Climate Change Update

Education, Environment

Climate Change Update

The threshold for dangerous global warming will likely be crossed between 2027 and 2042, research indicates.

That’s a much narrower window than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s estimate of between now and 2052.

In a study published in Climate Dynamics, researchers introduce a new and more precise way to project the Earth’s temperature. Based on historical data, it considerably reduces uncertainties compared to previous approaches.

Scientists have been making projections of future global warming using climate models for decades. These models play an important role in understanding the Earth’s climate and how it will likely change. But how accurate are they?

Climate models are mathematical simulations of different factors that interact to affect Earth’s climate, such as the atmosphere, ocean, ice, land surface, and the sun. While they are based on the best understanding of the Earth’s systems available, when it comes to forecasting the future, uncertainties remain.

Climate uncertainty

“Climate skeptics have argued that global warming projections are unreliable because they depend on faulty supercomputer models. While these criticisms are unwarranted, they underscore the need for independent and different approaches to predicting future warming,” says coauthor Bruno Tremblay, a professor in the department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at McGill University.

Until now, wide ranges in overall temperature projections have made it difficult to pinpoint outcomes in different mitigation scenarios. For instance, if atmospheric CO2 concentrations are doubled, the General Circulation Models (GCMs) used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), predict a very likely global average temperature increase between 1.9 and 4.5 degrees C—a vast range covering moderate climate changes on the lower end, and catastrophic ones on the other.

“Our new approach to projecting the Earth’s temperature is based on historical climate data, rather than the theoretical relationships that are imperfectly captured by the GCMs. Our approach allows climate sensitivity and its uncertainty to be estimated from direct observations with few assumptions,” says coauthor Raphaël Hébert of the Alfred-Wegener-Institut in Potsdam, Germany.

Global warming threshold

In the study, the researchers introduce the new Scaling Climate Response Function (SCRF) model to project the Earth’s temperature until 2100. Grounded in historical data, it reduces prediction uncertainties by about half, compared to the approach currently used by the IPCC.

In analyzing the results, the researchers found that we’ll likely cross threshold for dangerous warming (+1.5 C) between 2027 and 2042. This is a much narrower window than GCMs estimates of between now and 2052. On average, the researchers also found that expected warming was a little lower, by about 10 to 15%. They also find, however, that the “very likely warming ranges” of the SCRF were within those of the GCMs, giving the latter support.

We’ll likely cross threshold for dangerous warming (+1.5 C) between 2027 and 2042.Image: Climate Dynamics

“Now that governments have finally decided to act on climate change, we must avoid situations where leaders can claim that even the weakest policies can avert dangerous consequences,” says coauthor Shaun Lovejoy, a professor in the physics department at McGill University. “With our new climate model and its next generation improvements, there’s less wiggle room.”

Insane Drug Prices

Education, Health Care

How Prices for the First 10 Drugs Up for U.S. Medicare Price Negotiations Compare Internationally

Image, view of pharmacy with people outside

View of a Paris drugstore on June 29, 2019. Americans pay more for brand-name prescription medications than do residents of most other countries, with per capita spending on pharmaceuticals nearly three times the average of the other member nations of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Photo: Edward Berthelot/Getty ImagesToplines

  • Prices for 10 drugs commonly prescribed for millions of older Americans are, on average, three times higher than prices in other high-income countries
  • Even after price rebates and discounts, Americans pay significantly more for brand-name drugs than people in most other countries — leaving room for further reductions in upcoming Medicare drug price negotiations

Authors

Evan D. Gumas, Paige Huffman, Irene Papanicolas, Reginald D. Williams IIDownloads

  • Americans pay more for brand-name prescription medications than do residents of most other countries, with per capita spending on pharmaceuticals nearly three times the average of other member nations of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). In 2022, high costs forced one of five U.S. adults age 65 and older to skip or delay filling a prescription, miss or reduce doses, or use someone else’s medication. More than half of patients resort to cost-coping strategies like coupons or free samples so they can get the medications they need but cannot afford. Such stopgap measures can have particularly serious consequences for older people who rely on medications to control chronic health conditions.

The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has empowered the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), for the first time, to negotiate prices on behalf of Medicare for a small group of prescription drugs. Negotiations for the first 10 drugs will begin in February 2024, with price changes taking effect in 2026. This will increase to 15 additional Medicare Part D drugs in 2027, up to 15 Parts B and D drugs in 2028, and up to 20 drugs in subsequent years. These price negotiations are projected to save the government $100 billion through 2031, savings that will go in part toward funding an important but costly provision of the IRA that caps Medicare beneficiary spending for Part D drugs at $2,000 per year, starting in 2025.

The first 10 drugs to be negotiated by Medicare — used to treat conditions like blood clots, diabetes, and autoimmune disorders — were selected because they account for a significant portion of Medicare Part D spending. They meet key criteria set by the IRA for negotiable drugs: 1) no generic versions available, and 2) they are either small-molecule drugs that have been on the market for at least seven years or biologics that have been on the market for at least 11 years.

Understanding drug pricing and policy in peer countries — where drug use is similar but costs are lower — is important for benchmarking drug affordability going into the negotiation process. In the following charts, we look at list retail prices, which are prices charged by pharmacists to patients or insurers before any discounts, rebates, or other price reductions. List prices are a standard in international drug-pricing comparisons because of the lack of reliable data on net drug prices, which are prices that include rebates and discounts. Because of the exclusion of discounts or rebates, list prices likely overstate the prices paid by patients and insurers. But because list prices are set before country-specific discounts or rebates are applied, they are some of the only data points that can be systematically compared between countries. They are also the basis for discount negotiations. For drug prices in the United States, we also estimate net prices based on publicly available, therapeutic, classwide rebate estimates.

