Discussion of public health and health care policy, from a public health perspective. The U.S. spends more on medical services than any other country, but we get less for it. Major reasons include lack of universal access, unequal treatment, and underinvestment in public health and social welfare. We will critically examine the economics, politics and sociology of health and illness in the U.S. and the world.
Wednesday, August 17, 2016
Fat Al told you so
With California burning and Louisiana drowning, NASA informs us that we've just lived through the hottest month in recorded history. If you go to the last link, to Joe Romm's blog, you'll see a graphic that ought to terrify you.
What appears to be happening is a long-anticipated step up in global temperature -- with 2016 landing close to .2 degrees centigrade hotter than last year, which was already the all-time hottest year by a lot. The Middle East is literally becoming uninhabitable -- Baghdad has had temperatures above 109 Fahrenheit every day since June 19, and other places in the region are even hotter. In case you didn't know, the collapse of agriculture in Syria due to climate change was the main reason why Syrian society disintegrated, leading to the greatest humanitarian catastrophe since WWII.
One of the presidential candidates says this is not actually happening, it's a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. The other one never mentions it. It is the single most important thing that is happening on earth.
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