Is there *any* disaster which climate change can’t make worse?
About three days ago I tweeted this:
Waiting for the inevitable opportunistic BS story that #EbolaOutbreak is a result of climate change.
— Watts Up With That (@wattsupwiththat) August 4, 2014
Eric Worrall writes:
The Washington Post has in my opinion stooped to a new low, by trying to tie the ongoing Ebola misery in Africa to the issue of Climate Change. According to the Post;
“A 2002 study published in the journal of Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing found that sudden shifts from dry to wet conditions were associated with Ebola outbreaks from 1994 to 1996 in tropical Africa.
As the globe warms, precipitation extremes are projected to increase. Periods of drought are expected to become more frequent in some areas while heavy rain events, when the occur, are forecast to become more intense. Presumably, those areas which see precipitation variability increases – with abrupt shifts from extremely dry to extremely wet periods – would be most vulnerable to Ebola outbreaks.” (h/t Breitbart)
Ebola is a horrible disease which is ravaging the poorest people of Africa. The new outbreak, which has demonstrated a frightening ability to spread to new victims, and to infect and kill health workers, may yet become the new global plague we all fear – with every new victim, Ebola improves its ability to strike at our vulnerabilities. We are all at risk.
To try to tie this continent wide tragedy to the promotion of global warming alarm, to exploit a catastrophe which is afflicting the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world, and to play on people’s deepest fears, to advance an unrelated political position, is in my opinion a new and disgusting low point in the current standards of what passes for mainstream journalism.
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We have a winner.
Michael Fumento’s opinion piece:
http://nypost.com/2014/08/05/why-ebolas-nothing-to-worry-about/
“We’re now witnessing the worst Ebola epidemic ever — and on your list of worries it belongs . . . nowhere.
Here’s a rule of thumb about diseases: The rarer and less likely they are to kill you, the more hype they get. The New York Times ran more than 2,000 articles on SARS, which ultimately killed zero Americans.
This is only the deadliest outbreak of Ebola virus disease because past ones were so tiny. At this writing, there have been 1,603 reported cases in Africa and 887 deaths.”
And the word “Extreme” appears (in various forms) 3 times in one paragraph so we know it must be CO2 related because CO2 NEVER causes anything that is less than extreme.
“CO2 NEVER causes anything that is less than extreme.”
Can’t CO2 cause extremely average weather?
Good catch Anthony:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2014/08/05/will-climate-change-worsen-ebola-outbreaks/
Ah, so it’s not linked to poor education and lack of understanding of transmission of disease amongst the local population then. Not that education standards would benefit from economic growth based on fossil fuels, of course.
Michael Mann is bad, the Washington Post is worse.
Also in the paper from 2002:
“Our analysis is limited by only having one Ebola
hemorrhagic fever outbreak during our period of study.
http://www.asprs.org/PE-RS-Journals-2002/PE-RS-February-2002.html
Surely Eric knows better — who here was not expecting exactly this story?
This example of climate scaremongering is not unprecedented; it falls within the natural variations of slimy journalism.
My knee hurts when the barometer is falling and a storm is coming. I am a victim of “weather change”, but “climate change” is so often used to explain just about any problem that “climate change” should apply to my problem too.
Today I’m applying for aid as a climate change victim from Tom Steyer’s new ‘climate victim fund’.
I plan to ask for $500,000, but would be willing to settle for $50 a day for the rest of my life.
The fact that so many humans could be convinced to fear a climate catastrophe based on a tiny change in the average temperature over 150 years, and computer game wild guesses about the future climate from climate astrologers, is the ultimate comedy.
Extreme ebogosity.
“a new and disgusting low point in the current standards of what passes for mainstream journalism.”
Have they ever had any? My opinion of the press is that they are always at a low & disgusting point! Perhaps it’s just me!
I think it was only a matter of time before somebody somewhere linked some illness to AGW! Trouble is, the number of malaria cases doesn’t seem to be making headlines, perhaps because they’re not rising significantly or at all!
Not the ultimate comedy, the ultimate tragedy , pointing directly to the dumbing down of our education system.
The Journal of Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing? Now there’s a real mainstream media publication for you! One can’t help be wonder how much the editors at WaPo had to dig to find that paper. They obviously decided that the link between climate change and Ebola MUST have been made somewhere, so they finally found it in a twelve year old issue of a very obscure publication. It would be laughable if it wasn’t pathetic. Idiots.
BTW, what are photogrammetric engineering and remote sensing anyway?
photogrammetric engineering and remote sensing – taking pictures to help draw maps. Very climate related!
Climate change sells newspapers, and Ebola sells newspapers, so together they REALLY sell a lot of papers!
“Can’t CO2 cause extremely average weather?”
Heretic!
Can’t CO2 cause dangerously extreme average weather?
If it is cause and effect, should they not wait for the cause to exist beyond computer models before linking it to reality? If there was a virtual Ebola pandemic in the model space I could accept that, but this sounds like a chimera event and hence, unlikely.
I doubt any skeptic can listen to this entire program of the “Aspen Ideas Festival: Solving the Carbon Problem Together” and not have your head explode.
http://www.mprnews.org/story/2014/08/06/mpr_news_presents
And to acknowledge proper science, variations in rainfall do contribute to viral outbreaks. The unusually dry conditions in 1993 intensified the hantavirus outbreak in the “Four Corners” region of the US (where Arizona, Colorado, Idaho and New Mexico come together). The hantavirus was aerosolized from mouse droppings, so the dry conditions increased transmission.
But I don’t know whether the study linking rainfall variations to Ebola outbreaks has any validity, and I have zero confidence in the increasing “climate extremes” claim.
“If you don’t read the newspaper you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed.”
(Mark Twain)
Ebola is comparable in many ways to rabies, except that rabies is far more lethal and kills many thousands every year in Africa and Asia. It typically kills several people in US-Canada every year.
– Rabies widespread nature in African dog populations results in about >20% turnover of that population every year, bringing new naive hosts to maintain the virus reservoir. Rabies is >99% lethal once symptoms appear in a human victim. It is found in wild animal populations throughout temperate North America.
– Rabies is transmitted by contact with bodily fluids, usually saliva in a bite wound, but mucosal contact (eyes, nose) transmissions have been documented.
– Rabies has been around thousands of years, long before any possibility of man’s impact on climate. That is not to say that changes in regional climate does not affect dispersal of reservoir animal populations.
– Putting “Climate Change impacts” in an Ebola study grant proposal would simply be dishonest.
So…the message is clear
Don’t farm, it will raise you CO2 footprint….
….eat more bush meat
This outbreak is God’s wrath against sinners.
Okay, WP: prove it’s not.
Paul says at August 7, 2014 at 7:21 am
I’m not convinced about climate change selling papers.
“…the “Four Corners” region of the US (where Arizona, Colorado, Idaho and New Mexico come together).”
That should be Arizona, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico.