The threat of tropical mosquito-borne vector diseases becoming endemic in Britain in the near future made recent headlines in the unquestioning mainstream media, with particular pride-of-place given to the revelation that London could suffer endemic dengue fever transmission by 2060. Of course, like all good sandwich-board climate scare stories, this one has been walked around the park a few times in the past. In 2013, the Guardian reported that “leading health experts” were urging the Government to take action against the growing threat of mosquito-borne diseases, since “climate change could bring malaria to the U.K.”. Back in 2001, the newspaper reported British health officials had warned that malaria could return to southern counties “within 20 years” as the climate warms.
The latest catastrophising report comes from the U.K. Government’s Health Security Agency (UKHSA), led by Dame Jenny Harries. It is highly political in tone with Professor Isabel Oliver, Chief Scientific Officer at UKHSA noting that it “demonstrates the impact that climate change could have on our society if we don’t take decisive action”. It does nothing of the sort of course because, astonishingly, the UKHSA has based many of its headline-grabbing predictions on climate models fed with a presumption that temperatures will rise by 4-5°C in less than 80 years. Since global temperatures have barely moved much more than 0.15°C in the last 25 years, this 4-5°C high emissions pathway, known as RCP8.5, is little more than a highly implausible invention.
“Climate modelling under a high emissions scenario suggests that Aedes albopictus – a mosquito species that can transmit dengue fever, chikungunya virus and zika virus – has the potential to become established in most of England by the 2040s and 2050s, while most of Wales, Northern Ireland and parts of the Scottish Lowlands could also become suitable habitats later in this century,” says the report. Dr. Lea Berrang Ford, Head of Centre for Climate and Health Security at UKHSA, added that “a child born today will be in their working-age years when health impacts may peak or accelerate further, depending on how much we decarbonise now”.
Linking public health in this way using invented future temperature rises is a disgrace. It does a grave disservice to the British public who are entitled to receive timely and realistic advice on current and future health threats, not politically-driven scare stories based on unproven science and garbage-in, garbage-out climate models.
It is particularly disappointing to see the UKHSA, an executive agency of the Department of Health, making such a play of RCP8.5. In its latest assessment report, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change noted that “the likelihood of high emissions scenarios such as RCP8.5 or SSP5-8.5 [a later version] is considered low”. The UKHSA is using a ‘low likelihood’ prediction to make fanciful, politically-inspired claims of tropical disease epidemics to scare the young, in particular, to follow a collectivist Net Zero agenda. Regrettably, the RCP8.5 pathway is responsible for much of the ‘clickbait’ science that still dominates the mainstream media headlines, from the Gulf Stream collapsing, to all the coral suddenly dying in the oceans. For its part, the UKHSA describes RCP8.5 as a “plausible” scenario.
The science writer Roger Pielke Jnr. has long been a critic of its widespread misuse, noting that we can view it as one of the “most significant failures of scientific integrity in the 21st century so far”. His short explanation for how such an obvious corruption of the scientific process has been allowed to stand for so long is “groupthink fuelled by a misinformation campaign led by activist climate scientists”.
As I noted earlier, the vector tropical disease climate scare is dusted down at regular intervals. But the facts have refused to cooperate – since the U.K. Department of Health and the Guardian first told us in 2001 it could appear within 20 years, malaria has been keeping its long-term low profile.

In June this year, the UKHSA issued a more sober assessment of malaria in the U.K. It noted that malaria “is not currently transmitted in the U.K.”, but travel-associated cases occur in those who have returned to or arrived in the U.K. from malaria-endemic areas. The above graph shows cases of malaria reported in the U.K. from 2002 to 2021. It shows they have remained fairly constant over the last 20 years, with major drops in the travel-restricted Covid years.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
As Sir Desmond Swayne MP puts it in a recent blog post
“…the BBC (in reality a partisan campaigning organisation)…”
https://www.desmondswaynemp.com/ds-blog/concrete-though-tempted-to-profanity-britain-isnt-finished/
One would have to possess a heart of stone not to laugh.
I’ll only laugh if the BBC admits she lied, apologises for having a liar as a disinformation reporter and sacks her, or I see a flying pig.
Honestly, hasn’t she got a face you would just love to slap?
(A wet slap at that!)
“A brilliant reporter” what smug twat she is!
a BRILLIANT LIAR more like!
Oh what a terrible shame. I thought she was such an open-minded, honest and even-handed person, not someone who is simply reverting to type…./sarc.
Miss Information Mariana Spring falls
“Everything else on my CV is entirely true.” Unless it isn’t. Oh how I laughed. She will however escape punishment or any kind of sanction.
The bottom line wth this Spring creature is that she is a liar. We know that, she knows that and we can always call on this fact when the stupid, evil woman needs taking down a peg.
Those eyebrows look like ‘deliberate disinformation’ to me.
If you’re going to put yourself in this sort of position, you have to be whiter than white. Since no one can be that perfect, there shouldn’t be a BBC Verify. The very idea that a state broadcaster funded by compulsion is now dictating what is and isn’t reality is utterly terrifying. The only conclusion is that the people are consciously malevolent or so stupid that they’ve no idea just what sort of slope they’re sliding down.
