Your Fault: Climate Change Is Poisoning Our Food

Yup, your fault. You refuse to give up your fossil fueled vehicle and mortgage yourself to get a Tesla, plus, there was that steak you had the other day instead of eating bugs. Anyhow, in the BBC’s travel section (should they be recommending people take fossil fueled trips to far flung places?), Naomi Tomky got sick while on vacation, thanks to you keeping your heat above 55 degrees

How climate change poisons our food

One thing I’ve come to love about travelling around Mexico is that you’re rarely far from a toilet. Yes, it will cost you five pesos (£0.20), but it’s a small price to pay for a few folded squares of toilet paper, a clean seat and peace of mind (and bottom). But what I didn’t know as I explored Oaxaca last May, spending a few pesos to slowly, sweatily tour the bathrooms of the city’s cathedral, a few ceramics shops and the sprawling Mercado de Abastos, was that I didn’t have a typical, run-of-the-mill case of food poisoning. I had what I now lovingly call “my freaky fish poisoning”.

Some 12 hours after that first wave of nausea, as I was sitting alone in my holiday rental, the numbness in my fingers and toes crawled up to my wrists and ankles. The odd tingling felt as though I’d woken up in an odd position and my hands and feet were asleep – only instead of gradually improving and returning to normal, the numbness just steadily continued. It suddenly occurred to me that if it persisted, I might struggle to call for help by the time I needed it. So I did the only rational thing I could think of at the time: I walked down the street for ice cream.

The culprit, I would eventually find out, was ciguatera: a strange, specific form of food poisoning stemming from a toxin in certain types of fish. It is acutely misirable for 12 hours and has effects that often last months and sometimes years. There’s no way to screen fish for it and no known cure…

So, things that happen, right? Nope

…and it’s likely to become far more common as climate change warms our oceans and causes more storms, and more widespread as more fish is exported around the world.

This is the insanity of being a cult member: no matter what happens, it is the fault of anthropogenic climate change and IT’S GOING TO GET WORSE AND WE’RE ALL DOOOOOOOMED!!!!!!!

Despite rising ocean temperatures and related weather phenomena bringing ciguatera to the headlines, the toxin is extremely common and has been around for a long time. Back in the 4th Century BC, Alexander the Great supposedly forbade his soldiers to eat fish because of an illness thought to be ciguatera.

So, it’s completely common (especially in shady eateries)? Huh. But, hey, you need to pay a tax to stop Naomi from getting this again.

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4 Responses to “Your Fault: Climate Change Is Poisoning Our Food”

  1. Kye says:

    “Naomi Tomky got sick while on vacation, thanks to you keeping your heat above 55 degrees”

    At what number must we set it to kill the bitch?

    (Elwood before you start charging me with wanting to murder women who don’t agree with me, it’s sarcasm).

    Trump 2020 Let’s set our thermostats to “Keep America Great”.

  2. alanstorm says:

    So this guy got sick eating fish that came from Alexander the Great’s era?

    Evan a liberal should know better than that….

  3. david7134 says:

    Went to Mexico in the 60s to build church. You know singing kumbyeya and all that. But our hair was short so we weren’t hippies. But made the terrible mistake of eating the food and drinking the water, it does not seem like they had bottle water, besides no one had money back then so you could not buy it. Vomited until I saw what I thought were my toe nails, then the diarrhea started. If I look at a map of Mexico I get sick, now. The place should be used to test nuclear weapons, not good for anything else.

  4. aboda says:

    Went to Mexico in the 60s to build church. You know singing kumbyeya and all that. But our hair was short so we weren’t hippies. But made the terrible mistake of eating the food and drinking the water, it does not seem like they had bottle water, besides no one had money back then so you could not buy it. Vomited until I saw what I thought were my toe nails, then the diarrhea started. If I look at a map of Mexico I get sick, now. The place should be used to test nuclear weapons, not good for anything else.yeallashoot

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