The buildup of greenhouse gases will take hundreds (link) to possibly hundreds of thousands of years (link) to breakdown and return the atmosphere to levels that we have been used to during our years on earth as human civilizations. The climate changes are also likely to affect the oceans for hundreds of thousands of years. (link) The graph of the increase in the main greenhouse gases is fairly level and then exponentially increases in the recent past: The Big Picture Breakdown of Greenhouse Gases.
Passive Energy Building, links for more information
Climate change is not just about increased temperatures on a global average it is about increased extremes in temperature and increased risk of severe weather conditions. Architecture in many areas is not suited to extreme changes in outdoor temperatures and often glass is a major building material for aesthetic reasons. Glass walls and large windows can make buildings overly cold during cold weather and overly warm during hot sunny conditions. Passive energy architecture tends to use smaller windows that can be shaded during warm conditions and walls may be made of wider materials that provide better insulation during hot or cold weather.
There is no question of the reality – human use of fossil fuels has been warming the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution started over one hundred years ago. The ozone layer depletion was addressed successfully with more study and political bipartisan work in the 1970’s and 80’s. Increased use of solar power was also begun at that time but who to blame and loss of fossil fuel profits became more of a concern and disinformation and denial took place after the initial progress with reducing ozone depletion. The history in a long read is available, the introduction and epilogue discuss the current situation and possible directions we are headed as a species and planet inhabitants. “Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change,” by Nathaniel Rich, The New York Times Magazine, August 2, 2018, (Losing Earth/NYTMagazine).
Summary points from the introduction:
Limiting warming to two degrees: tropical reefs will become extinct, sea levels will rise several meters and we will lose the Persian Gulf. This “long term disaster” has become the best case scenario we can hope for if we manage to stop producing greenhouse gases.
Three degree warming, possibly the realistic minimum we can expect: “short-term disaster” – loss of forests in the Arctic and loss of most coast cities.
Four degree warming: permanent drought in Europe; desertification of large areas of China, India and Bangladesh; Polynesia covered by sea waters; Colorado River reduced to a tiny creek; American Southwest largely uninhabitable.
Five degree warming: some leading climate scientist’s consider this level to place human civilization at risk of survival.
Summary take home point – we need to change our civilization in revolutionary ways now – and invent ways to remove greenhouse gases from the air in addition to decreasing adding more to the atmosphere. We need to stop using modern agricultural methods that don’t recycle phosphorus and allow it and other chemicals to run-off into groundwater and coastal waters. (Losing Earth/NYTMagazine).
A free course was available that provides more information about climate change effects that are already occurring and strategies that have been found helpful around the globe: From Climate Science to Action, by The World Bank Group, Coursera.org, resources provided for additional reading are included at the end of this post. A course being offered on the site by the University of Michigan can be enrolled in now which begins August 20th: Act on Climate: Steps to Individual, Community, and Political Action, coursera.org.
This is an area of interest for me but not my area of expertise. Preventative health education is my area of expertise and treating a growing population of humans with more effective methods would also be good for planetary health. Toxic medications eventually add to groundwater pollution and medical equipment and supplies is also adding to pollution.
See these resources for more information about Passive Energy Building and how modifying architecture methods now can help us in the future (I am not affiliated with any of the resources, this information is being provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of Fair Use; it is not an inclusive list, just a few resources from a brief search or ones of which I was aware from other reading.):
The problem of architecture and changing climate described:
Architecture Matters: Excerpt from Architecture Canada Past President’s Message, by Paule Boutin, PP/FIRAC, Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, https://www.raic.org/raic/architecture-matters
A few photos of a passive energy rest area can be viewed in this collection of images of rest areas and travel photography: Where’s that rest stop?
