A year ago I was lining up medical, public health, science & climate faculty to explain (mostly to international & local news outlets) what the impact of the Canadian wildfires, heat dome, heat warnings summer of 2023. Literally nothing is different this year in the news. It’s the season we have
Talking to those researchers you’d learn there’s a lot of new stresses on human bodies that create organ trouble. The more 100 degree days & air pollutants, the more stress. People will still reach their 90s because our medical science is good at keeping us alive. If you have that kind of care.
Essentially the one way to measure climate change impacts is measure death rates, averages, median for middle to lower income populations. We live in same climate but a lot more organ systems breaking down in one population. Cancer/covid rates ⬆️, but heart & lungs are very stressed by heatwaves ☀️☀️☀️
I suspect by the time the heat + air pollutants connection to climate change & death rates will take as long as it did for the public to accept (en mass) smoking causes cancer. So 300 years?
I garbled the joke, but basically in 1900 although smoking was popular its connection to disease wasn’t even glimpsed. People had smoked tobacco for centuries. By 1970-ish it wasn’t the least bit in doubt that smoking causes cancer. So how many decades before climate change equals death rates?
Re: heart & lung stress…it wasn’t until I was talking to medical researchers that I heard how young & healthy you could be & still see deterioration from heat wave caused stress on heart & lungs. It might not show up in median of 10 year olds but it will in 30 year olds.
By the time your 45 yo and in good condition, if your position puts you in outdoors for 8 hours the organ damage from our climate heat increase will begin to become visible. You may not have a diagnosed condition but the heart & lungs are working much harder than a 45 yo outdoor worker in 1974
This is at least some of the theories researchers had (dumbed down so much that local news can get a sound bite). Public health, individual health & all the other factors besides where a body lives have a lot of factors weaving around for everyone. But the hotter & dirtier air > healthy organs
