The iconic photo that defines climate change has changed from the polar bear on a shrinking ice floe to a child wheezing for breath in a hospital emergency room.
A recent report from The Lancet, the world’s most widely read medical journal, along with recent October reports from the U.S. Climate Assessment and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) all confirm what we and other physicians are seeing in Washington and beyond — climate change is harming and killing our patients today.
The numbers are striking. The Lancet’s global research team reports that 157 million more vulnerable people experienced heat waves and attendant health risks in 2017 than in 2000. Pollution from particulate matter, a key component of wildfire smoke and vehicle exhaust, contributed to 2.9 million premature deaths in 2015 alone. Vector-borne disease, food shortages and mental-health impacts are becoming more prevalent and will continue to do so.
The findings also confirm that people who did the least to create the problem are disproportionately affected by the consequences.
The impacts are being felt in our region. Between 1990-2010, the U.S. Climate Assessment found that King County saw a 2 percent increase in heat-related hospitalizations and a 10 percent increase in deaths on “extreme heat days.”
~~~snip~~~~~
And what was the increase in population in your area between 1990-2010?
What was the increase in the homeless population?
The poor?
And what was the increase in deaths due to extreme cold days?
Based on your idiotic reasoning I can make the case that we are experiencing global cooling.
My God, is it this easy to become a doctor? You two are friggin’ idiots.
ht/ jd hasty
I’m waiting for the reports on how many people are dying from heart disease, heart attacks, and strokes brought on by irrational and uncontrolled hysteria over fake climate news.
#fakenewskills
What the hell? Environmentalists are always complaining that there are too many people so I am I wrong to assume they are now hypocritical for not wanting more to die off? I am also assuming they are TOTALLY hypocritical for not killing THEMSELVES.
You know what is starting to piss me off? The constant attacks and attempts to humiliate the residents of Seattle. This site in particular is guilty of disparaging and ridiculing everything Seattle, and it must come to an end. Ahahaha, just kidding, I live 2 hours from Seattle and I won’t go there anymore.
Didn’t the Lancet publish that fabricated study in the 90s that connected vaccinations to autism?
I’ve read articles that claim that the DDT ban killed over 50 million people from mosquito carried disease. But hey, Rachael Carson was one of their own, so that doesn’t count.
Anyway, if I had a choice between trying to survive for a year in Phoenix as opposed to trying to survive for a year in Siberia, Arizona here I come.
There was an article on msn.com today saying climate change is causing decay of the ocean floor. They never stop with this crap…
@Wyatt, Insensitive Progressive Jerk – There was a good article on Breitbart only a week ago about changes in insect-borne disease rates, “climate change”, and DDT. It doesn’t mention the numbers you mention, but I’ve seen the same sort of stats that support that estimate. Today, best estimate is that sub-Saharan Africans die at the rate of about 1 million per year from malaria. During the heyday of DDT spraying, there was one year (in the ’50s IIRC) when world-wide malaria deaths were in the low thousands. Multiply the difference by the interval and you are in the general neighborhood of 50 million, as you say.
Progressive idiocy has now conquered the last remaining hurdle: STEM studies. Rest in peace, science.
If they think particulate matter pollution is bad now, how will it be when everyone has to burn wood to cook and keep warm?
@Manbearpig – And even that wouldn’t be as dirty as today’s African and Asian peasants who cook over burning dried dung.
Drs. jumping on the anti-2nd amendment bandwagon too.
Don’t bother pointing out that Drs. kill more people than guns and climate change combined; they’ll simply sprout some fake moral outrage.
Take this, joe6pak!
The brownest skies you’ve ever seen are in Seattle
And the hills the meanest scene, in Seattle
Like a spoiled little child, throwing up, being defiled
Full of dopes an’ full of sneers, full of needles, full of jeers
Full of drugs to last the years, in Seattle
. . . in Seattle!
Occasional-Cortex HAS mounted a FORMIDABLE campaign for this award… 😳
Jimmy, doesn’t that come from the show “Seven Wives for Seven Brides”? Or something like that.
The TV series “Here Come The Brides” (1968), joe6pak. With a melody sung by Perry Como that will make you cringe.
What the “distinguished medical elite” REALLY ought to be studying is the pernicious, highly contagious, brain killing virus that comes with being elevated to “culturally elite intellectual status”. That virus and the blather generated by those infected by it is what’s killing just about everything good in what’s left of Western Civilization. Lancet be damned! JAMA too!
These two retards couldn’t doctor their way out of a shithouse.
Hot/cold/wet/dry is fashionable because modeling can predict that the earth will drown in hot lava, or spin off it’s axis.
Our weather comes from the Sun.
Changes in the Sun affect our weather.
The Volcano Mt. Pinatubo put out more greenhouse gas in four days that the entire human race since the dawn of fire.
I would worry more about asteroids. That does not require ‘modeling’ of billions of estimates. It requires serious science.
The worst air I have had to breathe was in Jakarta, Indonesia. IMO, the horrid stuff was produced by cooking fires and leaded gasoline. I’ve read that Shanghai air is bad also, probably for the same reasons. That is not the fault of America or the oil companies.
I still don’t know how raising taxes changes the climate…