[✔️] May 12, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*May 12, 2021*/

[Press release ]
*Last week the Royal College of Psychiatrists declared a climate and 
ecological emergency,* publishing a position statement they termed a 
'planetary diagnosis' of the ongoing climate and ecological crises. As 
well as outlining how the climate crisis and ecological crisis each are 
contributing to a mental health emergency, RCPsych's position 
statement's details 'treatments', i.e. the actions the college has 
pledged to take to reduce its own contribution to the climate emergency 
and their recommendations for action by others - including the NHS, 
research institutes and Government.

New research conducted by the college shows that more than four-fifths 
(84%) of the UK public think the climate and ecological emergencies will 
affect mental health in a decade at least as much as unemployment (83%) 
and Covid 19 (84%). Three in five (60%) respondents say that the climate 
and ecological emergency is already affecting their mental health now 
and will continue to do so in the future. Dr Lisa Page, Joint Associate 
Registrar for sustainability in the College, and RCPsych's 
representative to UKHACC, said:

“The knock-on effects of climate change and biodiversity loss will be 
felt on people’s mental health, we already see difficulties during heat 
waves. Many patients with serious mental illness experience worse 
physical and mental health on hotter days, polluted air has been linked 
to excess deaths and flood events with PTSD. If action isn’t taken the 
physical and psychological consequences will manifest in poorer health 
outcomes in the UK and overseas.”

As a college the RCPsych has pledged to commit to an ambitious plan for 
sustainability, including to reducie its own emissions to net-zero by 
2040. Its broader recommendations for tackling the crisis demonstrate 
the possibilty for action to combat climate change in every aspect of 
healthcare delivery, covering (amonst other things):

     Creating sustainable mental health services, and supporting the 
development of Green Plans
     Preventative psychiatry and a wellbeing approach
     The sustainable use of medication, and social prescribing
     Embedding planetary health in medical education

To find out more about RCPsych's plans and recommendations, visit 
https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/news-and-features/latest-news/detail/2021/05/05/rcpsych-declares-a-climate-and-ecological-emergency

- -

[Royal College of Psychiatrists]
*RCPsych declares a climate and ecological emergency*

More than four-fifths (84%) of the UK public think the climate and 
ecological emergencies will affect mental health in a decade at least as 
much as unemployment (83%) and Covid 19 (84%), new research from the 
Royal College of Psychiatrists has found.

Three in five (60%) respondents say that the climate and ecological 
emergencies are affecting their mental health now and will continue to 
do so in the future.

Alarmingly, many appear unaware that the climate and ecological 
emergencies were a contributing factor to the global outbreak of 
COVID-19. Just one fifth (22%) think so, whereas two fifths (40%) do 
not, although a significant minority say ‘maybe’ (29%).

The Royal College of Psychiatrists is calling for international 
cooperation and urgent action by declaring a climate and ecological 
emergency.

The declaration is supported by a statement published today (6 May) with 
recommendations for psychiatrists, the NHS, research institutes and 
Government to tackle the crisis and promote more sustainable clinical 
practices.

Dr Adrian James, President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists said:

    “The disruption to life posed by the climate and ecological
    emergencies presents an unprecedented threat to our health in the UK
    and worldwide.
    “The climate and ecological emergency is a mental health emergency.
    Our mental health is entwined with the health of our natural world.
    “We have no choice but to join the voices of those who are calling
    for urgent action and declare a climate and ecological emergency to
    avert a health and mental health catastrophe.”

Around the world, climate change and environmental degradation are 
resulting in major repercussions on human health, including on mental 
health, and an unprecedented loss of biodiversity.

Human populations are already experiencing the health effects of more 
severe storms, floods, air pollution, wildfires and droughts, whilst 
food insecurities, extinction events and loss of habitats are 
drastically changing people’s lives especially in the global South.

The ramifications of climate and ecological emergencies are increasingly 
noticeable in the UK as well. Flooding which is associated with anxiety, 
depression and PTSD in survivors is the most common disaster in the UK. 
Due to climate change floods are increasing in frequency and severity.

Between 28,000-36,000 deaths a year in the UK, are due to air pollution 
exposure, while research points to the link between childhood exposure 
and mental illness in adulthood.

Dr Lisa Page, Joint Associate Registrar for sustainability of the Royal 
College of Psychiatrists, said:

    “The knock-on effects of climate change and biodiversity loss will
    be felt on people’s mental health, we already see difficulties
    during heat waves.
    “Many patients with serious mental illness experience worse physical
    and mental health on hotter days, polluted air has been linked to
    excess deaths and flood events with PTSD.
    “If action isn’t taken the physical and psychological consequences
    will manifest in poorer health outcomes in the UK and overseas.”

https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/news-and-features/latest-news/detail/2021/05/05/rcpsych-declares-a-climate-and-ecological-emergency



MAR 25, 2020
*How to breathe easier during allergy season*
DR. AARON BERNSTEIN
A pediatrician's perspective on surviving longer pollen seasons on a 
warming planet
DR. AARON BERNSTEIN | NEWS SERVICE OF BLUE CROSS BLUE SHIELD OF 
MASSACHUSETTS

Fifty years ago, New England’s pollen season started, on average, a week 
later than it does today, and ended a week earlier. What’s changed? The 
climate.

