Climate change is a health emergency

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, human activities are driving climate change, the effects being felt in all parts of the world. The further global warming will bring increased scarcity of food and fresh water, extreme weather events, rises in the sea level, loss of habitable land, mass human migration, conflict and violence [1]. Overpopulation leads to poverty, overcrowding, pollution of air and water [2]. Together with increasing unemployment and food shortages, these factors will decrease the quality of life for great numbers of people [3]. The ongoing industrial development of the previously underdeveloped countries is precarious because environment protection measures are observed less rigorously there and also because of the unplanned nature and large scale of this process.

All kinds of ecological damage and depletion of non-renewable resources are proportional to the population size [4,5]. Food production cannot increase infinitely without soil depletion, desertification and deforestation [6]. Humankind can choose between reduction of the population growth by diminishing the birth rate and of raising the death rate [7] by means of famine, epidemics or war, which were usual throughout history. Humanity is in a demographic dead-end street [8], while no realistic solutions have been proposed so far. Such solutions would require a revision of some ethical principles and propagation of new ones, in particular, that no population group, ethnic, confessional or otherwise defined, may obtain any advantages because of its numerical size or growth. On the contrary, those who have had many children should logically live in more crowded conditions for some period. Acknowledgement of this principle would be a basis for globalization and mutual trust.

High fertility was propagandized during the global conflicts and the Cold War to replenish military and manpower resources. Necessity of birth control has been obfuscated by conflicting national and global interests: population growth has been regarded as a tool helping to sovereignty and economic advance. Even today, there are appeals to increase the birth rate, accompanied by misinformation about allegedly severe complications of contraception and abortions [9]. Global birth control would require investments and managerial efforts; all simpler and less expensive solutions would be however less humane. As a source of financing, oil and gas revenues, sometimes spent in a wasteful and unproductive manner, could be used.

Labour productivity is growing; few people can cater for many, while unemployment is increasing. In the past, similar conditions were terminated by wars and pestilence. This has not happened long since, and we are waiting to see what happens, while the population is growing.

However, there are many things to do. Great projects could be accomplished by a globalised mankind to improve the life of billions: irrigation facilities for drought-stricken lands, production of hydrogen as eco-friendly fuel, nuclear power plants to reduce the consumption of fossil hydrocarbons. Chernobyl accident has been exploited to strangle the worldwide development of atomic energy, the cleanest, safest and practically inexhaustible means to meet the global energy needs [10]; but it was necessary to prevent the spread of nuclear technologies to the regions, where conflicts and terrorism could not be excluded. However, today there are no alternatives to nuclear energy: unrenewable fossil fuel will rise in price, contributing to the overpopulation in oil-producing countries and poverty elsewhere. Combustion of hydrocarbons causes air pollution and accumulation of greenhouse gases, contributing to global warming [11]. In future, nuclear fission must be replaced by fusion, which is intrinsically safer [12]. However, worldwide introduction of nuclear energy will become possible only after concentration of authority by a powerful international executive. It will enable construction of nuclear power plants in optimally suitable places notwithstanding national borders, considering socio-political, geographical, geological and other conditions, which would prevent accidents like in Japan in 2011 [13]. Scientific research must be revitalized and purged of scientific misconduct, centrally planned and controlled to avoid parallelism, unnecessary experimentation and dangerous developments [14-16]. There are many breathtaking topics for research, which however can be permitted only if the humankind is reliably unified. These measures would create work for many people. Moreover, should the birth rate decline in the future, it means that the workforce is at its maximum today, which provides an opportunity to accomplish great projects. Therefore, propaganda should popularize the image of hardworking people, which must become a pattern of identification for youth.

As for the Ukrainian question, discussed in [17], the bulk of the international aid will flow into the corruption channels. The transferral of Crimea to Ukrainian SSR in 1954, extracting it from Russian territory, was Nikita Khrushchev's voluntarism; it was hopeless from the beginning, among others, because of linguistic reasons. The overwhelming majority of Crimean people are Russian-speaking. For Russian-speakers, the Ukrainian language is a regional dialect. Nobody would voluntarily learn it and teach children. Considering the forthcoming globalization, the only alternative to Russian Crimea would be English-speaking Crimea. It can be reasonably assumed that the whole Ukraine except Galicia (West Ukraine), would vote for unification with Russia: because of economical and linguistic reasons. There is however a reason why the power should not be displaced to the East: incapability of Russian government to eradicate corruption [18]. The main thing is to avoid a new East-West conflict. All of us will be losers, even the militarists, as it was 100 years ago. What is urgently needed is lawfulness and mutual trust.

