From the AMERICAN THORACIC SOCIETY and the “consensus is the same as data” department comes this eyeroller of a claim that seems to confuse climate, real air pollution, and weather. It looks like they are trying to give a whole new meaning to “allergy season”. Of course, it comes from the same George Mason university that aided and abetted the Shukla scam, and soon will be bring 97% faker John Cook on board, so I don’t give much credence to it.
ATS international and US members agree climate change affects patient health
Survey results are published in the October issue of the Annals of the American Thoracic Society.
“The response from international physicians underscores that of American respondents who noted the impact of illness severity related to increases in pollution, specifically asthma, COPD, pneumonia and cardiovascular disease,” said John Balmes, MD, past Chair of the ATS Environmental Health Policy Committee and one of the study authors.
Respondents further noted the following as the most common health effects of climate change among their patients:
- Severity of chronic disease – 88 percent
- Increased allergic symptoms – 72 percent
- Heat-related effects – 70 percent
- Injuries due to severe weather – 69 percent
- Vector-borne infections – 59 percent
- Diarrhea from food/water-borne illnesses – 55 percent
The survey, which was conducted by the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University, polled 5,013 international members. The survey had a response rate of 9.8 percent and respondents represented 68 countries.
The survey results come on the heels of the DC District Court of Appeals’ hearing of oral arguments related to the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan on September 27. ATS and several physician organizations jointly filed an amicus brief with the court arguing that climate change has negative consequences for patients’ health.
###
It is worth noting that up until 2005, the medical community “consensus” was that stomach ulcers were from stress, smoking, bad diet, and other cause. It wasn’t until two people actually looked at autopsy data that they discovered the true cause. From a 2005 Discovery Magazine article, some familiar excerpts:
The medical elite thought they knew what caused ulcers and stomach cancer. But they were wrong—and did not want to hear the answer that was right.
…
How did you get the word out about your discovery?
I presented that work at the annual meeting of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians in Perth. That was my first experience of people being totally skeptical. To gastroenterologists, the concept of a germ causing ulcers was like saying that the Earth is flat. After that I realized my paper was going to have difficulty being accepted. You think, “It’s science; it’s got to be accepted.” But it’s not an absolute given. The idea was too weird.
Then you and Robin Warren wrote letters to The Lancet.
Robin’s letter described the bacteria and the fact that they were quite common in people. My letter described the history of these bacteria over the past 100 years. We both knew that we were standing at the edge of a fantastic discovery. At the bottom of my letter I said the bacteria were candidates for the cause of ulcers and stomach cancer.
That letter must have provoked an uproar.
It didn’t. In fact, our letters were so weird that they almost didn’t get published. By then I was working at a hospital in Fremantle, biopsying every patient who came through the door. I was getting all these patients and couldn’t keep tabs on them, so I tapped all the drug companies to request research funding for a computer. They all wrote back saying how difficult times were and they didn’t have any research money. But they were making a billion dollars a year for the antacid drug Zantac and another billion for Tagamet. You could make a patient feel better by removing the acid. Treated, most patients didn’t die from their ulcer and didn’t need surgery, so it was worth $100 a month per patient, a hell of a lot of money in those days. In America in the 1980s, 2 to 4 percent of the population had Tagamet tablets in their pocket. There was no incentive to find a cure.
…
The microbiologists in Brussels loved it, and by March of 1983 I was incredibly confident. During that year Robin and I wrote the full paper. But everything was rejected. Whenever we presented our stuff to gastroenterologists, we got the same campaign of negativism. I had this discovery that could undermine a $3 billion industry, not just the drugs but the entire field of endoscopy. Every gastroenterologist was doing 20 or 30 patients a week who might have ulcers, and 25 percent of them would. Because it was a recurring disease that you could never cure, the patients kept coming back. And here I was handing it on a platter to the infectious-disease guys.
Does this consensus protection sound familiar?
