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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I can say, without doubt, that I have read of CO2 causing real trouble– death, even– and that humans were the cause of it. Not in ebola outbreaks, that’s something else. In WW2 submarines. A submarine back in those days had to surface every now and then partly to recharge batteries and partly to ventilate the boat. If the sub lost power while submerged, or was held down for too long a time, the crew would use up oxygen and create CO2 by breathing. When the concentration of CO2 got too high men would pass out and eventually die.
Today that doesn’t happen because modern scrubbing technology does wonders. But, it remains the only place I’ve heard of “for sure” where man-made CO2 could and did kill.
When I lived in Virginia the Washington Post was often called “Pravda on the Potomac”. For the young’uns here — Pravda was the official newspaper of the Soviet Union. It still exists and has a web site. Anyway, the idea was that neither is very reliable — at best some piece of truth existed and leveraged into something else entirely.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pravda
After all, the climate is changing — has been for billions of years — and ebola has become a more noteworthy problem in Africa, so you have a classic case of correlation. Other interesting correlations exist.
http://www.tylervigen.com/ Spurious Correlations. Amusing and clever.
“Number people who drowned by falling into a swimming-pool correlates with Number of films Nicolas Cage appeared in”
“Divorce rate in Maine correlates with Per capita consumption of margarine (US)”
By the way, some of these correlations are more aligned than global warming and CO2 (IMO)
If memory serves me, we still don’t definitively know the origin of this disease?
Here is how manmade climate change is making ebola worse:
The money squandered on hyping the phony climate catastrophe could have been put into infrastructure, clean water, cheap energy, better medical care. Instead we are wasting about $1 Billion per day on fear mongering and fat cat conferences and insider deals on windmills and suppression of economic development in Arica in the name of climate.
PaulH says: August 7, 2014 at 6:37 am
“We’re now witnessing the worst Ebola epidemic ever — and on your list of worries it belongs . . . nowhere.
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Don’t be an idiot. ANY uncontrolled viral outbreak in urban population centers deserves some significant level of concern. Especially this one.
It is out of control in Monrovia, Liberia with a population of about 1 million and has reached the level of bodies in the streets. Cases are have now been discovered in Lagos, Nigeria with a population of 17 – 22 million.
Furthermore, the ineffectiveness of current global quarantine measures has been demonstrated by the instances at Gatwick Airport (London) and others around the globe should instruct us that public health measures must be reinforced. This goes for porous border situations as well. The last thing you want is a disease this deadly going global.
Complacency has no place in this discussion.
The only thing I see increasing because of climate change is stupidity.
It’s Ebola that has caused climate change at the Washington Post.
Ebola is dangerous, of course. But it’s not all that easily transmitted, and it incapacitates its victims too quickly for them to be symptomless carriers in the general population. Once you’re outside densely populated areas, the danger decreases exponentially.
“Global Warming” has evolved into a Religion that divides us. It is an argument about just ‘who is the good guy’, ‘who is the smartest among us’. It really has nothing to do with Climate Change it has everything to do with a band wagon that brings one group together to challenge another — it is not much different than what we are programmed to admire in terms of sports; one team challenging another. We love sports challenge and now our brainwashing has led us to love any contest of team challenge. Those who jump on the ‘I’m the good guy, I’m here to save mankind’ think they have the high road. Those who deny the whole game use scientific facts to challenge emotion. The fact is, emotion is a Religion that can’t be defeated with facts. Mankind is programmed to team challenges; thus sports morphs to politics and any particular flavor of the day dispute that can be sided into a team challenge. Our species is dominated by ‘dumb’ and thus the challenge of emotional dumb vs. scientific fact,
What PaulH said: AW, please don’t fall for ridiculous disease panic hype, keep your healthy skepticism of media coverage across disciplines.
And FWIW, I agree with hunter, too.
The enviros are always inferring they save someone or something from something, but in reality do the exact reverse. For decades deprived Africans have died from malaria in the millions due to the banning of DDT. The lack of electrical power, because of their unwarranted disdain for fossil fuels, is uncompromisingly keeping these people desolate and destitute. They enjoy trying to lay the blame elsewhere.
