Thomas Fuller of the San Francisco Examiner has a great piece which summarizes the issue of climate and malaria and Mann. Like with the imagined increase in hurricane frequency due to global warming, so it goes with malaria. There’s no correlation. The premise is false.
On Monday, May 17th, I had the privilege of sitting on a panel at the Heartland Institute Chicago ICCC4 conference with regular WUWT contributor Dr. Indur Goklany. He gave his views on the declining mortality we’ve seen worldwide and has published several pieces here on WUWT. He also the author of the book: “ The Improving State of the World”. “Goks” (as his friends call him) gave a PowerPoint presentation on declining mortality in a warming world and you can view the PPT File here.
I’ve culled one of the slides he presented below. If this doesn’t offer proof that when it comes to mankind that “warmer is better”, I don’t know what would. Note the reversal in the southern hemisphere with Australia and New Zealand.
But the most interesting slide is number 10, showing the drop in Malaria worldwide:
Thomas Fuller covers the Mann-Malaria issue below:
Correspondent Barry Woods has done all the heavy lifting on this story, so if you like it, kudos to him–any errors of course are my responsibility.
In the Guardian today there is an article following on about the story of malaria and climate change. I like the quote from Peter Gething of Oxford: “If we were to go back to the 1900s with the correct climate change predictions for the 20th century, modellers would predict expansion and worsening of malaria and they would have been wrong, and we believe they are wrong now.” That’s because despite global warming for the past 30 years, the geographic extent of malaria has lessened, leading logical thinkers to guess that climate change has not worsened the spread of malaria.
Gething was referring to his study published yesterday in Nature that found that bednets and drugs will influence the spread of malaria far more than will climate change, challenging fears that warming will aggravate the disease in Africa.
Many researchers have predicted that rising temperatures will cause malaria to expand its range and intensify in its current strongholds. But unlike usual models, which aim to predict how climate change will affect malaria in the future, researchers looked at how warming affected the disease throughout the last century.
They used a recent epidemiological map of the global distribution of the major malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum, and compared this with historical data on malaria’s prevalence in the 1900s.
The researchers — whose work was published in Nature yesterday (20 May) — found that despite global warming, the prevalence of malaria decreased, which they attribute to disease and mosquito control programmes.
Or so you would think. But Matthew Thomas thinks differently. Matthew Thomas said that the study “plays down the potential importance of climate [change]”.
Who is Matthew Thomas? He is a researcher at… Penn State. Matthew Thomas is a researcher… at Penn State… who has just won a $1.8 million grant to study the influence of environmental temperature on transmission of vector-borne diseases. Think he has a dog in this hunt?
Ask his co-investigator on the project. Michael Mann…
Where do we ask for a refund?
…
Read the rest here and tell Tom I sent you. Bookmark his page.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Greenland rising from the ocean:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100518170218.htm
Is this real? Global sea temp rise?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100521192533.htm
Even if true, it does mean the rise will continue, and it also means the heat sink of the ocean acts as a buffer to any warming.
If you want to eradicate malaria, use DDT. End of story.
People who say a warming world will spread malaria are simply ignorant. Or worse.
Period.
Where and when was the first clinical trial for quinine for the treatment of malaria? If you know the answers to those questions, you know what a bunch of #@ur momisugly$* liars these people are.
Essex, England, near London. About 1670.
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol6no1/reiter.htm
The Mann Scam rolls on.
That he is allowed to stay on the Gravy Train is just an extension of the one of the greatest periods of scientific fraud in history.
I am almost feeling sorry for this dufus thinking he can bluff his career back on track after what he has done. His series of quick & dirty promotions is bad enough – he knows he’s been “chosen”, but he has gone along with the scam.
He better start learning to ask people if they’d like fries with that order because his academic career is a toilet just waiting to be flushed.
This latest scam means he now has his two hands on the toilet handle.
Flush Mikey, flush.
Greg Leisner says:
May 22, 2010 at 2:13 pm “In short, malaria incidence is due to many factors. Climate is the major one since it is the best single explanatory factor for incidences of malaria. To not quantify the effect of climate on malaria and dengue would be an act ideological foolishness.”
This statement is irresponsible. We know how to stop malaria and blaming it on climate change prevents the attention required to achieve this end. DDT, draining of wetlands, screened homes and treatment of victims eradicated malaria in the developed world. There is no reason for malaria in any future warm or cold!
Malaria is carried by the Anopholes mosquito which is found on every continent with the exception of Antartica and its range extends to the polar regions. http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/biology/mosquitoes/map.html. All that is required to cause a new epidemic is a reinfected population. (infection rates are slower in the northern climes)
Africa’s greatest challenge is the lack of a health care infrastructure and funding as well many NGOs that had an ideological bias against DDT. DDT is no longer a silver bullet- too much time has passed and DDT resistance developed in some areas but it is still required in areas that have developed resistance to pyrethrin spraying.
The goal is to develop a vaccine and we may be close until then it is insecticides, bed nets and medicine
Here’s my 2 cents worth.
See also this 1900 – 2002 Malaria Map
It’s much worse than we thought!!! :o)
Greg Leisner says at 2:13 pm: malaria incidence is due to many factors. Climate is the major one …
Oh pish posh! Try the ban on DDT, Greg. And the reason malaria is not prevalent in industrialized countries anymore is because the mosquito vectors have been controlled. Malaria used to be prevalent in northern climes. Responsible adults solved that problem with public health programs, including draining the swamps and spraying insecticides. Better living through chemistry and engineering. You should be grateful for your benefactors.
