9 ms·

The inconvenient truth about malaria

87 points by jrmurad 17y ago

TravisLS 17y ago
It's cases like this that make it so easy to be skeptical about global warming. There is a fair amount of real, verifiable evidence that global warming is real, human-caused, and problematic, but none of it is dramatic enough to make a good story. Endangered polar bears, Hurricane Katrina, and out-of-control Malaria epidemics are a much easier way to get people's attention. Unfortunately, in the quest for a good story, the activists may give their critics so much scientific firepower as to eventually lose the political battle. It's happened with other environmental problems, and it looks poised to happen again.
- ellyagg 17y ago
  Evidence of anthropogenic warming is real, verifiable, and weak. Evidence that it is problematic, or that scientists are even remotely able to predict its magnitude and effect is nonexistent. But the costs of prevention are 100% real and enormous. One common argument for drastic public policy initiatives is the attempt by some folks to seize the moral high ground with "humans are terrible at long term planning". Yes, they are terrible at long term planning, because humans are really terrible at predicting the future, e.g., predicting the size and magnitude of AGW. It's simply not true that preventing a worst case scenario is worth any price. Coming up with imaginary worst case scenarios 50 or 100 years from now is as easy as pie. That's not valid risk assessment. Typically, AGW[1] proponents only argue from the expected value of our investment in preventing global warming. Since the purported worst case scenario is the extermination of humanity, the upside is our survival. Essentially, the expected value is infinite, so the net present value is infinite, so we should be willing to spend all our money to prevent even a possibility of AGW killing us off. Since no one knows the risk, even to within several orders of magnitude, your guess is as good as mine. Your opinion on AGW policy comes down to something entire aside from the science, namely, your moral view of, and problem-solving assumptions about, humankind as a whole. AGW is not currently acute[2]. I choose to believe that in a hypothetical (and vanishingly unlikely) case where it becomes acute, humans would weather it. [1] There is currently no good way to describe the for and against on this issue. Almost every knowledgeable person believes in the theoretical model of AGW. Most people believe there has been some AGW. The true division is between people who believe it's been proven that AGW is alarming and those who don't. "AGW skeptics" is not really an appropriate term. [2] Don't say it is. That's preposterous. AGW itself is weakly shown. Regional climate changes have not been scientifically linked to weak AGW. Regional climate change is the rule, including changes that melt ice and extinguish species.
  - guelo 17y ago
    "Evidence that it is problematic ... is nonexistent." Wow. What's amazing to me about this rant is how the debate has moved over the last 10 years from "it's not happening" to "it's not a big deal". So, our massively complex ecosystem is changing in ways that our scientists don't fully understand and it's not a big deal? The ecosystem so complex that scientists have a hard time using the world's fastest supercomputers to try to model it. These real, verifiable changes to OUR ONLY ecosystem are not a big deal even though nobody knows the outcome? Your position is that playing russian roulette with our grandkids future is worth it because the price of action is overwhelmingly expensive (or infinite). But that's wrong, it's not that expensive. The European economies that have reduced their emissions according to the Kyoto protocol have been doing fine. Reducing the world's carbon emissions is easy, cheap and prudent.
    - artsrc 17y ago
      I suspect that reducing our emissions is actually not just cheap but cost negative. You invest in energy saving infrastructure, like insulation, solar hot water, public transport, more efficient appliances, lights, cars etc. Increase the usage of renewable resources, like solar, hydro and wind. And do R&D. Just wait for the next down turn and instead of cutting interest rates have the plans ready to do the investment. We probably have 4 to 10 years to do some good planning.
      - DaniFong 17y ago
        At present, it depends on the strategy taken, ad of course it will depend on the technologies developed. There are actually many many technologies which, at present, will save you money in the long run (and the run doesn't even need to be that long.) The main barriers to adoption are laziness, cost of capital, consumer behavior (not purchasing LED lights because they 'seem' too expensive), and most importantly, lack of education. Page 4 of this paper has a great graph where they examine costs and cost abatement for a variety of 'green' strategies. Hybrid cars are the most expensive! www.khoslaventures.com/presentations/Hybrids.pdf
      - Tichy 17y ago
- dasil003 17y ago
