Back in 2001, the University of Florida wrote one of those “science by press release” thingy’s in Eurekalert where they speculated that global warming would increase ranges, and thus the range of mosquito borne disease.
The next year, NPR jumped into the fray with Is Global Warming Nurturing Parasites?
In 2006 it was Warming Trend May Contribute To Malaria’s Rise in Science Daily
In 2009 Gore gets bitten again by another factual blunder getting all worked up about mosquitoes in Nairobi.
Joltin Joe Romm and NYT’s Andrew Revkin agreed last year that:
The climate blogger Joe Romm and I agree (breaking news): Scientific research and assessments examining the link between human-driven climate change and malaria exposure have, for the most part, accurately gauged and conveyed the nature of the risk that warming could swell the ranks of people afflicted with this awful mosquito-borne disease.
Also in 2010, Indur Goklany did a WUWT guest post Smacking Down Malaria Misconceptions as well as this guest post from Dr. Pat Michaels where clearly the malaria data just doesn’t add up in Peer reviewed whack a mozzie.
I’m happy to report both Romm and Revkin are wronger than wrong, and the whole AGW to malaria link has just been shot down, in Nature no less, by a Penn State study. It may also be time to revist this WUWT post: Mann’s 1.8 million Malaria grant – “where do we ask for a refund’? since he didn’t contribute to this new study.
Here’s excerpts from the story in Nature:
Global warming wilts malaria
Transmission of infectious parasites slows with rising temperatures, researchers find.
A common assumption is that rising global temperatures will increase the spread of malaria — the deadly mosquito-borne disease that affects millions of people worldwide. But a study out today in Biology Letters finds that warmer temperatures seem to slow transmission of malaria-causing parasites, by reducing their infectiousness.
The study was done with rodent malaria, but the researchers, at Pennsylvania State University in University Park, expect the pattern to apply to human malaria and possibly to other mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue fever and West Nile virus.
Studies predicting that warmer climates will increase malaria infections commonly assume that the disease-causing parasites will develop faster and that the ability of the mosquito to acquire, maintain and transmit the pathogen will remain constant. They conclude that as temperature rises, mosquitoes become infectious quicker and therefore malaria transmission increases.
But the latest study shows that temperature has a more complex effect. As temperature rises, parasites do develop faster, but fewer of them become infectious.
“It is a trade-off between parasite development and parasite survival,” says Krijn Paaijmans, an entomologist and study author. “And if you don’t factor this in I think you come to the wrong conclusions.”
To tease out the factors involved, Paaijmans and his colleagues incubated mosquitoes infected with Plasmodium yoelii, which causes rodent malaria, at 20, 22, 24 and 26 degrees Celsius for 5–14 days. The researchers then examined the salivary glands of the mosquitoes — where the parasite travels when it is mature — and found that the parasite developed more quickly in warmer temperatures. But they also found fewer sporozoites — the infectious form of the parasite — indicating that the mosquitoes were less infectious at higher temperatures.
==============================================================
Full story here
Will Romm finally shut up about mosquitoes and malaria now? Will Revkin write a story correcting his previous ones? Will Mike Mann give back the 1.8 million dollars?
UPDATE: In comments, Andrew Revkin disputes that he was “wrong” on malaria per the quote I cited from the Climate Progress article. He now points to his 2010 article: ‘The science linking warming and malaria risk was always iffy‘ He says he was taken out of context and that his quote was poor word construct. – Anthony
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Three ending questions and I suspect the answer is “No” to all of them.
And from Penn State no less !!
There they go … mucking up a good story with all those inconvenient facts. Epidemiology, like the climate, is no simple matter.
I’m suprised that Nature has turned from its climate Orthadoxy . This is good news, atleast its 1 less (fallacious) point the fraudsters have to make in swaying the public opnion to their scam.
Does this mean the “team” will try to get the editor of NATURE fired? Inquiring minds want to know.
The findings of the study are interesting. I’ve always assumed that the major plagues of the late middle ages on through the colonial period were so devastating because the enviromental conditions resulted in a lower quality of life. This study seems to indicate that the infection agent itself may have been more infections at lower overall conditions.
Isn’t it getting cooler the last 10 years? Where is my malaria surge?
Bengal appears to have the highest incidence of malaria in India, and, the temperatures hit well over 100F, which is well outside the temperature range of this paper. This research may only be relevant to spring in the U.S.A. So, I wouldn’t go demanding apologies with this scant data.
Would this qualify for the FAIL files?
This is reported here from the Australian Climate Commissioner, only a month ago.
http://climatecommission.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/key-messages_FINAL-FOR-WEB1.pdf
“”3. As the climate changes, infectious diseases will rise.
› The expected rise in some infectious diseases associated with increasing temperatures,
changes in rainfall, and more intense extreme weather events is of serious concern.
› dengue fever is currently confined to northern Queensland. As north-eastern Australia
becomes hotter and wetter the range of the mosquito that spreads dengue fever is projected
to move south. A southward spread could put five to eight million Australians at risk by the
end of the century, 10–16 times the population that is currently at risk.
› As average temperature continues to rise across Australia the incidence of bacterial food-borne diseases will also rise. The more vulnerable members of the community will be hardest hit
by climate change-related illness.
› The more vulnerable members of the community—the elderly, the young, those with
chronic illness, those in lower socio-economic groups and indigenous communities—are
especially at risk.
› more frequent and more extreme bushfires, droughts and floods will increasingly affect
physical wellbeing, mental health and incomes of rural Australians.””
——————————————————————————
I have refereed their media coordinator to this new study and asked that the report be formally corrected. No doubt it will be a long time coming. My persistence will allow this little mossie to suck some blood.
