American Academy of Pediatrics links global warming to the health of children

Totally crooked and unbalanced Warmist boilerplate below.  No mention that winter is the big killer so a warm climate should be healthier overall.  So they ignore the elephant in the room

Today, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released a policy statement that links climate change with the health of children, urging pediatricians and politicians to work together to solve this crisis and protect children from climate-related threats including natural disasters, heat stress, lower air quality, increased infections, and threats to food and water supplies.

"Every child need a safe and healthy environment and climate change is a rising public health threat to all children in this country and around the world," said AAP President Sandra G. Hassink, MD, FAAP. "Pediatricians have a unique and powerful voice in this conversation due to their knowledge of child health and disease and their role in ensuring the health of current and future children."

The policy statement, "Global Climate Change and Children's Health," updates a 2007 policy, and is being published in the November 2015 issue of Pediatrics (published online Oct. 26). In the 2015 policy statement, the AAP states that:

    There is wide consensus among scientific organizations and climatologists that the broad effects known commonly as "climate change" are the result of contemporary human activities.

    According to the World Health Organization, more than 88 percent of the existing burden of disease attributable to climate change occurs in children younger than 5 years old.

    Climate change poses a threat to human health and safety, but children are uniquely vulnerable.

    Failure to take prompt, substantive action would be an act of injustice to all children.

"Children are uniquely at risk to the direct impacts of climate changes like climate-related disaster--including floods and storms--where they are exposed to increased risk of injury, death, loss of or separation from caregivers and mental health consequences," explained Samantha Ahdoot, MD, lead author of the policy statement. "They are also more vulnerable to the secondary impacts of global warming, like disease. For example, Lyme disease affects approximately 300,000 Americans each year, with boys, ages 5 to 9, at greatest risk. Climate warming has been linked to northern expansion of Lyme disease in North America, putting more American children at risk of this disease."

A technical report accompanies the AAP policy statement and offers a review of the latest scientific evidence linking climate change to child health, development, wellbeing and nutrition. Highlights include:

    Infants less than one year of age are uniquely vulnerable to heat-related mortality, with one study projecting an increase in infant heat-related deaths by 5.5 percent in females and 7.8 percent in males by the end of the 21st Century.

    Climate influences a number of infectious diseases that affect children across the world, including malaria, dengue fever, West Nile virus, Chikungunya, Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, diarrheal illness, Amebic Meningoencephalitis and Coccidioidomycosis.

    The number of deaths in American high school and college football players from heat stroke has doubled from 15 to 29 from 2000-2010.

    There is an emerging concern that increased atmospheric CO2 impacts grain quality, lowering the protein content of the edible portions of wheat, rice and barley.

    High rates of post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms have been found in children following climate-related disasters, including hurricanes and floods.

    Children in the world's poorest countries, where the disease burden is already disproportionately high, are most affected by climate change.

    In 2030, climate change is projected to cause an additional 48,000 deaths attributable to diarrheal disease in children younger than 15 years old, primarily in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

The policy also advocates for the promotion of resource efficiency and renewable energy, research on climate-associated health effects, education and public awareness on this critical issue, and green development and transit. The AAP calls for a new public health movement to educate, advocate, and collaborate with local and national leaders regarding the risks climate change poses to human health. Pediatricians, as advocates for the population most vulnerable to climate change health effects, have a vital role to play in this movement.

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UK Parliament To Debate Abolition Of Department of Energy and Climate Change

In Whitehall parlance it is known as “mogging” — slamming together or scrapping departments to save cash. Speculation about machinery of government changes is set to reach a fever pitch this week as MPs debate a private member’s bill on the abolition of the Department of Energy and Climate Change.

The bill, introduced by the maverick Tory MP Peter Bone, is unlikely to pass — in its current form at least. Nevertheless, for the hundreds of civil servants at DECC, the debate will not be much fun because its dissolution remains a distinct possibility.

With George Osborne asking for departments to prepare for budget cuts of as much as 40 per cent, winding up one or two would help to ease the burden on those that are considered indispensable. Ministers are urgently running the rule over possible savings in advance of the chancellor’s autumn spending review on November 25.

DECC has always been an unwieldy beast, tossed together from bits of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the old DTI in a shake-up led by Gordon Brown in 2008.

It remains relatively small and could simply be broken up, with the energy policy parts rolled into the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the DTI’s successor, and climate policy folded back into Defra. After all, that is the structure that existed only seven years ago.

Best of all for Mr Osborne, unlike most other departments, DECC’s abolition would have no direct impact on public services. Outside Whitehall, few people would notice. Mr Osborne is not known for his sentimentality towards such changes, especially when the political risks are so low. His hunt for cost savings makes DECC a prime target.

However, there are risks here. Machinery of government changes can be blunt. The disruption can last for years, as experienced Whitehall mandarins get bogged down by the logistics and the need to forge relationships with new colleagues and permanent secretaries. [...]

