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Is Global Warming Harmful to Health?

By

Paul R. Epstein

, Scientific American, New York; August

Computer models indicate that many diseases will surge as the earth’s atmosphere heats up. Signs of the predicted troubles have begun to appear

Introduction

Today few scientists doubt the atmosphere is warming. Most also agree that the rate of heating is accelerating and that the consequences of this temperature change could become increasingly disruptive. Even high school students can reel off some projected outcomes: the oceans will warm, and glaciers will melt, causing sea levels to rise and salt water to inundate settlements along many low-lying coasts. Meanwhile the regions suitable for farming will shift. Weather patterns should also become more erratic and storms more severe.

Yet less familiar effects could be equally detrimental. Notably, computer models predict that global warming, and other climate alterations it induces, will expand the incidence and distribution of many serious medical disorders. Disturbingly, these forecasts seem to be coming true.

Global warming can also threaten human well-being profoundly, if somewhat less directly, by revising weather patterns – particularly by pumping up the frequency and intensity of floods and droughts and by causing rapid swings in the weather. That prospect is deeply troubling, because infectious illness is a genie that can be very hard to put back into its bottle. The control issue looms largest in the developing world, where resources for prevention and treatment can be scarce.

I will address the worrisome health effects of global warming and disrupted climate patterns in greater detail, but I should note that the consequences may not all be bad. High winds may at times disperse pollution. Hotter winters may reduce cold-related heart attacks and respiratory ailments. Yet overall, the undesirable effects of more variable weather are likely to include new stresses and nasty surprises that will overshadow any benefits.

Mosquitoes Rule in the Heat

Diseases relayed by mosquitoes such as malaria, dengue fever, yellow fever and several kinds of encephalitis-are among those eliciting the greatest concern as the world warms. Mosquito-borne disorders are projected to become increasingly prevalent because their insect carriers, or “vectors,” are very sensitive to meteorological conditions. Cold can be a friend to humans, because it limits mosquitoes to seasons and regions where temperatures stay above certain minimums.

Excessive heat kills insects as effectively as cold does. Nevertheless, within their survivable range of temperatures, mosquitoes proliferate faster and bite more as the air becomes warmer. At the same time, greater heat speeds the rate at which pathogens inside them reproduce and mature.

The extra heat is not alone in encouraging a rise in mosquito-borne infections. Intensifying floods and droughts resulting from global warming can each help trigger outbreaks by creating breeding grounds for insects whose dried eggs remain viable and hatch in still water. And the insects can gain another boost if climate change or other processes (such as alterations of habitats by humans) reduce the populations of predators that normally keep mosquitoes in check.

Mosquitoes on the March

Malaria and dengue fever are two of the mosquito-borne diseases most likely to spread dramatically as global temperatures head upward. Some models project that by the end of the 21st century, ongoing warming will have enlarged the zone of potential malaria transmission from an area containing 45 percent of the world’s population to an area containing about 60 percent. That news is bad indeed, considering that no vaccine is available and that the causative parasites are becoming resistant to standard drugs.

True to the models, malaria is reappearing north and south of the tropics. Dengue, or “breakbone,” fever (a severe flulike viral illness that sometimes causes fatal internal bleeding) is spreading as well. It has broadened its range in the Americas and it has also found its way to northern Australia. Neither a vaccine nor a specific drug treatment is yet available.

Although these expansions of malaria and dengue fever certainly fit the predictions, the cause of that growth cannot be traced conclusively to global warming. Other factors could have been involved as well-for instance, disruption of the environment in ways that favor mosquito proliferation, declines in mosquito-control and other public health programs, and rises in drug and pesticide resistance. The case for a climatic contribution becomes stronger however, when other projected consequences of global warming appear in concert with disease outbreaks.

Opportunists Like Sequential Extremes

The increased climate variability accompanying warming will probably be more important than the rising heat itself in fueling unwelcome outbreaks of certain vector-borne illnesses. For instance, warm winters followed by hot, dry summers favor the transmission of St. Louis encephalitis and other infections that cycle among birds, urban mosquitoes and humans.

