[sojournerc]

We have dog ticks at 8000 feet in Colorado, not sure how much altitude affects them.

[estearum]

I think temperature is the relevant variable

[sojournerc]

It still gets cold in the winter (negative 15-20 degrees F) where I am, and even though we had a relatively mild winter, ticks are about the same.

There's a tendency today to attribute everything to climate change, but it should be backed by actual data. It's a sort of attribution bias that to me just feels lazy.

There could be a lot of reasons why ticks might spread. I have lived here 10 years, and haven't noticed an increase or decrease in ticks year over year. Just my anecdata.

[estearum]

... is this a serious comment?

> explanations should be backed by data, it's lazy otherwise

> I personally haven't noticed an increase

The relationship between temperature, wetness/humidity, and tick range is extremely well-understood. Altitude is not a relevant variable compared to and controlling for temperature and humidity.

We know under what conditions different tick specie thrive versus die, and we know that as the years go on, there are far more areas under "tick-thriving" conditions for far longer periods, at least for the disease-carrying tick specie that we tend to care about.

No one mentioned anything about climate change except you, reflexively and defensively, for some odd reason.

[sojournerc]

Chill out. This is what I replied to:

> No ticks at the altitude I reside. But with global warming it's slowly creeping up towards the towns further down.

I wasn't making any causal claims such as this ^

[matsemann]

It's a fact, though. You got too hung up on altitude, which I guess is just a proxy for temperature when I compare to neighboring towns. Been mentioned on the news etc that more and more towns get disease bearing ticks here, due to conditions for them getting better with global warming. Not sure why hearing a negative effect from global warming triggered you so?

[sojournerc]

Goodness, who's triggered here?

I merely attempted to point out nuance, that mono-causal explanations are lazy and perhaps ignore other factors that might go into the increase of ticks. Ecosystems change for all kinds of reasons, climate change among them.

I didn't make any claims that temperature or moisture doesn't affect tick populations, but maybe there are some other factors at play. For instance, lack of predators for ruminants and rodents, also perhaps human caused, but unrelated to climate.

This thread proves one again that nuance is lost on the internet.

[abc123abc123]

I think the OP was thinking about northern europe. Less ticks far up north.