19 June 2008
Science Expert Discusses Changing Environmental, Health Patterns
Ask America webchat transcript, June 19
Leonard P. Hirsch, a U.S. senior policy adviser at the Smithsonian Institution, participated in a June 19 Ask America webchat on the global efforts to protect people in an atmosphere of changing environmental and health patterns.
Following is the transcript:
(begin transcript)
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Bureau of International Information Programs
Ask America Webchat Transcript
Predicting Changing Health and Climate Patterns
Guest: Leonard Hirsch
Date: June 19, 2008
Time: 9:00 a.m. EDT (1300 GMT)
Webchat Moderator: Welcome to our webchat! We're looking forward to your questions. The live webchat will take place on June 19 at 0900 EDT/1300 GMT.
We are taking your questions now, please ask your questions by typing into the space provided below.
We will begin our chat at the top of the hour. Thank you for your many questions.
Leonard Hirsch: The event on Changing Climate-Changing Health Patterns: What Will it Take to Predict and Protect at the US National Press Club yesterday (Wednesday 18 June 2008) brought together policy makers, researchers, and the health community in a wide ranging and path-breaking discussion. The key take home messages were that the public health community wants to use earth observations research more effectively enable to prepare for a full range of issues – responses to extreme weather events, changes in infectious and vector and water borne disease patterns, health responses to pollution, to name a few. And the earth observations community united in responding positively to work together to develop data and information tools which are timely and useful for the public health community. The Associate Press did an elegant write-up which can be found at: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/S/SCI_WEATHER_HAZARDS?SITE=CAACS&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT.
Question [Madelyn Appelbaum]: What is the Global Earth Observation System of Systems – and why are so many nations on board with it?
Answer [Leonard Hirsch]: The Global Earth Observation System of Systems [GEOSS] is a network of data providers who have agreed to come together in the Group on Earth Observations to develop standards, methodologies and tools to better use the enormous investment countries and localities have made in collecting observations about the earth – everything from satellite based images to on-the-ground measurements of water flow, biodiversity patterns, to health trends. This seemingly obvious task is actually very difficult as different data sources need to be made interoperable and the data needs to be standardized so that one is not trying to add apples to widgets. So many nations, organizations, and individuals are on board because not only is this the right thing to do to best leverage investment, but because it enables new and pathbreaking science and understanding of global and local patterns in ecology, weather, climate, and health which will drive better policy.
Q [Cheryl]: How soon will GEOSS be ready to integrate all this environment and other data?
A [Leonard Hirsch]: GEOSS is a work in progress. Some areas are already feeding data in, others are still figuring out what data to put forward and developing the tools to make them accessible and interoperable. All is based on geographic information systems (GIS) technology where place-based data can be mapped, mixed, mashed, and visualized. One of the “communities of practice” which developed key tools of interoperability prior to GEOSS, and become part of the test case, actually came from the museum community which came together to respond to requests from the UN Convention on Biological Diversity and created GBIF (the Global Biodiversity Information Facility) to share data on biodiversity from collections and observation networks around the world. More and more standards, systems and data are coming on-line monthly. Check out the GEO website for information about what is available, and what is being developed.
Webchat Moderator: We are taking your questions now. We will post selected questions followed by answers from today's guest, Dr. Leonard Hirsch.
Q [Chivas]: So, what do you foresee as a way to predict without precedence the changes?
A [Leonard Hirsch]: While climate change is about change, it is not a wholesale change. We can use the past to see patterns, and be sensitive to interannual differences to try to tease out and be ready for impacts in weather, agriculture, and public health. The physics of weather will not change – just the timing of some events. With more and more consistent data, we will be able to understand the processes and the changes to the processes to hypothesize the impacts and hopefully, mitigate against the worst of them.
Q [Chivas]: What about epidemics like bird flu? How you will know the next epidemic?
A [Leonard Hirsch]: The problem is that we will know it when it emerges. If we have good and effective surveillance systems and ways of communicating findings quickly, we should be able to move the response curve from late in an epidemic to early – potentially slowing or stopping it. It means that environmentalists and wildlife managers need to understand their role as sentinels in the public health arena, that countries need to be open about outbreaks in both human and animal disease outbreaks, and that research labs need to have capacity to find the underlying causes.
Q [Jency]: How do changes in atmosphere affect health patterns?