Can someone tell me what big news story this person has ever reported on?…..What exactly are her supposed reporting credentials?….…
Before last year I had never heard of her…and the only thing I know about her now is that she seems to be another useless, likely overpaid BBC numpty….with a non-job, paid for at our expense….
….the idea that we, the public, should pay for these people to tell us what we can and cannot see…..or read..or hear…and that somehow they have the magical power of being the only ones capable of being the arbitrators of the truth is beyond ridiculous…
Who the hell do they think they are?… especially air-headed twenty something’s who know way less than me….just bugger off, no thank you….I’m not buying the crap you are selling….
We know civilisation is in terminal decline, but If this is the epitome of what we now call an investigative reporter..God help us…..
https://nypost.com/2022/11/01/marianna-spring-tries-to-understand-us-politics-by-creating-fake-americans/
PS…a round of applause for all you smug buggers who don’t pay a licence fee!!! LOL!
“What exactly are her supposed reporting credentials?….…”
Apparently she once bumped in to Sarah Rainsford. Err, that’s it.
Who is Sarah Rainsford?
She is, apparently, a leg-end in her own lunchtime.
And a bell-end the rest of the time.
As Vanessa Beeley said of Spring on U.K. Column “she’s a piece of work”.
There’s an article in Spiked on this issue. For a while it seems to find it slightly amusing although by the end it does admit that the BBC’s reach makes it a bit more important.
Well I don’t find it remotely amusing. The woman is a proven liar and yet she is telling millions of people that others who have the temerity to question events are the ones lying.
She should be sacked and never work in the media again but we know that’s not the way the MSM work.
Leave her in place – if she does the equivalent damage to the BBC licence fee payers that Mulvaney did to Bud Lite sales all well and good.
Those doctors and scientists who have stood up to all the covid nonsense have told the truth despite the detriment to their careers
Marianna Spring has lied to further her career, both on her CV and in her reporting.
What a contrast between these heroes and the despicable low-life Spring.
Perhaps the most significant thing about Marianna Spring is that she’s the best the BBC could get to run its Orwellian offshoot. She’s a nobody, who looks about 12 (age, not size!) whom no one had heard of before, who has no significant experience. You would have expected them to front this setup with a big name, but clearly no one experienced with any common sense would take on such a job.
She’s actually probably a nice girl who means well, but a lot of these people suckered by the progressivist left don’t understand just how totalitarian their world view is. In essence: ‘You should be nice to everyone. I’ll MAKE you be nice to everyone!’
That manjaw: this picture makes it look as though Marianna has a huge manjaw. I’m sure she hasn’t got a manjaw like this, so why publish a picture that makes it look as though she has actually got a huge manjaw?
It really is a low blow to try and pretend that she has got a huge manjaw and I think you should reconsider. Women have feelings too, Daily Sceptic.
Check her out on a picture search. That’s what she looks like when they aren’t doing carefully lit publicity pictures…
What she looks like is not particularly relevant. What she spouts is. She is a crook.
BTF that’s putting it mildly.
Hopefully more TV licence cancellations come of this.
The BBC lie by omission. During all the time since the Covid vaccines were first introduced in December 2020 – two years and nine months ago – the BBC have reported nothing negative about the Covid vaccines. Absolutely nothing – apart from the death of the BBC’s own presenter, Lisa Shaw, which the Coroner stated was due to the Covid vaccine, which the BBC could not avoid reporting, briefly.
The BBC have never allowed any expert critical of the vaccines to speak on the BBC. They never report what any critic of the vaccines say. That’s not honest reporting, that’s propaganda.
There was an interview with Dr Malhotra, but he did have to use subterfuge: –
https://twitter.com/DrAseemMalhotra/status/1613837487796850688?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1613837487796850688%7Ctwgr%5Ee29792375d4be71d6ecf52cfad4d8594860d5d06%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdeadline.com%2F2023%2F01%2Fbbc-interview-anti-vax-aseem-malhotra-praised-by-andrew-bridgen-1235220965%2F
Yes, the interview wasn’t about the vaccines, but he managed to get a sentence in about them when the interviewer wasn’t expecting it. And it was on a regional BBC channel, not any of the main channels.
By their silence, they have actually endorsed our scepticism about the new
wonder jabs being pushed on the population for a virus that 98% survive.
Jesus. That smile. The smile of the smug and the self-righteous.
What a dupe.
In the private sector, lying on your CV would be an instant P45.
Agreed
Marianna Spring identifies as a Brilliant Journalist but hasn’t actually made the transition yet.
The bigger question is why a 26 year old, with all of her life’s inexperience, could get the job in the first place. Like most of her ilk she knows the square root of sweet FA
Yes, you’d expect a big name BBC journalist to front such an organisation, not someone in her mid-20s with no life experience. Which means no big name journalist would take the job.
Who better to employ to broadcast lies than a liar.