  I think humans are pretty much incapable of doing long-term science and coming to rational conclusions on any kind of climate or environmental issues. If any money is involved at all it gets politicized and science goes right out the window. Plus, time scales of even 10 or 20 years are too long to really enter our decision making process in any meaningful way. Essentially we will do whatever we want until there is an immediate crisis, and then we will deal with it to the best of our ability. Maybe that means mass deaths or extinction, or maybe the consequences will be manageable.
  - guelo 17y ago
    The idea that this is an impossible problem to tackle is just more FUD spread by the skeptics. It is very doable, we've successfully done it in the past with other chemicals such as ozone. It will not destroy the economy. It WILL cause some extremely profitable industries to be less profitable which is why we still haven't done anything about it. If the horse buggy industry had been a massive multi-billion dollar influential industry they might still be around to the detriment of us all.
  - astine 17y ago
    Maybe that means mass deaths or extinction, or maybe the consequences will be manageable. Levees; lots of them. :P
    - yummyfajitas 17y ago
      That's actually not a terrible solution for the first world. Coastal areas tend to be wealthy and levees are not that expensive.
  - hazzen 17y ago
    I have long wondered if there is a good solution this this problem: given that politicians serve some short term length, say 2-6 years, before running for re-election and given that major policy changes can not be enacted overnight nor in one piece, is there any way we can get forward-thinking legislation into law? It seems that any major legislation should require an informed, rational public - something I do not believe to be possible. What solution is there, other than benevolent dictator (which is not a true solution)?
- diego_moita 17y ago
  Overall I agree, but there is another side to it: you can't win on ideology with science. There are lots of ideas/facts (e.g.: evolution, free trade, vaccines, etc) which science has a huge pile of evidence to support but still face a lot of resistance because of ideology, conflicts with political interests or plain dumbness. Global warming is just another one of these ideas.
- guelo 17y ago
  The complaints about inaccuracy of the "activists" are so hard to swallow when the skeptics have been throwing every dirty trick in the book to successfully derail any progress for decades now. "Gore made a mistake on the mosquitoes, what an idiot! and he's fat! har har har! dirty fucking hippies!." Our grandkids will look upon these people as monsters. I'm not sure why there is such a big climate-skeptic strain here on HN.
  - JacobAldridge 17y ago
    I think it's because there's a "big [insert anything] skeptic strain here on HN". Edit: Which is a damn good thing, and why I love hanging out here.
  - run4yourlives 17y ago
    With basically any argument, the skeptical position should be your default one. The person presenting the argument should be the one charged with convincing you of their point. It doesn't work the other way around. So, the fact that there are raving hordes of neo-religious freaks claiming that climate change science is bunk does not mean that those supporting the assertion that we are doing irreparable harm to our planet are absolved of all responsibility to actually prove that.
    - Locke1689 17y ago
      There's a difference between reasonable and unreasonable skepticism. A couple years ago there was a big debate about climate change on the xkcd forum. Fortunately, there was someone with some experience in the field itself. There is always a question of what the scientific opinion is on climate change. He answers that question pretty well in this post http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=15290&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=global+warming&start=40#p406833 http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=15290&st=...
    - guelo 17y ago
      OK, I understand that opinion here leans towards the skeptic crowd, and I used the word 'fucking' in my comment so maybe that's why I was downvoted so harshly. But why upvote this comment so much? It doesn't make any sense. The "person presenting the argument" are the scientists that have published hundreds of peer reviewed papers on global warming science. Apparently they're not doing a good enough job of convincing some people, but they're not trying to get people to blindly agree with them, their doing science! What more are they supposed to do to prove it?
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
10ren 17y ago
He has a nice line in rhetoric. I especially liked global warming ‘sceptics’ and pointing that a true scientist is always a skeptic (his spelling is legit BTW)
Periodic 17y ago
