Eric Worrall writes: The BMJ (British Medical Journal), one of the oldest and most distinguished medical journals in the world, has categorically stated that climate change is a more serious issue than Ebola.
According to Fiona Godlee, editor in chief of the BMJ
“Deaths from Ebola infection, tragic and frightening though they are, will pale into insignificance when compared with the mayhem we can expect for our children and grandchildren if the world does nothing to check its carbon emissions. And action is needed now.”
Lets consider;
We have a disease raging out of control in Africa, threatening the borders of America and other Western countries – a disease which may be one mutation away from being utterly unstoppable. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2778022/UN-Ebola-chief-raises-nightmare-prospect-virus-mutate-airborne.html
We have an apparent lack of vigilance against this threat, with US doctors allegedly not considering the possibility of Ebola, when presented with a patient who recently travelled from one of the afflicted countries.
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/10/01/health/ebola-us/index.html
And now we have educated intellectuals, on whose skills we depend to defend us from this threat, attempting to deflect attention away from something which threatens our lives right now, onto something which, even if they are right, cannot possibly threaten anyone’s life for decades to come.
How can a presumably educated person hold a viewpoint which is so stupid?
“How can a presumably educated person hold a viewpoint which is so stupid?”
The world seems to loves stupid as time goes on.
Shshshshshhhhh…
Quiet please, we are building the ideocracy here!
Did you mean, ‘idiocracy‘?
Don’t you mean idiocracy?
Why do people go to the trouble of blogging on a simple spelling mistake rather than comment on the seriousness of the subject matter?
Ideocracy is a real word and fits the posters sentence – from Mirian Webster:
government or social management based on abstract ideas
The ones asking are probably seeking clarification.
Woo Boy! Good one Phil! Quote a dictionary and misspell the name! That should be Miriam Webster
George Lawson – not misspelling. ‘Idiocracy’ is a 2006 Mike Judge movie set 500 years in the future in which Earth’s population are all morons (click the link for more details). ‘Ideocracy’ sounds like a portmanteau of ‘ideology’ and ‘democracy’, so right_writes could have been referring to either. Both seem appropriate given the subject matter.
The years passed, mankind became stupider at a frightening rate. Some had high hopes the genetic engineering would correct this trend in evolution, but sadly the greatest minds and resources where focused on conquering hair loss and prolonging erections.
PiperPaul
Please note C. Kornbluth’s “The Marching Morons” from 1951.
Looking for idiots? Start with climate change deniers who cannot join the dots. This is what is taught to high school students:
…Britain has long been affected by mists and fogs, but these became much more severe after the onset of the Industrial Revolution in the late 1700s. Factories belched gases and huge numbers of particles into the atmosphere, which in themselves could be poisonous. The pollutants in the air, however, could also act as catalysts for fog, as water clings to the tiny particles to create polluted fog, or smog… http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/education/teens/case-studies/great-smog
“Climate Change is worse than Ebola,”
thus proving that Education is worse than Climate Change.
I assume these are the guys that run the NHS.
No, they are a small group of doctors. They don’t even represent (in any meaningful way) doctors as whole.The NHS is run, ultimately by politicians. Below them come administrators. The administrators don’t have to have any medical qualifications.
This is the same kind of stupid that led to the Ebola quarantine center in Liberia being raided and robbed. Attackers claimed ‘there is no Ebola!’ and ran off with blankets that Ebola victims had been sleeping in etc..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-28827091
Oi, a bit unfair- she must have studied real hard to get that stupid.
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”
Nah…
It’s ideologically based madness, not necessarily due to too much mad cow steak acting on the brainbox.
Idiocracy was due to welfarism and inbreeding.
Ebola has landed on US soil, Texas and Honolulu. The person who entered Texas did not fill in his papers at the border at the airport thruthfully and was in fact in contact with a relative in Lyberia, Africa, who died from ebola. He has tested positive for ebola and is now confined. Unfortunately he’s been in contact with several people and now some 100 people are being isolated and screened.
Ebola is real and it is now. Climate change is in the minds of computer models.
People have been mentioning Ebola entering the US, which is worrying. Has anyone thought of the global calamity that might occur if an infected person gets to say India, China, Vietnam etc? Fiona Godlee, editor in chief of the BMJ might rue the day she came out with here garbage and should be very concerned about Ebola. Climate change is a terrible distraction for the BMJ and the rest of the world.
As Alan Robertson points out, ~75,000 people have died in the UK over 3 years alone trying “check carbon emissions”. Deaths from ebola haven’t got to these numbers, yet. But once it enters a large, poorly educated, fed and treated population…we soon won’t be worrying about checking carbon emissions. Actually, there was a very disturbing image on the news tonight. Someone infected with ebola was being wrapped up and taken away for burial, and yet he was still alive.
Viruses have a real nasty habbit of mutating rather quickly. I wonder have virologists have done any work with phages, the good viruses, and ebola?
May I suggest Godlee, editor in chief of the BMJ move to the epicentre of the outbreak and tell the locals about their terribly high carbon footprints. I’m sure locals who live in shanty towns will understand and act accordingly.
Good one Jimbo. Having been to and lived in Africa, I know no-one there is worried about “carbon emissions”. Many don’t even eat every day, and some of those are in “well paid” jobs.
there were reports of some people in India ( returnees or immigrants not sure)some weeks back
and then?
not a word.
so it may have been false alarms or might be correct and being kept quiet.
Desperate times call for desperate measures…
The good news is that the patient in Honolulu had neither symptoms nor recent travels consistent with Ebola and is no longer being considered for a possible Ebola infection. Not clear why it was ever even suggested that he had contracted the virus. But it is clear that the suggestion that he had contracted it traveled through the media very quickly. And that catching some of that same highly motivational fear for the Climate Change hypothesis is a very attractive opportunity. Why a professional journal would print such a suggestion and why a professional person would want their name attached to such a stupid statement is difficult to explain or accept.
‘Jimbo’ I may be a little pedantic here but I don’t like the misuse of the word ‘epicentre’. The ‘focus’ of an earthquake is the exact location underground where an earthquake occurred. Its epicentre is the location on the surface immediately above the focus. Better just to say ‘centre’
If we have to rely on the honesty of people getting on planes we are in big trouble. Meanwhile at the southern border thousands of people are coming here without filling out any papers.
