Guest essay by Leo Goldstein
The website medsocietiesforclimatehealth.org, owned by a previously unknown group called the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health (“the MedSocCon”), published a MEDICAL ALERT! report and other climate alarmism materials, targeted at physicians. MedSocCon attempts to use medical doctors and other health care providers to alarm their patients about climate change, to tell their patients to vote for the left Democrats (“Vote for elected leaders that will act to cut climate pollution,”) and to engage in political activism (“Join local efforts to fight climate pollution.”)
But the worst part is that these materials also instruct doctors to give wrong advice to their patients, both adults and children. For example, a poster for children speaks directly to kids over the heads of their parents and tells them to bike to school. Dangers and high fatality rates of biking compared with driving are not mentioned. A “Heart Health” poster advises heart patients to replace their car trips with biking and walking. MedSocCon gives these materials to doctors to use in diagnosing and/or treating illnesses and diseases.
MedSocCon and its materials have been heavily promoted by the former mainstream media from March 14. Many of MedSocCon materials were developed by the Center for Climate Change Communication (“4C”) of George Mason University over years, and possibly altered after the elections to include “resistance” to President Trump. 4C employs Edward Maibach (#2 among signers of the infamous RICO 20 letter) and John Cook of SkepticalScience. Among 4C programs is Republicen.org — anttempt to mislead Republican voters and/or to interfere into internal affairs of the Republican Party few months before the November elections.
MedSocCon is not shy about rationale for its outrageous behavior. Its Guidance for Health Professionals openly says: “The combination of trust and reach, whether it’s public health officials engaging communities or the doctor–patient relationship, presents a unique opportunity …”. This is why MedSocCon repeatedly tells physicians to provide intentionally wrong medical advice to adults and children alike. Such abuse of the doctor – patient trust is an unprecedented low even for climate alarmism.
MedSocCon is funded by the notorious Energy Foundation, Kresge Foundation, and others. 4C is funded by the Rockefeller Brothers/Rockefeller Family Fund, Energy Foundation, Grantham Foundation, and other “usual suspects” – along with our tax money.
The decision to join MedSocCon was made by a small number of top officials of each complicit medical society, not by its members. It is not clear how many of those officials have approved its MEDICAL ALERT! report and the materials, distributed to physicians. These societies do not represent doctors, even those who are listed as members. But the former MSM claimed that MedSocCon represents 400,000 doctors or more than half U.S. physicians. This claim is as false as a similar assertion that IPCC reports had been approved by thousands of the world top scientists.
The WUWT readers know that officials of many scientific societies have gone to extremes to endear themselves to the Obama administration’s climate alarmism. Officials of medical societies have done no better. But It’s one thing to sign foolish statements, and quite another one to advise doctors to harm patients.
I call upon the readers to react to the actions of MedSocCon and its backers, and possibly to bring matter to the attention of their state attorneys general. I will certainly not confine my reaction to writing articles. Updates will be posted on my Defy Climate Change Cult / Alarmism website.
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+1
Anyone this stupid should not be a doctor; not eve a vet.
Maybe they could work in a doll hospital….
“Physician, heal thyself”.
An appropriate name: Med Soc Con
I thought so too. Hidden in plain sight.
Anyone see this? http://therighttobreathe.org/ Pretty funny complaining about smog in Los Angeles, not going away soon.
What nobody that hasn’t read the novel “1984” realizes is that the war on climate change will never end. Even if global warming turns out to be demonstrably false by global cooling, we will just change the name of the enemy and start fighting global cooling, a.k.a. climate change. People will forget that there was ever a warming scare in the same way we have forgotten that there was ever a cooling scare. We can fight, but we can’t win because there is no definition of victory.
Anyone who is an astute observer of human beings and has read history knows that there’s always another scare, another prediction of impending doom, etc. It’s not really the lack of a definition of victory so much as any victory can never actually be had. The battle between fear and hope is eternal.
Too true. There always seems to be a following for Second Coming of Jesus or one number of Imam or another.
Yes, there is always alarmist lobby seeking power and profit. The world was going to run out of oil/energy several times in the 20th century…
Isn’t there a law against fraudulent representations? Misleading under color of authority?
Only for people of the Right persuasion.
The gist of the Hippocratic Oath “First do no harm.”
So… what harm could be in giving false and misleading information to your patients? \sarc
But we fight and in the fighting is the glory. To qoute a very great person “we shall never surrender” That man, flawed human that he may have been was clear on what mattered most when the stakes were the highest.
