It’s been a few weeks since you’ve heard from me as I was on vacation.  My son Zack (35) and I went on a wilderness kayaking trip on the Allagash River in very northern Maine with a group from Sierra Club.  We had a great time.  It was so very nice to get removed from civilization for 8 days and just relax.

 

Unfortunately, the planet continued to grow warmer while we were away and the news didn’t stop.  There are a number of interesting items in the summary of articles at the end of the blog but I am going to feature public health in the primary article.  I’ve touched somewhat sporadically over time on the health impact of climate change but not in any great depth as I have on other topics.  That is because I haven’t seen much substantive material.  But when an editorial is published in over 200 medical journals worldwide that is noteworthy and makes one sit up and take notice!

 

““The science is unequivocal; a global increase of 1.5°C above the preindustrial average and the continued loss of biodiversity risk catastrophic harm to health that will be impossible to reverse,” the authors wrote. “Indeed, no temperature rise is ‘safe.’””

 

“In an editorial published in more than 200 medical and health journals worldwide, the authors declared a 1.5-degree-Celsius rise in global temperatures the “greatest threat to global public health.””

 

“In the editorial, they raised concerns not only about the direct health consequences of rising temperatures, including heat-related mortality, pregnancy complications and cardiovascular disease, but also the indirect costs, including the effects that soil depletion could have on malnutrition and the possibility that widespread destruction of habitats could increase the likelihood of future pandemics.”

 

Scroll to the very end for the full article or click here:  

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/07/climate/climate-change-health-threat.html?algo=combo_lda_channelsize5_unique_edimp_fye_step50_diversified&block=1&campaign_id=142&emc=edit_fory_20210907&fellback=false&imp_id=143067960&instance_id=39815&nl=for-you&nlid=91958744&rank=1&regi_id=91958744&req_id=17464645&segment_id=68296&surface=for-you-email-wym&user_id=8377d1f66a57cc2fd87a0167fa0f159b&variant=0_combo_lda_channelsize5_unique_edimp_step50_diversified

 

Climate and Geopolitics:

Aug. 30, 2021

Unrest and climate change are creating an agonizing feedback loop that punishes some of the world’s most vulnerable people.

Click on photo to read the article

 

Parts of Afghanistan have warmed twice as much as the global average. Spring rains have declined, most worryingly in some of the country’s most important farmland. Droughts are more frequent in vast swaths of the country, including a punishing dry spell now in the north and west, the second in three years.

Afghanistan embodies a new breed of international crisis, where the hazards of war collide with the hazards of climate change, creating a nightmarish feedback loop that punishes some of the world’s most vulnerable people and destroys their countries’ ability to cope.

“Climate change will make it extremely challenging to maintain — let alone increase — any economic and development gains achieved so far in Afghanistan,” the United Nations warned in a 2016 report. “Increasingly frequent and severe droughts and floods, accelerated desertification, and decreasing water flows in the country’s glacier-dependent rivers will all directly affect rural livelihoods — and therefore the national economy and the country’s ability to feed itself.”

 

Impact on daily life and travel:

What it means: Global warming is increasing the risks of jets encountering turbulence. A 2019 study in the journal Nature found wind shear—sudden changes in wind speed or direction—increased 15% over the North Atlantic since 1979. Sara Nelson of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA union wants attendants to be required to be seated for longer periods as many injuries occur at lower altitudes.

 

Automotive and Oil News:  This first article reaffirms what I have been predicting all along…that projections and predictions have been and continue to be way off…

Most long-term outlooks by definition take a quite a while to be proven wrong or right. But occasionally that happens sooner and this gives us the opportunity to consider why. OPEC’s 2015 Outlook is a good example of being wrong sooner rather than later — it expected a fleet of 4.7 million battery electric vehicles on the road in 2040, with over 98% of the world’s vehicle fleet to be powered solely by an internal combustion engine. OPEC was not alone in this view — Exxon and BP had similar numbers in their outlooks at that time.

The global fleet of battery electric passenger vehicles hit 4.7 million at the start of 2020, meaning OPEC’s 2040 scenario arrived 20 years ahead of schedule. There were over 400,000 fully electric vehicles sold in June alone; by the end of this year there will be almost 11 million on the road, more than doubling OPEC’s 2040 number.

Another lesson is around focusing on technology trajectories, instead of snapshots in time. OPEC’s outlook gives a slight nod to this, acknowledging that “the cost of technologies such as electric batteries for cars will be further reduced in the coming decades — probably by 30-50%.” EV battery prices have fallen 65% since OPEC’s outlook was published. BNEF expects average lithium-ion battery prices to fall to under $60 per kilowatt hour by 2030, down another 60% from where they are today.