Like his claim about the people he is attacking, it felt like his arguments were a little empty. He certainly had some facts about the actual movement of malaria, but most of the piece was dedicated to attacking specific climate-change proponents on one small issue. He even went as far as to claim that everything Dr. Epstein and co. published is a myth with the only evidence being one article on which the author is now correcting. In truth, the science is never in. We’re not pollsters or policy-makers. We proceed by question, observation, hypothesis, and testing by experiment. We are still re-testing Einstein’s theory of relativity! So I’m happy to be a sceptic. That is how science works. I think if you were to go out and try to claim that relativity wasn't true and still needed to be tested you wouldn't get much attention from the rest of the scientific community. Science is about finding evidence that verifies or falsifies a claim, but once that has been done multiple times (as it has with relativity) people find that it is much easier to just accept is as true until they find evidence to contradict it. I think it is a bad comparison.
- mtarnovan 17y ago
  The findings of classical mechanics have also been verified multiple times, before being contradicted by the findings of relativistic physics. It's a pivotal part of science to remain skeptic and continuously challenge the status quo.
- yummyfajitas 17y ago
  He even went as far as to claim that everything Dr. Epstein and co. published is a myth with the only evidence being one article on which the author is now correcting. No he didn't. He claimed that Epstein publishes primarily opinion pieces in scientific journals, which are then cited by activists as if they are actual research. A quick perusal of Epstein's CV suggests the first part of this claim is true: http://chge.med.harvard.edu/about/faculty/epstein.html http://chge.med.harvard.edu/about/faculty/epstein.html I imagine he focuses on the actual movement of malaria because he is a medical entomologist and didn't want to make claims he was uncertain of.
  - kscaldef 17y ago
    > I imagine he focuses on the actual movement of malaria because he is a medical entomologist and didn't want to make claims he was uncertain of Which didn't stop him from making claims that his nomination to the IPCC would have been blocked by other countries and insinuating that some conspiracy caused his nomination to be mysteriously lost. Honestly, I was a lot more sympathetic to his arguments until I got to that part of the article.
ams6110 17y ago
And malaria was only eliminated from the Soviet Union and large areas of Europe in the 1950s, after the advent of DDT. This is an important fact that is only mentioned in this one sentence. The banning of DDT lead to millions of deaths in tropical areas (an "unintended consequence"). Limits on CO2 emissions and the resulting impact on energy production, manufacturing, and agriculture may well have unforeseen consequences, which will, like the DDT ban, probably affect developing nations more than anyone else.
- spamizbad 17y ago
  DDT is still legally used to the quantity of 4000+ tons a years. I fail to understand how it was "banned", as it's still widely used in countries like India and several African countries. What actually happened was a bunch of guidelines were established for its use, which any sovereign nation can ignore with little consequences. The fact that the west decided to outright ban the stuff isn't that big of a deal given the fact that there aren't terribly many Malaria deaths in the United States or Norway. And those restrictions were put in place for good reason: For DDT to be effective in wide areas (rather than targeted spraying indoors) you essentially need something potent enough to disrupt the entire Entomological portion of the eco-system, which works its way up to small mammals, which can eventually impact certain key predators. One infamous example this occurred in Borneo in the 1950s. The WHO responded to a malaria outbreak on the island by spraying DDT. It abated the malaria problem but completely disrupted insect life which lead to numerous problems culminating in roofs collapsing from an overpopulation of thatch-eating caterpillars, along with killing of mammalian predators that ate lizards (which ate DDT-laden insects). This caused an overpopulation of rats which started spreading typhoid and plague. The rat problem was ultimately solved by airdropping cats.
  - patio11 17y ago
    which any sovereign nation can ignore with little consequences This is contrary to fact, because a) African nations are dependent on foreign aid, and donor organizations both will not fund DDT and will quietly threaten other funding if you choose to spray it and b) the prospect of African agricultural exports being barred due to "contamination" by DDT residues acts as another de-facto ban on DDT, since it threatens crippling economic sanctions for using it. (Oddly enough, the crop most often at "risk" is tobacco -- because God forbid your cigarettes have harmful chemicals in them. There is an absolutely priceless quote from a chemist saying that he's be more concerned that you got nicotine in his DDT than getting DDT in your nicotine.) Sources: http://www.africanagricultureblog.com/2008/07/malawis-tobbacco-industry-unhappy-with.html http://www.africanagricultureblog.com/2008/07/malawis-tobbac...
baguasquirrel 17y ago