Eustace Cranch says: August 7, 2014 at 9:40 am
Ebola is dangerous, of course. But it’s not all that easily transmitted, and it incapacitates its victims too quickly for them to be symptomless carriers in the general population.
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You had better learn more about the actuality of the current outbreak, since your life may depend upon it.
– It is so easily transmitted in practice that over 100 health professionals contracted the disease and died. Some portion of these doctors and nurses were in full containment gear.
– It can be anywhere from 2 days to 21 days before symptoms present, so your point about quickly incapacitating victims is totally incorrect.
There is plenty of accurate info on the web; read it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_West_Africa_Ebola_outbreak
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola_virus_disease#Treatment
It could be indirectly linked to climate change!
As you know many people think that humanity is a cancer on the face of the Earth and would like to see the population reduced to 10% of what it is today. It has been a concern for me that someone with this belief could engineer a disease to do just that. It would need few people and few resources. Admittedly a mad conspiracy theory but below is a report on a much applauded speech given saying how suitable Ebola would be for this task if transmission could be made airborne.
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/04/doctor_doom_eric_pianka_receiv002118.html
Of concern is how many health workers have died. They must be taking the highest precautions yet are still contracting the disease so it could indeed be capable of airborne infection. A single case in Lagos [a city of 21 million people] has infected five health workers. If they have infected others then it could spread rapidly. People will flee the city, some infected, and spread it elsewhere.
There have only been about 1000 deaths so far, but they have been mainly in rural areas. If the disease enters dense areas of population then we will soon see what ‘exponential’ means. The CDC have declared it a level 1 potential pandemic. It IS of serious concern.
Ebola is a disease carried by fruit bats, which are a source of food in parts of Africa. Transmission is by contact with anything which comes out of the body – urine, faeces, blood, spittle. Death is caused by the liquefaction of internal organs.
I really do hope it will be contained.
Ron Tuohimaa says: August 7, 2014 at 9:57 am
For decades deprived Africans have died from malaria in the millions due to the banning of DDT.
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Completely false. The use of DDT to control Malaria mosquitoes has NEVER BEEN BANNED globally. DDT has been in continuous use to control insect disease vectors since it’s invention, in Africa, Asia, even in the USA, etc.
In 1972 the US withdrew the permit for DDT use on field crops & forest but included an exception for insect disease vectors. The manufacture of DDT (for export) in the US continued for more than a decade. DDT has been used a number of times in the US to control Bubonic Plague outbreaks.
The United States is NOT the world. In the rest of the world, DDT was employed pretty much unrestricted by most any countries that had any desire to use it. In 2001-2004 the effort to ban DDT failed and DDT was specifically allowed by permit for any signatory of the Stockholm Convention. Non-signitories did whatever they damned-well-pleased.
Here is the current list of some of those who manufacture and employ DDT to control
Malaria Vectors:
http://www.pops.int/documents/registers/ddt.htm
PaulH was citing an article by Michael Fumento. That was his quote. I’ll repost it below, since you evidently didn’t get that far in your reading.
To recall the opening post (but not its “told ya so” snark), the parents of global warming alarm are once again claiming grandparentage – this time ebola is the latest offspring of their own unwed and wayward child. (May they all someday occupy the same crowded ring of hell together). If you truly possess “bio” skill, you know the real “concern”: claimants of AGW want funding and attention. You should know better than most how scarce money should be allotted in an epidemic: to enforce quarantines and fragile laws in countries prone to gang and tribal conflicts, to public health infrastructure, doctors, nurses and workers on the “front lines”, the latest vaccines, supplies…
As deadly as ebola is (no doubt a horrible way to die), most people who contract it don’t die. The 90% and higher figures we have heard on alarmist newscasts (News Hour first reported 90% a few weeks ago – not “…up to”, or “…as high as”, just “90%”) refer to encapsulated populations in the Congo or Angola, where outbreaks first occurred, and where non-existent health measures, and routine handling of bodies during burial is an age-old custom, create a perfect storm for contagion. In the only outbreaks known in modern countries (compare Marburg Fever outbreak in Germany, only 25% die, vs. 80% in Angola)
Fumento’s point (and Paul’s) is that third world countries have more urgent concerns than just corralling this disease; others mentioned in the article Paul cites kill an order of magnitude more.
