UPDATE: Holy moly. Dr. Richard North over at the EU Referendum points to this, (screencap below) which makes Ric’s article (further below) look tame. Add this to what’s going on in the AMA, and it looks like a effort to co-opt the medical profession in the role of “trusted advocate”. They couldn’t get the TV weathercasters to go along, so they moved up the food chain. Expect climate change lectures with speeding tickets next. “Sir do you realize you were going 65 in a 60 zone? That hurts the planet with excessive emissions”. – Anthony
North says:
We are back to “foxtrot oscar” time. The medical profession is having a hard enough time convincing me that they can deal with the issues for which they are paid. The very last thing I am interesting in hearing from them is their ill-informed views on climate change. To use their positions to push them would be an abuse of trust. And it is quite disturbing that these people can’t even see that.
================================================================
Guest Post By Ric Werme
I give up. I almost was able to shake my head and move on, but no, this latest bit of congressional spin combined with general disdain for rational discourse and a vapid comment in Lancet got under my skin. All I can do is to try to pass it on. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll turn the page, metaphorically speaking, of course.
Has the world gone mad with stupid science, stupid testimony, and stupid editorials? I guess so. Consider this from The Hill:
Capps pointed to a 2009 article in The Lancet, a medical journal, that said climate change could be the “biggest global health threat of the 21st century.”
“That makes climate change a bigger public health problem than AIDS, than malaria, than pandemic flu,” Capps said. “That’s why we need to take steps to address this cause behind this growing public health problem.”
I’m going to skip the rest of the article, read it if you wish, it will sound all too familiar. I merely want to call attention to this “spin device”.
Note that the reference to The Lancet included the word “could.” Right off the bat we’re into a lot of uncertainty. I assume they didn’t offer other possibilities. Personally, I think Alzheimers deserves consideration, but who knows, hangnails could be the biggest threat. Time will tell.
Capps took that reference, discarded the “could” and added a few possible candidates – OMG! I just Googled for |aids malaria pandemic flu| and Capps’ comment is referenced by seven other web pages already! I was looking for what might have been her source or if she thought of that list on her own. Try Epic Disasters, it’s pretty close.
Where was I? Oh – she changed the indefinite statement into something that is completely certain and included things that The Lancet may not have considered. Perhaps The Lancet left those off just to make its comment about climate change look more dire.
Why do people continue to use this sort of spin? It’s almost as though Capps has no better argument and resorts to something she hopes people won’t see through. Judging from the comments at The Hill, it didn’t work.
Oh well, if climate change is the worst thing to happen to us this century, we’ll do quite well.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
[snip – your comment suggesting the authors have a medical condition is rude, condescending, and inappropriate. – Anthony]
Capps’ district is perhaps the most tortured geographically of the entire Congress. Redistricting will likely fix the problem.
yikes….
There’s nothing left to say…
….the comments at The Hill said it all
Things like this make me happy to be an EX-Californian.
But then… I’m ashamed that my state re-elected Senator Reid.
I don’t know what’s worse, stupidity or evil.
Climate Change is the natural order of world climate. What makes anyone think they can stop the natural order of our world climate?
In spite of being snipped, the direction of the the first comment is blindingly obvious.
D-Calif
Anthony, is the above a rude condesending and inappropriate medical condition?
[snip – don’t hassle the lady, she can’t help how she looks – Anthony]
We revolve around the Earth’s axis once every 24 hours; depending on your latitude on this globe, you’re going anywhere from 0 to 1,000 mph, 24 x 7, but regardless of your speed you never stop spinning. Then we’re all circumnavigating the Sun once a year, accomplishing a 300 million mile orbit in just 365 days–my BOTE math tells me that’s about 860,000 miles per day! (and it ain’t in a straight line, either, if you catch my drift.) We’re on one of our galaxy’s pinwheel arms, which from the shape of it, is obviously not stationary, either (and at a speed far greater than our progression around the sun). It wouldn’t surprise me a bit if our galaxy itself isn’t rotating around some far distant point out in space somewhere, at an even greater speed than any of the former, and that point has a center of rotation, too.
So I’m in a spin in a spin in a spin in a spin in a spin, and Ric asks (referring to Ms. Capps) “Why do people continue to use this sort of spin?”. I suppose it simply comes with the territority; it just comes naturally.
Well, if there was any uncertainty left that the Democrats are well on the road to getting thoroughly trounced at the next federal election, then Rep. Capps is doing nothing to dispel it. The way things are going, the Republicans could choose Donald Trump, Newt Gingrich or Groucho Marx as the next presidential candidate and still romp in.
I really don’t blame our congress-people like Ms. Capps for this kind of over-the-top CAGW rhetoric. They’re just trying to bring home the Climate Ca$h to fund massive pork barrel climate “science” projects and other boondoggle “green” initiatives.
