Global warming is fueling the growth of plants, which means that allergy sufferers can expect more pollen, and in turn more sneezing and red, itchy eyes, according to a new report by CBS News.
Warming global temperatures mean “another tough season for allergy sufferers,” CBS warns, as “warm weather is arriving up to 20 days earlier this year in some places.”
In recent years, “climate change” has been blamed for myriad ills, including everything from a slump in coffee production to devastating hurricanes to a drop in the population of Hawaiian monk seals to the decimation of migratory songbirds and even colder winters.
Now, thanks to CBS, we know that peoples’ allergies would not be nearly as bad if fewer people drove SUVs.
“The climate and the weather has an impact on the start, the duration, and the intensity of allergy season,” Dr. Tara Narula told CBS This Morning on Friday. “With global warming, we know last year was one of the hottest on record, as well as increased carbon dioxide emissions. This all fuels the growth of plants, which means more pollen, earlier pollen, and pollen that stays around longer,” she added.
Dr. Tara Narula even went so far as to predict the concentration of pollen grains per cubic meter of air in the year 2040. Her answer? “Around 20,000.”
To combat global warming’s negative effects on allergies, Narula recommends starting anti-allergenic drugs earlier in the season.
“So about two weeks before the season starts you want to start taking either your over-the-counter meds or your prescription meds,” she said. “There are things like allergy shots and now sublingual medicines that you can take, immunotherapy.”
Anthropogenic climate change—the idea that human emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere are significantly driving global temperatures upwards—has become the convenient scapegoat for problems ranging from the mass deaths of reindeer to the creation of “ghost forests” along the U.S. Atlantic seaboard.
“I think ghost forests are the most obvious indicator of climate change anywhere on the Eastern coast of the U.S.,” said Matthew Kirwan, a professor at Virginia Institute of Marine Science who studies ghost forests. “It was dry, usable land 50 years ago; now it’s marshes with dead stumps and dead trees.”
Fortunately, amidst the ecological hysteria generated by global warming alarmists, rational voices can occasionally be heard.
A refreshingly sober essay by John Horgan in Scientific American last month counseled readers to “chill out” over the apocalyptic scenarios drawn up by climate change prophets of doom.
Horgan, the director of the Center for Science Writings at the Stevens Institute of Technology, explored two recent reports by “ecomodernists” who reject climate panic and frame the question of climate change and humanity’s ability to cope with it in radically new terms.
The reports urged people to reject climate “fatalism” and to regain some much-needed perspective on climate, both in the context of the overwhelming benefits of industrialization and in the ability of humanity to solve far worse problems than climate change.
In the meantime, you may want to stockpile your Allegra, Nasacort, and Neo-Synephrine. You never know when climate change will strike.
Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter Follow @tdwilliamsrome
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.