Day: June 7, 2017

India is likely to experience deadly heat waves more frequently in the years ahead, even though there only has been a slight increase in human-driven warming over the past few decades, according to a study released Wednesday.

“It’s getting hotter, and of course more heat waves are going to kill more people,” said climatologist Omid Mazdiyasni of the University of California, Irvine, who led an international team of scientists analyzing a half-century of data collected by the Indian Meteorological Department.

After tracking temperature, heat waves and heat-related mortality, Mazdiyasni said, “We knew there was going to be an impact, but we didn’t expect it to be this big.” The findings are especially sobering considering the average temperature in India rose about one-half of one degree Celsius over 49 years.

The unveiling of the study, published in the journal Science Advances, follows President Donald Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the Paris climate agreement, which aims to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels during this century.

The scientists said that, even despite the relatively slight rise in mean temperatures in India between 1960 and 2009, the probability of India experiencing a massive heat-related mortality event – defined by more than 100 deaths – has shot up by 146 percent. Roughly speaking, that means dying in a heat wave in India is now about two and one-half times as likely as it was in the mid-20th century.

Country mostly unprepared

Most of India has experienced a 25 percent rise in the number of heat-wave days during that period. The study’s authors said the vast majority of the country’s cities and states are not prepared to handle such heat crises, even if they understand the devastation they can wreak.

In 2010, 1,200 people died from heat-related causes in the western city of Ahmedabad, prompting city officials to introduce seven-day weather forecasts and warnings, extra water supplies and cool-air shelters in the summer.

After more than 2,500 people were killed by heat in ravaged areas of India in 2015, nine other cities rolled out a plan to educate children about heat risk, stock hospitals with ice packs and extra water, and train medical workers to identify heat stress, dehydration and heat stroke.

But those nine cities have only about 11 million people, not even 1 percent of the country’s population.

The same methodology can be applied in any region to get a sense of how vulnerable a country or population might be, the authors said. Recent events underscore years of warnings by scientists that climate change will make future heat waves more intense, more frequent and longer lasting.
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NASA chose 12 new astronauts Wednesday from its biggest pool of applicants ever, selecting seven men and five women who could one day fly aboard the nation’s next generation of spacecraft.

The astronaut class of 2017 includes doctors, scientists, engineers, pilots and military officers from Anchorage to Miami and points in between. They’ve worked in submarines, emergency rooms, university lecture halls, jet cockpits and battleships. They range in age from 29 to 42, and they typically led the pack.

“It makes me personally feel very inadequate when you read what these folks have done,” said NASA’s acting administrator, Robert Lightfoot.

Vice President Mike Pence welcomed the group during a televised ceremony at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. He offered President Donald Trump’s congratulations and noted that the president was “firmly committed to NASA’s noble mission, leading America in space.”

Pence assured the crowd that NASA would have the resources and support necessary to continue to make history.

“Under President Donald Trump, America will lead in space once again, and the world will marvel,” he said.

More than 18,300 people threw their hats into the space ring during a brief application period 1½ years ago. That’s more than double the previous record of 8,000, set in 1978 when the space shuttles were close to launching.

The 12 selected Wednesday will join 44 astronauts already in the NASA corps. U.S. astronauts have not launched from home soil since 2011, thus the low head count. But that could change next year.

After two years of training, the newbies may end up riding commercial rockets to the International Space Station or flying beyond the moon in NASA’s Orion spacecraft. Their ultimate destination could be Mars.

SpaceX and Boeing are building capsules capable of carrying astronauts to the space station and back, as soon as next year. A launch engineer and senior manager for SpaceX, Robb Kulin, is among the new astronauts. He’s also worked as an ice driller in Antarctica and a commercial fisherman in Alaska.

“Hopefully, one day, I actually fly on a vehicle that … I got to design,” Kulin said.

Kulin and his classmates may be in for a long wait for space.

Some members of the class of 2009 have yet to launch. Jack Fischer, who was in that group, just got to the space station in April, but he said he couldn’t be happier as he showed the latest hires their “new office” in a video.

“It’s a little bit cramped,” he said. “The desk is kind of small. But the view. Oh, the view.”

This is NASA’s 22nd group of astronauts. The first group, the original Mercury 7 astronauts, was chosen in 1959.

Altogether, 350 Americans have now been selected to become astronauts. Requirements include U.S. citizenship; degrees in science, technology, engineering or math; and at least three years of experience or 1,000 hours of piloting jets.
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The momentum of climate change efforts and the affordability of cleaner fuels will keep the United States moving toward its goals of cutting emissions despite the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Paris global accord, business and government leaders in a growing alliance said.

