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.
We would have got away with it, if it weren`t for those meddling mozzies!
You may have won independence, but our climatologists are way more incompetent than yours, so there.
The troublesome farmers in the American colonies were left to their own devices, due to the Indian sub-continent being a far more profitable proposition…
“No taxation without representation”?
Huh!
The colonists paid just 1/20th of what the folks back home were taxed at.
Pascvaks says:
October 19, 2010 at 7:50 am
“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?”
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Its just another group of scientists I deem unworthy of the name. Have they said anything? I’ve seen one paper from an infectious disease doctor throughout the whole malaria scare. Perhaps there were other papers, but surely one could have picked up the phone and told a reporter that the scare was BS……….haven’t heard peep out of them. They’re silence was deafening, also.
Not really surprising – before the invention of penicillin (etc) and the understanding of how diseases are contracted (i.e. tainted water – not miasma) casualties in virtually all wars caused by disease greatly out numbered those caused by actual warfare – sometimes by up to 10 to 1.
Thank you ladies and gentlemen for some most informative and amusing posts. I shall continue to drink gin and tonic regularly as a sovereign remedy for all ills. The quinine prevents malaria, the lemon stops scurvy and the juniper is a general antiseptic (but not anti-sceptic).
Chin, chin!
Galvanize says:
October 19, 2010 at 8:44 am
“We would have got away with it, if it weren`t for those meddling mozzies!
You may have won independence, but our climatologists are way more incompetent than yours, so there.”
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Hmm, IDK……….we’ve some doosies ourselves. Maybe Mann and Hansen et al, vs. Jones et al……..a draw?
I was laying on a Cot in Ft. Yukon, with the mosquitoes buzzing-round the net(s)
Overheard this conversation: “Shall we take him home or, eat him here? ”
the other Mosquito said:” Better have him here, if we take him home the big ones will get him!”
Apologies to Red Skelton ..
As one British soldier lamented: “We get terrible provisions now …. putrid meat and wormy biscuits spoiled on the ships. Many of the men have taken sick with the bloody flux and diarrhoea. Foul fever is spreading and we get little rest, night and day”.
I can’t help but add, however, the fact that at the end, with only 3275 fit for duty (out of 4300 British, 2100 German and 1000 American loyalists), facing 3500 CA, 2000 VA Militia, 9500 French ashore with heavy guns and siege engineers, plus 25000 more in the fleet, might have had something to do with the outcome.
P.S. Captain Ludwig, Baron von Closen, observed that a quarter of the Continentals were African Americans [primarily because of the common practice of sending slaves “in lieu” to do the fighting]. The all-black Rhode Island Regiment he described as “the most neatly dressed, the best under arms and the most precise in manoeuvres”.
So here we have yet another professor (it would appear) that has “discipline-ites”(a shallow thinking condition brought on by being cloistered within one’s own discipline), as well pointed out above and as evidenced by one of the final conclusions- Mosquitoes helped the Americans snatch victory from the jaws of stalemate and win the Revolutionary War, without which there would be no United States of America. Obviously, the writer knows little about war, how an army functions and strategic logistical planning. And, in many ways, you can say the same thing for the British at that point in time. They alone put themselves in a position that was unwinnable. Of course, it always the loser that says the winner was “lucky” or had some quirk of fate that help them succeed. To conclude the Americans would not have succeeded at a latter point in time is __________. (Fill at will)
Noted in passing, apparently John Adams contracted malaria in the Netherlands when he went there to try and raise money for the revolution.
Sorry, should have tagged this one along on the other. Dr. Benjamin Rush (signer of the Declaration of Independence) noted in his book Bilious Remitting Fever written in 1793 about the yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia, that yellow fever had spread as far north as Boston. [His cure of preference was to first purge the patient with mercury salts and then bleed them. I suppose if you survived that, you would survive anything.]
Most comments seem to be about the means of delivery and not the package. In the animation at the end of the link below, there appears to be a spatial (geographic) component.
http://www.map.ox.ac.uk/
Government and politics?
I seem to remember that malaria (Leishmaniasis) from sand flea bites caused more casualties (or deaths) to US troops then combat in the first Iraq War.
Malaria and Dengue disappeared from Peru, South America, in the 1960’s, but “thanks to the GOOD PEOPLE” of the Club of Rome, Malthusians, and the like, DDT was forbidden and these illnesses have came back. Though it is a known fact that the World Health Organization lifted this ban, it seems that many governments still keep the prohibition of its use except for “industrial purposes”.
If the ideologists “free thinkers”, win this war against humanity, that “survival” will not be called the “survival of the more fitted” but the “survival of the unfitted”.
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! ”
It is quite logical and correct to drive on the right side of the road rather than the left.
Since the majority of people are right handed, it is much better that one should have the dominant hand on the wheel while waving the other out the window giving the finger to all other “bad” drivers.
It may have warmed up by October of 1781, but the winters of 1777/78 at Valley Forge and the even colder winter of 1779/80 at Morristown (NJ) seemed to typify the conditions of the ‘Little Ice Age’.
Doesn’t this article show that there can be warm times in an otherwise very cold period?
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!
Anyone who has experienced the voracious clouds of biting ‘midges’ in the Scottish Highlands and wears a kilt, immediately understands the origins the ‘highland fling’.
@Tom in Florida : However, it is much more logical to use your broadsword with your dominant hand. Thus you approach your opponent on the left.
Oh where are Jefferson’s thermometers now? He kept such good temperature records, including the urban heat island in Philadelphia during the writing of the Declaration. (he moved to the outskirts of town to escape the heat of the city)
From John Cleese :
Chris,
Hey, I remember that Cleese guy. He’s the one who used to be funny, right? ☺
Also, Mr Cleese made a major miscalculation putting #6 before #7.
I was taught, at Medical School, that the last “home grow” death from Malaria was in the Fenlands in 1926.
Can’t find an exact reference but for epidemiologist may find the link interesting.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2181524/pdf/procrsmed00830-0072.pdf.
From the discussion at the end, it would appear the paper was presented “live”!
@Le Judge re. Eskimo kayak and associated equipment:
http://calms.abdn.ac.uk/Geology/dserve.exe?dsqServer=Calms&dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqCmd=Show.tcl&dsqDb=Catalog&dsqPos=4&dsqSearch=((text)='kayak‘)
And account thereof (see p.4 onwards):
http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/adsdata/PSAS_2002/pdf/vol_046/46_213_241.pdf
I understand there are various theories about the origin of this material: you may wish to check with the Marischal College Museum in Aberdeen, Scotland about its provenance.
Chris says:
October 19, 2010 at 11:29 am
Funny, note that it was written in response to GW’s second election.
To that end, I can only ask Mr. Cleese, how do you like us now?