Passover starts later this month.  Just in time, the U.S. Global Change Research Program has given us an updated list of plagues.  What’s fascinating is that the new list actually bears a certain similarity to the biblical list.

Why has the U.S. updated the list of plagues?  It’s actually part of a report on “The Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health in the United States:  A Scientific Assessment.”  What’s climate change going to do to us?  Instead of lice, flies, boils, and the like, we now have the following list:

• Temperature-related death and illness
• Poor air quality
• Extreme weather events
• Vector-borne diseases
• Water-related illness
• Problems with food safety
• Mental Illness

A prize will be offered for the reader who best correlates the traditional list with the new list.  All kidding aside, it makes for some sobering reading.  Climate change is not just about a few more hot days or the loss of some endangered species (not to suggest that a loss of biodiversity is not itself very important).

The full text of the report is here.

A more interactive version is here.