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.
John R T , KimW
Puddle control might have as large an effect as DDT, without endangering brown pelican eggs. Any puddles I get in my yard here in Houston get populated with wigglers in about three days.
I used to stay at the Barcelo Palacio in San Jose, CR, an upscale neighborhood and well uphill of much of the town. Never seemed to have a mosquito problem there, but perhaps they “took care of it” on their own. I didn’t know about Singapore, but I’m not surprised.
Want to erradicate malaria? Bring back DDT. Oh, that’s right, the shoddy science of Rachel Carson was the basis for banning DDT worldwide; a ban which alone has resulted in millions of needless human deaths from malaria, all the while not traceable to any loss of fauna, thinning egg shells, or similar tommyrot.
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Mike McMillan writes about “Puddle control” and reminds me of my free-ranging rural childhood, during which time we were turned out-of-doors in clement weather with admonitions to return home when full dark overtook us, and no expectations of adult supervision or protection of any kind whatsoever.
My poor grandchildren – courtesy of my MSM-blighted adult offspring and their equally neurotic spousen – are helpless hothouse plants by comparison.
Part of our routine, self-acknowledge duties while roaming farms and fields and woods was to obliterate or otherwise deny mosquitoes access to standing water. No matter what else we were doing, without discussion or demurrer, we overturned tin cans, flipped old tires, filled in puddles, inverted wheelbarrows, covered rain barrels, and otherwise addressed these potential skeeter breeders.
Nobody told us to do this as a matter of “community service.” We had been educated in school about how the little bloodsuckers reproduce, and we were informed that if people could add puddle-plotzing to the ongoing DDT-spraying campaigns (the roads were regularly occupied by trucks misting the countryside), we could reduce their pestiferous impositions upon our own persons, and it was entirely out of self-interest that we treated incipient mosquito nurseries to extirpation.
The woods and fields were our domain and free-time habitation, the places where we could go to get away from the goddam grown-ups, and we took fierce proprietary interest in those sylvan and sandpit waste patches not yet bulldozed by the real estate developers.
I find that children today don’t have that “My place” attitude toward the out-of-doors, almost certainly because their parents never leave the kids to hellangone alone. With no sense of their own power, they have no real sense of responsibility, and thus today’s children – not one friggin’ bit motivated by the Teachers’ Union ex-Education majors in the government gulags – do not participate in “Puddle control” and do not grow up to become adults with any appreciation of the functions of participatory citizenship.
Ain’t that the way Barry Soetoro and all his little ACORN elves want it to be?
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Research Grant for malarial thermageddon… cool
Malaria in Britain: Past, present, and future
Katrin Gaardbo Kuhn*,†, Diarmid H. Campbell-Lendrum*, Ben Armstrong‡, and Clive R. Davies*
+ Author Affiliations
*Disease Control and Vector Biology Unit, Department of Infectious and Tropical Diseases, and ‡Environmental Epidemiology Unit, Department of Public Health and Policy, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Keppel Street, London WC1E 7HT, United Kingdom
Communicated by Kirk R. Smith, University of California, Berkeley, CA, June 16, 2003 (received for review February 20, 2003)
Next SectionAbstract
There has been much recent speculation that global warming may allow the reestablishment of malaria transmission in previously endemic areas such as Europe and the United States. In this report we analyze temporal trends in malaria in Britain between 1840 and 1910, to assess the potential for reemergence of the disease. Our results demonstrate that at least 20% of the drop-off in malaria was due to increasing cattle population and decreasing acreages of marsh wetlands. Although both rainfall and average temperature were associated with year-to-year variability in death rates, there was no evidence for any association with the long-term malaria trend. Model simulations for future scenarios in Britain suggest that the change in temperature projected to occur by 2050 is likely to cause a proportional increase in local malaria transmission of 8–14%. The current risk is negligible, as >52,000 imported cases since 1953 have not led to any secondary cases. The projected increase in proportional risk is clearly insufficient to lead to the reestablishment of endemicity.