So… what’s the priority, Bio Bob? Global warming funding? Or disease prevention?
Michael Fumento’s opinion piece:
http://nypost.com/2014/08/05/why-ebolas-nothing-to-worry-about/
Well, as the warmer latitudes move north there’s been a correlation noticed between the frequency of street hos happening and warmer temperatures; but it’s problematic whether the more reported street hos are just a linguistic construct of particular social groups expanding their range, the current economic difficulties, or an artifact of more frequent reporting of the phenomena by agencies of social control, namely vice squads, to enhance continued enforcement funding to bust soliciting johns rather than the influence of warmer temperatures. Fortunately Ebola is not classified an STD, although intimate contact with bodily fluids seems to be the major vector for contamination. The last climate caused global viral STD that came out of Africa, HIV, did end the Free Love era though. Bummer.
……”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”…..
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This excerpt is pure hype, I’m reluctant to even comment upon it but it was there.
Paul H says SARS killed zero Americans, by which he presumably means inhabitants of the U.S.A. It did, however, kill quite a few Canadians. A friend of mine barely survived it. Three members of his family did not.
@BioBob
From the wikipedia link you posted
“It is not entirely clear how Ebola is spread.[16] EVD is believed to occur after an ebola virus is transmitted to an initial human by contact with an infected animal’s body fluids. Human-to-human transmission can occur via direct contact with blood or bodily fluids from an infected person (including embalming of an infected dead person) or by contact with contaminated medical equipment, particularly needles and syringes.[17] …The potential for widespread EVD infections is considered low as the disease is only spread by direct contact with the secretions from someone who is showing signs of infection.[17] The quick onset of symptoms makes it easier to identify sick individuals and limits a person’s ability to spread the disease by traveling. Because dead bodies are still infectious, some doctors disposed of them in a safe manner, despite local traditional burial rituals.[20]
Medical workers who do not wear appropriate protective clothing may also contract the disease.[21] In the past, hospital-acquired transmission has occurred in African hospitals due to the reuse of needles and lack of universal precautions.[22]”
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Ebola is not curable but it is preventable, unfortunately preventative measures are more unlikely in rural areas and in some cases opposed (conflict with burial rituals for example) and that is where the concentration of deaths have occurred. Bottom line Ebola is not easily spread, requiring mixing of bodily fluids to spread. There is a threat, it is serious, it should be addressed, but the panic and fear rhetoric is not equivalent to the threat. Put in perspective about 600,000 people in the United States die of Heart Disease alone every year. Add cancer and it is over 1 million.
It can also be used as a biological weapon, lab tests with aerosoling Ebola have proved effective. I do not believe currently there are any claims of terrorist involvment in this outbreak though. I think those kind of claims were during the Bush administration, in this administration Climate Change has superceded terrorists as a primary object of evil.
Another pablum adherent redirect, I suppose. You AND PaulH chose to post the link that is idiotic — and thereby are tarred by the same brush, since you apparently like it. I don’t – Fumento is full of bullcrap.
Spare me the BS with the strawman argument about AGW. I am writing about Ebola and the level of concern about it and the facts at hand concerning the disease and the seriousness of this outbreak. AGW is and always has been BS as well, and of no concern to anyone with half a brain. and certainly not to me, except as to the absurd notion that anyone else should care about the pile of crap they call “data”.
Also, YOU NEED TO READ THE LINKS. The MAJORITY of people who contract Ebola DO die.
Current mortality rates overall are at 55.3%, but the total numbers really need to get higher for more precision, and the variances resulting from the various levels of post infection support. No worries on that account; we are entering the exponential phase of infection rates since the disease is completely out of control and has entered urban areas in several countries. Mortality rates for untreated infections supposedly is about 90%. Given the current conditions in many areas, we will see the numbers trending in that direction.
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So… what’s the priority, Bio Bob? Global warming funding? Or disease prevention?
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RE: the above:
You have issues with chewing gum, walking at the same time ?