People entering the U.S. from places that had contagious disease outbreaks used to be quarantined to determine if they were infected. Don’t know if this law is still in effect?
At one time in the past you could leave the U.S. for overseas without a smallpox vaccination certificate but you couldn’t get back in without an up-to-date vaccination certificate. Had to be checked for smallpox.
The UK has no monopoly on stupid:
http://postimg.org/image/jrvw2qjtv/
“How can a presumably educated person hold a viewpoint which is so stupid?”
* Dementia or some other mental disorder
* (illegal) Drugs
* Political orders
“How can a presumably educated person hold a viewpoint which is so stupid?”
Educated beyond their ability to understand.
Education and Intelligence are not necessarily the same. Many an idiot can pass tests in college and gain a degree.
It’s a moral and spiritual disorder more than a mental disorder.
It has been said that someone who does not believe in God will not believe in nothing, but will believe in anything. That is true of environmentalists like these. They are trying to fill that God-shaped vacuum in their hearts by worshiping the earth and demanding the same from others–complete with orthodox theology, inquisitions, sacrifices, offerings, penance and saints. And, yes, hypocrisy.
Sheep…
They just want a bit more money before the coalition falls apart; they are already at each other throats over data surveillance measures.
According to Fiona Godlee, editor in chief of the BMJ
“Deaths from Ebola infection, tragic and frightening though they are, will pale into insignificance when compared with the mayhem we can expect for our children and grandchildren if the world
does nothing continues to check its carbon emissions…”_________________
In light of the reported 75,000 deaths in the UK over the past 3 years due to attempts to “check carbon emissions”, consider her statement now fixed.
Alan,
I’ve wondered about the numbers of deaths likely caused by mad government climate change policies, particularly caused by more expensive heating. I’m interested in your 75,000 deaths number. Could you give a link to the source of this number? Many thanks, Chris
There are many sources on the web for that information. I don’t recall where I saw that figure used most recently, but here’s one link discussing excess British Winter deaths:
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/11/27/336904/uk-winter-deaths-increase-by-a-third/
Mods, I made a format error immediately prior. There should be a closed ‘strike’ after the words “does nothing’.
With scores, hundreds, even thousands of years in which to adapt to “climate change” how can anyone from the BMJ think that a disease for which we have no defense or adaptability is not a bigger problem? The warmunists’ religion is delusional. Can someone please explain to me how so many previously respected scientific journals have been taken-over by cranks with agendas. The list just keeps growing.
Simple really – as usual, follow the money.
Everyone expects their general practitioner to be the ultimate empiricist.
Medical knowledge has advanced thus far in the past 150 years or so because of a firm adherence to the principles of empirical science.
This is a worry.
Please. Medical science is so rife with bad research, systematic error and outright fraud I don’t even want to go into it. Science everywhere is affected by this malady and it is not likely to change anytime soon.
Retraction watch @wordpress….very enlightening
Global warming threatens human health in the UK.
For some years now the British Medical Journal, along one might add with the Royal Society and other supposedly learned bodies here in Britain have taken to spouting plenty of rubbish. It would not be so bad if these organisations, and here I must include much of government and its bureaucracies, the bulk of academia and the mainstream media, offered practical solutions to the concerns they reflect on, unfortunately they fail that test time and again.
One must say that diseased thinking is now the norm amongst the established nations that once led the world. A condition that sees it most intellectually capable citizens abandoning the necessity to examine problems rationally. Capacities now replaced by peddling a near uniform politicised message hitched to the wagon of deceit and the competitive urges to outdo one another in gaining momentary headlines through spreading fear. For the life of me I cannot understand why those best able to construct viable, sensible hypothesis based on the evaluation of comprehensive research and data should now avoid this vitally important task, they do a huge disservice to the entire human race.
Even if nothing else is ever invented the capacity exists to feed and clothe all the world’s peoples, a potential that could sustain decent standards of life for everyone. There is plenty in the way of this goal, but these difficulties have nothing to do with our technical abilities, unfortunately the shift away from the rational by influential established bodies like the BMJ and the RS make this task next to impossible by denying the development of solutions that if employed would at least offer the chance of easing life on the margins. I of course realise that this a utopian ideal, one beyond a species whose wretched behaviours readily adopt what is loathesome. The latest example of this cyclic trait being provided by radical Islam, an ideology unable to conceive of building constructively for the future, which come to think of it makes acolytes of the RS and BMJ fellow travellers.
This person should be fired immediately. Not even Nature accepts this viewpoint at this stage (as they retrieve from the AGW mantra) re 2C limit nonsense
Contributors,Doctors,subscribers ect should write to the Board and demand her resignation.
Quite right.
She is an embarrassment to the journal.
Her job must be in jeopardy; are their any statements from the publisher?
Help for dummies is in sight!Rush outside doctors,we got extreme weather, it’s raining brain!
BM Journal – — there. I fixed their journal name.
How can a presumably educated person hold a viewpoint which is so stupid
They already have strong form on this , hard core green and large left bent so you can see how ‘the cause ‘ would be very important to them as its suits their other agendas very well. When you think your ‘saving the planet ‘anything is acceptable.
Zactly. Ebola only threatens people. “Climate change” threatens the planet. And we know which is more important to them.
Guilty as charged and yet we all do it!
We get so used to being asked to deliver authoritative opinions using our expertise that we start pronouncing on stuff that we have no particular expertise in at all.
Ebola, they can and should make a contribution on.
Co2 and Global Warming ? Its just hot air coming from them 😉
Apparently also in the (printed) media things go viral.
actually I would like to point out Australia had a record number of deaths from our recent heatwaves. And we are a place that has it’s fair share of heat. Climate change affects more people than Ebola and it does actually kill them
Unsubstantiated nonsense. More elderly die from the cold in Brisbane then heat in Melbourne.
Yes, and the deaths from heat events are increasing, so much so, that the government has had to issue advisories to pensioners to turn on the air conditioners they are afraid to use because of the sky high electricity cost driven by government backed green schemes. The increase in deaths is NOT coming from increased heat, it’s coming from increased fuel poverty.
