Earth & Space : Beautiful Relaxing Music & Views

Space Videos

Beautiful music stream featuring 4K Video of earth and space. Very relaxing music. Great for study music, sleep music, meditation music , relaxation music and background music. Relax as we watch incredible video of our earth and the universe around us.

Real video of Earth as seen from the International Space Station. Images of space taken by telescopes such as the Hubble Space Telescope.

4K Beautiful Relaxing Piano Music 24/7, Earth & Space : Study Music, Sleep Music, Meditation Music

Thanks for viewing – Please check out my otherPlease check out my other Youtube videos : https://www.youtube.com/user/ouramazi…

Thanks to Kevin McLeod for the music http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-…
Peace of Mind Almost in F Music for Manatees

Disease and climate change: What could the future look like? OCS Blog – OXFORD CLIMATE SOCIETY

Disease and climate change: What could the future look like?

5/4/2020  By Laura Watson
Coronavirus is on all our minds right now – but what does our changing climate mean for the future of outbreaks?

Disease incidence and climate change
We have known that climatic conditions affect disease spread throughout human history. Civilisations as early as the Romans knew to retreat to hillsides during the warmer summer months, as malaria was endemic to the lowland areas during the warmer season. Climate change is likely to change the pattern of transmission for all kinds of diseases. For example, some pathogens may no longer be able to survive in certain locations, while they may become more prevalent in others. The Wildlife Conservation Society has identified 12 diseases which are likely to spread and get worse with climate change, including cholera, Ebola, plague and tuberculosis.
Disease spreading vectors like mosquitoes have optimal climatic conditions at which they survive and reproduce. This means that climate change might expand their range to include a much larger geographic area. Amplified seasonal patterns could also put areas at risk for longer portions of the year.

Human exposure to waterborne diseases could also rise as climate change amplifies the contamination of water supplies, as extreme weather events such as hurricanes increase, and sea levels rise. There are also links between increasing prevalence of diseases and ocean warming (such as red tide disease, caused by toxic algal blooms) and increased precipitation in certain regions (such as rift valley fever, and Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome).
People could also become more vulnerable to disease as the climate changes, as the health impacts of increased temperatures (such as increased stress) take hold.

The following two case studies illustrate the effects of already occurring climatic changes.

The West Nile Virus
West Nile Virus is a vector-borne disease originating in the West Nile region, transmitted by mosquitoes. It was first reported in around 1937, with human outbreaks reported intermittently since then. Transmission of the disease is impacted by weather conditions, and climatic conditions (temperature, precipitation, humidity and wind) are driving the expansion of the range of the disease’s mosquito vector, and therefore the geographic area affected by the disease.
Recent trends in increased rainfall and ambient temperature, as well as changing migration patterns of bird species have meant that the disease has migrated further north to the USA, Southern Europe and further south to Australia. The first case in the USA occurred in 1999, in New York City. Since then, it has spread across the country, with a reported 39,557 cases of the disease in the USA as of 2013, and only 4 states not reporting a case in 2018.
Climate change has been a key factor here for two reasons. First, increased temperatures correlate with increased viral replication rates, population growth, and transmission. Secondly, increased precipitation and flooding correlates with increased mosquito abundance, due to the use by the insect of stagnant water as a breeding ground. These trends are likely to continue, and the range of the vector and disease will continue to increase, meaning that monitoring of this (and other vector borne diseases like malaria and Zika) is crucial.

Cholera
Cholera is a waterborne bacterial disease which is likely to worsen with climate change. Its spread will be greatly affected by climate change as temperatures warm and precipitation levels rise, because cholera outbreaks, while sporadic, tend to occur in regions associated with higher temperatures and rainfall. In these conditions, water borne diseases can spread inland and thus into more densely populated areas. While there is as yet no clear understanding of the nature of the link between cholera and climate change, it is clear that with more weather extremes, cholera spread and incidence will be affected.
As well as the contamination of water supplies, the abundance and distribution of cholera is affected by sea surface temperatures, ocean currents and weather changes. It has recently been demonstrated that warming seas, a key impact of climate change, are linked to an increase in the presence of cholera bacteria in Europe and the USA. Overall it is clear there is a link between cholera and climate change – and like West Nile Virus, this could affect all of us.

What does this mean for the future?
While some diseases show clear links to climate change, the recent Covid-19 pandemic so far has not. This shows that not all diseases will necessarily become more prevalent as the climate changes. However, it is clear that monitoring, especially of vector borne diseases, remains crucial to understanding what the future will look like. Covid-19 has shown us that there are many diseases in the natural world which are currently unknown to humans. We must act urgently on climate change to lower the pressure on natural systems and to prevent dangerous future outbreaks.