References
1. Godlee F. Climate change is a health emergency. BMJ 2014;348:g2546.
2. Greep RO. Whither the global population problem. Biochem Pharmacol 1998; 55(4): 383-386.
3. Robey B. Asia’s demographic future: the next 20 years. Asia Pac Pop Policy 1990; (14): 1-4.
4. Van Niekerk J. P. de V. Humans - a threat to humanity. S Afr Med J 2008; 98(3): 163.
5. Desvaux M. The sustainability of human populations: How many people can live on earth? Significance 2007; September: 102-107.
6. Reddy PH. India in the demographic trap. Janasamkhya 1989; 2: 93-102.
7. Russell C, Russell WM. Population crises and population cycles. Med Confl Surviv 2000; 16(4): 383-410.
8. Vishnevsky AG. Selected Works in Demography. Moscow: Nauka, 2005 (in Russian).
9. Jargin SV. Overpopulation and modern ethics. S Afr Med J. 2009;99(8):572-3 continued in 2010;100(11):694, 2011;101(8):494 and 2013;103(6):357.
10. Jaworowski Z. Observations on the Chernobyl Disaster and LNT. Dose Response. 2010;8(2):148-71.
11. Keller CF. Global warming 2007. An update to global warming: the balance of evidence and its policy implications. ScientificWorldJournal. 2007;7:381-99.
12. Llewellyn Smith C, Ward D. The path to fusion power. Philos Trans A Math Phys Eng Sci. 2007;365(1853):945-56.
13. Jargin SV. Hormesis and radiation safety norms. Hum Exp Toxicol. 2012;31(7):671-5.
14. Jargin S. On the scientific misconduct: a letter from Russia. Einstein (Sao Paulo). 2013;11(1):135.
15. Jargin SV. Chernobyl-related cancer and precancerous lesions: incidence increase vs. late diagnostics. Dose-Response 2014, doi: 10.2203/dose-response.13-039.Jargin
16. Jargin SV. Renal biopsy for research: an overview of Russian experience. J Interdiscipl Histopathol 2014, doi:10.5455/jihp.20140312020838
17. Vlassov V. Is climate change the greatest health emergency? BMJ Rapid Response of 7 April 2014.
18. Jargin SV. Barriers to the importation of medical products to Russia: in search of solutions. Healthcare in Low-resource Settings 2013;1:e13 http://pagepressjournals.org/index.php/hls/article/view/728

While climate change is an unfortunate fact, the dependence of the heating on human activity is not proven. Therefore, the call to act against it is 'preemptive'.

Of course, it doesn't mean that medicine should not prepare for the outcomes of the heating, for the health consequencies.

But does it mean that this is the most important problem for today? The example of the IPPNW must remind us about the dangers of totalitarian states. IPPNW was manipulated by the KGB to turn the actions in a way congruent with the Communists 'struggle for peace', which was only a form of Communist aggression.

Nowadays another Russian state lead by former KGB boss (who stated that KGB officers never became 'former') develops aggression against a neighbouring country. Already part of it is occupied. Further aggression is just around the corner. The response from the West, which forced the Ukraine to pass all its a-bombs to Russia and assured Ukrain's integrity, is negligible.

Ukraine's physicians dearly need support from the medical community. Please be aware that one of the presidential candidates in Ukraine at the elections this May is physician Olga Bogomolets.

Compare the comments of real climate scientists - not to mention that of the smartest man in the world, Freeman Dyson, describing himself as a "heretic on global warming, the most notorious dogma of modern science.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2014/01/renowned-physicist-freeman-dys...

Here's Judith Curry on the working group report WG2:
The DRAFT agrees that "climate change will amplify existing stress on water availability in Africa" and will "very likely" reduce cereal crop productivity. But this time the discussion is not about how big or small those reductions might be, but on how African farmers might cope with less water, through terracing and agroforestry for instance.
Asia has fallen into a similar forecasting limbo. Last time, the IPCC warned that there would be less water in most Asian river basins and up to a billion people could experience "increased water stress" as early as the 2020s. This time, "there is low confidence in future precipitation projections at a subregional level and thus in future freshwater availability in most parts of Asia." Last time the IPCC predicted "an increase of 10 to 20% in tropical cyclone intensities" in Asia. This time it reports "low confidence in region-specific projections of [cyclone] frequency and intensity."
But it asks us to be grown-up about the uncertainties involved in what plays out when. "Responding to climate-related risks involves making decisions and taking actions in the face of continuing uncertainty about the extent of climate change and the severity of impacts in a changing world," the draft report says.
What some call "climate exceptionalism" — the idea that climate change is something of an entirely different order to other threats faced by the world — has been rooted out.