A warming planet doesn’t just make for hotter summers; it makes spring 
start earlier and winter start later, and that means longer pollen seasons.
The climate has changed primarily because we’ve flooded the atmosphere 
with carbon dioxide from fossil fuels like oil, gas, and coal. This 
higher concentration of carbon dioxide causes plants like ragweed to 
make more pollen. A ragweed plant grown today may make twice as much 
pollen per plant as it would have in the 19th century when carbon 
dioxide levels were much lower.

Burning fossil fuels — especially from cars and trucks — also releases 
air pollutants that can worsen children's allergies and even trigger 
asthma.

Your allergies may be especially active if you live in a city, where 
carbon dioxide levels can be 30% higher and temperatures 3+ degrees 
warmer than in surrounding areas. Cities are hotter than suburbs or 
nearby rural areas because of the “urban heat island effect.” Cities 
have more dark roofs, paved roads, and lack cooler and greener surfaces 
in comparison to surrounding areas, which all leads to more heat 
absorption. The warmer temperatures and higher carbon dioxide levels 
mean that ragweed plants thrive in cities—they flower earlier, make more 
pollen and live longer than their rural counterparts.

A first line of medication defense against seasonal allergies are 
antihistamines, such as loratadine (Claritin), fexofenadine (Allegra), 
cetirizine (Zyrtec) and diphenhydramine (Benadryl). These medications 
can work wonders for people with allergies. At the same time, they are 
often paired with other medications, such as decongestants, that can 
affect how our bodies sweat and regulate temperature. (Diphenhydramine 
may do this on its own as well).
This matters because climate change is causing more severe heatwaves and 
taking certain medications, including those taken for allergies, may 
increase your risk for fainting, over-heating, or getting dehydrated, 
among other problems. If you take allergy medications, and especially if 
you take other medications regularly, make sure to pay attention to how 
hot it is outside as summer approaches, which for many of us is now.

Beyond taking antihistamines, we can all take important actions to make 
pollen season more bearable:

Keep an eye on the pollen forecast. If it looks bad, try to stay indoors 
in a room that has good air filtration to take out pollen.
If you have forced heating and cooling, replace the air filter on your 
furnace at least twice a year, and more if you have pets or smoke.
If you live in a city, maximize your green space, whether inside or 
outside, with plants that make little or no allergenic pollen (like 
these). Think about a green roof. More plants can help cool things down 
and suck up carbon dioxide, too.
Driving less and walking, bicycling and taking public transit more will 
mean less fossil fuel is burned and less carbon dioxide and other air 
pollutants are produced.
Allergies are never fun, but climate actions can clean our air and 
shorten pollen seasons, and that means we can all breathe a little easier.
https://coverage.bluecrossma.com/article/how-breathe-easier-during-allergy-season



[New data visualization]
*Climate Lab Book*
Open climate science
Climate spirals
Warming stripes
Visualisation resources
Comparing CMIP5 & observations
Global warming does not mean the same amount of warming over the whole 
globe. There is a distinct spatial pattern to the long-term changes.

The first map below shows the total change in temperature since the 
early-industrial era, and the second map removes the global average 
warming to highlight regions of above and below average warming.

The largest warming is seen in the Arctic, and the land regions are 
clearly warming faster than the ocean. The striking blue area in the 
North Atlantic is a region of very little warming, and this is due to a 
decline in the strength of the Atlantic overturning circulation which 
brings warm water from the tropics to the northern latitudes.

All these features of the warming have been long predicted in climate 
model simulations, for example in IPCC AR4 and IPCC AR5.

Technical details: spatial pattern of warming uses approach described in 
Hawkins et al. (2020) using Berkeley Earth dataset, and the changes are 
relative to 1850-1900.
http://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/2021/warming-patterns/



[Young authors in video conversation]
*Nathaniel Rich with Claire Vaye Watkins: What Does It Mean to Live in a 
Post-Natural World?*
Apr 5, 2021
Town Hall Seattle
We live at a time in which scientists race to reanimate extinct beasts, 
our most essential ecosystems require monumental engineering projects to 
survive, chicken breasts grow in test tubes, and multinational 
corporations conspire to poison the blood of every living creature. No 
rock, leaf, or cubic foot of air on Earth has escaped humanity's clumsy 
signature. The old distinctions—between natural and artificial, dystopia 
and utopia, science fiction and science fact—have blurred, losing all 
meaning. So author Nathaniel Rich argues in his book Second Nature: 
Scenes from a World Remade.

With intimate stories from ordinary people making desperate efforts to 
preserve their humanity in a world that seems increasingly alien, Rich 
joins us to share from this deeply reported book. In conversation with 
fellow author Claire Vaye Watkins, he presents a beautifully told 
exploration of our post-natural world, one that helps us understand our 
place in a reality that resembles nothing human beings have known. 
Together, they wonder what it means to live in an era of terrible 
ecological responsibility. The question is no longer, How do we return 
to the world that we’ve lost?, they express, but rather What world do we 
want to create in its place?

