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The unexpected ways climate change harms your health

by AlyciaX57289953 Posted on April 4, 2016

A man rests during a heat wave in Manhattan, New York. Reuters/Eduardo Munoz

The unexpected ways climate change harms your health

By on 4 Apr 2016commentsShare

Climate change is bad for your health. There’s no question that the impacts of a warming world — harsher heat waves, increased flooding — will put a strain on our nation’s public health. Take one example: studies predict some 11,000 additional heat-related deaths during summers about 15 years from now.

But other health-related climate consequences have proven more difficult to tease out and thus more difficult to quantify. The White House released a scientific report on Monday that draws on research from eight federal agencies to provide the most comprehensive look yet at climate’s health impacts.

“I don’t know that we’ve seen something like this before, where you have a force that has such a multitude of effects,” U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy told reporters when previewing the report. “As far as history is concerned, this is a new type of threat that we’re facing.”

Here are some of the more unexpected consequences of climate change identified in the report:

Americans are at greater risk of eating contaminated food. Higher temperatures and more extreme weather create perfect conditions for dangerous contaminants to make their way into the food supply. For example, researchers found a link between higher ocean temperatures and mercury accumulation in seafood. Warmer weather and flooding also raises the chance for foodborne illnesses like salmonella.

More of the water we drink may be unsafe. The same problems in food affect water quality, with extreme weather and floods raising the risk of bacteria, pathogens, and other contaminants. Plus, higher temps give harmful algae the opportunity to thrive in new, more widespread parts of the country. Compounding the problem is when flooding overwhelms our existing and quite creaky water infrastructure.

Mosquitoes and ticks will be more than an itchy nuisance. Mild winters and early warmer seasons allow insects to travel further and faster, carrying illnesses like Lyme Disease with them.

Disasters will compromise mental health for already-vulnerable populations. Just think about the stress that extreme weather events like Hurricane Katrina or Superstorm Sandy add to people’s lives: displaced families, economic losses, ruined livelihoods. For children, the elderly, and pregnant women, who are among the most vulnerable, these conditions can lead to post-traumatic stress, anxiety, and depression.

The air you breathe is dirtier. Fossil fuels make our air dirtier — that’s obvious. But greenhouse gases can impact air quality in other ways. Climate change affects weather and precipitation patterns, changing how smog and particulate matter moves over cities. More wildfires add pollution  to the air, too.

Lives are literally at stake if we don’t act on climate change. Even a small global change in average temperature can hurt people at the extremes, and the same holds true for health — affecting the poor, indigenous, very young, and very elderly people the most.

“The public health case for climate action is really compelling beyond words,” Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy said. “It’s not just about glaciers and polar bears. It’s about the health of our kids.”

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The unexpected ways climate change harms your health

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How to Throw an Eco-Friendly Party

by GemmaGale929 Posted on December 26, 2015

We love throwing down as much as the next guy, but aside from the occasionalhangoverthe morning after, whatreallyhurts is seeing the amount of waste generated from a singleawesome night.

Dont get us wrongthe memories of a great party are worth the effort we put into throwing it, but plain and simple, we can do better when it comes to greening our events. Every year, Americans throw away 21.5 million tons of food and dispose of enough paper and plastic serveware tocircle the Equator 300 times.

Throwing a party that’s less wasteful and more earth-friendly is pretty simplethese five tips will get you started.

Skip paper invites, save trees

First, theres a guest list to deal with. Paper invites are the very first thing to cut out when it comes to trimming the environmental impact of an event. In 2012, Americans threw away24.4 million tons of paperthat could beas many as 585 million trees.

Know whats classier than snail mailing paper invites? Calling up each and every guest to invite them personally. Then, send those who are available the details via email. If aesthetics areimportant to you, design a graphic for the email or usePaperless Post. Online invitescan also make it a little easier to connect guests with each other to set up carpoolsfeel free to encourage that.

If physical invitations are still a must, be sure to use post-consumer recycled paper, which helps keep used paper items out of landfills.