The timing of the autumn spending review also poses a tricky challenge for Mr Osborne, coming only a week before the start of the UN climate policy conference in Paris.

Scrapping DECC then would hardly send an encouraging message on British leadership on the problem of climate change. Nor would it chime well with David Cameron’s dubious pledge to lead the “greenest government ever”.

It would also deal an extremely awkward hand to Amber Rudd, DECC’s well-respected secretary of state, who was appointed only six months ago. If Mr Osborne does choose to wind up DECC, he might wait until the new year to do so — but I certainly wouldn’t rule out his doing so before then.

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Jim Webb Is Basically A Republican When It Comes To Global Warming

Not a lot of people had heard of former Sen. Jim Webb before the  Democratic presidential debate, but based on his response to a question on global warming voters can assume he’s much farther to the right than his fellow Democrats on the issue.

“You’re pro-coal, you’re pro-offshore drilling, you’re pro-Keystone pipeline. Are — again, are you — the question is, are you out of step with the Democratic party?” CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked the former Virginia senator during the debate.

Webb responded that he was an “all-of-the-above energy voter” while in the U.S. Senate, adding that he supported nuclear power. Most importantly, however, Webb stressed the point that global warming would not be solved by the U.S. alone — a point most Democrats seem to ignore in the climate debate.

“And really, we are not going to solve climate change simply with the laws here,” Webb said. “If you look at China and India, they’re the greatest polluters in the world. Fifteen out of the 20 most polluted cities in the world are in one of those two countries. We need to solve this in a global way.”

Webb also took a swipe at the “illusory” agreements between the U.S. and China that have been announced in the last year. Webb argued that the Chinese have been vague on what they would do right away to fight global warming.

“It’s a global problem and I have been very strong on — on doing that,” Webb said. “The — the agreements — the so-called agreements that we have had with China are illusory in terms of the immediate requirements of the — of the Chinese government itself. So let’s solve this problem in an international way, and then we really will have a — a way to address climate change.”

Webb’s answer during Tuesday night’s debate makes him a stand-out among his Democratic opponents on global warming. All of the other candidates have pushed for unilaterally reducing fossil fuel use while ramping up green energy — regardless of what China does.

In fact, Webb’s insistence that China and India need to cut emissions mirrors what Republican presidential candidates have said about their position on global warming.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said, “we have a moral responsibility to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy” to protect future generations. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley kept referring to his plan for a “100 percent clean electric grid by 2050.”

“We did not land a man on the moon with an all-of-the-above strategy,” O’Malley said.

Clinton agreed with Webb that China and India need to cut their emissions to truly fight global warming, but the former secretary put forward her own plan earlier this year to install half a billion solar panels across the country. Her plan would also have the U.S. get 33 percent of its electricity from green energy by 2027 and reduce fossil fuel use as well.

Former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee told CNN’s Cooper that he wanted to address global warming and that he’s proud he’s an enemy of the coal industry.

Chaffee’s website states he’s against the Keystone XL pipeline and Arctic drilling. Webb’s website, on the other hand, doesn’t even have a section for his views on the environment.

Webb’s stance on global warming — judging by his debate comments — is much closer to any Republican candidate than to what his Democratic counterparts espouse.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said in April that U.S. must “[b]e cognizant of the fact that we have this climate change issue and we need to work with the rest of the world to negotiate a way to reduce carbon emissions.”

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said during the second Republican presidential debate that “America is not a planet.” Rubio argued that we “are not going to destroy our economy, make America a harder place to create jobs, in order to pursue a policy that will do nothing, nothing to change our climate, to change our weather.”

Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina told Yahoo News anchor Katie Couric that regulating emissions here “will make not difference at all, yet we’re destroying people’s lives and livelihoods.”

“So I think the answer to this problem is innovation, not regulation,” Fiorina said. “China could care less. In fact, China is delighted that we are not spending any time or energy figuring out clean coal, because they’re going to go do it.”

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The Pope's not Green enough for an old feminist shrew

No matter his recent encyclical on the environment. Pope Francis himself is the cause of global warming, according to feminist activist Gloria Steinem.

Cosmopolitan writer Prachi Gupta revealed that her editor-in-chief, Joanna Coles, interviewed Steinem, “arguably the most influential women’s rights activist in the world today” for an hour on Wednesday. From that interview, Gupta recalled Steinem’s “serious wisdom” and “best quotes.”

One of those quotes came from when Coles spoke with Steinem about “rethinking the patriarchy.”

Steinem started off with a focus on economics. She argued, “All of our courses in economics should start with reproduction, not production.”

What do economics and the patriarchy have to do with each other? Steinem’s logic went something like this: Pope Francis and “other patriarchal religions” support “forcing women to have children” instead of abortion. There’s then a “human load” on the Earth. Thus, the pope causes global warming.

