Steven Jay Gould, the late philosopher/scientist, pointed out that a visitor from outer space would think bacteria were the true inhabitants of Earth. By a somewhat round about method he showed that the weight of all living creatures and plants was less than the total weight of bacteria on our planet. His contention was that a space traveller would see microbes on every available surface. Some surfaces would be solid, some liquid, some stationary and some mobile and of these latter, some would be slow moving, green coloured ones, while others would move much more quickly and come in a variety of shapes and hues. We would be among these latter bacterial carriers. We have bacteria on our skin in countless numbers, we have even more of them in our guts, and, to cap it all, every single cell in our body relies on mutated, captured bacterial parts for its power supply. Puts us in our place, doesn’t it?
And if that isn’t enough to set your mind working, try this one. Every single living object on Earth, be it microbe, fungus, plant or animal, is made up of the same four amino acids. Only the sequence in which these are knit together separates each living entity from its neighbour.
Look around you. Everything you see, and you yourself, are related…
Gaia.
Signed…John Bart
Please visit my website www.mediclim.com which links your health to the weather forecast and offers FREE warning emails if your health problem is likely to be aggravated by tomorrow’s weather.

Yes she was…at least when she said that the weather makes a difference to her health and wellbeing. And now, we can tell you what tomorrow’s weather is going to do to you… IF you have MIGRAINE, ARTHRITIS, ASTHMA, HEART DISEASE or DIABETES. ( see www.mediclim.com)
BIOMETEOROLOGY is a branch of science that relates the weather to human health. The first North American book on the topic was published by Dr.W.F. Petersen in 1938 and was entitled “The Patient and the Weather.” It took him four volumes to say what your grandmother says in a few well chosen words.

In 1950’s interest in the subject was renewed in Germany and Holland. There is a wrinkle however to what your grandma told you…they found that comparing one parameter alone, such as temperature or humidity with changes in human health never produced reliably repeatable statistically valid results.
However when the weather is characterised as the combination of several meteorological measurements, viewed over the timespan of a week or so, comparison with health outcomes does produce statistically sound findings. This technique is known as synoptic weather analysis. From this understanding came a German weather/health forecast fore every large town or city, on a daily basis in the 1980’s. Was it valued? Sure. Their trial effort, a telephone number advertized to the public, resulted in 1.9million calls in one year.
I, a family doc, and a friend, Denis Bourque, who for his sins is a meteorologist, have taken advantage of the Internet and its popularity. We provide a free service, offering email alerts to sufferers of migraine, arthritis,asthma diabetes and heart disease, is now available for people in Eire, the U.K., Canada and the continental U.S.A. Subscribers’ anonymity is preserved since they need only provide their email address and postal code. They are warned the day before the weather will impact unfavourably on more of these health problems. Synoptic weather analysis, coupled with data showing weather pattern effects on the five conditions mentioned, underpins our small but we think valuable public health effort.
How valuable is your grandmother’s insight?
In Canadian dollars… in1996 stats.. if everyone who went to the doctor that year and then had lab work and a script had NOT gone just once the money saved would have been $1.4billion dollars…that’s the amount that was spent on medical research in Canada that year.
SO… if you want a heads up, to be forewarned and so forearmed about the weather and what it’ll do to you please go to www.mediclim.com
John Bart

A couple of weeks ago I was in Ireland and England. I was staggered at the cost of transport in London. It cost the two of us one pound more to travel from Belfast to Stanstead than to travel seven miles across London, from Marble Arch to Stanmore. It’s scary… nearly as scary as the cost of watching a rugby match on the t.v. at home in Toronto… which is FIFTEEN pounds + if it’s an international.
One can live without rugby…almost… but no one can live without transport. In T.O. there is a uniform ticket price and, if you are going in the same direction, you can hop from subway to bus for no extra cost.
However, to get to the best rugby field around T.O. one has to go by car because it’s out in the boonies… from:
john bart at www.mediclim.com… linking your health to the weather forecast.check us out.