If the world was warming, which it’s not for the last 18 years, then frankly the last thing you’d want to do is push the means to combat that (cheap energy) out of the range of the vulnerable population, but yet that’s exactly what the greenies do…. idiotic!
Heatwaves are weather, dingdong.
actually in Australia we have broken records for heatwaves and had a record number of deaths subsequently so yes climate change is more dangerous and deadly than ebola
Umm, where are your referenced sources, from peer-reviewed publications? I would love to hammer this apparent factoid into my conservative colleagues from Down Under. Take your time, and fully articulate the medical sources. Thanking you in anticipation…
You won’t succeed I’m afraid. The “record heat wave” claims are all based on BOM:s un-peer-reviewed, black-box AWAP model, which oddly results in much higher temperatures than any that are actually measured at weather stations.
But they have promised to publish it somewhere peer-reviewed real soon now…
If there was an Aussie heatwave, it completely missed me…and I live in inner-west Sydney.
probably the gruniad:-)
realscience has a good post on the Bom temps for melbourne
right near some nice urban ashphalt and nsw near a 21 lane highway
UHI to the max!
Australian Government figures show that in Australia there are more deaths in winter than summer………
http://www.aihw.gov.au/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=6442453159
Over 3000 people have died out of 7000+ infected so far of ebola and the numbers of infected are multiplying by 4 each month. The estimate is for between 0.5 and 1.3 million by January if things don’t change. The US authorities have made such a mess of dealing with their first local case that they didn’t isolate the victim for three days, they come to pick him up without wearing protection and they have incarcerated the man’s family with his soiled bedding and towels.
How many people have died from the Australian heat wave and its it likely to spread person to person? Do the numbers of dead even match your winter increase in deaths?
oh and climate change affects everyone as opposed to ebola which few people on a global basis will come in contact with
Because unlike climate, viruses respect international borders /sarc.
Please show us ONE verifiable instance of AGW causing the death of some one. It can be shown there are deaths caused by “anti-AGW” policies, like unaffordable heat and food.
What is your authoritative source for both of your statements?
I’m sorry, but the Ebola discussion is just as (or even moreso) rayciss than the Climate Disruption discussion.
These issues (disease and climate) have their immediate and most prolific effects upon the denizens of Third World countries, who also have racial issues to contend with. Fiona Godlee is of course an expert, and if she believes that Ebola is nothing compared with the coming climate catastrophe, then so be it.
But is the BMJ rejecting any scientific input into the Ebola crisis as a waste of time and resources, upon the proposition that Global Climate Disruption will be worse?
One of these days, I will be convinced that we have reached Peak Stupid. Otherwise, carry on…
I suggest you learn to spell and do a grammar course. If you wish to bow and kiss the arse of an expert then so be it but don’t expect the rest of us to be so nice.
spdrdr
October 3, 2014 at 2:45 am
“These issues (disease and climate) have their immediate and most prolific effects upon the denizens of Third World countries, who also have racial issues to contend with. ”
Black people in black countries have racial issues? Why?
Actually they do. You could say its like the Indian “caste” system. A blacker colour = a lower social status. And it stinks!
Is that a “racial” issue or is it the difference between rural people who work the land and office workers in the city who can avoid the sun?
One wouldn’t call disagreements between rednecks and nerd-glassed liberal arts majors “racial issues” even though they have different skin hues.
I’d say more tribal.
The racial issues are usually tribal in nature. Since tribes often have different skin tones due to heredity, it appearst to be skin-tone related, but the root cause is more often tribal in nature.
Ever heard of hutu and tutsi? Now that’s what I call a racial issue!
Climate Disruption? What ever happened to good old Global Warming? Or Anthropogenic Global Warming or Climate Change or Catostrophic Climate Change?
Ms Godlee is editor in chief of the BMJ and lists her “Competing Interests” as “vice-chair and on the board and executive of the Climate and Health Council” which is basically a Climate-worrying pressure group for “health professionals”.
Shame she thinks it’s acceptable to misuse her position as editor of an esteemed journal to promote her own extreme view of climate and action, but par for the course from this fraternity. Not a reflection on doctors generally.
I can’t stop wondering how people believe that changing slightly level of only one ingredient of atmosphere will change the climate as they wish.
This news item does show lunacy as well as utter uniformed ignorance, but it also shows something else — something very troubling. This item shows the magnitude of the delusion that “we must save the earth”. This news item shows how large segments of humanity feel better about their pathetic little lives when they are engaged in a vast and important “greater good” — even if it is imaginary.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” ~ H. L. Mencken
The politicians are winning you see. Even those who run a medical journal think that we need to be protected (by freezing in the dark I suppose) from the evil magic molecule CO2. And lord-a-mercy they are clamoring to be protected from the evil plant food by the politicians. Lately they have been telling me that I need to be protected from all carbon and not just CO2. What is up with that?
more bullshit being pedalled – i live in Aus – please show proof of record deaths due to heat – you can’t.
Climate Change / Global Warming is a cult. That will explain “How can a presumably educated person hold a viewpoint which is so stupid?”. But all of this is not about preserving humanity it is about destroying the virus of humanity infecting mother earth. Restrict CO2 generation enough and you will depopulate mother earth, but ebola now, that will work faster so it is an acceptable addition to the cult. Islamism is also an acceptable addition to the cult, we saw that in the news as well. It is a cult, the cult is death to the the infestation of humanity on mother earth. Now do you get it?
The view will change when a polar bear dies from Ebola.
I doubt if their view would change if polar bears range extended into south Alabama and NYC was under 5 km of ice.
Not satisfied with being terrible researchers and advocates of treatments that don’t work, doctors constantly get involved in causes they don’t understand and say embarrassing things……I’m seeing a pattern here.
Yesterday a British medical volunteer , who contracted the disease but recovered after treatment in London, recalled his witnessing the deaths of 2 small children : 2 out of hundreds . Close to tears he appealed for help to stop this terrible plague and whilst I am usually sceptical of foreign aid , the money Cameron has pledged from UK will be well spent,
What they need in Sierra Leone and Liberia however in the long term is cheap power to develop good sanitation , establish clean water facilities , build more hospitals, train more doctors and improve farming so that the population is not attracted to infected bush meat . Telling them that the only power that they can have must come wildly inefficient renewables that they cannot afford and do not have the trained personnel to maintain is something that would shame anyone with a decent conscience . It is a sorry state of affairs that persons like Ms Godlee can have any role in public life .