I don’t; here is my optimal funding distro since you ask:
Global Warming Funding: Zero
Quarantine & Public Health Measures: more than we are spending at this moment of your apparent total unconcern
If we don’t get off our collective asses, there may not BE any functional countries left in West Africa and perhaps beyond to speak of. Malaria requires enough population to spread. If Ebola remains an issue of the current magnitude or worse, the disease will take care of the Malaria problem.
If uncontrolled Ebola goes global AGW, will be our least concern. Or is that your point ?
While we know virtually nothing about this virus it may be entirely possible that the statement about increased rainfall leading to an increased chance of an Ebola outbreak may be more or less correct.
Just about as correct as saying that if the climate does not change at all the chance of an increase in Ebola may be possible.
The climate not changing may be basically impossible and observations show that it may always be in a state of flux. Contrary to the believe of some (many?) that it is only the last 30 odd years where climate has changed notably.
Therefore it may be easy to conclude that a changing climate may have something to do with an increase in outbreaks and nobody can prove you wrong. “May” being the defining word in all science these days or so it seems, no one says it “is” these days which may be too definite.
Everything is now classified in “likely” scenarios, from highly likely to highly unlikely and we add % numbers with it to give it more impact. But even with “highly likely” we leave the escape hatch open just in case it turns out to be bogus.
The disease was first properly classified in the 70’s but who knows how long it has been around. It seems that the early symptoms of infection are similar to a number of diseases, malaria being one, and as such it is quite possible that plenty of earlier outbreaks have gone unreported. (this statement IS correct as there is no evidence otherwise at the moment and never will be in a conclusive manner).
What is known is that the most likely sources for humans seem to be primates and a small antelope. With primate contact being the most traced source or so they conclude so far.
Perhaps these primates had contact with an antelope carcass and in turn were hunted and eaten by humans so that the real source is the antelope. Possible that in times of heavy rains the primates are easier prey for these hunters and/or being caught up with this virus is likely to slow them down a bit becoming easier prey also. A bit like AGW, you can theorize plenty and draw correlations.
But it is a serious health threat and with the speed and ease of travel can very quickly jump continents.
Had it not been for all those medical workers in that region working hard to contain it and restricting travel this could have been a big one and may still prove to be.
Sputter away all you like, Bob. You’ve got your alarm and, well, it’s your alarm… and nobody is gonna take it away from you, and anybody who tries is… well, just an idjit. So there.
As far as I can see, you’ve just conceded the only point of concern of this thread: global warming gets – and should get – zero funding.
Now I need to get back to building my ark. The rains are coming.
Hunter. Well said! It would indeed be a bitter irony for mankind if there was a global pandemic of a virus that wiped out millions of people which need not have happened if global resources had not been squandered on a non-existent problem that benefited the non-deserving who propagated AGW in the first place.
Alx says: August 7, 2014 at 11:12 am
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Alx, I am unsure exactly what your point was in this post.
I do find the first sentence of interest, however, and am especially interested exactly how “Western-Medicine-Trained” doctors and nurses in more or less full containment outfits are contracting the disease, and if that is actually a fact, or if some ‘off duty’ aspect was involved. We know that Ebola is contracted by body/fluid contact, either indirect (e.g.door handle) or direct, sexual transmission. One study indicated inhalation of contaminated body fluids was possible.
One thing is certain. We are going to find out one way or another. This outbreak of Ebola is going to get much, much worse before it gets better. All should understand, once a viral disease reaches a large population size, the cloud of potential mutations increases and the probability of undesired new behaviors increases, like new modes of transfer, as does the potential for decreased lethality or whatever.
Wes Spiers says:
August 7, 2014 at 11:12 am
Paul H says SARS killed zero Americans, by which he presumably means inhabitants of the U.S.A. It did, however, kill quite a few Canadians. A friend of mine barely survived it. Three members of his family did not.
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Yes, sadly in Canada 438 people contracted SARS and 44 died.
It is interesting that SARS is coming up in this discussion being that SARS was an influenza pandemic. Unlike ebola a flu can easily spread, but at least is not as deadly as ebola.
It is only a matter of time before the WP editors realize thay can start tying the flu to Climate change since during the flu season it does cause quite a few deaths. I can see a fancy graphic now that looks something like this (climate–>season–>flu—>death).