The fact that this guy is an epidemiologist doesn't impress me worth a nilly bit. What I do know is that some of Gore's science is spotty, but that malaria may indeed be affected by any sort of climate pattern changes. I've done only a bit of traveling in my life, but I think it can hardly be disputed that there are more mosquitoes in Florida than there are in NY, and more in NY than there are in California. The question then is: will global warming increase the primary factor and secondary factors that contribute to mosquito breeding? Those factors are clearly water/humidity first, and warmth second. California has few mosquitoes because it's cold when it's wet and it's dry when it's warm, and Florida has a lot because it's got warmth and water aplenty. So then, the answer is complicated. Some places will see an increase in malaria prevalence and some places will see a decrease, due to the varying effects of climate change. California is set to be drier and warmer, so we shouldn't have any increase. But that's the twist. Some places are poised to become wetter and warmer, as opposed to drier and warmer. Thus, places that don't normally experience it will experience it (or at least be plagued by mosquitoes). The authorities in those places won't be prepared for it. So either way you play it, global warming will cause some issues.
- ghshephard 17y ago
  "Some places will see an increase in malaria prevalence and some places will see a decrease, due to the varying effects of climate change. California is set to be drier and warmer, so we shouldn't have any increase." I figured I'd do some fact checking, for no other reason than that's what a lot of this thread is about: From: http://diseasemaps.usgs.gov/ http://diseasemaps.usgs.gov/ Cumulative 2009 Data as of 3 am, Dec 08, 2009* Cumulative Mosquito West Nile Infections by State: New York: 100 California: 1056 Florida: 3 Population of New York is approximately twice that of California, so, on a per capita basis, Mosquito Infections of West Nile Virus are five (5) times more prevalent in California. Florida has almost _no_ west nile infections (though they have a lot of mosquitos) We need to be cautious about conflating disease and insect prevalence, as tempting as that may be.
rbranson 17y ago
Consider the source. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Reiter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Reiter http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/personfactsheet.php?id=421 http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/personfactsheet.php?id=421 http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/196/6786/ http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/196/6786/
- artsrc 17y ago
  Basically the bulk of the article says malaria is better characterized as a disease of poverty than as a disease of warming. It seems to me that this is the best analysis based on our knowledge. Are there any reputable scientists who hold an different position?
benl 17y ago
It's amazing what a little fact checking can do for your perspective. After watching 'An Inconvenient Truth', I was quite affected by the supposed plight of the Polar Bears. So I did a bit of research, and I found out two fascinating facts: 1. Polar Bear populations have increased massively over recent years. 2. Polar Bears as a species are older than the last time the Arctic Ocean was free of ice. At that point, I began to suspect that I was being sold something.
- ryanwaggoner 17y ago
  Can you post some sources? My cursory research has shown the opposite. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_bear#Population_and_distribution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_bear#Population_and_distr... http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/essay_schliebe.html http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/essay_schliebe.html http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/special/polar_bears/ http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/special/polar_bears/ http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/ask-the-experts/population/ http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/ask-the-experts/popul... http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/07/polar-bear-decl/ http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/07/polar-bear-decl/
- billswift 17y ago
  Not only that, but polar bears are seriously migratory. If the ice retreats, they'll just follow the edge of the ice (like they already do.)
  - sethg 17y ago
    And after there’s no ice left to retreat to...?
willwagner 17y ago
FWIW, this is a peer-reviewed article he wrote on the subject in 2001. http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/members/2001/suppl-1/141-161reiter/reiter-full.html http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/members/2001/suppl-1/141-161reiter/...
mahmud 17y ago
I nearly died of malaria in the middle-east, but never got it in Kenya and Somalia when I lived there. You don't need DDT or any poisons to get rid of mosquitoes, we used frogs and fish. Any puddle of sitting water was filled with sand as quickly as possible. And any largish natural body of water got fresh-water fish and frogs introduced to it. No questions. In Kenya (Mombasa) and south Somalia, even sea-water fish worked for us. I used to take off my Sarong and catch little fish for our wells.
wendroid 17y ago
25%-30% of the worlds human population has been wiped out in under a year a few times. Sucks to be the 1-in-3 but fuck it, let's go shopping.