Providing energy in sustainable ways at the community level is a strategy being used in one area of the U.K.:
Chelwood Comm Energy – Community energy group, developing and operating solar power for the local community – chelwood.org
/Disclosure: This information is provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of fair use. While I am a Registered Dietitian this information is not intended to provide individual health guidance. Please see a health professional for individual health care purposes. — *Passive Energy Building is a health issue because the very young, the elderly, and the chronically ill are more at risk from excessive heat exposure or extremes in temperature and climate change is making extremes in temperature more common in many locations globally. Reducing use of fossil fuels for air conditioning or heating will ultimately help protect against the long term risks of increasing levels of Carbon Dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Resources on climate change from: From Climate Science to Action, by The World Bank Group, Coursera.org.
I call the search engine Fact Checker because it is generally reliable and quick at producing answers to questions. The information needs to be screened for how credible the sources of the information and how prevalent – the weight of evidence – in support of the answer. Odd phrases or terms can be easier to find then words that have a variety of meanings or are also used for businesses. Search results can become to numerous to sort through occasionally.
Research into how having instant answers available to us may affect us suggests that it may leave the user with a better impression of their own intelligence even though it was the quick access to what is essentially an encyclopedia or a dictionary with a search feature. See this article and podcast interview for more information: How Search Engines Make Us Feel Smarter than We Really Are. (2015).
Fact Checker – the search engine provides answers but it is up to the reader to evaluate the sources for accuracy/reliability and it is up to the reader to remember the information for future use or bookmark the source/file the information in a way that can be accessed again if long term learning or ability to use the information in the long term is to occur.
My blog is my personal notebook with a built in search feature. I can store notes with a variety of tags to help me find information that I read years previously. In general it is wonderful compared to older styles of handwritten notes but recording information in some logical way is part of learning – filing the information in the brain in a way that can be accessed again. I have to remember that I read something about such-and-such years ago and that I took notes and filed them under such-and-such a title or with some specific tag.
The search engine is only as useful as the questions you ask it. You have to collate the information for yourself and store it in a way that you will be able to find it again within your own internal memory or in your external memory devices whether handwritten, digitally written, or audio recorded. We all vary somewhat in how well we remember things. I do better with written or visual information then with remembering things I hear while other people may be very good at remembering lectures or lyrics that they hear.
The podcast interview included a brief description of the research study format – participants were told that a more active brain is more intelligent – however that is not what actual brain scans suggest. The person with a more intelligent brain seems to have learned how to conserve energy possibly by having more organized pathways to quickly find information and there is less electrical activity. (The Neuroscience of Intelligence, Richard J. Haier, a book mentioned in a previous post Intelligence and the Weight of Evidence)
The participants (How Search Engines make Us Feel Smarter) took part in several variations of the research design. The experimental group were asked to look up answers to somewhat obscure questions using the internet and the control group were given the answers. In some variations of the basic experimental design the experimental group obtained search results that included accurate answers to the questions, in other sessions they obtained not very helpful results for the questions, and in other sessions they obtained results that provided inaccurate answers to the questions. In all variations the experimental group afterwards rated their intelligence/ability to answer other questions more positively than the control group who had been given answers. The research author made clear that this doesn’t mean the internet is making us stupider, just that it may give us a false impression of our intelligence.
To me the results suggest that we feel more intelligent when we try to solve problems for ourselves rather than when we are provided answers, and having asked questions and read answers, we may have learned something if we remember the answer and have improved our ability to evaluate information for accuracy.
My blog is my notebook, I share a few pages publicly in case the information or ideas or experiences might help someone with their own health or with their research or business. (currently: 197 public/1374 total posts – I love my blog.) Sharing helpful resources and saving the links an ideas for my own use in the future are goals. Putting together information that I learn today with information that I learned years ago often requires finding the link from years ago to review for more detail.
Evaluating project goals and improving how we learn as individuals or as teams includes reviewing how we do things – or learning and trying methods used by others.
A software design consultant has shared a series of posts on strategies to help small groups evaluate project goals and team communication issues. The series might be helpful for individuals and teams in other industries in addition to software development: Design Thinking Toolkit, Introduction What is Design Thinking?; Activity 13 – Hopes & Fears, by Kimberly Wolting, spin.atomicobject.com.
