Posted on 04/11/2017 6:29:35 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
2017 could be a record year for ticks and tick-borne illnesses according to one researcher who studies the arachnids in Alabama.
"I would say this is going to be a very bad tick year because it was a very mild winter," said Tim Sellati, chair of Southern Research's Infectious Diseases Department.
In addition, Sellati said a warming climate has let certain species of ticks expand their range and those changes are reflected in tick surveys in Alabama and other parts of the United States.
"The winters are warmer and the ticks recognize this, they sense this change in their environment," Sellati said. "We are seeing, year over year, ticks migrating into areas they would not normally venture into.
"The ticks take advantage of this change in climate that allows them to expand their range. When ticks expand their range, they also increase the likelihood of coming in contact with humans."
(Excerpt) Read more at al.com ...
The ticks recognize that man is making the winters warmer???
Or is it that the ticks thrive in warmer climate and think it is spring already?
I know that when it warms a little and is wet, the mosquitoes come out but they certainly don’t recognize when a cold snap is coming that will kill them off!
I was stationed at Ft Rucker Alabama for 2 years in the early 1970’s, and got eaten alive by ticks every time we went to the field. I doubt if this year will be any different, because every year in Alabama is a bad tick year.
A warm winter is ‘weather’ not climate change. AND ticks don’t ‘sense’ things are changing. This whole piece is too stupid to be real - or should be classed that way.
Here in Massachusetts Lyme disease is extremely common — Most of the older people I know (ie they were out in the woods before Lyme was well known) have Lyme disease — I knew one gentleman who died from Lyme complications. I was under the impression that Lyme wasn’t really an issue outside of New England...Hopefully Powassan virus doesn’t start to spread outside of southern New England too quickly.
"al gore was RIGHT!!!!"
Climate change my ass. Stupid freaking liberals.
Actually its been pointed out that the huge mast crop in 2015 caused an increase in mice populations and thus the increase in transmission of the spirochete to the ticks that feed on them.
High mast crops are usually an indication of nature bracing for a long cold winter.
As the winters of 2013 and 2014 were quite brutal, one could deduce that this was the cause.
The mast crop here was incredible especially in the fall of 2014 and 2015. 2015-16 was the El Nino winter that was warmer.
I also know here in the NE the mice populations have gone through the roof the past couple years with this year being a bumper crop of the little disease vectors.
I’m no scientist but that seems far more logical a reason.
I won’t get in the way of the mass hysteria though.
They’ll never catch up to Washington D.C. It’s the parasite capitol of the world. Only the DC ticks are mostly walking around on two legs. But they’re bloodsuckers lust the same.
Okay. Fairness in advertising. Here is this man’s particulars. Judge for yourself.
http://www.southernresearch.org/about/southern-research-directory/timothy-sellati-ph-d/
I'm in rural SW Mobile.
He seems solid.
People are dying from tick bites yet the powers that be will not use DDT or anything else to control the problem. It is like they want us to all die.
My golf game has been suffering recently. It must be climate change.
Due to the warm fall and mild winter, many prey species have proliferated greatly this spring providing numerous hosts for our littlest democrats (ticks, not tax-payers).
Bull, er, Dorkbama excrement.
The same can be said for all insects as well.
One would think. But my inclination is to question credibility when study funding, etc. may be involved AND when the panacea of ‘climate change’ interjects itself in the most odd places such as ticks as seems to end up being the global causation these days for publically funded researchers.
To my simple mind, something directly-connected or implied as a cause by ‘climate change’ would take many, many years of careful, detailed work to catalog and develop a recurring theme phenomena data trace. I don’t see that here.
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