Global Warming Will Kill the Children

Samuel Johnson once stated that "patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel". I'm beginning to think there's a new refuge - claiming that we must do something "for the children". San Fran Nan stated that the Congress would be run "for our children", and now we're told that global warming will increase fevers in our children (so of course, we must do something about it):

GLOBAL warming will take a toll on children's health, according to a new report showing hospital admissions for fever soar as days get hotter.

The new study found that temperature rises had a significant impact on the number of pre-schoolers presenting to emergency departments for fever and gastroenteritis.
The two-year study at a major children's hospital showed that for every five-degree rise in temperature two more children under six years old were admitted with fever to that hospital.

The University of Sydney research is the first to make a solid link between climate changes and childhood illness.

"And now global warming is becoming more apparent, it is highly likely an increasing number of young children will be turning up at hospital departments with these kinds of common illnesses," said researcher Lawrence Lam, a paediatrics specialist.

"It really demonstrates the urgent need for a more thorough investigation into how exactly climate change will affect health in childhood."

So, based on this, it must be extremely dangerous to be a child in Las Vegas where temperatures are regularly over 100 for months at a time...or Palm Springs...or Phoenix. And yet, I don't remember any legislation requiring children to be removed from those cities during the summer. Apparently, children are able to acclimate themselves to hot weather.

Oh, but wait! There's a glimmer of good news in the report:

Surprisingly, rates of gastroenteritis were lower on days with a high UV factor probably, says Dr Lam, because the rays "sterilised" the ground, killing more germs and reducing risk.

That's probably the first time I can remember reading any possible positive effect of global warming in a scare article. I'll bet the writer gets a lot of hate mail from the warmies.