DOCTORS FOR DISASTER PREPAREDNESS NEWSLETTER

The 2007 Minority Report of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee addresses commonly held myths concerning grievous effects of global warming on life on earth–the only reason that temperature change is important.

United Nations documents assert that 20%-30% of plant and animal species are threatened with extinction in this century because of global warming. Daniel Botkin, of the Dept. of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology at the Univ. of California compares such fashionable beliefs with those described in Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. During geologic periods when Earth experienced climate changes as rapid and warm as those predicted by U.N. models, almost no species went extinct, and warming did not broaden the distribution of malaria or encephalitis.

The consensus on global warming is a sham, stated Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute. He had to threaten legal action to have his name removed from the IPCC. “That is how they make it seem that all the top scientists are agreed,” he said on March 5, 2007.

“For years, the public has been fed a lusty diet of climate doom and gloom, cooked and served by alarmists who use the language of science to push their agenda. Now, every politician of every stripe must embrace the `climate consensus' or be branded a callous skeptic,” he writes. Concerning the heart-rending Associated Press story about the “unprecedented” outbreak of malaria in Karatina, Kenya, at 1,868 meters (6,130 feet), he notes that there were 10 disastrous outbreaks between World War I and 1950, extending much higher into the hills.

Biodiversity is greater in warmer regions, notes Josef Reichholf, head of the Vertebrates Department at the National Zoological Collection in Munich. If life for polar bears is harder, it is because Canadians slaughter tens of thousands of seals, their most important food source, every spring–not because of warming, which the bears survived in the past. Very few species are accustomed to rigid climate conditions.

As to malaria, Reichholf states that it is not truly a tropical disease. It was prevalent in northern and central Europe in previous centuries. In fact, notes botanist David Bellamy, a famed UK environmental campaigner, malaria was a main killer of people in Britain and Russia throughout the Little Ice Age.

Without climate change, the population at risk from malaria would increase 100% by 2080, while the greatest effect from warming would be a 7% increase, according to Gwyn Prins of the London School of Economics and Steve Rayner of Oxford. They see the Bali conference as a typical human response to failure: doing more of what is not working. Adaptation is the best method for dealing with climate change, they say.

“The American people are fed up with the media for promoting the idea that former Vice President Al Gore represents the scientific ‘consensus’ that SUVs and the modern American way of life have somehow created a ‘climate emergency’ that only United Nations bureaucrats and wealthy Hollywood liberals can solve,” said Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), ranking minority member of the Environment and Public Works Committee. “Scientific studies that debunk the dire predictions of human-caused global warming continue to accumulate.” Sen. Inhofe's 68-page Skeptic's Guide for journalists can be downloaded from epw.senate.gov; look on the Minority Page under “White Papers and Reports.” It contains links to all supporting documentation, and identifies the “major players in media bias.” It “presents a reporter's virtual who's who of embarrassing and one-sided media coverage,” with critiques of network television and major newspapers.

VECTOR CONTROL: CHAGAS DISEASE

Donated blood is now being tested for Chagas disease (American trypanosomiasis). The vector, the reduviid bug commonly known as the kissing bug, Triatoma genus, is here; bites are being more commonly seen as homes are increasingly built in natural habitats in the Southwest. Life-threatening anaphylaxis is not infrequent, but Chagas disease has apparently not been transmitted. It is thought that bite victims inoculate themselves by scratching the bug's feces into their skin; the bugs in the American Southwest may be more fastidious, defecating some time after their meal at a distance from their victim. Or it is possible that the density of Chagas disease carriers entering the U.S. from endemic regions is still too low to cause an outbreak here.

Reduviid bugs have an elongated, conical head. They are strictly nocturnal and are drawn toward lights in houses. In the daytime, they hide in cracks and other dark locations, coming out at night to feed. They are attracted by olfactory (CO2 and host odors) and thermal cues. They inflict multiple painless bites, generally in clusters on uncovered areas. Blood-engorged bugs are often found in the bed. The primary hosts are various species of Neotoma (wood rats or pack rats), but the bugs readily feed on other mammals. Pest control must target both bugs and rodents; however, targeting all the pack rats, instead of just those closest to the house, could send the bugs to the house in search of alternate hosts.

Thorough vacuuming, inspecting and shaking out bedding before retiring, sticky traps around beds, double-sided sticky tape placed on bed legs, and mosquito netting tucked in all around the mattress may help.

Copies of references, including Klotz JH, et al. PCT Magazine, April 2006, and other articles on anaphylaxis caused by insects, are available on request.

NYC TRIES TO OUTLAW PRIVATE RADIATION DETECTORS

Citing fears of false alarms, NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Richard Falkenrath, NYPD deputy commissioner for counterterrorism, tried to get the city council to approve a law that would require a permit for a citizen even to possess a biological, chemical, or radiologic detector–unless the commissioner, in his or her discretion, made an exception for a certain class of detector “because requiring a permit therefor would not further the purposes of this chapter” (proposed ordinance 10-802).

Under this law, the West Virginia air-quality experts who tested the air after 9/11 would have been a bunch of criminals. Industrial-hygiene people traveling from Boston to Atlanta with atmospheric detectors would be guilty of a misdemeanor when their plane landed at JFK. Asthma-Free School Zones would have to tell police they were testing for pollutants. Though stating that regulation of air-quality sensors around schools was “not what this is about,” Falkenrath didn't want to put an exemption for them in the law: “It becomes a slippery slope, and it would then be possible for many entities to sort of drive things through that loophole.”

Appearing shell-shocked from the outpouring of dissent on short notice, Councilman Peter Vallone pulled the legislation to give it a second look. But it will be back: “the cops are going to have this new power,” writes Chris Thompson (Village Voice 1/15/08). The re-written legislation will probably give blanket exemptions to all government employees, so that the NYPD doesn't have to arrest them when they come into the city to do their job. But what will happen to schoolchildren who make a KFM?

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