Automotive Technology:

An Electric Car that’s Sparking Excitement

Woburn’s Indigo Technologies is building a low-cost vehicle with motors inside each wheel

“Our goal is to be about a third cheaper than the average Tesla Model 3 or Chevy Bolt,’’

 

Bloomberg Hyperdrive

September 17, 2021

Lucid said this week its Air sedan will clock in at up to 520 miles of range, the highest rating the Environmental Protection Agency has doled out to an electric vehicle. Rivian’s big breakthrough was getting certification to sell its electric R1T pickup to consumers.

Lucid’s news may be the more impressive. I admit I was very skeptical when Chief Executive Officer Peter Rawlinson told me at the New York auto show in 2017 that the Air would go into production with more than 400 miles on a charge and 1,000 horsepower. That seemed like, well, hot air.

The Air will cost as much as $169,000, so not many will be able to afford all these impressive specs. But the Dream version will more than deliver in terms of range and also boast 1,111 horsepower. The car is slated for production in Lucid’s Arizona plant by the end of this year.

Lucid isn’t just getting those performance digits by packing a massive battery in the car. The Air achieves this level of range and power with a 113 kilowatt-hour battery. Tesla’s Model S Plaid has a 100 kWh battery and gets 390 miles of range. That means the Air can go about 4.6 miles per KwH compared with the Plaid’s 3.9 miles. Lucid also has a 900-volt fast-charging system that the company says will juice the battery with 300 miles of range in just 20 minutes.

And finally how about this cool thing in transportation?

 

 

Joby Aviation, which promises to build and operate a commercial fleet of aerial taxis by 2024

It demonstrated what it calls a final aircraft design to two Bloomberg reporters in June and said it will begin manufacturing the vehicles next year. Last month, Joby said it completed a flight of more than 150 miles on a single charge. The company has been working for several years with the Federal Aviation Administration and expects to achieve certification in 2023. As it works toward that goal, it will begin training pilots to operate the five-seat crafts.

 

 

A collection of leading health and medical journals called this week for swift action to combat climate change, calling on governments to cooperate and invest in the environmental crisis with the degree of funding and urgency they used to confront the coronavirus pandemic.

In an editorial published in more than 200 medical and health journals worldwide, the authors declared a 1.5-degree-Celsius rise in global temperatures the “greatest threat to global public health.” The world is on track to warm by around 3 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels by 2100, based on current policies.

“The science is unequivocal; a global increase of 1.5°C above the preindustrial average and the continued loss of biodiversity risk catastrophic harm to health that will be impossible to reverse,” the authors wrote. “Indeed, no temperature rise is ‘safe.’”

Although medical journals have copublished editorials in the past, this marked the first time that publication has been coordinated at this scale. In total more than 200 journals representing every continent and a wide range of medical and health disciplines from ophthalmology to veterinary medicine published the statement. The authors are editors of leading journals including The Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine

In the editorial, they raised concerns not only about the direct health consequences of rising temperatures, including heat-related mortality, pregnancy complications and cardiovascular disease, but also the indirect costs, including the effects that soil depletion could have on malnutrition and the possibility that widespread destruction of habitats could increase the likelihood of future pandemics.

The editorial urged wealthy countries to go beyond their targets and commit to emissions reductions that are commensurate with their cumulative, historic emissions. It also called on them to go beyond their stated goals of $100 billion for climate resiliency plans in developing nations, including funding for improving health systems.

“While low and middle income countries have historically contributed less to climate change, they bear an inordinate burden of the adverse effects, including on health,” said Dr. Lukoye Atwoli, the editor in chief of the East African Medical Journal and one of the co-authors of the editorial, in a statement. “We therefore call for equitable contributions whereby the world’s wealthier countries do more to offset the impact of their actions on the climate.”

Sue Turale, the editor in chief of the International Nursing Review and a co-author of the editorial, said in a statement, “As our planet faces disasters from climate change and rising global temperature, health professionals everywhere have a moral responsibility to act to avoid this.”

The publication comes ahead of a busy few months of climate and environmental conferences. The U.N. General Assembly is scheduled to meet this month in New York City, the U.N.’s biodiversity summit will meet in October in Kunming, China, and the U.N. Climate Change Conference, known as COP, in Glasgow in November.

A growing body of research has shown that extreme weather events worsened by climate change are contributing to a wide range of adverse health outcomes. Earlier this year a study found that around a third of heat-related deaths worldwide could be attributed to the extra warming associated with climate change. And this summer, hundreds of Americans have died in extreme weather events, including more than 600 during the weeklong record-breaking heat wave in the Pacific Northwest that climate scientists say would have been “virtually impossible without climate change.”