Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Dr. Willie Soon; Dr. Neelu Tummala, MD claims she can see the effects of climate change increasingly impacting the bodies of her patients.
What Climate Change Does to the Human Body
An ENT physician sees the effects in her patients all the time
By Neelu Tummala on August 29, 2020
…
I vividly remember a patient who came in late for her appointment during a July heat wave. When I walked in, she said, “I’m so sorry I’m late, I was up all night walking my grandbaby around the train station.” Without air conditioning at home, the child was sweating through her clothes in the heat of the night, putting her at risk for dehydration.
…
Heat affects every part of our body. It can lead to heat exhaustion, heat stroke, anxiety, impaired cognitive function and even premature death from heart and lung disease. Across the country, the health concerns of the climate crisis are increasingly being recognized, pushing thousands of medical providers—doctors, nurses, pharmacists, therapists, medical students—to become advocates for change.
In my own practice, I explain to patients how the climate crisis affects their health. For example, apart from contributing to global warming, rising carbon dioxide levels increase the amount of pollen that plants produce as a consequence of higher rates of photosynthesis. This rise in pollen levels can lead to worsening allergy symptoms. Another example is fine particulate matter (known as PM2.5) associated with air pollution, much of it linked to the burning of fossil fuels that help drive the warming. When we breathe in these particles, they travel down the airway and settle in the tiny air sacs called alveoli of the lungs, causing inflammation and potentially worsening asthma symptoms. The explanations are simple, but the health risks are widespread and complex. Ground-level ozone pollution, which is worse in hotter weather, can also harm people with asthma and other respiratory diseases.
…
Climate action is required of our elected leaders, and we must mandate it of ourselves. It can be as simple as educating family and friends, while making sustainable shopping and traveling choices.
…
Neelu Tummala, M.D., is an ENT doctor with George Washington Medical Faculty Associates and a climate advocate with a special interest in the intersection of climate and health. She is a Public Voices Fellow with The OpEd Project and the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. Follow her on Twitter @NeeluTummala.
Read more: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-climate-change-does-to-the-human-body/
As someone who suffers severe asthma I am outraged when a doctor lends the weight of their professional qualifications to such sweeping and in my opinion grossly misleading generalisations.
Warmer temperatures would help many asthmatics. Different asthmatics have different triggers. My biggest trigger is dry cold winter air mixed with smoke emitted by people trying to keep warm, which is one of the main reasons I moved to the edge of the tropics. Warm, moist tropical air for me is just like one of those steam vaporiser masks, it helps control my symptoms. No matter how extreme the heatwave I do just fine, so long as the air is humid.
Humans have far greater capacity to handle heat than most people realise. Our ancestors evolved in the extreme tropics, many anthropologists believe our ancestors survived by persistence hunting, using our superior ability to handle extreme tropical heat to run prey into the ground – a tradition still practiced by some remote tribes. Anywhere outside the extreme tropical zone where we evolved, we have to wear clothes to stay warm. If you feel too warm, give your body’s superb heat management system a chance, drink lots of water and remove items of your cold climate clothes until you feel comfortable.
I have no doubt Dr. Tummala sometimes sees patients suffering heat stress or suffering the effects of pollution triggered asthma. But to blame all this on climate change, and to suggest a warming planet would be certain to make it worse is just absurd.
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Neelu Tummala is a full on climate change activist who has decided to ascribe any of her patients worsening conditions to an increase in CO² in the air. She isn’t bothered it would seem about using their private medical problems to invent stories that bolster her own political agenda.
Monday, September 23, 2019 Sierra club article:
“Dr. Neelu Tummala with the Virginia Clinicians for Climate Action discussed the many health consequences of climate change and fossil fuel pollution. Dr. Tummala told a story of one of her first patients, a 14 year-old boy who she described as “one of the many faces of the climate crisis.” Due to worsening asthma, Michael had to give up his passion of playing soccer, and leave a team that was central to his identity and social belonging as a teenager.”
This is her activist group website:
https://states.ms2ch.org/va/virginia-clinicians-for-climate-action/
She could roll out articles like this every week:
Are seasonal allergies getting worse? Blame climate change
The Times-Tribune 16 Aug 2020 BY NEELU TUMMALA
https://blogs.gwu.edu/himmelfarb/2020/05/13/climate-change-and-communication-what-do-they-have-to-do-with-medicine/
I see the doc reckons CO2 is causing far too many pesky plants for humans own good-
https://www.pressreader.com/usa/the-tribune-slo/20200811/281698322100478
Careful doc as the watermelons have a nasty habit of turning on you.
I am not worried about watermelons, but prickly pears are another story1
Just more Green Porn for the addicts
I live in the North, the climate changes every year. It is called winter and summer, and yet people here not only survive, they they thrive and repopulate.
Another candidate for the intellectual Darwin Awards.
I, too, can see evidence of Climate Change related illness every time I read an article which makes such risible conclusions, I suggest the author seeks urgent psychiatric help.
To paraphrase Winston “Never in the field of human newspeak has so much been so falsely linked to so little”
Some information for Dr. Neelu Tummala:
There are 2 simple yes/no questions that NO Alarmist (including climate scientists) will answer. Can you guess why they won’t answer them?
Simple yes/no question 1 – Did humans evolve near Kenya, in Africa?
Simple yes/no question 2 – Should humans be able to tolerate temperatures similar to Kenya’s?
The obvious answers to these 2 simple questions, are Yes and Yes.
But no Alarmist can manage to say the answers. Can you see why?
The real absolute temperatures for Kenya (in degrees Celsius) are:
winter = 14.7
average = 21.5
summer = 29.1
Nice and warm !!!
