“By wastewater levels, #JN1 is now associated with the second-biggest wave of infections in the United States in the pandemic, after #Omicron. We have lost the ability to track the actual number of infections since most people either test at home or don’t even test at all, but the very high wastewater levels of the virus indicate about 2 million Americans are getting infected each day.” #COVIDisNotOver#COVIDhttps://mstdn.social/@erictopol/111698225140794627
“study published on Wednesday in Nature has found that using online search engines to vet #conspiracies can actually increase the chance that someone will believe it. The researchers point to a known problem in search called "#DataVoids." Sometimes, there's not a lot of high-quality information to counter misleading headlines or surrounding fringe theories”
Yersinia Pestis never went away. It is endemic in the rural South West of the USA for example. It was the conditions that helped it propagate that improved. Even then the multiple waves of the plague went well beyond a few years.
“the #HeatDome was a foreshock of the world to come, with impacts both immediate and long-lasting. Yet it occurred in a world that has only warmed, on average, about 1.2 degrees since 1850. We’re now racing to 1.5 degrees and are likely to cross that threshold by the mid-2030s.” #ClimateCrisishttps://mastodon.social/@ryanschultz/110906759659640682
“While the planet has warmed 1.2 degrees since the 19th century, when humans first started burning #FossilFuels at an industrial scale, Canada has warmed at twice that rate, and the Arctic at four times. ..An Earth that’s two degrees hotter translates to a #Canada at least four degrees hotter, on average. .“A hot, dry summer ..in the Canadian context that means forest fires, that means #CropFailures, that means urban #droughts .”
“In 2005, Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht first coined the term #solastalgia to describe the feeling of being homesick while still at home. It’s that feeling of loss and melancholia that kicks in as your home #environment changes before your eyes, and it will come to define the deep emotional and psychological distress that more #Canadians will confront as global warming drives their #climate past recognition.”
“A study of #wildfire seasons conducted by scientists working with #HealthCanada and other federal departments estimated up to 240 deaths from short-term exposure, and up to 2,500 #PrematureDeaths in the long run, from fire events in 2017 alone. In parts of #BC hardest hit by that year’s wildfires, the smoke was estimated to reduce average #LifeExpectancy by a full year.”
“in #Canada, some 30,000 #children who were in utero during B.C.’s 2017 #wildfire season were later studied by #PublicHealth scientists. Those whose mothers lived in areas with the worst #smoke exposure were likelier to be born smaller and #preterm; they were also sicker, developing #croup, #laryngitis and #bronchitis at higher rates than other children.”
“Within a few decades, #Canadians in every part of the country will be faced with an inescapably altered #geography. #SeaLevels will rise up to half a metre on the #EastCoast by 2060 and approach a full metre by century’s end. Levels on the #WestCoast will rise more slowly, but the more urbanized coastline around #Vancouver and lower-lying communities will require massive upgrades to the #dikes keeping them dry.
“John Pomeroy, #Canada Research Chair in #WaterResources and #ClimateChange at the #UniversityOfSaskatchewan, says faster-than-expected melting in the past few years makes it likely that all the #glaciers of the #Rockies—including the famed #ColumbiaIcefield, upon which a thriving tourism industry depends—will all be gone by the end of the century, save for a few remnants. That means reduced flows to rivers that millions of people depend on”
“A widely publicized study published last year by researchers at the University of Northern Arizona analyzed satellite images taken between 1985 and 2019. They show that large parts of the #BorealForest have “browned” (i.e., died) in the south and greened with trees and shrubs in the north. If this shift, long hypothesized as a future outcome of #warming, is already underway, the effects will be profound, transforming natural habitats, animal migration and human settlements.”
“#ClimateMigration will be one of the defining forces of the 21st century—but record numbers of #Canadians will be #displaced on the home front by #disasters both sudden (fire, flood, storms) and slow (drought, coastal erosion, sea-level rise). A permanent class of the #InternallyDisplaced will require care, shelter and other resources “
“Accounting for increased health costs, supply-chain problems, falling crop yields, reduced exports and more, it estimated that the #costs of #ClimateChange will knock more than five per cent from the national #GDP by 2095, compared to what it would be in a world with a stable #climate. ..At that point, the #AnnualCost of dealing with disaster after disaster, and the hits to health, productivity and more will add up to $100 billion annually.”
“It doesn’t take a lot of auditing to see how the bill will get so steep, so fast. The total cost of the 2016 #FortMcMurray fire: $9 billion. The all-in price tag of B.C.’s 2021 #HeatDome, #wildfires, #floods and #landslide, all linked to warming: up to $17 billion. Cleanup and repair after #HurricaneFiona, which bulldozed #AtlanticCanada last year: $3 billion.”
“The cost of upgrading the #dikes that protect the low-lying #IsthmusOfChignecto and prevent Nova Scotia from becoming a defacto island: $300 million. The bill for #Richmond—the fourth-largest city in metropolitan #Vancouver, which includes the #VancouverInternationalAirport—to raise its own dikes against rising seas: $1 billion.”
“#NovaScotiaPower is spending millions to install more resilient #ElectricalPoles, after several years of increasingly powerful storms and hurricanes. In its last application to the provincial government to increase power rates on consumers, it cited #ClimateChange as a reason.”
Why “debate me” is always a poisoned pill. The cautionary take of those trying to “provide balance” is perfectly illustrated here. Can’t provide balance when competing against brazen lying. #Misinformation
Rural FP anesthetist formerly of Fort St John, BC, Canada. Trained in Aus and UK. Now doing rural locums in Canada. Blessed to live, work and play on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Tk’emlúps te Secwe̓pemc people. #Science and #Medicine Twitter was invaluable to me as the guy at the pointy end of "if you have questions ask your doctor".But also appreciate links to #music, #art, #photography, health equity and many other things #fedi22