Read it here: http://discovermagazine.com/2010/mar/07-dr-drank-broth-gave-ulcer-solved-medical-mystery
Note: cartoon licensed from cartoonstock.com
Always knew climate alarmism would herald the return of the witch doctor. Break out the goat entrails and runes. Here they come.
ha ha
They “agreed”. And what does a body of respiratory practitioners know about climate in the first place apart from what they get fed by the media, like everyone else. The fact that they were even asked whether they agree exposes the bias in those running the survey.
Who was that, by the way ?
So it is not a medical faculty nor a science faculty, it is a “center for communication” about “climate change”, ie a politically oriented, PR group.
Not surprised that they had to publish in the “Anals of the American Thoracic Society.”
Well of course Climate Change is occuring, if it weren’t we would either be in the throws of a great glaciation or there would never have been Polar Ice Caps
But rest assured it was only 492 of the 5,013 surveyed so once again a relatively Small Sampling
There, fixed it for you.
Notice how many more acquiesce outside the US? “Hey, ve answer sure t’ing on this survey, and mebbe dey send us money becuz Climate Chenge! Vot’s to lose?”
9.8% response rate? It is very likely the true believers were the ones who bothered to respond.
OMB requires government agencies to show a strong likelihood of achieving a 75% response rate in any questionnaire they administer to the public. (In some of the studies that I led, requiring persons to wear a personal air quality monitor for 24-48 hours was considered enough of a burden to justify lowering the threshold response rate–still we generally achieved 60-80% rates.) No competent survey statistician would pay attention to a questionnaire that told you nothing about 90.2% of the target population.
Oh, but wait–this is George Mason “University” after all.
And let me see the motivated minority whackos by country-
“The survey, which was conducted by the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University, polled 5,013 international members. The survey had a response rate of 9.8 percent and respondents represented 68 countries.”
Well, that would be 492/68 countries or about 7 1/4 whackos per country. Lew’s papers probably have a statistically similar sampling
@ Tom Hala, It is probably the same 9.8 % that drive the political agenda regarding “Social Justice, the lesbian/gay transgender/hermaphrodite/ not sure communities and others. The louder these minorities scream the more attention they get, the others? Too busy at work for their families.
I am certain that this world that I think that I am living in, is not real. It is a 1970’s tilted camera psychedelic trip. Let me out.
Kinda like when Batman and Robin faught King Tut and his thugs
WHACK
BOP
BIFF
So, all those Americans that retire and go to Florida should go to Alaska.
Excuse me (stupid Irishman)- what exactly is a thoracic?
Think Jurassic Park, only in Norway- you know, Thor.
No, Thor might actually have some knowledge of weather !
Unlike those who study how much hot air people are able to produce.
Didn’t you see the movie – Thoracic Park?
Nimble-fingered Alan beat me to it….
Thorax is chest above the diaghram. These are pulmonary physicians concerned with things like asthma and COPD. About 500 of whom internationally have swallowed Obama’s coolaid that climate change made Malia’s asthma worse. Nothing to do with his cigarette smoking around his daughter.
The region below your neck and above your waist.
Or a theme park full of Hipsaralsaurus’
Think upper torso, rib cage.
Sounds to me like most of those so called symptoms of climate change are likely due to changes in the way we live. Always indoors so when we do go outside allergens seem stronger. Always inside so we have little experience dealing with severe weather. Always inside with central air so we are less acclimated to the heat when we do go out in it. Always inside and less active, so chronic problems are worse simply because we aren’t fit. Not keeping fields, processing plants and kitchens clean so there are more water and food borne illnesses.
IN other words, common sense.
With a modest addition: 20 pounds overweight and less able to deal with heat, more likely to have chronic problems, more likely to weeze when they do go outside and confuse the shortness of breath of an allergic reaction
Quick! Someone remind me how many climate scientists the American Thoracic Society has in its’ ranks?
You meant “so-called climate scientists” or course.