The temperature in Kenya is almost always above 14.7 and the average is 21.5
Humans evolved in a hot country. And many humans migrated to colder countries. But we didn’t evolve in a cold country.
That is why humans can tolerate heat, better than they can tolerate cold.
==========
Over 2.5 billion people (1/3 of humans) live at an average temperature of 15.0 Celsius or lower.
This is more than 6.5 degrees Celsius LESS THAN the average temperature in Kenya.
This 1/3 of humans could warm by 6.5 degrees Celsius, and most of them would still be LESS THAN the average temperature in Kenya.
Are these people at risk from global warming?
Or are they at risk of freezing to death?
Alarmists ignore all of these people !!!
==========
There are many more interesting temperature facts on my website.
Dear Mr Worral
Remove clothes. Job done? For further suggestions watch In the Heat of the Night:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061811/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_1
Born and brought up in the tropics, my night attire was underpants and a single sheet (optional). No air-conditioning or fan, just open windows and doors.
When helping with hay making one sunny summer I had a face cloth liberally soaked with water on my head under a straw hat.
Recent days in the 90’s (UK) have been bliss: not having to work in it helped.
DP
What she saw was the health effects of expensive or scarce energy. If people can afford to buy and use a small window AC unit, a heat wave is not threatening, only uncomfortable.
My middle son suffered from childhood asthma. He had two severe attacks every year, along with normal attacks at other times. The major attacks were in May, around the time of the FA Cup Final, and the other on my dad’s birthday the 19th of September. I don’t know what the trigger was for either possibly pollen in May and fungi spores in autumn
Makes it sweat or shiver?
She appears to suffer from a rather severe case of climatardia, which causes people to spout all manner of nonsense about climate. I think there are drugs for that, and perhaps counseling would help. At minimum, she owes that much to her
victimspatients.Climate change causing her eyes to bug out?
Risus abundat in ore stultorum
There are hucksters in all disciplines. I have met plenty of scientists who are simply hustlers, generally activists; also M.D.s, DDS, and hucksterism isn’t unknown among engineers. We don’t even need to mention lawyers or educators.
Anyone who takes advice of professionals without a degree of skeptism and a little independent research or perhaps a second opinion, is just asking for trouble.
Scary eyes. Reminds me of AOC.
This is what an 8+ year University education has produced.
Ho hum
Another Sc Am article .
“she can see the effects of climate change increasingly impacting the bodies of her patients”
Let me fix that.
We can see the effects of FEAR OF climate change increasingly impacting their BRAINS.
Psycho. Call it the Greta Syndrome. There must be a good paper in that.
Penrith is 50km west of Sydney (NSW, Australia). The coastal temperatures are more moderate compared to the foot of the Blue Mountains (eg. Camden, Penrith, Richmond). These western Sydney areas can be 10C warmer on the hottest summer days and upto 10C colder overnight in winter. People move house and move states all the time with little concern with the different climates. Plants & animals seem to cope with a wide range of climate across where they live (different growth but far better than expected). Shading from another tree or building, slope, rock, soil, water runoff are just as important to the perceived climate.
I could move 25km and mitigate the potential of 100 years of a warmer climate. You could stop population growth in Sydney: 25% population growth = everyone has to use 80% of the water per person per year compared to baseline. I could save about 50% of my heating+cooling if our house was on the coast. They build more homes out west with no insulation in the walls & no 2+ layer glass and they wonder why we use more power than coastal locations with better climates!
tygrus
Local climate conditions may mean that you can negate 100 years of global warming by moving just 25 km. But in general, you must move further than that. More like 200 to 300 km. And it depends on the latitude that you live at.
If you live in Sydney (New South Wales, Australia), latitude about 34S, then you would need to move a little under 250 km towards the South Pole to negate 1 degrees Celsius of global warming.
I have used real temperature data from 36,000 locations all over the Earth, to answer the question of how far a person would need to move towards the nearest Pole to reverse one degree Celsius of global warming.
There is even a nice graph showing how the distance varies with latitude. The article can be found here:
https://agree-to-disagree.com/how-far-to-reverse-global-warming
Can she truly be that vapid?its scary as hell to think some whack job like this could affect your life through medical practice and I mean practice
Dr. Neelu Tummala is obviously not fully aware of the dangers that increased temperatures pose to humans. It is far worse than she thinks.
The IPCC has issued an urgent travel warning. Many people are foolishly travelling to countries which have an average temperature which is more than 2 degrees Celsius warmer than their home country.
This is highly dangerous, and could result in the deaths of millions of people.
The IPCC suggests that people limit their travel to countries which have an average temperature which is less than 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than their home country.
Scientists have proved that travel and temperatures are more dangerous than smoking 60 cigarettes a day, for 50 years. It is safer to stay at home, and take up smoking, than it is to go travelling in warmer countries.
To ensure your personal temperature safety, the IPCC has emitted the following travel regulations. Travel will be limited to “safe” country groups. This means that travel may only take place between a country, and the other countries that are in the same temperature safety group.
For full details please read the following article:
https://agree-to-disagree.com/global-warming-travel-warning
I searched the GW Medical Faculty Associates web site staff listings and found no mention of this person. Is she even really an MD at all?
OK – she is there, but listed as “Neelima;” guess “Neelu” is “for short.” She actually seems to have degrees and residencies from American medical schools, in case anyone wondered. No climate training in any obvious way.
The ‘climate change effect’ on the human body starts in the brain with a throbbing pain caused by agenda/advocacy science assaults on the senses. It then spreads to the oral cavity and anal region. Finally, short-term memory is triggered when we recall that we saw the same deception efforts used the prior day and the day before that.