Global warming deniers beware --brain-eating amoebas may kill your children!

Those who discount the catastrophic effects of global warming, like my younger brother even though he acknowledges the reality of climate change, often counter that warming may not be all that bad. 

Like the melting of the ice in Greenland may turn it into a productive agricultural center for growing wheat and corn and maybe even tomatoes.  Or apples.  After all, we are witnessing an oil rush in the Arctic with countries racing though once unnavigable ice-clogged waters to stake their claims.  In the larger economic scheme of things, what's a few polar bears? 

That's capitalist optimism at work, always seeking  opportunity in disaster for making a few bucks.

Let me suggest that the money makers back off a bit and listen to the scientists.  Rapid global warming --a hundred years is a nano-second in geological time-- could prove disastrous to the ecosystems which sustain life on earth.  It takes a long time for complex organisms to adapt to change, but not so much for microorganisms.

Take the amoeba, for example.  It turns out that a certain brain-eating variety of the one-celled organism likes warm water and will surely expand its range as temperatures rise.  In fact, the mini-blobs have killed six people across the southern United States in the past year alone. 

Does that mean we're all going to die a slow brain death at the hands of these microscopic killers?  No.  But it is one more thing to worry about as we continue pumping greenhouse gases into the skies.  That and the coming infestation of killer bees and the loss of Florida and the dying off of the fish we eat as the oceans warm  and the decimation of  Antarctic penguins.

Those and all the changes and dangers we have yet to even imagine. 

 

Comments

[marcia]

and...Disappearance of the polar bears....

[A new low]

Wow what a great addition to the hysterical litany! Florida disappears, and our brains get eaten!

Stop driving! Prevent any third world nation from developing! We cannot allow them to achieve our affluence, because if they do, they will just have their brains eaten by amoebas!

Sheesh!