Posted on 09/22/2005 10:19:52 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
CANBERRA (Reuters) - Rising world temperatures could cause a significant increase in disease across Asia and Pacific Island nations, leading to conflict and leaving hundreds of millions of people displaced, a new report said on Thursday.
Global warming by the year 2100 could also lead to more droughts, floods and typhoons, and increase the incidence of malaria, dengue fever and cholera, the report into the health impact of rising temperatures found.
Compiled by the Australian Medical Association (AMA) and the Australian Conservation Foundation, the country's leading medical and environment groups, the study predicts average temperatures will rise by between 1 degree Celsius (1.8 Fahrenheit) and 6 degrees by 2100.
"We're not just talking about a longer summer or a shorter ski season," AMA president Mukesh Haikerwal told reporters.
"Climate change will damage our health. People will get sick as a direct result. People will die in larger numbers as our earth, our world, our home, heats up."
In Australia, Haikerwal said up to 15,000 people could die each year due to heat stress by 2100, up from about 1,000 a year at present, while dengue fever and other mosquito-borne diseases could spread as far south as Sydney.
Dengue fever in Australia is currently confined to the country's tropical and sparsely populated far north.
Internationally, higher world temperatures would increase the incidence of violent storms and droughts, and could lead to crop failures which could cause political and social upheaval.
"As stresses increase there is likely to be a shift toward authoritarian governments," the report said.
"At the worst case, large scale state failure and major conflict may generate hundreds of millions of displaced people in the Asia-Pacific region, a widespread collapse of law, and numerous abuses of human rights."
The report said crop yields were likely to increase in parts of Northern Asia, but would decrease in countries in Southern Asia, where the incidence of floods, droughts, forest fires and tropical cyclones would all increase.
The report, titled Climate Change Health Impacts in Australia; Effects of Dramatic CO2 Emission Reductions, calls on governments to cut carbon dioxide emissions to limit the impact of global warming.
Global warming could spark conflict - report
A medieval bridge has emerged from the depths of the San Juan reservoir in San Martin de Valdeiglesias, 70 kilometres (43 miles) outside Madrid, as a result of dramatically low water levels, September 21, 2005. (Susana Vera/Reuters)
Oh well, what's meant to be is meant to be.
Sweet ... that means that places like the Yukon, Russia and Alaska will become really livable.
As the sun continues to evolve, grow and get hotter, the climates of earth and Mars will continue to warm. Long before the sun has become a red giant, earth will have lost its oceans due to boiling off. This is not billions of years off. Much sooner, although by then humanity will have evolved into something else or died off altogether anyway. Humanity might have taken its ecosystem into deep space before then or not--looks like not--but that won't stop evolution, and humanity will have become something else by then. Whether it stays and dies with dignity or leaves, the billion hours of a species will end.
I'm getting out while the getting's good.
LOL
Probably most of us are.
Hawaiian Tropic to Open Concession in Vladivostok ... Hey, it oculd happen lol.
No one said it yet? Fine...I'll do the honors:
WE'RE DOOOOOOOMED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The sun will either get better or worse. If it's going to get worse, then earth will become a more hostile place IMO.
Not anything we humans are in control of though.
They must have built that bridge underwater. Either that or the water was dramatically lower then too, centuries before Al Gore invented the SUV.
Not in Kansas or parts of Pennsylvania.
Bring back DDT!!
The senseless ban on DDT has killed more people than Hitler, Stalin, Mao, & Pol Pot combined!! If things are going to be warming up, we'll need it!!
(I really don't think that global warming exists, but I do believe that DDT should be broght back as a cheap, SAFE, effective way to control insect born diseases)
Psst..the sky is falling..
Read my tagline
Global warming "science" = Another Enviro-WHACKO "scientist" trying to get, or keep, a government grant.
Global warming = Enviro-WHACKO leftists trying to push their un-American agenda with so-called global warming as a "club" to use against us.
The weather comes in cycles, and it has for THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of years.
We humans have little, if nothing to do with it.
The sun will continue to do its thing (hopefully), bovine creatures will continue to fart into the atmosphere, and those events, and many more natural events like them, will make the weather conditions change consistently over time.
I believe in global warming, it sure is a lot hotter now than it was this morning.
I believe the term is Red Giant.
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