This sequence seems to have abetted the surprise emergence of the West Nile virus in New York City last year. No one knows how this virus found its way into the U.S. But one reasonable explanation for its persistence and amplification here centers on the weather’s effects on the mosquitoes.

The interaction between the weather, the mosquitoes and the virus probably went something like this: The mild winter of 1998-99 enabled many of the mosquitoes to survive into the spring, which arrived early. Drought in spring and summer concentrated nourishing organic matter in their breeding areas and simultaneously killed off mosquito predators, such as lacewings and ladybugs, that would otherwise have helped limit mosquito populations. Drought would also have led birds to congregate more, as they shared fewer and smaller watering holes, many of which were frequented, naturally, by mosquitoes.

Once mosquitoes acquired the virus, the heat wave that accompanied the drought would speed up viral maturation inside the insects. Consequently, as infected mosquitoes sought blood meals, they could spread the virus to birds at a rapid clip. As bird after bird became infected, so did more mosquitoes, which ultimately fanned out to infect human beings. Torrential rains toward the end of August provided new puddles for the breeding of mosquitoes, unleashing an added crop of potential virus carriers.

Like mosquitoes, other disease-conveying vectors tend to be “pests”-opportunists that reproduce quickly and thrive under disturbed conditions unfavorable to species with more specialized needs. In the 1990s climate variability contributed to the appearance in humans of a new rodent-borne ailment: the hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, a highly lethal infection of the lungs. This infection can jump from animals to humans when people inhale viral particles hiding in the secretions and excretions of rodents.

First, a regional drought helped to reduce the pool of animals that prey on rodents. Then, as drought yielded to unusually heavy rains early in 1993, the rodents found a bounty of food, in the form of grasshoppers and nuts. The resulting population explosion enabled a virus that had been either inactive or isolated in a small group to take hold in many rodents. When drought returned in summer, the animals sought food in human dwellings and brought the disease to people. By fall 1993, rodent numbers had fallen, and the outbreak abated.

As the natural ending of the first hantavirus episode demonstrates, ecosystems can usually survive occasional extremes. But long-lasting extremes and very wide fluctuations in weather can overwhelm ecosystem resilience. And ecosystem upheaval is one of the most profound ways in which climate change can affect human health. Pest control is one of nature’s underappreciated services to people; well-functioning ecosystems that include diverse species help to keep nuisance organisms in check. If increased warming and weather extremes result in more ecosystem disturbance, that disruption may foster the growth of opportunist populations and enhance the spread of disease.

Unhealthy Water

Beyond exacerbating the vector-borne illnesses mentioned above, global warming will probably elevate the incidence of waterborne diseases, including cholera. Warming itself can contribute to the change, as can a heightened frequency and extent of droughts and floods. It may seem strange that droughts would favor waterborne disease, but they can wipe out supplies of safe drinking water and concentrate contaminants that might otherwise remain dilute. Further the lack of clean water during a drought interferes with good hygiene and safe rehydration of those who have lost large amounts of water because of diarrhea or fever.

Floods favor waterborne ills in different ways. They wash sewage and other sources of pathogens into supplies of drinking water. They also flush fertilizer into water supplies. Fertilizer and sewage can each combine with warmed water to trigger expansive blooms of harmful algae. Some of these blooms are directly toxic to humans who inhale their vapors; others contaminate fish and shellfish, which, when eaten, sicken the consumers. Recent discoveries have revealed that algal blooms can threaten human health in yet another way As they grow bigger they support the proliferation of various pathogens, among them the causative agent of cholera.

Solutions

The health toll taken by global warming will depend to a large extent on the steps taken to prepare for the dangers. The ideal defensive strategy would have multiple components.

One would include improved surveillance systems that would promptly spot the emergence or resurgence of infectious diseases or the vectors that carry them. Discovery could quickly trigger measures to control vector proliferation without harming the environment, to advise the public about self-protection, to provide vaccines for at-risk populations and to deliver prompt treatments.

