08.12.2007

"There's talk of a 2- or 3-degree temperature rise (3 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit) in the future"

In one New Guinea hilltop village the message was rooted deep in lore: If you hunt in the valley below and sleep there overnight, evil spirits will possess you, you'll become sick, and you'll die.

It was a homespun kind of malaria control in the highlands of this western Pacific island, long free of the disease-bearing mosquitoes that plague the hot and humid nights of its lowlands, said Dr. Ivo Mueller, a lead scientist at the Papua New Guinea Institute of Medical Research.

As the Earth warms, however, 'malaria epidemics in the highlands are now basically happening every year,' Mueller said. Read more


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