Dengue fever: Entire world’s population to be at risk, climate change to blame

A billion more people will be newly exposed to mosquito-borne diseases like dengue fever as global warming hits its stride over the next 60 years, according to modelling by US researchers.

Aedes aegypti, the mosquito that carries dengue, chikungunya,
Zika viruses, coming to a warming neighbourhood near you

The research team led by Sadie J. Ryan of the University of Florida, and global change biologist Dr Colin J. Carlson at Georgetown University, studied what would happen if the two most common disease-carrying mosquitoes – Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus – spread to places that become warmer and more humid with climate change.

The net result is that most of the world’s population will become vulnerable to infection – either sporadically or seasonally – by the dengue, chikungunya and Zika viruses between now and 2080.

Read the story The New Daily by John Elder - “Dengue fever: Entire world’s population to be at risk, climate change to blame.”

Renewables will give more people access to electricity than coal, says IEA

Around the world, more than a billion people still lack access to electricity.

This number is shrinking, down by one third since 2000, despite rising population levels, according to an International Energy Agency (IEA) special report on energy access, published today.

The report says that while coal has supplied nearly half of the progress from 2000 to date, its role is set to decline “dramatically”. This is because renewables are becoming cheaper and because the hardest-to-reach people are in remote, rural areas where off-grid solutions offer the lowest cost.

The report shows the number of people without access to electricity will shrink by another third by 2030, with 60% of these gains supplied by renewables. Furthermore, if the world commits to providing universal access by 2030, then renewables would bridge 90% of the remaining gap, the IEA says.

Read the CarbonBrief story - “Renewables will give more people access to electricity than coal, says IEA.”

What will it 'cost' before the world takes notice?

How “much” will it take to have people take notice of climate change?

The cost of dealing with global warming in terms of lives lost and injury, the replacement and repair of damage houses and other buildings and the replacement or repair of infrastructure nearly broke $200 billion in 2012.

However, that doesn’t appear to be enough as the climate change skeptics still strut around the world declaring all is well, and for them, and for the moment, it is.

The alarming mounting costs of climate change are discussed in Climateprogress story headed: “Global damage from extreme weather and other disasters set to break $200 billion a year”.