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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BioBob on August 7, 2014 at 10:28 am writes:
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.>
But it’s absolutely true . . .
The environmentalists were joined in this effort by such entities as the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the World Health Organization, the United Nations Environment Program, and UNICEF. These aid bureaucrats warned impoverished countries whose populations were at high risk of contracting malaria, that if they continued to use DDT as the lynchpin of their anti-malaria programs, grants to their governments would be withheld.
Only a few nations—among them Ecuador, Mexico, and South Africa—possessed the financial resources necessary to fund their own DDT programs without the help of the aforementioned foundations and organizations. And for as long as they continued to use DDT, they remained malaria-free.
Since the issuance of Rachel Carson’s book, “Silent Spring” in the early 60’s, environmentalists have directly killed millions and millions of poor destitute Africans. And, as Michael Crichton once said, “didn’t give a damn”.
PeterD says:
August 7, 2014 at 9:03 am
Thanks for the correction.
Eustace Cranch says:
August 7, 2014 at 9:40 am
Jet air travel considerably changes the range of “symptomless carriers”, and we all know people continue their planned routines in spite of all kinds of symptoms.
The US Coast Guard was originally instituted as a tax collection service as the early US Federal government relied on import tariffs for a considerable portion of its income. But due to their practice of boarding ships on arrival in port (before they had a chance to offload cargo), the Coast Guard quickly acquired the duty of ordering and enforcing quarantines should crew or passengers show symptoms of infectious disease. Except for medical and Coast Guard personnel nobody could board or leave a quarantined ship, which had to fly a quarantine flag as a warning.
This heritage entitles the US Surgeon General to wear the uniform of a Coast Guard Admiral.
We don’t do this routinely any more in the age of air travel, and I don’t know whether many international airports even have quarantine facilities.
Bill Parsons, but at least do it accurately while you are at it. Seems to me that inaccuracy and passing off of ignorance and unconcern fit the definition of ‘sputter’ better than my post, but opinions always vary.
By all means, get back to building your ark. Hopefully, more concerned heads will treat the current Ebola outbreak with a bit more concern than you exhibit, as it deserves. The CDC apparently thinks so, it has elevated it to it’s highest level of concern, class 1.
http://www.newsmax.com/TheWire/cdc-high-alert-ebola/2014/08/07/id/587493/
Actually WaPo pulled off a twofer of low down, rotten Ebola articles. In addition to claiming that global warming will exacerbate the spread of Ebola, they wrote a story chastising the CDC for providing the American medical missionaries with the experimental drug rather than giving to African health workers. Of course, if the experimental drug was given to Africans first, WaPo would be screaming that we are using Africans for Ginnie pigs rather than providing the drug to the infected Americans.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/08/wapo-plays-ebola-race-card-why-do-two-white-americans-get-the-serum-not-africans/
WaPo, how low can you go?
Ron Tuohimaa says:
August 7, 2014 at 11:41 am
I am not going to get into a pissing match in this thread with you Ron. If you refuse to do your homework and believe that Potemkin-Village-all-the-way-down meme brought to us by a dood named Bates, feel free.
DDT is so cheap and easy to produce that any organic chemist can make low quality but perfectly functional DDT in his garage. The fact that that powerhouse, Ethiopia, decided to manufacture and employ DDT for Malaria control should tell anyone with a brain all they need to know.
Ignore the reality that Malaria continues to be a problem because there are real limits to human abilities and the usual seven deadly sins are the universal bane of humanity. The fact that mosquitoes are damn difficult to control may have something to do with it too…..
“…a new and disgusting low point in the current standards of what passes for mainstream journalism.” I believe this is referred to in the Journalistic Standards and Practices Handbook as standard operating procedures. We know it as d*****baggery.
@Biobob. It must be exhausting being this hysterical and alarmed all the time. How do you cope, how have you managed to not have a heart attack? From what you have posted on here, you’re very ignorant to what Ebola does, how it infects and how it is transmitted.
I would post a million links to article wrote by real life Virologists. But I fear I’d be wasting my time.
You’re mind is made up. WE’RE ALL DOOOOOOMED!
Bob,
I’m not complacent. I just don’t care if you think I am. If you know something about the disease and the epidemiology concerned, I’m all ears. So far, you are all about alarm, with little information.
Really, this is a fairly distant concern, and should be low on the priority list of most people in the U.S. at the moment. I’m not saying healthcare workers here shouldn’t be getting ready, and apparently they are setting up quarrentine units at airports, as they are at OHare for example.
