Contemporary politics,local and international current affairs, science, music and extracts from the Queensland Newspaper "THE WORKER" documenting the proud history of the Labour Movement.
MAHATMA GANDHI ~ Truth never damages a cause that is just.
Palestinians flee the Israeli ground offensive in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip.(AP: Mohammed Dahman)
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Tens
of thousands of already displaced Palestinian families took flight
again on Thursday in a new mass exodus in central Gaza, where Israeli
forces mounting a major advance pounded areas already teeming with those
driven out of the north.
Key points:
Thousands of displaced Palestinians are again fleeing as Israeli forces advance through central Gaza
Many of those displaced have crowded into camps made up of makeshift tents
A UN organisation decried what it called "forced displacement" under Israeli evacuation orders
Further
south, Israeli forces struck the area around a hospital in the heart of
Khan Younis, the Gaza Strip's main southern city, where residents
feared a new ground push into territory crowded with families already
made homeless by 12 weeks of war.
Israel
has escalated its ground war in Gaza sharply since just before
Christmas, despite public pleas from its closest ally, the United
States, to scale the campaign down in the closing weeks of the year.
The
main focus of fighting is now in central areas south of the wetlands
that bisect the Gaza Strip, where Israeli forces have ordered civilians
out as their tanks advance.
Tens
of thousands of people fleeing the huge Nusseirat, Bureij and Maghazi
districts of central Gaza were heading south or west on Thursday into
the already overwhelmed city of Deir al-Balah along the Mediterranean
coast, crowding into hastily built camps of makeshift tents.
Tens of thousands of families fled districts of central Gaza as Israeli forces mounted a major advance.(AP: Hatem Ali)
"Over
150,000 people — young children, women carrying babies, people with
disabilities & the elderly — have nowhere to go," the main United
Nations organisation operating in Gaza, UNRWA, said in a social media
post, decrying what it called "forced displacement" under Israeli
evacuation orders.
The eastern
part of Bureij saw heavy fighting on Thursday morning, with Israeli
tanks pushing in from the north and east, residents and militants said.
"That
moment has come. I wished it would never happen, but it seems
displacement is a must," said Omar, 60, who said he had been forced to
move with at least 35 family members.
"We
are now in a tent in Deir al-Balah because of this brutal Israeli war,"
he told the Reuters news agency by phone, declining to give a second
name for fear of reprisals.
"Israel is killing doctors, social media influencers, journalists, and civilians," he said.
Israel says it is doing what it can to protect civilians and blames Hamas for operating among them, which Hamas denies.
Israel says it will not halt its ground campaign in Gaza until it annihilates the Hamas movement which controls the enclave.
The
war erupted when Hamas militants crossed the border and killed 1,200
people and captured 240 hostages on a rampage through Israeli towns on
October 7.
The Israeli assault
has laid much of Gaza to waste. According to Gaza's Hamas-run health
ministry, more than 21,100 people — nearly 1 per cent of Gaza's 2.3
million population — have been confirmed killed, with thousands more
dead feared lost in the ruins.
Virtually
all residents have been driven from their homes at least once, and many
have been forced to flee several times. Only a handful of hospitals are
still functioning.
Israel claims to have killed 8,000 Hamas fighters so far.
The United Nations Children's Fund estimates about 180 babies are being born in Gaza each day. (Reuters: Mohammed Salem)
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The sound of women and newborn babies screaming in pain is constant inside Gaza's hospitals.
WARNING: This story contains distressing content.
Amid
the raging war, women are reportedly giving birth on rubble-filled
floors, undergoing emergency caesareans with no anaesthetic or pain
relief, and even dying after childbirth due to a lack of medical
supplies.
Despite few
functioning hospitals still in operation in Gaza, it's estimated 180
babies are being born into the war zone every day.
The
United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has warned women, children and
newborns are disproportionately bearing the brunt of the war.
'Pregnant women living amid rubble'
Yafa Abu Akar says a woman she knew had to have an emergency caesarean without anaesthetic. (Supplied: Oxfam)
In
early November, the UN agency reported there were some 50,000 pregnant
women in Gaza, and 15 per cent of them were likely to experience birth-
or pregnancy-related complications.