Job done, gimme the money……….:-)
Headline : Peer reviewed science results in catastrophe averted……….
Greg Leisner says:
A larger factor than climate change increases “incidence” of malaria in Africa – a population explosion….duh.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200804100908.html
Where a World Bank official is being interviewed:
Africa’s population is growing at twice the rate of other regions. In the following interview, John May, a demographer at the World Bank, discusses the effects of population growth on Africa’s development agenda and what the Bank ….
Also, AGWers hammered into my head for decades that there will be no significant change in temp in the tropical regions – it will all be in the temperate and polar regions. In the last few years, I have had to keep reminding them of this!!
Charles S. Opalek, PE says:
May 24, 2010 at 3:59 am
“Want to erradicate malaria? Bring back DDT”
Charles- it is much more complicated than that. Saying all we need to do is use DDT does not help educate the public or advance malaria control efforts in the world’s poorer economic regions. I agree DDT does not have a demonstrated human health impact at doses used for vector control-I agree temperature is being blown out of proportion. Those horrified about DDT fail to understand it replaced spraying with the far more powerful poison Paris (Emerald) Green– a mixture of diesel fuel and copper acetoaresenite. DDT is a vital tool but it is NOT the only tool required. It can however significantly reduce transmission and suffering. (Some mosquito populations have developed DDT resistance and can even metabolize it- this was seen as early as 50’s in India. Again it is complex– even if DDT does not kill by contact – mosquitoes tend to avoid it which makes it great for spraying inside the homes and its persistence means the spraying benefits last for a considerably longer time period- an important point in remote areas. Remember the vector is the mosquito- and we never eliminated the mosquito even in those areas where malaria is not now seen as a threat. Not only do you need to suppress the mosquito population you must also suppress the human/mosquito interaction (screens in windows, bedding etc–and DDT “scaring” skeeters from entering a room). Required control elements also include drainage of standing water and treatment of infected individuals. The problems are compounded by the remote nature of some of the infected villages and the inadequate health infrastructure unable to keep up a spraying schedule, insecticide “refreshing” of the bed nets and medication. There is also a counterfeit market for malaria treatment drugs (useless) – causing no small concern. (Remember one not only needs to suppress the mosquito but also the number of malaria infected hosts.)
Several years ago the town of Greensburg Kansas ws hit by a tornado. The town of well under 2,000 population lost 12-13 people. When Obama ran for office, he commented on 10,000 died. This is very rare.
Most times the death can’t exceed the number of population. If population grows, the figures we use should be rates per 100,000. If there was an area that lost millions, the expected rate would fall because a reduced number of places to infect.
Vector-borne diseases result when vectors transmit the disease. It is irrelevant to temperature or in many cases, the number of mosquitoes. Eastern Equine Encephalitis is rare, generally because there are few vectors around where people are. Also, remember in 2003, there were nearly 3000 cases of WNV in Colorado and less than 100 in Florida. Obviously temperture had nothing to do with it.
Yeah, and I’m sure they’ll use that $1.8 million to show that.