Nathaniel Rich is the author of Losing Earth: A Recent History and the 
novels King Zeno, Odds Against Tomorrow, and The Mayor’s Tongue. He is a 
writer at large for The New York Times Magazine and a regular 
contributor to The Atlantic, Harper's, and The New York Review of Books.

Claire Vaye Watkins is the author of the novel Gold Fame Citrusand the 
short story collection Battleborn. A National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 
honoree, Watkins is a professor at the University of California Irvine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GLnczzJCf0



[turnabout - book review - _Crude Britannia: How Oil Shaped a Nation_]
*Big Oil’s malign influence is waning at last*
May 12th, 2021, by Paul Brown
It has enriched us, even dictated our politics, but now we know Big 
Oil’s malign influence we want no more of this black gold.

LONDON, 12 May, 2021 − Despite the hold that oil has had on our lives 
for the last century through cars, chemicals, plastics, pesticides and 
almost every facet of daily life, including keeping millions of people 
in employment, it is something few of us ever think about. Big Oil’s 
malign influence has left us unaware.

But oil has a remarkable story to tell: its rise, its ascendancy in all 
our lives, and now, if civilisation is to survive, its fall. These 
phases are all described in a new book, Crude Britannia: How Oil Shaped 
a Nation.

Although the book is specifically about oil’s role in shaping the United 
Kingdom, it is also concerned with the way oil changes the politics and 
national economies of the rest of the world.

This is because, more than with any other industry, the scramble to own 
and distribute oil is a multi-national business controlled by some of 
the world’s biggest and most powerful companies, which have frequently 
influenced the destiny of nations.

The authors, James Marriott, a writer who has been studying the industry 
for 35 years and Terry Macalister, former energy editor of the Guardian, 
detail just how pervasive oil is in our lives. They visit towns that 
were once thriving hubs of industry, places of full employment which are 
now hollowed-out relics.

“ . . . they are hidden and largely closed to scrutiny, except by their 
own public presentations. They are privately owned, often by individuals 
tax-domiciled abroad . . . ”

More illuminating though is their series of interviews with former and 
current oil executives, speculators, politicians and civil servants. 
Some of them have been all of those things at different times in their 
lives.

They have managed this because, as the book demonstrates, there has 
always been a revolving door between governments and the oil industry 
that allows powerful individuals to shape policy and wield undue influence.

The history of the industry and its effect on our lives is fascinating. 
We are reminded that it is the reason for the existence of many products 
we use and benefit from daily. Then there is the downside: the wars 
fought over oil, the way that the industry has used its influence to 
protect its position and its profits, undermining democracy and ruining 
many thousands of lives.

Perhaps, for those involved in the battle over climate change who want 
to see the back of Big Oil, it is the last part of the book that is most 
illuminating. It describes how the multi-nationals BP and Shell have 
striven to brush up and green their image.

This is partly because of pressure from shareholders and environment 
groups, but also because the companies themselves realise that the game 
will soon be up for fossil fuels and they will need to invest elsewhere.

An era ends?

Although the book explains that it may be a case of too little, too late 
for both the planet and the companies, Shell and BP are currently 
reducing their exploration in sensitive and expensive areas and selling 
oil assets to hedge funds and shadowy offshore companies. At the same 
time, they are beginning to invest heavily in renewables.

This diversification may help some oil majors survive, but according to 
the authors the new oil barons who buy their assets face none of the 
pressures that steer the companies to go green. The barons’ sole aim is 
to squeeze every drop of oil and dollar they can from the industry as it 
gradually winds down.

This change signifies a new kind of institution in the industry. It has 
scant need of journalists, unlike the traditional corporations which 
used the media to build a positive profile as they lobbied ministers, 
largely behind the scenes.

“Instead they are hidden and largely closed to scrutiny, except by their 
own public presentations. They are privately owned, often by individuals 
tax-domiciled abroad,” the authors say.

In a final chapter, entitled rather hopefully Heading for Extinction, 
the book concludes that the era of oil is over, or at least rapidly 
fading. It charts the rise of Extinction Rebellion, the school strikes, 
and the growing awareness of the danger the human race is in. It is an 
optimistic end to a fascinating and detailed account of how we have all 
let oil dominate our lives. − Climate News Network

_Crude Britannia: How Oil Shaped a Nation_. Pluto Press, hardback 
£20.00:  to be published on 20 May, 2021. By James Marriott & Terry 
Macalister
https://climatenewsnetwork.net/big-oils-malign-influence-is-waning-at-last/



[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming  May 12, 2008 *

May 12, 2008: GOP presidential candidate John McCain lays out his plans 
to address climate change in Portland, Oregon. The speech receives a 
tepid reaction, as McCain is widely faulted for adopting an energy plan 
that would not reduce carbon emissions enough to avoid the worst impacts 
of climate change.

http://youtu.be/JZsmQzOT1oo

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2008/05/12/172199/mccain-climate-speech/


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