Yafa Abu Akar lives in Khan Younis in Gaza, sheltering with thousands of others in abandoned buildings.
She
told the ABC she personally knew women who had bled to death giving
birth in Nasser hospital, the only hospital in the area, which is barely
functioning due to constant bombardment by Israeli forces.
She told the ABC doctors performed an emergency caesarean on one 25-year-old woman she knew because of complications.
Due
to heavy bleeding, the woman had to have her womb removed after birth —
a situation that could have been avoided if proper health care was
available, she said.
Yafa Abu Akar lives in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.
"She's
young, it was her first child, and she won't be able to have kids
again. Some other women didn't survive at all from bleeding out," Yafa
said.
"Pregnant women are living amid the rubble and women are facing dire circumstances in every aspect of their life here."
In
October, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned patients were being
operated on without aesthetic due to low medical supplies.
Since
then, the situation has gotten worse, with the WHO decrying the
"decimation" of Gaza's health system while commending health
professionals there for continuing to work under extreme circumstances.
Yafa said a woman she knew in Khan Younis, who was nine months pregnant, had endured a "horrible situation".
She said doctors "were forced to cut open her stomach to get the baby out" with no pain relief.
During that time the woman lost her husband, mother and father to the war.
"Her child, a girl, lived, thankfully, but after what? [The woman] lost her whole family in the war," Yafa said.
UNICEF
expressed concerns that women who were unable to make it to hospitals
in Gaza would have to give birth in unsafe conditions.
They predicted maternal deaths would increase given the lack of access to adequate care.
According to Yafa, those concerns are being been borne out.
In
other parts of Gaza, she said she had heard of pregnant women who
didn’t make it to hospitals in time being forced to give birth inside
whatever remained of their homes.
Some had died and left children behind, she said.
Giving birth in hospital safely 'impossible'
Premature babies are adding to the infant death toll in Gaza, doctors said.(Reuters: Amr Abdallah Dalsh)
Oxfam partner Juzoor is one of a handful of organisations operating in northern Gaza.
It
supports 500 pregnant women among up to 35,000 others crammed into 13
shelters that are without clean water or proper sanitation.
In some situations, up to 600 people are sharing one toilet.
Giving birth in a hospital safely had become "impossible", Juzoor's executive director Umaiyeh Khammash said.
He said in each of the 13 shelters Juzoor runs, at least one newborn had died due to preventable causes over the past month.
Mr
Khammash said this number was "very high" and was being reflected in a
significant increase to the infant mortality rate in Gaza.
People in Gaza don't have enough eat, and pregnant women are unable to receive enough nutrition. (Supplied: Oxfam)
According
to Juzoor's network of doctors, premature births have also increased by
between 25 per cent and 30 per cent, as stressed and traumatised
pregnant women faced a myriad of challenges, such as walking long
distances in search of safety, running away from bombs and being crowded
into unsafe shelters.
Meanwhile,
the entire 2.3 million population of the Gaza Strip is facing crisis
levels of hunger and the risk of famine is increasing each day,
according to the UN's Integrated Food Security Phase Classification
(IPC).
At least one in four
households — or 577,000 people — in Gaza are already facing catastrophic
hunger, suffering from an extreme lack of food, starvation and
exhaustion of coping capacities, the IPC found.
The
United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) estimated 45,000 pregnant and
68,000 breastfeeding women in Gaza did not have enough food to eat,
putting them at a higher risk of developing pre-eclampsia, haemorrhages,
or even dying.
UNFPA said malnourished women also faced the prospect of having babies with a low birth weight.
'It's extremely challenging to be pregnant in Gaza'
Everyday issues that could otherwise be managed with proper healthcare
are being missed due to the lack of continuity in care available.(Supplied: MSF)
"It's extremely challenging to be pregnant in Gaza right now," Dr Thurtle said.
She
said women were being discharged from hospitals as soon as they could
walk after birth because there was nowhere for them to receive postnatal
care.
"Those babies are being born … but are they being born safely? Almost certainly not," Dr Thurtle said.
Doctors
say everyday issues that could otherwise be managed with proper
healthcare are being missed due to the lack of continuity in care.
Dr Thurtle says managed birth isn't possible in Gaza.(Supplied: MSF)
They range from women who have gestational diabetes to newborns needing to gain more weight.