It’s very nearly $1.9 million, actually: $1,884,991 to be precise.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Look how much Michael Mann and his cronies have been screwing out of the US taxpayer since 1996 for climate related projects – here’s the list for which Mann has had his nose in the trough:
Development of a Northern Hemisphere Gridded Precipitation Dataset Spanning the Past Half Millennium for Analyzing Interannual and Longer-Term Variability in the Monsoons,
$250,000
Quantifying the influence of environmental temperature on transmission of vector-borne diseases,
$1,884,991
Toward Improved Projections of the Climate Response to Anthropogenic Forcing: Combining Paleoclimate Proxy and Instrumental Observations with an Earth System Model,
$541,184
A Framework for Probabilistic Projections of Energy-Relevant Streamflow Indices,
$330,000
AMS Industry/Government Graduate Fellowship,
$23,000
Climate Change Collective Learning and Observatory Network in Ghana, $759,928
Analysis and testing of proxy-based climate reconstructions,
$459,000
Constraining the Tropical Pacific’s Role in Low-Frequency Climate Change of the Last Millennium,
$68,065
Acquisition of high-performance computing cluster for the Penn State Earth System Science Center (ESSC),
$100,000
Decadal Variability in the Tropical Indo-Pacific: Integrating Paleo & Coupled Model Results,
$102,000
Reconstruction and Analysis of Patterns of Climate Variability Over the Last One to Two Millennia,
$315,000
Remote Observations of Ice Sheet Surface Temperature: Toward Multi-Proxy Reconstruction of Antarctic Climate Variability,
$133,000
Paleoclimatic Reconstructions of the Arctic Oscillation,
$14,400
Global Multidecadal-to-Century-Scale Oscillations During the Last 1000 years, $20,775
Resolving the Scale-wise Sensitivities in the Dynamical Coupling Between Climate and the Biosphere,
$214,700
Advancing predictive models of marine sediment transport,
$20,775
Multiproxy Climate Reconstruction: Extension in Space and Time, and Model/Data Intercomparison,
$381,647
The changing seasons? Detecting and understanding climatic change,
$266,235
Patterns of Organized Climatic Variability: Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Globally Distributed Climate Proxy Records and Long-term Model Integrations,
$270,000
Investigation of Patterns of Organized Large-Scale Climatic Variability During the Last Millennium,
$78,000
northerngirl says:
May 24, 2010 at 8:57 am
“Vector-borne diseases result when vectors transmit the disease.”
Temperature does impact the transmission rate– adult mosquitoes are not present in the colder months- but does little to change the relative potential geographic range. This is only a point of clarification. The goal is no malaria under any temperature. Climate linkage does nothing to achieve this goal and may indeed impede its progress.
Hi temperatures are certainly no encouragement to malaria since one of the highest death rates due to malaria is from one of the coldest places on earth, Russia’s Siberia.
There have been some instances though where African nations that have withstood political pressure and had the guts to start spraying DDT again have seen drastic decreases in Malaria. Surprisingly enough there have been no plants dying, no birds dropping, only bird droppings, and mortality rates have decreased.
It would almost seem that the “bug” which is responsible for Malaria actually does better in cooler climes than warmer, which would seem to fly in the face of long held believes to the opposite.
I want to thank Rick Matarese, Dave Springer and Pat Moffitt for their excellent contributions to this comment thread.
I live and practice in a land of unusual animal vector diseases. Here in northern NM we have hanta virus and even more interestingly, Santa Fe county is one of the few places on the planet where plague is still endemic. The local vet usually sees 1 or 2 cases of plague in dogs almost every year. I haven’t seen a human case in many years but they still occur. One would not think that the climate of Santa Fe would be conducive for harboring unusual animal vector diseases. We’re high (about 7,000 feet) and dry (and very cold in the winter). On the bright side we have almost no mosquitoes.
Ultimately the answer to malaria eradication is wealth but this true for a whole lot of diseases as well.
Has anyone read the Mann grant?
Man Oh man! Now Mann is investigating malaria???
DR. PAUL REITER, professor of entomology and tropical disease, the Pasteur Institute, who served on the IPCC and specializes in that area, studied that specifically and wrote off the warming connection long ago. Problem was the IPCC wrote what it wanted and rejected his findings. Dr. Reitter had to threaten legal action to get his name taken off the IPCC report.
He has stated, “We have done the studies and challenged the alarmists – but they continue to ignore the facts, and perpetuate the lies.”
(Anthony/Mods, would you please be so kind as to snip this guy’s garbage?
Rich Matarese says:
May 24, 2010 at 12:08 am
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CRS, Dr.P.H. extols yet another one of Barry Soetoro’s apparatchiki and his “drop your pants, bend over, and pray for Vaseline, ’cause we’re gonna screw you!” presentations.
Nah. I ain’t buyin’ that line of crap, either.
etc. etc.
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I included Holdren’s slides not as a show of support for the administration, but as a demonstration of the crazy stuff being promoted at the highest levels! This mope doesn’t seem to get it.