Someone remind me how many “climate scientists” are real climate scientists, or “scientists” at all as judged by Richard Feynman (RIP) or one of his peers.
Well that would depend – if they agree with the consensus then all of them are official members of climate science™, if they disagree they are just another basket of deplorables. (do I really need /sarc?)
With a miniscule response rate of less than 10%, you are dealing with an extremely biased survet.
Surveys should never report the results of such a small segment of the target population. These researchers should have contacted those who didn’t respond, etc. But I sincerely doubt that any doctor
can see any changes in the short time span of his personal experience. Global warming has proceeded
very slowly with respect to man’s lifespan and they also cannot provide any plausible evidence that the small increase in heat of the planet has had any significant effect on health, and certainly cannot connect health issues to global warming when the climate condition causing the health issues cannot be correlate to global waming – extreme weather, for example.. A pathetically misleading study that provides no convincing evidence of anything.
Most of the respondents ( I see no claim or indication that they are all MDs ) probably recognised it as politically motived tripe and declined to waste their time. Those that did also recognised it was politically motived tripe and decide they wanted to “do their bit to save the planet”.
“Surveys should never report the results of such a small segment of the target population.”
Where does that leave prospective voter polls?
Where?
Up an anal creek without a paddle.
There seems to be some confusion about polls and surveys. A survey is administered to the ENTIRE population as described by certain characteristics such as those dealing with the thorax. Strictly speaking is any are not queried it is a poll. A poll requires a REPRESENTATIVE sample. Be skeptical.
ha ha , they wanna make more $ dough
So they asked 5000 people. 490 replied. An average of 7 people per country. Then they have used percentages. So 88 in 100 for example. During the average lifetime there has been no statistically significant change in the climate.
This is truly statistics’ finest hour.
But they asked 5000! Don’t you see if all 5000 of those specialists had responded it would have been a good sampling therefor since under 10% actually did respond we will report it with the robust authority, certainty, and scholastic solemnity the letterhead of George Mason University richly deserves!
If it isn’t the economics department George Mason has no reputation at all.
We are planting foreign species of plants, which attract new kinds of molds and mildews. We have more trees and plants than 100 years ago. We live inside in air conditioned space (as Myron points out above). But in the age of the climate religion, all things are caused by that climate change god….
I found it really interesting that less than half (44 percent) of the respondents from the U.S. agreed that climate was occurring, as compared with 69 percent of the international respondents. What happened to the 97 percent consensus?
It got Cooked.
+++
Of course none of the flaws in this study matter, so long as the headlines can be endlessly cited in the mainstream media. So looking forward to it.
All this from what, maybe a 1 degree C warming since 1850??? Just when I thought the climate scam couldn’t possibly get any sillier. And we thought witch doctors were a dying breed…I must go now and make sacrifice to gods.
But climate was perfect when we could have frost festivals on the frozen Thames and the frozen canals on the continent. That evil 1 degree C increase ended the joy of collecting frozen corpses from the poorer portions of our great cities. Think of the poor unemployed body collectors! How could we so selfishly bask in this warmer, less deadly clime?! Think of the great literature that colder clime inspired! Without the bitter little-ice-age cold, we wouldn’t have such stories as Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Match Girl” – such a hopeful vision of the future that. ( sorry the sarcasm got a little thick there)
Owen
We could start a list of little ice age inspired literature:
A Christmas Carol
War and Peace
Hound of the Baskervilles
Nallo and Patras
Any others?
. . Hmm . . might be of interest to the Hellary campaign staff . .
“A survey of international members of the American Thoracic Society (ATS) found that 96 percent of respondents agreed that climate change is occurring ”
Utter rubbish, we all KNOW it’s 97% , they must have done it all wrong.
I believe in climate related illness.
I’m sick of all the climate change nonsense.
