I would hope the question they will be looking at is the relative
disease impacts of global warming with and without climate engineering,
as that is the choice that lies ahead. Consideration of whether climate
intervention causes disease or other impacts relative to the present
climate is informative, but any incremental disease in such a comparison
is really a consequence of inadequately offset global warming, not due
to climate engineering.
Mike MacCracken
On 9/28/18 3:33 PM, Andrew Lockley wrote:
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-09/uom-nit092818.php
Now is the time to answer questions about climate engineering
disease impacts
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND
<https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-09/uom-nit092818.php#>
<https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-09/uom-nit092818.php#>
<https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-09/uom-nit092818.php#>
<https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-09/uom-nit092818.php#>
<https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-09/uom-nit092818.php#>
Radical solutions to climate change might save lives, but a commentary
in the October 2018 issue of the journal /Nature Climate Change/ calls
for caution because geoengineering still lacks a "clean bill of health."
With global fossil-fuel emissions reaching an all-time high and the
United States' withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, climate experts
have become increasingly interested in "climate engineering," a set of
ambitious and largely undeveloped technologies that could artificially
counteract global warming. One proposed approach, called solar
radiation management (SRM), would reduce incoming sunlight by
injecting tiny aerosol particles into the stratosphere or by
brightening clouds. Other approaches would directly remove carbon
dioxide from the atmosphere.
Even if some combination of these worked, scientists warn that the
climate wouldn't be the same as it was before climate change. And
those differences might make a big difference for global health,
ecologists Colin Carlson and Christopher Trisos argue in the /Nature
Climate Change/article. The article was written while both were
postdoctoral fellows at the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis
Center (SESYNC), a unique University of Maryland center funded by the
National Science Foundation that brings together science of the
natural world with science of human behavior and decision-making.
So far, Carlson and Trisos say, almost nothing is known about the
potential health consequences of such geoengineered "solutions."
"We're a step before saying these technologies will probably save
lives or saying they're too dangerous to use," says Carlson. "Right
now, what we know is climate and disease are already closely linked,
and that raises basic questions about climate engineering. Now, we
need answers."
Carlson gives the example of malaria, a disease mostly confined to the
tropics today, but was once widespread in Europe and North America.
Recently, scientists found that malaria transmits best at cooler
temperatures. In some projections, SRM would disproportionately cool
off the tropics--and that might make malaria worse.
"But it's all guesswork--we can qualitatively talk through possible
risks, and that's what we do here. But we can't make any judgements
without solid, quantitative evidence. And no one's run those models
yet. There's no data to go off."
Carlson and Trisos hope to shed some light on these issues over the
next two years. They are part of an international, interdisciplinary
team that has been recommended for a $50,000 grant from the DECIMALS
Fund (Developing Country Impact Modelling Analysis for SRM), which was
launched by the Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative to
help scientists understand how SRM could affect the "global south"--a
term that refers to less developed countries. Eight projects will
receive DECIMALS grants that will be announced in October. The fund is
administered by The World Academy of Sciences.
"Links between climate change and health are often complex, so climate
engineering may impact health in unexpected ways," says Trisos, now a
research affiliate at the African Climate and Development Initiative.
"Governments have pledged to prevent 'dangerous anthropogenic
interference' with the climate system, so it's critical that we can
compare public health risks from climate change to those from climate
engineering, in order to decide if climate engineering should even be
considered."
Carlson and Trisos' DECIMALS research proposal was put together in
collaboration with lead researchers Shafiul Alam and Mofizur Rahman
(International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research in Bangladesh)
and includes epidemiologist Shweta Bansal (Georgetown University),
climatologist Alan Robock (Rutgers University), and world-renowned
microbiologist and cholera expert Rita Colwell (University of
Maryland, formerly the ninth director of the National Science Foundation).
Their team is designed to produce important results on a fast deadline.
"Climate scientists, ecologists and public health researchers are
increasingly working together to understand what climate change means
for infectious diseases," says Trisos. "We're lucky to take advantage
of that partnership to tackle a problem this complicated--and this
urgent."
In a perfect world, understanding the possible health impacts of
climate engineering might help policymakers make the right call, if
other options seem limited. But Carlson says there's another reason
this work is important.
"From a public health standpoint, we're not likely to be the ones
making the call about climate futures. But we want to know what's
coming if climate engineering does happen, and we want to be prepared,
first in places like Bangladesh that might have the most to gain but
also have the most to lose."
Bangladesh is the world's hot spot for cholera and has led the global
research program to prevent the disease for several decades, with
medical care reducing fatalities from 50 percent to less than 5
percent. Climate change will only increase the pressure that countries
like Bangladesh face from infectious diseases like cholera and malaria.
"Whether or not the climate engineering 'button' gets pushed, the
research we do here still helps us," Carlson explains. "We're building
our toolbox and getting better at predicting cholera and malaria, and
that should save lives, whatever climate change looks like."
###
Media Relations Contact: Abby Robinson, 301-405-5845
Writer: Lisa Palmer
University of Maryland
College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences
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College Park, MD 20742
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About the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences
The College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences at the
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research funding exceeding $175 million.
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