Excerpt from Boiling Point by Ross Gelbspan, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Nor is the phenomenon limited to malaria.

According to Epstein, 'Dengue or 'breakbone' fever (a severe flu-like viral illness that sometimes causes fatal internal bleeding) is spreading as well. Today it afflicts an estimated 50 million to 100 million in the tropics and subtropics (mainly in urban areas and their surroundings). It has broadened its range in the Americas over the past ten years and had reached down to Buenos Aires by the end of the 1990s. It has also found its way to northern Australia. Neither a vaccine nor a specific drug treatment is yet available.'

Another insect that flourishes in a warmer world is the tick. In coastal New England--as well as in coastal areas in Scandinavia, researchers have documented a substantial increase in tick-borne Lyme disease. The reasons: The shorter and warmer winters in the northern temperate latitudes are no longer providing the deep, prolonged killing frosts that normally kill the ticks during the winter season.

The changes in the climate affect not only infectious diseases. They are also expected to trigger far more allergies among humans. One team of researchers found that a doubling of carbon dioxide levels--which is expected to occur after 2050--produced 61 percent more pollen than normal. This, in turn, strongly suggests more virulent allergies among current sufferers and new allergies for people who were previously unaffected.

And of course there are the direct effects of heat itself.

Two years ago, the World Meteorological Organization projected a doubling of heat-related deaths in the world's cities within twenty years. 'Heat waves are expected to become a major killer,' World Meteorological Organization secretary general Godwin Obasi said.

That projection turned prophetic in the summer of 2003. The final death toll of that summer's heat wave in Europe approached 35,000 fatalities, according to the Earth Policy Institute.

Part of the reason for the unusually high number of heat-related deaths--which also occurred in Chicago during a heat wave in 1996, when more than 800 people lost their lives--seems to involve more than rising temperatures. It also apparently reflects the fact that greenhouse gases trap in the heat during the nighttime, preventing the normal radiational cooling that allows heat-stressed bodies to recover from the high daytime temperatures.

From Boiling Point by Ross Gelbspan, pages 93-126 of the hardcover edition.  Reprinted with Permission from Basic Books – Copyright 2004.