Children exposed to climate hazards are more likely to be stunted, underweight, and more vulnerable to early pregnancies
This is not as mad as it sounds. Some parts of India are so badly affected by floods, droughts and big wind events that their livelihood is endangered. They can suffer from semi-starvation. And that DOES have adverse health effects. It's nothing to do with global warming
Women and children in Bihar, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal and Telangana are particularly vulnerable to climate change-related disasters, reveals an internal study commissioned by Ministry of Women and Child Development. Children exposed to climate hazards are more likely to be stunted, underweight, and more vulnerable to early pregnancies, it further says.
The study exclusively accessed by The Hindu identifies climate and health hotspots in order to specifically understand the impact of floods, cyclones and droughts on health of women and children. Titled “How does climate change impact women and children across agro-ecological zones in India - A scoping study”, it was conducted by the non-profit M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF).
“The issue of climate-change impact on women and children is under-researched and often overlooked in policy formulation. In our scoping study we realised that up to 70% of Indian districts are at very high risk of floods, droughts, and cyclones. Women and children’s undernutrition, teenage pregnancy and domestic violence indicators in these hotspots are also very stark,” Soumya Swaminathan, chairperson, MSSRF and former chief scientist of World Health Organization told The Hindu on the sidelines of the WomenLift Health Global Conference 2024 at Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, in April earlier this year.
Overall, 183 districts were vulnerable to hydro-meteorological disasters such as cyclones and floods while 349 districts witnessed drought. The study was able to generate certain spatial hotspots where high exposure to hydro-met hazards such as floods, cyclones and droughts significantly co-exists with a higher prevalence of poor health variables such as underweight women and child marriage.
In northern areas of Bihar and Gujarat, the geospatial maps show hotspots where exposure to drought, flood, and cyclone co-exists with stunting and underweight children. In terms of women’s nutritional indicators too, these States need immediate attention, the study says. The northern parts of both States are flood-prone areas battered by heavy rainfall.
Also read: Fixing India’s malnutrition problem
The study also points out that the northern plains, including parts of Uttar Pradesh, have hotspots for stunting, while parts of north Maharashtra and south Madhya Pradesh are hotspots for underweight children. Children are 6% more likely to be stunted, 24% more likely to be underweight, experience 35% reduction in minimum diet diversity, and there is a 12% increase in likelihood of deaths if they are under five years of age and exposed to drought, the report said.
“Also, it should be noted that southern India and parts of coastal belts in Odisha have high exposure scores to hydro-met hazards but perform better in terms of child stunting and underweight, highlighting the role of stronger health systems,” the study points out.
The study further goes on to identify major hotspots in terms of impact on women and young girls in areas exposed to drought, floods and cyclones - northern Bihar and parts of Uttar Pradesh, southern West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and parts of Telangana, eastern Maharashtra, parts of northern Madhya Pradesh and southern Uttar Pradesh.
“Exposure to drought events increases the likelihood of prevalence of underweight women by 35%, child marriage by 37%, teenage pregnancy by 17% and intimate partner violence by up to 50%,” the study states.
The climate change hotspots have been identified by spatio-temporal analysis encompassing 50 years of data on frequency and intensity of floods, cyclones and droughts and by using district-level climate vulnerability exposure scores published in 2021 by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW).
For health indicators of women and children, mapping and statistical analysis had been conducted by using the fifth National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) which cites data of 2019-21.
The study recognises that each hazard has different implication and it is difficult to attribute effects of sudden and short-term hazards like flood and cyclone on various parameters. Contrarily, slow and long-term hazards like droughts are likely to have more chronic and long-lasting effects.
The document submitted to Ministry states that the study’s limitations include reliance on secondary data sources, with limited empirical insights into the health aspects of women affected by climate change.
The recommendation to Ministry also states that there is a key gap in evidence, in order to understand differential factors behind children’s vulnerability to heatwaves and develop a systematic method to measure children’s exposure to heatwaves, and relatively less research attention has been paid to this area of inquiry, particularly in India.
“Excess deaths due to heat are not recognised and every State and city should make a heat action plan to tackle the effects of heatwaves. There should be accountability for who is responsible for co-ordination, who will finance, how will messages be disseminated in case of heat stroke and so on. It is a multi-sectoral effort. For instance, the labour department should enforce laws to give a break to construction labour from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m.,” Dr. Swaminathan said.
There is also an absence of national-level data on climate vulnerability considering all hazards. There is a need to study the extent of exposure of women and children at the individual, household, and community levels to seven types of hazards - floods, cyclones, droughts, rainfall variability, heatwaves, air pollution, and cold waves, the recommendation to Ministry points out.