Sure the other side isn’t formidible and will not give up easily. You may have noticed that we have pulled of some nice wins lately.
Winston: “My dear, you’re ugly!”
Lady: “Winston, you’re drunk!”
Winston: “In the morning, I shall be sober.”
The ‘Lady’ was Bessie Braddock (1899-1970), an outstanding, but leftish – trending rightwards – Labour MP.
Auto – possibly showing my age . . .
Lots of doctors (the vast majority of the ones I’ve met) are able to sift the wheat from the chaff. Even if they believe in CAGW, they will deal with the patient’s problems and not waste the patient’s time, and money, with a diatribe against fossil fuels.
Agreed.
MDs are trained to believe what is in the Journals.
So if “97% of the scientists” believe XYZ, it must be true and we have to warn against the consequences.
Oh, I hope not. If this is true, my grandchildren are doomed to suffer. Hmm, I wonder if the undergraduate degree mix of incoming medical students have changed. 40 years ago, I believe, most would have been hard science types, (chemistry, physics, and to a lesser extent, biology … yes, I know, biology was started as a morphological classification system, but once biochemistry got going, some of the softness was mitigated).
Argh, *has changed
Yes, medicine has been socially co-opted many times, long undermining the doctor – patient relationship, and trust.
Unfortunately, health care is becoming dominated not by medical doctors, but by administrators and “public health” practitioners. I easily see them plastering walls of the clinics with the MedSocCon’s posters.
There has to be some global warming…windmill….medical connection
Yep the comments are messed up …
” … very few doctors are even members of the official medical associations because of the political positions that adversely impact common practice of medicine … ”
I think some stick with the associations to hang onto the shingle on the front desk. I’ll stick with my GP, as he is a confirmed climate skeptic.
The examples of them giving poor medical advice are not really that convincing. Telling children to ride their bikes for exercise is good advice. They did not tell them to hide it from their parents. Kids are so molly-coddled these days that they would not dare do it without asking the parents and they would only do it if it was close (and safe). And the advice to heart patients to walk more is great and completely in line with all medical knowledge of the last century. I do agree that this is a climate group masquerading as a health group and misleading people about the number of doctors involved. But to say they are giving bad medical advice is a huge stretch.
Oh, let us really not go into the cardiovascular disease fads that I know of over the last 50 years. Having heart patients walk more is a good idea, not because exercise necessarily helps them, it is just that it isn’t likely to hurt them. Even though there was a cardiologist that I knew of who was an avid runner. He still had a myocardial infarction at age 44. What I don’t know is what other factors were involved in 1. his decision to be an avid runner (and no, he was actually a little too much on the thin side) and 2. why he had it when it happened. I do know that he survived it.
Commuting by bike is dangerous.
If the worse example Leo can point to is posters telling people to cycle and walk more then I don’t think there is much to worry about. Or do you really think that driving is better for your health than walking/cycling?
Yes with my heart it is better.
My closest grocery store is 6 miles away and over a 700 foot hill. I am not going to walk , bike any time soon.
Depends on the distance, the dangers of being hit by a car when biking, the odds of being mugged while walking/cycling, the odds of a hail storm during the day, etc.
First Al Gore was a climatologist and now doctors are, I guess the only people who aren’t climatologists are those who have a realistic view of climate change.
Ah, yes. Big Al, also inventor of the internet.
The Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health should spend more time looking into the ill effects of low-frequency infrasound from all local wind farms on local resident, to whom to causes significant health and mental problems.
If doctors follow that advice, sounds like lawyers may have a field day for malpractice suits.
OCFP/Ontario College of Family Physicians
Tools/Environmental Health Resources
Resources and Links
Climate change
Health Impacts of Climate Change
Health Effects of Climate Change
Physician Advocacy, which includes:
Health Care Without Harm and CAPE/ Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment
Additional Resources which includes:
IPCC
UNEP
UNFCCC
Naomi Klein
And others
http://www.ocfp.on.ca/tools/environmental-health-resources
——————————————————————————————
The Globe And Mail, Toronto, Canada, March 21, 2017
Re: Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health
‘Heat and Health: Doctors taking the pulse of the planet on climate change’
At:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/heat-and-health-doctors-taking-the-pulse-of-the-planet/article34352790/
This has been circulated into Canada.
