Carbon Dioxide and Earth's Future Pursuing the ... - Magazooms

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multiple, interdependent covariates (Dobson, 2009; Ostfeld, 2009; Pascual and Bouma, 2009,
Randolph, 2009), [6] host movement in response to climate change (Harvell et al., 2009), and
[7] geographic tools to account for distinctions between fundamental and realized niches
(Ostfeld, 2009; Randolph, 2009).” And in light of these many and varied challenges that
confront the scientific community in this emerging field of study, there is much unfinished
business that needs to be conducted in researching the several potential relationships that may
(or may not) exist between climatic change and the spread of infectious diseases. Hence, it
should be abundantly clear that the numerous viral and vector-borne health catastrophes that
are routinely predicted to occur by the world’s climate alarmists in response to future global
warming are definitely not yet ready for prime-time consideration, much less unquestioning
acceptance.
Inching one year closer to the present, Reiter (2010) writes that the appearance of the West
Nile virus in New York (USA) in 1999, plus the unprecedented panzootic that followed, “have
stimulated a major research effort in the Western Hemisphere and a new interest in the
presence of this virus in the Old World,” which developments have been driven in part by the
fact that “a great deal of attention has been paid to the potential impact of climate change on
the prevalence and incidence of mosquito-borne disease.” Therefore, Reiter reviews what
researchers have learned about the subject and reports the worldwide implications for public
health, summing things up in his final paragraph, where he states that “one point is clear: the
importation and establishment of vector-borne pathogens that have a relatively low profile in
their current habitat is a serious danger to Europe and throughout the world,” which state of
affairs, in his view, “is a direct result of the revolution of transport technologies and increasing
global trade that has taken place in the past three decades,” modern examples of which include
“the global circulation of dengue virus serotypes (Gubler, 1998), the intercontinental
dissemination of Aedes albopictus and other mosquitoes in used tires (Hawley et al., 1987;
Reiter, 1998), the epidemic of chikungunya virus in Italy (Angelini et al., 2007), and the
importation of bluetongue virus and trypanosomiasis into Europe (Meroc et al., 2008; Moretti,
1969).” And he further concludes that in view of what his review reveals, “globalization is
potentially a far greater challenge to public health in Europe than any future changes in climate
(Tatem et al., 2006).”
Last of all, writing that “pathogens cause roughly one in five human deaths, are responsible for
51% of years of life lost globally, and have long affected human demographics,” Dunn et al.
(2010) state that pathogens “have also been identified as drivers of human behavior, the
politics and political stability of countries, human fertility, global economies, and more
generally the course and dynamics of human history.” And, somewhat ominously, they report
that “researchers have linked the presence and prevalence of some pathogens to climate, as
has been highlighted in recent discussions of climate change and disease,” where they
specifically mention malaria, plague and dengue as examples of the latter. Thus, they
conducted, as they describe it, “a global analysis of the relative influence of climate, alternative
host diversity and spending on disease prevention on modern patterns in the richness and
prevalence of human pathogens.”
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