Tag: temperature
Here’s Who’s Missing As 185 Nations Bid To Cut Climate Pollution

Here’s Who’s Missing As 185 Nations Bid To Cut Climate Pollution

By Alex Morales, Bloomberg News (TNS)

PARIS — Just 10 nations are sitting on the sidelines of the United Nations effort to rein in climate change, which drew unprecedented support from world leaders last week who turned out in record numbers to get the talks going in Paris.

Of the 195 countries represented at the discussions, 185 have submitted pledges. That’s a remarkable feat on its own and stands in contrast to previous U.N. gatherings.

“You need to take a moment to realize that that is an absolutely extraordinary number,” U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern told reporters on Friday. “Virtually all the countries here have put forward their targets.”

The last time countries tried to strike a global deal was in 2009 in Copenhagen, when the discussions collapsed in a round of finger- pointing over who should move first on pollution. No official pledges were made before that conference, and just 55 countries met the deadline for submissions set for after the summit.

This time, ministers are more confident they’ll reach a deal, even though there are still holdouts. The pledges already on the table are estimated to limit the temperature increases since pre-industrial times to 2.7 degrees Celsius (4.9 degrees Fahrenheit). That’s short of the 2 degrees that envoys are targeting and the 1.5 degrees that the most vulnerable nations want — but it’s much better than doing nothing.

According to World Resources Institute data, the 10 nations not pledging account for a little over 2 percent of global emissions.

Here are the countries that haven’t yet submitted what the U.N. terms Intended Nationally Determined Contributions, starting with the biggest polluter not making a pledge:

Venezuela:

One of the blockers in Copenhagen, the South American oil exporter accounts for 0.83 percent of global greenhouse gases. Venezuelan envoy Claudia Salerno told reporters last week that the country’s pledge has been ready “for a long time,” but that Venezuela prefers to keep it up its sleeve in case the Paris deal isn’t ambitious enough. “We will keep until the end the possibility to continue to fight INDCs as not being the perfect tool to achieve the temperature goal that we set ourselves,” she said.

Uzbekistan:

The central Asian nation and former Soviet republic emits 0.5 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases.

Libya:

The divided nation with Africa’s largest oil reserves accounts for 0.27 percent of world emissions. With competing eastern and western administrations, preparing an emissions pledge won’t be at the top of Libya’s priorities.

North Korea:

The hermit nation, largely isolated from the rest of the world because of its repressive regime, emits 0.18 percent of world greenhouse gases.

Syria:

War-torn Syria divided into a patchwork of areas controlled by different factions, including Islamic State, is another country whose political situation prevents it from paying attention to its emissions. It makes 0.15 percent of the global total.

Nicaragua:

The Central American nation also stood against the deal in Copenhagen. It emits 0.09 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases. Nicaraguan envoy Paul Oquist Kelley last week compared the INDC process to a “lottery” that won’t succeed in limiting temperatures to acceptable levels. “It will take us to a 3-degree hell,” he told reporters. “Which is 4 degrees and 5 degrees in many of our countries.” He said Nicaragua won’t pledge because the whole system is distracting attention from inaction of the biggest polluters, like the U.S. and European Union.

Nepal:

One of Asia’s poorest nations, the country accounts for 0.08 percent of emissions.

Panama:

The Central American country accounts for 0.05 percent of greenhouse gases.

East Timor:

One of the world’s newest countries after gaining independence from Indonesia in 2002, East Timor accounts for around two-thousandths of 1 percent of world emissions, according to EU data.

Saint Kitt’s & Nevis

The Caribbean island country accounts for less than a thousandth of a percent of global greenhouse gases.

©2015 Bloomberg News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: French President Francois Hollande (C, 1st row), United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon (4th, 1st row) and Christiana Figueres (3rdL, 1st row), Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, pose for a family photo with head of states and government during the opening day of the World Climate Change Conference 2015 (COP21) in Le Bourget, near Paris, France, November 30, 2015.  REUTERS/Jacky Naegelen

Study Finds No Link Between Certain Weather Conditions, Lower Back Pain

Study Finds No Link Between Certain Weather Conditions, Lower Back Pain

By Deborah Netburn, Los Angeles Times

Have you ever noticed that your lower back pain flares up during a rainstorm? Or when the temperature suddenly drops? Or when there’s a change in humidity or air pressure?
Well, then you’ve been noticing wrong, according to a study published this week in the journal Arthritis Care & Research.

In a paper titled, “Weather Does Not Affect Back Pain,” researchers from the Sydney Medical School at the University of Sydney in Australia found no connection between changes in temperature, relative humidity, air pressure, wind direction or precipitation, and an increase in lower back pain episodes.

Oddly, however, the researchers found that higher wind speeds and wind gust speed were associated with a small increase in back pain. The correlation reached statistical significance, but the authors say that the magnitude of the increase was not clinically important, and they do not go on to explain what may be responsible for the finding.

Data for the study were collected in Sydney from October 2011 to November 2012. The researchers gathered information from 993 people who showed up at their primary care doctor’s office hoping to get treatment for a sudden onset of intense lower back pain.

To be included in the study, the patients had to have gone to see their doctor specifically because of pain between their 12th rib and the “buttock crease.” The pain had to have developed over a period of no more than 24 hours, and none of the patients could have known or suspected serious spinal problems. All patients in the study were 18 years or older.

Participants were asked to give specific information about where they lived and the exact time that their lower back pain started to increase. The researchers cross-referenced that information with meteorological data from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, which has five weather monitoring stations in Sydney.

The patients did not know that the study had anything to do with weather and lower back pain, nor did the interviewers. At the time they were collecting information from the participants, they were working on a different study that looked at physical and psychological triggers for lower back pain. It is only after they published that research that they decided to see whether there were any links between the back pain data they had collected and historical weather information.

Though they ultimately found no relationship between weather and lower back pain, the researchers are not ruling out that weather can affect pain at all. For example, they note that a previous study found higher temperatures and lower pressures can lead to an increase in headaches.

“Our findings refute previously-held beliefs that certain common weather conditions increase risk of lower back pain,” said Daniel Steffens of the George Institute for Global Health at the University of Sydney, who was the lead author on the study. “Further investigation of the influence of weather parameters on symptoms associated with specific diseases such as fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, and osteoarthritis are needed.”

AFP Photo/Don Emmert

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