Thanks, Chuck the contributor)
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CRS, Dr.P.H. is upset because I took his earlier post (see above) at face value, in which he cites Holdren’s presentation and concludes with: “This powerpoint presentation should be required reading! Take a deep breath, global health is improving substantially.”
To which I’d responded that I ain’t buying any of this crap. Still ain’t.
And now CRS, Dr.P.H. writes: “(Anthony/Mods, would you please be so kind as to snip this guy’s garbage?”
Another exercise in irony, perhaps? Or is he really demanding censorship?
Perhaps he takes offense at my observation to the effect that Barry Soetoro is commanding the annual expenditure of $7 billion to “confirm” anthropogenic global warming (or to study its putative effects under the assumption that such man-made “climate change” is, in truth , happening) and will not put his signature to a consent for the government of the state of Hawaii to release to the scrutiny of the public his long-form, printed-on-paper (rather than Photoshop’d-into-JPG computer graphic images), signed and embossed birth certificate.
Jeez, I’d be happy to cough up the fifteen bucks that the public records people in Honolulu want to charge for such an issue. Consider it my personal contribution to the maintenance of civil government under the rule of law.
Those of us who prefer factual reality to duplicitous fabrications tend reliably to do so in every aspect of our evaluations of the phenomenal universe.
Or doesn’t the concept of “falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus” arm the reasoning of the inquisitive mind anymore?
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Dr. Dave writes of northern New Mexico, where “…we have hanta virus and even more interestingly, Santa Fe county is one of the few places on the planet where plague is still endemic. ”
Well, console yourself, colleague. At least the federal DHHS doesn’t list your corner of the country as one of the loci of Hansen’s disease.
I draw attention to Dr. Dave‘s observation that “We’re high (about 7,000 feet) and dry (and very cold in the winter). On the bright side we have almost no mosquitoes.”
That gives me to remember a pattern of housing distribution in Sicily and the campagna of the southern part of the Italian peninsula, where villages and other clusters of domiciles are to be seen perched atop the higher hills, distant from fields and even vineyards to an extent that getting to and from these places of labor (and hauling fuel, food, and other things to home and hearth) was rendered miserably difficult.
When I’d asked about that as a boy, I’d been told that arable land was in such short supply that the frugal peasants wouldn’t think about planting houses where they could instead plant garden truck or cash crops. Later I learned better.
Mosquitoes and malaria, of course. As Dr. Dave observes, skeeters don’t “do” higher altitudes all that well. Till the soil in the lower areas, and get the hell out of there when darkness falls.
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Rich Matarese says:
May 24, 2010 at 4:34 pm
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CRS, Dr.P.H. is upset because I took his earlier post (see above) at face value, in which he cites Holdren’s presentation and concludes with: “This powerpoint presentation should be required reading! Take a deep breath, global health is improving substantially.”
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REPLY:
No, I take exception to your crass and unnecessary use of vulgar sexual innuendo on a science-oriented blog.
Did you even read Holdren’s powerpoint? It represents an extreme pro-AGW position, and since he is Pres. Obama’s chief science advisor, I think all WUWT readers should be aware of this information.
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Ah, now CRS, Dr.P.H. speaks plainly. It’s my “crass and unnecessary use of vulgar sexual innuendo” to which he takes exception.
Well, fu…. Whoops! Make that “schtupp” me. Is it just the commonplace Anglo-Saxonisms that offend this fellow, or is it the concept of copulation (even the non-fecundative sodomistic insults figuratively imposed upon the private citizen by “The Malevolent Jobholder” of civil government) at which CRS, Dr.P.H. takes umbrage?
I did examine Dr. Holdren’s presentation, though. That’s why I ain’t buyin’ that crap. That he is one of Barry Soetoro’s “made men” I have no doubt, for he would not be present in the Obama Administration as yet another slurpker-at-the-public-trough were he not himself well equipped with a set of Oval Office intern knee-pads and a willingness to “serve” our Mombasa Messiah with his every intake of breath.