OCFP/Ontario College of Family Physicians
Website: > Tools/Environmental Health Resources
Environmental Health Resources
Climate Change
Health Impacts of Climate Change
Health Effects of Climate Change
Physician Advocacy
Additional Resources which Include:
IPCC
UNEP
UNFCCC
Naomi Klein
http://www.ocfp.on.ca/tools/environmental-health-resources
The Globe And Mail, Toronto, Canada, March 21, 2017
Re: Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health.
‘Heat and Health: Doctors taking the pulse of the planet on climate change’
“Climate change is a threat to the health of people, and not just polar bears.”
Read at:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/heat-and-health-doctors-taking-the-pulse-of-the-planet/article34352790/
Re: the above Globe And Mail article, March 21, 2017
Article reference links:
Canadian Public Health Association link >
‘Global Change and Public Health: Addressing the Ecological Determinants of Health’, May, 2015, 28 + pages.
Lead Author: Dr.Trevor Hancock, Co-founder of CAPE/Canadian Physicians for the Environment.
Wind and solar power are mentioned in this paper/report.
http://www.cpha.ca/uploads/policy/edh-discussion_e.pdf
CMA/Canadian Medical Association reference link >
‘Climate change a significant threat to public health, CMA members hear’, Aug.22, 2016
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/climate-change-a-significant-threat-to-public-health-cma-members-hear/article31501589/
Correction: Should be Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment/CAPE.
Use the “report” link instead for the CPHA paper.
CPHA/ACSP digest, Summer 2015
‘Introducing the new CJPH editorial board’
Includes: Trevor Hancock
List and photo at:
http://www.cpha.ca/en/about/digest/39-2/5.aspx
—————————————————————————–
Can J Public Health
‘Browse Author Index’
Select: Letter H > p.4 > Hancock
http://journal.cpha.ca/index.php/cjph/search/authors?searchInital=H&authorsPage=4#authors
The Rockefeller Foundation
Team
Dr. Trevor Hancock
Biography at:
https://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/people/trevor-hancock
Times Colonist, B.C., Canada, Nov.23, 2016
Opinion article by Trevor Hancock
“Trevor Hancock: Trump’s ‘ignore-ance’ will harm our health”
At:
http://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/columnists/trevor-hancock-trump-s-ignore-ance-will-harm-our-health-1.309353
Global Change Musings, Aug.22, 2014
Re: Australia
‘Health-Earth (H-Earth): A new coalition for global health’
Scroll down to H-Earth:
“Our website is soon to be launched at the University of Canberra at the Centre for Research and Action in Public Health.”
At:
https://globalchangemusings.blogspot.ca/2014__08_01_archive.html
————————————————————————————————————
University of Canberra – H-Earth
Founding members list at:
https://www.canberra.edu.au/research/faculty-research-centres/ceraph/healthy-earth/founding-members
Try:
https://www.canberra.edu.au/research/faculty-research-centres/ceraph/health-earth/founding-members
Try:
https:globalchangemusings.blogspot.ca/2014_08_01_archive.html
Maybe I can get this right this time.
https://globalchangemusings.blogspot.ca/2014_08_01_archive.html
It’s a bit weird to read Canadian doctors warning their patients that extreme temperatures due to Climate Change™ are a health hazard, just south of the border (most Canadians live within a few hundred kms of the border) US extreme winter extremes (cold) are declining, hooray:
Tornados are declining (so are hurricanes):
I realise data is irrelevant to the religious.
We are told time and again that ’97% of scientists believe in Climate Change™’ where this is an example of supposedly responsible medical professionals perpetuating falsehoods, do they not check the data for themselves?
It’s freely and easily available, it must be a worry.
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Wow, you sure don’t need much of a thread that touches even briefly on medicine to attract the spambots, do you? At least this one isn’t in ALLCAP/ALLBOLD like so many I see. >¿<
Alaska will soon be too hot to live in. A nice map.
I live in Anchorage. The summer temperatures shifted nicely around 1990, the summer in the mid 80s were unpleasantly cool. Although it is probably cyclic, I wouldn’t mind more. I am more worried about global cooling starting around 2020.
I posted some of this before, but it looks like it is worth repeating and expanding.
