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.
Hope everyone has seen this. Mann’s day is coming.
http://www.climatechangefraud.com/politics-propaganda/6988-cuccinelli-says-uva-research-probe-is-about-fraud
davidmhoffer says:
May 22, 2010 at 8:29 pm
I’ve just had my first look at the video – truly horrible.
The oil is leaking out a broken ‘riser’. This was what connected the rig at surface to the borehole. The riser outside diameter is probably about 40 inches (1 metre). The internal diameter is typically 30 inches.
jorgekafkazar says:
May 22, 2010 at 2:54 pm
Brad says: “Oil that has entered wetlands may never be able to be removed:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iyCzi7JFE0-cRyBdBUMmDC6Zm9GgD9FS2VR00”
Don’t worry, Brad; it’s an AP article. There’s very little chance that it will turn out to be true.
—–
Indeed. As I recall, about a week after Climategate broke, AP did a review of the emails which concluded: move along, nothing to see here.
rbateman says:
May 22, 2010 at 2:59 pm
Greg Leisner says:
May 22, 2010 at 2:13 pm
Malaria is not spread by climate, as in a warm-weather dependant virus.
Malaria is spread by mosquitos that carry it.
———–
It can also be spread by infected humans who can rapidly travel long distances and then pass it on to the mosquitoes that bite them.
See Ramenofsky, A.F. 1987. Vectors of Death: The Archaeology of European Contact, University of New Mexico Press.
—
Greg Leisner had written:
There’s a but more to it than just climate, as another poster had observed, but it’s more, too, than whether or not Plasmodium falciparum malaria (the big killer of the four Plasmodium species commonly infecting humans, and the one most prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa) spreads, takes hold, and cannot be extirpated.
There are patient factors affecting malarial virulence, including both the development and persistence of immunity to the parasites and histological factors such as the presence of sickle-cell trait and and alpha-thalassemia prevalent among the host population.
Genetic hemoglobinopathies which are much more common in sub-Saharan Africa than elsewhere conduce to lower total mortality in P. falciparum infections (though the pathogen does, indeed, kill its millions every year), which increases the total number of immune patients in any such population and in turn increases the pool of hosts – estimated at 300 to 500 million worldwide – whose participation in the parasite’s reproductive cycle raises the possibility of mosquito-borne transmission to uninfected people.
In the words of Mackinnon and Read, “Immunity Selects for Higher Virulence.”
Incidentally, another population in which a genetic hemoglobinopathy is commonly observed – alpha-thalassemia – is that of southern Italy, il Mezzogiorno, where malaria was epidemic up until the 20th Century. I’ve got that hemoglobinopathy myself. Like Hemoglobin S (sickle trait) being a disorder preconditioning the sufferer to improved survival in areas where malaria and African trypanosomiasis (“sleeping sickness”) are prevalent, I strongly suspect selection pressures having resulted in thalassemia minor showing up so commonly among those of us who descend from the impoverished provinces south of the Po River Valley.
Ancestors who weren’t so “blessed” tended not to survive as readily to reproductive age.
As in most matters of epidemiological concern, there’s a helluva lot more to malaria than most people understand. Best if Matthew Thomas were to get an expert on tropical diseases as one of his co-investigators, no?
—
davidmhoffer says: May 22, 2010 at 4:52 pm
…………
1900 to 1940 divergence in the CET summer – winter temperatures
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET5.htm
was due to temperatures ( anomalies ) moving in the opposite directions as shown here:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CETt.htm
(see bottom ‘detrended’ chart where long term trend was eliminated).
This was not the case for the 1970 – 2000 period where both anomalies moved in the same direction (note 2000 – 2010 divergence is reappearing).
I think this is good enough reason why the two periods, if one is interested in the science only, should not be compared.
My wife is from a developing country, an island state in the sub-tropical zone.
When I courted her there many years ago, the place hadno malaria problem, s it had been eradicated in the 1950s and 1960s. Planes landing were sprayed with insect killer before anyone got off.
However, malaria has returned are chloroquine tables are a must for visitors.
