Sunday, July 06, 2008

Of course

Brian Schmidt has recently seen a copy of the Heartland Institute's "Environment & Climate News". As he says

It's a 20-page tabloid-sized publication that resembles a news-packed summary of everything climate-related. Someone's paying them good money to write and produce it.
and sure enough, somewhere in the middle is a claim that environmental tobacco smoke is harmless, published by a heart doc, one Jerome C Arnett. Brian started by pointing out that
It's well documented that tobacco companies are promoting climate change denialism and then latching on to the distrust of science they've created to assist their own denial of the link between second-hand smoke and cancer
but innocent that he is Brian finishes with
Anyway, I didn't expect to see the tobacco-climate connection be so blatant
Brian, Brian, Brian, didn't you see JPANDS, the denialists second famous journal, on the Google search for this guy? Jerry is an all arounder, tobacco denial, ddt denial, climate change denial. As Eli pointed out many moons ago, its a very thin bench at denial central. The least they could do is bring on new moles to whack.

52 comments:

Anonymous said...

It may be a very thin bench, but it sure carries a lot of weight (fat asses)

And you probably thought denialists were the only ones who could play the "fat card".

Anonymous said...

Environment and Climate News has been online on Heartland's web site for, well, a long time.

Even as a "tabloid" it's an abject failure. There are some comic moments now and then, but most of the time it's boring as heck.

-- bi, International Journal of Inactivism

Anonymous said...

MarkeyMouse says: Obviously you have the electron microscope photo of tobacco derived in vitro carcinogen causing cancerous growth?

Please don't say there isn't one, as was the case for the HIV.

Anonymous said...

If the merger goes to completion, the coal/tobacco people could paint all the smoke stacks to look like cigarettes. Isn't it bizarre that the tobacco people's product has killed so many people--and they are still getting away with it?

EliRabett said...

Marky dear you never made an offer to pay for the information which is easily available.

John Mashey said...

re: Cigarettes & bizarre
Recommended: Harvard Prof's fine hisotry "Cigarette Century".

Also: http://www.tobaccoarchives.com/

Ity's still bzarre, but at least these explain how it happened.

Also, if you haven't seen it:
Google: twista lime

[Candy-flavored tobacco, one of various Camel brands.]

To really *set* nicotine addiction, it's best to get kids early, say in the 12-18 age range, when brains are developing fastest. oddly, tobacco companies knew this long before the research came out to really prove it...

Anonymous said...

Eli, I don't know about you, but I think I can accept payment in the form of electron microscope photos of hammer-and-sickle mitochondria.

And MarkeyMouse should really go see a doctor, perhaps with a tinfoil hat on. But I repeat myself.

-- bi, International Journal of Inactivism

Anonymous said...

MarkeyMouse says: Regarding Lung Cancer...."Tobacco smoke is a known human carcinogen that primarily produces malignant lesions in the respiratory tract, although it also affects multiple other sites. A reliable and practical animal model of tobacco smoke-induced lung cancer would be helpful for in studies of product modification and chemoprevention. Over the years, many attempts to reproduce lung cancer in experimental animals exposed to tobacco smoke have been made, most often with negative or only marginally positive results. In hamsters, malignant lesions have been produced in the larynx, but not in the deeper lung. Female rats and female B6C3F1 mice, when exposed over lifetime to tobacco smoke, develop tumors in the nasal passages and also in the lung. Contrary to what is seen in human lung cancers, most rodent tumors are located peripherally and only about half of them show frank malignant features. Distant metastases are extremely rare. Male and female strain A mice exposed to 5 months to tobacco smoke and then kept for another 4 months in air respond to tobacco smoke with increased lung tumor multiplicities. However, the increase over background levels is comparatively small, making it difficult to detect significant differences when the effects of chemopreventive agents are evaluated. On the other hand, biomarkers of exposure and of effect as well as evaluation of putative carcinogenic mechanisms in rats and mice exposed to tobacco smoke allow detection of early events and their modification by different smoke types or chemopreventive agents. The challenge will be to make such data broadly acceptable and accepted in lieu of having to do more and more long term studies involving larger and larger number of animals."

Well the scientists are still looking. If you have photos, I should let them know."

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a780906617~db=all

Eli. Regarding the HIV pic. You can't produce one because the virus has never been isolated.

You must start to question eveything!

Anonymous said...

MarkeyMouse,

When you start to question your own paranoid hammer-and-sickle theories, then we can talk.

Until then, feel free to wear your tinfoil hat.

-- bi, International Journal of Inactivism

Anonymous said...

Well, as so often with this blog, this is a post that is simply incomprehensible. It consists of remarks that probably are a series of in-jokes, perfectly understandable to club members, but baffling to the rest of us.

Is it saying (and this may well be very wide of the mark given the opacity of the post) that there is substantial overlap between those who deny global warming and those who deny the smoking-cancer link? That the leading figures on the sceptical side are the same in both discussions? This does not seem to be true.

Or maybe it is just saying that the debating tactics used by debaters who are sceptical are the same? This might be true, but so what? Sceptics will tend to use the same debating tactics.

Or is it maybe saying that both scepticisms are equally irrational? This is obviously wrong if that is what is being said, but right or wrong, it needs a lot more proof than a simple assertion. And at the end of the day, who cares? What interests us is the case for AGW. Never mind is it better, worse, or the same as some other cases. Is it a decent case is all we need to get to. We can do the comparisons for ourselves. Its like the idiocy of worrying about whether MBH is or is not similar to Piltdown. That is the least important thing about it.

