The science of anthropogenic climate change: what every doctor should know
BMJ 2014; 349 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.g5178 (Published 09 September 2014) Cite this as: BMJ 2014;349:g5178Click here to see an interactive graphic, summarising the impacts on health predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
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Unfortunately we cannot do double blind prospective trials on this topic and therefore have to be satisfied with a lower level of evidence than we usually do in our field.
As we have learned in the past with the EBM movement we tend to overestimate our understanding of complex systems iand may make erroneous conclusions.
Lastly , without a control, we cannot assume we would not be in a global warming period at the moment.
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The author omits any consideration of the single factor most responsible for the destruction of the ecosphere. That single factor is overpopulation. Too many homo sapiens excreting into too small a pond is at the bottom of all environmental problems.
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Left to its own devices, the earth's climate will, sooner or later, return to the ice age conditions which (mysteriously) ended about 10,000 years ago. Maybe some degree of anthropogenic global warming will help to prevent this. What we need the experts to tell us is how much. I think future generations may be very grateful to us for, albeit inadvertently, having prevented such a disaster.
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Climate change has emerged as one of the most devastating environmental threats, and there is overwhelming evidence of a wide range of implications for human health. To mitigate this, well-prepared medical manpower is required. This editorial is obviously important as it is very evident that the medical field has not given much importance to climate change and its health hazards.
A study conducted in a medical college in western India by Pandve & Raut (1) amongst Medical students on awareness regarding climate change and its health hazards found that 98.40% students commented that the global climate is changing. The majority of the students opined that human activities are contributing to climate change. The commonest source of information was newspapers and magazines (78.20%). Surprisingly only one third of students had heard about the IPCC. The majority commented that deforestation and industrial and vehicular pollution contribute most to climate change. But only 47.50% students opined that health-related issues are a priority for a climate change prevention strategy. According to 65.10% students, direct physical hazards of extreme climatic events are the most important health-related impact of climate change, followed by natural disaster-related health hazards (43.50%). Education and awareness regarding climate change are the most effective strategies in tackling climate change issues according to 88.5% of the students.
Medical students are the future of our medical fraternity, and they should be well equipped with thorough knowledge regarding global climate change and its prevention. It is recommended that global climate change and its prevention should be included as a compulsory part of the curriculum in medical education. In most parts of the world doctors are still supposed to be a reliable as well as an authentic source of information. Doctors must be made aware and trained by government authorities across the globe regarding climate change and its prevention strategies. To conclude, doctors must lead the war against global climate change.
Reference:
1. Pandve HT, Raut AN. Assessment of awareness regarding Climate change and its health hazards amongst the medical students. Indian J Occup Environ Med 2011;15:42-5
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Climate Change, Food and Health
It is timely to bring important climate change issues to the attention of mainly medical readers1. Not alluded to, however, is that ecologically destructive processes that are likely to be effecting climate change also affect human health in a more intimate way than we like to think.
Most farming now follows large-scale, monocultural, agribusiness practices, often including large public subsidies and corporate profits2. Foodstuff commodity3 production replaces or exploits huge tracts of carbon dioxide and pollution ‘sink,’ sustainable or pristine ecologies4. Ever-increasing amounts of persistent chemical ‘pesticides’3 are used, often in combination with genetically modified organisms. Industrial farming contributes far too much energy dense, micronutrient depleted ‘food’.
About half of all food is wasted5; much of the half not lost accumulates on human bodies as ‘toxic’6 fat, depleted of micronutrients, and contaminated7. Such foodstuffs appear responsible for suboptimal infant (cognitive) development, obesity, cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases, and cancer8. These diseases are already curtailing human fitness and survival, and as longevity has been a major human evolutionary tactic9, we may be surrendering a climate change survival advantage10.
Biologists devise climate change ‘resilience’ models11 but important climate change food supply management involves smart ecological farming2. Less arable land area and ‘slash and burn’ conversions are required, carbon and nutrients are recycled, environmental toxins are severely decreased, and environmental sustainability is restored to farming.
The most important human health issue is that the food so produced will be appropriate for our medium energy/ high micronutrient requirements9, and more healthy longevity could be expected.
1. McCoy D, Hoskins B. The science of anthropogenic climate change: what every doctor should know, 2014.
2. Magdoff F. Ecological agriculture: Principles, practices, and constraints. Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems 2007;22(2):109-17.
3. Pennington J. Proceedings of the workshop on food-consumption surveys in developing countries: general approaches to estimation of dietary exposure to contaminants. Food Nutr. Bull. 2004;25(4):420-7.
4. Poff NL. Rivers of the Anthropocene? Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 2014;12(8):427-27.
5. Scientists of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers. Global Food: Waste not, want not. Energy and Environment, IMECHE http://www.imeche.org/knowledge/themes/environment/global-food, 2013.
6. Unger RH. Minireview: weapons of lean body mass destruction: the role of ectopic lipids in the metabolic syndrome. Endocrinology 2003;144(12):5159-65.
