It seems strange to address someone who is unlikely to read this response but since you were kind enough to comment I should have the courtesy to reply. When I wrote this post back in March I didn’t expect the subject of it, Paul Reiter of the Institut Pastuer in Paris, to reply. My delay in replying is probably due to the fact that I was very skeptical that you were the self same international expert of vector-borne diseases, but your IP address was attributed to the Institut Pastuer, so I have to presume it is you.

First of all, if I suggested that you should be persecuted as a type of ‘holocaust denier’ then I apologize. I certainly don’t want to be thought of as someone who is trying to vilify someone who is simply attempting to question what they see as an increasingly dominant, yet erroneous orthodoxy. Apart from this brief foray I’ve largely stayed out of the debate on global warming, one because there are those better informed and more articulate to do it for me and secondly because, through blogs at least, there is much reactionary hysteria on both sides that simply produces a kind of white noise rather decent, intelligent, well informed debate.

Which leads me to ask why you should feel the need to counter my post? I imagine there have been many who have pointed out your various contributions to organization that have a vested interest in challenging the increasing consensus that global warming is man made. Certainly when researching the post I came across many, some of which I linked to in the post above. I can’t imagine you tried to refute them all.

My post was originally inspired by your appearance on the BBC’s Newsnight, where it was clear to me that that news organization was trying to suggest that there where two sides to the story of whether global warming was man made or not. Whether unwittingly or otherwise, you were representing the view that it was not man made, an argument that was perpetuated in the completely discredited scandal of a documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle. In the article I asked why you continue to allow your name to be associated with media events and organisations such as the GGWS and Tech Central, Cooler Heads etc, whose principle aim is to not clarify but muddy the debate on global warming.

You attack Al Gore’s book for perpetuating inaccuracies about global warming and declaring that it is ‘raw propaganda and indoctrination’. Yet, you have been the willing contributor to another propaganda machine, The Great Global Warming Swindle, which has been shown to have falsified the testimony of those who have contributed to it, modified graphs and illustrations, used discredited scientific data (the sun spots being responsible for global warming theory has also been recently refuted, although the data the original theory was based on was shown to erroneous) and whose director is connected to The Revolutionary Communist Party that have steadfastly and inaccurately attacked anti-global warming campaigners.

You seem to have two arguments. One that the IPCC findings that the transmission of malaria is not going to occur where temperatures are below 15°C (interestingly, from a local perspective you say in a letter on the Center for Disease Contol site: “Ae. aegypti is common where winter temperatures of -15°C are not unusual and epidemics of dengue and yellow fever have occurred as far north as Boston and Dublin”). And, connected to this, the relative worth of the scientists used to write the report.

The other is that IPCC is a political organization that is being mis/used by Al Gore and other activists who are determined to perpetuate their own agenda in the name of ‘science’ and in doing so undermine the real Science, which contains within the means for intelligent, well researched dissent.

On the first point, on malaria, some of which has been raised here, I can’t really argue. You are one of the world’s leading experts on the subject, and I’m thoroughly bemused that you should try use that extensive knowledge when its clear I can’t possibly counter it. As you say, you’ve been making the point since 1997, coming down to the level of a non-expert blog to reiterate it is kind of self-defeating.
About checking the bios of the scientists who are signees of the IPCC report, I have yet to do that. What I did do, however, was check the bios of those signatories of the letter to sent to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in April last year, of which you were one. The information is courtesy of the DeSmogBlog, admittedly, but there’s every reason to presume it’s accurate. While you have published many papers, over 30 according to DSB, there are many who have published considerably less and some who have published none at all. This is despite the fact that the letter starts with the line: “As accredited experts in climate and related scientific disciplines.”

In the letter its states: “Observational evidence does not support today’s computer climate models, so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future.”

I find this curious as another paper has been published recently that also takes issue with IPCC findings. Not by saying that the IPCC have rushed to judgment. Rather to argue that their findings are too conservative.

In a paper published by the NASA climate research scientist James Hansen, uses ‘empirical data on trace gas histories and climate change…history also provides our best indication of the level of global warming that would constitute ‘dangerous interference’ with climate. The empirical data, abetted by appropriate calculations, imply that control of trace gases must play a critical role in preserving a planet resembling the one on which civilization developed.

According to George Monbiot, the authors try and show that “Rather than taking thousands of years to melt, as the IPCC predicts, Hansen and his team find it “implausible” that the expected warming before 2100 “would permit a West Antarctic ice sheet of present size to survive even for a century.”

On the second point, Al Gore did little about climate change while Vice President, and is responsible for Live Earth for which he should forever be castigated. The IPCC is a political organization and as an international organization like the UN it is ultimately a servant of its masters, which similar the UN, are the stronger Industrial nations. Up to now those masters haven’t really been very enthusiastic about implementing the changes needed to try and curtail global warming, no matter how much they talk about carbon offsetting.

An example: Mr Gore’s assertion that Nairobi was founded in a healthy, malara-free place, but today the mosquitoes have moved up the mountains etc etc. (remember his animation of the little mozzies moving up the mountain?!).

I first wrote to counter this fabrication in The Lancet in 1996. The author of many such myths knows the truth, but ignores it.

