Pandemic ponderings: Protect nature to avoid future pandemics

IPBES Pandemics report identified the risk and solutions

New research from the University of Queensland highlights Biodiversity loss and ecosystem health are strongly linked to human health. Scientists have investigated the links between the COVID-19 pandemic and the deterioration of the world’s ecosystems and their biodiversity, discovering feedback loops that suggest a potential increase in future pandemics.

“We’ve long known that issues like land-use change, intensive livestock production, wildlife trade, and climate change drive the emergence of zoonotic diseases, as they increase human-wildlife interactions." said Master of Conservation Biology graduate Odette Lawler, a contributor of the study  in Professor Salit Kark’s Biodiversity Research Group at University of Queensland. 

The study was published in Lancet Planetary Health as  The COVID-19 pandemic is intricately linked to biodiversity loss and ecosystem health.

Pandemic Ponderings: Cooking with gas: fugitive emissions, indoor pollution and Covid19

This article was originally published at my Linked In Blog on June 10, 2020.

Why I transitioned from cooking with gas to an electric magnetic resonance induction cooktop, a story about gas, fugitive emissions, indoor pollution and now the Covid19 virus.

One of the incidents in 2017 that started me on this whole journey was smelling a gas leak in my front yard. I called the gas company and when they attended, sure enough a leak was detected on the network side of my connection. They fixed the leak. This is fugitive emissions adding methane to the atmosphere, a greenhouse gas 86 times more powerful than carbon dioxide over a 20 year timeframe. These leaks are ocurring throughout the distribution network.

Aviation growth disrupted, time for a moratorium on airport expansion, reassesment of aviation climate impact

IATA forward projections for aviation due to the pandemic

There should be an immediate moratorium on the Melbourne Airport 3rd runway design and construction due to aviation forward growth projections being now out of date due to the impact of the Covid19 pandemic.

Melbourne Airport today (14 May) put out a notice they are still committed to building the 3rd runway.

"However, our public exhibition period and community engagement activities for the Draft Major Development Plan will be postponed as we adhere to current strict social distancing measures."

Melbourne airport failed to include any business risk management plan in their latest Airport Masterplan on high impact low occurrence situations such as black swan events (such as the pandemic) or forseeable but unlikely impacts such as increased climate regulatory action by government, or building a high speed east coast rail network for competition. This was poor risk management. (see Climate Action Moreland 2018 submission to the Melbourne Airport Draft Masterplan)

The International Airline Industry in a press release on 13 May forecasts that due to the pandemic domestic travel may not recover till 2023 and international long haul aviation 2025.

The pandemic is already changing recreational travel behaviours in the short and medium term, and business travel will also be less in future as video-conferencing reduces need to travel while also reducing travel expense to business.

Add to this growing concern and action over climate impact of aviation when we need to be reducing emissions. The need for the 3rd runway based on prepandemic travel projections should be reassessed.

The airline industry also want to remove international quarantine measures as rapidly as possible, replacing with temperature and other health checks in a layered approach.

As up to 50 percent of Covid19 infection transmission is asymptomatic or pre symptomatic, these checks will almost certainly fail to be enough in preventing continued spread of the Corona Virus.

Mass Aviation enabled the rapid global spread of this virus in the first place. Opening up international aviation without quarantine or a vaccine is highly problematic.

Brian Pearce Chief Economist for IATA in his 5 year projections provided this chart. I suspect even this projection by IATA is very rosy forecasting showing a V rebound when consumer confidence will likely take much longer and with airlines subject to much more regulatory action over emissions as the climate emergency comes to the fore again as we learn to live in post pandemic times.


Sources:
IATA press release, 13 May 2020, Don’t Make A Slow Recovery More Difficult with Quarantine Measures
https://www.iata.org/en/pressroom/pr/2020-05-13-03/

Guest Post: The smoke from autumn burn-offs could make coronavirus symptoms worse.

I felt somewhat vindicated when this post appeared at The Conversation warning of hazard reduction burns smoke during the early pandemic. Correlation links had already been found between covid19 severity, increased mortality and higher levels of pollution.

See: Pandemic ponderings: Indications that High levels of Air Pollution exacerbate Covid19 spread (virus may be airborne) (March 26, 2020) and Pandemic Ponderings: US study finds Air pollution link to Covid19 deaths (April 8, 2020)

The smoke from autumn burn-offs could make coronavirus symptoms worse. It’s not worth the risk

MomentsForZen/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

Don Driscoll, Deakin University; Brian Oliver, University of Technology Sydney; Courtney Alice Waugh, Nord University; Marcel Klaassen, Deakin University, and Veerle L. B. Jaspers, Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Pandemic Ponderings: US study finds Air pollution link to Covid19 deaths

New research from the Harvard School of Public Health highlights a possible causal link between PM2.5 particulate pollution and Covid19 deaths.

That is, areas in the US with higher levels of PM2.5 particulate pollution have statistically significant higher rate of Covid19 deaths.

The aggregated data strongly suggests a link, while the researchers suggest more research is needed down to the individual patient medical data level to positively confirm the link.

The New York Times Lisa Friedman has reported on the study in an article titled New Research Links Air Pollution to Higher Coronavirus Death Rates.

Pandemic ponderings: Indications that High levels of Air Pollution exacerbate Covid19 spread (virus may be airborne)

First published as a Linked-in Blog post on March 26,2020.

While we all hunker down in physical distancing with Covid19. I have been chasing up reports on preliminary research by Italian scientists between high levels of Pm10 and Pm2.5 air pollution particulates increasing intensity and spread of Covid19 based on their research in northern Italy. 

I intially followed a link from a CMCC climate observatory (strong science reputation) post What Science Has to Say About the Coronavirus – Climate Crisis Connection. A Press Review (An excellent article by the way)

I came across a linked Italian news report dated 18 March reporting on a preliminary study by several Italian scientists regarding Pm10 and Pm2.5 particulates exacerbating Covid19 intensity and spread in northern regions of Italy. I documented this in my facebook timeline post with an english translation.