The Lancet & Climate Change

By Paul Homewood

 

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https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)32594-7/fulltext

 

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The Lancet has published its latest report on health and climate change.

It looks alike a rehash of last year’s version, which I took to the cleaners here.

It contains four key messages:

• • 1 Present day changes in heat waves, labour capacity, vector-borne disease, and food security provide early warning of the compounded and overwhelming impact on public health that are expected if temperatures continue to rise. Trends in climate change impacts, exposures, and vulnerabilities show an unacceptably high level of risk for the current and future health of populations across the world.

     

 

• 2 A lack of progress in reducing emissions and building adaptive capacity threatens both human lives and the viability of the national health systems they depend on, with the potential to disrupt core public health infrastructure and overwhelm health services.

   

 

 

• 3 Despite these delays, a number of sectors have seen the beginning of a low-carbon transition, and it is clear that the nature and scale of the response to climate change will be the determining factor in shaping the health of nations for centuries to come.

   

 

 

• 4 Ensuring a widespread understanding of climate change as a central public health issue will be crucial in delivering an accelerated response, with the health profession beginning to rise to this challenge.

 

 

You may have noted that three of the four are all about policy actions for tackling climate change, which should have nothing to do with The Lancet at all, as they are public policy matters.

 

As for actual health matters, they identify the following:

Vulnerability to extremes of heat has steadily risen since 1990 in every region, with 157 million more people exposed to heatwave events in 2017, compared with 2000, and with the average person experiencing an additional 1·4 days of heatwaves per year over the same period (indicators 1.1 and 1.3). For national economies and household budgets, 153 billion hours of labour were lost in 2017 because of heat, an increase of more than 62 billion hours (3·2 billion weeks of work) since 2000 (indicator 1.4). The direct effects of climate change extend beyond heat to include extremes of weather. In 2017, a total of 712 extreme weather events resulted in US$326 billion in economic losses, almost triple the total losses of 2016 (indicator 4.1).

Small changes in temperature and precipitation can result in large changes in the suitability for transmission of important vector-borne and water-borne diseases. In 2016, global vectorial capacity for the transmission of the dengue fever virus was the highest on record, rising to 9·1% for Aedes aegypti and 11·1% for Aedes albopictus above the 1950s baseline. Focusing on high-risk areas and diseases, the Baltic region has had a 24% increase in the coastline area suitable for epidemics of Vibrio cholerae, and in 2016, the highlands of sub-Saharan Africa saw a 27·6% rise in the vectorial capacity for the transmission of malaria from the 1950 baseline (indicator 1.8). A proxy of agricultural yield potential shows declines in every region, with 30 countries having downward trends in yields, reversing a decades-long trend of improvement (indicator 1.9.1).

Decreasing labour productivity, increased capacity for the transmission of diseases such as dengue fever, malaria, and cholera, and threats to food security provide early warning of compounding negative health and nutrition effects if temperatures continue to rise.

 

Let’s break these down:

1) Heatwaves

It is claimed that:

On average, each person was exposed to an additional 1·4 days of heatwave from 2000 to 2017 (compared with the 1986–2005 baseline)

But the report makes no attempt to quantify the effects of this on health, nor even list such effects, apart from a brief allusion to the fact that there are more old people in Europe than Africa.

Worse still, they make no mention of the fact that cold kills many more people than heat. Some might argue this is a startling omission, given the fact that The Lancet itself published a study in 2015, which showed that deaths from cold weather far exceeded those from hot, even in tropical areas such as Thailand.

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2) Extreme weather

The Lancet again brings out the same tired old argument about extreme weather:

The direct effects of climate change extend beyond heat to include extremes of weather. In 2017, a total of 712 extreme weather events resulted in US$326 billion in economic losses, almost triple the total losses of 2016

Quite what the relevance of comparing 2016 and 2017 is, I have no idea. It has nothing to do with climate.

The report claims that extreme rainfall has worsened in some regions, such as South America and SE Asia since 1986 to 2005.

They don’t mention areas where the opposite has happened, and as the IPCC firmly stated, there is no evidence of long term trends in flooding globally:

https://ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/

 

The sort of short term,regional changes found in the Lancet study frequently happen around the world as ocean cycles such as the PDO and AMO evolve.

They have nothing to do with global warming.

Exactly the same can be said about droughts. Again this is what IPCC AR5 had to say:

https://ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/

 

The increase in drought in West Africa is in fact misleading. As the IPCC admit, their trends are dominated by the Sahel drought of the 1970s and 80s, which occurred during a period of global cooling.

Globally, as IPCC AR5 also states, a warmer climate has tended to increase precipitation, particularly above 30N, while downward trends have been observed in the already very wet tropics. This is in line with both theory and the observations of HH Lamb and others. Such a precipitation regime would tend to ameliorate drought, although there will inevitably be regional variations.

 

The Lancet have mentioned economic losses, but as Roger Pielke Jr proved, the cost of weather disasters has not risen as a proportion of GDP. If anything the reverse is true.

https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2018/01/05/weather-disasters-as-proportion-of-global-gdp-1990-2017/

 

 

3) Labour productivity

They claim that:

In 2017, 153 billion hours of labour (3·4 billion weeks of work) were lost, an increase of 62 billion hours lost relative to 2000

Needless to say, these are not measured numbers, but the product of modelling that do not necessarily reflect reality.

The first thing to note is that the most heavily populated places on earth tend to be the very places they have highlighted. And there is a very good reason for that – hot climates are more productive.

