Exerpts: Memorandum by Professor Paul Reiter, Institut Pasteur. “specialist in the natural history and biology of mosquitoes, the epidemiology of the diseases they transmit, and strategies for their control. “
I wonder how many of your Lordships are aware of the historical significance of the Palace of Westminster? I refer to the history of malaria, not the evolution of government. Are you aware that the entire area now occupied by the Houses of Parliament was once a notoriously malarious swamp? And that until the beginning of the 20th century, “ague” (the original English word for malaria) was a cause of high morbidity and mortality in parts of the British Isles, particularly in tidal marshes such as those at Westminster? And that George Washington followed British Parliamentary precedent by also siting his government buildings in a malarious swamp! I mention this to dispel any misconception you may have that malaria is a “tropical” disease. […] In fact, the most catastrophic epidemic on record anywhere in the world occurred in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, with a peak incidence of 13 million cases per year, and 600,000 deaths. 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.
Re: IPCC Second Assessment Report, Chapter 18, Human population health;
12. The scientific literature on mosquito-borne diseases is voluminous, yet the text references in the chapter were restricted to a handful of articles, many of them relatively obscure, and nearly all suggesting an increase in prevalence of disease in a warmer climate. The paucity of information was hardly surprising: not one of the lead authors had ever written a research paper on the subject! Moreover, two of the authors, both physicians, had spent their entire career as environmental activists. One of these activists has published “professional” articles as an “expert” on 32 different subjects, ranging from mercury poisoning to land mines, globalization to allergies and West Nile virus to AIDS.
13. Among the contributing authors there was one professional entomologist, and a person who had written an obscure article on dengue and El Niño, but whose principal interest was the effectiveness of motor cycle crash helmets (plus one paper on the health effects of cell phones).
Re: The IPCC Third Assessment Report;
24. The third assessment report listed more than 65 lead authors, only one of which—a colleague of mine—was an established authority on vector-borne disease. I was invited to serve a contributory author on the health chapter
25. My colleague and I repeatedly found ourselves at loggerheads with persons who insisted on making authoritative pronouncements, although they had little or no knowledge of our speciality. At the time, we were experiencing similar frustration as Lead Authors of Health Section of the US National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change (US Global Change Research Program). After much effort and many fruitless discussions, I decided to concentrate on the USGCCRP and resigned from the IPCC project. My resignation was accepted, but in a first draft I found that my name was still listed. I requested its removal, but was told it would remain because “I had contributed”. It was only after strong insistence that I succeeded in having it removed.
IPCC Fourth Assessment Report;
31. It will be interesting to see how the health chapter of the fourth report is written. Only one of the lead authors has ever been a lead author, and neither has ever published on mosquito-borne disease. Only one of the contributing authors has an extensive bibliography in the field of human health. He is a specialist in industrial health, and all his publications are in Russian. Several of the others have never published any articles at all.
[…]
33. When I contacted IPCC personnel (at the Meteorological Office in Exeter) to see whether my nomination had been accepted, I initially received the message: “The IPCC received over 2000 government nominations during this process and most, such as yours, were of a very high standard. Unfortunately the IPCC Working Group Two Bureau did not pick you to be an author, although all nominations were scrutinised and assessed”.
34. I replied with a question about the two Lead Authors that had been selected:“It is often stated that the IPCC represents the worlds top scientists. I copy to you the bibliographies of (the two lead authors), as downloaded from MEDLINE. You will observe that (the first) has never written a single article, and (the second) has only authored five articles. Can these two really be considered “Lead authors” with experience, representative of the world’s top scientists and specialists in human health?”
35. I also pointed out that one Lead Author is a “hygienist”, the other is a specialist in fossil faeces, and both have been co-authors on publications by environmental activists.
Written in 2005, this is a “read the whole thing” item.
Flashback: Hurricane expert Chris Landsea withdraws from IPCC, citing misrepresentation of the research.
Excellent find.
Malaria also wiped out many workers on the Rideau canal in the 1820s, and an early Selkirk settlement called Baldoon in Ontario near the St. Clair River.
Not to mention leprosy was rampant in Scandanavia, Yellow Fever in Philledelphia, Malaria all through the Mississippi valley and small pox everywhere. So what happened. Wealth!Oh yeah, all these diseases were prevalent during the little ice age.
Australia ratified Kyoto today, it looks like this concern over AGW is blowing over.
