Summers across the global north are now defined by flash floods, #droughts , heat waves, #wildfires , & intensifying named storms, as predicted by #Exxon scientists back in the 70s. The US sec of #HHS advocates against using the most effective tool we have to fight the infectious diseases that have ravaged humanity for millennia. People are eagerly lapping up the #misinformation spewed & disseminated by #AI#chatbots
Here's great graphic for those of you interested in where the rain mostly falls in Britain from Alasdair Rae (via LinkedIn):
'A slightly revised version of my 'where does the rain fall across Britain?' 3D render, just in time for the rain - the higher the spike, the soggier it is. In a shocking development, the east gets less rain than the rainsponge west. Shadow effect added as a nod to the rain shadow effect'...
So, do you suppose over the last 30 odd years the water companies have been building lots of reservoirs, you know, where the demand for water is greatest?
due to #wildfires raging across Europe, people had to evacuate Burrolandia, a sanctuary for burros & other equines. it’s also a farm, so they left all the animals out of their stalls. when they came back, they found the burros had organized all the animals in the middle of the farm to avoid the fires & smoke that luckily stopped meters away from the property.
it from their Spanish edition i found this article written by a group of scholars from the Universidad de Navarra about how the abandonment of rural economies is contributing to #climateChange and the extreme #droughts#sequías that cause #wildfires#incendios forestales:
How a Changing Climate Is Reshaping the Spread of Infectious Diseases
"...Then you have this convergence of crises—the #ClimateCrisis overlapping with the #PollutionCrisis. So you get this intersection between air pollution and respiratory #diseases, and then infectious diseases more broadly, all layered on top of a changing #climate.
When it comes to waterborne and foodborne diseases, the link to #ClimateChange is even more direct. As temperatures rise, you create more favorable conditions for #bacteria and other #pathogens to multiply. They thrive in warm environments—soil, water, contaminated areas—so warming can increase their abundance.
#ExtremeWeather events are also a big factor here. Aedes #mosquitoes need water to complete their life cycle—from egg to larva to pupa, it all happens in #water. When #floods occur, all the discarded #plastic and #trash lying around fill with water and becomes the ideal breeding ground for mosquitoes.
What’s interesting is that these diseases aren’t just associated with floods—they’re also linked to #droughts. That might seem counterintuitive at first, but in many parts of the world, people don’t have safe, reliable access to clean water, especially during drought conditions. So they store water in containers that aren’t properly sealed or protected, which too can become the perfect breeding sites for mosquitoes.
Infections—particularly vector-borne diseases—are increasingly reemerging and emerging in new areas around the world for a lot of different reasons. Climate change is definitely part of that, with rising temperatures and more extreme weather events like floods and droughts. But the way we live our lives and interact with the environment also plays a huge role. I mean, first and foremost, most of us now live in urban areas rather than rural ones..."
Mosquitoes, for example, rely heavily on ambient temperature. They’re ectotherms, meaning they depend on room temperature to function. Every vector species has multiple traits that are influenced by temperature. If you map all those temperature-dependent traits, you can build a curve that shows the optimal temperature range for that vector.
Depending on where you fall on that curve, if you’re already past the peak and temperatures keep rising, there’s actually the potential for a decrease in transmission risk.
But these systems are highly nuanced. It’s not just about temperature—it’s also about human behavior and how we alter natural habitats. And vectors can evolve, too. So it’s almost like we’re in a race with other organisms to adapt more quickly.
The #climate/water paradox: As global temperatures rise, more #water evaporates into the atmosphere and so more precipitation occurs. But vast areas of the planet are getting drier not wetter. Why? Because as temperatures rise, more water is lost from soils. And the precipitation that does fall is falling in more intense events in fewer regions, leading to more extreme #floods. As a result, we're getting both more dangerous #droughts and floods simultaneously.
Stop burning carbon now.