Mortality rate can increase due to global warming

Sizzling temperatures brought on by global warming would kill more people in the summer, a new study suggests. "The results suggest that mortality from hot temperatures won't be compensated by a reduction in mortality in winter," said the study author and a research fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health's department of environmental health, Mercedes Medina-Ramon.
According to the study, global warming is expected to increase the average temperature of Earth between 1.7 and 4.9 degrees Celsius by the year 2100. It is also expected to result in more scorching summer days and fewer freezing winter ones. "It seems that global warming would increase deaths due to extreme hot temperatures. That we already know. What we didn't know was if that would be compensated by a reduction in mortality during the winter because it's less cold", Medina-Ramon said.
During two-day cold snaps, deaths went up 1.59 percent. Many of the deaths were due to heart attacks and cardiac arrest. But during scorchers, death rates went up by much more: 5.74 percent.
The effect of extreme cold was similar between cities, suggesting that the use of central heating may have prevented some deaths. But the effects of heat were wildly different, with the largest effects seen in cities with milder summers, less air conditioning and denser populations.
"In the US, most people have heating in their homes, so a change in cold temperature won't make as much of a difference," said Medina-Ramon. But the answer isn't to install air conditioners in every home, because that just adds to global warming.
"We don't want to say air conditioning is a solution because it's going to have an impact on global warming," Medina-Ramon said. "We should increase the use of air conditioning but stop the abuse. Some places have air conditioning that is so strong it's completely unnecessary. If we had air conditioning everywhere but people didn't abuse it, that would be the best solution, along with investing in technology that is more efficient." But individual actions, while important, are only part of the picture.
"When you look at global warming as a phenomenon, it clearly has public health, individual health and eco-system implications, and there is a growing body of evidence that seems to imply that we are a ways from exactly determining how the human-environment interaction will play a role in the ultimate impact of global warming," said , chairwoman of the department of environmental health sciences at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, Dr Maureen Lichtveld.