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.
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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.
“The Upton bill has some support from Democrats. Reps. Nick Rahall (W.Va.), Collin Peterson (Minn.) and Dan Boren (Okla.) are all co-sponsors of the bill. More Democrats are expected to vote in favor of the legislation, but just how many is unclear.”
Some Democrats, at least, are getting the message from voters, regardless of where they stand on the issue of CAGW; voting against this bill could be seriously hazardous to their political health. I would certainly consider voting for a Democrat who, for whatever reason, supports the Upton Bill.
By far the greatest killer of mankind is socialism. A pretty good top limit of the number of people that have ever existed is about 20 billion. How many people died in the American Civil War, the Spanish Civil War, WW I, WWII, Communist China cultural revolution, Latin American wars, SE Asian wars, African famines and malaria outbreaks, Former Soviet Union internal programs and pogroms, etc. The list goes on. Just a quick estimate, it looks like we could be talking about 5 to 10 % of all of mankind!
I’m a doctor, and I refuse to violate the trust placed in me by adding to the man-made climate change hysteria. A doctor who believes in catastrophic anthropogenic climate change is a doctor who will prescribe a dangerous, unproven drug, or perform surgery, or perform a bone marrow transplant, on the flimsiest of evidence, provided by authors with deeply conflicted interests.
As always consider the source. The Lancet is hardly to be trusted anymore.
Remember the 2004 and 2006 articles about casualties in Iraq that came out just before the elections in those years? The 2006 article “estimate the number of “excess” Iraqi deaths after the 2003 invasion at 426,369 to 793,663; the study said the most likely figure was near the middle of that range: 654,965. Almost 92 percent of the dead, the study asserted, were killed by bullets, bombs, or U.S. air strikes. ”
I’ve never trusted them since.
Seems to me . . . . if everyone actually minded their own business . . . . there would be very little to talk about . . . . and
From the last several different posts one thought keeps coming into my mind . . . especially “Energy content, the heat is on: atmosphere -vs- ocean” . . .
It’s nothing but a skew job and will stay a skew job . . . until we add the spin . . . . (of the earth that is . . . ) sorry, just had to get that in . . .
I remember a paleontology professor talking about how a given genus often evolves weird, flamboyant, almost absurd species just before going extinct. The alarmists are in that phase.
RE: Climate Change: Bigger health threat than AIDS, malaria
Given that we’ve been told that snow will be a rare event in England (THAT FAILED), hurricanes are going to increase (THAT FAILED), and the temperature is rising at an alarming rate (THAT FAILED, it’s going down); what are the odds that this scare is just another failed prediction?
Cue the song:
😉
They will surely find a few academic types willing to take paid work as part of the “physicians against climate change” advertising campaign. Most front line workers, however, are probably too busy dealing with injury and disease. In fact, I imagine at least a few doctors would be insulted at the suggestion they spend time away from their patient’s health concerns to champion the cause of climate change. I would ask my own doctor about it just for laughs, but I suspect it would’nt much brighten his day.
Dave, Isn’t that why they are “called” alarmists?
@Jessie says:
April 7, 2011 at 3:53 am
CRS, Dr.P.H. says: April 6, 2011 at 11:17 pm
Pardon my ignorance of epidemiology Dr P.H., but would you explain how tobacco has killed more human (souls) than injury, inc direct human violence and industrial illnesses/accidents and other infectious diseases?
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REPLY Please re-read my post, I said that tobacco has killed more souls than global warming is ever likely to. I’ll stick by that, thanks.
Here’s some reading if interested: http://www.who.int/tobacco/health_priority/en/index.html
As an ex-smoker, I have a license to be grumpy & mean about the topic.
Regardless, the claims about AGW being a public health problem are just sheer hoo-ha. My expectation is that a slightly warmer world will increase crop productivity in many areas (Univ of IL’s conclusion, not mine), and have other benefits.
Doug
April 7, 2011 at 8:29 am
I remember a paleontology professor talking about how a given genus often evolves weird, flamboyant, almost absurd species just before going extinct. The alarmists are in that phase.
