Is Climate Change Making You Sick?

I say, of course, it is....and so does one of my gurus, Dr. Andrew Weil....

In his newsletter recently...




https://www.drweil.com/health-wellness/balanced-living/healthy-living/is-climate-change-making-you-sick/



"


Is Climate Change Making You Sick?

I’m very distressed about climate change. Recently I heard that doctors are alarmed that it is already taking a toll on human health. How so?

– April 18, 2017
Doctors have indeed started to see the effects of climate change on their patients’ health. A report on this topic was published in March (2017) by the Medical Society Consortium on Climate & Health, an organization formed by 11 leading U.S. medical societies representing more than half of our physicians.
Here are some of the health problems we are seeing now:

• Emergency room visits for heat-related illnesses increased by 133 percent between 1997 and 2006. Almost half the patients were children and adolescents. Every year, some 9,000 high school athletes are treated for heat-related illnesses.

• Poor air quality is increasing asthma and allergy attacks and can lead to other illnesses. Warmer and drier conditions cause more wildfires, producing smoke that can travel hundreds of miles downwind and expose people to harmful pollutants. The result is more asthma, bronchitis, chest pain, and worsening of cardiorespiratory ailments. For example, the Evans Road Wildfire that began in June 2008 in the midst of North Carolina’s worst drought burned more than 45,000 acres in the eastern part of the state. It continued to burn for 3 months, sending plumes of smoke and toxic particles throughout eastern North Carolina and beyond. This led to a 50 percent increase in visits to emergency departments in the area by people with respiratory illnesses compared to elsewhere in the state. People with heart disease are exceptionally sensitive to particles from wildfires.

• Warmer temperatures mean a longer pollen season, and increased carbon dioxide in the air leads to higher pollen levels. These changes worsen allergies and asthma and increase their frequency. Also, higher humidity and flooding from heavy downpours can foster dampness and mold growth indoors, further increasing allergies and worsening asthma.

• Air pollution leads to 7 million early deaths worldwide from lung and heart disease and cancer. In the United States, dangerously high levels of pollution on the east coast and in the greater Los Angeles area are causing premature death, disability and disease.

• Increasing temperatures, too much or too little rainfall and severe weather events help mosquitoes thrive; those insects can transmit viruses that cause West Nile fever and dengue fever. Ticks carrying Lyme disease can now be found in 46 percent of U.S. counties compared to 30 percent in 1998. Even malaria could re-emerge in the U.S.

Additional health hazards of heavy rains result in more run-off of contaminated water from farms into rivers, lakes, and oceans. Heavy downpours and flooding also can spread fecal bacteria and viruses into fields where food grows.
This is a bleak picture of what climate change is doing to our health. Prompt action is needed to reverse these trends. The report notes that we can start by simply driving less, and walking and biking more."

 

We got immune from the current conditions we will become immune to the new ones.

 

A lot of the rise in cancers, breathing problems, and infant disabilities are caused through human disasters, like Chernobyl, Japan..And chemical crop spraying! But governments will never admit this!

Something i always wonder about, is the ozone layer, how far up is that?
Do space rockets, satellites​ and such actually break through, causing holes?
What damage do these do?

I think they use us as an excuse to take the heat from what the government around the world are actually doing to us them selves!

 

I have ragweed allergies that usually last from September through December, usually we get a few good frosts by January that kills all the ragweed. I stopped taking my allergy meds in January like I do every year and my allergies started going crazy, we didn't really get a winter to kill the ragweed until February. But only for a few short weeks then went immediately into pollen season, I feel for people this year who have ragweed and pollen allergies

 

And dont get me started on the mosquitos, I saw them throughout the entire "winter"

 

I suspect that one day, if humankind makes it that far, it will be very uncool not to respect the planet.....and excuses and denials will just be frowned upon....

 

You think way too highly of the idiotic masses.

 

ozone is gas

the "hole" is displaced ozone...meaning there is other stuff there instead


edit...if i remember right ..some of the other gasses combine with ozone and convert it to something more harmfull..or destroy it completely...the magnetic field and gravity is the cause of the holes being mostly over the earths poles ...has a lot to do with the weight of gas (think of helium)...

 

"According to an ongoing temperature analysis conducted by scientists at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), the average global temperature on Earth has increased by about 0.8° Celsius (1.4° Fahrenheit) since 1880."

Over 140 years I do not personally feel like we can say climate change has effected our health. Our problem is the consumption of what we have as food and water intake that has health concerns. For example, our food, almost all of it, is probably laced with chemicals and preservatives our bodies haven't managed to learn how to break down or to digest and use properly.

If the temperature steadily increased by 1°c a year then there might be something to this, but it hasn't even increased by 1°c in 140 years.. that actually blew my mind this statistic.

If you look at the chart of the ebs and flows of recorded temperatures on earth for the last thousand years, you'll see it go up and down up and down. Steadily rising now no doubt and far more rapidly, just considering this really isn't anything new in regards to the history of our earth, we'd have seen this epidemic throughout the ages from when history was being recorded like the Middle Ages, the temperature was actually warmer then than it is now so you'd have to question were there any health concerns back then?

The biggest fear was Black Death and all the Plagues... and Vikings. =p

 

What else is there to deal with?

 

Rocket launches probably do damage the ozone layer.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/04/090414-rockets-ozone.html

The ozone layer is 20 - 30 km above the earth's surface.

 

the launches do...due to the fuel

the rockets do not

 

Go back to 1900 and the average life expectancy in most western countries was around 50 years old

 

and it would probably be less than that today without science, penicillan and medical advancements...So what is your point?

 

My point is yay for medical science and we have a leg up on keeping up with the ever changing world.......but what does that mean? we survive and all of the other species get to die?....as we have left them behind? Not a kind of world I like looking at.....we can see by bees and frogs, how badly things have really affected other life forms already.

 

Coral Reefs aren't faring very well either. Some scientists say they will all probably die.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/15/science/great-barrier-reef-coral-climate-change-dieoff.html?_r=0

 

The hype is making me sick

 

^ I am sorry that you feel that way, but cannot help feeling attitudes like yours are part of the problem...

Very sad about the coral reefs, Bill......

There are many sad photos and diagrams for climate change I just looked at, including two penguins standing on a small block of ice with things melting all around them....

 

Coral Reefs are a little bit like the rain forests. They are very bio-diverse, and very beautiful, and there may be plants or other living things that could contain potential medicines - maybe a cure for cancer even. At the current rate of destruction, most of these will never even be looked at.
If we kill the oceans, probably all life will die. There are substances such as omega 3s which we require in our diets that are only synthesized in the oceans. I find it alarming that so little is being done to turn things around.

I don't give a shit about how sick people are of hearing about the destruction of nature. Too easy to bury one's head in the sand and pretend everything is hunky dory. Or simply deny the evidence.
The problem is that the threat isn't immediately obvious in everyday life to many people unlike other human created threats such as economic meltdown, potential wars, monkey politics in general.