Congratulations to Castiglione di Cervia, Italy, the first place in modern Europe to feel one dismal effect of a warming world: a tropical disease out of its natural habitat. This summer, more than 100 people in the village of 2,000 came down with fever, exhaustion, and terrible bone pain later found to be caused by chikungunya, a disease spread by warm-climate-lovin' tiger mosquitoes. "Climate change creates conditions that make it easier for this mosquito to survive and it opens the door to diseases that didn't exist here previously," says Dr. Roberto Bertollini of the World Health Organization. "This is a real issue. Now, today. It is not something a crazy environmentalist is warning about."
source: The New York Times
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JennyP Posted 5:18 am
27 Dec 2007
We've seen other tropical diseases spreading because of increased immigration and trade. West Nile, Malaria and other diseases. You can't lie and twist everything to suit your own ends. It just shows you for the cowardly propagandists that you are.
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bookerly Posted 6:31 am
27 Dec 2007
Dear JennyP,
The disease spread because the mosquitoes that carry it can now live in places they could not live before. That is because those places are warmer. That is because of global warming. It has nothing to do with immigration. Tourists could have carried them back.
patrick in Beijing
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