This book, mentioned in a previous post, is also helpful for improving decision making strategies:
For more information on thinking creatively and effectively working towards a better solution to difficult decisions rather than feeling forced to choose one of two less preferred choices I recommend the book Creating Great Choices: A Leader’s Guide to Integrative Thinking, by Jennifer Riel and Roger L. Martin (2017, HBR) (hbr.org/Creating Great Choices)
Digital toolkits can contain a variety of software apps and services to help make organizing and sharing information easier, a variety are shared in this helpful list: Resources – Digital Discovery.
Remembering where you filed something in your memory or in a digital or physical filing system can require labeling the items with a tag or variety of tags that you are likely to remember. This post about my nickname for search engines – Fact Checker – was based on a conversation I had online about a trivia fact shared by a space oriented social media comment. The trivia fact – It would take us only an hour to reach space if we were able to drive a car straight up. There were a few questions in response along the lines of “How fast would you have to drive?” or “Really?“
The account hadn’t provided more information and a simple check of the search engine confirmed the factoid – the atmosphere is considered to be about 62 miles/100 kilometers thick, (space.com/Karmin Line), so a car driving 62 miles per hour could reach the edge of outer space – if that was possible, which it isn’t, however as a visual image it does make it easy for me to remember the trivia fact. Our atmosphere is like the thin peel of an orange or apple around the more solid earth. Am I stupid for not having known a basic fact about our planet’s atmosphere? Or am I smart for having access to a search engine in order to look up the fact? Or am I smarter now because I was curious and took the time to find more details about the topic and the visual image (driving a car straight up) linked with the more detailed information (62 miles per hour) turned the fact into something that I am now likely to remember even if I don’t need to know it?
The search engine doesn’t make us smarter or more stupid but using it and storing the information in some sort of memorable way can make us more knowledgeable. Putting information together in useful ways is applying knowledge. Air pollution and weather is part of our atmosphere – our thin peel of life-giving oxygen and blanket of radiation-protecting ozone – and we need our atmosphere for our survival so we should protect it.
These are facts that I am trusting the source to provide accurately. It is not information that I obtained through direct measurements of my own – that would be a type of direct research that is independent, and which might provide results that agree or disagree with the information other researchers found by their methods of measurement or mathematical analysis. Fact Checker found a fact for me and I evaluated the source as being fairly trustworthy but I didn’t do any independent research to confirm the reliability of the fact. The Internet can be a very fast encyclopedia and dictionary but the results may vary in reliability. Science also varies somewhat though as our methods of measurement and mathematical analysis improve we may get slightly or very different results from past answers, aka “facts.”
The concept of “weight of evidence” brought up by Haier in his book The Neuroscience of Intelligence is the important point to remember when looking up information online. I tend to skim through all of the results on the first page, and occasionally the first few pages, of search results in order to get a rough overview – what does the consensus of results suggest?
(More trivia about our planet – the planet is about 8000 miles wide (12,800 kilometers) if we could dig a hole from one side straight through to the other side. The crust, the solid part made of rock and soil, is about 1802 miles/2900 kilometers wide, and the interior molten core is 4349 miles/7000 kilometers wide – visual, picture a Tootsie Pop type lollipop with a crunchy exterior around a soft caramel interior. (livescience.com) (1 mile = 1.60934 kilometers, 1 kilometer = .62 miles))
Learning is fun – in my opinion.
Disclaimer: Opinions are my own and the information is provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of fair use. While I am a Registered Dietitian this information is not intended to provide individual health guidance. Please see a health professional for individual health carepurposes.