Sources:

• https://www.who.int/globalchange/summary/en/index5.html
• https://www.who.int/globalchange/environment/en/chapter6.pdf
• https://www.ipcc.ch/2018/10/08/summary-for-policymakers-of-ipcc-special-report-on-global-warming-of-1-5c-approved-by-governments/
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4342965/
• https://health2016.globalchange.gov/vectorborne-diseases/content/west-nile-virus
• https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2018/09/16/west-nile-virus-how-climate-change-may-be-contributing-to-its-spread/
• https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/may/05/uk-tropical-disease-malaria-threat
• https://eos.org/articles/climate-change-predicted-worsen-spread-cholera
• https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/twelve-diseases-climate-change-may-make-worse/
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2744514/
• https://e360.yale.edu/features/climates_strong_fingerprint__in_global_cholera_outbreaks
• https://www.newscientist.com/article/2100371-warming-seas-linked-to-rise-in-cholera-bacteria-in-europe-and-us/
• https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/25/coronavirus-nature-is-sending-us-a-message-says-un-environment-chief

Noam Chomsky: ‘Coronavirus pandemic could have been prevented’ | News | Al Jazeera

Chomsky slams US’s handling of virus as he warns nuclear war, global warming threats will remain after pandemic is over.

3 Apr 2020

The coronavirus crisis could have been prevented because there was enough information available to the world, according to Noam Chomsky, who has warned that once the pandemic is over, two critical challenges will remain – the threats of nuclear war and global warming.

Speaking from his office in self-isolation to Croatian philosopher and author Srecko Horvat, the celebrated 91-year-old US linguist offered a stark perspective on how the pandemic has been managed by different countries.

More:

• As Iran struggles to fund virus fight, US keeps squeezing economy

• Noam Chomsky: The mass media machine

• Will coronavirus signal the end of capitalism?

“This coronavirus pandemic could have been prevented, the information was there to prevent it. In fact, it was well-known. In October 2019, just before the outbreak, there was a large-scale simulation in the United States – possible pandemic of this kind,” he said, referring to an exercise – titled Event 201 – hosted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in partnership with the World Economic Forum and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

“Nothing was done. The crisis was then made worse by the treachery of the political systems that didn’t pay attention to the information that they were aware of.

“On December 31, China informed the World Health Organization (WHO) of pneumonia-like symptoms with unknown origins. A week later, some Chinese scientists identified a coronavirus. Furthermore, they sequenced it and provided information to the world. By then, virologists and others who were bothering to read WHO reports knew that there was a coronavirus and knew that had to deal with it. Did they do anything? Well yes, some did.

“China, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore began to do something, and they have sort of pretty much seemed to have contained at least the first surge of the crisis.”

….(read more).

Climate Crisis Weekly: How climate change, COVID-19 intersect – Electrek

Michelle Lewis

– Apr. 4th 2020 9:00 am ET
Arthur Wyns, a climate change adviser to the World Health Organization (WHO), wrote an op-ed for the World Economic Forum about how climate change and the coronavirus are linked. You can read the full article here, but below is an excerpt. Wyns makes four crucial points that humanity needs to note and act upon.

A first lesson we are drawing from the COVID-19 pandemic and how it relates to climate change is that well-resourced, equitable health systems with a strong and supported health workforce are essential to protect us from health security threats, including climate change. The austerity measures that have strained many national health systems over the past decade will have to be reversed if economies and societies are to be resilient and prosperous in an age of change.

Secondly, the ongoing pandemic illustrates how inequality is a major barrier in ensuring the health and wellbeing of people, and how social and economic inequality materializes in unequal access to healthcare systems. For example, the health threat of the novel coronavirus is, on average, greater for cities and people exposed to higher levels of pollution, which are most often people living in poorer areas. The same is true for the health impacts of climate change, with one of its major causes, the burning of fossil fuels, also adding pollution to the air and disproportionately impacting the health of those in poverty.

Third, the global health crisis we find ourselves in has forced us to dramatically change our behavior in order to protect ourselves and those around us, to a degree most of us have never experienced before. This temporary shift of gears could lead to a long-term shift in old behaviors and assumptions, which could lead to a public drive for collective action and effective risk management. Even though climate change presents a slower, more long-term health threat, an equally dramatic and sustained shift in behavior will be needed to prevent irreversible damage.

Lastly, crises like these offer an opportunity for a regained sense of shared humanity, in which people realize what matters most: the health and safety of their loved ones, and by extension the health and safety of their community, country, and fellow global citizens. Both the climate crisis and unfolding pandemic threaten this one thing we all care about.

A final thought from all of us at Electrek: For those of you who are frustrated with people ignoring stay-at-home orders and making the pandemic problem worse for all of us, this is how environmentalists have felt for decades about polluters and the climate crisis.

…(read more).