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?
