Global warming: enough to make you sick

[Corporate Avenger]

Rising temperatures are redistributing bacteria, insects and plants, exposing people to diseases they'd never encountered before.


CORDOVA, ALASKA — Oysterman Jim Aguiar had never had to deal with the bacterium Vibrio parahaemolyticus in his 25 years working the frigid waters of Prince William Sound.

The dangerous microbe infected seafood in warmer waters, like the Gulf of Mexico. Alaska was way too cold.

But the sound was gradually warming. By summer 2004, the temperature had risen just enough to poke above the crucial 59-degree mark. Cruise ship passengers who had eaten local oysters were soon coming down with diarrhea, cramping and vomiting — the first cases of Vibrio food poisoning in Alaska that anyone could remember.

"We were slapped from left field," said Aguiar, who shut down his oyster farm that year along with a few others.

As scientists later determined, the culprit was not just the bacterium, but the warming that allowed it to proliferate.

"This was probably the best example to date of how global climate change is changing the importation of infectious diseases," said Dr. Joe McLaughlin, acting chief of epidemiology at the Alaska Division of Public Health, who published a study on the outbreak.

The spread of human disease has become one of the most worrisome subplots in the story of global warming. Incremental temperature changes have begun to redraw the distribution of bacteria, insects and plants, exposing new populations to diseases that they have never seen before.

A report from the World Health Organization estimated that in 2000 about 154,000 deaths around the world could be attributed to disease outbreaks and other conditions sparked by climate change.

The temperature change has been small, about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit over the last 150 years, but it has been enough to alter disease patterns across the globe.

In Sweden, fewer winter days below 10 degrees and more summer days above 50 degrees have encouraged the northward movement of ticks, which has coincided with an increase in cases of tick-borne encephalitis since the 1980s.

Researchers have found that poison ivy has grown more potent and lush because of increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

In Africa, mosquitoes have been slowly inching up the slopes around Mt. Kenya, bringing malaria to high villages that had never been exposed before.

"It's going to get very warm," said Andrew Githeko, a vector biologist who heads the Climate and Human Health Research Unit at the Kenya Medical Research Institute in Kisumu. "That's going to mean a huge difference to malaria."

Githeko, 49, grew up in the central highlands in a tiny village near the town of Karatina, about 5,700 feet above sea level.

His home was different from most of Africa. The air was damp and chilly. On clear days, he could see the glaciers on Mt. Kenya, the second-highest peak in Africa at 17,058 feet.

When he was a child, lowland diseases like malaria were unknown in Karatina. But perhaps 10 years ago, a smattering of cases began to appear.

He had long ago left his home to study the great plagues of Africa — Rift Valley fever, malaria, cholera and others. The appearance of malaria in the highlands, however, was a mystery worth returning home for.

Githeko dispatched a colleague to collect mosquito larvae in puddles and streams around Mt. Kenya, some as high as 6,300 feet. Tests later identified some of the mosquitoes as Anopheles arabiensis, one of the species that carry malaria.

Githeko's findings, published in 2006, marked the highest A. arabiensis breeding site ever recorded in Kenya and was the first published report of malaria infections in the central highlands, he said.

He knew by watching Mt. Kenya's gradually disappearing glaciers that his world was warming, and that lowland diseases would eventually work their way higher. "But we did not expect this to happen so soon," he said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/...home-headlines



Here is a quote from a person who believes in fairy tales, but not proven science, this is the disgusting level of ignorance we face in dealing with this problem...

So, I thank God for global warming. I like hot weather, and if the earth warms up a degree or two, and the climate of MD becomes like that of Georgia, I'll be very happy about it.

Insanity, whatever nonsense is put out by big oil is Gospel to these kind of people.. The hurricane party mentality is alive and well..

If only karma worked in a way that the Ostriches were the only beings affected by global warming.. I'm sure they'll soon muck up this thread with their usual bullshit as well.. Probably some inane gibberish about Al Gore..

[Betrade]

Originally Posted by Corporate Avenger

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/...home-headlines



Here is a quote from a person who believes in fairy tales, but not proven science, this is the disgusting level of ignorance we face in dealing with this problem...





Insanity, whatever nonsense is put out by big oil is Gospel to these kind of people.. The hurricane party mentality is alive and well..

If only karma worked in a way that the Ostriches were the only beings affected by global warming.. I'm sure they'll soon muck up this thread with their usual bullshit as well.. Probably some inane gibberish about Al Gore..

I've said over and over that I acknowledge the slight climactic warming that's been recorded over the last 100 + years (roughly 1.4.degrees farenheit). That's well known. It's no revelation.

But, I'm still waiting for you, or anyone else to prove that humans are completely responsible for it. The truth is, you can't, or you already would have.

And this palnet has warmed, and cooled, lots of times. We're still here.

There's also the fact that bacteria, viruses and microbes show upin all kinds of places by different means. Some even believe they could be living on Europa for that matter. So bacteria turning up where they haven't been recently does not prove that humans are warming the earth. All that it rpoves is the presence of a particular bacteria.

Oh, and I don't read anything put out by "big oil", or worship any corporations, but as usual, you're displaying your complete ignorance of who I am and what I believe. You should really break that habit of being so presumptuous.



Oh, and i do like warm weather. Up until about three weeks ago, this one of the warmest winters we've had in a few years. It's been great, and everyone I know was thankful for it. No shoveling snow, no scraping the windshield every morning or any other annoyance brought on by cold weather.

Then it got cold. Batteries were dying, cars were stalled along the roads, power lines went down because of the weight of the ice, etc. Cold weather is a pain in the ass, and i don't care one bit if the temperature rises another degree or two, because eventually, it will drop again anyway, as it always has. Remember, the last ice age was by no means the first.

But, if you want to get in on the hysteria, go ahead. I don't care. If you want to live in fear, that's your business, but personally, I choose otherwise.



Florida was a pretty cold place at one time. Chicago was under glaciers. The great lakes exist because of glaciers. It was really cold, but then it got hotter. Why??? Did Exxon melt the ice???? No; nature did.

So prove to me that nature isn't at work now. I'll believe it when it's proven, but so far, it hasn't been.

[KanuckiStang]

Originally Posted by Betrade

But, I'm still waiting for you, or anyone else to prove that humans are completely responsible for it. The truth is, you can't, or you already would have.

Why are you looking for sole responsibility?

Do you not think that the tens of billions of tons of GHG emissions of all types -- methane, CO2 and others -- that are anthropogenically created or fostered will not add to whatever natural processes already occur?

Methane emissions in pre-industrial times were on the order of 300 million tons annually. Post-industrialization, it is 600-million tons. How do natural processes that, for eons, dealt with 300 MT/a emissions suddenly cope with a sustained doubling of methane emissions? We pump close to 8 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere via "non-natural" processes...how would you expect nature react to this?