I know its only anecdotal, but I would certainly need to know more before I would accept Goklany’s maps. My understanding was that emergence of mosquitos resistant to insecticidal sprays has been the root cause of the resurgence of malaria.
From Luboš Motl on May 22, 2010 at 10:37 pm:
No matter how much I enjoyed Seinfeld back in the day, I find it painfully near impossible to think about virtually anything concerning Michael Mann and say “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.” Let us not speak of this again.
Everyone has missed out the fabulous quote from this scientist :
“Climate change is, in our view, an unwelcome distraction from the main
issues.”
Dr Gething told BBC News.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/science_and_environment/10127989.stm
“A lot of the studies proposing there would be a dramatic increase in a
warmer world have been met with guarded criticism, and often what’s been
said about them surpasses what the actual science indicates.
“So this redresses the balance a bit.”
ALSO:
“I am slightly sceptical of the furore surrounding (malaria and) climate change in the sense that we have to bear in mind there are other factors that are moving much faster than climate change,” he said.
“I don’t doubt climate change is happening, but we have also seen an increase in the coverage of treatment, and in the last 20 years there has been a huge amount of information and education on malaria made available in Africa; and that’s all changed much faster than the climate.”
Of course it finishes with:
“I don’t doubt climate change is happening, but…”
(of course not a single sceptic doubts climate change, the doubt is MAN MADE Climate change)
my translation from scientist speak:
“I always thought ‘alarmist’ AGW was rubbish really,but I still cant say it yet less I get labelled a deniar (see New Scientist) and more people get hurt because my funding dries up…
I personally expect to here more of this phrase from scientists/politicians over the next couple of years.
Barry Woods
There is a lot of nonsense on this thread. It is NOT necessary (or possible) to control malaria vectors to eradicate malaria, and DDT is not a panacea. Anybody familiar with the taiga zone in Canada, the northern US, Scandinavia and Russia knows that mosquitos there are far, far worse than in any tropical malarial swamp, and still malaria is extinct there, and mostly became so long before DDT was invented.
What is really needed is reasonably decent housing, where mosquitos can’t get at sleeping people, and where mosquitos can’t sit out the dry/cold season indoors. Malaria oddly enough is almost always acquired indoors, and at night. That is why bednets and DDT can be used as a quick ‘n dirty solution, but decent houses is a better and permanent cure. That will incidentally also prevent reintroduction of the disease by carriers from malarial areas, which is emphatically NOT occurring in North America or Europe despite massive immigration from Africa and Latin America and supposed global warming.
Italy had indigenously generated malaria until 1969, and was the last European country to have this problem. Malaria was not wiped out, despite a series of concerted government programs to eradicate the disease dating back to 1900 — including draining swamps, afforestation, education and social programs, and anti-malarial drugs — until the government finally embraced the use of DDT.
Is there any link between the final eradication of malaria in Europe (Italy being the last European country to harbour the disease) and the EPA’s denunciation of DDT within a few years afterwards? If malaria had remained a threat in North America and Europe could the environmentalists have gained any popular or official support against DDT?
DirkH says:
May 22, 2010 at 6:32 pm
Where do mosquitos go in the winter?
Mosquow.
Couldn’t we just use DDT? Ever since that lie has been exposed and been thoroughly debunked. In 2006, WHO once again allowed DDT to be used. So why not just put DDT back into production. The only reason DDT was banned was to keep people from living in the woods.
And as a side benefit, the million or so African children under the age of 5 that are killed yearly, would live. There have now been over 35 million deaths since DDT was banned. Let’s try humans first.
Malaria (et al) is a disease! Mosquitos are a vector! Why I’ll bet the Sun, and cloud cover, and temperature, and humidity have something to do with it. Think it’s something, maybe, that we only have to worry about when it’s damp and overcast and we don’t get enough UV? Sounds like something left over from the last Ice Age when folks didn’t live too long. That’s why Mann got the money! Ain’t he smart as a wet bird dog with a duck in his mouth?
As to the Greenland rising comments, the entire Great Lakes region is still rebounding from all the ice that was sitting on it in the last ice age, and even if Greenland is rising, that is not predictive of the future.
