The title seemed pretty unambiguous:
“Study on connection between global warming and eye health”
How odd? How, I wondered could the minuscule changes in global temperature be linked to eye health. Perhaps it was the outbreak of some deadly eye eating bacteria? A well known medical phenomena whereby millions of people just spontaneous loose their sight if the temperature warms? Swarms of flies, poisonous frogs jumping over slumbering villagers, vampire bats homing in on eyes? No the clue was literally the first sentence of the article:
“NEW DELHI: Are rising temperatures and increased ultraviolet radiation making more and more Indians suffer from serious eye diseases?” (The Times of India)
Yes! That’s right, the original study was actually on UV radiation and the well known medical effects like cataracts, but that wasn’t enough for the Times of India (which seems to be having the same field day on global warming mis-mann-agement as did the Western papers a few years ago). The aims of the study were very clear:
“From March, trained staff will go from house to house in randomly chosen community clusters in Delhi, NCR region and Guwahati and fill up a questionnaire to find out how much time people spend in the sun, whether they wear any eye protection, whether they have any eye problem and for how long have they been suffering from it. These people will then be screened for eye diseases and the data recorded.”
It was purely and simply a study on the effects of UV radiation, but somehow in the eco-propagandists at the Indian times that has to be linked to Global warming so it goes on to say.
“Experts say the study will quantify the effect of environmental factors and temperature changes like UV-B radiation”
What? “Temperatures changes like UV-B radiation”? Have they gone barking mad or have I missed a major piece of research showing that “global warming” is also causing a thinning of the ozone layer (now that’s a scare we haven’t heard much of recently). If anything, the reduction in the size of the Ozone hole might just conceivably be a cause of a small change in global temperature but not the other way around.