I know many people from west Africa here in Aus…and they are all fearful of their families!
As Einstein once said : “There are 2 things which I consider to be infinite. The Universe and human stupidity. But I’m not sure about the universe.”
Embarrassed to be British.
To give you a grasp of the kind of mentality we are dealing with here, & I do not know if Ms Godlee is a doctor turned journo, I give you this. The British Medical Association (BMA – the doctors’ union in effect) have enriched their membership to the tune of thousands beyond the dreams of average. In July 2010 after the General Election, after droning on for years about the perils of the demon drink, were in Downing Street thumping the table demanding a minimum price on alcohol, whilst at the same time, their HQ in Central London had applied for a permanent bar licence extension so that it could stay open & serve said demon drink for longer to its membership, presumably so that they can get peed out of their tiny brains for longer! One rule for the rich, another for the rest of us! The word hypocrisy springs to mind!
Alan Hannaford
It’s not just the Medical Hierarchy: The CAGW Disease has already infected the rank and file
Here’s a report from 2008 by the Ontario College of Family Physicians which simply regurgitates the same usual dogma and drivel of which we are all aware:
http://ocfp.on.ca/docs/committee-documents/health-effects-of-climate-change.pdf?sfvrsn=4
http://ocfp.on.ca/cme/offerings/environmental-health/climate-change-and-health
Addressing the Health Effects of Climate Change:
Family Physicians Are Key
This is a landmark review of the science of climate change and its impacts on human health –nowand in the near future. Climate change has led to a great deal of concern amongst Canadians and a world-wide debate on the strategies that are needed to address this all encompassing health issue. In spite of the concerns of governments a
nd people around the world, physicians and thehealth care sector in general have been relatively silent on an issue that will have major impacts on the health of the people they serve and in the communities in which they practice.
http://ocfp.on.ca/docs/public-policy-documents/addressing-the-health-impacts-of-climate-change-family-physicians-are-key.pdf?sfvrsn=3
http://www.cfp.ca/content/59/5/462.full?sid=d2c65e34-6cf8-44b8-a094-469f0ac13c15
Here’s a short youtube clip of Dr. Alan Abelsohn , one of the principle authors of above linked “landmark” report by OCFP. He’s swallowed the CAGW dogma hook line and sinker.
Alan Abelsohn on climate change and public health
http://tinyurl.com/n5c4pun
This reminds me of the Lancet’s editor deciding it was a good idea to publish an anti-Israel missive.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/lancet-editor-in-israel-after-outcry-over-gaza-letter/
I think we can now say the hard core AGW Chicken Littles are certifiably insane.
A few people have posted concerns about heat waves. I’d like to point out – they were all most likely wearing clothes when they posted those comments.
Why? Because otherwise they would have felt cold.
Our ancestors compensated for their comparatively low speed, poor eyesight, and lack of strength, by developing an almost unequalled ability to endure extreme heat – the ability to run 10s of miles in the blistering hot tropical savannahs of Africa, using our superior stamina, our superior ability to withstand hour after hour of searing temperatures, our ability to follow a trail, as much with our intelligence as with our senses, to run our prey into the ground.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting
We wear clothes, because we are so well adapted to heat, that in any climate other than the tropical savannahs and jungles in which we evolved, we need clothes to stay warm.
Thanks for your post. When I was a teenager, I hunted rabbits via persistence hunting, though I had no idea until now that it had a name.
When I flushed a rabbit in a cotton field, I would chase it on foot. Yeah, I had no chance of catching it. But I had discovered that rabbits, when running from humans, will run about a hundred yards, then stop. As I approached the rabbit, it would take off again. After three or four iterations of the process, I’d spot the rabbit before he took off again, and get a shot on him.
The odd thing is that rabbits will run a mile from dogs. As hunters know, the rabbit will then circle back to the same spot, where the hunters stand waiting for their shot.
British Doctors and American Democrats – both see AGW as more serious. But then neither group has gotten Ebola yet.
“How can a presumably educated person hold a viewpoint which is so stupid?”
It is part of their job. They are paid to be alarmists for CAGW. Their colleagues applaud them for it.
Exactly. These are government doctors, paid government shills. They know who butters their bread. They will say that which is “correct” in the eyes of their employer. Truth is irrelevant.
Nobody has died from climate change.
On the other hand, fighting climate change has killed thousands.
Can we really trust chief scientific officers?
The Times del 11/01/2010 , articolo di Ross Clark
There was a time when, if you read a scientific scare story, you tended to put it down to the over-active imagination of a redtop journalist. No longer: nowadays it is outwardly sober government scientists who spin the biggest scares. They know they can get away with it because laymen have an irrational respect for words uttered by scientists.
That much was proved by the 1963 Milgram experiment in which the Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram persuaded volunteers to administer a – simulated – potentially fatal electric shock to another human being when instructed to do so by a man in a white lab coat.
It will be a good 50 years before anyone can make a definitive judgment on the biggest scientific scare of our times: climate change. But I can’t read the latest prediction for man-made flood and tempest without thinking of all those millions who have failed to die from swine flu and the other grim fates predicted by government scientists
http://www.agenziafarmaco.gov.it/aifaminesi/201001/articolo_20100111_115257211.htm
Uhhhh……….yeah ok.
Just goes to show some things are so stupid it requires a PhD to believe them.
bingo…..stealing this one…
That reminds me of:
B.S. Bullshit
M.S. More Bullshit
PhD Piled higher and drier
Anthony, could we perhaps ask the Medical half of the authors to post here on how he can support his editors position? His email address is listed on the BMJ site. I can’t actually read the article without signing up for a free trial of the BMJ, but I suspect (since it looks like it parrots the IPCC line) that it isn’t particularly alarming at all. It is interesting though how the BMJ divest itself of fossil fuel interests and then so blatantly promote a story that furthers its new interests. That would be called a conflict of interest in my line of work. Clearly something that medical science and climate science don’t need to worry about.
