Blood drawn from this woman in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2016 is now being studied for monkeypox antibodies to better understand the virus’ prevalence.NICOLE HOFF
A version of this story appeared in Science, Vol 376, Issue 6597.Download PDF
As monkeypox stokes here-we-go-again fears in a pandemic-weary world, some researchers in Africa are having their own sense of déjà vu. Another neglected tropical disease of the poor gets attention only after it starts to infect people in wealthy countries. “It’s as if your neighbor’s house is burning and you just close your window and say it’s fine,” says Yap Boum, an epidemiologist in Cameroon who works with both the health ministry and Doctors Without…
Ilove trees. I also love dendrochronology—literally, “the study of tree time.” This science, which uses data derived from tree growth rings, provides scientists with a wealth of information relating to the conditions under which trees grow.
As a graduate student, I was interested in the now-famous method ofdating archaeological sitesthrough tree-ring analysis. Later I became interested in the application of tree-ring interpretation to thedating of musical instruments.
Recently, with the increasing intensity ofanthropogenic climate change, the topic garnering more of my attention is dendroclimatology. This fascinating science uses tree rings to reconstruct ancient precipitation, temperature, and other climatic variables. Unlike various instruments for tracking weather, tree rings provide researchers with a…
An M270 multiple launch rocket system fires during a live fire training exercise at Rocket Valley, South Korea, Sep. 25, 2017. 2nd Battalion, 4th Field Artillery Regiment , 210th Field Artillery Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division ROK-US Combined Division, certified 16 crews in five hours as they completed their Table VI certification. | U.S. Army Photo/Sgt. Michelle Blesam/210th Field Artillery Brigade
The United Kingdom is asking the U.S. to sign off on a plan to send advanced, medium-range rocket systems to Ukraine within a few weeks, according to a person familiar with the matter and a document outlining the proposal, a move that follows President Joe Biden’s announcement that he’s sending similar weapons.
Some parts of the planet expected to become too hot for humans to live in
Laura McQuillan · CBC News · Posted: May 28, 2022 4:00 AM ET | Last Updated: May 28
A construction worker uses a misting fan to cool down at a work site in Vancouver in June 2021. (Ben Nelms/CBC)
Unbearably hot temperatures are already testing the limits of human survival, and will continue to rise, challenging our bodies’ ability to cope and making parts of the world increasingly uninhabitable.
Scientists say urgent steps are needed for humans to adapt to extreme heat, including rethinking the way we live, work and blast the AC.
“Extreme heat is going to get more problematic going forward, period,” said Professor Blair Feltmate, head of the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation at the University of Waterloo in Ontario.
India and Pakistan recently saw temperatures soar to 50 C, killing at least 90 people and devastating agricultural harvests. South Asia, along with Africa, Australia and U.S. Gulf States, now face potentially fatal combinations of heat and humidity — conditions that scientists hadn’t anticipated until later this century.
Boys cool off under a pipe of flowing water on a hot summer day in New Delhi, India, on May 17. India and Pakistan recently experienced a heat wave with temperatures topping 50 C. (Anushree Fadnavis/Reuters)
Canada is also feeling the effects of extreme heat: in British Columbia last summer, 595 people died from the heat. The village of Lytton, B.C., set a new Canadian heat record (49.6 C) on June 29, before it was razed by a wildfire the next day. The same “heat dome” left the ground parched, contributing to catastrophic flooding in B.C. months later.
Feltmate is one of the authors of a recent report warning of a “potentially lethal future” for Canadians in terms of heat, especially those living in B.C.’s southern interior, along the U.S. border in the Prairies and in southern Ontario and Quebec.
“We’re going to see extreme heat events that will make what we saw in British Columbia last year during the heat dome look relatively mild,” Feltmate said.
When you’re exposed to prolonged heat, you may feel sluggish because your organs are working harder to keep you cool — and alive.