###
I think you nailed it! The phenomena your prof was referring to is sometimes called hyper-specialization. Organisms become so specialized as to specialize for the specialization of other specialists. Most evolutionary biologists see this as evolutionary stagnation. The thing with change, is that the specialists go extinct whilst the generalists prosper. No wonder our elitist class is terrified of change!
Well, if the Vatican has agreed to pimp for global warming, why not a few doctors?
http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/2010/12/wikileaks-green-pope-co-opted-to-global.html
Extra: Vatican announces ecumenical program for outreach to Wiccans and Druids. Film at
elevenmidnight.While this issue has been framed as prevention of “Climate Change,” I suspect the real issue as perceived by many as the prevention of the perceived ‘evil’ impact of Human, or perhaps more particularly Western, Civilization on the sacred ‘natural’ climate of the Earth. I suspect that prevention of Anthropogenic Climate Change (of any kind) is the real issue for people who may, perhaps after losing faith in a traditional religion, have adopted a worship of the natural environment. For them, the world would be their church, their sacred platform for a noble cause.
DesertYote says: “No wonder our elitist class is terrified of change!”
April 7, 2011 at 9:16 am
There has been no change . . . the elitist class has it’s own behavioral cycles that the “commoners” have fallen for . . . . for thousands of years . . .
I’ll give you a clue . . . all the wealth is in the hands of the few . . . . again . . . . they are the “players club”. . . .
I just can not give this subject justice . . . . your “elitist class” have already taken the money and ran . . .
Even now, Congress does not understand fully that they are trying to pick up the piece’s . . . . of what got broken 50 years ago . . . The very fact that Al Gore got away with what he got away with is a symptom . . . not the cause . . .
When an issue, any issue, comes up . . . you don’t ask who’s saying it until you first ask . . . . Is what they are saying Right or Wrong?. . . .
The medical profession is having a hard enough time convincing me that they can deal with the issues for which they are paid.
Agreed, and the Lancet should have already learned to shut up about this kind of Leftist bs. But, after all, they are just soooo Progressive, don’tcha know. “Perception is reality”!
Anecdotally, over the past 6 yrs. I’ve been amazed by what I’ve seen in medical care involving my friends and acquaintances, probably since they are now old enough for things to start happening. Two almost died. Amazingly, one evidenced the same problem as with the CO2=CAGW fiasco: the alleged treatment was the thing which was going to kill him and it almost did, not the alleged disease, which didn’t exist. He was in such good shape cardiovascularly that despite the “treatment” for his “heart failure”, he lasted long enough for me to finally convince him that his politically correct cardiologist – who reportedly had written an article for the New England Journal of Medicine on the “oppression” of women in the medical field – had no idea what she was talking about. When he finally stopped the very strong blood pressure lowering medication which had decreased his already low-normal blood pressure to levels which usually would have been deadly, strangely, all of his symptoms of having too low of a blood pressure because of the “treatment” went away. He didn’t get faint everytime he stood up, or “rummy” when he was out hiking at 8000 – 9300′, and never even passed out at the wheel again! And, amazingly, his blood pressure never went down to 70/40 again! He must have had the cleanest blood vessels in the World in order for something to not infarct/die, during what was probably one of the longest “stress” tests of anyone’s heart and vessels ever recorded.
The other guy, my best male friend – but he lives about 1300 miles away – just got amazingly lucky, partly because of his own persistence. He was having what was obviously unstable or pre-infarction angina, but his local cardiologist blew off his symptoms and didn’t do an adequate “treadmill test” to try to elicit the symptoms or signs of “coronary insufficiency” while an ekg was being taken, which the cardiologist admitted at the time. My friend then soon had another episode of the classic pain at home, and got to the hospital at exactly the right time for the great team there to immediately clean out his nearly totally obstructed right coronary artery, with no evidence of any heart muscle death having occurred.