Sadly, however comprehensive surveillance plans are not yet realistic in much of the world. And even when vaccines or effective treatments exist, many regions have no means of obtaining and distributing them. Providing these preventive measures and treatments should be a global priority.

A second component would focus on predicting when climatological and other environmental conditions could become conducive to disease outbreaks, so that the risks could be minimized. If climate models indicate that floods are likely in a given region, officials might stock shelters with extra supplies. Or if satellite images and sampling of coastal waters indicate that algal blooms related to cholera outbreaks are beginning, officials could warn people to filter contaminated water and could advise medical facilities to arrange for additional staff, beds and treatment supplies. Satellite images can predict outbreaks of Rift Valley fever in the Horn five months in advance. If such assessments led to vaccination campaigns in animals, they could potentially forestall epidemics in both livestock and people.

A third component of the strategy would attack global warming itself. Human activities that contribute to the heating or that exacerbate its effects must be limited. Little doubt remains that burning fossil fuels for energy is playing a significant role in global warming, by spewing carbon dioxide and other heat absorbing, or “greenhouse,” gases into the air. Cleaner energy sources must be put to use quickly and broadly, both in the energy-guzzling industrial world and in developing nations, which cannot be expected to cut back on their energy use. In parallel, forests and wetlands need to be restored, to absorb carbon dioxide and floodwaters and to filter contaminants before they reach water supplies.

The world’s leaders, if they are wise, will make it their business to find a way to pay for these solutions. Climate, ecological systems and society can all recoup after stress, but only if they are not exposed to prolonged challenge or to one disruption after another. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, established by the United Nations, calculates that halting the ongoing rise in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will require a whopping 60 to 70 percent reduction in emissions.

I worry that effective corrective measures will not be instituted soon enough. Climate does not necessarily change gradually. The multiple factors that are now destabilizing the global climate system could cause it to jump abruptly out of its current state. At any time, the world could suddenly become much hotter or even much colder. Such a sudden, catastrophic change is the ultimate health risk-one that must be avoided at all costs.

Questions on: Is Global Warming Harmful to Health?

Answer the questions according to section Introduction

1. What point is the author making by mentioning high school students?

__________________

______________________________

2a. The author suggests global warming will cause a number of threats besides those related to weather. List 2.

1. __________________________________

2.__________________________________

2b. Who will suffer the most and why?

______________________________________________________

3. Explain the meaning of the metaphor of the genie?

_____________________________________________________

4 How does global warming benefit our health?

_____________________________________

Answer the questions according to section Mosquitoes Rule in the Heat

5 a. What types of diseases is the author concerned about?

__________________

b. Why is the spread of these diseases due to global warming so problematic?

i. ______________________________________________________

ii. _____________________________________________________ (6 pts)

6a. The following sentence is correct according to the text.YES/NO (Circle one)

Global warming is the sole force behind the spread of mosquito- borne diseases.

b. Support you answer by quoting from the text.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________(6 pts)

Answer the questions according to section Opportunists Like Sequential Extremes

7. Why are malaria and dengue fever serious threats?

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

8b. Fill in the following flow chart to describe the process in which the West Nile virus

spread.

Before the Virus is acquired:

Many of the mosquitoes survive into the spring, which arrived early

Drought in spring and summer

8b. 8b.After the virus is acquired:

Heat wave
Drought

They spread this virus to birds which infect human beings.

9a. What normally limits the amount of mosquitoes?
(a) ____________________________
(b) _____________________________
b. Why didn’t they do so this time?
________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________
Answer the questions according to section Solutions
10a. The author suggests a solution for the problem discussed in the article. What are its components?
1.______________________________________________________
2.______________________________________________________
3.______________________________________________________

b. What is the writer’s opinion about the above mentioned solution?

Answer the following questions according to the entire text.

