Propaganda science meets the smell test;
Estimates that airborne contaminants cause thousands of deaths a year - often cited by public-health authorities and medical associations - are gross exaggerations, argues the University of Guelph's Ross McKitrick in the paper.
Other research on the issue has generally failed to factor in the confounding effects of smoking and income levels, and looked at short time periods where pollution levels were relatively low, making results less reliable, he said.
"High air pollution will affect people's lung health, it's just that the effect seems to be too small to support this notion of thousands of hospitalizations," said Prof. McKitrick. "If we got rid of all the air pollution in the cities - didn't change anything else - how much would the rate of hospitalization go down? The answer is it really wouldn't go down at all."
Gotta love McKitrick; won't believe publicity BS, but does the digging to uncover facts. He'll be drummed out of the legion of "respectable" scientists soon enough.
In the name of stopping "pollution", the Oceanside Star has been publishing an incredible level of yellow journalism about a small coal mine proposed for the area. They currently have a poll to establish whether the potential jobs of a coal mining operation would be worth the "pollution" that would occur.
It would be nice to see the poll have an unexpected result.
oceansidestar.com
I have a great deal of respect for Ross McKitrick. He is one of the few who seems dedicated to applying real, hard science to the shibboleths of the government sucklers, regardless of their political leanings.
We need 1000 of him right now. Would it be irresponsible to attempt cloning?
The world has gone nuts.I don't know whether to laugh or cry.Better yet,I think I'll just keep my ammo dry and my rifle oiled.
Quote: "I think I'll just keep my ammo dry and my rifle oiled.
Why bother, you won't need it once the Hadron Collider gets done!
McIntyre's one critic basically denounced his findings in general terms---what I would style yelling heretic.....
That "ets" second-hand smoke thing has been debunked as junk-science as well.
Regardless media and politicos still yammer about carbon-footprints..........
Nobody honestly believes such statistics/talking points are true in the first place, but it is satisfying to see someone in academia publicly admit it.
btw, third hand smoke is killing thousands of babies a year!!!
Interesting. I've always assumed that high levels of smog will cause health problems. Obviously, the claims of environmental advocates and bureaucrats hired to solve the problem are inflated ...they always exaggerate.
I wonder if places like China, where air pollution in cities is greater, would produce the same results for McKitrick. Or is it particulates, not smog, that is the bigger health hazard? Of course particulates from industrial sources are relatively easy to reduce and therefore require only minimal government intervention. Very little opportunity to make the public feel guilt and then shame them into changing their auto-loving lifestyle.
Pine and noble fur add probably several powers of 10 more tons of pollen to the air every year, than entire Western industry.
Pine and noble fur add probably several powers of 10 more tons of pollen to the air every year, than entire Western industry.
Perhaps, but are industrial particulates differences (size and composition) enough to cause health problems?
I previously lived in an area that had one of the highest rates of asthma in Canada. The residents claimed that the local mine and utilities were responsible for the problem. The mine and(government owned) utility disagreed. A research team was hired to compare the city with one of similar size and conditions (dry,windy,dusty, farming areas)to do a comparison - the only difference being the presence of mining dust and flyash. I never saw the results of the study publicly released but the mine began to water down the haul roads more often and the utility installed the expensive particulate controls.
I lived in Moscow, where vehicle emissions are several times higher than in Toronto, while TO asthma rates are 10x higher. It's the food we eat, not what we inhale.
Vehicle emissions,contributing to smog - smoke and fog, and particulates are different beasts. Smog is a chemical reaction. Particulates cause things like welders lung or black lung. Smog, according to this study, may be far less harmful.
ChrisinMB: What about 4th and 5th hand smoke? Will nobody think of the children?!?!
// Propaganda science meets the smell test; //
And fails, if one reads the whole National Post article.
Monica Campbell, a toxicologist and manager of the Toronto health department's environmental health office, said the majority of research - literally hundreds of studies - have found a link between pollution and health.
For example,regarding this statement by McKitrick --
"If we got rid of all the air pollution in the cities - didn't change anything else - how much would the rate of hospitalization go down? The answer is it really wouldn't go down at all."
BUT
On 1 September 1990, Dublin banned the sale and burning of bituminous coal. A study published in the Lancet by Luke Clancy, Pat Goodman, Hamish Sinclair, and Douglas W Dockery - comparing the six years before the ban and the six years after - found dramatic results.
Black smoke concentrations in Dublin fell 70%, and the authors estimated there would have been 116 fewer respiratory deaths and 243 fewer cardiovascular deaths a year in the city after the ban.
Of course we all die eventually
When I lived in South Korea, hospital admissions for "yellow dust" (sand from Mongolia blows into Korea- this is thanks to China's deforestation) went up dramatically. The air is actually quite foul.
Just my thoughts.
With Dizzy Batting 100, there is no need for my comment.
Nice flattering picture of the guy in the Post there, eh? Shame there's no way to sue the sons a' bishops for journo-malpractice.
And yes, obviously the air pollution numbers are crap, as are 95% of the numbers on smoking, particularly second hand smoke.
