Infected Ticks On The Increase
Here’s another “global warming is good for everything that’s bad, and bad for everything that’s good” story. Now according to the online Swiss suedostschweiz.ch:
Ticks could become more dangerous because climate change favours infected ticks. That’s the conclusion that researchers of the University of Neuenburg concludes. The study was supported the Swiss Nation Fund.”
Scientists claim that the infected blood-sucking critters live longer when it’s warmer. Every year 10,000 Swiss people are infected with the Lyme-Borreliose.
A team led by Lise Gern have been studying the Holzbock tick over 10 years and found they have become increasingly infected during that period. The Suedostschweiz.de says:
Climate warming could have enhanced this trend, the researchers fear.”
Could?
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Inflation In Germany and Europe Jumps
This certainly is no surprise to anyone. When sources of energy are villainized and citizens are forced to buy more and more expensive energy, plus the senseless shut own of nuclear power plants, eventually these dumb policies start having an impact on supply chains. The online Mitteldeutsche Zeitung here reports:
Consumer prices climbed in march like in February on a year earlier another 2.1 percent. That’s the highest increase in two and half years, according to the German Federal Office of Statistics. Foremost energy prices are fuelling inflation. Energy increased in price in March 10 percent. Heating oil (+ 32.8 percent) as well as gasoline and diesel (+ 11.2 percent) were at the top of the list. But also electric bills climbed sharply (+ 7.6 percent).”
There are no “coulds” here – just hard reality. The price of food, which requires substantial energy to produce, also jumped 2.2%. Unfortunately political shift to renewable energy has barely gotten underway, and so these increases are only a tiny sampling of what is in store should Europe plunge fully into the renewable energy madness.
The Germans are in good company
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13090135
Perhaps the chinese shouldn’t print money to control their exchange rate.
They don’t control the exchange rate by printing money; they control it by allowing only small exchanges per day per person; and you have to do it physically; i.e. arrive at a bank counter personally. (AFAIK)
The author is right when he says it will be a boom-bust sequence; much like the Japanese bubble’s bursting, followed by the Lost Decade.
Don’t forget those large exchanges made when companies import from China. If you want to import several thousand pounds worth of chinese made components from down town shanghai, the manufacturer will want payment in yuan not pounds dollars or euros.
Given that the Chinese “miracle” is based on being able to undercut the opposition. A favourable exchange rate really does help.
I’m constantly tracking the CNY/USD ratio.
http://www.comdirect.de/inf/waehrungen/detail/uebersicht.html?ID_NOTATION=1343320
The Chinese try to get to a more realistic exchange rate, but in a controlled fashion, letting the Yuan appreciate by 7 % a year or so. Bernanke OTOH tries to devalue the USD faster by printing more. It looks like the USD and the Euro are failing with the same speed, while we are waiting for the Chinese bubble to burst.
http://www.businessinsider.com/china-worlds-fastest-printing-press-2011-1
“China’s Money-Printing Addiction Could Spell Disaster”
“Energy increased in price in March 10 percent.”
This makes renewable energy 10% less overprized!
Only half in jest. Another electricity prize hike is expected mid-year. Some utilities already announced that. With each prize hike, we get closer to the average renewables subsidy level. We should reach it asymptotically.
Industry gets better tariffs than households, but has to pay the same cross subsidy to renewables as households. So, if there were still renewable energy production industry in Germany, the costs for future wind turbines and solar panels would rise accordingly, leading to an exponential rise in electricity prizes.
Of course this can’t happen; the rising electricity prizes will drive any energy-intensive production process out of the country, to China. Some job losses.
So the rise of electricity prizes will probably reach the average renewables subsidy per kWh (somewhere around 30 cent, as the average is dominated by expensive solar subsidies), plus 7 cent (for the real energy production by the spinning reserve) plus about 15 cent in taxes and levies. Ending up at about 52 Eurocent/kWh.
About the ticks…
There has been no warming in Switzerland in the last ten years. Look at GISSTemp:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=646066600003&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
The tick population cycles along with the animal population they feed on. As each increases and decreases, the infection rate also cycles. If these “researchers” are biologists, they aren’t very good ones.
‘Could’ it be that people are vacationing at home, or, more with nature versus city? Could it be that when in contact with natures ‘lesser side’ a bit more brushes off? Could eco-tours be ‘exporting’ indigenous parasites world-wide with ease?
