President Obama Plays the Asthma Card
Marlo Lewis
“President Obama says that climate change became a personal issue for him when his older daughter Malia, now 16, was rushed to the emergency room with an asthma attack when she was just a toddler,” ABC News reports.
The President explained in a one-on-one interview with ABC News health editor, Dr. Richard Besser: “Well you know Malia had asthma when she was 4 and because we had good health insurance, we were able to knock it out early… And if we can make sure that our responses to the environment are reducing those incidents, that’s something that I think every parent would wish for...”
Is there any sillier justification for pricing low-income families out of affordable power, or for EPA to seize control of State electricity markets, than the one the President just gave?
Carbon dioxide, the substance targeted by EPA’s Clean Power Plan, is not a lung irritant and does not contribute to respiratory problems. At most, the CPP would reduce atmospheric CO2 concentrations a few parts per million by century’s end. What biological difference could that make to children, when their exhaled breath contains about 40,000 parts CO2 per million?
Obama argues that CO2 emissions cause global warming, which in turn increases ozone smog, which then causes asthma. But how can that be so when, despite global warming, smog-forming emissions and ozone levels have declined, decade-by-decade, since the 1970s? Besides, asthma-related hospital admissions are lower in summer than in winter, and childhood asthma rates have gone up as smog levels have gone down. Those facts indicate that air quality is an increasingly unimportant factor in childhood asthma.
Obama plays the asthma card because, as explained in a secret strategy memo, obtained via FOIA by my colleague Chris Horner, the public won’t care about climate change unless it is repackaged as a threat to children’s health.
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Global warming didn’t give Malia asthma
James S. Robbins USATODAY
President’s smoking more likely to cause daughter’s health problem than climate change.
President Obama blames global warming for his daughter’s asthma. Today that’s politically useful spin, but the science says something different. If you’re looking for a culprit, it just might be Malia’s dad.
In an interview Wednesday, in support of a new White House climate change awareness campaign, the president noted that his 16-year-old daughter had asthma when she was 4. He said that as a father, when your child says she has trouble breathing, “the fright you feel is terrible.” Fortunately, doctors were able to treat Malia’s condition quickly.
The president connected his daughter’s malady to global climate change. In a discussion Tuesday, he said “all of our families are going to be vulnerable” to global warming-induced health risks because “you can’t cordon yourself off from air or from climate.”
A White House fact sheet connected the dots, saying that asthma rates have more than doubled in the past 30 years, and that “climate change is putting these individuals and many other vulnerable populations at greater risk of landing in the hospital” like Malia.
The good news is that there is less reason for alarm than the White House suggests. The Environmental Protection Agency cautions that “outdoor air pollution and pollen may also worsen chronic respiratory diseases, such as asthma.” Yet the EPA also reports that our air quality has substantially improved; aggregate emissions of common pollutants have decreased 62% between 1980 and 2013. It is unlikely that cleaner air is causing the increase in asthma.
Enlarged
Source: EPA
Whether there is a link between asthma and global warming, Malia herself hasn’t really experienced much. The high school junior was born in 1998, when temperatures spiked. By some measurements, the world hasn’t warmed significantly since then.
Which brings us back to her father and his Marlboros. The president, who quit smoking years ago, has long kept his tobacco use out of doors. That’s a common-sense tactic for folks who have trouble quitting. But sometimes, science can show that common sense has less sense than you think.
Research funded by the National Institutes of Health has shown that smoking outside doesn’t totally protect children from secondhand smoke. Even when smoking is done outside, nicotine in infants’ hair is five times higher for babies with outside smoking parents than non-smoking parents. Smoking-related chemicals in infants’ urine is seven times higher. Other studies have found similar results.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “tobacco smoke is one of the most common asthma triggers,” and “if you have asthma, it’s important that you avoid exposure to secondhand smoke.”
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Still organizations I once supported (I had asthma as my father smoked cigars) like the American Lung Associations allowed themselves to be infiltrated by the EPA (one of the board members) and benefiting from a $20M grant, they were willing to do unsupportable ads like the baby carriage in front of congress to appeal to emotions and support the EPA’s regulatory war on the economy,
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Victory as WV School Board allows students to debate global warming
April 9, 2015 by CFACT Ed
The West Virginia Board of Education voted yesterday to put an end to months of controversy and open up teaching standards to permit students to consider both sides in the climate debate.
