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?
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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 ??