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Bugs Get a Warm Welcome

-- Adam -- 02/26/2007

The LA Times reported yesterday on how climate change is spreading the distribution of many harmful diseases around the globe, providing examples of what has already occurred and looking forward. "Incremental temperature changes have begun to redraw the distribution of bacteria, insects and plants, exposing new populations to diseases that they have never seen before."  For one example, a species of seafood bacteria is shown to has expanded its territory in Alaskan waters previously too cold to support it and sickened many consumers of local oysters. Also, ticks carrying encephalitis are now being recorded at higher elevations and latitudes in Europe than ever before, in a shift scientists say is clear secondary evidence of warming. Many shifts of malignant species such as these have collectively made the forecast for disease into the future significantly worse. Within 2000 alone, the World Health Organization pegged the number of people killed by warming-caused outbreaks and shifts at roughly 154,000.