As existing holders of Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons General Practice Accreditation, this year we decided to apply for two additional RCVS Practice Standards Scheme (PSS) Awards. These awards offer practices the opportunity to demonstrate that they excel in one or more specialist area. After much evidence upload onto an RCVS assessment platform and an assessor site visit, we are delighted to share with you that we have been deemed ‘Outstanding’ in RCVS’s ‘Client Service’ and ‘Team & Professional Responsibility’ Awards.
For additional PSS Awards, assessors score practices in their chosen award against a framework of evidence requirements, with each evidence statement carrying a weighting of marks. For ‘Client Service’, assessment reviews a practice’s investment in all elements of the pet owner experience. The ‘Team and Professional Responsibility’ award covers assessment across a wider topic remit which includes clinical governance, infection control, medicine management, health and safety, team wellbeing, sustainability, professional development opportunity and training outcomes.
To achieve ‘Good,’ a practice must gain over 60% of available additional award marks in all modules of a specific award. This rises to 80% to achieve ‘Outstanding.’ Click here for more information about RCVS PSS Awards.
The RCVS’s Practice Standards Scheme is a voluntary initiative designed to promote and maintain the highest standards of veterinary care. Accredited practices give pet owners the reassurance that they meet RCVS’s stringent standards. And if a practice has additional RCVS PSS awards, you now know in these areas they truly excel.
Wellcare World specializes in providing the latest advancements in wellness technology, supplementation, and lifestyle changes that improve health and increase the quality of people's lives.To learn more, visit WellcareWorld.com and begin living a better life today.
The Arctic region plays a critical role in the Earth’s climate system, with its sea ice acting as a vital component. However, in recent years, the Arctic sea ice has been facing significant challenges due to various factors linked to climate change. This update sheds light on the current state of Arctic sea ice and the implications for the environment and global health.
The World daily 2-meter Air Temperature (90-90°N, 0-360°E)
The World daily 2-meter Air Temperature (90-90°N, 0-360°E) was 16.77°C on June 9, 2023, an anomaly of 0.9°C for that day. The highest temperature on record is 16.92°C, and it was reached on August 14, 2016, and the anomaly for that day was only 0.75°C.
The record high of 16.92° actually was a tie between August 13, 2016, August 14, 2016, and July 24, 2022. That latter date is important, since the record high temperature was reached even while there was a strong La Niña, suppressing the temperature. This time, we’re in an El Niño, so we can expect even higher temperatures over the next few weeks.
The highest anomaly on record was reached on February 28, 2016, when there was a strong El Niño and the anomaly was 1.15°C. Note that these anomalies are compared to the mean temperature for that day in NOAA’s NCEP CFSv2.
The above image, from an earlier post, uses monthly NASA Land+Ocean temperature anomalies versus 1886-1915 that are further adjusted by 0.99°C to reflect ocean air temperatures, higher polar anomalies and a pre-industral base.
The above image shows sea surface temperature on the North Atlantic (0-60°N, 0-80°W) depicted as anomalies, reaching about 1.1°C above the 1982-2023 mean on June 10, 2023.
The situation is especially critical in the North Atlantic, as vast amounts of ocean heat in the North Atlantic are moving toward the Arctic, threatening to cause rapid melting of Arctic sea ice and thawing of permafrost.
North Atlantic (0-60°N, 0-80°W) reaching 22.7°C
The above image shows the same data for sea surface temperature on the North Atlantic (0-60°N, 0-80°W) reaching 22.7°C on June 10, 2023 (on the black line), 0.7°C higher than the 22.0°C on June 10, 2022 (on the orange line).
The comparison with 2022 is important, as the North Atlantic sea surface temperature reached a record 24.9°C on Sept. 4, 2022, even while there was a strong La Niña, suppressing the temperature. This time, we have an El Niño, as illustrated by the NOAA image on the right.
The annual Arctic sea ice extent minimum is typically reached in September and the North Atlantic sea surface temperature is critical in regard to melting of the Arctic sea ice. The already high sea surface temperature together with the impact of the El Niño make the outlook for Arctic sea ice for September 2023 look grim.
Sea ice concentration is getting lower in many places and there is open water off the Siberian coast and in parts of the Beaufort Sea and Baffin Bay, as illustrated by the Uni of Bremen image on the right. Rising temperatures in the Arctic threaten to trigger massive loss of Arctic sea ice over the coming months.
The image on the right, from polarportal.dk, shows very low Arctic sea ice volume for the time of year on June 8, 2023, already much lower than the volume on the same date for any of the four previous years.
The NASA Worldview satellite image below shows Arctic sea ice in a very vulnerable state on June 11, 2023, even very close to the North Pole (on the left of the image below). Open water is also visible near the Franz Jozef Archipelago, some 1000 km from the North Pole (on the right of the image below).
The NASA satellite image on the right provides a closer look at the sea ice near the North Pole on June 12, 2023 (click on images to enlarge).
