Research is new and exciting. However, due to the uncertainties of climate change, it relies heavily on simulation and modeling frameworks that involve high levels of uncertainty in their predictions.

What are there limitations directly related to plant, animal and human climate change and disease research?

For plants and animals, relating biological events, such as disease intensity, as a function of abiotic events, such as temperature, is variable and inaccurate. Basically, researchers either rely on predictive models for climate based on historical data of biologcal events in relation to abiotic events. However, the scarcity of data for different diseases and different organisms makes predictive models difficult to make with any kind of accuracy. "In addition, lack of reliable long-term disease records inhibits the acquisition of more reliable methods of prediction. Extrapolating to future climatic changes is even more difficult given the necessity of function models of cliamate-disease relationships integrated with relelvant predicted meterological variables" (Bergot 2005). In addition, many biological events cannot be understood as direct functions of abiotic events--nature is just not that simple.

For humans, international travel and population movements may aid in the spread of disease, confounding variables related to the spread of disease due to climate change. “In 1997, the World Health Organization recorded 12, 328 cases of imported malaria in the European region”(Gubler 2001). Summertime transmissions of malaria have been reported as north as Toronto, Canada, and Berlin, Germany. However, the impact of these outbreaks in human populations is controlled by socioeconomic and lifestyle factors as well, such as suitable housing and drainage, air-conditioned living with screened or closed windows and doors, and reliable public health infrastructure.

What kind of impact can disease and climate change research have if it is so inaccurate?

In order for policy-makers to successfully address global warming, research must be generated to support agendas that protect the organisms and people that are subject to the affects of environmental changes. Thus, it is critical in the dispute about global warming and its affects that scientific studies are published and improved upon.