One characteristic of ebola that I do believe is being fairly reported by the media is its indolence. It is not easily transmissible by people unless they are clearly sick – visibly weak, feverish and vomiting. People in this condition don’t want to travel to other countries, let alone leave their beds. Carriers who are in the infectious stages are therefore relatively easy to spot. Moreover, travel in and out of the affected zones is being squeezed shut by authories of those provinces. Thanks in part to the media alarm in the affected countries, air and ground travel are being monitored. It’s still spreading, and I have little faith in African authorities to do the right thing, but I don’t believe any claims of an “exponential” spread.
paddylol
We can’t give the serum to Africans. Not only is it made from evil tobacco, it’s derived from GMO tobacco! Oh noes!! We can’t have people from third world countries getting stuff like that or golden rice or something. (/sarc for those who didn’t catch on)
I smell a Pulitzer!
Sorry Bill, if you do not like my posts (not really). At least I don’t post garbage links and factually incorrect points, like you did. I post no alarmist points, simply the facts as I understand them along with links that actually have facts in them as opposed to opinions like those of some wannabe lawyer / journalist turd like Fumento who wants us to think he knows something about new pandemics with atypical behaviors.
I have no idea why anyone would think any new and totally uncontrolled, incurable disease outbreak with EXPONENTIAL GROWTH INCIDENCE NUMBERS and 55% mortality rate is of no concern. It has gone exponential because the numbers of people contracting the disease is growing exponentially. Is there some part of that you do not understand ?
I can help you if you like – see this and see exponential:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola_2014#mediaviewer/File:Diseased_Ebola_2014.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_growth
I have no idea why anyone would not be concerned when a disease that is supposedly difficult to transmit suddenly spreads to 4 or more additional countries and urban areas containing multi-millions of people.
I have no idea why a disease that is supposedly hard to transmit infects well over 100 health professionals, some using modern western containment methodology, would not be concerned.
So naturally anybody concerned would be pissed when apparently unconcerned people post links to propaganda pieces like those from Fumento.
Nothing to see here….move along…right ?
I believe Ebola was brought to the USA by the government; not by a change in the weather.
“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. ”
Having lived in tropical and subtropical countries for 32 years this makes no sense at all. The ‘periods of drought’ are expected to increase in an environment of increased water content in the atmosphere? That makes no sense(1). What exactly does ‘heavy rain’ mean? As heavy rain occurs in most places, is it really going to become heavier? If it due to increased water vapour content in the air, then it will rain sooner and more frequently, spreading the heat around more evenly, not less frequently and ‘more intensely’. That makes no sense(2).
If the whole globe warms, the rainfall is likely to come in more frequent, less stormy, gentle rains because the temperature differences will be decreasing, what with polar amplification and all.
The thunderstorm heat vent hypothesis has it that storms will arise sooner and perhaps higher (implying greater energy involved). But they might form sooner and more frequently and smaller, with the same total increased heat venting capability as a few large storms. If the air over the Sahara Desert is a lot more humid, it would rain a lot more. The Sahel has moved 500 km north over the past 30 years ‘during the warming’ so obviously being ‘warmer’ it is good for rainfall, farming and grazing.
@george e. smith
“I believe Ebola was brought to the USA by the government; not by a change in the weather.”
Or an agency of the government, in a plane that looks it came out of a spy movie.
Ebola has been brought to the US of A many times before so they would investigate its potential threat and no doubt as a weapon of mass destruction. Each outbreak, a team from the US was sent to collect samples. We have no idea whether or not someone carrying the disease was brought with it to a disease centre. An American doctor survived Ebola in 1974 and he is a carrier of the virus and the antibodies so … sounds like a stretched claim.
Something that has not made the news in the US of A is that the treatment (monoclonal antibodies) is produced from a tobacco plant created by gene-splicing (OMG, its GM Tobacco!) resulting from a Canadian research effort. I am waiting for the commenters on CNN to mention that this is a Canadian treatment not something ‘from the CDC in Atlanta’.
Watch the green fanatics refusing treatment with a genetically modified product created by Big Pharma in league with Big Tobacco. Where are those 350.org volunteers when you need them…
Maybe ebola will breed an immune variety of human, which will then take over the world.
@BioBob
South Africa also uses DDT routinely in the control of malaria. Works well, like nothing else.
Don’t know yet if it’s true, but I read that DDT is actually a repellant, not an insecticide. Come to think of it, never saw clouds of (or any) mosquitoes dropping out of the air in the mist from the spray trucks we kids used to follow and chase…
@ur momisugly Crispin in Waterloo says: August 7, 2014 at 1:41 pm
Actually, the monoclonal antibodies treatment for Ebola has been in the news both on the web and TV News (4,290 results in Google News), but certainly not as much as it could be. Would not want to upset the masses by mentioning incurable diseases, would we ?
The companies who invented & developed this potential treatment are actually small pharma startups (produced by Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc.), hardly ‘big pharma’ but certainly in league with somebody evil (lol).