87 points by jrmurad 17y ago

It's cases like this that make it so easy to be skeptical about global warming. There is a fair amount of real, verifiable evidence that global warming is real, human-caused, and problematic, but none of it is dramatic enough to make a good story. Endangered polar bears, Hurricane Katrina, and out-of-control Malaria epidemics are a much easier way to get people's attention. Unfortunately, in the quest for a good story, the activists may give their critics so much scientific firepower as to eventually lose the political battle. It's happened with other environmental problems, and it looks poised to happen again.

ellyagg 17y ago
Evidence of anthropogenic warming is real, verifiable, and weak. Evidence that it is problematic, or that scientists are even remotely able to predict its magnitude and effect is nonexistent. But the costs of prevention are 100% real and enormous. One common argument for drastic public policy initiatives is the attempt by some folks to seize the moral high ground with "humans are terrible at long term planning". Yes, they are terrible at long term planning, because humans are really terrible at predicting the future, e.g., predicting the size and magnitude of AGW. It's simply not true that preventing a worst case scenario is worth any price. Coming up with imaginary worst case scenarios 50 or 100 years from now is as easy as pie. That's not valid risk assessment. Typically, AGW[1] proponents only argue from the expected value of our investment in preventing global warming. Since the purported worst case scenario is the extermination of humanity, the upside is our survival. Essentially, the expected value is infinite, so the net present value is infinite, so we should be willing to spend all our money to prevent even a possibility of AGW killing us off. Since no one knows the risk, even to within several orders of magnitude, your guess is as good as mine. Your opinion on AGW policy comes down to something entire aside from the science, namely, your moral view of, and problem-solving assumptions about, humankind as a whole. AGW is not currently acute[2]. I choose to believe that in a hypothetical (and vanishingly unlikely) case where it becomes acute, humans would weather it. [1] There is currently no good way to describe the for and against on this issue. Almost every knowledgeable person believes in the theoretical model of AGW. Most people believe there has been some AGW. The true division is between people who believe it's been proven that AGW is alarming and those who don't. "AGW skeptics" is not really an appropriate term. [2] Don't say it is. That's preposterous. AGW itself is weakly shown. Regional climate changes have not been scientifically linked to weak AGW. Regional climate change is the rule, including changes that melt ice and extinguish species.
- guelo 17y ago
  "Evidence that it is problematic ... is nonexistent." Wow. What's amazing to me about this rant is how the debate has moved over the last 10 years from "it's not happening" to "it's not a big deal". So, our massively complex ecosystem is changing in ways that our scientists don't fully understand and it's not a big deal? The ecosystem so complex that scientists have a hard time using the world's fastest supercomputers to try to model it. These real, verifiable changes to OUR ONLY ecosystem are not a big deal even though nobody knows the outcome? Your position is that playing russian roulette with our grandkids future is worth it because the price of action is overwhelmingly expensive (or infinite). But that's wrong, it's not that expensive. The European economies that have reduced their emissions according to the Kyoto protocol have been doing fine. Reducing the world's carbon emissions is easy, cheap and prudent.
  - artsrc 17y ago
    I suspect that reducing our emissions is actually not just cheap but cost negative. You invest in energy saving infrastructure, like insulation, solar hot water, public transport, more efficient appliances, lights, cars etc. Increase the usage of renewable resources, like solar, hydro and wind. And do R&D. Just wait for the next down turn and instead of cutting interest rates have the plans ready to do the investment. We probably have 4 to 10 years to do some good planning.
    - DaniFong 17y ago
      At present, it depends on the strategy taken, ad of course it will depend on the technologies developed. There are actually many many technologies which, at present, will save you money in the long run (and the run doesn't even need to be that long.) The main barriers to adoption are laziness, cost of capital, consumer behavior (not purchasing LED lights because they 'seem' too expensive), and most importantly, lack of education. Page 4 of this paper has a great graph where they examine costs and cost abatement for a variety of 'green' strategies. Hybrid cars are the most expensive! www.khoslaventures.com/presentations/Hybrids.pdf