This should maybe go in climate fail files for reference. The whole malaria thing keeps coming up again and again. Or at least it did in the past. It’d be nice to have a quick reference to this. Other alarmist myths should go in the climate fail files too. Weren’t there several posts in the past about melting ice on mountains.
Once in a while, a good piece of science will still slip into Nature. Mann and Jones and company don’t dare try to get the editor fired there…..
The “backing away slowly” has begun?
As for malaria, you need: 1) lotsa skeeters (any standing water for breeding will assure this); 2) available food.
Which is why historically, e.g., Siberia had major outbreaks. Etc.
“Will Mike Mann give back the 1.8 million dollars?”
That would be premature. Mann did not get the grant – Matthew Thomas did. Mann was one of four co-investigators. And Matthew Thomas was one of the co-authors of this paper, which was written under that very same grant:
Paaijmans, K.P., Blanford, S., Chan, B.K. & Thomas, M.B. (accepted).Warmer temperatures reduce the vectorial capacity of malaria mosquitoes. Biology Letters.
How many times do peer-reviewed studies have to show what we all know, need to be published before the maniacs STFU about malaria and global warming!??!!??? Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad these guys engaged, but, on my unplugged 3-generations-ago-computer I have two papers that clearly state there is no connection. And, if memory serves me correctly, a comment in Lancet, from a team of people that actually know about infectious diseases, absolutely, emphatically, under no uncertain circumstances, does malaria have any connection with global warming. Are these people braindead? Why is it so important to these people that malaria be connected to global warming? Personally, I would have gone with dysentery, but that’s as easily dismissed as well. But, honestly, what part about the historical malaria outbreaks in Siberia and Alaska do they not understand?
The people arguing that malaria is tied to global warming are the reason why people give the argument of eugenics merit.
Its funny how the Pro AGW people tend to be outspoken proponents of population control, and the Anti AGW people typically take the opposite view. Al Gore and Bjørn Lomborg come to mind as fairly vocal proponents of their respective beliefs.
Since the modern day Green Progressive’s are direct philosophical decedents of the Progressives of the 1920’s and 1930’s, advocating population control should not come as a big surprise to people. At least the people that have take the time to inform themselves about the subject…I think.
Andrew
From the pedant in me, you may wish to correct the spelling of borne in your headline. Though the way it reads at present gives it a very interesting meaning
Will the IPCC include this research in their next report?
James Sexton says:
December 20, 2011 at 8:34 pm
How many times do peer-reviewed studies have to show what we all know, need to be published before the maniacs STFU about malaria and global warming!??!!???
People in the grip of a cultish fundamentalist belief system usually don’t “give up” they can only be deprogrammed, or absolutely shocked out of their belief when their messiah figures are caught doing something especially dispicable to them or someone they truly care about.
Due to lack of personal interaction between the core believers and their prophets (Gore, Hanson, Mann, et al) it’s only deprogamming that will work.
Where AGW has lost “believers” is from the ranks that were not fundamentalist to begin with – such as myself (woke up in 2008).
So no STFU’ing on the horizon – this is a long march fight.
WOOT. WOOT. WOOT.
Now that I have your attention, consider the trivial “borne” vs “born” in the title. 😉
[REPLY: Happy Now? -REP]
There have been several excellent articles about malaria here at WUWT. What’s important to remember is that humans are the reservoir of the Plasmodia that cause malaria in humans. Wanna get rid of malaria in your neighborhood? Get rid of humans infected with the disease. I don’t mean get rid of the humans, per se, just get rid of the disease. Mosquitoes are only the insect vectors for transmission of the disease. Because we have seen severe outbreaks of malaria close to the arctic circle should be a tip off that the insect vectors are only one part of the equation. The trick is to break the chain. Reduce the prevalence of the insect vectors (e.g. DDT), treat and/or isolate infected individuals and pretty soon you no longer have malaria. Most of the US was malarious just 150 years ago (before global warming started). A lot of things changed in the US (and Europe). We moved indoors, we invented screens, we discovered the cinchona alkaloids (i.e. quinine and derivatives) and eventually we developed very effective pesticides. No more malaria in North America and most of Europe. EVERYBODY has mosquitoes (almost), but if you don’t have a population actively infected with malaria you’re unlikely to become a malarious region. Mosquitoes are only the vector…humans carry the disease.
Right up until the 1890s, malaria was endemic in the Essex and Kent marshes (low lying areas on opposite sides of the Thames Estuary). That was at the end of the period that we now know as the Little Ice Age. Warming and drainage of the marshes in the early 20th Century finished the malaria off.
This study is interesting but it was done with rodent malaria etc. The main point is that malaria hasn’t increased with increased temperatures:
http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0024524
I’d assumed this was because of successful interventions. It’s interesting that there may be more to the story.
Those danged complexities!
I assume that’s now in the “FAIL” file
To answer your questions probably not. This is not and never was about science in the first place so whey would anyone expect behavioral changes in these people.
David Eyles says:
December 20, 2011 at 10:26 pm
Re: UK malaria
A bit more recent than early 20th Century (last UK case was 1952 on the Isle of Sheppey) but as Dr Harbach (quoted in the Daily Telegraph) confirmed the mosquitoes were just the vectors.
‘Dr Ralph Harbach, of the Natural History Museum in London, said that there could not be an outbreak of malaria unless someone in the island already suffering from the disease were bitten by a mosquito that then bit other people.
He said: “This is how the man died in 1952. Soldiers coming home from foreign countries were bringing malaria into Britain. The mosquitoes were passing it on to others from them.”‘