"For
people who need to have a managed birth and need to have medical help
around their birth, that's not consistently and sustainably available,"
Dr Thurtle said.
She said
"urgent care is essentially not happening" for women in labour, given
the number of people needing treatment from war injuries.
"All
of those services are falling over. Every day the space that [MSF] can
work in is getting smaller. Every day the security is getting worse," Dr
Thurtle said
MSF staff have
been working in Gaza's hospitals and clinics throughout the conflict,
but they say hospitals and ambulances are under siege.
The
organisation said patients and medical staff were being injured and
killed, and access to the wounded and sick was impeded by insecurity,
lack of fuel, and mobile phone connectivity.
MSF
said hundreds of healthcare workers have already been killed, including
three of its own staff, while nearly 60 ambulances had been hit and
damaged.
"We cannot work in
this level of conflict with not enough aid making it in, with
healthcare, and infrastructure being directly targeted," Dr Thurtle
said.
"We desperately need this to stop. Until it stops we just almost cannot work … it's almost impossible."
In particular, Dr Thurtle said the severity of children's injuries in Gaza was "extremely confronting" and still haunted her.
"Hearing
about the children who are dead on arrival, children who've got rotting
limb injuries from very delayed presentation to care, from being
bombed.
"These children without
any surviving family, which is very common now who need anaesthetic and
then when they wake up from surgery [screaming].
"Pick a story, because there's a lot of tragedy."
Women take the pill to stop menstruating
In
addition to the daily struggles of finding drinkable water, food, and
proper shelter, practising feminine hygiene, including the use and
disposal of sanitary napkins, is a daily struggle for women.
Yafa said many women were taking birth control to stop menstruating because of the lack of access to sanitary napkins.
"Most women use whatever material is available to them during their periods," she said.
"They have no other choice. Their health is weak because of the lack of food, water, and nutrition.
"The pill has affected many women's mental health, their wellbeing in general."
Dr Thurtle said it was "really quite grim for all of the females who menstruate in Gaza".
"If
you think about changing, [and] having menstruation where you have no
access to sanitary products, where you only have one toilet between 20
people, you're living in an environment where you can't keep yourself
clean, you can't shower," she said.
"That may not be the most dramatic manifestations of the war but it's still extremely dehumanising."
Doctors worry women in Gaza are at risk of many health issues.(Supplied: Oxfam)
Dr Thurtle and Yafa said women were bearing the brunt of the war.
Yafa said they were often forced to fend for their families, with men injured, sick or killed during the war.
"[Women]
have to find wood for [cooking] food, and shelter for their children,
searching in between blown-up homes, and wherever they can," Yafa said.
"They're forced to look between the rubble just for things just to survive."
Regular exercise protects against chronic illness, lowers your stress and improves your mental health.
At this time of year many of us resolve to prioritise our health. So it is no surprise there’s a roaring trade of products purporting to guarantee you live longer, be healthier and look more youthful.
An estimated 25 per cent of longevity is determined by our genes, but the rest is determined by what we do, day to day.
There are no quick fixes or short cuts to living longer and healthier lives, but the science is clear on the key principles.
Here are five things you can do to extend your lifespan and improve your health.
1. Eat a predominantly plant-based diet
What you eat has a huge impact on your health.
The evidence overwhelmingly shows eating a diet high in plant-based foods is associated with health and longevity.
If
you eat more plant-based foods and less meat, processed foods, sugar
and salt, you reduce your risk of a range of illnesses that shorten our
lives, including heart disease and cancer.
The Mediterranean diet is one of the healthiest and most studied eating patterns.
Plant-based foods are rich in nutrients, phytochemicals, antioxidants and fibre. They’re also anti-inflammatory.
All of this protects against damage to our cells as we age, which helps prevent disease.
It’s
based on the eating patterns of people who live in countries around the
Mediterranean Sea and emphasises vegetables, fruits, wholegrains,
legumes, nuts and seeds, fish and seafood, and olive oil.
2. Aim for a healthy weight
Another important way you can be healthier is to try and achieve a healthy weight, as obesity increases the risk of a number of health problems that shorten our lives.
Obesity
puts strain on all of our body systems and has myriad physiological
effects, including causing inflammation and hormonal disturbances.
