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Dave
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AUSTRALIAN death rates from climate change-related heatwaves will climb steadily this century unless greenhouse emissions are sharply cut, the most comprehensive national report into global warming and health has found.
The Australian Climate Commission study, endorsed by health groups including the Australian Medical Association and the nurses' federation, shows heat-related death rates could rise to between 8000 and 11,000 people per year by the end of the century, from a base figure of just under 6000 in 1990.
The death toll from extreme weather events is also expected to rise steadily in coming decades, even as emergency responses improve, the report said.
''Over the last few years, most of the climate-change discussion has been about the economic impacts, or the impacts on iconic places like the Great Barrier Reef or vulnerable species,'' said the report's co-author, Tony McMichael, of the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health. ''We should also be concerned about the impact on another important species - humans. What climate change is already doing is weakening the natural life-support system we need to survive.''
The data shows the overall weather-related death rate for people in NSW, Victoria and Tasmania could hold steady, or even decrease slightly due to a drop in the number of cold-related deaths. But this would be more than offset by much-higher death rates in the Northern Territory, Queensland and Western Australia.
The estimates are based on data from the known spikes in hospital admissions and deaths in hot weather and projections from the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology about warming in different parts of the country.
When Melbourne endured three days with temperatures above 43 degrees in 2009, 980 people died - 374 more than the average number - and in the 2004 Brisbane heatwave, the average rate of death rose 23 per cent.
Children, the elderly, people who work outdoors and those on low incomes are statistically more likely to die due to heat, the report said. While people in rural areas generally had less access to immediate medical help, people in cities usually endured temperatures one to three degrees higher due to the ''urban heat island'' effect, under which reflective surfaces tend to contain heat.
''This is intended as an early warning of practical changes that will be needed in preparedness, in funding and disaster recovery,'' Professor McMichael said.
The head of the commission, Tim Flannery, said the report was not intended to alarm people but to give them the best information on which to plan, fund and organise healthcare.
''The Climate Commission has only produced two reports so far and they have been in response to the public's need to know,'' Professor Flannery said.
''What we have found, doing our job and travelling around Australia to talk to a wide range of people, was that the public knowledge about health risks was actually very low, compared to knowledge about some other areas of climate change.''
Prominent Australian healthcare groups and GPs endorsed the report, including former Australians of the Year Fiona Stanley and Peter Doherty. A delegation of Australian doctors is travelling to the United Nations climate-change conference in Durban this week, to argue human health should be central to discussions.
Read more: Deaths from heatwaves to rise 'without emission cuts'
Thats because we'll be all !@#$%^&, our air con will cost $50 a day to run, because of the "Carbon Tax".
Way to go, all you wanker Labour sellouts.
