Global Climate Change and Human Health

From Science to Practice

George Luber, Jay Lemery

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781118603581
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Public Health, Administration & Care

Learn the foundations of climate science and human health

Global Climate Change and Human Health examines the environmental crisis from a public health and clinical health perspective, giving students and clinicians the information they need to prepare for the future of health care. Edited by George Luber, associate director for climate change at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Jay Lemery, associate professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and section chief of Wilderness and Environmental Medicine in the Department of Emergency Medicine, and including chapters written by luminaries in the field, this landmark book provides a comprehensive introduction to climate change and health. Students will learn about climate changes direct effect on health, including extreme weather events, altered and degraded ecosystems, and threats to human security and welfare. Discussions on mitigation and adaptation strategies, including disease surveillance, communications, and greening health care, as well as a primer on the core concepts of climate change science are presented. Each chapter has a specific section on the clinical correlations of the impact of climate change on health. Informative illustrations depict increasing aeroallergens, shifting vector habitats, emergent risks, and more. Visual teaching materials broken down by chapter (including PowerPoint lecture slides) are available for instructors.

This book shows how human health will be —and already has been — affected and how health care practitioners need to start preparing.

• Understand the science behind climate change and climate variability
• Learn how the availability of food and clean water will affect public health
• Consider the diseases that will surge as vector populations swell
• Discover mitigation strategies targeted toward the health care community
• Understanding how climate change affects human rights and how international institutions are responding

Increased temperatures bring algal blooms that threaten clean water. Degraded air quality brings allergies, asthma, and respiratory diseases. Ground pollutants lower the nutritional value of food crops. It's clear that climate change is very much a public health concern, and Global Climate Change and Human Health helps those preparing to be on the front lines of health care.

Part 1
Our Changing Planet: Emergent Risks for Human Health

Chapter 1
Primer on Climate Science

Christopher K. Uejio, James D. Tamerius, Karen Wertz, Katie M. Konchar

The notion that carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions could accumulate in the Earth's atmosphere and increase global surface temperatures was first proposed in the nineteenth century. Indeed, in 1896, Swedish physicist and chemist Svante Arrhenius created a greenhouse law for CO₂ that is still in use today: the increase of CO₂ emissions leads to global warming (Walter 2010). However, the idea was considered unlikely at the time and was mostly forgotten until rising global temperatures in the middle of the twentieth century sparked renewed interest in the hypothesis.

In the late 1950s, Charles Keeling began measuring the atmospheric concentration of CO₂ at Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, a remote observatory that is minimally affected by local CO₂ sources and thus reflects average global atmospheric CO₂ levels. Over time, repeated measurements at Mauna Loa showed a consistent upward trend in the concentration of atmospheric CO₂. Indeed, this atmospheric concentration has increased more than 42 percent since the Industrial Revolution (Siegenthaler and Oeschger 1987). This increase is consistent with the quantity of CO₂ emitted into the atmosphere by humans through the burning of fossil fuels such as oil, coal, and natural gas. As of 2008, approximately 10 billion tons of anthropogenic carbon had been released into the atmosphere, and the total mass of anthropogenic emissions was increasing annually by approximately 2 percent (Le Quéré et al. 2009).

Key Concepts

• There is a strong consensus among climate scientists that global temperatures are increasing as a result of human activities.
• Weather, natural climate variability, and long-term climate change are distinct phenomena.
• The Earth is in an energy balance, which means that the amount of energy that enters the Earth's atmosphere is equal to the amount of energy that leaves the atmosphere.
• Three primary factors affect the Earth's energy balance: variability of solar intensity, reflectivity of the Earth's surface or atmosphere, and concentration of greenhouse gases.
• Natural solar radiation cycles affect the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth's surface, but they cannot account for the average global temperature increases we are experiencing.
• The greenhouse effect is a natural process that traps energy in the Earth' s system, causing average global temperatures to be warmer than they would be otherwise.
• Human activities have increased the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which have augmented the greenhouse effect and increased average global temperatures.
• Direct and indirect observations indicate with certainty that the global climate is changing.
• Average global temperatures have increased by approximately 0.85°C since 1880.
• In addition to increasing temperatures, observations over the past century have indicated that snow and sea ice cover is decreasing, the average global sea level is rising, and precipitation patterns are changing.
• Climate models make projections of future climate change.
• Climate models strongly suggest that the increasing global temperatures and climate change in the past century are due to anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases.
• Average global temperatures are expected to increase between approximately 0.8°C to 4.9°C by the end of this century.
• Temperatures will increase most over land and high-latitude regions.
• There will likely be an increase in extreme heat events associated with climate change.
• Most areas will see an increase in the amount of precipitation, and rainfall events may become more intense.

Scientific Consensus

As a result of increasingly complex mathematical models of climatological processes and the development of techniques to study past climates, there is now strong agreement among climate scientists that the altered composition of the atmosphere due to emissions of CO₂ and other GHG from human activities is causing an increase in mean global temperatures. An analysis of 11,944 peer-reviewed global warming studies published between 1991 and 2011 found that 97.7 percent of the studies stated that humans are causing global warming (Oreskes 2004; Cook et al. 2013). The science that has shaped this consensus is synthesized by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a nonpartisan intergovernmental organization that was created in 1988 and was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. The IPCC performs periodic assessments on the status of climate change science, potential impacts, and mitigation and adaptation.

The IPCC reports reflect the evolving state of the science. The IPCC (1990) stated that “the unequivocal detection of the enhanced greenhouse effect from observations is not likely for a decade or more.” In the Third Assessment (IPCC 2001), the panel concluded there was new evidence that human activities were responsible for the majority of the observed temperature increases. The Fourth Assessment Report (IPCC 2007) collectively determined with “very high confidence” (very low uncertainty) that human activities have increased global temperatures over the past fifty years. Over five hundred scientists and two thousand reviewers voluntarily contributed to the report. The recently completed Fifth Assessment (IPCC 2013) issued the strongest statement that observed warming in the past fifty years was “unequivocal.” The strength of this scientific consensus is similar to the evidence linking smoking to carcinogens and cancer (Shwed and Bearman 2010).

This book looks at the climatological processes that modulate human health. This chapter, however, focuses on the physical processes associated with climate change to provide a foundation for subsequent discussions. In particular, we discuss how greenhouse gases alter Earth's energy balance and describe recent climate trends and projections of future climate change. In addition, we present multiple converging lines of evidence that support that the climate is changing and the changes are primarily caused by human activities.

Weather, Climate Variability, Climate Change, and Scientific Theory

It is important to distinguish short-term weather changes, natural climate variability, and long-term climate change. People are intricately familiar with short-term weather changes in atmospheric conditions from their everyday experiences. However, it is exceedingly difficult to sense changes to climate because of its relatively slow progression and because it is masked by weather fluctuations. Confusion about these concepts can lead to incorrect interpretations and conclusions regarding climate change.

We commonly experience weather, the state of the atmosphere at an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Introduction
• Acknowledgments
• The Editors
• The Contributors
• Part 1: Our Changing Planet: Emergent Risks for Human Health
• Part 2: The Health Consequences of Climate Change
• Part 3: The Public Health Approach to Climate Change
• Part 4: Taking Action: Adaptation, Mitigation, and Governance
• Index
• End User License Agreement