Just add it to Obamacare as more mandatory coverage. The extra premium inflation on top of what is already happening might push the timeline of getting to single payer a little faster than originally planned at stage three of the overreach game plan.
http://www.thoracic.org/about/overview.php
And now Climate Change.
Now that’s funny
Let’s not be too harsh on ATS. 90% (4522 of 5013members) had such a low concern about climate that they didn’t even bother with the survey. As someone with latent TB for over 40 years I am glad most of them are not wasting their time on this foolishness.
That’s 90.20546% if you don’t mind squire.
That’s way too many significant digits. I’m not a statistician but I suspect that for this particular study one significant digit would be too many. 🙂
significant digits
https://www.gapminder.org/ignorance/
Stephen Skinner on October 10, 2016 at 12:58 pm
https://www.gapminder.org/ignorance/
Great – thx for the link!
Hey, wait a minute. I’ve got the basic level of EMT Certification, I’m esteemed member of one of the finest volunteer first-response-search-rescue organizations in the U.S., we’ve been cited by the U.S. Coast Guard, the Michigan State Police, the National Park Service and the AMA for exemplary performance. I just realized we get about 3 times as many complaints about breathing problems in the cold months than we do in the warm months… the ATS should welcome global de-chilling.
I have COPD and cold dry air is harder for me to breathe than warm moist air.
It is quite clear that, people involved in conducting the survey do not understand the difference between weather and climate. They are confused weather as climate change. It is a fact that weather influences the patients and health. We all know there are several seasonal diseases over different parts of the globe. Particularly bronchites Asthma.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
That’s the ‘weather’ as in, ‘whether or not I’m going to get a grant for my next study.’
One thing the medical system needs for a long and prosperous future is SICK people . Chronic illness is the road paved with gold. Back in the 70’s the cure for cancer was only 5-10 years away But the reality is it’s still a dangling carrot they use to generate funds for more research . This type of pollution https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7E36zGHxRw will make sure the drug dealing medicos have a prosperous future.
Wait. Are they sure it’s climate change and not witches? You can’t burn or hang climate change.
You burn or hang the deniers. Back in the day most witches were condemned as heretics.
Well first I guess we’ll need to find a duck…
Most people around here are ill over the weather, because there has been snow on the ground for days, and winter has come a month early this year. So much for global warming.
Yes there is a wee problem for health practitioners relying too much on climate models for diagnosis-
http://joannenova.com.au/2016/10/bom-september-failure-but-who-can-predict-the-climate-a-whole-month-ahead/
Odd when I googled cold weather increases respiratory illness; below are a couple of articles I found. So yes it is possible that climate change is increasing the risk factors for respiratory illness. But it the change to colder climate not warmer that is the threat.
As usual the alarmists are out in the cold with a wet head.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0954611113004344
http://www.airguardmedical.com/html/content/Mourtzoukou_2007.pdf
michael
Do these hypocrites realize that they work
in a field that undeniably aides and abets the production of that horrid “pollutant”, CO2
that is “proven to be directly involved in AGW ?
There’s “good” CO2 and “bad” CO2, don’t you know? The good stuff comes out of Leonardo’s private jet, and Hillary’s gob, for example.
Can we do a scientific study where we seal both for a week and see if there is any climate impacts?
RIP science. Indeed, the witch doctors will return. I pity those treated by said witch doctors. At one time, medicine was good. It dies a bit every day now.
A survey with a 9.8% response rate is not valid and should not be published.
The US EPA is forbidden by law to lobby Congress or run PR campaigns outside of established US PR channels (US Ad Counsel) that are rigorously vetted for non-partisan messages.
So the EPA (run now after 7 yes under BO by the NRDC hacks) gives grants to the American Lung Association and the Am Thoracic Society.
And, Voila!!! propaganda appears that the EPA itself couldn’t legally put out.
Greens made the same claims in Ontario and Terence Corcoran has been tearing into them over their falsehoods in the Financial Post. FP in general seems to doing a good job of exposing the scam.
