turn over information. When an agency decides to alter the way it has analyzed historical temperature data for the past few decades, it’s crucial to understand on what basis those decisions were made.”
– See more at: http://www.thegwpf.com/us-congress-to-investigate-noaas-temperature-adjustments/#sthash.rIoy0xtl.iDyA35Tp.dpuf
Related Links:
NOAA Hiding The Decline: ‘Ten years ago, NOAA showed that all warming occurred before 1950, and a sharp drop in temperature after 1950. The National Academy of Sciences showed the same thing in 1975. The National Center for Atmospheric Research showed the same thing in 1974. This didn’t fit the government political …
‘Insurance Companies Raising Prices Because Of Exaggerated Global Warming Threat’
‘Insurance companies will raise prices because of exaggerated, unrealistic threats’ …
Proselytized: Sec. of State Kerry tells climate faithful: ‘None of you need to be converted’
Speaking at the State Department’s ‘Climate and Clean Energy Investment Forum’, Secretary John Kerry tells green investors, ‘None of you need to be converted.’
Kerry: ‘Achieving a global agreement on climate change at the Paris conference this December is an absolutely critical step and a major priority of President myself and the rest of the administration.
Climate and Clean Energy Investment Forum
October 20, 2015
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Related Links:
Outgoing UN IPCC Chief reveals global warming ‘is my religion and my dharma’
Flashback: Michael Crichton: ‘One of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists.’
The Real ‘Consensus’: Global Warming Causes FEWER Hurricanes
http://dailycaller.com/2015/10/23/the-real-consensus-global-warming-causes-fewer-hurricanes/
Scientists project fewer hurricanes in the future that may be slightly stronger. Research also suggests that even though hurricanes may become slightly stronger, wind patterns will drive them further out to sea, meaning fewer storms hitting Americans.
“I would characterize ‘mainstream’ science on global warming and hurricanes as thinking that there will be a slight decrease in frequency of storms but a slight increase in intensity on a global scale,” climate scientist Chip Knappenberger with the libertarian Cato Institute told The Daily Caller News Foundation Thursday.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2015/10/23/the-real-consensus-global-warming-causes-fewer-hurricanes/#ixzz3ph1X0CcC
The e United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), considered the world’s top climate authority by environmentalists and scientists,found “it is likely that the global frequency of tropical cyclones will either decrease or remain essentially unchanged, concurrent with a likely increase in both global mean tropical cyclone maximum wind speed and rain rates.”
But IPCC notes the “future changes in storms are likely to be small compared to natural interannual variability,” meaning scientists won’t even be able to detect global warming’s influence on storms for some time.
“By and large, the projected changes will be pretty small compared to natural variability so may not be detectable for a long time,” Knappenberger said. “Recent trends, in whatever direction, are dominated by natural variability and thus very likely do not display a detectable global warming signal.”
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2015/10/23/the-real-consensus-global-warming-causes-fewer-hurricanes/#ixzz3ph1eMyBN…
NY Mag: Author Naomi Klein: We Must We Choose Between Capitalism and Climate
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/10/must-we-choose-between-capitalism-and-climate.html#
Klein’s narrative rests heavily on moral disgust with market-based mechanisms and the cold reasoning associated with them. She dismisses the “language of risk assessment,” a traditional economist way of measuring the dangers of climate change, and approvingly quotes a spiritual leader who tells her, “Water is holy.”
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U.N. efforts to fight climate change have only been under way since 1988. Compare this with the notion of replacing capitalism with a radical egalitarian alternative, which has been around for a century and a half. The project does not seem to be moving forward. Waiting to limit the damage of greenhouse-gas emissions until the people can overthrow the yoke of unfettered capitalism may represent the most dangerous advice the left has come up with in a very long time.…
Obama’s Science Czar: ‘Man Made’ Climate Change Endangering Shrimp, Lobsters, Crabs
According to Holdren, the “pace and pattern of the changes in climate” that have occurred since the industrial revolution match with “great fidelity” what climate science told us would result from the buildup of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere.
“Clear beyond reasonable doubt is that the ongoing human-caused changes in climate are already causing harm to life, property, economics and ecosystems including more extremely hot days and longer and stronger heat waves often accompanied by worse smog,” Holdren said.
“Longer allergy seasons, a larger fraction of total precipitation coming in extreme downpours resulting in floods and mudslides, an increase in the power of the strongest tropical storms, shoreline erosion and aggravation, coastal flooding by sea levels rising, longer and more intense droughts in regions prone to drought, a longer wildfire season and larger areas burned in regions prone to that and major impacts on ecosystem dynamics, including the factors governing pest outbreaks and geographic ranges of tropical diseases,” he added.…
Warmist Academic: Rich Nations Must Combat Climate Change With ‘Planned Austerity’
Only a period of enforced “planned austerity” can save the world from dangerous global warming, a warmist academic has claimed at a TED lecture.…