These increase your chances of a number of diseases, including heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, diabetes and a number of cancers.
In addition to affecting us physically, obesity is also associated with poorer psychological health. It’s linked to depression, low self-esteem and stress.
One of the biggest challenges we face in the developed world is that we live in an environment that promotes obesity.
The
ubiquitous marketing and the easy availability of high-calorie foods
our bodies are hard-wired to crave mean it’s easy to consume too many
calories.
3. Exercise regularly
We all know that exercise is good for us – the most common resolution we make this time of year is to do more exercise and to get fitter.
Regular exercise protects against chronic illness, lowers your stress and improves your mental health.
Although
one of the ways exercising helps you is by supporting you to control
your weight and lowering your body fat levels, the effects
are broader and include improving your glucose (blood sugar) use,
lowering your blood pressure, reducing inflammation, and improving blood
flow and heart function.
Do the types of exercise you enjoy.
It’s easy to get caught up in all of the hype about different exercise strategies, but the evidence suggests that any way you can include physical activity in your day has health benefits.
You don’t have to run marathons or go to the gym for hours every day.
Build movement into your day in any way that you can and do things that you enjoy.
4. Don’t smoke
If you want to be healthier and live longer, don’t smoke or vape.
Smoking cigarettes affects almost every organ in the body and is associated with both a shorter and lower quality of life.
There is no safe level of smoking – every cigarette increases your chances of developing a range of cancers, heart disease and diabetes.
Even if you have been smoking for years, by giving up smoking at any age you can experience health benefits almost immediately, and you can reverse many of the harmful effects of smoking.
If you’re thinking of switching to vapes as a healthy long-term option, think again.
The long-term health effects of vaping are not fully understood and they come with their own health risks.
5. Prioritise social connection
Don’t forget about friendship and socialising.
When we talk about living healthier and longer, we tend to focus on what we do to our physical bodies.
But
one of the most important discoveries over the past decade has been the
recognition of the importance of spiritual and psychological health.
People who are lonely and socially isolated have a much higher risk of dying early and are more likely to suffer from heart disease, stroke, dementia as well as anxiety and depression.
Although we don’t fully understand the mechanisms, it’s likely due to both behavioural and biological factors.
People who are more socially connected are more likely to engage in healthy behaviours, and there also seems to be a more direct physiological effect of loneliness on the body.
So if you want to be healthier and live longer, build and maintain your connections to others.
Fig.
1. Fossil fuel emissions divided into portions appearing in the annual
increase of airborne CO2 and the remainder, which is taken up by the
ocean and land (1 ppm CO2 ~ 2.12 GtC).
Good News for Young People About Climate Change and a Thank You
28 December 2023
James Hansen, Makiko Sato, Pushker Kharecha
Abstract. Our
climate research and analysis places comparable emphasis on
paleoclimate information, global climate modeling, and modern
observations of ongoing global change. Despite our findings[1] that
climate sensitivity is greater than the canonical estimate of 3°C
equilibrium warming for doubled CO2 and that global warming is
accelerating, let us end the year with some real-world good news.
Betsy Taylor, President of the Board[2] of
Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions (CSAS.inc), asked if we had
any good news to counter pessimism from our findings that climate
sensitivity is 4.8°C ± 1.2°C, much higher than the 3°C best estimate of
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and that global
warming is accelerating due to reduction of human-made aerosols.[1]
We proffer new evidence of nature’s ability to help clean up human
pollution of the climate system, specifically nature’s ability to
rapidly absorb a large part of the CO2 that humanity injects
into the air by burning fossil fuels. There has long been a “carbon
cycle” mystery, a “missing carbon sink.” Fossil fuel emissions are known
quite accurately, shown by the upper curve in Fig. 1a, increasing by
about a factor of four from ~2.5 GtC (gigatons of carbon) in 1960 to ~10
GtC in the last few years. However, the amount of carbon (C) appearing
in the air is not much more than half (blue area in Fig. 1) of the
fossil fuel emissions, and that fraction has even decreased over the
past few decades.