And presumably, if medical doctors are qualified to educate policy makers about climate change (from the BMJs website), they won’t mind me as a qualified scientist promoting my latest theories about why vaccinations are bad for you? (I’m not serious folks, vaccines save lives, though like any field of human endeavour they also carry risks and can suffer from tragic failures).
She has caught the eco-loony disease. It’s a form of dementia. It really doesn’t matter what your qualifications and achievements were before. Once you catch it, it’s fatal. The symptoms are gradual loss of cognitive function, withdrawal from reality and belligerence.
There is no cure
Recommendation to family and friends:
agree with her.
maintain your distance
Climate change is a brain disease and it spreads rapidly. There is no known cure.
I see you have come across it too Scary
“There is no known cure.”
Seems like if someone is already infected with socialism this weakens the brain function enough to give the Global Warming virus an easy way in.
It’s unfortunate, but also quite telling, that the alarmists have now almost completely and uncritically claimed all weather related deaths from storms, floods, fires, etc. for CAGW. To make this claim, one must necessarily believe either that no one ever died from weather related storms, floods, fires before 1960, or that those deaths were caused by some fundamentally different process. This is insane. This is Orwellian in the most obvious way. And yet major academics, leftists, the pop culture and media outlets trot along with the crazy.
I don’t wish to minimize what could be a very serious situation but it’s important to remember what everybody was thinking about the AIDS virus back in the 1980s. It didn’t become the end of civilization.
I don’t mean to be flippant, but are you referring to climate change or ebola?
“but it’s important to remember what everybody was thinking about the AIDS virus back in the 1980s”
Not me. A disease that you can only catch by blood transfusion or unprotected (homo)sexual intercourse isn’t really very terrifying. I mean it is not that hard to figure out how to avoid being infected.
Don’t forget the thousands who died from blood products, transfusions and hemophilia treatments. These killed many who were not high risk.
Can we have a comment from the editor of the British Medical Journal please?
Climate change is threatening our health
Physicians all over the world are concluding that a healthier planet will mean a healthier population.
In 2009, the Lancet called climate change the “biggest global health threat of the 21st century.” Many physicians, myself included, were surprised by this diagnosis. Bigger than cancer? Heart disease? Really?
snip
Internationally, physicians are mobilizing to improve climate health. Following last year’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, the British Medical Journal deemed climate change an “emergency” and called for physicians to do their utmost to translate the science for society, and to make clear the benefits to health and society of a transition to a low-carbon world. This past summer, the British Medical Association and the Canadian Medical Association pledged to do just that, with the BMA additionally voting to divest itself of fossil fuels and power its operations with 100-per-cent renewable energy.
Courtney Howard is an emergency physician in Yellowknife, a mother and a board member for the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment. @courtghoward
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2014/10/01/climate_change_is_threatening_our_health.html
Sorry Brent but I don’t like doctors. Its not the same kind of feeling as ‘I don’t like dentists’. I and my partner have been to doctors in the past and have been totally misdiagnosed. She had been diagnosed with high blood pressure for years (15) she has been off the medication for 5 years now. Blood pressure around 128/75 when tested at home. She had to have a compulsory test at a hospital in China , for visa requirements. She was “s#tting herself as she was walking in, face red with tension. 200/bullshit. White coat syndrome. I even get it too, even though I consider my self a cool customer. They strap on all the probes and find that I have a healthier heart than most 20 year olds. I’m 65. If I break a bone and its sticking through my skin , then I will go to you.
I have other personal stories about doctors that I won’t bore you with. Suffice to say, I don’t trust doctors or their opinions about ANYTHING.
I was also working for a medical supply company at one time in my life. I really know these a holes.
You are possibly a nice guy (I met some of those), but generally the medical profession leaves me flat.
You can rest easy Alex. I’m not a doctor 🙂
White Coat Hypertension is very real. I know.
Same here…… Had a thin vertebral disk (doc said old injury/finally wore away) about 1/3 of normal and causing stiff leg /walking issues because of nerve contact. Two doctors confirmed on X-ray and both said only surgery would help. Looked around for some alternate treatments and found success with the back stretching inversion table (2 two times a day for 10 days/thereafter once a week). Completely okay and got rid of most morning stiffness also (went with being 55 at the time). Fifteen years later still don’t have a back problem. Several other issues were also solved with alternate methods (e.g. a couple of drops of clove oil for sore, infected or irritated throat). A medical degree just gets you a recitation of their medical training with (usually) very little logical thought to go with it and an assurance of expensive treatments to support the med companies and rep procedures. Docs are needed sometimes for the straight forward stuff, but even then one would be wise to cross check everything possible.
Knowing this, how a medical degree could even qualify any response in an area completely outside that field is insane. Obviously just parroting the political AGW line and then not even bothering to provide references.
Sincere apologies for my gross error
“Climate change is threatening our health
Physicians all over the world are concluding that a healthier planet will mean a healthier population.
In 2009, the Lancet called climate change the “biggest global health threat of the 21st century.” Many physicians, myself included, were surprised by this diagnosis”.
Why do you assume that physicians or The Lancet are any better qualified to make scientific judgements on the health or otherwise of our planet than the many scientists in the field who have studied the subject all their lives? We all agree that a healthier planet is better for all of us, but, like all of the warming cult, you conveniently ignore the fact that there are no signs that we have a problem. Global warming has not occurred for the last 18 years; the Southern ice cap is at an all time record freeze; the Arctic ice summer melt is the lowest for at least six years; Polar bears are increasing in numbers; the worlds oceans are not rising; species are not becoming extinct through global warming, and the computer model forecasts have all been proved wrong. All factors which prove that the planet is no more unhealthy now than it has always been. So tell us Brent what is your argument to support your assertions that we are facing the health problems you mention without qualification, we would all like to know? Just open your mind a little and look at the facts rather than accepting the scaremongering statements from those who have so much to gain by putting out false information to convince the gullible that we have a problem. By doing so you might come to a different conclusion to that about which you write.
@george Lawson
George. You have made a simple and fundamental mistake. You have assumed that the article to which you take exception represents my views.
You are incorrect!!
The views expressed in the article are those of the author of the article to which I linked.
I fundamentally disagree with her views.