From the Canadian Medical Association Journal http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/179/2/158 “Seven days before admission our patient had returned from northeastern Peru, where she had stepped barefoot on 5 caterpillars… We received the antivenin from Brazil and administered it on the 10th day after envenomation (third day in hospital); however, our patient’s organ dysfunction progressed, and she died of multiorgan failure later that day. ”
X-files story!
Eeew! Ok, i immediately googled “Caterpillar-induced bleeding syndrome global warming” to see whether our friends from the AGW paper mill already have a prediction that this is worse than we thought. They don’t, apparently, but i found *FRIGHTENING* indications that… hold your breath…
*GLOBAL WARMING MAY REROUTE EVOLUTION – no less!*
http://scienceblog.com/42827/global-warming-may-reroute-evolution/
Oh nohs! The eternal harmony of climate and life has been disturbed; Pandora’s box opened; send more funding, yadda yadda…
Inflation? It has just started! Buy gold!
Global warming not only makes more ticks and reroutes evolution; it also spreads lung worms.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peterwedderburn/100082978/the-truth-about-urban-foxes-and-a-deadly-disease/
[…] sig dikteras av de gröna energifundamentalisterna. Redan har dessa satsningar slagit igenom på energipriserna, vilket har lett till en växande inflation på […]
The ticks are infested with a bacteria called ‘Borreliosis’ which causes Lyme Disease, after the Canadian town of Lyme where the disease was first discovered.
This is a serious problem and some medical researchers have called Lyme Disease the new epidemic.
In most environments the spread of borreliosis takes place via host animals like red deer. However, researchers in the Netherlands some years ago found that one of the main reasons why infected ticks have occupied our city parks is because people took their dogs with them on holiday.
The dogs carried the infected ticks from the holiday destinations to the parks.
I was infected with Lyme in the eighties and it took me over ten years to recover from it. In fact I still have problems.
Today infected ticks are everywhere and it is my advice that if you get bitten by a tick you remove the tick with a special tick remover which you can buy at any chemist or ‘Apotheke’ and every vet praxis.
You should have it in your emergency kit.
Never use alcohol or tobacco juice to remove it because the it could cause the tick to empty it’s stomach in your blood stream increasing the infection risk. Don’t twist the tick to remove it. If the body breaks away from the head, the head is still in your flesh and that could cause a nasty infection, even if the tick is not infected with borreliosis.
Now listen good to this advice.
If you are bitten by a tick, go to the doctor and ask him to prescribe a broad spectrum antibiotic treatment for 10 days.
Most physicians are reluctant to prescribe antibiotics and I agree with that but the risk you run to become infected with borreliosis is much bigger that the application of an anti biotic treatment.
Simply insist and if rejected go to a Lyme specialist who will provide you with the anti biotic treatment without rejection.
I found a tick when I was under the shower, removed it and never thought about it. A few months later I suddenly didn’t feel well, I got a heavy head ache, a fever, went to bed and simply passed out.
I got the right treatment because I developed a high fever but the infection made me so sick that I had meningitis, heart problems,
rheumatic symptoms, coordination and control problems and concentration problems, feeling very, very tired.
In fact I had to learn walking again when the symptoms were overcome.
This all happened in the eighties when there was no common knowledge about Lyme disease among general physicians.
I was just very lucky and I know people who died from the complications of the disease or ended up in a wheel chair.
As for the diagnosis, the red ring that should appear around the area of a bite after a few day’s as a sign of a possible infection, forget all about it. Tick bite = broad spectrum antibiotics. period.
If you go hiking, cover up, prevent ticks to make skin contact and check your clothes and your body and that of your kids, your wife, your girl friend and check your dog for ticks after every walk.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyme_disease
By the way, with Global Warming aka Climate Change this has absolutely noting to do so I call BS on the article.
It is nice to know that ticks according to the UN have the same rights as humans. http://www.canada.com/technology/document+would+give+Mother+Earth+same+rights+humans/4597840/story.html
Our plan to turn our modern civilization into an idiocracy is right on schedule.
Ron
Sorry to hear about your bout with miserable little beasts – and good to hear you recovered for the most part. Last fall I also picked one up on my leg and didn’t notice it until about 3 days later. I had it removed and some blood tests done to check for infection. Luckily nothing turned up. Our cat picks them up almost every day, and my wife has become sort of an expert at removing them.
People need to be reminded that “Nature” is not beautiful and friendly. “Nature” is a really REALLY nasty b–ch when you get down to it. She is constantly throwing her vast array of things at you – to try to eliminate you. There are so many natural things out there that can kill you – viruses, bacteria, parasites, fungus, insects, poisons, predators, weather events, earthquakes, tsunamis, asteroids, etc., etc. etc.