11. What recommendations would you give to help solve the problem of global warming?

12. Do you think it is possible to solve the problem or it is too late? Why/why not.

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7

Adventures in Good and Evil

What makes some of us saints and some of us sinners? The evolutionary roots of morality.

By Sharon Begley

From: The Newsweek

Introduction

It isn’t surprising that the best-known experiments in psychology (apart from Pavlov’s salivating dogs) are those Stanley Milgram ran beginning in the 1960s. Over and over, with men and women, with the old and the young, he found that when ordinary people are told to administer increasingly stronger electric shocks to an unseen person as part of a “learning experiment,” the vast majority – sometimes 93 percent – complied, even when the learner (actually one of the scientists) screamed in anguish and pleaded, “Get me out of here!” Nor is it surprising that Milgram’s results have been invoked to explain atrocities from the Holocaust to Abu Ghraib and others in which ordinary people followed orders to commit heinous acts. What is surprising is how little attention science has paid to the dissenters in Milgram’s experiments. Some participants did balk at following the command to torture their partner. As one of them, World War II veteran Joseph Dimow, recalled decades later, “I refused to go any further.”

On second thought, ignoring the few people who did not fit the pattern-in this case, of throwing morality to the wind in order to obey authority – is not that surprising: in probing the neurological basis and the evolutionary roots of good and evil, scientists have mostly focused on the majority and made sweeping generalizations. In general, most people’s moral sense capitulates in the face of authority, as Milgram showed. In general, the roots of our moral sense-of honesty, altruism, compassion, generosity and sense of justice and fairness – are sunk deep in evolutionary history, as can be seen in our primate cousins, who are capable of remarkable acts of altruism. In one classic experiment, a chain in the cage of a rhesus monkey did double duty: it brought food to the monkey who pulled it, but delivered an electric shock to a second monkey. After observing the effect of pulling the chain on their companions, one monkey stopped pulling the chain for five days and one stopped for 12 days, primatologist Frans de Waal recounts in his 2006 book, “Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved.” The monkeys “were literally starving themselves to avoid inflicting pain on another,” he writes. The closer a monkey was related to the victim, the longer it would go hungry, which supports the idea that morality evolved because it aided the survival of those with whom we share the most genes. Darwin himself viewed morality as the product of evolution. But monkeys and apes, like people, have taken a trait that evolved to help kin and extended it to completely unrelated creatures. De Waal once saw a chimpanzee pick up an injured starling, climb the highest tree in her enclosure, carefully unfold the bird’s wings and loft it toward the fence to get it airborne.

And the final “in general” is that people’s ethical decision making is strongly driven by gut emotions rather than by rational, analytic thought. If people are asked whether they would be willing to throw a switch to redirect deadly fumes from a room with five children to a room with one, most say yes, and neuroimaging shows that their brain’s rational, analytical regions had swung into action to make the requisite calculation. But few people say they would kill a healthy man in order to distribute his organs to five patients who will otherwise die, even though the logic – kill one, save five – is identical: a region in our emotional brain rebels at the act of directly and actively taking a man’s life, something that feels immeasurably worse than the impersonal act of throwing a switch in an air duct. We have gut feelings of what is right and what is wrong.

These generalizations are all well and good, but they get you only so far. They do not explain, for instance, why Joseph Dimow balked at Milgram’s experiments. They do not explain why a Tibetan monk who had been incarcerated for years by the Chinese said (in a story the Dalai Lama is fond of telling) that his greatest fear during captivity was that he would lose his compassion for the prison guards who tortured him. They do not explain why – given the human capacity for forgiveness and revenge, for compassion as well as cruelty, for both altruism and selfishness – some people fall at one end of the moral spectrum and some at the other. Nor do they explain a related mystery – namely, whether it is possible to cultivate virtue through the way we construct a society, raise children or even train our own brains.

