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The end of what?

16 Mar 2022 | OP ED Watch

If you’re tired of the end of winter, you’re not alone. Where we live it seems to be stretching out interminably, with deep snow on the ground and more falling. And now climate change means mosquitoes in winter. Or so we’re told by a doctor on NBC’s “Think” who encountered some of the miserable little bugs in Washington, D.C. in December and immediately blamed global warming. The day after her article appeared, on Feb. 22, NBC did allow that a massive winter storm was affecting 41 of 50 states: “Long-duration periods of snow, ice, heavy rainfall and arctic cold will result in highly disruptive weather through Friday for millions from coast-to-coast”. And in DC itself, as of March 12, the Washington Post still advised “refreeze and wind risks into tonight” with large clouds of… never mind. Just snow particles. We didn’t know such conditions were ideal for mosquitoes but of course there is nothing climate change cannot do.

So according to Dr. Neelu Tummala, “surgeon and co-director of the Climate Health Institute at George Washington University”, everything people like her told you is true and never mind that silly old snow.

“Living in a world affected by climate change is a part of our daily reality. It is what climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe refers to as ‘global weirding.’ All last year effects were glaringly present, from heat extremes over the summer to a record hurricane and wildfire season and, now, to warmer winter temperatures that are marked by winter mosquitoes and wildfires. While the change in seasons is confusing, to say the least, what is most concerning to me, as a physician, is what this warmer weather means for public health.”

As you doubtless guessed, it means everything bad will get worse and everything good will get less good.

"In many parts of the U.S., warmer temperatures and changing precipitation patterns are contributing to a lengthening of the mosquito season. I asked a colleague, Dr. Hana Akselrod, an infectious disease doctor and assistant professor of medicine at the George Washington School of Medicine and Health Sciences, what this means for public health. ‘The lengthened mosquito season increases risk of transmission of West Nile virus, which is endemic to most of the U.S.,’ she told me.”

So an endemic disease will become endemic. Blast. But wait. You also get dengue, chikungunya and Zika because “mosquitoes are just one small, bloodsucking piece of a growing public health crisis.”

What pray tell is this crisis? Well, symptoms appear to include anxiety, paranoia and political correctness: “The recently released Lancet countdown on health and climate change calls climate change a ‘code red for a healthy future,’ and a joint editorial from more than 230 medical journals published in September calls for ‘emergency action’ to limit global warming.’”

Oddly, the piece says “An estimated 85 percent of the global population lives in areas affected by climate change, according to a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change” leaving us scratching our heads about where the 15 percent are who don’t experience climate change. Judging by the piece they link to, it’s just that the poorest of the poor don’t have enough machine-learning climate scientists to speculate about how they didn’t have bad weather until now or something. Everybody gets to be a victim, some people more than one way.

Thus the NBC piece lumbers on that “In the U.S., environmental racism has contributed to higher levels of heat exposure for people of color living in urban areas”. Due not to the Urban Heat Island, you understand, but to capitalism, patriarchy and global warming that hits poor black neighbourhoods harder with unerring rhetorical precision.
The piece ends with a perhaps ill-timed call to block energy pipelines not coming from Russia. But who can resist a doctor’s call to like whatever man when “only with more successes like these can we avoid diagnosing more and more people with climate change", to say nothing of sparing Frosty a plague of itchy little bites.

P.S. Send us photos of your winter mosquitoes please. We can’t see ours for the snow.

6 comments on “The end of what?”

  1. It is hard for me to believe “experts” are paid taxpayers’ money to connect the dots to reveal a pretzel like trail that links global warming to an increase in winter storms, snow on the ground in Washington DC, to mosquitoes swarming north to take advantage of global warming with the temperature change over the last 100 to 150 years of regular measurements is hardly perceptible, other than some years are warmer, some years are colder, but the average temperature has hardly move the needle.
    Where can I get an expert job like that that reveals that CO2 has increased 58% since Roman Times 2000 years ago from 265ppm to 417 ppm today, and the temperature has gone DOWN One degrees Celsius. Then I could show that I f CO2 increases by 100% then the temperature must go DOWN by 1/.58 or 1.72 degrees Celsius, according to my computer model. Who can unravel that pretzel to prove me wrong! What if I’m right, should we still spend US $275 trillion to achieve the Net Zero by 2050 goal that the McKinsey 2022 Report calculates it will cost to achieve?

  2. Patrick - The effect of CO2 on temperature is not linear. It declines with increasing concentrations.

  3. It is hard for me to believe “experts” are paid taxpayers’ money to connect the dots to reveal a pretzel like trail that links global warming to an increase in winter storms, snow on the ground in Washington DC, to mosquitoes swarming north to take advantage of global warming with the temperature change over the last 100 to 150 years of regular measurements is hardly perceptible, other than some years are warmer, some years are colder, but the average temperature has hardly moved the needle.
    Where can I get an expert job like that that reveals that CO2 has increased 58% since Roman Times 2000 years ago from 265ppm to 417 ppm today, and the temperature has gone DOWN One degrees Celsius. Then I could show that if CO2 increases by 100% then the temperature must go DOWN by 1/.58 or 1.72 degrees Celsius, according to my computer model. Who can unravel that pretzel to prove him wrong! What if I’m right, should we still spend US $275 trillion to achieve the Net Zero by 2050 goal that the MacKensy

  4. It's almost as if the role of the state was to exclusively fund hysteria in any form as long as it doesn't stray from the CAGW hypothesis.

  5. Thylacine, it It’s good to know that you were not extinct.
    You are correct that as CO2 increases in the atmosphere, it’s GHG effect diminishes. That’s why I used percentages, as they are proportional, not linear. For example if you increase the number two hundred by 100, resulting a total of 300, that is a 50% increase, but if you increase that 300 by an additional 100, that’s only a 33% increase.

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