The Board voted 6-2 in favor of amending the standards to, as the Charleston Daily Mail reports, “allow students to use scientific models to form their own conclusions on the debated topic.”
“Supporters of the changes, including board members Wade Linger and Tom Campbell, argued that ‘science is never settled’ and that debate will lead students into a deeper understanding of the issue,” the paper added.
The vote represents a significant victory for student rights and for science. The scientific method demands consideration of all data, without regard for the impact this may have on a cherished theory. Open minds and free debate are essential to science and climate science is no exception.
When the Board voted in December to amend teaching standards to allow students to consider both sides in the climate debate, global warming pressure groups were apoplectic.
They ridiculed the Board and demanded it drop its revised standards and ban facts which question the man-made global warming narrative from the classroom.
CFACT Executive Director Craig Rucker, Marc Morano, who edits CFACT’s Climate Depot news and information service and a contingent of students from CFACT Collegians chapters at the University of West Virginia and Marshall University testified before the Board, which voted in January to temporarily pull back the amended standards and further consider the matter.
CFACT also asked readers to submit comments to the Board and large numbers did. Sources close to the West Virginia Board report that CFACT readers submitted thoughtful and persuasive comments that made a significant impact on the proceedings.
The original standards forced students to only consider “rises” in temperature. The amended standards substitute “changes” and permits students to consider “natural forces” as well as human activity when they study the climate.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change would do the world a lot of good if it adopts similar standards.
Thanks to everyone who emailed their comment to the Board. Your voices were heard. Well done!
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Here’s the comment CFACT sent in
Subject line:
Protect students’ rights to all the facts about the climate
Email:
The Board of Education should ensure that its science standards permit students to examine and learn from all the data and analysis about global warming.
Must students be made ignorant of scientific data which shows that over the last 18 years climate computer models have consistently projected a warmer world than scientific observations record? Global warming has not occurred as projected during the entire lifetime of today’s school children.
Should the actual recorded data of world temperature, sea levels, storms, droughts, floods and all the rest be banned from our classrooms? Is comparing this data to the pronouncements of highly funded global warming pressure groups heresy?
Claims of an overwhelming scientific global warming consensus have been repeatedly and thoroughly debunked.
The discussion is far from over. The true mind of science remains open to new data and alternative explanations. Whether and how much of the approximately 1/2 degree C of warming which occurred in the latter half of the 20th century is due to human industry has not been conclusively established. Neither have any of the incredibly expensive “solutions” proposed to address any global warming been shown to be meaningfully effective or worth their tremendous cost.
The Board owes every child an open-minded education free of indoctrination.
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Alarmists, greens, the administration, the minority party and the compliant media all with their heads up their a.., would prefer to see the public and young people kept in the dark with their heads…
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P. J. O’Rourke said it best:
“There’s not a goddamn thing you can do about it. Maybe climate change is a threat, and maybe climate change has been tarted up by climatologists trolling for research grant cash. It doesn’t matter. There are 1.3 billion people in China, and they all want a Buick. Actually, if you go more than a mile or two outside China’s big cities, the wants are more basic. People want a hot plate and a piece of methane-emitting cow to cook on it. They want a carbon-belching moped, and some CO2-disgorging heat in their houses in the winter. And air-conditioning wouldn’t be considered an imposition, if you’ve ever been to China in the summer.
“Now I want you to dress yourself in sturdy clothing and arm yourself however you like - a stiff shot of gin would be my recommendation - and I want you to go tell 1.3 billion Chinese they can never have a Buick.
“Then, assuming the Sierra Club helicopter has rescued you in time, I want you to go tell a billion people in India the same thing.”
My advise is to stop wasting time on stuff you can’t change and focus your efforts on the real climate change - “let’s work on making our culture less toxic and harmful to children and families.”
Thanks to FiddlingAnt.blogspot for this.