Use all-natural decorations

Decorating with plants is a lot prettier than using plastic accessories and other manufactured materials. Shop for flowers from the local farmers market to make sure youre getting the best seasonal options. Bunches of perennialred river liliesare a lovely alternative to poinsettias.Hellebores, also known as the Christmas roses, are beautiful for a white Christmas.Calendulasand tulips also start to bloom in December.

For an even smarter centerpiece, try potted succulents and herbs. Succulentslast long andrequire very little water, and they’re just asshow-stopping as traditional bouquets. Fresh herbs add a nice dimension of scents to the table, and can be used during a meal and post-party for future dinners. Both of these green options also make greatparty favors for guests.

As for lightingan essential aspect of the party moodkeep the switches off and opt for the amber glow of candles instead. Just be sure to choose beeswax candles (or make your own) instead of conventional wax ones, which are made from petroleum-derived paraffin.

Get creative with DIY hanging lanterns by tightly tying wire or string to the rims of small jars (underneath the notch where the cap stops in order to keep the jar from slipping out). Strew the strands wherever you want ambiance, drop a beeswax tea light into each jar, and light them.

Mind the dinnerware

Of course, the greenest way to go if this is a dinner party is to stick with your regular dishes, flatware, and glasses. Hitting up the thrift store to look for mismatched plates can add an eclectic vibe to the table. Invest in some nice cloth napkins to cut paper waste.

Expecting this party to be a big rager? Then reusable dinnerware might not be the practical way to gobut disposables dont have to be a complete waste.Sustainable, compostable plates, cups, and utensilsare a more earth-friendly choice.

Source food locally

Now to the most important element of any party: food!Finger foodscan help minimize flatware use. (Seriously, who doesnt love eating with their hands, anyway?)

Putting together a killer cheese plate? Imported camembert from Normandy is not the most eco-friendly choice. Go withartisan cheese from a local farmandshop locally as much as possible for any food that will be featured at your fete.

Serve seasonal, sustainable drinks

Hold up, we lied. The drinks are pretty crucial to a party, too. Create a seasonal cocktail using in-season fruit (winter options include cherimoya, grapefruit, kiwi, or pomegranate). Not into being a cocktail chemist? Olives are in season in December, too, so shake up an old standby: the dirty martini.

As far as beer and wine, going local should be pretty easy, sinceevery single state in the U.S. produces wineandhas multiple craft beer breweriesthese days. Pretty cool, huh? Whenever possible, select organic and biodynamic winesthoseproduced at vineyards that focus on every aspect of sustainability, from soil to the surrounding flora and fauna. For an added charm, use real fresh fruit slices as bottle stoppers.

In the end, going green doesnt requirea complete overhaul of your party prep. Even followingjust a few of these tips can go a long way towarda greener, healthier world this holiday.

byDana PobleteforThrive Market

More from Thrive Market:
Make Home Smell Like Christmas: 8 Natural DIY Tricks
Hot Cocoa Will Never Be the Same Once You Try These Chocolate Dipped Spoons
Sweet Orange and Aromatic Cardamom Add Wintry Flavor to Madeleines

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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How to Throw an Eco-Friendly Party

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Quote of the Day: Peter Roskam Explains Just How Much He Loathes Hillary Clinton

by ShanaProbert1 Posted on October 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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It’s time for a break to cast votes, but before that let’s hear some final words from Illinois Rep. Peter Roskam:

Let me tell you what I think the Clinton Doctrine is. Reads from prepared card. I think it’s where an opportunity is seized to turn progress in Libya into a political win for Hillary Rodham Clinton. And at the precise moment when things look good, take a victory lap, like on all the Sunday shows three times that year before Qaddafi was killed, and then turn your attention to other things.

See? This hearing is nothing more than a disinterested investigation into the events surrounding the Benghazi attacks of 9/11/2012. You partisan naysayers who think it’s just about attacking Hillary Clinton on national TV should be ashamed of yourselves.

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Quote of the Day: Peter Roskam Explains Just How Much He Loathes Hillary Clinton

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Why Does Donald Trump Have Nothing Against Germany?

by ValentiCatalano Posted on September 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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Which of these countries is not like the others?