A [Leonard Hirsch]: This is of course, a very broad question and one could write a book on it (but I do not have the time or typing speed for that at this moment). Heat and cold impact people’s ability to survive both directly through health impacts, and through secondary impacts on agricultural and harvesting productivity. Atmospheric pollution creates respiratory problems, decreasing individual’s ability to ward off pathogens. Changing climate patterns drive the movement of vector-borne pathogens, such as the mosquitoes which carry malaria, into areas they have not been in before. Floods carry other vector-borne and water-borne pathogens into new areas. With all of these problems, however, human population continues to grow and in many parts of the world, the work of the public health community and the over-taxed health care providers, has led to increased longevity for people.
Webchat Moderator: Dr. Hirsch is reviewing and answering your questions now. We will also post selected comments during today's chat.
Comment [Jency]: Even though we seem to be prepared on so many counts, nature seems to be a step ahead of us.
Comment [Rasoariamlala Volana]: Hi, I am an English teacher at a private institute in Antananarivo Madagascar. About this topic, I think that human beings are destroying the earth we live in and our health. We are responsible for this climate change. We should respect the environment and the conditions that we should follow. If no solution is found as quickly as possible, man’s life span will shorten, and no one will be healthy anymore. Everything will absolutely change, and we won’t be able to live a normal life.
Comment [Students]: Hi, honestly we would like to take part in this issue of climate change and the protection of environment and health. We are students from ALPHA school in Antananarivo.
We think that human beings are the first responsible for larger amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere because of activities, coal and natural gas. Some typical human activities that burn fuels include driving cars and heating homes. Many firms also burn fuels to provide electricity.
The rising temperatures will affect life on earth in many ways. As the climate gets warmer, the polar ice will begin to melt. That will affect plants and animals that live in these areas. Plants use carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in order to live and grow; when trees use carbon dioxide, the carbon is stored in their trunks, branches, roots, and other tissues, when they are burned or when trees die, their stored carbon is released back into the atmosphere.
So all those things have created some diseases to men like skin cancer, breathing problem, acid rain and so on. We would much protect our environment to ensure human life and avoid global warming because we only put ourselves in a serious danger.
Comment [Sambatra]: Hi, I am a student at the University of Antananarivo. First, I just want to say that I’m so glad I was given the opportunity to give comments on the big issue our planet is facing, the climate change. As we all know, nowadays, more and more forms of diseases are emerging on the surface of the earth due to climate change. Life condition is getting worse almost in every part of the world, if we just mention: flooding, desertification… Thinking about all of these things, one question comes to my mind: “Are we going to be able to preserve the life of our future generation? Last thing, I do appreciate your initiative.
Webchat Moderator: Welcome to our webchat! We are taking your questions and comments now. Dr. Hirsch is reviewing your many questions.
Leonard Hirsch: We are certainly modifying the planet. Over human history, people have not learned as well as they need to protect and preserve the ecosystems in which they live – and many communities and societies paid dearly for this. We are now seeing such impacts on a global scale and we do as a global community needs to work together in unprecedented ways to avoid many of the problems that are predicted. That is the goal of those of us working on GEOSS and its components. It will not be easy to make the changes we need, and in the timeframe we need to do it in. However, humans have shown an incredible capacity to innovate and adapt.
The fundamental question of our time is how to create the conditions which facilitate learning, innovation, and change without creating the negative, and generally unintended consequences that comes from innovation and change. We need to develop more environmentally oriented and holistic approaches – such as realizing that we cannot create waste in our processes. Things need to be reused, recycled, and that what is considered waste needs to be rethought of as an input for another process (such as the bagasse from sugar industry which used to be burned and now is a source of energy). We have just started dipping our toes into this new green production cycle analysis and need to move more quickly into it, I believe.
Webchat Moderator: Dr. Hirsch is responding to your comments above. Thank you for joining us today! We are still taking your questions. Please be patient as Dr. Hirsch responds. However, he may not be able to respond to all of your questions in the time allotted.
Leonard Hirsch: Emerging infectious diseases are a very important issue which needs great attention, and happily many of the nations and foundations of the world (such as Google.org, the Moore Foundation, and the Gates Foundation in the United States and the Welcome Trust in the UK) are putting resources into understanding this. Many are zoonoses – diseases from animals which are jumping to humans. Sometimes this happens due to new interactions between humans and animals in areas where humans are invading and modifying habitats, others are due to crowding and close proximity between humans and lifestock (such appears to be the factors in influenza strain development in Asia). Developing good conservation policies, appropriate buffer zones, better health standards, and good surveillance should enable us to at least deal with these issues without global pandemics. But they may happen. Throughout human history, diseases have evolved to become extremely virulent, creating massive human die-offs. But some humans so far have always shown sufficient immunity to allow for survival. Not a pleasant option, but one which could happen in the densely populated and increasingly interconnected world. If diseases are too virulent, they kill all of their hosts – not a smart strategy – so evolution should also limit the worst scenarios.