I you want some idea of what my views actually are, you would get an idea at the links below
cheers
brent
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/02/26/bizzare-anti-defamation-league-apparently-gives-a-green-light-to-defamation-of-climate-skeptics-by-comparing-them-to-holocaust-deniers/#comment-1578565
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/10/climate-change-hysteria-and-the-madness-of-crowds/#comment-1683050
Given the choice of being infected with Ebola or being forced to live in Florida (global warming equivalent)… ooooooh… tough choice. I’ll need some time to think it over.
I’d take ebola everytime. Nothing worse than a living death like Florida. I’ve been there twice. The 2 separate weeks were the longest 5 years of my life
One vote for Ebola; noted. But I’m teetering towards Florida in spite of the sunshine, beaches, fishing, sea food joints, and no income tax. I think perhaps I could manage to adapt to all of that, given time.
The claim that the transmission modes of Ebola are precisely known is a lie. Since there was no money in it for big pharma because it was such a rare disease and is so dangerous and, therefore, expensive to study, studies haven’t been done in the numbers required. Here’s a recent, nicely technical article on that:
Health workers need optimal respiratory protection for Ebola
Lisa M Brosseau, ScD, and Rachael Jones, PhD
Sep 17, 2014
http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2014/09/commentary-health-workers-need-optimal-respiratory-protection-ebola
Editor’s Note: Today’s commentary was submitted to CIDRAP by the authors, who are national experts on respiratory protection and infectious disease transmission. In May they published a similar commentary on MERS-CoV. Dr Brosseau is a Professor and Dr Jones an Assistant Professor in the School of Public Health, Division of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Excerpt:
The precautionary principle – that any action designed to reduce risk should not await scientific certainty – compels the use of respiratory protection for a pathogen like Ebola virus that has:
1. No proven pre- or post-exposure treatment modalities
2. A high case-fatality rate
3. Unclear modes of transmission
We believe there is scientific and epidemiologic evidence that Ebola virus has the potential to be transmitted via infectious aerosol particles both near and at a distance from infected patients, which means that healthcare workers should be wearing respirators, not facemasks.
The minimum level of protection in high-risk settings should be a respirator with an assigned protection factor greater than 10. A powered air-purifying respirator (PAPR) with a hood or helmet offers many advantages over an N95 filtering facepiece or similar respirator, being more protective, comfortable, and cost-effective in the long run.
We strongly urge the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) to seek funds for the purchase and transport of PAPRs to all healthcare workers currently fighting the battle against Ebola throughout Africa and beyond.
There has been a lot of on-line and published controversy about whether Ebola virus can be transmitted via aerosols. Most scientific and medical personnel, along with public health organizations, have been unequivocal in their statements that Ebola can be transmitted only by direct contact with virus-laden fluids and that the only modes of transmission we should be concerned with are those termed “droplet” and “contact.”
These statements are based on two lines of reasoning. The first is that no one located at a distance from an infected individual has contracted the disease, or the converse, every person infected has had (or must have had) “direct” contact with the body fluids of an infected person.
This reflects an incorrect and outmoded understanding of infectious aerosols, which has been institutionalized in policies, language, culture, and approaches to infection control. We will address this below. Briefly, however, the important points are that virus-laden bodily fluids may be aerosolized and inhaled while a person is in proximity to an infectious person and that a wide range of particle sizes can be inhaled and deposited throughout the respiratory tract.
…..probably paid off by Big PAPR
/sarc
I’d probably take the precautionary principle with something like ebola. It’s not the same as precautionary principle with climate change/AGW. Horses for courses
It’s the cautionary principle not the precautionary principle.
The precautionary principle says you should take action assuming the worst case before you have any information – because by then it might be too late (an inverted Pascal’s Wager).
The cautionary principle says you should take action assuming the worst case when you have information (being risk averse).
It is known that Ebola can be spread from bodily fluids so why risk death from a sneeze? The costs involved in paper masks are not so high.
Why absolutely no mention of the most obvious form of transmission – the african flies – they must be mightily attracted to an ebola sufferer who create fly attractants literally by the bucket full !! The flies feet must be riddled with viruses and then they fly off and settle on the bare skin of somone else spreading the virus to a new victim – . so why no mention of this form of very definate airborne ebola ??
I must say that I am a little bit surprised at the naivety expressed in these comments.
As a physician, let me state — the primary purpose of most all medical researchers and virtually all journal editors is not to further medical research and disseminate the latest medical findings to optimize health and minimize morbidity and mortality.
Their primary purpose is to obtain more funding for what they are doing. Hence — the tripe about “Climate change being more of a threat than Ebola”. . . .
Wow! Will you be my doctor? Oops! I’m not actually sick and don’t intend to be.
I, actually, do admire your honesty.
Ah So. When one finds himself in the arena, it serves him to follow their rules.
“As a physician, let me state — the primary purpose of most all medical researchers and virtually all journal editors is not to further medical research and disseminate the latest medical findings to optimize health and minimize morbidity and mortality. ”
Well sometimes, as in the many pub-med articles about phenyl butyl nitrone, it actually may be, but will come to naught anyway because there is no useful government or charitable program in place to provide for human testing and approval of a non-proprietary compound. It’s all about protecting big pharma. As one ex FDA director said in a documentary (paraphrased); we will not approve any anti cancer drug developed by an individual or small company, only deep pocket corporations need apply. So just how many good compounds are out there that aren’t available because of this attitude.
When you allow politicians and political hacks to manage health care they quickly incorporate political initiatives into their political directives under the guise of protecting the common man. The days of empirical evidence based medicine which targets no voting blocks is a casualty to the new paradigm.
There may be a bit of hope.. http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/27/health/ebola-hiv-drug/
Lamivudine, an HIV antiviral droppod mortality to 13% and to 0% for those getting it early.
Its most definitely worth investigating, but we also need to know if the patients the doctor treated had HIV as well as Ebola. Giving a HIV drug to someone who had HIV and Ebola might be misinterpreted as successfully treating the Ebola.
Read the article. To me it reads as: Folks did NOT have HIV. Folks did have Ebola. Doctor tried antivirals that did work on HIV, starting with Acyclovir (that failed) and found one that worked.
I’d also expect that if you have HIV, not much can save you from Ebola since your immune system is kaput…
I agree its definitely worth trying – any good news is worth following up, in this ongoing train wreck.
