Essay by Eric Worrall
Malaria was the scourge of early 1600s Britain, during the Little Ice Age, but today’s scientists think insect borne diseases need a warm climate.
Climate change could bring insect-borne tropical diseases to UK, scientists warn
Mosquito experts say cuts in aid will lead to collapse of crucial surveillance and control in endemic countries
Anna Bawden Health and social affairs correspondent Sat 24 May 2025 01.31 AEST
Climate change could make the UK vulnerable to insect-transmitted tropical diseases that were previously only found in hot countries, scientists have warned, urging ministers to redouble efforts to contain their spread abroad.
Leading mosquito experts said the government’s cuts to international aid would lead to a collapse in crucial surveillance, control and treatment programmes in endemic countries, leading to more deaths.
This week, the UK Health Security Agency announced the discovery of West Nile virus in UK mosquitoes for the first time. The agency said it had found no evidence of transmission to humans and the risk to the British public was low.
West Nile virus is transmitted by mosquitoes and, like dengue fever, chikungunya and zika, used to be confined to hotter regions of the world. But global heating has expanded the geographical spread of West Nile virus and other tropical diseases into cooler areas, including parts of northern and western Europe. In 2024, there were more than 1,400 cases of locally acquired West Nile virus and several hundred cases of dengue, mostly in France and Italy.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/may/23/climate-change-could-bring-insect-borne-tropical-diseases-to-uk-scientists-warn
Gee I wonder how West Nile virus got into UK mosquitoes?
There is zero doubt that insect diseases have no problem thriving in cold climates. Malaria used to be a horrific problem in the far North.
The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure
Department of Geography and Faculty of History
The not-so tropical disease: malaria in northern Europe
Mathias Mølbak Ingholt
Many people know that malaria is a mosquito-borne disease that largely occurs in tropical regions. However, it is not so well known that malaria was endemic in parts of northern Europe – including Britain – until relatively recently.
Unlike Plasmodium falciparum malaria, which today dominates in Sub-Saharan Africa with high mortality rates, European malaria was caused by Plasmodium vivax, a species with low mortality. It was eradicated from Europe only relatively recently, in the 20th century – yet surprisingly little is known about its history, and there is still some debate about how important a disease it was in the past.
Malaria, agues, and fevers
The word “malaria” comes from the Italian words mal and aria, meaning “bad air”. This was a reference to the miasma theory of disease, according to which disease is caused by exposure to unhealthy vapours that emerged spontaneously. These vapours were believed to have existed in marshes and wetlands, and these ecotypes were stigmatized as very unhealthy in 17th-19th century literature. In the case of Britain, wetlands were associated with “agues” and “marsh fevers”, and in Denmark and Germany, wetlands were associated with “koldfeber” (cold fever) and “fevers” in general.
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Read more: https://www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/blog/2025/03/13/malaria-in-northern-europe/
We are all used to climate disinformation, but I find nonsensical attempts to link the risk of insect borne disease outbreaks to a failure to install enough solar panels and wind turbines particularly distressing.
Responding sensibly to the risk of outbreaks or outbreaks which occur could save thousands of lives.
Climate alarmists who muddy the water on this issue, who sow confusion with their dogma, in my opinion are endangering people’s lives – including the lives of people I care about.
Ask old Russians about Malaria and the “warm” climate they had 😀
MALARIA IN LATE TSARIST RUSSIA
PDF
There were yellow fever outbreaks in Philadelphia in the 1780’s and 1790’s, again during the LIA.
DDT was effectively banned in 1973 and now malaria has returned to the Carolinas
Google’s AI doesn’t say anything about DDT or “Climate Change”
Endemic malaria: an ‘indoor’ disease in northern Europe. Historical data analysed
Endemic northern malaria reached 68°N latitude in Europe during the 19th century, where the summer mean temperature only irregularly exceeded 16°C, the lower limit needed for sporogony of Plasmodium vivax. Because of the available historical material and little use of quinine, Finland was suitable for an analysis of endemic malaria and temperature.
