The Kingston Whig Standard carried an article today by reporter Jennifer Pritchett about the spread of Lyme disease across Canada. An aunt of mine in the U.S. has suffered from it for many years. It wasn't treated soon enough or aggressively enough and got into her heart. This nasty disease is carried by the blacklegged, or 'deer' tick. Ticks are bad enough - seeing a creature with its head burrowed into your flesh is a bit distrubing - but those deer ticks are tiny little buggers and really hard to check for. Believe me, I have had to do it for friends.
(Image from the Public Health Agency of Canada website)
Canadians are especially susceptible because they are relatively ignorant about Lyme disease.
The Whig Standard article concludes with a warning from one scientist:
Jim Sutcliffe, a medical entomologist at Trent University, said bird migration has been the source of the ticks moving north into Canada. Global warming is enabling those ticks to survive and reproduce in more northern latitudes.
"The thing that's different is that the climate is changing - it's warming gradually so our summers are getting warmer and our falls are becoming warmer," he said. "The temperatures stay higher for longer throughout the year and that's making southern Canada receptive for the blacklegged tick."
"The thing that's different is that the climate is changing - it's warming gradually so our summers are getting warmer and our falls are becoming warmer," he said. "The temperatures stay higher for longer throughout the year and that's making southern Canada receptive for the blacklegged tick."
We have to worry about not only greenhouse gas mitigation (reducing the concentration of greenhouse gases) but global warming mitigation. Global warming has already started and we'll have to deal with (pay for) the consequences.
Do you want to pay for a government program to deal with Lyme disease? If so, where would you divert resources from? Would you cut spending elsewhere ? Raise taxes? Borrow from the future?
4 comments:
That is nonsense . . . lyme disease has been in Canada for decades.
That is as silly as Al's malaria nonsense in his crazy movie. The town he talks about in the movie was built when the railway was constructed in the 19th century, they had numerous malaria epidemics in the last 150 years . . . but Al hoped no one would check.
Did you know the globe has cooled .5 degrees since 2000?
Lyme disease is all over the worls. When we recognize its exact scoop severity and ability to spread, will we be ready to face Lyme disease, as we should be.
Read more now at http://the-lyme-disease-symptoms.com
Dear oldschool,
Thank you for your interest in this post. Here are the global temperature anomalies from NASA, relative to the 1951-1980 mean:
YEAR anomaly (degrees C)
2000 +0.42
2001 +0.57
2002 +0.69
2003 +0.67
2004 +0.60
2005 +0.77
2006 +0.66
2007 +0.73
Your remark about the globe cooling .5 degrees since 2000 calls into question your credibility.
As for your comment about Lyme disease, the Whig-Standard article does not claim that Lyme disease has recently entered Canada, but that the black-legged tick's geographic range is expanding in Canada. The article says that they used to be restricted to Long Point peninsula on Lake Erie, but have now expanded into southeastern Manitoba, the shores of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, Nova Scotia and southern BC.
In the past you'd have to be unlucky enough to come into contact with ticks carried by migratory birds, but now, in these regions, you can come into direct contact with established tick populations (presumably feeding on local populations of warm blooded animals).
jane: ?!? Blog readers, I wouldn't touch that link with a 10 foot pole.
Post a Comment