To think that man can just rain-dance these things away is just the peak of scientific insanity.
Dear Ron and Pierre,
This is not good for my latent hypochondria. By the way, nice post on WUWT about climate refugees.
Then this page should keep you awake a few nights. Enjoy.
Tick-borne diseases:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tick-borne_disease
Train Of Ideas inaugurated in Hamburg
http://nachrichten.t-online.de/umweltprojekt-zug-der-ideen-in-hamburg-eingeweiht/id_45797800/index
The Magical Mistery Tour of world saving smugness. The SPD critizised the project when they were in the opposition, now that they got the Hamburg government, they’re breastbeatingly gung-ho about it.
Leftist green fan-base demands action by the new Green-Red government in Baden-Württemberg to stop the Stuttgart 21 project as promised in the elections; demonstrate for first time since elections. Stopping the project will lead to high compensation claims by Deutsche Bahn.
http://nachrichten.t-online.de/-stuttgart-21-gegner-demonstrieren-erstmals-seit-der-wahl/id_45811556/index
This is absurd.
Greens deny that switching off nukes and deploying more subsidized renewables will lead to increases in electricity prizes.
Bärbel Höhn. Just google Höhn in news.google.de and you find a lot of hits.
A collection of this and other interesting quotes re the German Energiewende (“Energy U-turn”; meaning the decision to phase out all nukes):
http://www.ftd.de/politik/deutschland/:cdu-und-fdp-gegen-steuererhoehungen-fuer-atomausstieg/60040312.html
Despite rising coal prices NRW decided to stop further support to the coal industry which currently provides the bread and butter of 25.000 mine workers.
Shutting down coal and nuclear?
Estimates have been which assess coming investment in green technology at 2 to 3 billion Euro a year.
I think this is wishful thinking.
Sky rocketing electricity prices is all they harvest.
They have made Putin very happy.
Old but jaw-dropping. BBC’s Ethical man visits the USA and watches masses of greenshirts agitated by Salazar, Markey and Lisa Jackson. Obama controls greenshirt crowds to agitate for his goals. Alinsky tactics, probably. Nice Volkspalast shots.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/8024584.stm
@Pierre, thanks for your kind remark but I already had forgotten the entire subject unill you posted this article.
I think you have been lucky and I wonder what was tested because the current problem with tick bites is that there is a complex of infection possible which are very difficult to diagnose.
In fact it is impossible to establish any infection within three days after a bite. The probles is that if you have been infected and weight a few days for symptoms, you are already taking a risk.
If you visit the same area time after time you could do a test where they check if the ticks in your area have been infected.
Simply take a sheet and drag it over the ground, collect the ticks and bring them to a lab. In the Netherlands the University of Utrecht performed the research together with the Agricultural University of Wageningen. What they came up with was the percentage of ticks infected and which type of infections found.
You have to ask local authorities or a University lab to perform such a test. I saw some recent maps that marked the infected area’s but I immediately saw these maps are not correct.
You find infected ticks in any city and natural park.
@ DirkH: Thanks DirkH for the aditional link about tick born diseases.
The article confirms my advice take a broad spectrum antibiotic treatment under all circumstances:
Diagnosis and treatment
“In general, specific laboratory tests are not available to rapidly diagnose tick-borne diseases. Due to their seriousness, antibiotic treatment is often justified based on clinical presentation alone”.
The wife of a friend of mine once got bitten and got FSME. At that time, she trained to become a nurse. FSME reduced her mental capacities for a year or so to a level where she couldn’t learn anything so she failed the exams. (I wanted to say “reduced her mental capacities to the level of a HuffPost SuperUser” so much that i couldn’t suppress it.)
(because i just read the comments under this HuffPost piece:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/22/environmental-refugees-50_n_826488.html
and they’re a hoot.)
Perhaps the politicians should look at the level of TAX on fuel. In most European countries, the TAX element is seventy to eighty percent of the price at the pump ALREADY.
And the imbeciles in the EU Commission want to increase the tax on diesel! What do they think trucks run on and the effects on the price of _everything_ else, particularly food?
@DirkH,
I had similar symptoms. Couldn’t concentrate on anything with short memory capability down to nothing.
At a certain moment I took a carton of milk from the fridge, pored a glass and stuffed the milk in a kitchen drawer! I really thought I was going banana’s.