Nobody knows what causes asthma or even what triggers it. Nobody. Guy who tells you different is trying to pick your pocket.
Dizzy and TG, take a look at the admission rate for Hamilton Ontario before and after Stelco and Dofasco put in heavy duty air pollution controls 40 years ago, and lately have shut down completely.
Hint, it didn't go down.
Estimates are not -measurements-.
One needs to be careful about this issue. The London smog
of 1954 did in an estimated 4000 people (the estimate is from the 1950s and not distorted by
current politics). An Englishman I spoke to who lived in London at the time said that
some days were so bad that schoolchildren as he then was, didn't go to school.
Los Angeles had a big smog problem too. Every weather report that mentioned Los Angeles had a smog report.
Burt Rutan in his discussion of global warming says that when he was graduating
from college there was unwillingness to take well paying jobs in Los Angeles because of smog.
I remember Ottawa and Toronto in those years. Filthy.
As Burt Rutan says, that problem was solved. Patrick Moore, who founded
(and left) GreenPeace, says more or less the same.
A real problem, with real solutions found by real people, not by leftard flakes.
BTW the LHC is functional but is only slowly being
taken up to its design energy.
The lies told by Social Scientists, green freaks, are used to sustain unfair Taxation policy
Smoking increases health care Costs, Nonsense
If smoking morality rates are true; the elimination of Smoking would increase the life expectancy of every individual in society.. This will increase the total Health Care Costs over an increased life expectancy. Death is cheaper
(Diabetes: If we cure diabetes the increased life expectancy will likewise increase health care cost per individual}
Note: A quality of life issue (smoking) doesn't have the same taxation zing
oh for Pete's sake.From the time you pop out and take your first breath,you are dying,no matter where you live.No place is worse or better.If we cleaned up the leftards,I figure pollution would drop by 99%.
Two things make me want to automatically dismiss anything his critic says:
1) the claim that the science is effectively settled ("the wealth of evidence", "literally hundreds of studies"). Sounds like a familiar refrain, does it not?
2) "You can drown in a river that's only three feet deep, on average." Last I checked, you can drown in three inches of water. Besides that, averaging is how you identify trends, not by individual case studies, especially when you're dealing with variables that cannot be at a ll controlled (i.e., outside the lab).
Although I tend to believe that much of the hype about Canadian smog danger is over-amped by quacks, I invite anyone who thinks smog is no danger at all to spend a month walking the streets of Beijing without a face mask.
Reading the comments of the manager of the Toronto health department's environmental health office, it occurred to me that we'll virtually never get any specific statements from people in these types of jobs. The comments were sanitized by the City's lawyers before they were made and part of sanitizing is to make sure that no "Official Statement" can contradict the official position for fear of creating a lawsuit.
So, Ross McKitrick puts out a study that points out that the official model cannot replicate known data from 50 years ago (where have we seen that before?) and the City of Toronto can't do anything other than oppose him.
Am I paranoid or what?
The Phantom wrote --
// Dizzy and TG, take a look at the admission rate for Hamilton Ontario before and after //
Well McKitrick's use of "rate of hospitalization" leaves a lot of questions open. It isn't even an estimate.
Off topic, but I recall some cyclists ranting about having to wear helmets & how it was totally unnecessary, as proved by "hospital admission rates"
Except he put it this way --
"Statistics show relatively few emissions for cyclists between 91 & 95 ....."
Someone wrote back --
"Cyclists between 91 & 95 are lucky to have any emissions at all"
I agree with McKitrick as the levels of pollution in Canada are far less than they were 40 years ago yet asthma has increased. Where medical "scientists" go wrong is in their assumption of linear behavior of biologic systems. There is no question that London smog 50 years ago killed people but it is ludicrous to make the assumption that since, in London in 1950, the concentration of particulates was p and n people died then if the particulate concentration is p' then(p'/p)*n people will die.
This idiotic, non-biologically plausible thinking has given us the hysteria over radiation when the actual relationship between mortality and radiation exposure is U shaped with death rates going up when people are exposed to too little radiation. This U shaped relationship is a fairly general one and led to the concept of hormesis. Biologic systems, when they function properly, are nonlinear and chaotic; the only linear functioning one gets is in pathology and in the minds of semi-innumerate physicians who spent years grasping the concept y = ax + b
One plausible pollutant is aerosolized rubber from tires and this would only affect people with latex allergies. The sunscreen lobby is probably responsible for much of the asthma as low vitamin D levels affect immune response. Also, fanatically clean parents limit their children's exposure to allergens which is one of the theories of why highly polluted E. Germany had far lower asthma levels than the pristine environment of W. Germany.
Patients jump onto these junk-science pollution papers and I've had patients very angry at me because I won't sign their disability forms for their "pollution caused asthma" when they and the form come in reeking of tobacco smoke. The best comeback line I've had from a patient when I point this out was "It can't be the problem. It's organic tobacco"
The Environmental Emperor wears no clothes and McKitrick is one of the few authoritative people with the ethics and courage to say it.
Environmentalism=Socialism