Global warming bad for health?

The article below is from Australia but the claim is heard elsewhere too. It is a quite hilarious deception. It is COLD weather that promotes flu etc. Warm weather is good for you in many ways. Brisbane is warmer than Sydney. Does that mean it is less healthy? There is no sign of it. Australia is so big that people can choose just about any climate they like to live in. They do so now and they always will. Tropical North Queensland or chilly Tasmania? Take your pick!

And the Australian Bureau of Statistics reports: "There were no clear patterns in reporting of health-related actions between States and Territories" (p. 6 here). And note that one of the Territories concerned was the very hot Northern Territory! Both hot and cold climates have their advantages and disadvantages but overall there is a balance.

And if the 0.6 degrees C. warming observed across the 20th century is repeated in the 21st, they will not notice the difference even if they stay exactly where they already are

Children in rural Australia will face health problems as climate change starts to bite, and the impact on adults will go much further than the depression that is already affecting some drought-hit farming communities. A national rural health conference heard yesterday that health effects of climate change on rural communities would also include family stress, breathing and respiratory problems caused by more airborne dust and domestic hygiene and infection problems caused by poorer-quality drinking water.

Disruption to agriculture would affect food production, raising prices and lowering the quality and availability of vegetables and other healthy products. Rates of smoking, alcohol and other drug use could also be expected to rise.

Tony McMichael, director of the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at the Australian National University, said in a keynote speech to open the conference in Albury, NSW, last night that there would also be direct effects, such as the increases in numbers of people killed by heatwaves, storms, floods and bushfires. Research by the centre and the CSIRO has forecast that, among people aged over 65 in Sydney, the death rate caused by heatwaves could rise from the 40 deaths per 100,000 people to between 79 and 239 deaths per 100,000.

Dengue fever and other tropical or mosquito-borne diseases - currently confined to the Top End between Broome and the Cape York peninsula - would also extend southwards as far as Carnarvon on the west coast and just north of Rockhampton on the east. Professor McMichael said recent research by his centre had also shown that parents' stress was conveyed into the family home and increased stress hormones in young children "with immediate and long-term implications for their emotional development and their general bodily health". "We need to be aware of the emerging problems here, and do proper research, and develop intervention strategies," Professor McMichael told The Australian. "We are not talking about new problems that people haven't had before in severe droughts. We are talking about them becoming long-term, and at some level permanent." Suitable strategies included better early-warning systems for severe weather events, better community supports and better infrastructure design.

Tony Hobbs, a GP in the NSW Riverina town of Cootamundra, and chairman of the Australian General Practice Network, said rural doctors were already under pressure and said a significant rise in ill-health would probably force some care to be delivered by nurses and other health workers instead of GPs. "This drought has already had an impact - we have already seen rising rates of depression, including at my practice," Dr Hobbs said. "If this cycle were to continue, that would put an added burden on general practice."

Source

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