{"id":569252,"date":"2026-02-13T02:09:50","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T02:09:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/569252\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T02:09:50","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T02:09:50","slug":"royals-acquire-rhp-mitch-spence-from-the-athletics-for-rhp-a-j-causey-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/569252\/","title":{"rendered":"Royals acquire RHP Mitch Spence from the Athletics for RHP A.J. Causey"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Trump administration on Thursday revoked a scientific finding that climate change is a danger to public health, an idea that President Donald Trump called \u201ca scam.\u201d But repeated scientific studies say it\u2019s a documented and quantifiable harm.<\/p>\n

Again and again, research has found increasing disease and deaths \u2014 thousands every year \u2014 in a warming world.<\/p>\n

The Environmental Protection Agency finding in 2009, under the Obama administration, has been the legal underpinning of nearly all regulations fighting global warming. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt boggles the mind that the administration is rescinding the endangerment finding; it\u2019s akin to insisting that the world is flat or denying that gravity is a thing,\u201d said Dr. Howard Frumkin, a physician and professor emeritus of public health at the University of Washington. <\/p>\n

Thousands of scientific studies have looked at climate change and its effects on human health in the past five years and they predominantly show climate change is increasingly dangerous to people.<\/p>\n

Many conclude that in the United States, thousands of people have died and even more were sickened because of climate change in the past few decades. <\/p>\n

For example, a study on \u201cTrends in heat-related deaths in the U.S., 1999-2023 \u201d in the prestigious JAMA journal shows the yearly heat-related death count and rate have more than doubled in the past quarter century from 1,069 in 1999 to a record high 2,325 in 2023. <\/p>\n

A 2021 study in Nature Climate Change looked at 732 locations in 43 countries \u2014 including 210 in the United States \u2014 and determined that more than a third of heat deaths are due to human-caused climate change. That means more than 9,700 global deaths a year attributed to warming from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas.<\/p>\n

A new study published this week found that 2.2% of summer deaths in Texas from 2010 to 2023 were heat related \u201cas climate change brings more frequent and intense heat to Texas.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the more than 15 years, since the government first determined climate change to be a public health danger, there have been more than 29,000 peer-reviewed studies that looked at the intersection of climate and health, with more than 5,000 looking specifically at the United States, according to the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed research database. <\/p>\n

More than 60% of those studies have been published in the past five years.<\/p>\n

\u201cStudy after study documents that climate change endangers health, for one simple reason: It\u2019s true,\u201d said Frumkin, a former director of the National Center for Environmental Health appointed by President George W. Bush. <\/p>\n

In a Thursday event at the White House, Trump disagreed, saying: \u201cIt has nothing to do with public health. This is all a scam, a giant scam.\u201d<\/p>\n

Experts strongly disagree.<\/p>\n

\u201cHealth risks are increasing because human-cause climate change is already upon us. Take the 2021 heat dome for example, that killed (more than) 600 people in the Northwest,” said Dr. Jonathan Patz, a physician who directs the Center for Health, Energy and Environmental Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The new climate attribution studies show that event was made 150-fold more likely due to climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n

Patz and Frumkin both said the \u201cvast majority\u201d of peer-reviewed studies show health harms from climate change. Peer-reviewed studies are considered the gold standard of science because other experts pore over the data, evidence and methods, requiring changes, questioning techniques and conclusions. <\/p>\n

The various studies look at different parts of health. Some looked at deaths that wouldn’t have happened without climate change. Others looked at illnesses and injuries that didn’t kill people. Because researchers used different time periods, calculation methods and specific aspects of health, the final numbers of their conclusions don’t completely match.<\/p>\n

Studies also examined disparities among different peoples and locations. A growing field in the research are attribution studies that calculate what proportion of deaths or illness can be blamed on human-caused climate change by comparing real-world mortality and illness to what computer simulations show would happen in a world without a spike in greenhouse gases.<\/p>\n

Last year an international team of researchers looked at past studies to try to come up with a yearly health cost of climate change. <\/p>\n

While many studies just look at heat deaths, this team tried to bring in a variety of types of climate change deaths \u2014 heat waves, extreme weather disasters such as 2017’s Hurricane Harvey, wildfires, air pollution, diseases spread by mosquitos such as malaria \u2014 and found hundreds of thousands of climate change deaths globally. <\/p>\n

They then used the EPA’s own statistic that puts a dollar value on human life \u2014 $11.5 million in 2014 dollars \u2014 and calculated a global annual cost \u201con the order of at least $10 billion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Studies also connect climate change to waterborne infections that cause diarrhea, mental health issues and even nutrition problems, Frumkin said. <\/p>\n

\u201cPublic health is not only about prevention of diseases, death and disability but also well-being. We are increasingly seeing people displaced by rising seas, intensifying storms and fires,\u201d said Dr. Lynn Goldman, a physician and dean emeritus at the George Washington University School of Public Health. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe have only begun to understand the full consequences of a changing climate in terms of health.\u201d<\/p>\n

The issue gets complicated when cold-related deaths are factored in. Those deaths are decreasing, yet in the United States there are still 13 times more deaths from cold exposure than heat exposure, studies show.<\/p>\n

Another study concludes that until the world warms another 2.7 degrees (1.5 degrees Celsius) from now, the number of temperature-related deaths won’t change much \u201cdue to offsetting decreases in cold-related mortality and increases in heat-related deaths.\u201d <\/p>\n

But that study said that after temperatures rise beyond that threshold, and if society doesn’t adapt to the increased heat, \u201ctotal mortality rises rapidly.”<\/p>\n

The Associated Press\u2019 climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP\u2019s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.<\/p>\n


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FILE – Traffic moves along Interstate 76 ahead of the Memorial Day holiday weekend, in Philadelphia, May 22, 2025. (AP Photo\/Matt Rourke, File)<\/p>\n

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FILE – The Shell Norco oil refinery operates in Norco, La., April 7, 2025. (AP Photo\/Gerald Herbert, File)<\/p>\n

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FILE Joe Chyuwei, right, Addison Black, front center, James Black, front left, and back row from left, Helen Chyuwei, Jameson Black, Grace Chyuwei and Grayson Black watch the sunset in the heat at Zabriskie Point, Aug. 3, 2025, in Death Valley National Park, Calif. (AP Photo\/John Locher, File)<\/p>\n

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FILE – A pumpjack is visible before sunrise Feb. 26, 2025, in Kermit, Texas. (AP Photo\/Julio Cortez, File)<\/p>\n

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President Donald Trump speaks during an event with Environmental Protection Agency director Lee Zeldin to announce the EPA will no longer regulate greenhouse gases, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Thursday, Feb. 12, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo\/Evan Vucci)<\/p>\n

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FILE – The Gen. James Gavin Power Plant, a coal-fired power plant, operates April 14, 2025, in Cheshire, Ohio. (AP Photo\/Joshua A. Bickel, File)<\/p>\n

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