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Bishop Hill Oct 27, 2011 Climate: WG2 Climate: WG3 I have a letter published on the BMJ's website in response to their call for action on climate change.
Climate change editorial was callous
Andrew W Montford, Author: The Hockey Stick Illusion
Sir
The timing of your call for action on climate change (Editorial, 19 October 2011) could hardly have been worse. Rather than dwelling on the theoretical dangers of climate change, you would perhaps have done better to note the BBC's report the same day that 2700 people die each year in the UK because of conditions linked to fuel poverty. For you to call for "governments to enact legislative and regulatory change to stop the building of new unabated coal-fired power stations" - actions that would undoubtedly increase the death toll still further -- therefore seems needlessly insensitive. For you to do so on the same day that the main pilot carbon capture and storage plant was scrapped, thus ending any realistic near-term hope of 'abated' coal-fired power stations, might been seen as somewhat callous.
Yours faithfully
Andrew Montford
Author: The Hockey Stick Illusion
Reader Comments (27)
Very polite as usual; I might have mentioned that they have zero knowledge on climate change and should stick to their own area of expertise.
You're too polite stephen richards. I might have mentioned that since "up to one million hospital patients [are] affected by medical negligence" already, perhaps the BMJ is planning to expand that business and harm more people out in the community too.
For example, by massively increasing their fuel poverty.
On their salaries, GP's do not have to worry about fuel poverty, so why should editorial staff at the BMJ?
As a medic, but not a member of the BMA, I can only roll my eyes upwards. Evidence based medicine is the craze today, with authoritative bodies such as NICE weighing the evidence.
Evidence based climate medicine?
Go back to out-outpatients!
stephen richards,
What are the areas of expertise necessary to be employed by the BMJ?
I'm still waiting for a response to my email to Dr Godlee.
Not that I'm seriously expecting one.
Doubt I'll get one from Eugene Robinson either. He's a Washington Post columnist (I delivered their papers as a kid) who calls us "clueless, anti-science Luddites" in a recent opinion piece about the BEST press release.
When you stop to think about it, many of the people who support policies to "stop global warming" are cut from the same cloth as those who pushed for the worldwide ban on DDT because of its "harmful impacts to the environment". Does anyone here belief people like this can be shamed into admitting they could be wrong. If millions of dead due to malaria since the 1960's don't bother their conscience, I don't know what will.
Perhaps, as they are apparently so expert in the provision of energy, they might like to suggest some practical alternative to the coal-fired power stations they so clearly despise?
timg56
The deaths of poor people are irrelevent to climatologists, unless they can be dubiously linked to man made global warming.
The death of a single polar bear is always statistically significant, however the survival of the seals it would have killed, is not.
Poor people are just the lab monkeys for these great re-builders of society. If a few die, shame but so what, just means more research (money) needed, for more experiments, which might indeed kill a few more lab monkeys but hey, we're building socialism here, right? The noble end always justifies the messy means..
I could have been very much more virilent than my comment would suggest, ask my friends. Alors, doctors are just feeling left out of the climate scam and thought that might gain some kudos by pronoucing on AGW? Sad really that they are so prepared to make themselves appear stupid for un sou.
Letters to the editor begin with "Sir".
How quaint!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callus#Treatment
:-)
Most erudite Your Grace.
To interpret for the neds; "BMJ? get it right up ye's!"
As that great humanist, Joseph Stalin, once noted, "The death of Ivan Ivanovich is a tragedy. The death of 10,000 is a statistic."
The death of 2700 is just a medical statistic. Now we have Post Modern Medicine to go with Post Modern Science, Economics and Statistics.
>Letters to the editor begin with "Sir".
It's a fair assumption. Not many females would be daft enough to get involved.
Another doc here not a member of the BMA. They are a bunch pf extreme pinkos.
There is a convention, enshrined in English Law, that the use of male pronouns implies either male or female gender, the use of singular pronouns implies either the singular or plural context. Unless, of course, the context clearly specifies otherwise.
It also comes into Quality Assurance documentation (I used to be a QA auditor in a previous working life).
Thus, as well as following English conventions, the use of "Sir" by the Bishop would be correct whether the Editor were male, female, or one of a number of members of a panel.
(Of course, a lot of people don't know this or, even if they do, choose to make a fuss about gender exclusion.)
The BMA are 'extreme pinkos'
ha ha
How many deaths per year in the UK are attributable to Global Warming or the increase in CO2. It must surely be a large number to outweigh the number of deaths from the cold or the Uk Government would not be diverting funds away from keeping people warm to fighting evil CO2
"The government is right — if the masses do not agree, it’s only because they don’t know what’s good for them. They are uninstructed. Even if they think they are happy, they are wrong, suffering from 'false consciousness'. That means they need re-education and forced labour. A certain number may die; things occasionally get out of hand.’ - Saloth Sar.
I don't mean to be rude by cutting you off right there but that already sounds quaint enough to me. It is not like I am going to ask you for the citation of the said English Laws and the conventions thereof!
I'll just take your word. An Englishman's word is his bond, right?
To clear things up, the gender element wasn't in my mind when I said that (C'mon! I am one of us, guys!) but it turns out that might be an issue, too.
Why begin a letter to a newspaper or journal editor with "Sir"?
We are not in the 19th Century anymore, dude.
"To the Editor" or "Dear Editor" is more than adequate, if you must address it to someone in particular.
I note that on the BMJ "Editor's Choice" web page less than half of the letters begin with "Sir" or "Dear Sir".
Other letters have done away with the formal preliminaries.
Correctly so, IMHO.
Sir:
You neglect climatologists' Principle of Definition, their Two Color Theorem which asserts that "everything is either Black or White because we say it is." Any fool can talk sense, but only those Piled High and Deep can comprehend nonsense in all its glory.
Very truly yours,
Cordelia Knutch
sHx
"To the Editor" or "Dear Editor"
- "Sir" much quicker and easier.
I think the BMJ should put its own house in order first. Doctors have an appalling track record for clinging to old ideas and dogma, aided and abetted by the pharmaceutical industry - witness the discovery of an infectious agent for stomach ulcers by Barry Marshall in the mid-80's, reversing decades of medical doctrine, and rendering useless (as it always had been) the then most-prescribed medication in the world, Zantac. It took until 2005 for Marshall to get his Nobel prize...
Scots Renewable,
I don't have a clue what the political leanings are of members of the BMJ and even if I did I would have to agree that name calling doesn't get us anywhere.
But when the editor of their journal makes the statement that climate change is a greater threat to human health than communicable and non-communicable disease, then I am almost forced to think she is looney-toon. For anyone associated with the medical profession to state that it is more important to direct our efforts and resources to preventing some theoritical harm that might occur to people at some point in the future than it is to use them to help real people who are suffering and dying right now is not only the sign of someone who places their political opinions ahead of the responsbilities of their profession, but one that borders on either idiotic or disgusting. Can you seriously defend such behaviour?
Maybe you should suggest that the BMJ try to export a core principle of medicine to climate change policy analysis. A medical practitioner, in proscribing a potentially harmful or painful course of treatment should have (as an absolute minimum) a reasonable expectation that the patient will be better off than without the treatment. That means they have a duty of care to achieve the best possible diagnosis (including the severity) and proscribe the most appropriate treatment in the optimal dosage.
Also they should commend the high standards of testing new drugs to both the science & policy as well. At a minimum, a new drug should have independent verification, with rigorous standards of testing. The techniques should be clearly documented along with the results. The testing is of both the beneficial impacts along with rigorous testing for any potential side effects.
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