Was it warmer in Virginia in 1781 than it is today, or has our capacity to cope been enhanced? In fact, climate does not determine our well-being. Unfortunately, climate change policies might, and for the worse.
H/T and comment above: Indur Goklany
From: The Washington Post
By J.R. McNeill
Monday, October 18, 2010; 3:57 PM
Major combat operations in the American Revolution ended 229 years ago on Oct. 19, at Yorktown. For that we can thank the fortitude of American forces under George Washington, the siegecraft of French troops of Gen. Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, the count of Rochambeau – and the relentless bloodthirstiness of female Anopheles quadrimaculatus mosquitoes.
Those tiny amazons conducted covert biological warfare against the British army. Female mosquitoes seek mammalian blood to provide the proteins they need to make eggs. No blood meal, no reproduction. It makes them bold and determined to bite.
Some anopheles mosquitoes carry the malaria parasite, which they can inject into human bloodstreams when taking their meals. In eastern North America, A. quadrimaculatus was the sole important malaria vector. It carried malaria from person to person, and susceptible humans carried it from mosquito to mosquito. In the 18th century, no one suspected that mosquitoes carried diseases.
Malaria, still one of the most deadly infectious diseases in the world, was a widespread scourge in North America until little more than a century ago. The only people resistant to it were either those of African descent – many of whom had inherited genetic traits that blocked malaria from doing its worst – or folks who had already been infected many times, acquiring resistance the hard way. In general, the more bouts you survive, the more resistant you are.
Mosquito Fact: There would have been no western partition of Africa in the nineteenth century without the discovery of quinine (and development of the machine gun.) No aims w/out means…
Fiction: Remember the collapse of the invaders in ‘War of the Worlds’ They came that close 🙂 but we were saved by some bug.
Here are some interesting points and issues surrounding the ‘tropical disease’ Malaria:
Malaria is thought to have originated in West Africa.
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History of Malaria
“…Those tiny amazons conducted covert biological warfare against the British army.”
WOW!!! It’s amaizing to learn how the American & French forces trained those “tiny amazons” to only bite the British forces & *not* the American & French personel…eh? 😉
Richard Courtney
“….there are six records of Eskimos landing their kayaks in Scotland,…”
I have read articles that have claimed that eskimos came to Scotland in their kayaks during the Little Ice Age but I have never been able to find any verifiable evidence to support such claims. If you know of verifiable evidence that eskimos did indeed arrive in Scotland during the LIA then could you please supply it as I would like to pursue it further.
Thanks
M Le Judge
On the subject of nature’s indicators of warmth, or otherwise, Berwick Swans have started to arrive in the UK, 3 weeks earlier than usual, 2 weeks earlier than last year.
If that’s an indicator of the winter to come, I’d better get some more wood cut!
Update:
On my last comment the quote
http://pmj.bmj.com/content/80/949/663.full
“In order to be fully aware of the evil that can be inflicted by the Scots midge, you’d need to see a caravan or camping park cleared of outside pursuits within minutes of the midge arriving in the early evening. It’s really quite spectacular.”
Indeed I have witnessed such a thing, and been one of the victims who had to take refuge inside a caravan. Those midgies (of whatever origin) are truly evil.
My last Holiday in a bothy on Skye was reduced to only 3 days of outdoor activity. The rest of the Holiday I was cooped up inside for the wee beastly midgies.
On a trip to the high Canadian Arctic in 2000 our party were badly bitten by savage mosquitoes. Fortunately I had a midgie net ( purchased in Scotland ) & my face was protected but the b—–s still managed to get between my gloves & cuffs.
BTW on this trip we visited the remains of a tropical swamp on Axel Heiborg island. Early evidence of Global Warming?
Richard S Courtney says:
October 19, 2010 at 3:46 am
I point out that in the American War of Independence the Americans lost every battle without exception.
NOT SO!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I don’t think Saratoga, Trenton, Cowpens, Kings Mountain, and Yorktown were classified as losses.
Funny stuff, we can debate how us Americans won independence. It could be the mosquitoes, maybe it was the French and Germans that won it for us. But I believe England’s very own William Pitt the elder who articulated why and how we won our independence.
“If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms — never! never! never!”—–William Pitt.
The Ghost Of Big Jim Cooley says:
October 19, 2010 at 6:08 am
“You were doing fine on your own until you suddenly decided to start driving on the wrong side of the road! Never mind, we still think you’re our bestest friends.”
Well, ya, but you guys were the ones the switched up your measurements on us! What the heck? We take the time to learn all of your measurements and distances only for you guys to switch up and tell us we’re doing it wrong. Likely, if we went to driving on the other side you guys would switch back and tell us we’re doing it wrong again! And yeh, we still think you guys are our bestest friends too!
@ur momisugly M Le Judge
The opening paragraph smacks of an apocryphal account, and you’ve probably already seen this, but here’s a pdf which might occupy you for anything up to 60 seconds.
http://www.geoscience-environment.com/lia/report1.pdf
@ur momisugly M Le Judge
..not to mention the last section of this site
http://www.kayarchy.co.uk/html/01equipment/030greenlandhistory.htm
“Cromwell is thought to have contracted it in Ireland and he died of it.”
Allegedly he refused quinine because he wasn’t going to put up with a Papist Mummery like “Jesuits Bark”……:-)
Entomology is the study of insects. Bet these “scientists” could teach us all a thing or two about climate. Hummmm… are you maybe thinking what I’m thinking? Has anyone seen any entomology papers on climate? Hello…! Anyone know an entomologist?
