Unraveling the Relationship Between Climate Change and Human Health Sabrina Tavernise - The New York Times
go to original November 8, 2015

Climate Change: Our greatest health threat, or our greatest opportunity for better health? (Global Climate and Health Alliance)

Is climate change a serious threat to human health?

Simple logic would suggest the answer is yes, a point that the Obama administration is using to build support for the president’s effort to make climate change a centerpiece of his final months in office.

A White House report listed deepening risks. Asthma will worsen, heat-related deaths will rise, and the number and traveling range of insects carrying diseases once confined to the tropics will increase.

But the bullet points convey a certainty that many scientists say does not yet exist. Scientists agree that evidence is growing that warmer weather is having an effect on health, but they say it is only one part of an immensely complex set of forces that are influencing health.

For example, scientists note that global travel and trade, not climate change, brought the first cases of chikungunya, a mosquito-borne tropical disease, to Florida.

Temperatures may be rising, but overall deaths from heat are not, in part because the march of progress has helped people adapt — air conditioning is more ubiquitous, for example, and the treatment of heart disease, a major risk for heat-related mortality, has improved.

Read the rest at The New York Times

Related: Climate Change: Have We Already Gone Too Far? (Forbes)

Related: Exxon Helped Pioneer Climate Science — Then Disavowed Its Own Research. Was It a Crime? (PRI's The World)

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