Second Norm’s comment. Our infectious diseases prof used to repeatedly emphasize that malaria, among numerous other vector borne diseases, was not a tropical disease per se but a disease of poverty i.e. the lack of resources and technical know how to erradicate its breeding grounds. Not for nothing it’s called “malaria” — apparently latin for “bad air” arising from a belief that it was the musty air around swamps near Rome that was causing it.
As for Australia’s ratification of Kyoto, I’d recommend two books — “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” and “Taken by Storm”. The latter is a thoroughly good read, and points out the utter folly of talking about a “mean global temperature” or anyone claiming to predict climate based on a computer model. It’s an easier read if one has some scientific background but I don’t think it would be essential to understanding it.
jose,
The new PM of Australia is a leftard socialist who Australians will soon bemoan their own stupidity in electing.
The very notion that a leading scientist would be turned down in favour of a unpublished author with ties to environmental activists,
would ordinarily be earth shattering news.
That the media simply refuses to cover this (and other similar stories), notwithstanding that this stuff is all over the web ready to be spoon fed to the press (and by all means scrutinized as well), is nothing short of media fraud.
Think of all of those under cover exposee’s in which massive efforts are put into hiding cameras and michrophones, setting up meetings, even putting reporters at risk,to get the “real truth”.
Yet they’re literally holding their hands to their eyes with stories such as this.
All the while parroting the dominant meme in headline after headline.
A lot of people don’t realize that malaria is a vector-born disease. Mosquitos actually get the disease from people who have malaria and then they transmit it to people who do not have the disease. (In fact mosquitos actually get sick and can die of malaria.)
Very few people in North America have malaria nowadays – so it doesn’t matter how many mosquitos there are – and supposed increases in temperature may increase the number of mosquitos but they cannot spread malaria unless there is a malarial source (i.e. someone with malaria).
My cousin and her husband both have malaria because he spent 20 years working as an engineer for BP in Indonesia, Malaysia, Borneo, etc. They now live in San Francisco. They fear being bit by mosquitos because they know they can cause it to be transmitted. In fact, most cases (and there are only a few in North America now) is directly caused by someone coming here with Malaria.
Malaria is one of the few diseases that you can completely get rid of. The big case in point is the unbelievable success in India in stopping this stuff. You basically have to completely spray down all sources of mosquitos (until a majority of population living does not have malaria).
It’s going down in this nation Jose, and that’s all that matters to this over burdened taxpayer.
However you are still free to spend all your personal income on carbon credits if you still believe this will do anything to stop the sun from warming the climate.
Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol-Pot, history shows that they never planned anything as detailed as this cover-up, so making this out as some kind of sinister conspiracy would be…just wrong, right?
The truth is interesting, it’s more profitable for certain groups like the UN to make up stuff, but it’s nice to know about reality.
The optics on Bali couldn’t be more delicious:
Consider this:
– a bunch of activists and politicians standing in the warm tropical paradise of Bali,
– having gotten there by burning massive amounts of fuel which is supposed to be killing the planet,
– telling Canadians who are sheltering themselves from the deadly cold
– that WE should take drastic measures to stop “greenhouse gas” emissions which are causing “global warming”.
The icing on the cake:
Dion tells Mansbrigde on National TV that he promises to go to Afghanistan to meet with the troops at the first opportunity, but passes it up and instead goes to beautiful Bali, to “save the world” of course.
Optics.
Excellent information, kate. Many thanks.
As noted, where is the MSM in all of this? Like the UN, the MSM isn’t interested in facts; it’s part of the scam being carried out by the UN.
Think of their other scams – their oil-for-fraud, their utter uselessness in dealing with genocides around the world, in dealing with wars, in dealing with famines, disease.
What is the UN? It’s a massive hive of corruption, with unelected delegates getting rich by promoting ‘assignments’ and ‘aid’ in various countries. Who gets most of the money? The bureaucrats, the middlemen, the UN workers. Not the people in need.
Kyotoism is the latest UN fraud, a massive agenda of money transference from the industrial countries to developing countries. Nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with climate change, emissions or pollution. In fact, it will have the opposite effect; it will increase emissions and pollution.
The Aussie PM signed off, but Australia hasn’t yet ratified Kyoto 1.
Still needs to get through the senate.
What the media isn’t telling you is the the official Australia position on Kyoto 2 is to have binding targets for ALL nations . . . Australia supporting PM Harper’s position.
Probably causing Taliban Jack & Steffi to hack a few fur balls in disgust at their socialist buddies.
Jose, have you inadvertently (?) used AGW in the same context as Kyoto. They’re not anywhere near the same thing. AGW is a theory, neither proven nor disproven IMHO. When we’re not having to endure Gore’s irresponsible exaggerations and hype, we all (?) realize the necessity of finding an alternative to carbon fuels, lest India and China cause a pollution disaster (yes the real thing, CO, lead, radon, acid rain and so on).