I am still of the theory that most warming is sun caused, and the low sunspot cycle will pretty much take care of it.
Yes we need a refund, but more important, Mann should not receive anymore government money (Americans’ tax dollars) for his work.
tty (May 23, 2010 at 2:07 am) says DDT is not a panacea. True, but then if we insisted on only panaceas for treating disease, virtually all diseases would go untreated.
The real issue is whether there are situations where DDT is not only effective but cost-effective, considering its benefits and any undesired consequences . A discussion of DDT and malaria is available in my book on the Precautionary Principle, with an older version gratis in Applying the Precautionary Principle to DDT. Fact of the matter is that in many situations, indoor residual spraying with DDT is among the most, if not the most, cost-effective solution. Of course, this is not universally true.
One of the strongest pieces of evidence of the efficacy and utility of DDT as a malaria control agent is contained in graphs available in Barnes et al. (2005) in PLoS Medicine and The Rise, Fall, Rise, and Imminent Fall of DDT by Roger Bate. These figures ,which are both based on South African experience in KwaZulu, show how, among other things, malaria cases and deaths in that region went up when DDT was replaced with pyrethroids, and then fell again when DDT was brought back.
Does this mean that DDT is forever? Not necessarily, but while it is cost-effective, let’s use it. It allows us to buy time, get wealthier, improve public health services and, of course, save lives
toby (May 23, 2010 at 12:39 am): I know its only anecdotal, but I would certainly need to know more before I would accept Goklany’s maps.
RESPONSE: Not my maps. I just assembled them from a World Health Organization report put out in 2008 called, “Global malaria control and elimination : report of a technical review.” If you google it, you should be able to access it. However, I would suggest looking at Gething et al.’s diagrams and paper.
Luboš Motl (May 22, 2010 at 10:37 pm ). It was my honor too.
To think of the things that these scientists could be doing instead of this petty infighting. I blame climate change for wasting our time solving real problems.
Average annual deaths in the US due to malaria: 10
Average annual deaths in the US due to influenza: 20,000
Influenza season is wintertime. Malaria season is summertime.
Any questions?
If the prohibition on DDT continues YOU will enjoy, again, Malaria and Dengue.
Congratulations Saint Al Gore!, be praised for ever your sanctity!
Enneagram says:
May 23, 2010 at 10:55 am
“If the prohibition on DDT continues YOU will enjoy, again, Malaria and Dengue.
Congratulations Saint Al Gore!, be praised for ever your sanctity!”
You should follow the ruling from the 6th circuit court of appeals- National Cotton Council vs EPA. Pesticide applications near or with the ability to enter the waterways of America may be regulated as a point source discharge– meaning public hearings, points source permitting etc. Mosquito control using pesticides could become a very big problem. Groups like No Pesticides Org are fighting across the country against pesticide mosquito control.
Consider an area like Sacramento CA- high urban population surrounded by a half a million acres of rice fields. Malaria, Dengue and some other emerging disease are already omni-present at low levels– but the court decision and activist groups may take the tools we need away to keep these diseases in the background.
Its easy to be concerned with the risks of vaccines when you have “forgotten” polio and its easy to become hysterical about pesticides when you have “forgotten” malaria and yellow fever. Hopefully we will not need to be reminded of these “old fears” before we act with some common sense.
People have stated that Mikey Mann’s socio-economic edicts for the world cannot control climate, but it appears Mikey Mann can “make it rain” to the tune of $1.8 mill.
Pat Moffitt says:
May 23, 2010 at 11:57 am
Hopefully we will not need to be reminded of these “old fears” before we act with some common sense
One should expect “common sense” to be liberal (of “commoners”) but it is currently found only among conservatives. 🙂
Malaria kills millions of people. DDT may kill a few and damge some. Use the DDT. Climate has very little to do with malaria. Yes, it is associated with hot countries but in the past it has been prevalent in Northern Europe. Good housing and the drainage of stagnant water helps. How someone like Mann can a grant to study this is beyond belief. No background in Epidimiology; exposed as a fraudster in climate science. Whose taxes are paying for this? Do you live in a democracy or what?