Saying that the brain is designed for both virtues and vices “tells us nothing more than what everyone already knew,” says Alan Wallace, a Buddhist scholar and president of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies. “The important questions are what accounts for human variation in moral behavior? And are there ways to cultivate virtues?” Unfortunately, says Ernst Fehr of the University of Zurich, who has done pioneering work on the evolution of altruism and cooperation, there is precious little research on individual differences. “We know that women tend to be more altruistic than men on average, older people tend to be more altruistic than younger ones, students are less altruistic than nonstudents,” he says. “People with higher IQs tend to be more altruistic/cooperative.” However, there is little or no correlation between altruism and standard personality traits such as shyness, agreeableness and openness to new experiences.

That may be because altruism and its cousin, generosity, seem to reflect less who you are than what you see. The greatest barrier to greater generosity, at least in the wealthy West, is that “people think they’re in a world of scarcity and living on the edge,” says Christian Smith of Notre Dame University, who has studied what motivates people to give. “Consumer capitalism makes people feel they don’t have enough, so they feel they don’t have enough to give away.” But obviously some people do give very generously. That may reflect something very basic. “Being taught that it’s important to give and, even more, having that behavior modeled for you makes a big difference,” says Smith. So does empathy, which may explain why panhandlers on my subway so often seem to do better with people who are scruffily dressed and struggling than with the pearls-and-pumps set.

Compassion

Observing compassion and forgiveness can spur those virtues, too. But in these cases, whether you are likely to be forgiving or vengeful, compassionate or cold, may depend less on having a role model and more on emotion. A specific cluster of emotional traits seem to go along with compassion. People who are emotionally secure, who view life’s problems as manageable and who feel safe and protected tend to show the greatest empathy for strangers and to act altruistically and compassionately. In contrast, people who are anxious about their own worth and competence, who avoid close relationships or are clingy in those they have tend to be less altruistic and less generous, psychologists Philip Shaver of the University of California, Davis, and Mario Mikulincer of Bar-Ilan University in Israel have found in a series of experiments. Such people are less likely to care for the elderly, for instance, or to donate blood.

Intrigued by the growing evidence that the brain can be altered by experience in fundamental ways – a property called neuroplasticity – Shaver wondered if it would be possible to induce feelings of security and self-worth, thereby strengthening the neural circuitry that underlies compassion and altruism. “If only people could feel safer and less threatened, they would have more psychological resources to devote to noticing other people’s suffering and doing something to alleviate it,” says Shaver, who as a young man considered entering the priesthood.

To find out, he and Mikulincer had volunteers watch a young woman perform a series of unpleasant tasks. “Liat looked at gory photographs of people who had been severely injured. She pet a rat. She immersed a hand in ice water. And then she faced the prospect of petting a tarantula. After making a valiant attempt, she whimpered that she couldn’t, begging that “maybe the other person can do it.” Explaining that the experiment had to continue, the scientists asked a volunteer if he would trade places with Liat (who was actually part of the study). Volunteers who were trusting and secure in their own skin were four times more likely to swap places as those who were anxious and insecure. Even inducing this sense of trust and security made people more likely to help Liat. “Making a person feel more secure had this beneficial effect,” says Shaver. “It worked on everyone.” It was an intriguing hint that virtue could be boosted by altering people’s emotions.

The Tibetan monk who worried that he would grow to hate his Chinese captors has not had his brain scanned for clues to what accounted for his compassion, but others have. Encouraged by the Dalai Lama to lend their brains to science, Buddhist monks have made regular treks to the University of Wisconsin. There, psychologist Richard Davidson uses fMRI to compare activity in the brains of monks who practice Buddhist compassion meditation (a deep, sustained focus on the wish that all sentient beings be free from suffering) to that in the brains of volunteers who do not. One difference leaped out: heightened activity in regions involved in perspective-taking and empathy, not just during meditation, when you’d expect it, but when the monks viewed pictures of suffering, such as an injured child. “It seems that mental training that cultivates compassion produces lasting changes in these circuits, changes specific to the response to suffering,” says Davidson. “The message I’ve taken from this is that there are virtues that can be thought of as the product of trainable mental skills.”