“The answer is 17 years, what is the question: understanding time lags in translational research” – Morris, et al, 2011 (1)
It takes far too long for research findings to be ‘translated’ into health messages or techniques that reach the patient in need of health care guidance – 17 years on average according to the review of research study by Morris et al (2011). The team’s conclusion is that translational research is in need of further study but with more well defined terms and types of measurements so research by different teams can be compared. Twenty three studies were reviewed but the research parameters were diverse and not readily comparable. (1)
As a person with training and experience as a health care professional I followed general recommendations for general health and weight loss for many years but they didn’t help and I kept getting more sick with problems that didn’t show up on lab tests. Being told regularly that my symptoms must therefore be psychosomatic (mentally based) and that I should see a talk therapist did lead me to spending time with talk therapists and it helped somewhat but I kept getting more sick.
I knew I was physically sick, not just mentally making myself sick from stress or anxiety because I wasn’t always stressed or anxious and had always had some minor but chronic health problems as a child. So I eventually gave up on the standard not-helping-much answers and instead paid closer attention to my daily routine and dietary choices and slowly stopped doing any of the things that seemed to make me feel worse the next day. With the pay attention method I got somewhat better. Fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue symptoms were improved. Iodine supplements helped me with weight loss and a low dose antibiotic protocol developed for an autoimmune type of condition helped relieve my severe migraine problem.
Prescriptions can be quick and easy answers but they don’t always work, sometimes makes things worse, can delay trying other strategies that might work better – and can be expensive in insurance co-pays or be an out of pocket self pay expense. Health needs adequate sleep, with black out curtains and no lights, not even a digital alarm clock – keep it in a bedside table drawer or cover it with a towel. Even a little light at night can interfere with our production of melatonin and it helps with a variety of health needs throughout the body.
Health requires regular stretching and exercise that works out the heart and lungs and builds the other muscles somewhat. To maintain bone density requires weight bearing exercise – lifting weights in a warehouse or digging in a garden or in a gymnasium. Having the freedom to read text documents on your laptop while standing and using hand weights can multitask physical fitness needs with work or school needs. Varying positions and going for short walks occasionally is healthier than any type of job that requires too much of the same motions or having to stay in the same position for long periods of time.
Standing desks that can easily transition to a sitting desk can be as simple as a couple boxes under your laptop. Standing can allow some leg and arm stretches and then the boxes can be removed for some time spent sitting to type more intensively. Eight full hours in either position might be more of a health risk than being able to switch between the two options. (2)
Health requires all of the nutrients and additional fiber and antioxidants and other phytonutrients that aren’t considered essential in the same way vitamins are but may be necessary for more optimal health.
If it is reasonable to want to prevent measles or chickenpox, or other infectious diseases, then it seems reasonable to want to prevent age related degenerative disease by providing the body more of what it needs to remove toxins and rebuild tissue as it wears out. Even brain cells are replaced with new ones – our entire body is not the same body that we had as a newborn. We are regularly removing old cells and growing new ones.
All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered. The point is to discover them. ~ Galileo
And the point of translational research is to improve the process of translating research findings into effective strategies for patient care. If research is still in early stages it may not be safe for all patients, finding out how to identify which patients it might help would then be a necessary step before translating the findings into patient education messages or health care protocols. How to guides ideally will always include safety warnings about which patients the health messages might harm if they were to use or be ineffective for their use.
As an individual it is good to know your rights as a patient and to seek health care professionals that take the time to listen. As a patient seeking a second opinion may be helpful and it can be helpful to write down your symptoms and mood changes, your daily diet or sleep habits, and any other routine habits in order to look back occasionally to see if any patterns show up in what is helping or not helping you feel better. We all need to remember that we are the ones living our lives and that makes us the ones in charge of taking care of our own health as best as we can.