    - Tichy 17y ago
dasil003 17y ago
I think humans are pretty much incapable of doing long-term science and coming to rational conclusions on any kind of climate or environmental issues. If any money is involved at all it gets politicized and science goes right out the window. Plus, time scales of even 10 or 20 years are too long to really enter our decision making process in any meaningful way. Essentially we will do whatever we want until there is an immediate crisis, and then we will deal with it to the best of our ability. Maybe that means mass deaths or extinction, or maybe the consequences will be manageable.
- guelo 17y ago
  The idea that this is an impossible problem to tackle is just more FUD spread by the skeptics. It is very doable, we've successfully done it in the past with other chemicals such as ozone. It will not destroy the economy. It WILL cause some extremely profitable industries to be less profitable which is why we still haven't done anything about it. If the horse buggy industry had been a massive multi-billion dollar influential industry they might still be around to the detriment of us all.
- astine 17y ago
  Maybe that means mass deaths or extinction, or maybe the consequences will be manageable. Levees; lots of them. :P
  - yummyfajitas 17y ago
    That's actually not a terrible solution for the first world. Coastal areas tend to be wealthy and levees are not that expensive.
- hazzen 17y ago
  I have long wondered if there is a good solution this this problem: given that politicians serve some short term length, say 2-6 years, before running for re-election and given that major policy changes can not be enacted overnight nor in one piece, is there any way we can get forward-thinking legislation into law? It seems that any major legislation should require an informed, rational public - something I do not believe to be possible. What solution is there, other than benevolent dictator (which is not a true solution)?
diego_moita 17y ago
Overall I agree, but there is another side to it: you can't win on ideology with science. There are lots of ideas/facts (e.g.: evolution, free trade, vaccines, etc) which science has a huge pile of evidence to support but still face a lot of resistance because of ideology, conflicts with political interests or plain dumbness. Global warming is just another one of these ideas.
guelo 17y ago
The complaints about inaccuracy of the "activists" are so hard to swallow when the skeptics have been throwing every dirty trick in the book to successfully derail any progress for decades now. "Gore made a mistake on the mosquitoes, what an idiot! and he's fat! har har har! dirty fucking hippies!." Our grandkids will look upon these people as monsters. I'm not sure why there is such a big climate-skeptic strain here on HN.
- JacobAldridge 17y ago
  I think it's because there's a "big [insert anything] skeptic strain here on HN". Edit: Which is a damn good thing, and why I love hanging out here.
- run4yourlives 17y ago
  With basically any argument, the skeptical position should be your default one. The person presenting the argument should be the one charged with convincing you of their point. It doesn't work the other way around. So, the fact that there are raving hordes of neo-religious freaks claiming that climate change science is bunk does not mean that those supporting the assertion that we are doing irreparable harm to our planet are absolved of all responsibility to actually prove that.
  - Locke1689 17y ago
    There's a difference between reasonable and unreasonable skepticism. A couple years ago there was a big debate about climate change on the xkcd forum. Fortunately, there was someone with some experience in the field itself. There is always a question of what the scientific opinion is on climate change. He answers that question pretty well in this post http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=15290&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=global+warming&start=40#p406833 http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=15290&st=...
  - guelo 17y ago
    OK, I understand that opinion here leans towards the skeptic crowd, and I used the word 'fucking' in my comment so maybe that's why I was downvoted so harshly. But why upvote this comment so much? It doesn't make any sense. The "person presenting the argument" are the scientists that have published hundreds of peer reviewed papers on global warming science. Apparently they're not doing a good enough job of convincing some people, but they're not trying to get people to blindly agree with them, their doing science! What more are they supposed to do to prove it?
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]