Kyoto is supposedly the prescription for this? Frankly Kyoto is part of the problem now, by stating, officially, that is OK to pollute, provided you’re in the developing world. In the developed world, where we have cleaned up our environment significantly since the 70s and continue to develop clean technologies, must shut down their economies. It’s as if the atmosphere knows the difference between who is emitting CO2; it doesn’t.
Kyoto will legitimize pollution under the guise of some weird form of social justice, it will embrace a collectivism that has been absolutely repudiated for formenting poverty, misery and authoritarianism (or its evil cousin totalitarianism) wherever it has been tried.
Add to this that the UN is a seriously corrupt and incompetent organization, and you have a recipe for disaster.
Jose, please don’t join the irresponsible Dion crowd who want us to believe AGW and Kyoto are the same thing. They aren’t; any thought given to the matter beyond five seconds confirms that.
IMO, the world is long overdue;
‘The-Mother-Of-All-Malpractice-Suits’ against irresponsible journalism.
The Aussies better think long and hard (and maybe talk to the Kiwis for once) before they sign a check to “CASH” for an estimated 1.8 billion bucks…
See? Musical citations. Faced with proof of academic malpractice, Jose changes the subject to Australia. Non sequiter? Not if it shifts attention from the cheatin’ and the lyin’ and the thievin’ going on at the good ol’ IPCC.
Jose, don’t you ever get tired of covering for cheats, thieves and liars? Even for a determined Lefty like yourself, that’s got to get old eventually.
Incidentally, Hamilton used to be a malarial swamp. Now its just a dump. ~:D
Keep up the good work on this front Kate.
I can’t stand liars, especially those who use those lies to polish their halos while feathering their nests (mixed metaphors anyone?).
I was watching the weather channel yesterday. It showed extreme cold conditions over much of Canada while predicting the coldest winter in 15 years. At the same time the mid-screen story featured a group of chicken little alarmists saying we needed to act now to prevent global warming. They have no sense, and no shame.
Civil Servants Avid Movie Goers
“Federal officials government’s own policies could harm ecosystems…The Harper government is opening the door to “wide-reaching” and “large scale” impacts to the earth’s ecosystems …. warns a newly-released federal document. Foreign Affairs officials who prepared the internal research paper suggested that…
“The scientific uncertainty surrounding the temperature increase thresholds that would trigger global scale impacts (i.e., slowing of the North Atlantic Ocean currents, collapse of Greenland and/or West Antarctic ice sheets),”
http://tinyurl.com/2jf386
THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW (Warning: plot spoiler)
-the melting of the polar ice caps has poured fresh water into the oceans and diluted the salt level, which has caused the temperature of the ocean currents to drop…. the Gulf Stream is essentially ‘shut off’,”
Maybe soon some of these hand-picked specialists can do a study as to why there seems to be widespread outbreaks of apathy and gullibility in the western world.
Malaria — environmentalists really don’t want to “go there”. Their junk-science insistence that DDT be banned resulted in 20,000,000 million deaths (or more).
All because environmentalism is western-centric.
I sincerely hope someone is “keeping a list” of all the scientists and engineers who have joined the *settled science* crowd. I don’t mean just the most visible or public figures, but also the not-so-visible ones.
If, or when, the *A* falls from the *GW* in this present climate change cycle it may be important for employers to know certain things about potential, or future, employees. Such as how their thought processes work, how easily are they duped, and how easily might they throw in with a perceived or touted “consensus”.
What could this mean for the every-day-joe scientist or engineer? A few weeks ago a headhunter contacted me for some advice on how to advance the search they were carrying out, for a client, regarding a certain specialty.
In the discusion I learned that a number of them now routinely Google applicants to see if, and what kind, of tracks they may have left on the internet. Searches for insight and clues as to mental state. My impression was that closed-minded and consensus-as-gospel professionals, rude individuals and nuts need not apply.
Internet ===> Google ===> Whoops!
Speaking of expertise, the Globe and Mail is running a series on ‘Global Warming’ by Thomas Homer Dixon.
Dixon is a leftist in political science; he has no scientific background, no expertise in climatology or indeed, in any scientific discipline related to climate. But, he pontificates at great length on this issue and other leftist themes (apocalpytic scenarios, civilization clashes, etc).
Norm Potter I think over 100 died making the canal maybe because they were white that fact went down the Trudeaupian memory hole.