I presume that the ‘so called’ BMJ is a government funded publication.
“Climate change” means “Surrender your property, freedom, and rights to the collective.”
“Climate change” is just gibberish to get you to accept the unacceptable. It is a nonsense phrase.
If given the choice of being infected with Ebola or climate change, who would choose Ebola? Anyone?
I see this as evidence that climate change is making us all more stupider.
Yup, you’re definitively living proof. Some of us do stay in the shade skepticism provides so that the CAGW sun doesn’t dehydrate our brains 😉
When climate change causes the Zombie apocalypse, who are the brain-hungry undead corpses going to eat first? Those with more brains or less?
It’s not just the British journal.
Howard Bauchner is the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) Editor-in-Chief
To see screeds from recent JAMA issues, click here:
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1909928#FramingClimateChangeandHealth
(howard.bauchner@jamanetwork.org).
Someone should mention to the esteemed doctors, “If your kids die of Ebola, there will NEVER BE grandchildren to wring their hands over the unproved uncertainty of Climate Change(TM)”.
FIRST THINGS FIRST.
Indeed – skewed priorities.
brent
October 3, 2014 at 4:10 am
It’s not just the Medical Hierarchy: The CAGW Disease has already infected the rank and file
Here’s a report from 2008 by the Ontario College of Family Physicians which simply regurgitates the same usual dogma and drivel of which we are all aware:
http://ocfp.on.ca/docs/committee-documents/health-effects-of-climate-change.pdf?sfvrsn=4
http://ocfp.on.ca/cme/offerings/environmental-health/climate-change-and-health
Addressing the Health Effects of Climate Change:
Family Physicians Are Key
This is a landmark review of the science of climate change and its impacts on human health –nowand in the near future. Climate change has led to a great deal of concern amongst Canadians and a world-wide debate on the strategies that are needed to address this all encompassing health issue. In spite of the concerns of governments a
nd people around the world, physicians and thehealth care sector in general have been relatively silent on an issue that will have major impacts on the health of the people they serve and in the communities in which they practice.
http://ocfp.on.ca/docs/public-policy-documents/addressing-the-health-impacts-of-climate-change-family-physicians-are-key.pdf?sfvrsn=3
http://www.cfp.ca/content/59/5/462.full?sid=d2c65e34-6cf8-44b8-a094-469f0ac13c15
brent
In a posting of October 3, 2014 at 6:49 am, Brent quoted: ” Courtney Howard is an emergency physician in Yellowknife, a mother and a board member for the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment. @courtghoward”.
I have followed the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment a bit. The executive director is one Gideon Forman. I have seen at least three, maybe as many as five, letters from Forman in the Globe and Mail. Forman has no medical qualifications. Instead his CV includes a session in creative writing at the Banff Centre.
Ian
In Australia a similar organisation was established called Doctor’s for the Environment Australia.( DEA). It is one of many front groups established by the socialist left/greens Labor Party during the previous government to promote the cause and to purport to speak on behalf a professional group (in this case the medical profession) .The guy who set it up in Aust. is a known socialist activist. DEA recruits in naïve medical students to bolster numbers and convert them to the leftist way, whilst acting as the official voice of medicine to fool the public. Interestingly the DEA also pushes euthanasia, population control, etc . It would seem to me that its ideology contradicts the Hippocratic Oath and the medial profession should expose it for what it is. Beware the wolf in sheep’s clothing.
——- a session in creative writing at the Bumph Centre. (Bumpf is bum fluff).
Pegasus
Gideon Forman, also holds a Certificate in Renewable Energy from the University of Toronto.
http://www.pegasusconference.ca/gideon-forman
University of Toronto School of the Environment
Renewable Energy Certificate Program requires four courses:
Principles of Renewable Energy
Biofuels
Electives 2 of 3 courses:
Wind Energy. One of the two required text books is by Paul Gipe, 2004 edition
Urban Energy Systems
Solar Energy
http://www.learn.environment.utoronto.ca and follow the links.
I left the complete posting by Brent in my own posting by error…..
Ian
A quick detour in subject matter ….
Do those that have been infected and have recovered posses the viral immunity? Or is it like a cold … no true immunity, so the health workers will not return to the scene of their infection.
I’ve think found my answer [Ref. Huff. Post article]. No one is really sure. They think that there is an extended immunity, but that it may be limited to the subject strain (it appears that there are five differing known strains at this time).
So, Miss Godlee cannot be sure about Ebola immunity possibilities but she is positive that (increased) CO2 will cause such mayhem that the Ebola problem will pale in comparison….
These pipers play every strain. From what I gather, the JAMA plays the tune and American rank and file doctors… dance.
https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?indexType=s
AMA = second biggest lobbying group in Washington @ $310 million.
Why the AMA Wants to Muzzle Your Doctor WSJ, 2010
http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703961104575226323909364054
JAMA represents 17% of American doctors.
There’s a far bigger worry. Patients who recover continue to shed dangerous levels of virus for weeks after their recovery, there have been cases of patients who recover infecting their girlfriends when they leave hospital.
So what are the odds that some victims who recover will become long term carriers?
Obama says don’t worry. He’s got our backs.
Without such knowledge, how could any health worker try to discuss the Ebola situation at all?
Dr. Godlee is not the British Medical Journal. She does not represent medical doctors in UK. Shall we take her seriously? Only if you take seriously Michael Mann’s opinion on how to cure Ebola. Take the good doctor’s advice for its entertainment value. Laughter is the best medicine.
Knowledge alone does not produce wisdom. Transforming knowledge into wisdom requires input from the heart. Ergo, Godlee is heartless.
Fiona Godlee’s editorial has attracted appropriate derision and incredulity that a Natural Science graduate could write such drivel. The question by aGrimm on 3rd October@1.45am on why so many journals have been taken over by cranks with agendas is one that needs an answer.
Unfortunately she is not the only one.
The Veterinary Record – the journal of the BVA, is also published by the BMJ. The VR editor has also displayed green Guardian -type ideology not only what he prints but also a tendency to censor letters which are “inconvenient”. Apparently the BVA council has, from my feedback, little influence in the Editorial office. One improvement it did make, however, was the appointment of a veterinary academic as Editor in Chief about 2 years ago, Professor Lord Alexander Trees.
