Happy New Year 2024 (and sorry for the forum being offline some hours) /DM
The effects of climate change are being felt today, and future projections represent an unacceptably high and potentially catastrophic risk to human healthThe implications of climate change for a global population of 9 billion people threatens to undermine the last half century of gains in development and global health. The direct effects of climate change include increased heat stress, floods, drought, and increased frequency of intense storms, with the indirect threatening population health through adverse changes in air pollution, the spread of disease vectors, food insecurity and under-nutrition, displacement, and mental ill health.
The Bell Tolleth. This should resonate every bit as loudly as the Pope's encyclical, but will not.
The number of reported cases of Legionnaires’ disease is on the rise in the United States and researchers say the increase could be partly a result of climate change.More than three times as many cases of legionellosis, of which Legionnaires’ disease is one form, were reported in 2009 than 2000 — 3,522 up from 1,110, according to a 2011 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention....Dr. David N. Fisman, a professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto, said in an email that he doubted the increase was the result solely of improved testing. The rise is linear and across all regions of the United States, he said.It is difficult to be certain that climate change is a factor but it seems plausible, he said. The bacteria is more infectious in warm temperatures and some studies, including one he and others did in 2005, have shown that wet, humid weather predicts an upsurge in the risk of contracting the disease over the following week or two. That finding was not replicated in Toronto, he said, but there the disease peaks later in October in that area.
“When you talk about climate change to people in general, they think of loss of habitat, loss of ice caps or loss of coral reefs. They don’t think of its health impacts. But these affect us today, never mind affecting our children or our grandchildren. This is not some abstract threat; it is immediate and it is personal.”Farrar sees three particular threats to the health and wellbeing of humanity: the spread of infectious diseases, the linked issues of pollution and urbanisation, and the threat of worsening migration. In the case of infectious disease, he dismissed the idea that malaria was the most obvious problem.