The truth is that ‘Nyrobi’ was a watering place for Maasi herdsmen. It was chosen as a site for a hub in the construction of a railway that the British were building from Mobassa, on the coast, to Kampala, in Uganda.

The site was chosen because it was just before a major engineering challenge, the Kikuyu escarpment and the descent into the Rift Valley.

The site was a major mistake. Everybody came down with malaria, and the medical team tried hard to have the site abandoned.

In the 50 years that followed, there were at least 10 major epdidemics of malaria, and they extended up to at least 2250 meters. Nairobi is at 1600 m …

Check out “The Lunatic Express”, Penguin Books, for a fascinqting history of East Africa, and of the building of this railway.

Interestingly, when WAG TV asked me to go with them to Nairobbery to film for the docu,entary, I contacted colleagues who work on malaria in Kenya. They are the world’s tops in malaria research. I asked for guidance as to where to film malaria in Nairobi (without getting killed). My colleague replied: “what malaria? there’s bugger all malaria here!”

So, I was wrong to believe Mr Gore!

Some years ago; I wrote a review entitled: “From Shakespeare to Defoe, Malaria in Englnd in the Little Ice Age”. You will find it on the CDC web page. Check it out and then tell me whether I am corrupted by the oil industry (though I could do with a bit of dough!). So, next time you read, as in a previous IPCC report, that malaria cannot be transmitted in regions where the winter temperatures drop below 15 degC, think of the Bard. And next time the activists say malaria will move into southern Europe, remember that it was once transmitted as far north as Lapland! Think of Santa!

Best wishes to all, and please, please, read the scientific literature before believing what you are told. Make up your own minds.

Lastly, on the IPCC, the InterGOVERNENTAL Panel on Climate Change: each Chapter is written by a team (health has about 8 co-authors and 2 lead authors): at least two of these “worlds top 1500 scientists” must come from a country “of the South”, i.e. a very poor country, and at least one other must be from a country with an emerging economy (I think those are the terms). I have spent most of my career in very poor countries, so belive me I am not biased, but I ask you, how in the heck can they claim top class scientists from such countries for more than a 5th of the total. Check their bibliographies: many dont have a single published article …

Enough! I felt I had to put my own cards on the table. I am frightened of this situation. I/we are branded a holocaust deniers, stooges of Exxon Mobile, and all the rest. Were will it end? If activists come to dominate public perceptions, where will science end up?

Even if the Great Global … is refuted by others, do we not have the right to speak? Yet even the Royal Society has tried to get the DVD of the film bqnned!

And the Gore film/book. Truly, is it not worrying that Mr Gore has produced a blockbuster film, a lavishly illustrated boo, a simpler version of that book, for schoolchildren, and an even simpler one for 5-8 year olds? To me this is raw propaganda and indoctriination.

Lastly, check out the version for school children: look for the page on insect borne disease. Look carefully at the half page photo of a ‘mosquito’. Note that its proboscis is in its tail. Well, its not a proboscis, its an ovipositor. You see, its a parastic wasp, not a mozzy!

And check out the tse-tse fly. It is a tse-tse fly, but it must have died a horrible death; its only got 4 legs …

Because I’m not a climate scientist I have to make a decision about who I believe and on this issue I wholeheartedly accept the opinions of the majority of credible scientists and the conclusions of the IPCC. And so should you.

Some interesting reading for you, if you want it.

http://climatedenial.org/2007/03/09/the-great-channel-four-swindle/#comments
Provides many links to those who have rebutted the GGWS program, which reinforces the conclusions drawn from the IPCC report.

http://www.motherjones.com/blue_marble_blog/archives/2007/03/3924_james_hansen_te.html
Details how the White House interfered with science in order to downplay global warming

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/energy/story/0,,2038415,00.html
Discusses how ExxonMobil funds climate science departments in top US universities

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2005/05/some_like_it_hot.html
Provides an indepth report on the organizations behind the attempts to question climate change being a result of human action.

http://www.jri.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=137&Itemid=83
John Houghton, former chair of IPCC, provides a detailed rebuttal of the GGWS

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/swindled/#more-414
A blog written by real climate scientists detail lots and lots of science, verifiable, true science.

Someone with zero publications in human borne diseases does simply not meet this criteria. This is a disgrace to the IPCC and supporters like yourself should be *keen* to rectify it, lest it taint the other conclusions. The fact that you seem ok with non-experts making authoritative claims really does make me wonder how un-biased your views are.

I doubt that the primary chapters of the IPCC are staffed so questionably. Their lead authors *are* probably world experts. I would like to believe that they are being good scientists (observe then conclude), but the Human Health chapter tarnishes everyone’s work.

A few, as in a small minority of scientists, who were originally involved in the IPCC process have contested how the UN organization has come by its findings. However, they are outweighted by the majority who have published peer reviewed papers that indicate that human activity is a causal factor.

The findings of the IPCC and those who came by them are quite transparent and they continue to be part of an open debate. They state things using the terms ‘likely’ and ‘very likely’.

Reiter’s point is part of that debate, if only a minor footnote within it. However, because of his position as an expert he has allowed himself to be promoted by climate change deniers who want to use his minor quibble to blacken all the scientists and the science behind the IPCCs conclusions.

So the “concensus” of the IPCC may turn out to be merely self-selection of like-minded scientists.