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As Temperatures Rise, Health Could Decline
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| Contributor | ArmyDem |
| Last Edited | ArmyDem Dec 17, 2007 08:45am |
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| Category | News |
| Media | Newspaper - Washington Post |
| News Date | Monday, December 17, 2007 02:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 17, 2007; Page A07
Depending on where you are, this is going to be a hotter, wetter, drier, windier, calmer, dirtier, buggier or hungrier century than mankind has seen in a while. In some places, it may be deadlier, too.
The effects of climate change are diverse and sometimes contradictory. In general, they favor instability and extreme events. On balance, they will tend to harm health rather than promote it.
That is the majority view of scientists trying to solve an equation whose variables range from greenhouse gas concentrations and the El Niño weather pattern to mosquito ecology and human cells' ability to withstand heat.
"We are not dealing with a single toxic agent or a single microbe where we can put our finger with certainty on an exposure and the response," said Jonathan A. Patz, a physician and epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. "Climate change affects everything."
Predictions of how global warming could affect people's health are crude. They are based on the experience of the past several decades, when there has been a small, well-documented rise in the temperatures of the planet's atmosphere and oceans. What that says about the future -- a time when warming is expected to accelerate, but people may be able to prepare for it -- is quite uncertain. |
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