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"Global warming? I'm looking forward to it!"
RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—Your doctor's office probably displays educational posters showing you how to properly wash your hands to prevent H1N1 infection, and others urging you to quit smoking to protect your health. But chances are there isn't a poster explaining how to protect your health when it comes to global climate change, even though the Worldwatch Institute and United Nations Foundation just dubbed it the biggest threat to human health that we'll encounter in this century.
THE DETAILS: Humans' ecological footprint over the last 200 to 300 years has drastically altered the land, water, and air on the planet, prompting a drastic spike in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Here are some instances of how climate change, and the factors that cause it, are already affecting our health:
Read more about how global climate change:
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Major EPA Announcement: Greenhouse Gases Threaten Your Health
6 Reasons You're Ignoring Global Warming
• Intensive farming operations, known as concentrated animal-feeding operations, or CAFOs, create about 20 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions, according to a United Nations report. Because so many antibiotic-pumped animals are crammed into one area, along with their waste and germs, it's accelerating the evolution of pathogens (think swine flu) and breeding superbugs.
• Higher air temperatures are associated with increased breeding of stronger mosquitoes that spread malaria and other diseases.
climate change
Enough with the end of the world articles! Just when was the earth in perfect balance or to the point. What date was the earth safe for everyone and never changing? Was it 1774? Or 1000 BC. When have there never been tornadoes or typhoons? What about the changing magnetic poles. What are we going to do about that? When Mount ST. Helen exploded, where are all the dire things that where predicted? First it was global cooling, then global warming, now climate change since we cannot control the environment. So I guess go get a tent and grow your own food and hope it stays warm. But do not start a fire because of the effect on the environment!!