By H. Maccabee, PhD, MD on SPPI

Amid the clamor about the threat of global warming from increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, there are several scientific voices with surprising contrary ideas. The evidence is now coming together that there are substantial health benefits from greenhouse gases and these benefits are great enough to reconsider the campaign to cut carbon emissions.

The new medical findings were triggered by claims of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) that increased temperatures would cause
increases in deaths from heat waves, and that public health needs are therefore a powerful argument for decreasing use of fossil fuels. In the US, the EPA
(Environmental Protection Administration) has a mandate to regulate any “pollutant” that harms health, under the Clean Air Act. The EPA therefore proposes to regulate CO2, and climate alarmists are hoping for EPA action, since “cap and trade” legislation failed in the US Senate.

Both the EPA and the IPCC evaluated the incidence of deaths from epidemiologic studies of mortality from heat waves, but basically ignored the effects of possible warming during winter months. For the past 15 years, however, evidence from the US, Europe and around the world is consistent with a decreased death rate of about 2% for every degree centigrade of warming. This effect dwarfs the minor temporary effect of heat waves. The rate of cold mortality from winter months is six to nine times greater than heat degree of warming is expected to be six to nine times the harm from heat waves.

The mechanism of the benefit of warming is ascribed to decreased viscosity (thinning) of the blood, decreases in blood pressure, and cardiac workload. There is also decreased inflammation, red cell counts, plasma cholesterol and fibrinogen, all of which reduce the chance of clotting in the blood vessels. This reduces the chance of myocardial infarction (heart attacks) due to coronary artery blockage, as well as the chance of strokes due to blockage of brain vessels, and pneumonia, with better circulation to the lungs.

Recent publications have accurately quantified this effect for myocardial infarctions, showed that older adults are more vulnerable to cold in this way, and that aspirin reduces vulnerability because it reduces clotting. In the British population, for example, there is no increase of myocardial infarction at higher temperatures in the summer.

The rate of heat deaths has been dropping in the US, largely due to air conditioning, which is especially prevalent in the warmer (Southern) states. The benefit of greenhouse gases may be even greater than the effect of increasing average temperatures. The mechanism of “greenhouse warming” is that gases such as CO2 and H2O block and absorb the outgoing radiant energy from the earth to space at night, resulting in warmer nighttime temperatures. There is very little greenhouse warming in the day, because the incoming solar radiation is much more energetic (shorter wave length) and is not stopped by greenhouse gases, except for the cooling effect of water vapor in clouds. Thus there is moderation of the cooling at night which seems to trigger the vascular events.

Two publications in the past year have quantified this, showing that the rate of heart attacks varies with the “diurnal temperature range” i.e., the less cooling at night, the fewer infarctions. The result of this is a significant prevention of mortality and morbidity (i.e. death and illness). For example, two 2C of warming would be expected to postpone more than 100,000 deaths per year in the US. For comparison, this is the total of deaths annually from breast cancer, prostate cancer and auto accidents combined. The benefit for increased life expectancy would be proportionately greater, because premature heart attacks and strokes often take people in their fifties and sixties, who otherwise would have many more years of life.

The nature and extent of these benefits are a major reason to reconsider the attempt to decrease carbon dioxide emission. The mandate of the Clean Air Act is to improve human health. The EPA should not regulate greenhouse gases. Read more here.

By Paul Chesser, American Spectator

It looks like Sony and Kyocera Mita have demanded their removal from all associations with the extremist climate group 10:10.org, which produced that exploding schoolchildren video last week. The corporations’ names have been removed from the list of partners, and a lengthy post by Sony’s point-person on climate change, Naomi Climer, has been deleted from the 10:10 site.

Not only that, but a huge U.S. environmentalist promoter and partner, 350.org (headed by Bill McKibben), is no longer listed as an organizational partner. Both 10:10 and 350 have been heavily promoting an October 10 (10/10/10) “global workday” to supposedly bring fresh attention to the global warming threat. The message from 350.org’s press shop:

We respect 10:10’s previous work to encourage companies, schools, and churches to voluntarily cut their carbon emissions 10%. Upon seeing the video, however, we have informed 10:10 that we can no longer remain partners on 10/10/10 or any other initiative. 350.org maintains an absolute commitment to nonviolence in word and deed.