“To identify statistically significant hotspots highlighting the prevalence of heatwaves or prolonged heat and poor health variables, there is a need to generate detailed district-wise monthly temperature data that is currently lacking,” the study document states.
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‘Gambling With The Grid’: New Data Highlights Achilles’ Heel Of One Of Biden’s Favorite Green Power Sources
New government data shows that wind power generation fell in 2023 despite the addition of new capacity, a fact that energy sector experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation demonstrates its inherent flaw.
Wind generation fell by about 2.1% in 2023 relative to 2022 generation, despite the 6 gigawatts (GW) of wind power capacity that came online last year, according to data published Tuesday by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). That wind power output dropped despite new capacity coming online and the availability of government subsidies highlights its intermittency and the problems wind power could pose for grid reliability, energy sector experts told the DCNF.
The decrease in wind generation is the first drop on record with the EIA since the 1990s; the drop was not evenly distributed across all regions of the U.S., and slower wind speeds last year also contributed to the decline, according to EIA. The Biden administration wants to have the American power sector reach carbon neutrality by 2035, a goal that will require a significant shift away from natural gas- and coal-fired power toward wind, solar and other green sources
“Relying on wind power to meet your peak electricity demands is gambling with the grid,” Isaac Orr, a policy fellow at the Center of the American Experiment who specializes in power grid-related analysis, told the DCNF. “Will the wind blow, or won’t it? This should be a moment where policymakers step back and consider the wisdom of heavily subsidizing intermittent generators and punishing reliable coal and gas plants with onerous regulations.”
Between 2016 and 2022, the wind industry received an estimated $18.6 billion worth of subsidies, about 10% of the total amount of subsidies extended to the energy sector by the U.S. government, according to an August 2023 EIA report. Wind power received more assistance from the government than nuclear power, coal or natural gas over the same period of time.
“This isn’t subsidies per kilowatt hour of generation. It’s raw subsidies. If it were per kilowatt hour of generation, the numbers would be even more extreme,” Paige Lambermont, a research fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told the DCNF. “This is a massive amount of money. It’s enough to dramatically alter energy investment decisions for the worse. We’re much more heavily subsidizing the sources that don’t provide a significant portion of our electricity than those that do.”
“Policy that just focuses on installed capacity, rather than the reliability of that capacity, fails to understand the real needs of the electrical grid,” Lambermont added. “This recent disparity illustrates that more installed wind capacity does not necessarily correlate with more wind power production. It doesn’t matter how much wind you add to the grid, if the wind isn’t blowing at peak demand time, that capacity will go to waste.”
Wind power’s performance was especially lackluster in the upper midwest, but Texas saw more wind generation in 2023 than it did in 2022, according to EIA. Wind generation in the first half of 2023 was about 14% lower than it was through the first six months of 2022, but generation was higher toward the end of 2023 than it was during the same period in 2022.
In 2023, about 60% of all electricity generated in the U.S. came from fossil fuels, while 10% came from wind power, according to EIA data. Beyond generous subsidies for preferred green energy sources, the Biden administration has also aggressively regulated fossil fuels and American power plants to advance its broad climate agenda.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) landmark power plant rules finalized this month will threaten grid reliability if enacted, partially because the regulations are likely to incentivize operators to close plants rather than adopt the costly measures required for compliance, grid experts previously told the DCNF. At the same time that the Biden administration is effectively trying to shift power generation away from fossil fuels, it is also pursuing goals — such as substantially boosting electric vehicle adoption over the next decade and incentivizing construction of energy-intensive computer chip factories — that are driving up projected electricity demand in the future.
“The EIA data proves what we’ve always known about wind power: It is intermittent, unpredictable and unreliable,” David Blackmon, a 40-year veteran of the oil and gas industry who now writes and consults on the energy sector, told the DCNF. “Any power generation source whose output is wholly dependent on equally unpredictable weather conditions should never be presented by power companies and grid managers as safe replacements for abundant, cheap, dispatchable generation fueled with natural gas, coal or nuclear. This is a simple reality that people in charge of our power grids too often forget. Saying that no doubt hurts some people’s feelings, but nature really does not care about our feelings.”
Blackmon also pointed out that, aside from its intermittency, sluggish build-out of the transmission lines and related infrastructure poses a major problem for wind power.
“Wind power is worthless without accompanying transmission, yet the Biden administration continues to pour billions into unreliable wind while ignoring the growing crisis in the transmission sector,” Blackmon told the DCNF.
Another long-term issue that wind power, as well as solar power, faces is the need for a massive expansion in the amount of battery storage available to store and dispatch energy from intermittent sources as market conditions dictate. By some estimates, the U.S. will need about 85 times as much battery storage by 2050 relative to November 2023 in order to fully decarbonize the power grid, according to Alsym Energy, a battery company.