  1. China
  2. Germany
  3. Japan
  4. Mexico

Answer: When Donald Trump goes on a tear about foreign countries that are stealing our jobs thanks to their “cunning” and “ruthless” leaders, he always talks about our horrible trade deficit. China: $300+ billion. Japan: $60+ billion. Mexico: $50+ billion.

Who doesn’t he mention? Germany, which is in second place at $80+ billion. Why is that? What is it that makes Germany not like those other countries?

And as long as we’re on the subject of Trump, I caught a bit of his speech in Dallas today and heard him bragging about the fact that every network was covering him. He explained it this way: “It’s a very simple formula in entertainment and television. If you get good ratings—and these aren’t good, these are monster—then you’re going to be on all the time even if you have nothing to say.” Credit where it’s due: Trump may not actually be much of a builder, but he sure does know his TV. And himself, apparently.

Also worth noting: Trump got plenty of cheers for all his usual shoutouts, but by far the biggest cheer came when he promised to toss out every illegal immigrant within his first 18 months. “We have to stop illegal immigration,” he said. “We have to do it.” That set the arena rocking for nearly a full minute, ending in a fervid chant of “USA! USA! USA!” Judging by this, immigration is still the single biggest key to his appeal.

Finally, on a more amusing note, Trump complained that because all his events are televised, he can’t just give the same speech over and over like other politicians. I wonder if he actually believes this? I haven’t heard anything new from Trump in months. Every speech he gives relies on all the same snippets. He changes the order depending on his mood, but it’s always the same stuff. He may be new to politics, but the idea of a standard stump speech is something he seems to have in his blood.

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Why Does Donald Trump Have Nothing Against Germany?

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A Republican’s Guide to Gotcha Questions

by Danny81R8157 Posted on September 5, 2015

Mother Jones

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Are “gotcha” questions unfair? It depends. I’m personally averse to Jeopardy-style factual quizzes, but not because it’s out of line to probe presidential candidates about what they know. Rather, it’s the form of the question itself. It treats presidential candidates like schoolchildren being quizzed in front of the class. It’s inherently demeaning for any self-respecting adult—and for politicians too.

That said, there are gotchas and there are gotchas, and some are worse than others. Here’s a taxonomy:

SEVERE: “Can you name the president of Chechnya? The president of Taiwan? The general who is in charge of Pakistan? The prime minister of India?” Only an asshole asks questions like this.

Recommended answer: “Oh, go fuck yourself.”

HIGH: “Have you ever used cocaine?” This is moderately nasty, but there are dangers to a straightforward refusal to respond. Humor is worth a try.

Recommended answer: “Once, but only accidentally when I picked up a friend at Mena airport in the 90s and left the car door open.”

ELEVATED: “Do you know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite?” This is a double-edged sword. Answer it properly and you sound like you actually know something about Islam. Waffle and you sound stupid. Your best bet is to turn it into an attack.

Recommended answer: “ISIS terrorists are Sunni. President Obama is a Shiite. That’s why he hates those guys so much. It all goes back to the seventh-century, when Obama’s 18th cousin 43 times removed insisted that someone from Mohammad’s family should take up the leadership of the Muslim Ummah.”

GUARDED: “What’s your favorite Bible verse?” This is basically a hanging curve. If you ever went to Sunday School, you shouldn’t have any trouble hitting it out of the park.

Recommended answer: “Eye for eye, tooth for tooth. I try to live up to this every single day. There will be no appeasement of America’s enemies on my watch.”

LOW: “What newspapers and magazines do you regularly read?” This is pretty much the opposite of a gotcha. It’s the human interest version of “hello,” a way of easing into an interview with a friendly little softball.

Recommended answer: “All the usual suspects. The Times, the Post, Human Events, and the Journal of Econometrics. Did you see their paper last month critiquing the Fed’s easy money policies by applying a Tobit regression to a fixed-effects nonparametric model with time-aggregated panel data? It was killer.”

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A Republican’s Guide to Gotcha Questions

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The New York Stock Exchange Has a Long History of Shutdowns

by KelleKYUxqg Posted on July 8, 2015

Mother Jones

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Just after 11:32 am on Wednesday, the New York Stock Exchange experienced an extremely rare halt in all trading. NYSE leadership cited “an internal technical issue” and not, as many feared, a cyber attack.