In the medical journal The Lancet (volume 373, January 31, 2009) is a paper in the section “Department of Ethics” by Govind Persad, Alan Wertheimer, and Ezekiel J. Emanuel, the latter whose name is well known. The paper is “Principles for Allocation of Scarce Medical Interventions.” There is a graph on page 428 on the “Probability of receiving an intervention” charted against age. The figure is called “Age-based priority for receiving scarce medical interventions under the complete lives system.” It starts at near zero (Minimum), reaching a peak (maximum) about 20, decreasing to about 50, rapidly falling until 60 then gradually falling again to about 75 where the graph ends.
There are 97 references in a paper that tries to be scientific, and some of it sounds like what you might get in an animal husbandry journal like “Maximising total benefits: utilitarianism.” In the text– “The death of a 20 year-old young woman is intuitively worse than that of a 2-month-old girl, even though the baby has less life.” They also state “ Many thinkers have accepted complete lives as the appropriate focus of distributive justice.” Last line in the conclusions– “To achieve a just allocation of scarce medical interventions, society must embrace the challenge of implementing a coherent multiprinciple framework rather than relying on simple principles or retreating to the status quo.” I suppose the Hippocratic Oath is too simplistic.
We have Social Justice, Environmental Justice, Medical Intervention Distributive Justice, no telling what else. My doctor needs Relief from Paperwork Justice. He does not have time”… to become “champions” for climate and health in their community.” He is already doing his job as best he can with all the required nonsense like the yearly Medicare Wellness Exam. Bureaucratic Paperwork. If these worried about climate doctors have all this spare time to proselytize we can find some for medical work for them. Check with the churches.
Over a century ago we had a Eugenics movement in the world, based originally on the available science of emerging genetics. A clear racial driver emerged from this. It may not be fair, but I got that sort of impression from the Lancet article, just substitute age. Triage may be necessary, but not preferred.
So what is your suggestion as to the allocation of scare medical resources? No-one has an unlimited medical budget and there needs to be some discussion about how resources are allocated.
….and climate obsessed extremist misanthrope freaks are just the people to make those medical service allocation decisions.
Germinio-
With your post, I’m now more interested in your suggestions as to the “allocations” of scarce medical resources.
Germinio –
How about we also investigate making “scarce medical resources” not so “scarce”?
That should be left to the patient, his family and the doctors, free of political interference. And yes, if we got rid of income taxes and general government overreach, we’d find that medical markets work, too. Just ask the cosmetic surgeons and a lot of opthamologists who don’t take ‘insurance’.
I may not know how people’s health is affected by climate change. But as a practicing member of my medical community, I know how discussing politics in the operatory can be a detriment to giving care to my patients. We are taught in school to only use peer reviewed scientific methodology in our recommendations. And take an oath to do no harm. I would argue talking politics is harmful and having checked a few blood pressures in my time gives me at least an anecdotal idea of the harm.
I am sure that you were also taught to be skeptical and attempt to find replication and to evaluate the claims yourself, keeping in mind inherent uncertainties, Type I errors and Type II errors.
The beauty of offshore wind farms is that no nosey ornithologist will count bird carcasses.
MedSocCon seems to me to be a singularly apt name for this group.
It would appear that “climate pollution” is the new buzz-phrase to replace the discredited climate catastrophe/climate change/global warming.
Won’t somebody think of the polar bears?!!!
Won’t somebody stand up and tell us what a clean climate is supposed to be?!
NEVER! Straightforward definitions and statement goals is strictly forbidden because some nasty scientist or skeptic will then be evil enough to compare reality to the stated goal.
It’s when the human population is reduced to 500,000 breeding pairs world wide, wear animal skins and carrying obsidian tipped spears.
Well, if you can’t trust a shady group of previously obscure strangers who suddenly have funding and advertising telling you to vote a certain way, who *can* you trust?
Probably rather naive to assume that this also Highlights the very significant Reduction in Cold-Related deaths that would arise from a slightly warmer world ……… and that this reduction in loss of life is many, many times greater than the few additional heat-related deaths that a warmer world might cause….
Enviro-activists will never allow facts to get in the way of their propaganda.
The medical world is also linked to climate extremism through population health. In fact, in my analysis population health is nothing more than communist health. Population health is figuring out what is best for a general population and it completely ignores what is best for the individual. The general philosophy of those related to population health is also extreme leftism, kill the old and disabled and kills the babies before birth.
Ref required
UK solar is not even metered, so any figures you have a meaningless guesses based on installed capacity NOT real production.
That reflects how much consumers are being conned into paying for , not how much was actually produced and injected into the grid.
LIDAR is like RADAR but it lies.