This is reminiscent of recent political events. After the first presidential debate, all polls but one showed that Trump had won. Liberal’s responded that Hillary had won and their own polls weren’t accurate. Then polls showed that her VP lost.
After the second presidential debate, half a dozen major news sources didn’t bother polling and just announced that Hillary had won. CNN was an exception. In addition to announcing that they thought Hillary had won, they released a poll showing that 57% of respondents to their poll thought so, too.
Then someone got their methodology. They had been polling people for days before the debate, then after the debate 58% of the people they polled were the staunch Hillary supporters.
So, if the data refutes your favored conclusions, either stop using data and just announce the conclusions you want, or manipulate the data to fit your conclusions.
Easy peasy lemon squeezy!
This doesn’t bode well for getting an honest election, by the way, especially since the Republican establishment just launched a coordinated October surprise attack against their own candidate, claiming to be shocked by locker room talk and demanding that the presidency be handed to the “other” party.
Someone needs to place a radio tuned to rap music next to an OPEN MIC and educate Washington about America “culture”.
Ah, so that explains why my BP is so high & I’m now on tablets for it, globul warming did it!
I hate to be pedantic about a trivial spelling mistake, but isn’t there an extra “n” in the following sentence.
“Survey results are published in the October issue of the Annals of the American Thoracic Society.”
Maybe the ATS is studying a body part lower than their main focus.
I wonder if even one of the respondents knows that 20 times more people die of extreme cold events than warm ones? https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150520193831.htm
And they forgot the final question that should be on any such survey –
“Are your answers above at all influenced by the likelihood that you will be subject to open ridicule or worse by eco bullies, radical leftists and social justice warriors if you do not kowtow to their catastrophic woman-made global warming hoax?”
I live in the 4 seasons belt where the climate changes from winter to summer and everywhere in between all year around, every year. So we have billions of people living just fine in a constant state of the most extreme climate change possible all the time from extreme cold to extreme heat. Please point this out to these climate frauds.
The stomach ulcer example is instructive. It teaches us to look at the actual evidence. It was in 1993 that a clinical trial demonstrated antibiotics prevented ulcers recurring, so 2005 is a bit late – it was the year they got the Nobel prize.. The knowledge that bacteria could not live in the stomach was largely from a 1954 American study that failed to find bacteria. This became the textbook answer. It became received wisdom, and nobody looked into it again for decades. When someone did look into it they found the bacteria and the received wisdom was quite rapidly overturned.
This is total contrast to the climate. In climate research the received wisdom was that man was unlikely to change the climate. Until the 1970’s hardly anyone had looked into it. When they did look into it, they found that man was very likely warming the climate. Thus the received wisdom was overturned and the new knowledge became accepted.
I know of no instances – that is zero – of any case where a large research effort has been found to move understanding away from the truth. If anyone has an example please provide it here.
Climate science has destruction of knowledge as its principal goal. It is destroying palaeo climate data (e.g. Law Dome C, Antarctica) and it it could, would like to destroy the entire science of geology, since it considers all geologists from Charles Lyell onwards to be paid oil industry shills. Climate science is destroying epistemology by its repudiation of Karl Popper’s laws of deductive scientific logic and conjecture and refutation. It is destroying basic logic by tortuous arguments that CO2 atmospheric concentrations that follow temperature changes are nonetheless causative of those temperature changes. Knowledge of ice ages, Milankovich cycles, tectonic continental movements, past existence of dinosaurs, evolution, all these are in line to be sacrificed on the alter of the church of climate anthro-warmism.
Marcott’s Holocene temperature paper is a classic for all time in destruction of knowledge. He took a few isotope ratio based proxies which agreed with eachother on large temperature fluctuations throughout the Holocene much bigger than 20th century warming, and he deliberately homogenised and blended them together with a large number of the least reliable possible biological “proxies” such as midges, pollen, unicorn fart-dust etc, none of which agreed with eachother unlike the isotope data and hey presto – the Holocene was ironed flat, with a nice instrumental spike tacked on the end.
