From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Ian Magness

How Joe Pinkstone gets to be the Telegraph’s Science Correspondent beats me if this naive little article is any indication!

Disease-carrying bugs from Europe are increasingly crossing the Channel and arriving in Britain as a result of climate change, government scientists have warned.

Insects that once only survived in the warmer climes of the Mediterranean or further south are now migrating to northern Europe. They are then blown over the Channel on the wind or hitch a lift on ferries or trains.

Studies show that the pests are now also able to flourish in the UK as temperatures rise and winters become less intense.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/24/bugs-from-europe-pose-deadly-danger-scientists

He goes on to list main threat as the dengue transmitting Tiger Mosquito. Proper scientists would have told him that the spread of this charmer has nothing to do with “climate change”, as it has always been able to thrive in temperate climates, such as ours. Its spread has been solely the result of the expansion of global trade in recent decades.

Pinkstone goes on to warn us about bluetongue disease:

Meanwhile, this summer veterinarians at Defra were preparing for a deluge of tests for bluetongue, an infection that affects farm animals such as cattle and sheep, and is characterised by a blue tongue in infected animals.

Midges, belonging to the culicoides species, spread the virus to anything they bite, which includes sheep, deer, llamas and goats. It does not affect people or food security, experts say.

Farmers, vets and Government scientists up and down the country have been put on high alert for bluetongue, with the latest Government guidance saying “infected culicoides may be spread to Great Britain via the wind” from the coastal clusters in Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium.

There is a “medium” risk of incursion of a midge that carries a disease for which there is no vaccine, experts say.

Ele Brown, the UK deputy chief veterinary officer, said: “Vector-borne diseases account for more than 17 per cent of all infectious diseases in humans around the world, with mosquitoes and ticks representing a growing threat to the UK due to the fact that they are both established and invasive.

“Climate change, in the form of warmer summer temperatures and milder wetter winters, could increase the abundance of the native mosquito populations, prolong the active vector season and enable invasive mosquito species to establish in the UK and increase their ability to transmit diseases.

Notice the weasel word “COULD”! But as she admits, these midges and mosquitoes are already well established in the UK.

The situation regarding bluetongue is much more complex than Pinkstone suggests, something which a competent science correspondent should surely have explained.

The principal reason for the rapid spread of bluetongue through Europe in recent years has been its transfer to the obsoletus and pulicaris families of Culicoides midges, both of which are endemic throughout most of Europe:

Note the presence of the midges in much colder climates in Scandinavia.

Another factor in the spread has been the ability of the virus to survive in harsh winters. This survival has nothing to do with climate change:

Shame on the Telegraph for allowing this reporter to write such garbage.