Q [Monique Librarian from Diego]: Why do viral diseases so strong during cold weather? Why do we have flu, fever, diarrhea and coughing if there is climate change for instance from rainy season to cold weather?
Leonard Hirsch: Manahoana. There is some new research on the development and movement of influenza around the globe which may finally answer part of this question. It appears the many of the strains first appear in Southeast Asia and Southern China. Since people do not have immunities to the new strain, they get ill and start passing it around. It travels with commerce around, each place again finding people without immunities until it traverses the world. It may simply be that the timing of new strains, based on ecological and climatic factors in Southeast Asia starts the cycle and it happens to then hit the northern climes during the fall and winter. We are still trying to understand this. In terms of some of the gastrointestinal outbreaks, it has much to do with rain and flooding moving water-borne vectors in contact with humans. Much can be done to limit transmission by making certain that water supplies are kept as clean as possible – which means that human and animal waste needs to be kept out of the water streams as much as possible – that water is strained and boiled when possible. Dr. Rita Colwell, in her pathbreaking research on cholera demonstrated that in South Asia, using folded sari-clothes to strain water helped reduce transmission.
Comment [Doctor Diamondra]: Our climate change is also creating the ideal conditions for the spread of infectious disease like: dengue fever, encephalitis. These names are not usually heard in the U.S., but if we do not act to curb global warming they may occur again.
Q [Andrianantoaninarivo harinirina Project Manager in Wind Farm Majunga]: Could we tell the future of respiratory disease and skin diseases in 25 years from now?
A [Leonard Hirsch]: 25 years is a long time to try to predict anything, especially given the pace of innovation. We do know that respiratory diseases increase with pollution and from smoking. Reducing both will help reduce their incidence. There are many different types of skin diseases. While many which are fungal or vector borne can be controlled or managed by new medications and ointments – the pests evolve quickly and each medication, especially if not used correctly, creates evolutionary pressures which enable those pests more immune to our cures to live and propagate. Developing good habits of cleanliness and limiting exposure will go far in limiting many of those diseases.
Q [Jency]: When we try to predict using available data alone, is there a possibility of us going wrong? Decades after it was introduced, now we have found that green revolution with chemicals was a bad idea.
Webchat Moderator: Due to our time constraints, this will be our last question for today.
A [Leonard Hirsch]: I have to strongly disagree on the Green Revolution – it was a major success and reduced poverty and famine in most parts of the world which adopted it. But as with all innovations, it did have unintended consequences. Agricultural research is learning from both the successes of the Green Revolution and the problems. Such research is attempting to create new methods to feed the world. Either we find ways of intensifying production and increasing output per hectare or we have to despoil the few remaining natural landscapes at an unacceptable loss to biodiversity and the future of the planet. We need to support research and innovation, learn from nature – as is being done with integrated pest management techniques and intercropping tests – and be open to new and novel approaches. There is lots still to learn and much more to do.
Webchat Moderator: We will take one final question.
Q [Jency]: People in our villages have always used folded clothes to strain water from open tanks and reservoirs. But research seems to be confined to the labs and do not reach the common man.
A [Leonard Hirsch]: This question is at the heart of the GEO/GEOSS process. How do we create systems which enable the transmission of data, information, and ideas in both directions? Learning from the wisdom of communities around the world and using this to create new ideas for others. The two-way communication needs from science to communities and from communities to the research and policy community needs to be enhanced. To get information to communities, great programs using satellite and then radio transmission of information such as in the Ranet program is a great start. Using mobile phones to create more inclusive networks of information providers, users, and information integration will be one of the great innovations of this decade. All citizens of the world have to be part of the information and knowledge networks.
I am sorry I cannot answer more of the questions, but I look forward to continued discussion, research, and collaborations to make this world one which is cleaner, freer, and more supportive of human dignity and development with all of you.
Webchat Moderator: We wish to thank Dr. Leonard Hirsch for joining us today. The webchat is now closed. We hope you will understand that there were many questions coming in. A full transcript of today's webchat will be published (usually within one business day) to our Ask America homepage.
(Speakers are chosen for their expertise and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Department of State.)
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