I have tried to redress this CAGW bias in several letters to the VR. My most recent contribution was here 31.3.14@4.29am which also has a link to my post on 23.7.2012.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/30/a-timed-for-ipcc-report-claim-meeting-climate-targets-may-require-reducing-meat-and-dairy-consumption/
Could it possibly be that the BVA is in the pocket of DEFRA and the BMA is in the pocket of the Ministry of Health and have to tow the ‘Guvment’ CAGW line? The funding connection, as suggested by various commenters, is a very plausible one.
I have to totally agree with James Delingpole’s sentiments in his Brietbart column.
Michael,
I figured out for myself in the 97-98 timeframe there was only the remotest possibility that the GCM’s would be validated, therefore the CAGW agenda was a scam. This was a real shock to me at the time since I had previously no idea that this sort of thing was going on
I subsequently followed very closely in real time the UK 2001 FMD epidemic, and I quickly realised we had another instance of GIGO modelling in the service of politics.
There were a number of Veterinarians, outstanding individuals, who tried to do the right thing, however the profession did not stand up to the government
Instead of allowing the Vets who knew what they doing handle the outbreak, the policy was taken over by the government Chief Scientist, Sir David King and his junk-modelling sidekick Roy Anderson.
Roger Windsor was a very senior Vet, a member of the RCVS disciplinary committee who sought to bring to attention that Vets were violating their oaths by signing false certificates under pressure from MAFF/DEFRA
His very angry letter, all warranted in my view, is worth reviewing
WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO OUR INSTITUTIONS?
Roger Windsor’s talk, read on his behalf, to the Central Veterinary Society
http://www.warmwell.com/nov11windsor.html
Paul Kitching was another of the upstanding individuals who tried to do the right thing
Carnage from a computer
WE ARE USED to politicians suppressing the truth. When scientists do it as well, we are in trouble. Not one of the Government’s senior advisers, from Sir David King, the chief scientist, downwards, has yet dared to confirm in public what most experts in private now accept, that the mass slaughter of farm animals in the 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak was not only unnecessary and inhumane, but was also based on false statistics, bad science and wrong deductions.
http://tinyurl.com/28z67y
Use and abuse of mathematical models:
an illustration from the 2001 foot and mouth
disease epidemic in the United Kingdom
R.P. Kitching (1), M.V. Thrusfield (2) & N.M. Taylor
Summary
Foot and mouth disease (FMD) is a major threat, not only to countries whose economies rely on agricultural exports, but also to industrialised countries that maintain a healthy domestic livestock industry by eliminating major infectious diseases from their livestock populations. Traditional methods of controlling diseases such as FMD require the rapid detection and slaughter of infected animals, and any susceptible animals with which they may have been in contact, either directly or indirectly. During the 2001 epidemic of FMD in the United Kingdom (UK), this approach was supplemented by a culling policy driven by unvalidated predictive models. The epidemic and its control resulted in the death of approximately ten million animals, public disgust with the magnitude of the slaughter, and political resolve to adopt alternative options, notably including vaccination, to control any future epidemics. The UK experience provides a salutary warning of how models can be abused in the interests of scientific opportunism.
http://www.oie.int/doc/ged/D3278.PDF
Following the outbreak of SARS, one thing was certain: Professor Roy Anderson of Imperial College would soon be hitting the headines.
http://www.warmwell.com/2may1pe.html
Sir David King, claimed that his handling of the FMD epidemic made his reputation as it was early in his tenure as Chief Scientism-ist(sarc), and claimed it as a success justifying increased influence of “science” in policymaking.
Nothing could be further from the truth. David King and his sidekick Roy Anderson should have been drawn, quartered and c@strated for what they did.
Even rookie modelers, as long as they were well intentioned should not have made the
“mistakes” these people did.
Lesson to be learned: it would be rare for any so called profession whose privileges are regulated by the government, to stand up against a corrupt government that can reduce/minimize the professions privileges.
Lets see if Fiona Godlee, editor in chief of the BMJ changed her quote slightly. It would not be so bad.
“Deaths from Ebola infection, tragic and frightening though they are, will pale into insignificance when compared with the mayhem we can expect for our children and grandchildren if the world does nothing to increase its carbon emissions. and prevent its decent into the next glaciation action is needed now.”
Yeah I guess they are right about Ebola because evidently we are already prepared to sacrifice any number of lives in that part of the world to prevent CO2 going up 50ppm. Give ’em all the aid you can but don’t let them have cheap energy and a way out of poverty. Racism is rife among the gang green, it’s just a little obfuscated by weaselly save-the-planet words. This is truly a disgusting performance by doctors of all people – ‘first do no harm’ indeed. If Ebola gets a foothold in UK, the planet can take a back seat.
It could be true and, alarmingly, more people die of hypothermia than hitherto. The trend is double
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9078273/Hypothermia-deaths-double-over-five-years.html
The debate is over. Climate change is the root cause of everything, so yes, it therefore must be worse than Ebola.
They are quite right it is a more serious issue in that climate change taxation has caused hundreds more deaths in one year alone in just the UK than Ebola has caused world wide since the start of the epidemic.
Good thing they don’t seem to be biting people (for now at least). If it gets warmer though…
Lunacy from British Doctors: “Climate Change is worse than Ebola”
God help Britain. There was a news item that Ebola would arrive in Britain by the end of this month, But the doctors are instead preparing for thermageddon.
Are these geriatricians, brain surgeons or psychiatrists one wonders. Maybe they require lobotomy or electric-shock therapy?
I don’t know if it’s worse than ebola, because there’s news out there saying ebola is another false flag, but this video shows a Rockefeller Foundation brochure describing a global pandemic used to justify a global fascist regime – so Bill McKibbens and the ebola pandemic may share a common funding source. Then there’s Bill Gates, co-owner of the patented virus.
EBOLA HOAX?- EXPOSED ON CNN- ILLUMINATI CARD GAME CARDS
Epidemic card at 3:10.
If you like your Ebola, you can keep your Ebola
Fiona Godlee has hijacked the BMJ in order to support her own liberal left wing political agenda. It used to be a highly respected medical journal but is now widely regarded as no more credible than average red top daily newspaper on most topics.