As the debate over rising health care costs reaches a fever pitch, Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) warns that “global warming is a medical emergency.” In a press teleconference unveiling a new report on the human cost of increased heat waves, PSR executive director Peter Wilk, M.D. described global warming as “one of the gravest health emergencies facing humanity today”:

Global warming is one of the gravest health emergencies facing humanity today. It’s life threatening, it’s affecting us now, and if we don’t take bold and effective action, it could dramatically affect how we life on earth.

“More Extreme Heat Waves: Global Warming’s Wake Up Call,” jointly issued by PSR and the National Wildlife Federation, explains that scientists have found that global boiling will disproportionately threaten the health of the very old and very young, as well as the poor and those who live in big cities: Read more

On Friday, National Wildlife Federation (NWF) climate scientist Amanda Staudt explained to viewers of KTBC-TV in Austin how Hurricane Ike is part of a new era of more destructive storms, fueled by global warming. She explained that we’ve seen an increase of about fifty percent in the destructive power of storms, even as we’ve let our infrastructure decay:

As a researcher who’s been looking at global warming and hurricanes for several years now, it’s really hard to see one of these big storms play out in real life my heart goes all to all the folks who are dealing with the effects right now. There’s definitely a contribution from global warming to the storm activity and the intensity of storms that we’ve seen over the last few decades and we expect to see in the coming century.

Watch it:

Hurricane Ike’s deadly path has claimed at least 31 lives in the United States from Texas to Indiana. It devastated the Caribbean, killing 61 people in Haiti, 57 of them in one town destroyed by floods from the storm.

NWF is leading efforts to help Americans connect the dots on the real and present threat of global warming, sounding a “Wake Up Call” this year on the Midwest floods, California wildfires, and tropical storms.

UPDATE: At the ThinkProgress mothership, Amanda Terkel notes that the “media is restricted from covering Hurricane Ike’s devastation.” Watch it:

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (R) has described Tropical Storm Fay as a “serious, catastrophic flooding event,” as it dumps “historic levels of rain with totals in excess of 20 inches already” in Brevard County. Fay is tracking over the entire state of Florida, devastating crops and causing hundreds of millions of dollars of damage. Jeff Masters tells Bloomberg that Fay is “reminiscent of Hurricane Irene,” which caused $800 million in damage less than ten years ago.

The National Wildlife Federation, which has been warning that global warming is worsening wildfires and floods, describes the triple threat of global warming-fueled tropical storms in a new report:

While Florida and Gulf Coast residents bear the brunt of Tropical Storm Fay, the latest science connecting hurricanes and global warming suggests more is yet to come: tropical storms are likely to bring higher wind speeds, more precipitation, and bigger storm surge in the coming decades.

Watch it:

As Dr. Staudt writes in the report, “Stronger hurricanes, heavier rainfall, and rising sea level: this is what global warming has in store for the U.S. Gulf and Atlantic coasts.”

Scientists are begging politicians to take action. Eight national scientific organizations are asking the next president — whoever it may be — to support $9 billion in new investments between 2010 and 2014 “for research and forecasting, saying about $2 trillion of U.S. economic output could be hurt by storms, floods and droughts.” The organizations — the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, The Weather Coalition, the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, the Consortium for Ocean Leadership, and the Alliance for Earth Observations — represent “thousands of experts in the public, private, and academic weather and climate enterprise.”

Across the United States and the rest of the planet, people are reeling from torrential rains: Read more

In the second report of its “Wake Up Call” series on global warming’s worsening of extreme weather, the National Wildlife Federation describes how the western United States has entered a new era of catastrophic wildfires, brought on by global warming, past forest management, and poor land development.

The frequency of large wildfires and the total area burned have been steadily increasing in the Western United States. Warmer springs and longer summer dry periods since the mid-1980s are linked to a four-fold increase in the number of major wildfires each year and a six-fold increase in the area of forest burned compared with the period between 1970 and 1986. The fire season stretches about 78 days longer and individual fires last about 30 days longer.

In a video, the National Wildlife Federation’s climate scientist, Amanda Staudt, describes how “global warming will increase the risk of wildfires.” Watch it:

Global warming increases wildfire risk in several ways. From the report, Increased Risk of Catastrophic Wildfires: Global Warming’s Wake-Up Call for the Western United States:

– Longer fire seasons will result as spring runoff occurs earlier, summer heat builds up more quickly, and warm conditions extend further into fall. Western forests typically become combustible within a month of when snowmelt finishes. Snowpack is now melting 1 to 4 weeks earlier than it did 50 years ago.

– Drier conditions will increase the probability of fire occurrence. Summertime temperatures in western North America are projected to be 3.6 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit higher by mid-century, enhancing evaporation rates, while precipitation is expected to decrease by up to 15 percent.

– More fuel for forest fires will become available because warmer and drier conditions are conducive to widespread beetle and other insect infestations, resulting in broad ranges of dead and highly combustible trees. Higher temperatures enhance winter survival of mountain pine beetles and allow for a more rapid lifecycle. At the same time, moderate drought
conditions for a year or longer can weaken trees, allowing bark beetles to overcome the trees’ defense mechanisms more easily.

– Increased frequency of lightning is expected as thunderstorms become more severe. In the western United States a 1.8 degree Fahrenheit increase in temperature is expected to lead to a 6 percent increase in lightning. This means that lightning in the region could increase by 12 to 30 percent by mid-century.

Not only is global warming worsening wildfires (despite Joel Achenbach’s protestations), but catastrophic wildfires are hastening global warming, by rapidly releasing carbon it took the forests decades, even centuries, to store:

In recent years, fires in the western United States have released carbon dioxide into the atmosphere equivalent to about 11 percent of their annual fossil fuel emissions. In some Western states a fire spanning over just a couple months can emit nearly as much carbon dioxide as its total annual fossil fuel emissions.

This vicious cycle is one of many dangerous experiments humanity is running on its only planet through unmoderated pollution. Recent scientific reports have discussed how oceanic dead zones caused by fertilizer runoff and air pollution have reached catastrophic levels. Atmospheric oxygen is declining, reaching hazardous lows in urban centers. And rapidly declining arctic sea ice is leading to permafrost melt, which has kept frozen thirty percent of all soil-based carbon for hundreds of thousands of years.