Your heart beats harder to push blood to your skin, where it can cool down. Sweating is also essential for cooling your body, but it gets harder as humidity increases.
In extreme cases of heat stroke, your body essentially begins to cook, breaking down cells and causing organ damage.
A man rollerblades in Toronto amid a heat warning for the Greater Toronto Area and much of southern Ontario on August 22, 2021. People are generally advised to avoid strenuous activities outdoors during extreme heat. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
“It is very much like cooking an egg,” said Professor Stephen Cheung, an expert in environmental stress on human physiology at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ont.
“The reason it goes from a liquid to solid white mass is because the proteins have changed … If your body just continues heating up and isn’t able to control its temperature, eventually your proteins are going to be doing the same thing in your cells.”
Sitting in the shade and drinking water isn’t enough when you’re already suffering heat stroke. “It is critical to cool [an overheating person] down as rapidly as possible, ideally by immersing them in as cold water as possible,” Cheung said.
Being too hot at bedtime also makes it hard for us to sleep, which can lead to poor decision-making and injuries, and have a detrimental impact on people’s mental health, says Michael Brauer, a professor at the University of British Columbia’s school of population and public health.
A woman carries a pedestal fan during hot and humid weather in Karachi, Pakistan, on May 11. (Akhtar Soomro/Reuters)
“Nighttime temperatures matter a lot. It’s really trying to get your bedroom cool enough, get your body cool enough that you can sleep.”
Beating the heat
For anyone assuming they can train their body to handle rising heat, Cheung — who helped Canadian athletes prepare for the heat and humidity at last year’s Tokyo Olympics — says it is possible to a degree. Our bodies’ core temperatures can adjust to higher heat over a period of about two weeks of gradual, continued exposure.
But “in terms of global warming, it is a Band-Aid solution.”
“The biggest advantage, in a sense, that humans have over other animals is our behaviour — that we can develop things like housing, air conditioning, better clothing, et cetera,” said Cheung. “But that comes at a cost, whether it’s keeping us indoors, whether it’s increasing power use from air conditioning.”
Many people are unable to stay inside and keep cool, including those whose jobs involve physical exertion outdoors, such as farmers and people in manual labour.
There are concerns for outdoor workers, including farm workers, as temperatures continue to rise. In this photo, workers from Mexico and Guatemala pick strawberries at a farm in Pont Rouge, Que., on Aug. 24, 2021. (Jacques Boissinot/The Canadian Press)
In future, Feltmate says, the workday will have to shift so those workers can avoid the hottest part of the day — for instance, by starting work at 5.30 a.m. and finishing by 1 p.m.
Cities themselves need to be cooled, and that involves designing and retrofitting buildings with heat in mind, planting more trees and painting rooftops white to reflect light instead of absorbing it, says Feltmate.
He also says it’s critical that residential buildings have a backup power supply to ensure air conditioning and fans keep working if there’s a heat-induced blackout.
A lack of urgency
As straightforward as those measures may sound, Feltmate says Canadian cities and governments aren’t moving nearly fast enough, despite warnings of the potential for devastating loss of life from extreme heat.
“What’s missing in the equation, more than anything, is a lack of a sense of appreciation for the need to act with urgency to put adaptation measures in place.”
A man jogs with his dog during dense early morning fog in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, on Feb. 13, 2021. Scientists warn that the UAE and other Persian Gulf states will eventually become too hot for humans to be outdoors. (Kamran Jebreili/The Associated Press)
Adapting also means coming up with a plan for when places actually become too hot for human liveability, as is expected to be the case in parts of the Persian Gulf, South Asia, Central America and West Africa before the end of the century.
“There are true thresholds our bodies can take even when you’re acclimated, and the Gulf region is starting to exceed those thresholds more regularly,” said Cascade Tuholske, a researcher at Columbia University’s Center for International Earth Science Information Network, whose research focuses on exposure to deadly urban heat.