10ren 17y ago

He has a nice line in rhetoric. I especially liked global warming ‘sceptics’ and pointing that a true scientist is always a skeptic (his spelling is legit BTW)

Periodic 17y ago

Like his claim about the people he is attacking, it felt like his arguments were a little empty. He certainly had some facts about the actual movement of malaria, but most of the piece was dedicated to attacking specific climate-change proponents on one small issue. He even went as far as to claim that everything Dr. Epstein and co. published is a myth with the only evidence being one article on which the author is now correcting. In truth, the science is never in. We’re not pollsters or policy-makers. We proceed by question, observation, hypothesis, and testing by experiment. We are still re-testing Einstein’s theory of relativity! So I’m happy to be a sceptic. That is how science works. I think if you were to go out and try to claim that relativity wasn't true and still needed to be tested you wouldn't get much attention from the rest of the scientific community. Science is about finding evidence that verifies or falsifies a claim, but once that has been done multiple times (as it has with relativity) people find that it is much easier to just accept is as true until they find evidence to contradict it. I think it is a bad comparison.

mtarnovan 17y ago
The findings of classical mechanics have also been verified multiple times, before being contradicted by the findings of relativistic physics. It's a pivotal part of science to remain skeptic and continuously challenge the status quo.
yummyfajitas 17y ago
He even went as far as to claim that everything Dr. Epstein and co. published is a myth with the only evidence being one article on which the author is now correcting. No he didn't. He claimed that Epstein publishes primarily opinion pieces in scientific journals, which are then cited by activists as if they are actual research. A quick perusal of Epstein's CV suggests the first part of this claim is true: http://chge.med.harvard.edu/about/faculty/epstein.html http://chge.med.harvard.edu/about/faculty/epstein.html I imagine he focuses on the actual movement of malaria because he is a medical entomologist and didn't want to make claims he was uncertain of.
- kscaldef 17y ago
  > I imagine he focuses on the actual movement of malaria because he is a medical entomologist and didn't want to make claims he was uncertain of Which didn't stop him from making claims that his nomination to the IPCC would have been blocked by other countries and insinuating that some conspiracy caused his nomination to be mysteriously lost. Honestly, I was a lot more sympathetic to his arguments until I got to that part of the article.

ams6110 17y ago

And malaria was only eliminated from the Soviet Union and large areas of Europe in the 1950s, after the advent of DDT. This is an important fact that is only mentioned in this one sentence. The banning of DDT lead to millions of deaths in tropical areas (an "unintended consequence"). Limits on CO2 emissions and the resulting impact on energy production, manufacturing, and agriculture may well have unforeseen consequences, which will, like the DDT ban, probably affect developing nations more than anyone else.

spamizbad 17y ago
DDT is still legally used to the quantity of 4000+ tons a years. I fail to understand how it was "banned", as it's still widely used in countries like India and several African countries. What actually happened was a bunch of guidelines were established for its use, which any sovereign nation can ignore with little consequences. The fact that the west decided to outright ban the stuff isn't that big of a deal given the fact that there aren't terribly many Malaria deaths in the United States or Norway. And those restrictions were put in place for good reason: For DDT to be effective in wide areas (rather than targeted spraying indoors) you essentially need something potent enough to disrupt the entire Entomological portion of the eco-system, which works its way up to small mammals, which can eventually impact certain key predators. One infamous example this occurred in Borneo in the 1950s. The WHO responded to a malaria outbreak on the island by spraying DDT. It abated the malaria problem but completely disrupted insect life which lead to numerous problems culminating in roofs collapsing from an overpopulation of thatch-eating caterpillars, along with killing of mammalian predators that ate lizards (which ate DDT-laden insects). This caused an overpopulation of rats which started spreading typhoid and plague. The rat problem was ultimately solved by airdropping cats.
- patio11 17y ago
  which any sovereign nation can ignore with little consequences This is contrary to fact, because a) African nations are dependent on foreign aid, and donor organizations both will not fund DDT and will quietly threaten other funding if you choose to spray it and b) the prospect of African agricultural exports being barred due to "contamination" by DDT residues acts as another de-facto ban on DDT, since it threatens crippling economic sanctions for using it. (Oddly enough, the crop most often at "risk" is tobacco -- because God forbid your cigarettes have harmful chemicals in them. There is an absolutely priceless quote from a chemist saying that he's be more concerned that you got nicotine in his DDT than getting DDT in your nicotine.) Sources: http://www.africanagricultureblog.com/2008/07/malawis-tobbacco-industry-unhappy-with.html http://www.africanagricultureblog.com/2008/07/malawis-tobbac...