7. Frye CA, Bo E, Calamandrei G, Calza L, Dessi-Fulgheri F, Fernandez M, et al. Endocrine disrupters: a review of some sources, effects, and mechanisms of actions on behaviour and neuroendocrine systems. J. Neuroendocrinol. 2012;24(1):144-59.
8. McGill A-T. Past and future corollaries of theories on causes of metabolic syndrome and obesity related co-morbidities part 2: a composite unifying theory review of human-specific co-adaptations to brain energy consumption. Arch. Public Health 2014;72(1):31.
9. McGill A-T. Causes of metabolic syndrome and obesity-related co-morbidities Part 1: A composite unifying theory review of human-specific co-adaptations to brain energy consumption. Arch. Public Health 2014;72(1):30.
10. Morris WF, Pfister CA, Tuljapurkar S, Haridas CV, Boggs CL, Boyce MS, et al. Longevity can buffer plant and animal populations against changing climatic variability. Ecology 2008;89(1):19-25.
11. Uden DR, Hellman ML, Angeler DG, Allen CR. The role of reserves and anthropogenic habitats for functional connectivity and resilience of ephemeral wetlands. Ecol. Appl. 2014;24(7):1569-82.
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Dismayed to read Eugene Breen's response. What a naive reading of the world to assume that, because China and the US keep polluting, that it invalidates established climate science; or that "23 ice ages" deep in the Earth's past mean that people living here and now are somehow immune to the effects of current and predicted weather patterns. Do any of us believe that governments are free of vested financial obligations and diplomatic interests, which often override their duties to their citizens; or that corporations don't put profit first? How did tobacco companies respond to scientific evidence on the dangers of smoking? Climate change represents a growing public health issue and as such it is correct to address this in the BMJ.
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The BMJ has now donned the mantle of guardian of the planet, welcoming harbingers of doom and Armageddon, with statistical models and petrifying scenarios, scaring the living day lights out of casual medics perusing the journal for the latest medical breakthroughs! These well intentioned committed doctors who regularly read the journal, are suddenly mugged and left starry eyed by a climactic red alert, ready to unleash untold of misery and tsunamis at any moment! In case they got it wrong the distinguished and revered editorialist confirms their worst fears. It is on the way!
Such is the shock awaiting unsuspecting medics on picking up the latest BMJ. Life will never be the same. Panic attacks, and bouts of involuntary micturition will herald far more severe autonomic after drafts of this catastrophic weather forecast. What can we do? Stop having children. Stop smoking. Stop going to conferences. Stop photocopying. Somebody help. BMJ what do we do?
Population population population. Stop the population growth I hear. But the human contribution to the animal world population is in single figures! Get rid of cows or pigs or whatever. Contracept the reindeer and stop all that carbon stuff dirtying the planet. But did the planet never overheat before? Did the planet never over cool before? How about 23 ice ages. Why didn't the BMJ shout out about that...and all those poor people and animals frozen to death!
No my friends, this media hype about climate is a storm in a teacup. It is a driven frenzy of sly and some well intentioned, but naive, scientists to push for further limitation of human population. It is the last gasp of the population control lobby seeing the well for contraceptives and social engineering drying up. It is a frantic and agenda driven response to the dying of 4 or more young generations in Europe, Japan, USA because they have killed the youth with their contraceptive policies and "now they are no more". Europe and USA and Japan and other developed places are old men. They have no youth. This climate stuff is a distraction tactic to prevent people seeing the cause of our distress, which is the tiny birth rate in the northern hemisphere for the past 50 years.
There always have been climate changes. The planet is not everlasting and it does have a best by date ........and at some stage it will overheat or freeze or maybe both. This concerted climate scare tactic is aimed at distracting people from seeing the devastating result of contraceptive practices on the Northern Hemisphere and is a ploy to enforce the same policies on the Southern Hemisphere under the fallacious guise of public health and weather!
If all this climate forecast is true why have all the 120 heads of state not cried stop? Why have they agreed to reconvene not tomorrow or next week but next year? Why is China allowed to spew out so much carbon? Why is USA doing the same? Any reasonable person would have to conclude: "they can't be serious about this". Actions speak louder than words and the carbon reductions that have not happened speaks a thousand words. It is all a decoy for the real enemy. That is the inverted demography of the North (increasing elderly,diminishing youth) which they now want to spread to the South. This is indeed a carbon copy of any well orchestrated attempt to distract the public and achieve a hidden purpose.
Competing interests: No competing interests
Re: The science of anthropogenic climate change: what every doctor should know
There exist business interests against using Earth's huge fossil fuel reserves.
Alternative multi-trillion dollar energy production investments are proposed instead, without any guarantee of sufficient output, long term sustainability, worldwide distribution of electricity produced, etc.
The German Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources has published recently an extensive study describing the vast energy reserves and resources still existing in all Continents.
Our civilization needs fossil fuels, and the solution for global warming is not to ban hydrocarbons but to use available safe methods of utilising them efficiently.
References
http://www.bgr.bund.de/EN/Themen/Energie/Downloads/energiestudie_2014_en...
http://www.bgr.bund.de/EN/Themen/Energie/Downloads/energiestudie_2015_en...
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