Redesigning the brain to strengthen the circuits that underlie virtues obviously can’t explain all the differences between people in their levels of altruism, compassion and willingness to forgive. Meditation, after all, remains a niche activity. But ordinary, everyday experiences leave footprints on the brain no less than effortful mental training(C does. Dimow attributed his refusal to torture his unseen partner in the Milgram experiment to being brought up in a family that was “steeped in a class-struggle view of society, which taught me that authorities would often have a different view of right and wrong than mine,” and to his Army training, when “we were told that soldiers had a right to refuse illegal orders.”

Revenge

Psychologist Michael McCullough of the University of Miami calls such experiences “learning histories,” and he suspects they explain much of the difference between people in their willingness to forgive and their desire for revenge. In his 2008 book “Beyond Revenge: The Evolution of the Forgiveness Instinct,” he argues that both forgiveness and revenge “solved critical evolutionary problems for our ancestors.” Forgiveness helps to preserve valuable relationships. Exacting revenge acts as a deterrent against attacks, cheating or freeloading. It also establishes the revenge taker as someone not to be crossed, preempting future attacks. “We have blueprints in the brain for both revenge and forgiveness, and depending on our circumstances as well as our life histories, we are more likely to use one or the other,” says McCullough. “By the time I’m an adult, my history of being betrayed, violated, having my trust broken – or their opposites – pushes me toward a strategy tuned to the circumstances of my development.”

When people can count on the rule of law to punish infractions, they are less prone to seek personal revenge. Conversely, when society lacks a mechanism to defend people’s rights, “parents teach their children to cultivate a tough reputation and not let anyone get away with messing with them,” McCullough says. But there is also what he calls an “effortful path to forgiveness”. More recently evolved parts of the brain might exert top-down control over the emotional regions that otherwise compel vengeance-probably something similar to the mental training that the Buddhists undergo. After a gunman took Amish schoolchildren hostage in 2006, killing five girls, the community said they not only forgave the killer, they also donated money to his widow. “Evolution favors organisms that can be vengeful when it’s necessary, that can forgive when it’s necessary and that have the wisdom to know the difference,” says McCullough. If scientists can fathom the roots of the differences between sinner and saint, maybe more of us can move into the latter group.

Questions: Adventures in Good and Evil

Answer the following questions according to section Introduction

1. Why do people agree to commit immoral acts?

____________________________

_______

____

__________________________

2. In what way does the experiment with rhesus monkeys support the notion that altruism is part of our evolutionary history?

______________________________________________________________.

3. Complete the following flow chart.

a. _______________________

_______________________________________

b. __

_____________________________________________________________

c. People in the West are less generous

Answer the following questions according to section Compassion

4) What kinds of individuals are less likely to care for the elderly or donate blood?

_____________________________________

5. What trait of the human brain is called neuroplasticity?

_______________________________________

6a) What did Philip Shaver and Mario Mikulincer want to find out in their experiment?

_____________________________________________________________

b) Do the findings of their experiment support their premise? YES / NO

Support your answer by quoting from the text.

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

7. According to the text the following statement is TRUE / FALSE. (choose one)

Dimow refused to torture his partner because he believed in the view of authorities.

Justify your answer by quoting from the text.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Answer the following questions according to section Revenge

8. a) What are “learning histories”?

__________________________________________________________________

b) What may be their significance?

______________________________

9. COMPLETE.

According to McCullough, there are (ONE WORD) a)______________________

In the brain for revenge and forgiveness which may be activated according to people’s b)____________________ and c)___________________

10. What point does the example of the people of the community who donated money to the gunman’s widow illustrate? ANSWER IN YOUR OWN WORDS

__________________________

11. The author believes that if scientists are able to understand the reasons for differences between sinner and saint, more people may be considered as (ONE WORD) ______________________

12. Explain in YOUR OWN WORDS the quote: “ When people can count on the rule of law to punish infractions, they are less prone to seek personal revenge”

_______________________________________________________________________.

13. What is the purpose of the article?

_____________________________________________________________