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.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Sounds like another Fenton spin off.
Most of the comments seem to be off-topic.
“The WUWT readers know that officials of many scientific societies have gone to extremes to endear themselves to the Obama administration’s climate alarmism.”
I recommend Hubert Lamb’s study of climate history, particularly the Little Ice Age, which may have be little in temperature drop but not little in duration.
Also, the UK medical journal Lancet has articles that dispute an adverse effect from global warming. (Cold kills more people than warnth.)
Has there been any time in human history when global health has been better on average or when human lifespan has been longer?
Most of the comments seem to be off-topic.
“The WUWT readers know that officials of many scientific societies have gone to extremes to endear themselves to the Obama administration’s climate alarmism.”
I recommend Hubert Lamb’s study of climate history, particularly the Little Ice Age, which may have be little in temperature drop but not little in duration.
Also, the UK medical journal Lancet has articles that dispute an adverse effect from global warming. (Cold kills more people than warnth.)
Has there been any time in human history when global health has been better on average or when human lifespan has been longer?
@Rud Istvan,
Very true that intermittency costs not included in my post. Intent was to compare apples to apples across the years. Backup and buffering were ignored in both past and current numbers. Key takeaway is the lack of progress in economic competitiveness over the past 25 years, even disregarding the costs of buffering, backup, and grid integration (i.e., dedicated new transmission lines).
UK was getting 19% of its power from wind
========================
This is nothing more than the EU agricultural policy applied to electricity production.
Imagine that the EU paid egg producers to stop producing fresh eggs, because it hurts the market for rotten eggs. And at the same time, the EU passed a law requiring stores to buy all the rotten eggs first, at a higher price than they could sell fresh eggs. Only if there were no rotten eggs left, could stores buy fresh eggs.
Except this is not imagination, this is in fact how the EU market operates. And the same is now happening with windpower. If windpower was paid the same rate as every other electricity producer, the wholesale price of electricity, their share of the market would be 0%. If windpower was required to provide a stable, reliable output like every other producer, their share of the market would be 0%.
no one would pay a conventional power plant a penny for power if they did not regulate their output. if they were ramping up and down all day long without regard for demand, destabilizing the grid, they would very quickly find themselves disconnected from the grid.
Yet windpower is not only allowed to do this, the grid is forced by law to take this unstable (rotten) power and pay much more than the retail price for it, many times what the market price would be, while the government pays gas power plants to stand idle as hot standby.
Economic madness. Paying windpower a premium price for an inferior product, while paying producers of the superior product to stop producing. Forcing customers to guy rotten eggs, while fresh egg producers are paid to stop producing. The EU agricultural policy applied to electricity production.
“Mom’s Clean Air Force” is associated with these quacks. That’s all I need to know. If ever there was a totally uneducated, clueless group of busybodies who want to signal virtue more than this group, I have yet to find them.
Worse is that they are or would be tapping the insurance funds for this “service”.
Translated from the german “getting into gear” all clubs, professional organizations, etc. Must take a public stand on the correct side of the political issue of the day. Hence we have the St. Kitts Kite Club statement on climate change, The Three Rivers Junior Beavers Band declaration of climate change principles, and the Coupon Clippers climate change pledge. POL-O-TICS.
Memo to medical societies. Any and all funding or prestige building activities bringing you into contact with government functions will become embroiled in political partisanship if you chose this path. Welcome to the octagon.
I put the following in Tips and Note the other day.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2017/03/15/climate-change-making-us-sick-top-us-doctors-say/99218946/
From the report issued by the “Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health” which claims representation of 400,000 doctors (all in lab coats I bet). The director of the new consortium is Mona Sarafty of George Mason University (who would have guessed). The damage of course is “felt most by children, the elderly and people of color”.
Mona claims 3 types of harms:
1. direct such as injuries and deaths from increasingly violent weather , asthma and lung disease…..
2. increased disease through insects that carry Lyme disease….and “through contaminated food and water” (a non sequitur?!?)
3. the effects on mental health “resulting from the damage climate change can do to society”…..(It appears that effect has already spread to George Mason U.)
To me this shows how low journalism has sunk; you need only a fax machine and a University letterhead to spread unfounded claims and some “reporter” will reprint and distribute your “Fake News” to every Gannett Newspaper and TV station in the country.
All 3 claims have repeatedly been disproven, but since it is now printed in B&W (and in color in USA Today) it MUST be true.
These doctors should all get together and work on a cure for human delusions. We seem to have a lot of them in the science and political realms.
Not possible, for the doctors are human, too.
Some of the comments here were for the story on windfarm capacity, which seems to have gotten crossed with comments here. Unfortunately, since I can’t move comments to other threads, I regret that I had to delete them. If you made a comment on the wind farm story, feel free to redo it on that thread.
My apologies for the inconvenience.
From the report, item number one…
1. There is a scientific consensus about human-caused climate change. The reality of human-caused climate change is no longer a matter of debate. Based on the evidence, more than 97 percent of climate scientists
have concluded that human-caused climate change is happening. Many studies have proven this fact.
