July 25, 2017
Donate Donate Donate
Ok. I know we keep asking. Those of you who have donated, much appreciated. Those of you who have not, well, I know you are about to, so thank you in advance. ANHE is your nursing organization that works for you on environmental issues. Keep it going, go to Donate. And for those of you who donate you get a link to an interesting data set. See Hot below.
Toxics
Over the years I watched the usefulness of the tobacco document data base (much thanks to UCSF staff including Ruth Malone RN). Toxic warrriors at Columbia University are now putting together a data base that is beginning to contain millions of “previously secret documents” related to toxic chemicals. Go to ToxicDocs.
Suffering
There are three aspects to climate change: Mitigation, Adaptation, and Suffering. Here is a map of predicted changes in GDP at the end of the century for each county. Go to GDP.
Maps
I love maps. They are fun. Bless the internet that makes so many available, and those with all that time to create them. Aside – I frequently tell my daughter she should learn how to read maps and quit using Siri, but I got lost the other day and had to use Siri to get me home. She will never know. There are some wonderful interactive maps available at the Climate Impact Lab. You can set what map you want to see, adjusted by conditions and probability. Go to Maps.
Better
In the We Could Do Better department we don’t do such a good job with our thermostats even when they are programmable. Go to Thermostats. Our adjustments to our good behaviors sometimes are not so good. Go to Moral. Doing my meatless Monday on an airplane is probably precious at best.
Hide
And in the You Cannot Hide department see the results of in-car pollution testing. Go to Cars. A reminder that in the greater scheme it isn’t whether we have the will to have more effecients systems, rather do we have the will to leave fossil fuels in the ground.
Hot
It is hot, and I don’t mean the way they talk on the show Friends that my daughter makes me watch. We all show the maps and graphs related to climate change. Sometimes that does not feel personal enough. We have all seen the weather report in the newspaper (remember newspapers?) that noted the record high and low for that particular day. Here is how to get the data so you can speak to your local audience about the local weather using the high and low data. If things are relatively stable one would expect about the same number of record highs and record lows for any period of time. Well……
For example – here in Portland Oregon over the last 12 months there have been 10 days that recorded record highs. Over the same period the record lows, drum roll, 3 days. Since January 1, 2000 of the 366 calendar days in a year 106 have recorded record high, and over the same period the number of days that have a record low, drum roll, 34. Clearly something uneven is going on. No doubt there are other ways to look at this data and probably better ways to describe it. So, here is the way to the data. Have fun.
Go to Weather. Point over “single station products’ and click ‘calendar day summaries’. The option that should pop up is ‘max temp’ ‘maximum’, don’t touch it. Leave the ‘year range’ alone. If you click on the start box ‘por’ you will see that is the start of the record for the station you end up looking at. I have no idea what ‘por’ means. Click the box that turns on ‘include year of occurrence’. Click ‘station/area selection’ and enter info to search. I entered Portland Oregon. One station is listed, a TV station, but when I click on that box the full list is shown. (I couldn’t work the map to the right very well). I think best to choose an airport, particularly an international or big one, so I picked Portland Intl AP. Hit ‘go’.
You can click on the yellow row at the top of the spreadsheet to sort day, temperature, or year. I occassionaly would get lost trying to be techy and could never find my way back to a good place, so I would just exit and start over. You will do better.
A big thank you to the person I will never meet at NOAA who showed me how to do this and did not laugh at my hours trying and surfing through the internet to find the data on my own. I would have asked my daughter or son to find it for me but the illusion of parental competence is not to be tarnished.
Conferences
APHA annual conference – November 4-8, 2017
APHN annual conference – April 2018?
Clean Med – May 7-9, 2018
ACHNE annual conference – June 2018?
Webinars and Courses
Course – Chemicals of Concern – Six Classes
Webinar – EPA Rules and Children – Archived
Webinar – Mental Health and Climate – Archived
Other Dates
There are over 500,000 elected offices in the United States. It is not too early to mark your calendars, contact those you support, and file to run yourself.
Big dates: 11/6/2018 and 11/3/2020.
ANHE Website
The ANHE website is live. Go to ANHE. Let us know what you think. The full spectrum of positive to negative feedback is welcome.
ANHE Workgroups
ANHE has a number of workgroups. Education, Practice, Research, Policy, and Climate. If you are interested in one of them, send me a note and I will forward it to the group leader, I am at (tsengle@frontier.com). Or go to the pull down menu ‘Work Groups’ at the ANHE site.
Be Well!
Tom Engle
Newsletter Ed.
tsengle@frontier.com