Poorer countries where people rely on subsistence farming could see mass migration to cities, which themselves are ill-equipped to cope with increasing heat.
This is why global solutions to climate change are so important, Tuholske said.
“I do really question the liveability of many of the most populated places on the planet due to extreme heat without adaptation. The future really depends on the present and how much we mitigate heat now.”
Katharine Hayhoe warns that if we continue emitting greenhouse gases no adaptation will be possible.Photograph: Courtesy of Dr Katharine Hayhoe
Fiona HarveyEnvironment correspondentWed 1 Jun 2022 03.00 EDT
The world cannot adapt its way out of the climate crisis, and counting on adaptation to limit damage is no substitute for urgently cutting greenhouse gases, a leading climate scientist has warned.
Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist for the Nature Conservancy in the US and professor at Texas Tech University, said the world was heading for dangers unseen in the 10,000 years of human civilisation, andefforts to make the world more resilientwere needed but by themselves could not soften the impact enough.
“People do not understand the magnitude of what is going on,” she said. “This will be greater than anything…
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KEY POINTS
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the sudden appearance of monkeypox in multiple countries across the world indicates the virus has been spreading undetected for some time.
It’s unclear how long the virus has been spreading undetected outside Africa, according to Dr. Rosamund Lewis, the WHO’s monkeypox technical lead.
“We don’t really know whether it’s too late to contain. What the WHO and all member states are trying to do is prevent onward spread,” Lewis said.
In this photo illustration, a photo of a hand infected with the Monkeypox virus is seen through a magnifying glass. Monkeypox is a viral disease that occurs mainly in central and western Africa.
Russia’s Defense Ministry announced Wednesday that around 1,000 members of its nuclear forces staged drills outside of Moscow following an announcement by President Biden that the U.S. is sending “more advancedrocket systems and munitions” to Ukraine.
“In the Ivanovo region, autonomous launchers of the Yars mobile ground-based missile system of the Teikovsky formation of the Strategic Missile Forces perform intensive maneuvering actions on combat patrol routes as part of the exercises,” the Interfax news agency quoted the Ministry as saying.
President Biden’s announcement that the U.S. is sending “more advancedrocket systems and munitions” to Ukraineis a move that is “adding fuel to the fire,” Russia warned Wednesday.
Biden said the weaponry is part of the latestmilitary aid package for Ukraine, but stressed that his administration is not enabling the Ukrainians to strike outside their own border.
It’s the 11th package approved so far and will include helicopters, tactical vehicles, Javelin anti-tank missiles, Stinger antiaircraft missiles, and other advanced weapons.
The San Francisco district attorney’s office filed a lawsuit last week against a man accused of trapping nearly 300 Dungeness crabs in protected waters.
Tam Van Tran, a licensed commercial fisherman, allegedly set more than 90 traps in protected waters near the Farallon Islands off the coast of San Francisco, officials said. The D.A.’s office seeks nearly $1 million in fines against Tran.
Prosecutors called the illegal fishing “the most egregious case of unlawful crabbing activity in San Francisco’s history, as well as the largest incident of documented unlawful commercial crabbing in any Marine Protected Area in California.”
The Farallon Islands are part of a state marine reserve, the most protected category of waters under the state’s Marine Life Protection Act, through which “the taking of any marine resource is prohibited by law,” prosecutors wrote in the complaint filed…
Britain’s international environment minister, Zac Goldsmith, and celebrity anti-trophy campaigners likeRicky Gervaishave been accused of neocolonialism by African community leaders, who warn they are ignoring the voices of people who live alongside elephants, lions and other wildlife.
The UK government is expected to bring forwarda ban on the import of hunting trophiesduring this parliament, arguing that the new law will strengthen the conservation of endangered species.
With widespread support from the British public, and an anti-trophy hunting campaign backed bycelebrities includingGervais, Brian May, Ed Sheeran and Joanna Lumley, a ban would be…
Exposing the Big Game 