Some nightmare scenarios are robustly defused. Past IPCC reports have warned that there might be as many as 50 million "climate refugees" around the world, who will flee drought, rising tides and spreading deserts. This report is set to dismiss that idea.

If the leaked draft is reflected in the published report, it will constitute the formal moving on of the debate from the past, futile focus upon "mitigation" to a new debate about resilience and adaptation.

And the mitigation deal has become this: Accept enormous inconvenience, placing authoritarian control into the hands of global agencies, at huge costs that in some cases exceed 17 times the benefits even on the Government’s own evaluation criteria, with a global cost of 2 per cent of GDP at the low end and the risk that the cost will be vastly greater, and do all of this for an entire century, and then maybe – just maybe – we might save between one and ten months of global GDP growth.

And then, Professor Richard Tol of the University of Sussex in the UK, a senior author of the report’s chapter on climate change’s economic impacts, revealed last week that he had asked for his name to be removed from the study’s summary – the most widely [possibly the only] read section of the IPCC report – because he believed it was too "alarmist" and included "silly" statements about the vulnerability of people in war zones to climate change. "I really liked the first draft of the summary for policy makers because it had development at its core," he said.

Richard Lindzen is professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Addressing the House of Commons in February 2012 he said: "Perhaps we should stop accepting the term 'skeptic' because 'skepticism' implies doubts about a plausible proposition. Current global warming alarm hardly represents a plausible proposition. Twenty years of repetition and escalation of claims does not make it more plausible. Quite the contrary, the failure to improve the cause over 20 years makes the case even less plausible, as does the evidence from Climategate and other instances of overt cheating." I suspect the word "cheating" carries less of a legal burden than the word "Fraud".

Ron C. says: March 20, 2014 at 7:46 am
I hope the APS will address the basic issue. Skeptics are ordinary people who are simply asking for proof that rising CO2 is causing dangerous global warming. The proofs that have been offered are not convincing.
Claim: "The climate models show CO2 drives warming."
Answer: Models are not proof; they are built on the modellers’ assumptions, which require proving.
Claim: "The models can not explain warming from 1978 to 1998 unless CO2 is included as a driver."
Answer: Arguing from ignorance is not proof of anything.
Claim: "The models show that the globe will warm by 1.5 to 4.5C this century."
Answer: The models are all running hot compared to the datasets, even those with the unexplained "adjustments".
--Then there are the supposed proofs of the GHG atmospheric warming effect.
Claim: "CO2 radiates heat back to the surface, making it warmer."
Answer: Both the surface and the air have kinetic energy, so there is an infrared flux between them. But, on balance, the direction of warming is from the surface to the air, not the other way around.
Claim: "CO2 traps heat in the atmosphere, delaying the cooling of the surface, resulting in warming."
Answer: CO2 is IR active and unable to store the energy it absorbs. The energy is either instantly shared with O2 and N2 molecules, or is reemitted. O2 and N2 are not IR active and do slow the surface cooling.
Claim: "CO2 raises the emission level, causing the troposphere to warm all the way down to the surface, and the stratosphere to cool."
Answer: Analysis of radiosonde data shows no effect from increasing CO2 on the temperature profile of the atmosphere.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/20/that-noise-you-can-hear-in-the-dis...

As Patrick Moore said, if there were an actual proof of man-made global warming, you would see it everywhere.
http://archive.is/1ZKPQ#selection-1207.0-1251.109

http://judithcurry.com/2014/01/08/the-fundamental-uncertainties-of-clima...
The current re-direction of global funds in the name of climate change is of the order of a billion dollars a day. And in the future, to quote US senator Everett Dirksen, "a billion here and a billion there, and pretty soon we‘ll be talking about real money".

Fourteen years ago I wrote a letter to the BMJ when Richard Smith was editor and viewed climate change with alarm, and I think it's stood the test of time:
http://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/10/28/it-isnt-easy-being-green

Fiona,

Of course you are correct. Thank you.

We published very much the same information in JAMA in the 1990s, in Medscape in the 2000s.

As Bob Dylan wrote/sang "When will they ever learn"?

I wonder.

George Lundberg