GLOBAL WARMING BITES CASTILGLIONE
Still don't believe in global warming?
Try visiting Castiglione, a village near Ravenna on the Adriatic Coast, not far from Venice.
A tropical disease spread by tiger mosquitoes hit this town like a bomb this past summer.
The disease, normally present only in Africa and India, has now been spotted in Switzerland and France.
For those of us who love Italy, this is scary news indeed. Venice has its fair share of Mosquitoes even as early as April and May.
Read the whole story from this morning's NY Times here, if you're not too feverish.
6 comments:
I have Italian relatives and they tell me Italy is swarming with African migrants, who probably brought the mosquitoes with them.
Having camped near Venice (Lido) in 1961, I still remember being assaulted by millions of mosquitoes. It is not unusual for that region and as you can guess, I am not convinced there is global warming.
Global warming aside, swarming African migrants? Do people swarm together? Perhaps locusts do. Lovely analogy and so human. Italy is swarming with tourists as well. Or maybe the well heeled tourist doesn't swarm.
The Tiger Mosquito (or its Viet Nam relative) arrived in Puget Sound at Bremerton in shipments of returned used military tires after that unpleasantness. I believe they also found their way to the Lower Mainland but several years of very cold winters did them in. They are a very large distinctive mosquito with very pronounced stripes on their legs. The 'bite' is quite painful compared to other mosquitos, close in feeling to a wasp sting. They have been reported in New Zealand after hitching rides in containers that have water accumulated in them. And New Zealand fears they are now there for good. Italy can expect the same problem to become endemic as well.
The NY Times article linked in my post indicates that the tiger mosquitoe arrived in Italy in a shipment of tires, not on any people.
I'm convinced that 2007 will be the "Jumping of the Shark" (ala Happy Days) in terms of Al Gore & David Suzuki's false campaign to link global warming to CO2 produced by man.
Absolutely clean up pollution. Absolutely switch over to clean energy wherever you can.
But these religious zealots of the Church of Gore need to stop telling everyone to feel guilty about driving to work or shopping or having children or wanting to have a good life for their family or turning off Xmas lights at 10pm so as to prevent global catastrophe. It's all absolute nonsense.
According to the environmental movement:
- A young woman who is an environmental activist and flew to Bali to attend the recent conference, staying at a $200+ per night hotel, sipping champagne and eating canapes ... is the hero.
whereas:
- A slightly older woman, a soccer mom living in Alberta, raising 3 children to be contributing adults, driving them to school in a mini-van ... is the villian.
Anyone who doesn't see this logic as absolute INSANITY needs some immediate psychiatric care!
The moment I heard Al Gore say all this will be good for BUSINESS I began to have doubts. Then a High Court Judge in Britain found 9 serious errors in AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH and announced that the film could only be shown in schools provided the teachers raised the 9 mistakes. Governments will soon be having us on, with new taxes, while failing to deal with the oil and gas and coal industries.
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