Will global warming cause more asthma in California Children?

By Mollie Bloudoff-Indelicato

Mollie would seem to have a very indelicate brain.  Perhaps all the blood is off it.

She has  a lot of assertion, and some very weak reasoning below which tries to convince us that global warming -- if it ever comes -- would be bad for asthma.  I have endeavoured to pick out below the line of reasoning from among all the "human interest" content but you will see that no actual evidence for her claims is given.  I wonder why?  Could it be this medical report which says that: 

"Asthma UK says that for three quarters of the 5.4 million people with asthma, cold air is a trigger for their symptoms.  The charity says hospital admissions for asthma usually peak during periods of particularly cold weather. Breathing cold air into the lungs can trigger asthma attacks."

So warming would in fact be a good thing for asthmatics.  Hein?  It is a disgrace that the pseudo scientific rubbish below appeared in the "Scientific American"  -- now long ago transmogrified into  the "Unscientific American"

Climate change is expected to compound the issue, according to a new body of work published in the journal Issues in Ecology. Higher temperatures and an increased risk of drought on the West Coast essentially "cook" the nitrogen, resulting in nitrous oxide and ozone. These nitrogen byproducts cause cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, especially among the region's rural and urban poor who don't have the money to move away and reduce their exposure.

In 2007, about 25 million Americans had asthma, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Costs for the chronic disease increased from an estimated $53 billion in 2002 to about $56 billion in 2007. The condition is distinctly prevalent in California's Central Valley, where one out of every six children have asthmatic symptoms -- a contemporary warning of how dire this issue could become in the near future.

Nitrous oxide leads to more ozone

It's not nitrogen gas by itself that's the problem. Eighty percent of the world's atmosphere is made up of the gaseous form. Nitrous oxide is a different story. The combination of nitrogen and oxygen molecules creates a powerful gas. In small quantities, nitrous oxide is used as "laughing gas" in dentist offices. On a larger scale, the vapor traps heat and contributes to global warming.

"It's a very potent greenhouse gas," said Eric Davidson, the president of Woods Hole Research Center. "It's about 300 times more potent per molecule as carbon dioxide."

He added, "Its half-life is over 100 years. The emissions of that gas will be with us through many generations."

The subsequent increase in temperature only makes matters worse. Nitrous oxide is also a precursor to ozone and nitrogen dioxide. Ozone in the stratosphere is a good thing. These molecules block some of the ultraviolet rays that heat the Earth. However, ozone close to the surface is a harmful irritant, triggering asthma, reducing lung capacity and affecting immune system response.

More HERE.  H/T Tom Nelson






Crookedness born of desperation

The sort of nonsense reported below never ceases.  It is cold weather (winter) that most sends people to hospital and kills them but there is a never-ending attempt from Warmists to "prove" that it is actually warm weather that is bad for you.  There may indeed be some conditions made worse by warm weather (e.g. mosquito-borne diseases) but the balance is clearly the other way

The funny bit about the study below, however, was that it claimed to cover temperature effects on health but their survey included only the months from May to September!  They left winter completely out of it!  What joke "research"!  There are few people more crooked than a Greenie

The journal article is:  "The Effect of Temperature on Hospital Admissions in Nine California Counties".  Check it for yourself

The risk of heading to the emergency room for certain conditions, such as heart disease, diabetes, stroke, kidney disease and low blood pressure rises slightly as temperature and humidity increase, according to a new study from California.

Researchers also found that for a few conditions, including aneurysm and high blood pressure, higher temperatures were tied to a drop in ER visits.

"What we know about climate change is that heat waves in California and throughout the world are going to become more severe and more intense," said Rupa Basu, the study's lead author and an epidemiologist at the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. "With that, we're realizing this might implicate more health effects" from future temperatures.

That heat waves can lead to more deaths is already known, and one recent report predicts150,000 additional heat-related deaths will occur in U.S. cities by 2100 because of climate change (see Reuters story of May 24, 2012).

Basu and her colleagues looked at the relationship between heat and specific health conditions, rather than deaths, during the warm seasons in California from 2005 to 2008.

During this period there were 1.2 million visits to emergency rooms, the researchers report in the journal Epidemiology.

Basu's team divided the state into 16 climate zones and compared emergency room visits each day in a given area to local variations in temperature and humidity outside.

For each 10-degree increase in temperature, they saw increased ER visits for a variety of conditions - from a 1.7 percent rise in ER visits for heart disease to a 4.3 percent rise in diabetes visits to a 12.7 percent increase in visits for low blood pressure.

Conditions diagnosed as heat illness or heat stroke rose nearly four-fold for every 10-degree climb on the thermometer, and dehydration visits increased by 25 percent.

Although the study could not pinpoint why certain health conditions are more likely to send people to the ER on hotter days, Basu said it likely has to do with how our bodies adapt to heat.

SOURCE