2/19
- Warmth 'will kill millions'
2/6
- Orangutan population decline in Indonesia
Saturday, 19 February, 2000, 16:05 GMT
Warmth 'will kill millions'
Death by global warming could
become a reality in the very near
future, some ecologists have warned.
Although coroners will not write it
officially on a death certificate, these
scientists predict global warming will
be an ultimate cause of death as
millions succumb to disease in an
increasingly unhealthy environment.
David Pimentel, a
professor in
ecology at Cornell
University in
America, said
global warming
would create a
favourable climate
for disease-causing
organisms and
food-plant pests.
He told the annual meeting of the
American Association for the
Advancement of Science (AAAS) in
Washington: "Right now the evidence
of significant global climate change is
minimal, but there are already
noticeable increases in human
diseases worldwide."
Marginal change
His comments were echoed by Tony
McMichael, professor of epidemiology
at the London School of Hygiene and
Tropical Medicine.
He said: "Global
warming has
already caused a
marginal change in
the last decade.
"We are getting
into an unfamiliar
and hazardous
world."
Professor
McMichael said
diseases that
breed in warm and
wet conditions were likely to become
more prevalent in the next 20 years.
There was the potential for disease
epidemics such as malaria and
Dengue fever - and rates of diarrhoea
and food poisoning were also likely to
rise dramatically.
Surveillance systems
Professor McMichael said action had
to be taken now in a bid slow down
global warming.
He said research
into how global
climates affect
human diseases
should be made a
priority.
And more
surveillance systems, which aim to
help combat future problems, should
be set up.
Surveillance systems have recently
been set up in Africa and have meant
preventative measures, such as
public health defences including
vaccinations and mosquito nets,
could be given out ahead of a
predicted disease outbreak.
Familiar hype
There will be some scientists who will
recognise what they regard as the
familiar global warming hype in the
ecologists' comments
There is a sizeable group of
researchers who do not accept that
the Earth is going through a period of
dramatic warming
They point to the inconsistencies in
the temperature records over the last
century, and in particular the data
measured from space which shows no
warming trend in recent times at all.
These scientists are also critical of
the computer models which are used
to project future climate change
arguing that they are based on poorly
understood phenomena such as cloud
formation and the movement of heat
through the oceans - complex
processes that cannot be
satisfactorily reproduced by current
technology.
They regard the sort of concern
expressed at the AAAS meeting to be
unnecessarily dramatic.
BBC 2/6/00
Sunday, 6 February, 2000, 13:18 GMT
Orangutan population
decline in Indonesia
The Indonesian state news agency
says the population of orang-utans in
Indonesian Borneo has dropped by
about a third in the last three years.
The agency said the main reason was
the destruction of the orang-utans¿
habitat when fires destroyed
hundreds of square kilometres of
forest in Kalimantan in 1997.
It said fewer than twenty thousand of
the animals now remained in the
region.
The head of an orang-utan
rehabilitation project in East
Kalimantan province said many of
them could be found wandering
outside their habitat.
She said some strayed into
residential areas, where they were
often caught or killed by villagers.
From the newsroom of the BBC World
Service