Norm Potter I think over 1000 died making the canal maybe because they were white that fact went down the Trudeaupian memory hole.
ET, check out latest Torstar contribution to the collectivist guilt pity party known as Kyoto, from the illustrious Michael Byars, fresh from his non-fact finding tour of our Afghan war crimes:
http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/281902
PMSH is the small man of humanity, convincing Commonwealth leaders of a realistic approach becomes well, “nothing.”
No problem, Terence Corcoran does a good job excoriating Byers, not the least of his criticism being that Byars, in the finest traditions of junk political science, fails to present a single statistic, citation or cogent fact:
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2007/12/03/jonathan-kay-dump-kyoto-save-lives.aspx
During this retort, Corcoran does rely heavily on Lomborg the healthy skeptic, actually qualified to speak, who actually uses science, er I mean OIL SHILL.
How Byars, Dion, May and Layton are going to convince Canadians to swallow this Kyoto tripe should be lots of fun to watch. Here’s a hint: try to convince Canadians they won’t be inconvenienced in any way by Kyoto, then maybe they’ll go for it. Good luck with that one, los lefty amigos! Selling carbon credits to coal-spewing China, as act 2 will bring the house down not doubt. The finale, actually believing AGW theory and Kyoto are the same thing actually (carbon dioxide is the same as pollution right?), will surely propel the left to power, where we receive 34 cents on every dollar invested in Kyoto in lives saved, but only $40 per dollar invested on gasp, measures to improve quality of life in the developing world.
We can do no such thing, tis much better to relieve our “post-colonial” guilt by imporverishing ourselves and ruining everyone’s air and water, all at the same time!!
Then the world can be truly socialist – IOW equally miserable!
When the pointy heads that reside in the ivory towers start a public panic its time to grip your wallet a whole bunch tighter because its going to cost you money. The panic is never based in reality, always involves unprovable theories or idle speculation and the solution is always expensive and as unprovable as the panic.
31. It will be interesting to see how the health chapter of the fourth report is written. Only one of the lead authors has ever been a lead author, and neither has ever published on mosquito-borne disease. Only one of the contributing authors has an extensive bibliography in the field of human health. He is a specialist in industrial health, and all his publications are in Russian. Several of the others have never published any articles at all.
But DDT MAKES MOTHER GAIA CRY!
And morning drive-time talk radio figures the USA will sign Kyoto in late January/early February of 2009.
Darn….must be Christmas break coming around.Someone let Jose out of his Mommy’s basement to play in the frozen water. Or is that just solidfied,white CO2 falling over most of Canada,caused by the UV rays leaking through the ozone hole,bleaching the CO2?About right,Jose??
As noted earlier,these lovely leftards just don’t/can’t get it.
A human population cull is the goal of environmentalists, they couldn’t ask for one, so a DDT ban it is.
I happened to pick up a national geographic from 1979…. yes my doctor’s office is that old and cheap..!
One of the feature stories was “Concern” about mosquitoes and the environmentalists/naturalists screaming about an epidemic of DDT resistant flies.
Another was about dropping sea levels affecting life int the Caribbean…
How very illuminating.
Usually don’t read the climate change stuff anymore. Glad I pushed through with this, tho. Thanks Kate.
A good chuckle to read that one of the participants was an expert on motorcycle helmets and crashes. Bet he agrees with the Harley guys who opine that “loud pipes save lives” and that full face helmets interfere with this life-saving audio while also making you look dorky.
*Sue the Weatherman * (Telegraph.co.uk)
They have been hit with invitations to debate.
Al Gore has had a standing challenge for over 22 months,
Suzuki would not answer questions — storms out of radio interview.
Perhaps they will listen to a law$uit;
[Central Florida’s most famous Harris Rosen has threatened to sue hurricane forecaster Dr. William Gray claiming Gray’s wrong hurricane forecast may have cost Florida billions in tourist money. Rosen says a survey of former guests indicated 70% of those who didn’t plan to return cited hurricane fears as the reason.] Telegraph
http://my.telegraph.co.uk/reasonmclucus/december_2007/sue_the_weatherman.htm
IIII HHHAAVVEEE BBBIIIRRDDD FFFLLLUUU AAANNNDDD IIIMMM GGRROOWWIINNGGG FFFEEEAAATTHHHEEERRSSS AAAANNNNNDDD AAA BBBEEEAAKKK AAANNNDDD WWIIINNNGGGGSSSSS AAAANNNDDD III WWAAANNNTTT TTTTOOO FFFLLLYYY SSSSOOOUUUTTTHHHHH SQUAWK SQUAWK