Experts from leading U.S. medical groups gathered Thursday to warn of impending dangers to human health if greenhouse gas emissions continue unchecked, speeding climate change.
They believe the federal government, specifically the Environmental Protection Agency, does have the power to curtail such emissions, however.
"The science is unequivocal that global warming is occurring and human activity is the cause of it," Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association said during a press conference Thursday. "We believe the EPA has the potential to significantly reduce the public health burden of climate change and we are committed to protecting the agency's authority over the full breath of its work."
APHA and other groups worry that if Congress restricts the EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, health problems will rise.
Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a budget that would cut the EPA's budget by a third, the experts noted. Moreover, a funding resolution passed by the new Republican house would block the agency from enacting a new greenhouse emissions rule, according to speakers at the Thursday press conference.
Not everyone agreed with those experts, however.
Sterling Burnett is a senior fellow at the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis, a nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank focused on free-market approaches to public policy. In an interview, he said the effects of climate change on human health remain in question, as does the wisdom of earmarking EPA funds to fight global warming.
"I don't know if the world is going to be warmer 100 years from now than it is today, but if it is, there are likely to be less deaths from a variety of illnesses overall than more deaths from cardiopulmonary diseases due to the warmth," Burnett said.
Funding the EPA to reduce greenhouse gasses will slow economic growth without improving heath, he added. "If what you are concerned about is public health there are much more efficacious ways of responding to the health threats [of] 100 years from now," he said. "So do we, by making the world poorer in the future, buy the decisions we make now on climate change regulations, do we increase the disease burden overall?"
The experts gathered at Thursday's press conference took a different stance.
The AMA's Benjamin said that climate change is leading to extreme weather events that endanger the elderly and sick. In addition, increased air pollution can increase asthma and other respiratory diseases, he noted. Climate change also increase the prevalence of airborne and water-borne disease.
Benjamin believes that the Clean Air Act, passed in 1970, has already "made significant improvements in the health and well-being of the American public."
Also speaking at Thursday's press conference was Dr. Cecil Wilson, president of the American Medical Association (AMA). He said he believes that extreme weather conditions are behind dangerous travel conditions in winter and extended heat waves in summer, which have increased in the past two decades.
"Approximately 133 million Americans are living with a chronic condition, such as heart disease or diabetes, which are aggravated by heat waves, increasing the risk for serious complications and death," Wilson said.
In the United States, these severe extended heat waves are causing unnecessary deaths, added Kristie L. Ebi, lead author for the human health chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Fourth Assessment Report. The panel, which receives funding from the federal government, issues reports on climate change around the world.
"No one should die in a heat wave," Ebi said.
Climate change has caused other worrying trends, the experts said, including worrying changes in insect migration. "Many states are facing increases in insect-borne illnesses," Wilson pointed out. "For example dengue fever, a condition that has rarely been seen in this country, has appeared in Florida."
Lyme disease has also increased tenfold in the past 10 years, Wilson added.
And the increase in greenhouse gases has increased air pollution, he said. "Over the past three decades, poor air quality has extended the allergy and asthma season, in this country, by about 20 days. Asthma rates have doubled and other respiratory diseases are also on the rise."
Dr. Perry Sheffield, deputy director of the Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit for EPA Region 2, and an assistant professor in the department of pediatrics and the department of preventive medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, noted that reducing air pollution can have immediate health benefits.
"When air pollution was reduced during the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, asthma attacks among children dropped by 44 percent," she said during the press conference.
Burnett agreed that the burden of asthma has increased in the United States, but he doesn't think it has anything to do with climate change or greenhouse gases.
"It's not clear to me that you are going to get it from a warmer world," he said.
http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/healthday/650289.html
Medical Groups Warn Of Climate Change's Potential Impact on Health
Inspector general backs NOAA in climate-change dispute
A review of e-mail exchanges between federal scientists and British academics embroiled in a politically charged dispute over climate change found no misconduct at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, according to a report just released by the Commerce Department's inspector general.
"We did not find any evidence that NOAA inappropriately manipulated data ... or failed to adhere to appropriate peer review procedures," wrote Inspector General Todd Zinser in a letter and report sent Feb. 18 to Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., who had requested the review.
In addition, the report "found no evidence to suggest that NOAA was noncompliant" with the 2001 Information Quality Act, or the 1999 Shelby Amendment requirements for Freedom of Information Act release of documents on scientific deliberations.
In May 2010, Inhofe asked the Commerce IG to examine issues surrounding the Internet posting of e-mail exchanges taken from the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom in a 2009 computer hacking incident.
The senator also sought a rationale for a statement that NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco made in 2009 testimony to a House committee that the e-mails from Britain "really do nothing to undermine the very strong scientific consensus and the independent scientific analyses of thousands of scientists around the world that tell us that the Earth is warming and that the warming is largely a result of human activities."
The IG reviewed 1,073 e-mails, 289 of which involved NOAA employees, spanning 13 years, and interviewed Lubchenco and the scientists involved with eight of the e-mails. The IG's staff also addressed an e-mail involving the award of a NOAA contract to the British climate research center and a joke e-mail containing a photographic image of Inhofe stranded on a polar ice cap and depicted as a marooned character from the 1960s Gilligan's Island television show. The report recommended NOAA improve its responsiveness to FOIA requests and said the federal scientist involved in the joke image was disciplined.
An Inhofe spokesman on the Environment and Public Works Committee, where he is ranking member, said: "Sen. Inhofe believes the IG conducted a thorough and balanced investigation. He is very interested in following up on several issues identified in the report, including one in which a senior NOAA employee possibly thwarted the release of important federal scientific information for the public to assess and analyze. This is no doubt a serious matter that, along with other issues identified by the IG, deserves further investigation."
Managers at NOAA welcomed the report as "the latest independent analysis to clear climate scientists of allegations of mishandling of climate information," said Mary Glackin, the agency's deputy undersecretary for operations. "None of the investigations have found any evidence to question the ethics of our scientists, or raise doubts about NOAA's understanding of climate change science."
She also defended the handling of the FOIA requests. "The NOAA scientists responded in good faith to the FOIA requests based on their understanding of the request and in accordance with the legal guidance provided in 2007," Glackin said. "NOAA's policies, practices, and the integrity and commitment of our scientists have resulted in NOAA's climate records being the gold standard that our nation and the world has come to rely on for authoritative information about the climate."
David Doniger, director of the climate change center at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the report "should put the issue to rest. It's time for the climate-change deniers to pull their heads out of the sand."
http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=47194&oref=todaysnews