The White House and the Department of Energy did not respond to requests for comment.
https://dailycaller.com/2024/05/04/data-wind-generation-decrease-2023-grid-reliability/s
********************************************************Solar's Been Taking a Beating Lately
A massive blaze plunged a swimming carnival into chaos with hundreds of school children forced to evacuate a busy aquatic centre.
The solar panels on the roof of the Sydney Olympic Park Aquatic Centre in Homebush, western Sydney, went up in flames at about 12.30pm on Monday.
Children who were attending a swimming carnival inside the facility were forced to evacuate the building in their swimmers.
Thick plumes of smoke were seen coming out of the building as emergency services rushed to the scene.
Half a dozen NSW Fire and Rescue crews fought the blaze and three ambulance crews were also called to the venue.
Emergency crews got there and found the fire was literally in the solar array itself.
..."Six appliances and 24 Fire and Rescue NSW (FRNSW) firefighters responded to the incident in Shane Gould Avenue at 12.15pm after reports of black smoke issuing from the building.
"Upon investigation, crews found a working fire in the solar panels on the roof of the sporting facility."
Fire crews used a ladder platform to attack the flames and were able to get the blaze under control within about 45 minutes.
FRNSW confirmed that more than 2,500 people had to be evacuated during the incident.
...Multiple witnesses phoned Sydney's 2GB to report the incident, with one caller named Peter claiming "all the solar panels are going up on the roof".
Thank goodness they got there that quickly and that the number of people at the venue could be evacuated efficiently and safely. I've only seen reports of one injury so far. Kudos to all involved.
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Biden Signs Suicidal ‘No Coal’ Pact, While Rest of World Builds 1,000 New Plants
The Biden administration has just signed an economic suicide pact that would require the United States and six other Western democracies to shut down its coal power plants by 2035, while China, India and the rest of the world currently have more than 1,000 new coal power plants in the planning or construction phase. The no-coal pact allows all nations but the Suicidal Seven to continue using as much affordable coal power as they like.
Climate activists often point to China as a climate role model, noting that China manufactures more wind and solar power equipment than any other nation. China, however, isn’t stupid enough to use much of that equipment. Realizing that conventional energy – and especially coal power – is more affordable and reliable than wind and solar power, China manufactures wind and solar equipment, sells the equipment to America and Western Europe, and then powers its own economy primarily with coal power.
In America, government intervention has already caused the shutdown of many coal power plants and the construction of expensive wind and solar projects. In more than half the states, renewable power mandates require a certain percentage of electricity in the state to come from wind or solar. Federal laws and regulations punish coal power at nearly every step of coal mining and utilization. Massive subsidies for wind and solar allow wind and solar providers to charge substantially reduced prices for their product at taxpayers’ expense.
Even with government tipping the scale so heavily in favor of wind and solar power, the so-called green transition is coming with an enormous price tag. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, there was a 21 percent increase in wind and solar power since Joe Biden took office in January 2021 through the end of 2023. At the same time, electricity prices also rose by 21 percent. Prior to Biden taking office, the long-term electricity price trend was an increase of approximately 1 percent per year. The green transition has increased the pace of electricity price inflation by 700 percent. And that doesn’t account for all the wind and solar subsidies that are hidden in our tax bills.
There is little reason to believe we are on the verge of a climate crisis. A good resource documenting this good news is ClimateRealism.com. Yet, even if a climate crisis were imminent, unilateral coal disarmament is a foolish way for America to approach carbon dioxide emissions.
Since 2000, the United States has reduced its carbon dioxide emissions more than any other country in the world. U.S. emissions are down 21 percent, while the rest of the world has increased its emissions by 47 percent. Clearly, America “showing leadership” reducing carbon dioxide emissions is leading to nothing other than the rest of the world free license to jack up their own emissions. Even if the United States and the rest of the Suicidal Seven could somehow eliminate all of their emissions, it would have little impact on the global trend.
Ultimately, Biden’s pact to eliminate American coal use will further ramp up inflation. After all, energy is an important cost component in almost every product bought and sold in the economy. In addition to the inflation impact, Biden’s pact will force American businesses into a major competitive disadvantage versus businesses in China, India, and the rest of the world, which will be paying substantially lower energy costs than American businesses.
Under Biden’s plan, we will end up sinking vast economic resources into eliminating coal power and as much carbon dioxide as possible from the American economy. Even then, we will still be looking at global emissions continuing to rise. At that point, Biden’s plan is for America to assume the lion’s share of global “climate reparations” and financial bribes to induce China, India, and the rest of the world to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions. After sabotaging our own economy with higher energy prices, we will literally borrow money from China in order to then bribe China to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions.
It would be hard to think of a crazier domestic energy policy.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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