Ooh. Perhaps yet another “crass and unnecessary use of vulgar sexual innuendo” there, eh? Ah, well. As the late Murray Rothbard once replied when he was asked how he managed to write so eloquently in condemnation of Keynesian economics and the evils of dirigiste government:
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Rich Matarese says:
“Well, console yourself, colleague. At least the federal DHHS doesn’t list your corner of the country as one of the loci of Hansen’s disease. ”
No worries…we ship all our lepers to San Antonio where there’s plenty o’ armadillos.
Honestly Dr. Matarese, you crack me up! You’d be a blast to have a beer with.
Warming doesn’t trigger an increase in Malaria until we reach a fast approaching tipping point. It’s worse than we thought.
Run for your lives!
In California our native mosquito does just fine up to about 6000 ft elevation and is a great carrier of Malaria. The area up near where Anthony lives is a known Malaria Belt (when I grew up there we had mandatory nags in class about tipping water tubs to prevent mosquitos and had ‘mosquito fogging trucks’ drive through town).
The ’49ers were often felled by Malaria.
What changed it was public health, not warmth or cold. Take the AGW money and give it to MDs in stead.
Rich Matarese says:
May 24, 2010 at 12:08 am
“…Before I see another cent expended on AGW “research,” how about a few bucks spent in getting us a copy of Barry’s long-form printed-on-paper signed-and-embossed official State of Hawaii birth certificate, okay?…”
__________________________________________________________________________
Just pray that some where in the 50 states they manage to seat the wrong grand jury.
“….. As an independent grand jury, you also have the right to initiate your own investigations on evidence presented to you, and to indict anyone if you feel they are guilty of wrongdoing, including those government employees and elected officials who are not upholding an oath of public office….” http://www.fija.org/docs/JG_on_the_grand_jury.pdf
Now if we can just get the majority of US citizens educated….. I have a whole list of politicians and bureaucrats that should be up on charges.
See this for an example:
http://www.marlerblog.com/2009/07/articles/lawyer-oped/one-e-coli-o157h7-outbreak-i-think-i-could-have-prevented/
http://njcfil.com/b/pdf/stansTestimony.pdf
The USDA essentially called Painter a liar. The Union (meat and poultry inspectors AFGE) sued:
“…The lawsuit, filed April 8 on behalf of the meat and poultry inspectors AFGE represents, seeks to halt USDA’s implementation of a rule that in effect deregulates the critical post-mortem inspection of meat and poultry carcasses and instead relies on an industry “honor system.”…”
http://www.afge.org/Index.cfm?page=USDA
History of the whole situation: http://www.r-calfusa.com/BSE/050512-Exhibit7-LawReviewMcgarity.pdf
Our food safety “scares” mirror what is happening with CAGW. It is a politically manipulated circus called the international HACCP regs. The regs were implemented in 1996 per WTO directive, unfortunately the “collateral damage” with food is people become ill and/or die. The media scares then allows Congress to pass “food safety bills” that impose stringent regs on farmers while continuing HACCP (corporate self-inspection) The blame for food contamination is passed to the farmer and the large corporations get a “get out of jail free card”
The USDA is just one of the “corporate revolving door” bureaucracies that needs a major house cleaning complete with jail sentences.
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Writes E.M.Smith:
“What changed it [endemic malaria in California] was public health, not warmth or cold. Take the AGW money and give it to MDs instead.”
Even though it warms the cockles of my heart to hear somebody say that the research funding should go “to MDs instead,” I’ve got to point out that very few of us “health care providers” are actually in the business of addressing endemic or epidemic communicable diseases except on a one-by-one (or, at best, one hospital or nursing home at a time) basis.
Its people like the membership of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) – among others – who focus on the “bigger picture” stuff.
Don’t get me wrong; I like money. I even like this “legal tender” wipe-with-one-sheet-only bumfodder issued by the Federal Reserve System. But I’m not the kind of guy upon whom big wads of taxpayer cash should be showered in order to get optimax results in the address of real public health problems.
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All this talk of mosquitoes brings this song to mind:
BZZZZzzzzz