Complaint to Ofcom Regarding The Great Global Warming Swindle

2. Complete Transcript and Rebuttal

Page 89

_____________________________________________________________________

2.12

Conspiracy Theory About the IPCC

[Narrator]

It is also suggested that even a mild rise in temperature would lead to the spread northward of deadly insect-borne tropical diseases like malaria. But is this true? Professor Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute in Paris is recognised as one of the worlds leading experts on malaria and other insect-borne diseases. He is a member of the World Health Organisation Expert Advisory Committee, was Chairman of The American Committee of Medical Entomology, of the American Society for Tropical Medicine and Lead Author on the Health Section of the US National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability. As Professor Reiter is eager to point out, mosquitoes thrive in very cold temperatures.

[Comment 109: The first and last sentences by the narrator, above, are highly misleading, in several respects.

1.

The narrator implies here that as a general rule, mosquitoes are as active and long-lived in cold temperatures as in warm ones, which is entirely untrue. Reiters own papers make the point that general statements of the kind made by the narrator are inaccurate. See for example the following paper which Reiter co-authored: Patz J et al, The potential health impacts of climate variability and change for the United States, Environmental Health Perspectives, April 2000, http://tinyurl.com/34gd5j (PDF), which states (on page 7 of the PDF file):

High temperatures can increase the rate at which mosquitoes develop into adults, the rate of development of pathogens in the mosquitoes and feeding and egg-laying frequency. The key factor in transmission is the survival rate of the vector. Higher temperatures may increase or reduce survival rate, depending on the vector, its behavior, ecology and many other factors.

Indeed the narrator is misrepresenting Reiter here: Reiter does not claim that mosquitoes thrive in the cold: he simply makes the points that some mosquitoes are able to survive low temperatures and that malaria is not necessarily restricted to the tropics (although malaria transmission has now been eradicated from Europe and North America) – see his actual statements below, and Reiters email to Professor Curtis at http://tinyurl.com/2rklxc.

2.

Although the narrator does not specify whom he thinks is suggesting that even a mild rise in temperature would lead to the spread northward of … malaria, in the context of the statements about the IPCC, both by the narrator and by Reiter, that precede and follow this claim (Comment 22, Comment 112, Comment 113, Comment 115), the viewer is left with the clear and completely false impression that the IPCC has suggested this. It has not.

For example, the IPCC 3rd Assessment Report Working Group II, 2001, states (http://tinyurl.com/2xmwx4):

Continued …


[Bookmarks on this page: Click any of the following links to go to that bookmark. You can then copy and paste the bookmarks url from your address bar, and send it to someone as a link straight to that bookmark:
Section 2.12 / Comment 109: Misleading statement about effect of temperature on mosquitoes and malaria]

________________

Page 89 of 176

Final Revision

Last updated: 11 Jun 2007