We could produce gallons of the stuff by redirecting a good portion of the funds already allocated to AGW researchers and ban it’s export to any country regulating “genetic manipulation” agricultural products. What goes around, comes around, neh ? Probably too soon since we really don’t have human trials atm, but a good fantasy at any rate.
Crispin in Waterloo says:
August 7, 2014 at 1:45 pm @BioBob
South Africa also uses DDT routinely in the control of malaria. Works well, like nothing else.
————————-
Yep, I know. South Africa is on the list I linked of those with permits issued by the Stockholm Convention process (WHO). Pisses off those who spout the Bates meme to no end too, lol.
On August 1, residents of Toledo, Ohio, were advised: “don’t drink the water.” The city’s water supply, which comes from Lake Erie, was infected with microcystins, toxins produced by algae that feed on nitrogen and phosphorus from fertilizer runoff and sewage sludge.
On August 3, the Christian Science Monitor ran an article by Mark Sappenfield titled “Behind Ohio drinking-water ban, a Lake Erie mystery.” The gist is that agricultural runoff is putting a lot of phosphorus into the lake, but even though levels were higher in 2007 than in 2011, the 2011 bloom was larger. Consequently, “Scientists are investigating whether rising temperatures connected with climate change could be intensifying the blooms.”
Lake Erie water temperature on August 3, 2007, was 76 degrees. On August 3, 2011, it was 78 degrees. Warmer water, more algae.
But on August 3, 2014, water temperature was only 72 degrees. Do falling temperatures associated with climate change also intensify algae blooms?
No mention in the article that current lake temperature is below average, what the current phosphorous levels are, or how extensive the algae bloom is compared to 2011. Just a bunch of suppositions stoking global warming anxiety.
Intensive industrial-scale farming and animal feedlots have increased phosphorus and nitrogen runoff, and lack of maintenance at Detroit’s wastewater treatment plant have resulted in massive outflows of sewage sludge. Phosphorus concentrations in Lake Erie are approaching 1970s levels.
Once upon a time, journalists played a part in stoking citizen outrage and forcing EPA action to restore water quality in Lake Erie. Sappenfield downplays real pollution and shifts blame to CO2. Is he a tool of “big fertilizer,” or just a poopoohead?
Brian H says: August 7, 2014 at 1:51 pm
Don’t know yet if it’s true, but I read that DDT is actually a repellant, not an insecticide.
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Yep, that’s true in some cases, where DDT has been used long enuf for insecticidal action to cause resistance. Same as MERSA where antibiotics lose their effectiveness after years of overuse and misuse. And that’s exactly what happens with DDT, or ANY insecticide as well.
In the cases of mosquitoes who are capable of detoxifying DDT and which do not die from exposure at certain normally encountered levels, the chemical still irritates the mosquito, making is move from applied surfaces.
Kat says:
August 7, 2014 at 12:47 pm
There is a word for your post: transference.
I give the Ebola outbreak exactly it’s proper concern level based on my understanding of the science. Anybody who gives it less is a fool. And that is and was my point.
The fact that effective quarantine measures are nearly non-existent, that our borders are as porous as a sponge, people are posting & reposting opinion pieces saying ‘nothing to see here…move along’, and the known characteristics & behavior of the virus are proper topics of anybodies concern.
There is a difference between informed concern and panic. I will be sure to tell you when panic is warranted. Go back to sleep.
BioBob believes “I give the Ebola outbreak exactly it’s proper concern level based on my understanding of the science. Anybody who gives it less is a fool. And that is and was my point.”
Yeah, I do that too except for not calling others fool. I just write YMMV.
“Is there *any* disaster which climate change can’t make worse?”
Answer: the Obama administration comes to mind – immediately
Here’s the ultimate answer.
Eliminate everyone that:
is sick with a communicable disease (to eliminate the spread/source of the disease)
has an STD (to eliminate the spread/source of the disease)
has a genetically induced illness (to strengthen the Gene Pool)
that supports an extremins view (wait, does this post indicate the support of an extremist viewpoint?)
Nevermind
Paul says –
“Climate change sells newspapers”
check out the plummeting circulations of MSM that pushes CAGW.
CAGW fares no better on TV, tho that won’t stop it being nominated for Emmys!
Wikipedia: Years of Living Dangerously
A TV show is rated by the percentage of its target-demographic group watching the show – most often, adults 18–49 years old. The four Sunday evening episodes of Years of Living Dangerously, from April 13 to May 4, 2014, had ratings of 0.07%, 0.04%, 0.04% and 0.04% in that demographic…
The series was nominated for two 2014 Emmy Awards: Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series and Outstanding Writing for Nonfiction Programming (for Episode 3: “The Surge”).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Years_of_Living_Dangerously