Iguacu falls, which lies at the junction of Brazil and Argentina, rivals Niagara Falls in stunning beauty. Iguacu is wider, by far, as it stretches over several kilometers, with islands between parts of the falls. Except in one place, however, it is not as thunderous.That place is known as The Devil’s Throat.
By a trick of geography it is possible to stand very close to the waters rushing down The Throat, and to be overawed by their naked power. You stand, however, below the crest of this neck of the falls, to one side, looking up at their might. And there you see an example of adaptation which takes your breath away.
Please imagine that there are clouds upon clouds of spray, there are rainbows wherever you look, there is thunder blotting out all other sounds, and there is water cascading down in stunning power. And, from time to time, small birds fly right into the falling waters.
The guide, having pointed them out, stands back to answer the obvious question which is “Why are they doing that?”
He tells you they are not committing suicide but that they are flying to their nests and young ones that sit behind the waters of the falls. “They are safe from predators,” he says.
“But they fly right into the water!” you exclaim because that is exactly what you see.
“Look closer,” comes the reply. So you do, and, with patience, you see that the birds are flying through tiny gaps in the downward flow, gaps that are made by thin rocks jutting forward.
These small birds have adapted to their terrible, cascading, ever-changing but ever-the-same environment. The question that comes to mind is “When global warming floods over us, will we be as successful at the birds of The Devil’s Throat…or will we be hurled down it?”

There’s no doubt the weather is becoming more unstable. Last Friday the temp in Hog Town (T.O…Tronna…Toronto) was +8C in the morning and -14 by nightfall and -24 by 0300 the next day.

There were tank tops on the girls before lunch and long johns on the fellows before supper. No one has any real idea why this is all happening but whatever the reason it’s a real roller coaster ride.

And tonight (Tues 3rd Mar) it’s -12 and they promise +8 by lunch time Wednesday. Similarly in Ireland I hear it reached 13degrees last week, and this week it’s struggling to go above zero!

Coupled with the news of the economy most people are in the dumps. But not us (me and my missus)…we went tangoing on Sunday afternoon. Argentine tango…the vertical expression of a horizontal desire. If you haven’t tried it you should. If you want to know why check out a dancer called Natasha Poberaj on Utube. She has legs up to her armpits and when she moves around/on/beside/next to the fella she’s dancing with you can hear the air crackle.
And we can do about 1/10 of what she’s forgotten but boy is it fun. And very healthy too. Up goes your blood pressure, then then down it goes.

We went to Buenos Aires a couple of times a couple of years ago. It’s a great city. Faded, European, safe, cheap and life starts at 2330 and goes on till 0730…and then they go to work. We had to line up to get into a coffee bar in Ricoletta (one of the chi-chi areas of B.A.) at 2300 and the hostess said, “good afternoon” as we walked in.
B.A. has the widest street in the world and at one end of it is the third largest opera house in the world.
I wish I was there now.

Check out my other blogs on www.mediclim.com the world’s first weather/health website. J.B. tangoista.

The Alberta Tar Sands are Canada’s great answer to Middle Eastern oil. They contain as much oil as lie under the desert sands of Saudi Arabia…which is a lot. What’s more, they are on the same continent as the U.S.A, separated from it only by the “longest unguarded border in the world”. They are, then, of the greatest interest to Alberta (revenue, revenue,) Canada (jobs, jobs, tax revenue) and the U.S. govt. All of which are understandable and, even desirable. Howver there is a catch. Extracting the oil from the tar sands involves a process that denudes the countryside of water…in 40yrs Alberta might become a desert, if it takes that long… and pollutes the air (won’t be able to breathe… think Blade Runner in spades.)
There is a move to stop the sands being exploited. Even the bishop of St. Paul, in eastern Alberta, has said, “The tar sands are in my diocese, and we all have a responsibility. If we are to manage creation, we have a responsibility in not destroying it but managing it well.”
Pres Obama has said he’s committed to clean energy and Prime Minister Harper has said the same. But, as they say in Yorkshire, “Talk is cheap. It’s money buys beer.”

I live in Toronto, also known as Hog Town. At the moment the temperature is minus 10 C, which is warm compared to the minus 18 C it was yesterday. Everything (except my dog) is covered in three feet of snow, which, when banked at the side of the roads provides miles of six foot banking to liven travel.

For the last two years we have had much more snow than the preceding one hundred years, and to my mind, this is due to the increased amount of water in the atmosphere. I believe our increased snow fall is a direct result of global warming. Whatever the cause, my dog, a lab cross who thinks she′s a husky, is happy. She and I tramp through the local ravine, she trying to catch squirrels and I trying not to catch a cold. Hog Town is a clean, spread out city, with ravines running through it in which foxes, coyotes and squirrels live, and people walk their dogs, ride their bikes or just nature watch.

(more…)