baguasquirrel 17y ago

The fact that this guy is an epidemiologist doesn't impress me worth a nilly bit. What I do know is that some of Gore's science is spotty, but that malaria may indeed be affected by any sort of climate pattern changes. I've done only a bit of traveling in my life, but I think it can hardly be disputed that there are more mosquitoes in Florida than there are in NY, and more in NY than there are in California. The question then is: will global warming increase the primary factor and secondary factors that contribute to mosquito breeding? Those factors are clearly water/humidity first, and warmth second. California has few mosquitoes because it's cold when it's wet and it's dry when it's warm, and Florida has a lot because it's got warmth and water aplenty. So then, the answer is complicated. Some places will see an increase in malaria prevalence and some places will see a decrease, due to the varying effects of climate change. California is set to be drier and warmer, so we shouldn't have any increase. But that's the twist. Some places are poised to become wetter and warmer, as opposed to drier and warmer. Thus, places that don't normally experience it will experience it (or at least be plagued by mosquitoes). The authorities in those places won't be prepared for it. So either way you play it, global warming will cause some issues.

ghshephard 17y ago
"Some places will see an increase in malaria prevalence and some places will see a decrease, due to the varying effects of climate change. California is set to be drier and warmer, so we shouldn't have any increase." I figured I'd do some fact checking, for no other reason than that's what a lot of this thread is about: From: http://diseasemaps.usgs.gov/ http://diseasemaps.usgs.gov/ Cumulative 2009 Data as of 3 am, Dec 08, 2009* Cumulative Mosquito West Nile Infections by State: New York: 100 California: 1056 Florida: 3 Population of New York is approximately twice that of California, so, on a per capita basis, Mosquito Infections of West Nile Virus are five (5) times more prevalent in California. Florida has almost _no_ west nile infections (though they have a lot of mosquitos) We need to be cautious about conflating disease and insect prevalence, as tempting as that may be.

rbranson 17y ago

Consider the source. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Reiter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Reiter http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/personfactsheet.php?id=421 http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/personfactsheet.php?id=421 http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/196/6786/ http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/196/6786/

artsrc 17y ago
Basically the bulk of the article says malaria is better characterized as a disease of poverty than as a disease of warming. It seems to me that this is the best analysis based on our knowledge. Are there any reputable scientists who hold an different position?

benl 17y ago

It's amazing what a little fact checking can do for your perspective. After watching 'An Inconvenient Truth', I was quite affected by the supposed plight of the Polar Bears. So I did a bit of research, and I found out two fascinating facts: 1. Polar Bear populations have increased massively over recent years. 2. Polar Bears as a species are older than the last time the Arctic Ocean was free of ice. At that point, I began to suspect that I was being sold something.

ryanwaggoner 17y ago
Can you post some sources? My cursory research has shown the opposite. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_bear#Population_and_distribution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_bear#Population_and_distr... http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/essay_schliebe.html http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/essay_schliebe.html http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/special/polar_bears/ http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/special/polar_bears/ http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/ask-the-experts/population/ http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/ask-the-experts/popul... http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/07/polar-bear-decl/ http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/07/polar-bear-decl/
billswift 17y ago
Not only that, but polar bears are seriously migratory. If the ice retreats, they'll just follow the edge of the ice (like they already do.)
- sethg 17y ago
  And after there’s no ice left to retreat to...?

willwagner 17y ago

FWIW, this is a peer-reviewed article he wrote on the subject in 2001. http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/members/2001/suppl-1/141-161reiter/reiter-full.html http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/members/2001/suppl-1/141-161reiter/...

mahmud 17y ago

I nearly died of malaria in the middle-east, but never got it in Kenya and Somalia when I lived there. You don't need DDT or any poisons to get rid of mosquitoes, we used frogs and fish. Any puddle of sitting water was filled with sand as quickly as possible. And any largish natural body of water got fresh-water fish and frogs introduced to it. No questions. In Kenya (Mombasa) and south Somalia, even sea-water fish worked for us. I used to take off my Sarong and catch little fish for our wells.

wendroid 17y ago

25%-30% of the worlds human population has been wiped out in under a year a few times. Sucks to be the 1-in-3 but fuck it, let's go shopping.