1. This Apex Preditor Kills More People Than Any Other – And They Can Be Found In Your Back Yard.. One singular apex predator has done more to shape history than any other animal on the planet. Statistically speaking, this titan among the species has killed roughly half of all humans who ever lived. As colonial domination played out over 2,000 years, generals and their cunning strategies were not the game changers. More was decided by that leviathan living among us, ever abuzz in the background, ready to bite.
The mosquito”We are at war with the mosquito,” Timothy C. Winegard writes in his epic The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator (Dutton, 2019). “A swarming and consuming army of 110 trillion enemy mosquitoes patrol [almost] every inch of the globe.”
The mosquito first appeared 190 million years ago, followed not long after by the parasite that causes malaria. The female can deliver about 15 diseases through her bite, malaria being one of the most lethal. Amber-encased mosquitoes infected with the disease date back to the dinosaur age, which, Winegard notes, the mosquito likely helped bring to an end. In ancient Indian medical texts, doctors refer to a fiery fever demon arising during the rainy season (mosquitoes love standing water). And in ancient Egyptian papyri, scribes talk of bathing victims in fresh human urine to combat malaria.
The mosquito likes to hunt near the ground, which is why it’s often circling your ankles. After landing, it uses its serrated mandible cutting blades to saw through your skin, then stabs you with its proboscis and sucks out three to five milligrams of blood. The bite itself isn’t deadly; the diseases it can transmit are. Since 2000, the average annual number of human deaths caused by mosquito-borne diseases has clocked in at around 2 million, making eco-terror flicks like Jaws seem absurd by comparison (sharks kill about 10 people per year).
The insect felled whole empires. Invading Roman armies were decimated by a “chronic malarial snowball effect.” Meanwhile, “the Roman penchant for gardens, cisterns, fountains, baths, and ponds, in combination with the complex systems of aqueducts, frequent natural floods, and a coinciding period of global warming, all provided a haven for mosquito propagation, turning the elements of urban beautification into death traps,” Winegard writes.
“Once you go further down the rabbit hole,” Winegard told Sierra, “you realize that in the revolutions in the United States and Haiti and in south Central America, it was the mosquito that was the undoing of the colonial powers.”
But The Mosquito isn’t simply about battles and body counts. At every turn, you can feel Winegard maneuvering his thesis into place: The arc of history often bends not of our own will but through powerful forces at play in the world that are beyond human agency and control. It’s a history with a soundtrack: that all-too-familiar buzzing sound.
A mosquito, it turns out, played a primary role in Winegard’s own story. In 1918, his great-great-grandfather William was sick from a bout of malaria after serving in World War I, delaying his repatriation to Canada by two years. Had that not happened, William would not have found himself on a boat in 1920 watching a seasick girl vomit over the side.”I wouldn’t be here,” Winegard says, “if he didn’t contract malaria and meet my great-great-grandma on that boat.”
2. Join us on Sept 17th 2019 at 5:00 for Arizona Green Chamber’s Drinks and Dialogue, at Goodman’s Interior Structures, a commerical furniture distributor, with a vision
to change our community
Location: 1400 E Indian School Rd, Phoenix, AZ 85014
Cost $10 for members or first time guests
Cost $20 for non members
For more information, go to azgreenchamber.org
Our September 17th Green Drinks and Dialogue event will be hosted by Adam Goodman, President and CEO of Goodmans Interior Structures in Phoenix. Join fellow AZ Green Chamber members for a of tour the Goodmans LEED building and learn about their business model. As Arizona’s first BCorp, Goodmans believes that by considering all stakeholders, Goodmans can be a catalyst for change in our community. Be inspired on how you can use your own assets, resources, and talent to evolve into a more conscious business.
3. Solid and Hazardous Waste and Pollution Prevention Workshop in Flagstaff Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) Waste Programs Division invites interested community members and business and government personnel to participate in our free workshop. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn about the latest requirements and best practices and to earn Professional Development Hours.
Wednesday, Sep. 25 Solid Waste, Hazardous Waste and Pollution Prevention 9 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Coconino County Community Services and Health Services District, Ponderosa Conference Room – 2625 N King St, Flagstaff Learn more and register at azdeq.gov
4. The Terrifying Final Hours of the Dinosaurs’ Reign on Earth
- Scientists have described the hours immediately after the dinosaur-killing asteroid impact struck the coast off Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula.
- The force of the impact formed large mounds of earth around the crater, sparked fires, and sent waves crashing toward shore.
- The impact forever altered the course of life on Earth and gave rise to a tenacious class of animals: mammals.
Rock cores pulled from the famed Chicxulub crater off the coast of Mexico have revealed what the dinosaurs’ last day on Earth would have been like 66 million years ago.
