Posted on 11/17/2005 5:29:43 AM PST by Crackingham
Earth's warming climate is estimated to contribute to more than 150,000 deaths and 5 million illnesses each year, according to the World Health Organization, a toll that could double by 2030. The data, being published today in the journal Nature, indicate that climate change is driving up rates of malaria, malnutrition and diarrhea throughout the world.
Health and climate scientists at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, who conducted one of the most comprehensive efforts yet to measure the impact of global warming on health, said the WHO data also show that rising temperatures disproportionately affect poor countries that have done little to create the problem. They reached their conclusions after entering data on climate-sensitive diseases into mapping software.
"Those most vulnerable to climate change are not the ones responsible for causing it," said the study's lead author, Jonathan Patz, a professor at the university's Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and its department of population health sciences. "Our energy-consumptive lifestyles are having lethal impacts on other people around the world, especially the poor."
The regions most at risk from climate change include the Asian and South American Pacific coasts, as well as the Indian Ocean coast and sub-Saharan Africa. Patz said that was because climate-sensitive diseases are more prevalent there and because those regions are most vulnerable to abrupt shifts in climate. Large cities are also likely to experience more severe health problems because they produce what scientists refer to as the urban "heat island" effect.
Just this week, WHO officials reported that warmer temperatures and heavy rain in South Asia have led to the worst outbreak of dengue fever there in years. The mosquito-borne illness, which is now beginning to subside, has infected 120,000 South Asians this year and killed at least 1,000, WHO said.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Most of these deaths, and millions more, would be eliminated if DDT was made more available.
"Those most vulnerable to climate change are not the ones responsible for causing it," said the study's lead author, Jonathan Patz, a professor at the university's Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and its department of population health sciences. "Our energy-consumptive lifestyles are having lethal impacts on other people around the world, especially the poor."
Since we are not causing the climate change and the Solar cycle is, what would she suggest we do about the amount of sunshine falling upon the Earth??? (/sarcasm off)
Beat me to the punch. We've sentenced millions of Third World people to death so that environmental groups can sit smugly in the US and feel good about themselves.
Has the advent of science made things worse, or better, for the world's poor? Who would rather be poor 100 or 1,000 years ago, rather than today?
Not that I buy into these ridiculous numbers in the first place, mind you. This sounds like a nice round number pulled out of a hat, masquerading as a statistic.
Let's not forget about the hundreds of millions of lives SAVED by the energy made from fossil fuels.
You can't blame CO2 from fossil fuels for a certain number deaths without talking about the number of lives saved as well.
Just throwing another counter-point out there.
SWAG
Bush's fault, children and minorities hardest hit.
Peanuts!!
Imagine the catastrophe if the earth were cooling.
Liberals are never satisfied with "live and let live".
They always want control......now even with mother nature and old sol, himself.
Well, cranking up Soylent Green production should address that problem nicely...
One of the things that REALLY got me was "saving" the ape that passes on HIV from becoming extinct. The natives eat these infested critters. That IS WHAT natural selection is about. They SHOULD GO EXTINCT"!!
And when the world in the 70s was speeding into a human created Ice Age, people were dying from the winter flu, heart attacks from shoveling the driveway and car accidents due to the amount of snow on the roads.
Wow. Nice big round numbers. [/sarcasm}
But what about the hundreds of millions able to grow MORE and EAT BETTER BECASUE of the sun's global warming?
(Oh. We need to forget about those. They don't fit the propaganda picture.)
driving up rates of .........diarrhea throughout the world. Oh, lord. I thought I just drank too much beer last night!
Putting NYC under 2 miles of ice would be a good thing.
We're doomed..... or maybe we're domed...I just can't tell anymore.
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