Climate Change Linked to Future Uptick in Premature Deaths
Marie Donlon | August 01, 2017
Image credit: Wikimedia CommonsLeft unchecked, climate change could cause approximately 60,000 deaths worldwide in the year 2030 and 260,000 deaths worldwide in 2100, according to a new study from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Appearing in the journal Nature Climate Change, the study details the significant impact of climate change on global air pollution if nothing is done to address it.
"As climate change affects air pollutant concentrations, it can have a significant impact on health worldwide, adding to the millions of people who die from air pollution each year,” said Jason West, who led the research at UNC-Chapel Hill with former graduate student and first author Raquel Silva.
According to the researchers, as temperatures increase, the chemical reactions that create air pollutants like fine particulate matter and ozone accelerate, thereby impacting public health. Consulting several global climate models, West and Silva determined what that increase could mean in terms of the number of premature deaths linked to ground-level air pollution.
"Our finding that most models show a likely increase in deaths is the clearest signal yet that climate change will be detrimental to air quality and health," said West, associate professor of environmental sciences and engineering in the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. "We also collaborated with some of the world's top climate modeling groups in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Japan and New Zealand, making this study the most comprehensive yet on the issue.”
Researchers also advise against other issues linked to climate change, including its effect on health through changes in heat stress, access to clean water and food, severe storms and the spread of infectious diseases.
REALLY!
NOW WE MUST OUTLAW CLOCKS BECAUSE THEY CAUSE ALL THE DEATHS THAT OCCUR EVERY DAY. To say that climate change is occurring is like saying that statistics causes deaths because the climate is never constant. Stupid, Ignorant modern Pseudo-scientists' Drivel. I'm 87 years old (PhD physics '55, Penn State) and the climate today is the same as when I grew up in the '30's and '40's. If you want to ascribe a real number for the uptick of Earth average temperature due to burning fossil fuels, I have that number, calculated via first principles of infrared (black-body) radiation. That's +0.011 C (1/50th of a degree F). If you want credibility, I cite that most of this energy release in in cities which may comprise at best 1% of the area of the earth. So that uptick will be 100 times that, or 2 degrees F; now most every weatherman will attest that city temperatures are always 1 or 2 degrees F greater that in the countryside. QED. Forget climate change. Instead if your want to do some good, concentrate on Draining The Swamp in DC.
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