Nah, giving practicing M.D.’s anything more to keep them from doing their jobs and instead participating in the CO2=CAGW Propaganda Op. is not a healthy plan. Perception is not reality.
I worked in Lois Capps’ district for 15 years and know that she inherited her position from her husband, and enjoys wide support from the rich liberals of the Santa Barbara area and the ignorant majority of students and faculty from the local UC campus, so we will be stuck with her “until death do us part”.
Here’s how a seat belt works. If the plane’s about to crash, put this mask over your mouth. Chicken or pasta?
As a physician myself, I advise my colleagues to remember that there is no FDA to audit the truth of Climate Change industry’s claims. If that is OK, then they should be arguing to get rid of the FDA approval process for drug company products.
i heard somewhere that doctors can be exceptionally good at two things. now naturally one of them has to be medicine or they wouldn’t be doctors. normally the second thing is money management.
any thing more than two they are lousy with the others.
so why are we taking a doctors advice on the totally different science of global warming?????
is he, she or it poor, or maybe only one jump ahead of the county medical society discipline committee???
Heh – very relevant XKCD comic this week, see http://www.xkcd.com/882/
Green Jelly Beans linked to acne! 95 % confidence.
So you think it is wrong for a professional medical journal to speculate about possible medical problems arising from a warming climate?
Surely it behoves all such journals to flag up possibilities that ‘could’ (as the Lancet said) happen. And that was just one paper out of how many it publishes every year? Plus they are not responsible for how politicians use such publication.
Think some kind of perspective is needed here.
Please correct me if I am wrong, but the photograph of Lois Capps (D Calif) appears to be a picture that was released by by her.
If that is the case, I have to consider her judgement so bad that I would have to completely disregard her judgement on any subject.
Before you judge me a misogynist, would you like to look at that over your morning ham and eggs?
CRS, Dr P.H. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/06/bigger-health-threat-than-aids-malaria/#comment-637508
Post 1. ‘Smoking will kill many more souls than climate change is ever likely to.
Post 2. Please re-read my post, I said that tobacco has killed more souls than global warming is ever likely to..’
Yes I did read your post[s].
And thank you for your link to WHO tobacco and mental health disease.
Our work in isolated communities where we directly measured prevalence of 90% HepB surface antigen +ve and dealt with communicable (some say infectious) diseases such as syphilis and gonorrhoea was in the 80s.
I remain interested in the academic papers a decade later reporting communicable diease programs using incidence rates.
I recall effectively delivering, with local tribal people and health workers, a preventative health program with vaccinations that resulted in immunity to Hep B. We also effectively reduced the number of primary and adequately treated second stage syphilis [and gonorrhoea] to near negligible numbers.
Tobacco was of concern as at that stage marijuana had then entered
the economy, of which the older people, knowing local behaviours and mores became very concerned.
Those that saw tobacco as a health problem saw no problem with the smoking of marijuana. There was not, to my knowledge, any prevalence or diagnosis of cardiovascular disease or lung cancer.
In such an environment use of wood burning fires for cooking family meals,
keeping warm in a seasonally bitterly cold environment and 0-5 yr old pneumonia was quite evident.
In regard to these environments which are isolated, I suggest that the health data that was organised to be collected and reported has lacked transparency.
Though I remember the commitment of the community people to deal with the very real diseases and daily living issues.
I found this post interesting as it is situated in the 80s at the time we were dealing with communicable diseases and attempting to produce quality data.
http://ipa.org.au/news/2025/let-he-who-is-without-climate-sin
Allanj may be interested
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/united-nations-ignores-its-own-data-to-promote-gun-ban/
Dave Andrews. I am quite sure you realise the perspective of the great majority of posters on WUWT. If not, I’ll recap for you –
warming = good = less health hazards
cooling = not good = more health hazards
Is that clear enough for you?
Donald Mitchell,
Misogynist or not, there appears to be another who contemplated, more broadly, their morning protein.
http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/new-hampshire/nhdce/1:2006cv00321/30005/56/0.pdf