BTW did you forget that in the 70’s climate consensus (which actually means the loudest voices) was anthropogenic global cooling.
In the 1980s it was acid rain.
In the 1990s it was global warming.
In the 2000s it was climate change.
In the 2010s it is now climate disruption.
Every one of these is wrong.
“BTW did you forget that in the 70’s climate consensus (which actually means the loudest voices) was anthropogenic global cooling.
In the 1980s it was acid rain.
In the 1990s it was global warming.
In the 2000s it was climate change.
In the 2010s it is now climate disruption.
Every one of these is wrong.”
lets see
1) Consensus does not mean loudest voice. I believe the cooling was not thought to be anthropogenic at the time. That was attributed later. There was no consensus that there was an ice age coming, although the loudest voices from the media may have been shouting that.
2) There was acid rain in the 1980’s. What don’t you agree with there? There was also global warming.
3) There was global warming in the 1990’s. Do you not agree?
4) There is climate change in the 2000’s. Gobal warming causes climate change. If there is global warming there is climate change. Climate can change without global warming. What are you finding difficult here?
5) There is climate disruption, global warming and climate change in the 2010’s. Climate change, from whatever cause, will disrupt local climates.
Do you have an example of a research effort being shown to move away from the truth, apart form climate science, or do you think that is the only example there is?
I forgot one – remember global dimming?
The ozone hole is another circus of pure BS. Here’s an entity we are measuring for the first time. So naturally everything we see must be 100% due to human activity.
And how much of the Australian Barrier Reef has been bleached and ravaged? Must be 1000% already.
Who could forget? Coined in 2004 by Gerry Stanhill, the term refers to reduced sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface due to aerosol particles. It was particularly prevalent before 1970’s. The acid rain you mentioned has the same cause – largely sulphate aerosols. Combating acid rain also reduced global dimming.
Is there a point to you bringing up various well documented atmospheric changes and effects?
Yes it does sound very familiar indeed.
If warmer surroundings really have any negative effects on
humans, then anybody moving from Nebraska to Arizona should be dead within a week.
Is that supported by observations?
If they still dressed like they did in Nebraska, almost certainly. We can adapt, but we need to accept the changes so we can adapt in a timely manner. Consider an Arizonan moving to Alaska. If he rejected reports of cold condition in Alaska he will arrive very under-prepared and have to spend lots more than necessary in emergency purchases. Far better to believe the reports and get yourself a good coat before you set off.
Like a consensus agreement for the best pizza joint around, ten thousand flies can’t be wrong.
It was not long ago that Medicine believed that stomach ulcers were caused by stress rather than a microorganism. There are still some mysteries that MDs are not conceptually equipped to deal with – hypertension, obesity, allergies, chronic inflammation, and a slew of other conditions that they can only ‘treat’ symptomatically.
Bacteria and over/improper use of NSAIDs like aspirin.
Regarding “ATS international and US members agree climate change affects patient health”… I’m in total agreement… my health is affected! Incessantly being bombarded by witch doctor-like True Believer climate alarmists claims re catastrophic/anthropogenic climate change (nee global warming) makes me sick. Sick and tired, actually.
“A large U.S. Centers for Disease Control epidemiological study, NHANES found that those with more amalgam fillings (more mercury exposure) have significantly higher levels of chronic health conditions. The conditions in which the number of dental amalgam surfaces were most highly correlated with disease incidence were MS, epilepsy, migraines, mental disorders, diseases of the nervous system, disorders of the thyroid gland, cancer, and infectious diseases.” http://amalgam.org/education/scientific-evidenceresearch/cancer-connection-mercury-toxic-metals-dental-cavitations-information-cancer-treatment/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXB2AzqCjTE A mercury filling smoking.
The only reason they let this happen is to create sick people for a prosperous economic future like I said above at 1:31 on the 10th.