LatinaLista — By now, pretty much everyone agrees that Global Warming is a fact and not some left-wing, liberal propaganda story.
Global Warming temperature changes
(Source: nasa.gov)
Winters are getting colder, spring weather brings more violent showers and we know, global warming or not, summer is a killer with its high temperatures.
In fact, summer is the time of year when most undocumented immigrants crossing by foot through the Arizona desert are most likely to die of the heat.
That’s a no-brainer but we now know that when temperatures reach 104 degrees in the desert, there’s a 50% chance of death for undocumented immigrants.
Dr. Samuel Keim, an emergency-room physician in Arizona, has created a scientific index to predict the likelihood of death from walking through the Arizona desert during extreme heat conditions.
Dr. Samuel Keim
(Source: media.bonner.net)
Keim matched heatstroke victims with dates of death and desert temperatures using data collected between 2002 and 2006 by the medical examiner’s office in Pima County.
Keim, an associate professor at the University of Arizona and an emergency room physician in Tucson, said in recent years more than 100 adult male immigrants have died of heatstroke annually in Pima County.
Dr. Keim wants to start issuing daily forecasts starting in May but he hasn’t figured yet how to release the information or to whom so that it gets to the people it’s supposed to help.
Unbelievably, not even the prospect of preventing needless deaths is enough to attract the kind of help Dr. Keim needs from various organizations. It seems too many organizations are skittish to get involved, no matter in what capacity, for fear of getting caught in the middle of the immigration debate.
Obviously, Dr, Keim needs to release the information in Mexico and in those border towns where the migrants congregate as they gather up their courage and their resources to cross into the United States.
Yet, as we already know, desperate people pay little attention to the risks they take with their lives as they search for something better.
Which means that a strong campaign to get people to take the Dr.’s forecasts seriously must be undertaken before the triple digit heat begins — which most probably will be sooner than later.