Cosmo published Steinem’s quote:

    “I had this thought that we should have this massive education campaign pointing out that the Pope and all of the other patriarchal religions that dictate to women in this way, accusing them of global warming. Because the human load on this earth is the biggest cause of global warming, and that is because of forcing women to have children they would not on their own choose to have … I’m glad the Pope spoke out about global warming and it was very helpful, but does he know he’s causing it?“

At another point in the interview, Steinem addressed Roe v. Wade and abortion.

“​Reproductive rights are a fundamental human right,” she insisted, “like freedom of speech.”​

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The EPA Spill In Colorado Was Completely Preventable

In August, the Environmental Protection Agency royally screwed up when they released 3 million gallons of toxic water from an abandoned mine in Colorado. The waste from the Gold King Mine, which had been abandoned for nearly ten years, was so great that it turned the Animas River orange. That river connects with the San Juan River, which leads into the greater Colorado River. The spill has impacted Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. Now, investigators have found the EPA could have avoided this environmental fiasco (via AP):

    "The Colorado spill would have been avoided had the EPA team checked on water levels inside the inactive Gold King Mine before digging into its collapsed and leaking entrance, a team of engineers from Interior's Bureau of Reclamation concluded in a 132-page report released Thursday.

    Abandoned hard-rock underground mines are not subject to the same federal and state safety requirements other mining operations must follow, and "experience indicates that they should be," the report concluded.

    "A collapsed flooded mine is in effect a dam, and failure must be prevented by routine monitoring, maintenance, and in some cases remediation," the engineers wrote. "However, there appears to be a general absence of knowledge of the risks associated with these facilities."

    The findings have implications across the United States: Similar disasters could lurk among the many abandoned mines that have yet to be cleaned up.

    The total cost of containing this mining industry mess could top $50 billion, according to government estimates."

The initial clean up cost estimate by American Action Forum had a wide range of $338 million to $27 billion. Moreover, the EPA knew about the blowout risks with the mine. The Navajo Nation,whose livelihoods were threatened by the spill, were furious over the government inaction as well.

Earlier this month, the EPA had a soft repeat of Gold King at Standard Mine near Crested Butte, Colorado, where 2,000 gallons of toxic water leeched into a creek that connects to the town’s water supply, according to the Denver Post.

    "The spill happened at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday [October 6], and the EPA said it immediately informed public works officials. Residents weren't notified. Crested Butte Mayor Aaron Huckstep said he wasn't notified until Thursday.

    EPA officials on Wednesday, responding to Denver Post queries about the mine, didn't reveal the spill. On Thursday afternoon, the agency issued a prepared statement saying that, based on neutral acidity and creek flow levels, Crested Butte didn't close its water intakes.

    "Subsequent investigation found no visible plume or signs of significant impacts in downstream locations," the EPA said.

    At the cleanup site, acidic wastewater laced with cancer-causing cadmium and other toxic heavy metals leaches out of the mine into Elk Creek, which flows into Coal Creek — a primary source of water for Crested Butte. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has determined that the levels of arsenic, cadmium and zinc in Coal Creek exceed state standards."

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Disputes over financing hamper talks on global warming

Disputes over financing for poor nations hampered negotiations on Friday among almost 200 countries racing against the clock to seal an accord on combating global warming at a UN climate summit in Paris in December.

Some delegates said they feared a repeat of the 2009 summit in Copenhagen when governments last tried, and failed, to agree a deal, although many others said they remained confident of a breakthrough at the November 30th-December 11th meeting in Paris.

US climate envoy Todd Stern predicted a deal would be reached in Paris despite scant progress in Bonn, Germany, the final meeting before Paris, on issues including climate finance.

Many nations want a deal, he said, but “you still have to hack our way through specific language and it gets pretty sensitive and pretty contentious”.

Developing nations, which say their views are often ignored, said climate finance is the core issue, and all sides reported scant progress on the issue in Bonn.

“We are extremely worried about the pace,” said Amjad Abdulla, who speaks on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States, which fears rising sea levels.

Poor nations want clear promises of rising contributions from industrialised nations beyond an existing goal of $100 billion by 2020, from public and private sources, to help them curb greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to changes such as floods and droughts.

Rich nations led by the US and the EU want to make vaguer pledges beyond 2020 and for Paris to include new donors such as China, now outside the $100 billion plan, which last month pledged $3 billion for developing nations.

The Christian Aid group said a Paris deal was close “but climate finance is the elephant in the room”.

“Developing countries need Paris to be a success. We have no other option. For developing countries, climate change is a matter of life and death,” said Nozipho Mxakato-Diseko, South Africa’s delegate, who speaks on behalf of more than 130 developing nations and China.

An updated draft text of an accord on Friday covers 55 pages and has 1,490 brackets, marking points of disagreement. That was up from 20 pages at the start of the talks and far longer than hoped.

Nations were also split over how far the Paris text should include a new mechanism for loss and damage, meant to help emerging nations cope with the impact of droughts, hurricanes and rising sea levels.

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