Of mosquitoes and global warming
Dean Cornwell, "The Conquest of Yellow Fever," Walter Reed Army Institute of Research
I’ve been re-reading “The Path Between the Seas,” David McCullough’s masterful history of the Panama Canal. In some ways, it’s less timely now than when it was published in 1977, during the debate over the future of the canal. In other ways, it speaks to issues currently at the forefront of the national agenda.
McCullough writes of the heroic efforts, before the digging began, of Dr. William Crawford Gorgas of the U.S. Army Medical Corps to convince politicians in Washington that yellow fever and malaria were mosquito-borne diseases that could cause havoc to the effort to build the canal.
Gorgas had seen first-hand what mosquito-control measures had done to mitigate the problem in Havana after the Spanish-American War. He knew that the British physician Ronald Ross had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1902 for demonstrating the role that mosquitoes played in spreading yellow fever and malaria. McCullough writes:
The problem in essence was that Admiral Walker, Governor Davis and several others on the Isthmian Canal Commission, as well as a very large part of the populace and its political leadership, did not seriously entertain the notion that mosquitoes could be the cause of yellow fever or malaria. To spend time and money chasing after mosquitoes in Panama [they believed] would be to squander time and money in a most irresponsible fashion.
That the minds of men in such positions could be so closed in the face of all that had been learned and demonstrated in Cuba, not to mention the insistent warnings from [President Theodore] Roosevelt and [Dr. William Henry Welch, the president's adviser] may seem inconceivable. . . .
In the autumn of 1904, with the situation on the Isthmus unimproved, Gorgas returned to Washington to plead his case. It had been nearly four years since the epochal report of the Yellow Fever Commission. Ross had won the Nobel Prize in 1902 for his discoveries. A scientific congress held in Paris in 1903 had thoroughly reviewed [Gen. Walter Reed's] work [in Cuba] and declared that the mosquito transmission of yellow fever was a “scientifically determined fact.” But to Walker, Davis, and their fellow commissioners, Gorgas was wasting their time. Walker’s word for the theory of mosquito transmission was “balderdash.”
In the end, with the support of President Roosevelt and John F. Stevens, the canal project’s chief engineer, Gorgas was allowed to put his mosquito control measures into effect. Despite his efforts, nearly 5,000 workers died of yellow fever and malaria during the canal’s construction, the vast majority black workers who were forced to live in tents outside the mosquito control zone. Nonetheless, that was far fewer than the 34,000 who died during the earlier French efforts to build the canal.
History teaches us many things, not the least of which is that we keep making the same mistakes. Just ask this guy. Or these folks. Or this guy.
Kevin Horrigan is deputy editor of the editorial page. He writes editorials on local, state and national politics and public policy and also contributes a signed column to the Sunday Commentary Page. "The Old Sport" is a former sports columnist for the Post-Dispatch and for 10 years hosted radio talk shows on KMOX and KTRS in St. Louis. He lives in South St. Louis with his wife, Kate, and a dream of one day starting a professional catfish noodling tour. 
Kity Hawk wasn’t inside of that control zone. Funny, I didn’t realize [human caused] global warm… (I mean) climate change was decades after the industrial revolution.
http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/hh/34/hh34h.htm
Botched it, rats! I thought [human caused] global warm… (I mean) climate change was decades after the industrial revolution.
Lets look at what is observable. No sunspots means reduced magnetic activity. Look at the lawns of those of us who do not water. They are green past August. We don’t have cap and tax yet and its getting cooler! Could it be that we have nothing to do with it? 80% of the American people have doubts about man made global warming but our elected officials know what is good for us and will rush to pass yet another intrusive law. Inhofe is the modern day Crawford Gorgas.
If the greenhouse effect is the cause of global warming and the main greenhouse gas is water vapor why do we have to reduce Co2?
On a side note it was the evil chemical DDT that prevented an estimated 500,000,000 malaria deaths.
I was leaning toward MIT’s noted climatologist, Dr. Lindzen, since ya’ know he actually knows about this stuff …
… But lately I’ve found the Old Sport and the Green Czar much more convincing:
http://tinyurl.com/ObamaGreenCzar
By all means, pick the guy you agree with and ignore the consensus.
The consensus among the thinkers is that there is no conclusive evidence to show that global warming is a man made event. There certainly are theories. There is circumstantial evidence.
The hypocrits of the world will force regulations and laws on you to make you live greener, all while driving around in their gas guzzlers. There’s no problem with living a more conservative life in both energy consumption and thinking. There is a major problem with ignorant people (Mr. Gore) forcing laws to make others behave differently while they suck down gasoline and jet fuel.
I’m there with you Kev. Mooo. Baaaaa. What sound shall we make… are we a herd of cows or sheep this time? Old Sport and the Green Czar. Wait, we’ve got Al Gore, too. So that makes it cows, sheep or lemmings. Why kind of sound do lemmings make? No matter. I’m with you Big Guy.
“By all means, pick the guy you agree with and ignore the consensus.”
I have found Lindzen’s positions to be clear and convincing.
http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2009/07/resisting-climate-hysteria
That “consensus” thing is bunk. There are multitudes of pro & con scientists. Reality marches on with or without a majority understanding it.
Kevin, even a bright guy like you must know that science is not based upon consensus. It’s based upon verifiable and repeatable experiment and observation. Calling it consensus is the same as calling it faith, as in religion.
SOME species of Australian birds are shrinking and the trend will likely continue because of global warming, a scientist said.
Janet Gardner, an Australian National University biologist, led a team of scientists who measured museum specimens to plot the decline in size of eight species of Australian birds over the past century.
The research, published last week in the British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, found the birds in Australia’s southeast had become between 2 per cent to 4 per cent smaller.
Over the same century, Australia’s average daily temperature rose 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit (0.7 deg C), with the sharpest increase since the 1950s.
Source: - http://lifeofearth.org/2009/08/global-warming-shrinks-birds.html