It’s not the first time a random event has interrupted the 223-year-old stock exchange. Most memorably, the NYSE closed following V-J Day, when troops returned at the end of World War II, and for three full days after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. But the NYSE has closed for everything from the funerals of major world figures—such as Queen Victoria of England (1901), Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1968), and Richard Nixon (1994)—to extreme heat (August 4, 1917).

Here is a brief history of events that halted trading at the New York Stock Exchange.

September 1873: The collapse of the Jay Cooke & Company, a major financial institution, caused the New York Stock Exchange’s first closure, for 10 days, due to market calamity.

July 1914: The start of World War I in Europe shuttered the exchange for four months, the longest closure on record.

May 25, 1946: The NYSE shut down due to a railroad strike, part of one of the largest waves of strikes in US history.

1967 – 1996: Over this span of 29 years, eight ferocious blizzards either delayed the opening bell or closed the exchange early.

February 10, 1969: A snowstorm dubbed the “Lindsay Storm” shuttered the stock exchange for a day and a half amid 15.3 inches of snow.

July 21, 1969: This closure was planned, to celebrate the Apollo 11 moon landing.

July 14, 1977: The NYSE closed due to a major blackout across New York City.

October 27, 1997: A failsafe instantaneously stopped all trading for 30 minutes after the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 350 points.

May 6, 2010: The same circuit breaker that closed the NYSE in 1997 halted trading after a “flash crash” caused by automated high-frequency trading.

September 11, 2001: Terrorist attacks closed the exchange through September 14. The exchange also closed exactly a year later to mark the anniversary of the attacks.

October 29 – 30, 2012: The NYSE shut down while Hurricane Sandy battered the Eastern Seaboard. It was the first time a weather event closed the market for two full days in 124 years, after a snowstorm that dumped more than 40 feet of snow closed the exchange in 1888.

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The New York Stock Exchange Has a Long History of Shutdowns

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Why You Should Be Skeptical About the New Police Narrative on Freddie Gray’s Death

by JoeannTobias Posted on April 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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On a relatively quiet night in Baltimore, the Washington Post dropped a bombshell. According to a sealed court document, a witness alleged that Freddie Gray—whose April death has triggered days of protests in the city—may have been deliberately attempting to injure himself while in police custody:

A prisoner sharing a police transport van with Freddie Gray told investigators that he could hear Gray “banging against the walls” of the vehicle and believed that he “was intentionally trying to injure himself,” according to a police document obtained by The Washington Post.

The prisoner, who is currently in jail, was separated from Gray by a metal partition and could not see him. His statement is contained in an application for a search warrant, which is sealed by the court. The Post was given the document under the condition that the prisoner not be named because the person who provided it feared for the inmate’s safety.

It’s easy to see how a sealed document like that, drafted by a police investigator, might have leaked to the press in spite of the court order, and in spite of the police department’s general aura of secrecy. If Gray’s injuries were self-inflicted, the police department is off the hook.

But as WBAL’s Jayne Miller noted, the new exculpatory allegation appears to be at odds with the police department’s earlier narrative, as well as the timeline of events:

And there’s another reason to be skeptical. Information that comes out of jails is notoriously unreliable, for the simple reason that anyone in jail has a real incentive to get out; cooperating with the people who determine when they get out is an obvious way to score points. This report from the Pew Charitable Trust walks through the conflicts in detail. According to the Innocence Project, 15 percent of wrongful convictions that are eventually overturned by DNA testing originally rested on information from a jailhouse informant. Two years ago in California, for instance, a federal court overturned the conviction of an alleged serial killer known as the “Skid Row Stabber” because the conviction rested on information from an inmate dismissed as a “habitual liar.”

Or maybe the witness in Baltimore is right—that happens too!—and what we thought we knew about the Freddie Gray case was wrong. But the department isn’t doing much to quiet the skeptics. It announced Wednesday that it will not make public the full results of its investigation into Gray’s death, “because if there is a decision to charge in any event by the state’s attorney’s office, the integrity of that investigation has to be protected.”