New York, California and 11 other states representing nearly 40 percent of the U.S. economy, mayors of about 200 cities, and leaders of business giants including Amazon, Apple and Target have signed pledges to keep reducing their fossil-fuel emissions after President Donald Trump announced he would withdraw the U.S. from the 2015 Paris climate accord.

“Our coalition wants to let the world know that absent leadership from our federal government,” the country will keep cutting its emissions from fossil fuels, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown told reporters Tuesday.

California, New York, Virginia, Connecticut, North Carolina, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Washington state, Vermont, Massachusetts, Delaware, Oregon and Washington, D.C., have signed pledges. The states, most led by Democrats, represent $7 trillion of the U.S. gross domestic product, or 38 percent.

Texas absent from alliance

Texas, the largest producer of climate-changing carbon dioxide in the U.S. and the biggest state economy after California, is a key figure absent from the list. More than two dozen other states, mostly in the country’s middle, already had been fighting stepped-up federal emissions-cutting programs before Trump’s announcement.

Top Texas leaders have had little public comment on the withdrawal from the global accord, although the state’s attorney general praised the move.

New York and California are the only states in the country’s top 10 list of carbon emitters to sign pledges.

Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupsi, who joined former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s “We Are Still In” campaign, along with mayors of Houston, Atlanta and hundreds of other local leaders, cited the economics for her state: Utah has a $1 billion skiing industry threatened by climate change and marked 65 percent growth last year alone in solar power, as one of the country’s sunniest states.

“Utah is warming at twice the global average, and our drinking water is at risk,” said Biskupsi, saying she was acting “for the well-being of the planet I’m leaving to my sons and your children.”

Court battles ahead

Undoing most existing U.S. programs that curb car pollution and other climate-changing emissions would probably take years and court battles if Trump tries, climate experts say. A few efforts, such as a reduction on methane emissions introduced by the Obama administration, could be overturned more easily.

The momentum of existing climate-change efforts and the availability natural gas, wind and solar power mean those loyal to the Paris accord in the U.S. will have an easier time, with emissions expected to fall overall for years, said Robert Perciasepe with the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, who worked with Bloomberg’s group on the climate pledge.

Some studies suggest the United States will cut emissions as much as 19 percent by 2025 if it simply moves forward as is, he said. That’s not far from former President Barack Obama’s goals for a reduction of 25 to 28 percent as part of the Paris accord, Perciasepe said.

Interest leads to website

Since Thursday, commitments from cities, universities and businesses were happening so fast that organizers had to set up a website where they could sign up automatically, Perciasepe said.

The support from local governments, public institutions and businesses show that climate change efforts are getting something they have long lacked in the U.S. — vocal and enthusiastic support, said William K. Reilly, a former chief of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, who is not involved in the alliances.

“It does perhaps reflect an increasing activism on the part of the public at large” on climate change, Reilly said. “Trump can take some perverse credit for that.”

 
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A strong network of friends and family has long been seen as a key component of happiness, but a new study suggests friends may be more important than family.

Researchers at Michigan State University also found the importance of friendship on health and happiness grows as people get older.

“Friendships become even more important as we age,” said William Chopik, assistant professor of psychology at MSU. “Keeping a few really good friends around can make a world of difference for our health and well-being. So it’s smart to invest in the friendships that make you happiest.”

To reach their conclusions, the researchers looked at just over 271,000 participants in a health and happiness survey as well as nearly 7,500 participants in a survey about “relationship support” in older adults suffering chronic illness.

In the first group, both family and friendships were influential in overall health and happiness, but in the second group, friendships “became a stronger predictor of health and happiness at advanced ages.”

Furthermore, in the second group, researchers said strained friendships led to increased chronic illness, but with supportive friends, respondents reported being happier.

One reason, according to Chopik, is that relationships are optional in that we can maintain them with people who make us feel good and discard those who don’t. Family, on the other hand, are not normally optional and while often enjoyable, can also involve negative feelings.

“There are now a few studies starting to show just how important friendships can be for older adults. Summaries of these studies show that friendships predict day-to-day happiness more and ultimately how long we’ll live, more so than spousal and family relationships,” he said.

“Friendships help us stave off loneliness, but are often harder to maintain across the life span,” he added. “If a friendship has survived the test of time, you know it must be a good one, a person you turn to for help and advice often and a person you wanted in your life.”
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Cancer patients are being urged to speak up about their experiences with side-effects from chemotherapy. This, following a new study that shows reporting symptoms can improve their chances of survival. Faith Lapidus reports.
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The United Nations Ocean Conference opens next week in New York and is to call for action to help protect marine life from the threats of global warming, over-fishing and pollution. But in some cases, climate change is already affecting some of the ocean’s iconic species. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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