On other moments I decided to pick up my work again, went to my car to find out that I had totally forgotten where I was going. Thanks to the little yellow sticking notes from 3M I managed to create some kind of system that enabled me to function is ‘secure mode’. I must say it was a most humbling experience. It took me more than a year before the usual clear thinking and memory came back. I also suffered great set backs when I got the flu. I simple common cold resulted in a severe sinusitus which was battled with antibiotics but in reality made it worse.
That was until, thanks to the internet, I found out that that I developed an allergy which was stimulated by the use of antibiotics.
From that moment on I took antihistamine instead of antibiotics and the problems were solved overnight. I haven’t been ill since.
As for the Puffington Host, I don’t waste a single minute of my time on that blog. You know dumb asses, sell outs and dimocrats.
For your reader’s consideration, possibly a thought provoking comment on the direction we are heading in!
It’s so sad, it’s funny. From my window on the world here in Vancouver, Canada.
I watch the Western World committing economic Hari Kari (ritual suicide) In a sense the Tick problem and Lyme disease relates to the self inflicted energy problems and unaffordable prices.
Governments have become INFECTED and consumed with climate change and wealth redistribution, pushed and supported by fanatical greens and the progressive (socialist) and EU/UN driven agendas and policies like the UN’s Agenda 21.
The elite/governing classes have amassed huge war chest’s full of limitless money, power and influence, there are tens of thousands of tax free organization’s and their foot solders/zombies/sheep in every country with the same goals of complete and utter destruction of the Western economy’s and it’s people.
They can’t or won’t rationalize the repercussions of this infection/madness, they are stampeding us all down the road to ruination and it’s the little guy through misguided intentions or thoughtless belief’s that voted and supported these blood suckers into power that will get hurt the most.
Remember the films and history of the great depression of people on the march trying to escape poverty, starvation or war, of people without homes, food or hope, very few of the elite experienced hardship in those times?
When things get so bad that the masses are jobless and can’t afford food, heat or shelter, once more we will see the rise of smooth talking orators with the gift of the gab, then the inevitable dictators and the slimy manipulators urging nationalism and probable war all over again! This was very thing the EU and the useless but dangerous UN was designed to stop! It’s pure insanity, Seemingly only a few of us look ahead and see what is coming? Are we doomed because of madness and stupidity, to go down that nightmare road again?
I’m afraid Germany is starting down that road to a complete financial collapse thanks to It’s insane ideological energy/global warming/climate change policy’s. Even the strongest economy’s can eventually run out of money, power and ability, it’s happened throughout history! All the economic might, technology, cell phones, computers and smooth talking politicians won’t prevent the inevitable demise and breakdown of Germany or any other country under these circumstances.
If Germany fails, NO EU union or the World Bank can or will come to it’s financial aid, how can they? They are all borderline bankrupt and Germany is the BANKER/MONEY MACHINE for the EU and endless 3rd world gift giving!
Who in the western world will be able to step up and help? NOBODY! The US and all other green crazed morally bankrupt government’s are already on the financial precipice.
I think the EU is toast (burnt out) it’s in it’s last slow gasp/death spiral! We are heading for a worldwide depression!
There is only one hope and that’s a revolution that drives progressives and loony tunes out of the halls of power or influence, but I’m not holding my breath.
I’m sorry to sound so bleak but I’m watching history repeat itself and we skeptics seem to be the only ones that are aware and fighting against this tide of lies, disinformation and ruination. I don’t know that having truth on our side is enough to stop this steamroller.
Dave.
Dave, just a small reply. Not only skeptics are aware of all this. Yesterday a friend told me that she reads everything about CO2 in the newspapers and noticed that the texts have become bleaker and less convincing as if the journalists do not believe their own stories anymore. Perhaps we may compare climatism with Lime disease: it takes some time to recover.
That’s good news. (When ordinary people start opening their eyes.)
The AGW doctrine sticks in the rules and regulations.
We end up with a busted doctrine but all driving electric cars and living the sustainable life style, whatever that means.
We need to topple the ruling class and get rid of the red tape, rules , the regulations and make the use of conventional fuels affordable again.
One way or the other we’re going down the drain if we don’t act.
Expert: parasite behind stomach flu outbreak…
Published: 23 Apr 11 10:01 CET | Double click on a word to get a translationOnline: http://www.thelocal.se/33366/20110423/All indications point to the parasite Cryptosporidium as being the source behind the stomach flu epidemic that has affected thousa…