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Why You Should Be Skeptical About the New Police Narrative on Freddie Gray’s Death

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The Problem With the Ferguson, Ray Rice, and UVA Rape Stories

by CathleeWRR Posted on December 3, 2014

Mother Jones

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What do these three recent stories have in common?

Ferguson
Ray Rice
The University of Virginia gang rape

One thing they have in common is that I’ve written little or nothing about them. But they share two other attributes as well. Here they are:

  1. All three have spotlighted problems that are critically important and absolutely deserving of broader attention. Ferguson is all about racial disparities, police killings of unarmed civilians, the militarization of law enforcement, and other equally deserving issues. Ray Rice was about the scourge of domestic violence and its tacit acceptance within the culture of professional sports. The UVA rape story was about sexual assault on university campuses, fueled by alcohol, fraternities, and official lack of concern.
  2. However, the specific incidents in all three cases are, to say the least, less than ideal as poster children for these issues. We will never know for sure what happened to Michael Brown, but as evidence has dribbled out, the simple liberal narrative of a gentle teenager being gunned down while trying to surrender has seemed less and less credible. In the Ray Rice case, it’s clear that Rice did something terrible—but as it turns out, the evidence suggests that the criminal justice system treated him fairly reasonably and that the NFL’s actions were mostly a craven reaction to public opinion. Finally, in the UVA rape scandal, a number of credible questions have been raised about whether Rolling Stone‘s account of what happened was fair—or, in the worst case, even true.

If you’re curious about why I’ve been relatively quiet about these stories, that’s why. All of them spotlight issues that I think are well worth spotlighting, and I don’t really relish the thought of doing or writing anything that might dilute their power. These are all things that I want people to pay more attention to, not less, and if you want the world to change you have to be willing to exploit the events you have, not the events you wish you had.

And yet, the specific fact patterns of each specific case are genuinely problematic. To pretend otherwise is to be intellectually dishonest.

I’ve dealt with this by not saying much. That’s not exactly an act of moral courage, is it? And yet, with the facts as hazy as they are, I’m just not sure what else to do. Perhaps the answer is to stop worrying about it: Just accept that we live in a messy world and sometimes the events that have the most impact aren’t clear cut. But you use the events anyway in an effort to grab public attention and improve the world a bit, even if that sometimes means a few individuals end up being treated unfairly in some way. Perhaps.

I don’t know—though I’m struck that three such similar events have occurred in just the past few months. But I’m still not sure whether I should have reacted differently. I just don’t know.

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The Problem With the Ferguson, Ray Rice, and UVA Rape Stories

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Half of Americans Think Climate Change Is a Sign of the Apocalypse

by Myrna Posted on December 2, 2014

What a new report on theology and global warming means for public policy. Ig0rZh/Thinkstock Snowmageddon, snowpocalypse, snowzilla, just snow. Superstorm Sandy, receding shorelines, and more. Hurricanes Isaac, Ivan, and Irene, with cousins Rammasun, Bopha, and Haiyan. The parade of geological changes and extreme weather events around the world since 2011 has been stunning. Perhaps that’s part of why, as the Public Religion Research Institute reported on Friday, “The number of Americans who believe that natural disasters are evidence of the apocalypse has increased somewhat over the past couple years.” As of 2014, it’s estimated that nearly half of Americans—49 percent—say natural disasters are a sign of “the end times,” as described in the Bible. That’s up from an estimated 44 percent in 2011. Read the rest at The Atlantic. Source:  Half of Americans Think Climate Change Is a Sign of the Apocalypse ; ; ;

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Half of Americans Think Climate Change Is a Sign of the Apocalypse

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This Quirky Indie Rocker Can Help You Win at Scrabble

by SantiagMorrice Posted on October 18, 2014

Mother Jones

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Stephin Merritt, the singer for the Magnetic Fields, refuses to play Scrabble with me.

I can’t help but be a tiny bit disappointed. The ubiquitous word game, after all, is the reason I’m sitting down with him in this San Francisco bakery-cafe. Merritt is in town promoting 101 Two-Letter Words, a collection of poems—illustrated by the loveably oddball New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast—that he wrote to help himself remember the shortest words in Scrabble’s official dictionary.