Leaving a crater in the Yucatán Peninsula more than six miles wide—or the size of San Francisco—the asteroid wiped large swathes of life in the oceans, the land, and the sky off the face of the Earth. Roughly 70 percent of life on Earth was extinguished within the following hours, days, weeks, and months. Most notably, the impact and its aftermath spurred the extinction of the dinosaurs, thus altering the course of life as we know it.
“It’s so rare in geology that we get to look at the rocks and read a story on the timescale of hours,” geologist and study author Sean Guelick of the University of Texas at Austin, told Gizmodo.
As devastation reigned across the planet, clues to the impact’s timeline were left in the crater, according to a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In the seconds after the impact, the force of the crash thrust sediment into the air, which then fell back to Earth, forming a ring of mountains that circled the crater. Water then rushed back into the crater, depositing a significant layer of sediment
A tsunami hurdled toward nearby shores. Over the course of a few hours, superhot debris rained down over North America, sparking wildfires up to hundreds of miles away. The researchers found traces of sand, gravel, and charcoal in the rock cores, which suggests the massive tsunami sent out by the blast rebounded and deposited materials from the shore back into the crater.
All of this unfolded in a matter of hours.
Scientists were surprised not to find traces of sulfur in the core. This suggests that impact vaporized massive amounts of sulfur-bearing minerals, according to National Geographic. The rapid influx of such a potent greenhouse gas into the atmosphere would have dramatically altered the climate, potentially blocking out the sun and sending the planet into a period of global cooling.
“Our results support this scenario where first you burned parts of the continents, and then you had global dimming of the sun and plummeting temperatures for years to follow,” Gulick told Smithsonian.
There’s no doubt the hours after this collision would have been devastating. Now, scientists have a better idea how that devastation changed the course of life on our planet. Source: Wall Street Journal
5. State § 404 Proposed Program Roadmap Available for Review
ADEQ has drafted a proposed Roadmap outlining the pathway to Arizona’s assumption of the CWA § 404 permitting program from the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). This Roadmap also serves as our vision for a State-administered § 404 program.
This Roadmap was developed after more than a year of meetings, research, and collaboration with stakeholders, including federal and state agencies, and is located on ADEQ’s website at static.azdeq.gov/wqd/404/404rm.pdf. The Roadmap addresses many of the questions asked by stakeholders, bu there is still work to be done.
We Value Your Feedback
After you have reviewed the Roadmap, please complete a short, voluntary online survey to provide feedback. A link to the survey is on page 66 of the Roadmap. The deadline to complete the survey is Oct. 4, 2019.
Stakeholder Meetings
In addition to the survey, ADEQ will hold three stakeholder meetings in September. Tribal Listening Sessions will also be held in the afternoons on the same days in the same stakeholder meeting locations. Please RSVP for each meeting at the email links below.
Flagstaff
Date/Time: Tues., Sept. 17, 9 a.m. to 12 p.m.
Location:
Coconino Community College
Board Room
2800 S Lone Tree Rd., Flagstaff, AX 86005 RSVP E-MAIL
Phoenix
Date/Time: Thurs., Sept. 19, 9 a.m. to 12 p.m.
Location:
Arizona Department of Transportation Human Resource Development Center
Grand Canyon Rooms 1-3
1130 North 22nd Ave. Phoenix AZ 85009 RSVP E-MAIL
Tucson
Date/Time: Fri., Sept. 20, 9 a.m. to 12 p.m.
Location:
Tucson Convention Center, Maricopa-Mohave Meeting Rooms
260 S Church Ave. Tucson, AZ 85701 RSVP E-MAIL
Join Remotely:
Click to Join Online via WebEx | Meeting number (access code) 802 336 620 | Password JXTkcD2F
By Phone | (415) 655-0003 | Access code 802 336 620 WebEx Help
Path Forward
ADEQ will review comments on the Roadmap to determine if the proposed State § 404 program adds value to the regulated community. If state assumption adds value to the regulated community, ADEQ will begin drafting program rules in fall 2019. It is anticipated the draft rules will be distributed late in the fall with formal rulemaking to begin in early 2020 to support submitting an assumption package to EPA by end of June 2020. A more detailed schedule is included in the Roadmap.
Again, ADEQ thanks all the dedicated stakeholders for sharing their expertise and experiences with the ADEQ 404 team. For more information on state assumption of the CWA § 404 program visit azdeq.gov/cwa-404.
6. Summer Foods. The number of hot dogs eaten in the U.S. between Memorial Day and Labor Day (“Summer”) every second are:
a.) 1,239
b.) 157
c.) 818
Answer – c.) 818