It can take three weeks or more to build a habit and that suggests the reverse is likely true – and keeping a written tally sheet about the habit you want to change can help stay on track and help show where you may be veering off track. For more guidance, see Changing Habits, The Learning Center, University of North Carolina. (3)
Your Health Insurance agent is not your mother (probably), and in the current system large bills can lead to more profit for health insurance companies – so watch out for your own budget by taking care of exercise, diet, and sleep habits and send your Health Insurance agent a nice card at the holidays instead of having them on speed dial for questions about your enormous co-pays. Insurance is nice but 10 or 20% of an enormous bill is still more than most of us have in the bank or can easily borrow. (4)
Bankruptcy due to health care costs has become too common – stay out of bankruptcy court by spending more time on daily health care habits – the research is fairly conclusive regarding the basics –
ideally at least 30-60 minutes of exercise 3-5 times per week,
drink plenty of water for thirst
and eat 5-9 servings of vegetables/whole fruit per day, get adequate protein, whole grains and essential omega 3 fatty acids without too much saturated and trans fats each day. Trying to include a serving of fatty fish three times per week can be a source of omega 3 fatty acids or vegetarian sources include walnuts, hemp seed kernels or ground flax seeds. Including a serving of beans, nuts and seeds on most days may increase the amount of magnesium and other important trace nutrients in the daily/weekly diet.
Six hours of sleep seems to be a minimum need for most people and more than eight hours on a regular basis may be too much or a sign of health or depression problems in adults once they are out of the teen years, (teens may benefit from ten hours of sleep per day, (6)). Short naps during the day can be a healthful activity and may increase work productivity, 20-30 minutes may be ideal. Longer naps may lead to waking up groggy instead of refreshed. (5)
Social activity and other relaxing hobbies also seem to be helpful for health.
/Disclaimer: This information is provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of fair use. While I am a Registered Dietitian this information is not intended to provide individual health guidance. Please see a health professional for individual health care purposes. Thanks./
Zoë Slote Morris, Steven Wooding, and Jonathan Grant,
See Chapter Two: The Lost Hour, Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children, Twelve, Hatchette Book Group, New York, 2009 http://www.nurtureshock.com/
Additional references for more information on translational medicine:
Excerpt from a post about my own genetic screening (Genetic Screening can give guidance about potential medication adverse reactions, 2018):
Additional reference for further discussion of the advances in the use of genetic screenings for medication risk is available in a book that is already slightly dated with the rapid advances in technology but as a starting point it is helpful for an overview on the history of technological advances in the area of medical care: The Creative Destruction of Medicine: How the Digital Revolution will Create Better Health Care, by Eric Topol, M.D., 2013. Basic Books. ISBN: 978-0465061839. (1) (“Book Review…,” and summary, by Jung A Kim, RN, PhD, PubMed_2)
One of the pioneers in personal genetic screening was Esther Dyson, a venture capitalist. She quoted a colleague regarding why she agreed to be one of the first ten participants in the Personal Genome Project:
“You would no more take a drug without knowing the relevant data from your genome than you would get a blood transfusion without knowing your blood type.” [128] (1)
The future of individualized health care will include genetic screening for everyone and what isn’t addressed in the book by cardiologist and translational research specialist Eric Topol, M.D. is the use of genetic screening for individualized nutrition guidance. In addition to discovering what medications may work better or be more dangerous for an individual genetic screening can target which types of exercise or diet plans may be more or less beneficial and which nutrients may need to be restricted or supplemented more than the average guidance.
My previous genetic screening was for fewer genes but which were chosen as most commonly a problem for children on the autism spectrum – I had 11 of the 30 and the guidance led to supplements and diet changes that have helped me feel better and have better mood stability – Methylation Cycle Defects – in me, Genetic Screening “For Research Purposes Only” – at this stage “For Research Purposes Only” is a legal phrase as genetic screening is not considered consistent enough for use as a diagnostic tool, but my personal health is of significant interest to me.
Eric Topol, M.D,, The Creative Destruction of Medicine: How the Digital Revolution will Create Better Health Care, 2013. Basic Books. ISBN: 978-0465061839. (1) Chapter 5, Biology: Sequencing the Genome, page 117: [128]