But when I challenge him to a match, Merritt shakes his head. “The last time I attempted Scrabble with an interviewer,” he says in his slow, gravelly voice, “I accidentally stole 12 tiles from the Bryant Park public Scrabble set.”

Perhaps it’s no surprise that he doesn’t want his attention divided. Merritt isn’t known for doing things halfway. His band’s best-known record, the aptly named 69 Love Songs, is a three-volume epic that ranges from gospel to punk. On another album, i, every song title begins with the letter I.

He’s also not fond of repetition. In addition to his work with the Magnetic Fields, Merritt has written several Chinese operas, a score for a silent film version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and music for the audiobook of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. This poetry collection is his first. “I think I would get bored easily if I did the same thing again and again,” Merritt says, so “I don’t.”

The idea for 101 Two-Letter Words, which hit bookshelves at the end of September, came to him while he was on tour playing Scrabble and Words With Friends to kill time in hotels and airports. His opponents included a copyeditor, a journalist, and the novelist Emma Straub. He found himself losing often. So, in a ploy to remember strategically important words like “aa” (a type of lava) and “xu” (a unit of currency), he began composing quatrains for each.

Roz Chast/W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

“After a few,” he writes in the book’s introduction, “I thought I’d better write all of them down, and how better to do that than to write a book? I never finish anything without a deadline anyway.”

Merritt says he doesn’t have a favorite poem from the book, as he’s “not a person who has favorite things.” But he does, disproving his own claim, have a favorite illustration: The poem for “be” reads “‘Be yourself,’ all thinkers say; how odd they think alike. ‘Be yourself,’ says Lao Tzu; ‘Be yourself,’ says Wilhelm Reich.”

To accompany it, Chast has drawn what Merritt describes as “an ugly American tourist couple with his/her shirts.” His shirt says, “Be yourself.” Hers says, “I’m with stupid.”

“It blew me away,” Merritt says.

Roz Chast/W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

The book owes much of its aesthetic to Edward Gorey, whose unsettling illustrated books Merritt grew up on.

“As a child with dark, morose-looking eyes, I looked like an Edward Gorey character,” he tells me. “I guess I knew that I was going to meet some horrible end. Impaled by a candlestick or something like that. Sucked into the pneumatic tube in the department store.”

Merritt never considered setting the poems to music, he says. Each song would have been only about 15 seconds long—not enough to jog his memory. But some aspects of his creative process are consistent, no matter the medium. He prefers to work in the nearest gay bar (loud, drunk straight people annoy him), with a cocktail in one hand and his notebook in the other, trying to tune out the television and let his brain wander. If he’s at home, he says, there are too many other pressing things for him to do.

Stephin Merritt performs in New York. WFUV/Flickr

I ask him whether thematic constraints, such as writing only love songs or focusing on two-letter words, help stimulate his thinking. He frowns. “It puzzles me that people keep asking me that, he says, because doesn’t everyone give themselves thematic constraints in their work? Isn’t that what a work is?”

“Yes, definitely,” I counter. “But not everyone makes an album where every song begins with I.”

“No,” he says. “I think most people make albums where everything is more similar than I do. People make albums with only five instruments on them, doing more or less the same thing again and again for the entire album, and no one bats an eyelash. If I did that, I would be bored, and so would the audience. Everyone has constraints; I just have unusual constraints, I think. The Rolling Stones have sounded like Muddy Waters for 50 years, and no one has said, ‘Don’t you find that limiting?'”

With this book, Merritt says, he didn’t even choose his own constraints. He had a specific set of words he wanted to learn, and there happened to be 101 of them. He adds that he’s always been drawn to small things: He plays the ukulele, he drives a Mini Cooper, and his pet chiuahua Irving (after Irving Berlin) slept in his shirt while he wrote some of the poems.

Merritt has a theory about the origins of this affinity: “I’m 5-foot-3.”

So, I ask, have the poems succeeded? Is he now better at Scrabble?

Without a doubt, he says. And his mother is too, ever since he gave her a copy.

“It’s not like I have a moral crusade to help people improve their game,” he adds. “But why not? It makes the world a little more fun.”

Originally posted here – 

This Quirky Indie Rocker Can Help You Win at Scrabble

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