Hmmm…yet another gate?
Hmmmm, interesting reading;
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/05/21/its-the-sun-stupid/
How could malaria be tied to AGW? Malaria was once prevalent in England, and one of the biggest outbreaks occurred in Russia. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9803EFDE113FE432A25753C2A9649C946095D6CF
Mosquitos aren’t solely a tropical insect. They swarm over the tundra every year.
“Greg Leisner says:
May 22, 2010 at 2:13 pm
Looking at the industrialized countries doesn’t tell you much since that’s not where the preponderance of malaria occurs.”
In the not too recent past – the first half of the 20th century – Italy and Germany still had Malaria.
“In der etwa 100 km nordwestlich von Bremen gelegenen Stadt Emden wurden 1939 noch 225 Malariafälle verzeichnet.”
In Emden in Northern Germany there were 225 cases of Malaria in 1939.
Good description of the history of malaria in Europe (in German):
http://www.die-forschenden-pharma-unternehmen.de/medizin/wissenswertes/falsch_malaria/
I live in a country where malaria is like drinking water. IMHO it’s not always the mosquitos that are the problem but often people who have malaria and don’t seek medical treatment due to poverty or lack of education. If they harbour the parasite for long enough then the mosquitos are only too happy to bite and pass the parasite onto someone who doesn’t have it yet. There are course other factors which I accept (nets, sprays, removal of standing water etc.).
Is 1.8 million too much for google schlaring? Does Mann leave his armchair and do on the ground research?
DDT ban is the SOLE responsible agent for the spread of malaria in Southern Africa.
It is something that should be screamed at the enviromentalist lobby every time they open their mouths. They have DIRECTLY caused the deaths of millions of people, it makes any putative damage by CAGW appear irrelevent.
The DDT ban should be THE text book example of what NOT to do
Well why do you want a refund when we spend $20,000.00 on a toilet seat when one is not even needed….LOL
One of the largest outbreaks of malaria was in the Arctic circle in Siberia. Riddle me that Batman.
Just for the record, I have in the past had a serious bout of malaria (1982) and my 6 year old daughter had celebral malaria when she was three and luckily lived.
Greg Leisner says: May 22, 2010 at 2:13 pm
In short, malaria incidence is due to many factors. Climate is the major one since it is the best single explanatory factor for incidences of malaria.
As evidenced above, climate has zero effect.
The largest single factor is the prevalence of puddles in an area. Stagnant water, isolated puddles too small to have hungry minnows are where the mosquitoes come from, and that’s where the malaria comes from. Empty food tins, abandoned tires, any trash that will hold water will end up nurturing the critters. Cleaning up the trash in your environment will have a huge effect on the mosquito population. Climate change won’t.
Brad said on May 22, 2010 at 1:35 pm:
Removed by humans within a quick timeframe, that much is true. But nature will take care of it in time, and the area will recover. After all, nature copes very well with all the natural oil seeps.
People just don’t like to admit there are things larger than them that they cannot control, that work over periods longer than human lifespans, even just longer than the shorter time when individuals think they are able to control the circumstances around them and expect quick rewards. This is what makes belief in Mann-made warming so appealing. “You, yes you, have the power to fix the entire planet! You can do it right now! Don’t delay!”
Although Dr. Indur Goklany’s presentation is illuminating, it would be more so if each slide had an obvious text block that in effect subtly screams “The point of this slide is ….”
Not having attended “Gok’s” presentation, only reading this post, I can discern the point of most but not all the slides, making it a risky proposition if I forward or link to it. Apologies for pointing out what is ‘obvious’ is not when viewed by other eyes.
Otherwise, loved the slide showing the death rates vs month peaking during cold winter months. The 180-degree out-of-phase nature of the southern hemisphere death rate is “killer” (pun intended 😉
DirkH: Emden is almost tropical compared to Arkhangelsk, which had cases of malaria until 1930. But this paper argues that it was an “indoor disease” in the northernmost part of Europe.
I didn’t notice who provided the $1,800,000 grant to Mann, but it is clearly a payoff, and a signal to the warmist crowd.
If they had really wanted a report done on mosquitos and malaria vectors, they would have gone to an expert in mosquito biology or epidemiology rather than to geologist Michael Mann, and received a more accurate and up to date report for one tenth the amount.
Instead, Mann will simply assign a post-doc slave to collate reports of mosquito and related experts; cut ‘n’ paste, re-write with due recognition, and turn in his mosquito paper with the obligatory blame placed on AGW, without ever putting on his hip boots and heading for mosquito country. This is the kind of bribe that corrupts climate science.
As Al Gore’s Holy Hologram says:
“Why does it cost $1.8 million when you can use a bit of logic for half an hour for no cost?”
Greg Leisner says:
May 22, 2010 at 2:13 pm “In short, malaria incidence is due to many factors. Climate is the major one since it is the best single explanatory factor for incidences of malaria. To not quantify the effect of climate on malaria and dengue would be an act ideological foolishness.”
—
It sound like “we can’t think of anything else so it must be co2.”
You are spouting off without evidence. Where is the evidence, sources, references? I have shown you the worst recorded outbreak of malaria was near the Arctic Circle, what can you show me?
Greg: correction on my part, I meant to repeat:
“Transmission was high in many parts of Siberia, and there were 30,000 cases and 10,000 deaths due to falciparum infection (the most deadly malaria parasite) in Archangel, close to the Arctic circle.”
I wonder how many cases of malaria could be treated or prevented with 1.8 mil.?