It goes something like this:
(1) Liberal climate scientist sends liberal congress-person a scary-we’re-all-gonna-die climate “science” report, noting that climate science is woefully underfunded…
(2) Liberal congress-person is scared silly and wants to do something to save
the planetthe Earth…(3) Liberal congress-person goes his liberal congress-buddies and sneaks large amounts of Climate Ca$h into the next spending bill…
(4) The spending bill is passed, and the liberal climate scientist gobbles up the Climate Ca$h like a starving goat and thanks the liberal congress-person for their assistance…
(5) Liberal climate scientist uses the money to create more scary research project reports (and take trips to Bali, Copenhagen, Cancun)…
(6) Return to Step (1) above…
Griz says:
April 6, 2011 at 7:07 pm
And I have it on good authority that Senator Reid absolutely believes he won his last race to “finish the Lord’s work” in the senate. Now how messed up is that?? (Another example of spin/spin/spin/spin/spin?)
Off the Rails
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2011/04/off-rails.html
Your comment
Personally, I think Alzheimers deserves consideration, but who knows, hangnails could be the biggest threat. Time will tell.
is one way to rebut the “precautionary principle”. Must amputate the arm at the shoulder because of a hangnail. After all it may lead to infection and kill you.
lol, was going to comment on the pic but i guess that’s not gonna fly….
i do wonder where they get these folks…
I’ve been involved in (obsessed by) CAGW since just before Climategate. In only 18 months I have noticed a ramping up of the insanity and inanity of arguments and posturing about this ‘greatest threat in all of human history’. Despite a general cynicism about people, power and politics, I am amazed more than surprised what we are now hearing from these intelligent, educated boffins and lab-coated ‘scientists’. The inability to exercise critical thinking and independent thought at the top of our social pyramid is almost beyond belief – the reason that conspiracy theories float so easily, I suppose. Nobody can believe that some of us are so incredibly dumb and naive.
Humans have long been prone to magical thinking. The book, “The Madness of Crowds and Popular Delusions” comes from the 19th century, but the group-think that served us so well 200 years ago serves us well still. The desire to be in special times, to have a position of influence in the course of human affairs, of global history, is like a great, blinding light. There is nothing that cannot be seen by the mind that wishes to see it.
Why don’t we turn the tables? Let’s start applying the “precautionary principle” and requirements like Environmental Impact Reports to every new left-wing government program.
The woman is clearly what Lenin called a
“useful idiot”.
*sigh*
Some days it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed …
The Lancet is part of the giant publishing house Elsevier. They commissioned a report in 2009 to coincide with Copenhagen. A part of their executive summary……
Climate change could be the biggest global health threat of the 21st century. Effects on health of climate change will be felt by most populations in the next decades and put the lives and wellbeing of billions of people at increased risk. During this century, the earth’s average surface temperature rises are likely to exceed the safe threshold of 2°C above pre-industrial average temperature.
This report outlines the major threats—both direct and indirect—to global health from climate change through changing patterns of disease, water and food insecurity, vulnerable shelter and human settlements, extreme climatic events, and population migration. Although vector-borne diseases will expand their reach and death tolls, the indirect effects of climate change on water, food security, and extreme climatic events are likely to have the biggest effect on global health.
A new advocacy and public health movement is needed urgently to bring together governments, international agencies, non-governmental organisations, communities, and academics from all disciplines to adapt to the effects of climate change on health.
Certainly well up there in advocacy, wouldn’t hurt circulation either.
I don’t mind adapting to a change in our climate, it is just that now we can, and should, base this adaptation on sound science.
Rocky Road: If the Lord likes cowboy poetry he is.
joe says:
April 6, 2011 at 7:55 pm
lol, was going to comment on the pic but i guess that’s not gonna fly….
i do wonder where they get these folks…
Joe, the answer to your question is: From my district. Now tell me what my penance is. Maybe whenever I leave the state, I should wear two paper bags over my head (in case one of them tears). Although I voted against them both, I sincerely apologize to all Americans for sending Capps (dumb) and Boxer (dumber) to the US Congress. My only mitigating circumstance is that I had nothing to do with Reid.
This is an example of the sort of thinking that led the democrats to not pass a budget last year and then blame Republicans for trying to rein in the out of control spending: They are so busy with delusional CO2 obsessions they neglect to do their jobs.
And as for the photo of Rep. Capps, well no caption or comment is needed.
From Anthony’s update:
From the AMA editorial:
Hmmm … whatever happened to “weather != climate”? No doubt physicians have never before encountered any patients exhibiting illness and/or injuries as a consequence of inclement *weather*. Not to mention that as Donna Laframboise cogently noted last August, when reviewing the credentials of one of the IPCC authors, “The day my doctor starts talking about climate change is the day I find myself a professional who understands that the purpose of a medical consultation is to discuss my issues – not theirs.”
Now that they’ve sidelined the weathercasters, maybe their next move will be to “disappear” weather (just as they “disappeared” the MWP), so that all we’ll be left with is all climate, all the time.
Amazing. Simply amazing.
“Climate Change” may become a plausible dependability issue as people who push man-made climate change will claim the climate always changes over time. This is my prediction.