Cook is cited in the footnotes.
(28 pages. 97% consensus)
https://medsocietiesforclimatehealth.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/medical_alert.pdf
This is what I glean from the graphic, that my house will burn while being flooded on a hot day while I wear a mask as I have trouble defecating. But it could be worse, there could be mismanagement of my water supply, some sort of nuclear disaster, and spiders.
On a bright side, recognition of the real doctors in medicine will be easier.
For those who might have missed it, here’s the link to the full text of the alert:
https://medsocietiesforclimatehealth.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/medical_alert.pdf
And, yeah, the Con in “MedSocCon” is most appropriate. … MedicalAdviceForSuckersByCons … might be a better name.
My own personal suspicion is that global warming makes us happier. Now I’ve got to go scour the internet to find some articles to support this contention.
But just from experience, I can tell you that I, personally, have a much greater sense of joy on warm days than on cool days. I eat more homegrown garden vegetables in summer than in winter. I am inspired to get out an walk more in warm (even hot) weather than in cool or cold weather. I get more skin exposure to sunlight in warm weather, which boosts my vitamin D3 levels. Of course, all this is WEATHER related, but if CLIMATE affects weather in such a way as to make it warmer, rather than cooler, then I see nothing but positive health effects, especially since there is no support for the fear of extreme weather events that this “alert” portrays as impending.
Well, here’s a pop article that I just came across:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/minding-the-body/201504/why-warm-weather-and-hot-tubs-make-us-happy
If I have any fear of global warming, then it might be this: More warmer weather might drive a greater number of people to buy Harley Davidson motorcycles to blast as loud as they can along the busiest strips of city’s, during the most pleasantly warm days of the year. In other words, an increase in sound pollution will counter any mood-lifting benefits of the warmer climate.
Global warming boosts Harley sales. Global warming boosts irresponsible acts of pet ownership, like allowing dogs to run off leash to attack other dogs legally under control on their leashes. Global warming increases late-night party alcohol consumption and loud behavior at all hours of the morning.
Need I go on? (^_^)
Forget the damn polar bears, and let’s consider the REAL problems … with stupid HUMANS.
Well, if a CARTOONIST is involved, I’m convinced…
Just goes to show, you can prostitute any profession for political purpose.
As the punch-line goes: we already know what they are, they’re just negotiating the price.
I assume the red one with the Thermometer is warning of the chance of dangerous heatwaves. Then again, since every region has that one (including Alaska) it may just signify any uncomfortable temperature, ether too hot OR cold. We never had that before the Climate Crisis, right? ~¿~
Did these “doctors” actually recommend that school children ride bikes rather than taking school buses? That would be criminal idiocy, since very few places have sufficient bike lanes, sufficiently patrolled. Actually, where I live in Virginia, bicycles on car roads are a severe inconvenience to drivers and an imminent danger to the bikists. Except for major U.S. highways, the winding country roads around here are narrow two-lane affairs, with poor distance visibility and nonexistent pull-offs, usually with ditches or sharp rises of ground next to the edge of the road. Riding a bike on a road like that would be an unacceptable risk even for an adult, let alone a child; further, it is against the law to impede motor-vehicle traffic, which a bike rider cannot avoid doing. (I should add that most children live several miles from their schools, and inclement weather would also increase their risks.)
Yeah, the biking thing is pretty shortsighted. Another danger is that people of any age who bike are moving targets for insensitive idiots who just want to test their skills at hitting moving objects with fast-food remnants, ice from their now empty drink cups, spit, or other objects that they might wish to hurl. Ever get hit by a cup of ice slamming into your bare skin at forty miles an hour?
Sadly, the more steps you take to make yourself visible, the more you clarify yourself as a target for these idiots. At one point during my chosen biking-transportation days, I opted NOT to use lights or reflectors at night, in order to remain concealed from such people. I made extremely careful maneuvers in the dark (think cats at night moving between parked cars), which took much more time than just gunning it straight out. I took back roads, hid far off to the side when I saw oncoming cars, proceeded with caution at every pedal, carefully watching out for dangerous situations or for potential target hunters.
Leo ‘I will certainly not confine my reaction to writing articles.’
you’re welcome or out.
2 irons in the fire isn’t.
My doctor moved away because the climate is too cold. Must be due to climate change.
Doctors are like everyone else. Some will jump on a bandwagon if it coincides with their political beliefs. A few years ago at an appointment with a doctor he proceeded to ask me if I had a gun in my house and launched into a lecture about the dangers of guns. He gave me some literature from some anti-gun physicians organization which contained nothing but false claims. This climate bandwagon group is similar.
Yes, there was a similar (or dissimilar) campaign to use doctors to agitate patients against guns.
So, as I understand it, I”m in more danger from the raccoon on my front porch meeting and mating with aliens because my doctor needs to lecture me about climate change when he never goes outside or lets sunlight strike his skin.
Got it! Next time I go see a doctor (bleah), if he starts lecturing me about climate or raccoons or guns, I’ll ask him how much he paid the stripper in the Pink Pony club on the highway. If that doesn’t shut him up, nothing will.