Don’t fall for the “warmer=more malaria” malarky. The mosquito that carries malaria in the northern hemisphere is dependent on human dwellings to prosper. It likes rain barrels and buckets and puddles. It likes to come inside houses. Malaria was common in Siberia until the 1950s or so. Eliminating malaria was not due to draining swamps, but to window screens, elimination of rain barrels, and other hygiene (plus DDT for many decades).
Ken Hall says:
October 19, 2010 at 3:57 am
One has only to holiday for a week in the Highlands of Scotland to realise why it is still so empty. No bugger wants to live permanently with those evil Mosquitoes.
The Highlands are beautiful, and I need a good dose of their stunning scenery every couple of years, but live there? No way!
What the scottish midge lacks in stature it makes up for in sheer numbers. I love visiting Scotland but will only go there between Hogmanay (New Year) and the start of May.
As a dumb Engineer, I’d been under the impression that insect-borne diseases required insects and places for them to breed. Mozzies breed around stagnant water. Any liquid water will do. Even for only part of the year. vis Siberia.
Germany’s Emperor Friederich the Great drained the marshlands of what is now central, north-eastern Germany. Fritz wanted arable land to plant potato; but he also got navigable canals for water transport. Serendipitously the drainage diminished the breeding grounds of the pesky insects; which had been spreading various diseases for along time.
Environmentalists seem obsessed with returning nature back to what they dream it was; going mad with artificial “biotopes” featuring stagnant ponds of water. Never mind. Germany has the best (and most expensive) health system in Europe so, with reference to historical records from Charité, they can deal with outbreaks of diseases last recorded scores of years ago.
Mosquitoes?…….thus we should call them?……I mean, to the Global Warmers/Climate Changers/Climate Disrupters, A.K.A. “WATERMELONS” (GREEN OUTSIDE AND RED INSIDE) engaged in procuring the next Armageddon?
Yellow fever was feared more than malaria. In summer of 1793 the disease killed 5,000 of Philadlephia’s 45,000 inhabitants and caused some 17,000 to flee the city. http://pds.lib.harvard.edu/pds/view/7374219.
Most don’t realize the Center for Disease Control (CDC) was created to eradicate malaria. Or that 30% of Al Gore’s home state in 1933 were infected with malaria. http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/history/#
And it all may be coming back. Recent victories by anti pesticide groups in court now require that the spraying of pesticides over water needs to go through formal permit procedures (9th Circuit ruling?). An impossible task when one is trying to suppress a disease outbreak. Consider a city like Sacramento CA surrounded by hundreds of thousands of acres of rice fields that harbor omnipresent but low levels of malaria, dengue and Japanese encephalitis. The diseases have been kept under control by the judicious use of pesticides-dictated by monitoring programs. Now a point source permit must be applied for and go through hearings to allow for spraying….. Pray for the people in Sacramento and in towns like Key West where Dengue is again rearing its head. (Dengue has no cure and is called bone break fever for a reason)
Its not just the permitting aspects- EPA has had a continuing war on pesticides. Bed Bugs are a good example of how fast things can spin out of control. The explosion of this vermin is the result of EPA banning the pesticides used to control ants and termites in and around homes. DDT knocked them down and the termite and ant treatments allowed til recently suppressed bed bugs as a side effect.
What worries given the above is we may have more to worry about than itching and scratching in this green new world.
Björn:
At October 19, 2010 at 5:22 am you assert:
“Richard S Courtney says:
October 19, 2010 at 3:46 am
“………. the Viking settlements in Iceland and Greenland became extinct ……”
Just for the sake of the record, I had not heard that the Icelanders had become extinct , a typo perhaps ?”
In the light of recent arguments about “plagiarism” I think I need to point out that the statement was a quotation and not my words.
I wrote:
“Paul Reiter’s written presentation to the Select Committee on Economic Affairs covers these matters extensively and is worth reading in its entirety. It can be seen at
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldselect/ldeconaf/12/12we21.htm
The following is an extract from it.”
And I put the entire matter in quotation marks.
Anyway, Reiter is correct.
He wrote the “Viking settlements in Iceland and Greenland became extinct “. They did.
He did not say “the Icelanders had become extinct”.
A problem with English not being your first langauage, perhaps?
Richard
I believe that you picked up that mistaken idea from a well-known observation on General Greene’s batting average, boldfaced at the end of this Wikipedia excerpt. He inflicted Pyrrhic victories on his opponents.
Dave from the hot North-East of Scotland
Thanks for the links.
Apocryphal is, I think, an appropiate term.
Regards
Le Judge:
At October 19, 2010 at 6:42 am you ask me:
“I have read articles that have claimed that eskimos came to Scotland in their kayaks during the Little Ice Age but I have never been able to find any verifiable evidence to support such claims. If you know of verifiable evidence that eskimos did indeed arrive in Scotland during the LIA then could you please supply it as I would like to pursue it further.”
I have no evidence of that. Indeed, I did not know of it, and I wonder why your question was addressed to me.
Richard
Richard S Courtney says:
October 19, 2010 at 3:46 am
“I point out that in the American War of Independence the Americans lost every battle without exception.”
http://www.historycentral.com/Revolt/Cowpens.html says otherwise.
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American General Morgan defeated a British force of regulars under the command of Colonel Tarleton. Morgan's troops enveloped the British in a classic military action that captured all of the British forces.
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General Morgan commanded a force of colonialists – "600 Continental soldiers and seasoned Virginia militia men, together with another 500 untrained militia men." Tarleton commanded 1,000 British regulars and lost 910 of them (800 captured) in the battle.
Disease ( sometimes intentionally inflicted ), weather, and terrain have always been major players in warfare, and always will be. Singling out malaria as a major reason why the British lost Yorktown ignores the many other factors leading to that result. There is no single reason why a battle is won or lost – it is always a combination of factors.