As discussed in earlier posts such as this one, conditions are dire:
• Earth’s energy imbalance is at record high • emissions are at record high • greenhouse gas concentrations are at record high • temperatures are very high, especially in the Arctic
• North Atlantic sea surface temperature is at record high
• sea ice is very vulnerable • the Jet Stream is strongly deformed, threatening to cause:
• heatwaves extending over the Arctic Ocean with
• hot water from rivers entering the Arctic Ocean, and with
• storms pushing hot water into the Arctic Ocean
On the one hand, it’s terrible to see open water close to the North Pole so early in the year, yet on the other hand, this may enable ocean heat to escape to the atmosphere and thus delay eruption of seafloor methane (image further below).
The image on the right, from the Uni of Bremen, shows Arctic sea ice thickness on June 12, 2023.
The image below shows the extent of the deformation of the Jet Stream on June 6, 2023. No less than 26 circular wind patterns (at 250 hPa) are marked on the image, which also shows sea surface temperature anomalies. The Jet Stream is can also be seen crossing the Equator at the bottom of the image.
“The melting of Arctic sea ice not only affects the environment but also poses significant risks to human health, including mental health challenges, infectious diseases, and limited access to healthcare services.”
Furthermore, there are circumstances that could coincide in a cataclysmic alignment: El Niño is on the way, sunspots are higher than predicted and the Tonga submarine volcano did add large amounts of water vapor high into the atmosphere.
All this looks set to jointly result in massive loss of Arctic sea ice over the coming months, with loss of the latent heat buffer and loss of albedo threatening to trigger eruption of methane from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean, as has been described many times before, such as in this post, in this post and in this post.
[ Latent heat loss, feedback #14 on the Feedbacks page ]
Both loss of Arctic sea ice and eruption of seafloor methane constitute tipping points that threaten to abruptly accelerate the temperature rise in the Arctic, thus also accelerating loss of permafrost in Siberia and North America that threatens to trigger further releases of greenhouse gases.
In addition, there are further events and developments that could unfold and make things even worse.
The upcoming temperature rise on land on the Northern Hemisphere could be of such a severity that much traffic, transport and industrial activity will grind to a halt, resulting in a reduction in cooling aerosols that are now masking the full wrath of global heating. Without these cooling aerosols, the temperature is projected to rise strongly, while there could be an additional temperature rise due to an increase in warming aerosols and gases as a result of more biomass and waste burning and forest fires. Furthermore, as traffic slows down, there will be less nitrogen oxide emissions, which could result in less hydroxyl to curtail methane.
The bar on the right depicts the threat, as discussed at the Extinction page.
Wellcare World specializes in providing the latest advancements in wellness technology, supplementation, and lifestyle changes that improve health and increase the quality of people's lives.To learn more, visit WellcareWorld.com and begin living a better life today.
The over-medicalization of normal life has had profound consequences, particularly in relation to the strain it places on healthcare systems like the NHS. In recent years, there has been a growing tendency to medicalize common experiences and conditions that were once considered part of the normal spectrum of human variation. This trend has led to an increased reliance on medical interventions, overburdening healthcare systems and jeopardizing their sustainability.
Even though she may overstate her case, Katie Musgrave has a helpful article in Pulse about the state of NHS mental health services.
I’ve used the same title as her article for this post, although changing one word: ‘medicalisation’ to ‘over-medicalisation’.
“The system isn’t functioning”, said by “Katie Musgrave”.
I think it’s reasonable for a GP, for example, to be discussing a child’s “tantrums and mood-swings” with parents. GPs need to deal with mental health as well as physical problems.
But I agree with Musgrave that hoping “an hour on the phone having CBT might solve issues from a difficult childhood, a broken marriage or long-standing financial stresses” oversimplifies people’s problems. Addressing “our broken, disconnected communities” is not easy. The NHS has not got “the answer to all of life’s ills”.
I also agree that NHS leaders may not have “the courage to fix this”. In fact I think NHS England has encouraged this oversimplification, based on a misguided understanding of the need for early intervention to prevent problems getting worse .
The State of NHS Mental Health Services: Over-Medicalization and the Need for Solutions
In a war zone, which the NHS is rapidly emulating, we should not be discussing tantrums or mood swings. I know I will offend some by writing this. Still, if they were my mood swings, or my child’s tantrums, I would forgive the offence – if I knew my mother or father had fallen, broken a hip, and were lying on a bathroom floor for 10 hours.
The time for niceties has passed. There are no magic resources in the NHS. Every minute spent discussing a moody teenager is a minute less spent seeing a palliative patient. I know some of the teenagers with mood swings or ladies with night sweats will be emergencies, but most are not. And we usually have a reasonable inkling who could wait or be signposted elsewhere. Perhaps the non-essential aspects of our work need to have fees attached.
Wellcare World specializes in providing the latest advancements in wellness technology, supplementation, and lifestyle changes that improve health and increase the quality of people's lives.To learn more, visit WellcareWorld.com and begin living a better life today.