After Friday’s weak apology, 10:10 U.K. director Eugenie Harvey issued this statement today, clearly stung by the global outrage:

We also issued a statement apologising but there has subsequently been quite a lot of negative comment, particularly on blogs, and understandable concern from others working hard to build support for action on climate change.

We are also sorry to our corporate sponsors, delivery partners and board members, who have been implicated in this situation despite having no involvement in the film’s production or release.

I am very sorry for our mistake and want to reassure you that we will do everything in our power to ensure it does not happen again.

10:10 is a young and creative team but we will learn lessons from this. We are going to investigate what happened, review our processes and procedures, and share the results with our partners.  Responsibility for this process is being taken by the 10:10 board of directors.

Being “young and creative” is a bunch of garbage and another lame excuse. Gillian Anderson, whose CGI-generated guts were splattered in the film, is neither young nor creative, yet she went along with the program. Dozens if not hundreds of others were involved in the creation of the video and you can’t tell me they all were “young and creative.” They were just committed to the message. As Iowahawk wrote:

In order for your “No Pressure” advert to have been made, I am assuming several writers pitched a professionally-prepared storyboard to a committee, detailing shot-by-shot each second of the film. The committee approved it, along with a minimum $250,000 budget to hire actors, director, & crew. Each scene probably took 3-10 takes, and weeks of post production by special effects wizards.

At no time did a single person involved in this (expletive) say, “hey, maybe it isn’t the best PR to air our fantasies about detonating the people who don’t agree with us into a mist of blood meat and bone fragments.”

At his site Iowahawk imagines how the video plans came together, which sounds pretty plausible.

See post here.

By Rosalind Helderman, Washington Post

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has sent a new civil subpoena to the University of Virginia, renewing a demand for documents related to a work of a former university climate scientist that was stymied when a judge blocked his previous request in August.

The new Civil Investigative Demand revives a contentious fight between Cuccinelli and the university over documents related to the work of Michael Mann, a prominent climate scientist whose research concluded that the earth has experienced a rapid, recent warming. Mann worked at U-Va. until 2005; he is now employed by Penn State University.

In the demand sent to the university last week, Cuccinelli once again asked that the school turn over all e-mails exchanged between former university professor Michael Mann and 39 other scientists as well as between Mann and his secretaries and research associates.

An Albemarle County judge had quashed a previous demand from Cuccinelli at the request of the university, ruling that Cuccinelli had not properly explained his rationale for believing fraud may have been committed. He also ruled that Cuccinelli had no right to documents about grants conducted using federal instead of state dollars.

In response, Cuccinelli has limited his demand to the e-mails and documents related to one state grant Mann received. The attorney general dropped requests for paperwork related to four other federal grants. But he expanded a section explaining why he sought the records, laying out in writing that he seeks the documents because Mann wrote two papers on global warming that “have come under significant criticism” and that Mann “knew or should have known contained false information, unsubstantiated claims and/or were otherwise misleading.”

“Specifically, but without limitation, some of the conclusions of the papers demonstrate a complete lack of rigor regarding the statistical analysis of the alleged data, meaning that the result reported lacked statistical significance without a specific statement to that effect,” the CID alleges.

And late last week, he filed a notice with the court that he plans to appeal the judge’s ruling, a clerk with the circuit court confirmed.

The CID gives the university until Oct. 29 to comply, leaving the school’s Board of Visitors with a few weeks to decide whether to cooperate or to once again resist. Faculty at the school and academics across the country will likely push for a return to court, arguing that acceding to Cuccinelli’s inquiry would have a chilling affect on academic freedom and unpopular research.

Mann said with Cuccinelli’s narrowing of his request, he has now limited the request to documents related to a grant that funded research unrelated to climate change.

“I find it extremely disturbing that Mr. Cuccinelli has sought to continue to abuse his power as the attorney general of Virginia in this way, in the process smearing the University of Virginia and me and other climate scientists,” Mann said. “The people of Virginia need to be extremely disturbed that he is using their tax dollars to pursue this partisan witch hunt.”

Mann has long been targeted by those who, like Cuccinelli, do not believe that the science behind global warming is sound. Some of his methodologies have been criticized by other scientists, but an inquiry by Pennsylvania State University concluded that there was no evidence that Mann engaged in efforts to falsify or suppress data and his research conclusions have been affirmed by others in the field.

We’ve reached out to the university for a response and we also expect comment from the attorney general’s office soon. See post here.