|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Please visit our sponsor!
|
|
  
Follow @Uncle_Ernie More Global Warming Benefits By Ernest Stewart On the plus side, the only reason California got a decent rainfall was because of El Nino spawed storms. Unfortunately, most of it ran off or turned into mudslides, doing much damage with little benefit. Measurements and simulations have found that climate change has created a tendency toward more extreme El Ninos in recent years. Here's another benefit of global warming. The global public health emergency involving deformed babies emerged in 2015, the hottest year in the historical record, with an outbreak in Brazil of a disease transmitted by heat-loving mosquitoes. Can that really be a coincidence? Scientists say it'll take them years to figure that out, and pointed to other factors that may have played a larger role in starting the crisis. But these same experts added that the Zika epidemic, as well as the related spread of a disease called dengue fever that is sickening as many as 100 million people a year and killing thousands, should be interpreted as warnings. It's the shape of things to come! Over the coming decades, global warming is likely to increase the range and speed of the life cycle of the particular mosquitoes carrying these viruses, encouraging their spread deeper into temperate countries like the United States. I wonder, did the CIA do this like they did in their New York lab with West Nile Virus mosquitoes? Recent research suggests that "under a worst-case scenario, involving continued high global emissions coupled with fast population growth, the number of people exposed to the principal mosquito could more than double, to as many as 8 billion or 9 billion by late this century from roughly 4 billion today." Another critter that's heading north are fire ants, a nasty little monster that I've had experience with in South Carolina. They're already in North Carolina in the flat lands; fortunately, they don't like the mountains -- so the Blue Ridge and Smokeys may keep their northern migration in check for a while. Then, there's the spread of "Killer Bees;" and, I'm not talking about Elliott Gould, John Belushi and Garrett Morris! Yes, it's bad news for apiphobes: "Killer Bees" are on the move in the United States. Scientists from the University of California, San Diego recently collected hundreds of bees around the Golden State to determine how far north hybrid honeybees, or Africanized bees, have spread since they first arrived in California in 1994. They found that Africanized bees, which possess genes from both European and African honeybees, now live as far north as California's delta region about 25 miles, south of Sacramento. Are we having fun yet with global warming, or what, America? *****  05-01-1929 ~ 02-22-2016 Thanks for the music!  03-23-1937 ~ 02-25-2016 Thanks for the film! ***** We get by with a little help from our friends! So please help us if you can...? Donations ***** So how do you like Bush Lite so far? And more importantly, what are you planning on doing about it? Until the next time, Peace! (c) 2016 Ernest Stewart a.k.a. Uncle Ernie is an unabashed radical, author, stand-up comic, DJ, actor, political pundit and for 13 years was the managing editor and publisher of Issues & Alibis magazine. Visit me on Facebook. Follow me on Twitter. Email:uncle-ernie@issuesandalibis.org
|