But the Lancet study also misses something extremely important. Humans adapt. Moreover, technological improvements now make manual far less demanding than it used to be. For instance, mechanisation reduces both workload and effort. Better irrigation systems remove the need to carry water by hand. Seed development, pestkillers, fertilisation and so on all improve human productivity.

In short, workers don’t have to work as many hours to produce the same amount as they would have done in the past. That means they can rest at the hottest times of the day.

To quote just one example, India is heavily featured on the Lancet map. Yet if we look at the value of agricultural output (at constant prices), we find that it has been shooting upwards, particularly since 2000, the period The Lancet say has seen massive loss of labour productivity.

http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#compare

 

 

4) Health trends

The Lancet makes this extraordinary claim:

Although global health and development interventions have resulted in some impressive improvements in human health and wellbeing, mortality from two particularly climate-sensitive diseases, dengue fever and malignant skin melanoma, is still rising in regions most susceptible to both diseases

They are forced to admit that overall mortality rates have fallen substantially, even in Africa and SE Asia, something which is clearly a beneficial effect of modern society, based on fossil fuels.

The reference category (all-cause mortality) shows a strong decrease in mortality rates in Africa, and a substantial reduction in southeast Asia. The number of deaths caused by diarrhoeal diseases also show marked decreases, especially in Africa

Yet to be able to point up “detrimental effects” of global warming they bring up melanoma, which they say has got worse in Europe, the Americas and Western Pacific.

Has it not occurred to them that this is because people now sunbathe more than their ancestors, and are able to travel on holiday to sunny climes?

As for dengue, the connection with global warming has been debunked many times by experts in the field, such as Prof Duane Gubler. According to him:

Dengue is the most important arboviral disease of humans with over half of the world’s population living in areas of risk. The frequency and magnitude of epidemic dengue have increased dramatically in the past 40 years as the viruses and the mosquito vectors have both expanded geographically in the tropical regions of the world. There are many factors that have contributed to this emergence of epidemic dengue, but only three have been the principal drivers: 1) urbanization, 2) globalization and 3) lack of effective mosquito control. The dengue viruses have fully adapted to a human-Aedes aegypti-human transmission cycle, in the large urban centers of the tropics, where crowded human populations live in intimate association with equally large mosquito populations. This setting provides the ideal home for maintenance of the viruses and the periodic generation of epidemic strains. These cities all have modern airports through which 10s of millions of passengers pass each year, providing the ideal mechanism for transportation of viruses to new cities, regions and continents where there is little or no effective mosquito control. The result is epidemic dengue.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3317603/

In an earlier paper, Gubler also described how the principle mosquito vector, A. aegypti, had been almost eradicated from large parts of Central and South America in the 1950s and 60s, following the instigation of proper mosquito control.

Sadly, this eradication programme was discontinued in the early 1970s, with the result that by the 1990s A. aegypti had nearly regained the geographic distribution it held before eradication was initiated.

The WHO also recognises that the incidence of dengue has grown dramatically around the world in recent decades. Yet they make no mention of climate change at all in their fact sheet here.

What they do say is:

The Aedes aegypti mosquito lives in urban habitats and breeds mostly in man-made containers. Unlike other mosquitoes Ae. aegypti is a day-time feeder; its peak biting periods are early in the morning and in the evening before dusk. Female Ae. aegypti bites multiple people during each feeding period.

Aedes albopictus, a secondary dengue vector in Asia, has spread to North America and more than 25 countries in the European Region, largely due to the international trade in used tyres (a breeding habitat) and other goods (e.g. lucky bamboo). Ae. albopictus is highly adaptive and, therefore, can survive in cooler temperate regions of Europe. Its spread is due to its tolerance to temperatures below freezing, hibernation, and ability to shelter in microhabitats.

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/dengue-and-severe-dengue

The real problem is urbanisation, coupled with easy travel and international trade. But don’t expect The Lancet to put the blame on overpopulation!

 

 

5) Food insecurity

The Lancet claim that:

Worldwide, more than sufficient food is produced to feed the global population. The causes of food insecurity and undernutrition are hence both complex and multifactorial, driven by factors beyond total food availability.

However, food production is already being compromised by extremes of weather that are predicted to become more frequent and extreme; yield potentials are decreasing globally, and many countries are already experiencing falling yields.

 

Once again though, we must note that these are not actual reductions in yield, but “modelled”.

The logic goes that even though yields are increasing, they are not going up as fast as they would without climate change. To arrive at this theoretical conclusion, they have modelled growing patterns for maize, as a proxy for all crops, against a range of theoretical temperatures.

But back in the real world, we find that maize yields have relentlessly been increasing globally since 1960. There is certainly no evidence of a slow down since 2000, which is central to the Lancet claim:

http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#compare

In the Supplementary Material, The Lancet show some of the regions which have supposedly suffered from “falling potential yields”. (Most of the world apparently!).

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)32594-7/fulltext#seccestitle1080

 

Checking the actual yields for some of these regions, we see the same story:

http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#compare

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To sum up, this wretched impersonation of a proper scientific report is so one-sided, it could have been written by Greenpeace.

Whilst The Lancet devotes just seven pages to the health aspects, twenty are given to the policy issues of adaptation, mitigation, finance and public engagement. These sections cover the usual nonsense of phasing out fossil fuels, eating less meat, carbon pricing and brainwashing the public.

Nowhere is there any mention of the crippling costs of their recommended solutions, whether financial or economic. Nor is there any recognition that maybe the trillions involved might be put to better use.

We expect that sort of spin from politicians, but not from what used to be a serious, well respected journal.