See link below for the entire article. It is long but very informative and frightening. This is another example of a “hidden tax” for Citizens of the USA.

https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/2024/jan/how-prices-first-10-drugs-medicare-negotiations-compare-internationally

Jame Webb

Education, Science

From $1 billon to $10 billion. What does not get publicized (from Wikipedia and others)

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a space telescope designed to conduct infrared astronomy. As the largest telescope in space, it is equipped with high-resolution and high-sensitivity instruments, allowing it to view objects too old, distant, or faint for the Hubble Space Telescope. This enables investigations across many fields of astronomy and cosmology, such as observation of the first stars and the formation of the first galaxies, and detailed atmospheric characterization of potentially habitable exoplanets.

Although the Webb’s mirror diameter is 2.7 times larger than that of the Hubble Space Telescope, it produces images of comparable sharpness because it observes in the longer-wavelength infrared spectrum. The longer the wavelength of the spectrum, the larger the information-gathering surface required (mirrors in the infrared spectrum or antenna area in the millimeter and radio ranges) for an image comparable in clarity to the visible spectrum of the Hubble Space Telescope.

The Webb was launched on 25 December 2021 on an Ariane 5 rocket from Kourou, French Guiana. In January 2022 it arrived at its destination, a solar orbit near the Sun–Earth L2 Lagrange point, about 1.5 million kilometers (930,000 mi) from Earth. The telescope’s first image was released to the public on 11 July 2022.

The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) led Webb’s design and development and partnered with two main agencies: the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). The NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland managed telescope development, while the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore on the Homewood Campus of Johns Hopkins University operates Webb. The primary contractor for the project was Northrop Grumman.

The telescope is named after James E. Webb, who was the administrator of NASA from 1961 to 1968 during the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs.

Webb’s primary mirror consists of 18 hexagonal mirror segments made of gold-plated beryllium, which together create a 6.5-meter-diameter (21 ft) mirror, compared with Hubble’s 2.4 m (7 ft 10 in). This gives Webb a light-collecting area of about 25 m2 (270 sq ft), about six times that of Hubble. Unlike Hubble, which observes in the near ultraviolet and visible (0.1 to 0.8 μm), and near infrared (0.8–2.5 μm) spectra, Webb observes a lower frequency range, from long-wavelength visible light (red) through mid-infrared (0.6–28.5 μm). The telescope must be kept extremely cold, below 50 K (−223 °C; −370 °F), so that the infrared light emitted by the telescope itself does not interfere with the collected light. Its five-layer sunshield protects it from warming by the Sun, Earth, and Moon.

Initial designs for the telescope, then named the Next Generation Space Telescope, began in 1996. Two concept studies were commissioned in 1999, for a potential launch in 2007 and a US$1 billion budget. The program was plagued with enormous cost overruns and delays. A major redesign was accomplished in 2005, with construction completed in 2016, followed by years of exhaustive testing, at a total cost of US$10 billion.

A Solar Orbit

The James Webb Space Telescope is not in orbit around the Earth, like the Hubble Space Telescope is – it actually orbits the Sun, 1.5 million kilometers (1 million miles) away from the Earth at what is called the second Lagrange point or L2. What is special about this orbit is that it lets the telescope stay in line with the Earth as it moves around the Sun. This allows the satellite’s large sunshield to protect the telescope from the light and heat of the Sun and Earth (and Moon).

Webb orbits the sun 1.5 million kilometers (1 million miles) away from the Earth at what is called the second Lagrange point or L2. (Note that this graphic is not to scale.)

James Webb Space Telescope orbit as seen from above the Sun’s north pole and as seen from Earth’s perspective.

Getting There

It took roughly 30 days for Webb to reach the start of its orbit at L2, but it took only 3 days to get as far away as the Moon’s orbit, which is about a quarter of the way there. Getting Webb to its orbit around L2 is like reaching the top of a hill by pedaling a bicycle vigorously only at the very beginning of the climb, generating enough energy and speed to spend most of the way coasting up the hill so as to slow to a stop and barely arrive at the top.

Webb at L2

If Webb is orbiting the Sun further out than Earth, shouldn’t it take more than a year to orbit the Sun? Normally yes, but the balance of the combined gravitational pull of the Sun and the Earth at the L2 point means that Webb keeps up with the Earth as it goes around the Sun. The gravitational forces of the Sun and the Earth can nearly hold a spacecraft at this point, so that it takes relatively little rocket thrust to keep the spacecraft in orbit around L2.

Webb orbits around L2; it does not sit stationary precisely at L2. Roughly to scale; it is actually similar in size to the Moon’s orbit around the Earth! This orbit (which takes Webb about 6 months to complete once) keeps the telescope out of the shadows of both the Earth and Moon. Unlike Hubble, which goes in and out of Earth shadow every 90 minutes, Webb has an unimpeded view that allows science operations 24/7.

What is L2?

Joseph-Louis Lagrange was an 18th century mathematician who found the solution to what is called the “three-body problem.” That is, is there any stable configuration, in which three bodies could orbit each other, yet stay in the same position relative to each other? As it turns out, there are five solutions to this problem – and they are called the five Lagrange points, after their discoverer. At Lagrange points, the gravitational pull of two large masses precisely equals the centripetal force required for a small object to move with them.