Yes. When people stopped living over or beside their animals (to benefit from animal heat in their houses), malaria dropped precipiticely.
Harm from Bill Gates funded mosquito “research” is something we could actually prevent.
Creating new wetlands, lakes, slow moving rivers, re-establishing peat bogs reintroducing beavers isn’t going create ideal mosquito breeding environments? Still blame it on Climate Change just in case.
Like all climate hysteria, the proponents are astonishingly ignorant. The southern US is warm and muggy, but there are no large outbreaks of devastating mosquito-borne diseases anymore. Malaria was a big deal once but bright people figured out how to manage the environment to minimize mosquito populations and the diseases they carry. If you want to know how to manage mosquitoes, ask Walt Disney World in Florida. They’ve mastered the craft. But apparently in the apocalyptic world of climate alarmists, we’ll all become tragically stupid and lose all the knowledge we’ve already gained to deal with these kinds of things. In fact, the only people who are tragically stupid are the climate alarmists.
Stinkerp you really nailed it! They always assume unrealistic scenarios.
“Like all climate hysteria, the proponents are astonishingly ignorant.”
No, they’re counting on the ignorance of the masses. They are propagandists who know exactly what they are doing.
Humans are the reservoir of Malaria. Mosquitos are only the vector.
If there is a northern climate Malaria outbreak, its because humans with Malaria fueled it.
Now, where did those humans carrying the malaria come from? That’s the health question nobody ever bothers to ask and is never answered.
Look here what Russis does
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1155/2019/4610498
Imported Plasmodium vivax Malaria in the Russian Federation from Western Sub-Saharan Africa
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Malaria-cases-in-Russia-Source-Russian-Federal-Service-for-Surveillance-on-Consumer_fig1_331359438
Malaria cases in Russia. Source: Russian Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing (Rospotrebnadzor). * CIS—Commonwealth of Independent States, consisting of a part of former Soviet Republics.
“Mosquito experts say cuts in aid will lead to collapse of crucial surveillance and control in endemic countries.”
Rather than paying these “experts” perhaps our money would be put to better use spraying mosquitoes.
Oliver Cromwell allegedly died of malaria.
I learnt that fact from Trivial Pursuit and it stuck in my mind because the question master initially gave the wrong answer to the question of how Cromwell had died as ice skating.
A changing climate could bring a variety of diseases with it, but it’s far more likely that it may not be wholesale climate change. It’s far more likely that in one year or another the weather just happens to be more conducive to the spread of certain diseases; and when it reverts back to the long-term average, it’s no longer a permanent problem. So the trick is to take the necessary precautions to fend off the immediate threat rather than introducing carbon pricing, new laws and restrictions, and mandates forcing consumers to buy overpriced supposedly climate-friendly, conveyances and appliances that have no effect upon what’s a non-issue from the outset.
There is little profit and power in doing sensible things. Why would anyone who benefits from a problem, real or imaginary, want to solve it?
Number of mosquitoes is important, plus the number of human travelers that are malaria carriers for those mosquitoes to become infected….
No mosquitos in northern climates?
I heard that when they were building the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, that the mosquitos were so big that they would fly off with entire sections of pipe!
The so-called “heat exchangers” on the vertical supports that supposedly protect the permafrost, are actually sonic mosquito repellers designed to protect the completed pipeline!
Birds are the reservoir for West Nile Virus (WNV). Mosquitoes are the vector – this means that mosquitoes pick up WNV from infected birds and then can transmit the disease to animals, like humans. More birds migrating, more WNV. In the UK, the main birds that can carry West Nile Virus are blackbirds, thrushes, house sparrows, and pheasants. House sparrows are everywhere in the UK and fond of human habitation.
This is different from other mosquito transmitted diseases like malaria. In malaria, humans are the reservoir, and mosquitoes pick up malaria from sick humans and pass it to healthy humans.
Culex pipiens and Culex tarsalis mosquitoes are most likely to transmit WNV from birds to humans — so mosquito control (surveillance and spraying) can be important, but those mosquito species are already endemic to the UK — they re not “moving there” because of climate change or anything else, they have always been there.