The “problem” was that the most expert estimates for the ocean and terrestrial “sinks” for increased atmospheric CO2 did not add up to the magnitude of the disappearing CO2
(yellow area in Fig. 1), especially after estimates were included for
the additional carbon source from deforestation. Resolution of this
problem, in part, is provided by the new paper of Wang et al.
(2023).[3] They use data-driven analysis of the carbon, oxygen and
phosphorus cycles in the ocean, accounting for all known export pathways
for carbon, and obtain greater advective-diffusive downward transport
of biological carbon than that found in more conventional global climate
modeling. The upshot is that the deep ocean may provide a little more
help in taking up excessive atmospheric CO2 than most models have been indicating. This does not alter conclusions in our paper Global Warming in the Pipeline,[1] which uses empirical carbon cycle data. Fig. 1 above is Fig. 26 in Pipeline.
Fig.
2. Carbon intensity (carbon emissions per unit energy use) of several
nations and the world. Mtoe = megatons of oil equivalent. Data sources
(Hefner at al.[4] and Energy Institute[5]).
The world has made progress in reducing the
carbon intensity of its energy, i.e., carbon emissions per unit energy
use (Fig. 2). Over the past half century, the carbon intensity has
declined from a bit less than 0.8 to a bit less than 0.7. We compare the
carbon intensity of various nations (Fig. 2) as that helps reveal how
effective different energy policies are. Fig. 2 is Fig. 32 in the energy
policy section of the Pipeline paper.
The progress in reducing carbon intensity is welcome, but small compared
to the task at hand. Global carbon emissions are the product of carbon
intensity and energy use, and global energy use is still rising, as much
of the world is in the process of raising their living standards. Fig. 3
is a new figure made by Makiko Sato, which compares fossil fuel
emissions to emissions in 1997, the year of the Kyoto Protocol. Global
emissions have increased about 50 percent since 1997 and show no signs
of the very steep decrease that would be needed to keep global warming
below 2°C. Although nations with emerging economies and nations that are
just beginning to develop economically have the largest growth rates,
their contribution to climate change is smaller than that of the mature
economies, especially on a per capita basis, as shown by several graphs
in Pipeline.
Fig. 3. Global, national and regional fossil fuel CO2 emissions relative to emissions in 1997.
We are especially grateful for the unusual
level of support that we received in 2023, which made it possible for us
to finish the Pipeline paper, a 2+ year project. Specifically,
we were able to hire Isabelle Sangha, whose contributions were
essential to complete the Cenozoic section of the paper (in an upcoming
communication we will explain why the Cenozoic analysis is important for
understanding climate change and implications for policy; Isabelle is
now in a Ph.D. program at Cambridge University) and Joe Kelly, who is
helping us investigate cloud feedbacks in climate models and in the real
world.
Clouds are a great challenge, because of their role as both a climate
feedback and a climate forcing. Our inference of high climate
sensitivity implies that clouds provide a large, amplifying, climate
feedback. However, cloud changes also provide the mechanism by which
aerosol changes cause a large climate forcing. This complicates the task
of quantifying both the cloud feedback and the aerosol climate forcing.
Our expectation for 2024 is that continued unusual global warming will
provide empirical evidence of the strong acceleration of global warming.
Our goal is to complete work that helps provide understanding of
ongoing climate change and actions that are needed to avoid unacceptable
consequences for young people and future generations.
We are grateful for the wonderful support that we received in 2023 as
delineated in section 2.6 of our recent communication (“A Miracle Will
Occur” Is Not Sensible Climate Policy).[6] We hope for continued support
in 2024, which will be a challenging year because Makiko Sato will be
retiring in late 2024 and we need to continue her remarkable work in
obtaining, updating, and helping us understand the huge number of data
sets that are needed to analyze climate change. We apologize for failure
to send out thank you letters to supporters as we have been without a
local program coordinator for some time. Eunbi Jeong continues to work
with us part-time from Korea, via CSAS.inc, but work at a distance
places limitations on some activities.
Contributions to our work are equally useful to CSAS at Columbia
University or CSAS.inc; both are 501(C3) non-profits. CSAS at Columbia
supports people with University appointments while CSAS.inc supports all
other costs without overhead. Instructions for donations are at: CSAS-Columbia University:https://csas.earth.columbia.edu/giving CSAS.inc:https://www.climatescienceawarenesssolutions.org/donate