It would really help if you could just say whatever it is you mean without trying to be so very clever and allusive about it all.

Anon 1117

Anonymous said...

ANAON 1117, you wrote: "Well, as so often with this blog, this is a post that is simply incomprehensible."---Anon, I live in a world where human lives (and all the rest, dear treehuggers) are worth a waggling whisker more than the bottom line at Ligget & Myers, or Peabody Power. Incomprehensible? Mirror Time. (that has to hurt)

EliRabett said...

Tell you what, see that little box up at the top with the word SEARCH next to it. Enter "tobacco archive" (w/o the quotes)and read what pops up.

Jim Eager said...

EliRabett said... "Enter "tobacco archive" (w/o the quotes)and read what pops up."

Or to put it a little more directly, we know some of them are the exact same people because their invoices are now part of the public record.

Anonymous said...

Let me guess. The next inactivist argument after the above will be this:

The Alarmists Are Just As Bad... The Alarmists Are Just As Bad... The Alarmists Are Just As Bad... Om... Om... Om...

Who cares what the High Respectable Inactionosphere has done? The Alarmists Are Just As Bad, so it's OK.

-- bi, International Journal of Inactivism

Anonymous said...

OK, I did enter tobacco archive, and this is what popped up:

There are no posts in English with some authority containing tobacco archive from http://rabett.blogspot.com

Is this some sort of complicated in-joke at my expense?

I don't get it. We know that smoking causes lung cancer and heart disease. Wasn't it Richard Doll who showed that back in the early fifties? What does that have to do with global warming?

Anon 1117

Anonymous said...

Eli's trying to play guilt by association.

EliRabett said...

There is a search box associated with Rabett Run. It is in the upper left hand corner of the blue stripe at the top of the blog. Eli will save you the trouble. Click on this link

EliRabett said...

If you want to see guilt by association see Exxon Secrets.

Anonymous said...

MarkeyMouse says: Where it all started. KGB Lawyer and Founding President of Green Cross Mikhail Gorbachev (Commie)

"In January 1989, when addressing the Global Forum for Survival of Humanity, President Mikhail Gorbachev brought up the idea for an organization that would apply the medical emergency response model of the International Committee of the Red Cross to ecological issues and expedite solutions to environmental problems that transcend national boundaries.


Developing this idea, delegates at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro (June 1992), approached Mikhail Gorbachev (the former President of the USSR) mandating him to create and launch this organisation. At the same time Swiss National Council MP, Roland Wiederkehr founded a ‘World Green Cross' with the same objective. Both organisations merged in 1993 to form Green Cross International.


Green Cross International (GCI) was formally launched in Kyoto, on the 18th April 1993. Upon the invitation of Mikhail Gorbachev, many renowned figures joined its
Board of Directors and The Honorary Board."

http://gci.ch/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6&Itemid=6

KGB looked for useful idiots, and found them.

Anonymous said...

Eli's trying to play guilt by association.

At least he's not trying to play ignorant, like the Tobacco companies did (quite successfully) for several decades.

it's really no deep secret that some of the very same people who were involved in downplaying the dangers of tobacco are now doing the same with global warming.

It is also no secret that (quite unlike Eli) some of them get PAID for their efforts.

Claiming "ignorance" in this case just make a person look dishonest -- in addition to making them look dumb.

Anonymous said...

More on Milloy

Quite a fine upstanding fellow.

Dano said...

In the dim past, I'd have the opportunity to read that "publication".

Several years ago I did a bike tour in remote Northern CA where we stayed the first night at an airfield, and they had a number of back issues of ECN. I wished I had taken an issue, as it was so full of BS and FUD that it would have been fun to deconstruct it.

Best,

D

Anonymous said...

MarkeyMouse says: There really are a lot of sheeple about. Where is the exact description of the exact mechanism by which smoking tobacco is alleged to cause lung cancer? I see Rabett didn't answer either of the previous challenges on HIV and Lung Cancer. Can a Rabett be Chicken as well?

Anonymous said...

MarkeyMouse,

"Where it all started. KGB Lawyer and Founding President of Green Cross Mikhail Gorbachev (Commie)"

You, Sir, are an idiot.

Until you're ready to truly "question everything" instead of questioning only things you don't already believe in -- until then -- you can continue wearing your tinfoil hat.

-- bi, International Journal of Inactivism

Anonymous said...

Malarkey Mouse once again shows his ignorance.

"Cigarette smoke carcinogens such as benzo[a]pyrene are implicated in the development of lung cancer. The distribution of benzo[a]pyrene diol epoxide (BPDE) adducts along exons of the P53 gene in BPDE-treated HeLa cells and bronchial epithelial cells was mapped at nucleotide resolution. Strong and selective adduct formation occurred at guanine positions in codons 157, 248, and 273. These same positions are the major mutational hotspots in human lung cancers. Thus, targeted adduct formation rather than phenotypic selection appears to shape the P53 mutational spectrum in lung cancer. These results provide a direct etiological link between a defined chemical carcinogen and human cancer."

Science 18 October 1996:
Vol. 274. no. 5286, pp. 430 - 432

Can be accessed at:

http://preview.tinyurl.com/566nxq

Anonymous said...

here really are a lot of sheeple about. Where is the exact description of the exact mechanism by which smoking tobacco is alleged to cause lung cancer?


Even if there were "no exact description of the exact mechanism by which smoking tobacco is alleged [sic] to cause lung cancer", that would not mean that smoking does not cause lung cancer.

Ever heard of "epidemiology" Malarkey?

I'm sure you probably don't like probabilistic arguments, but if you deny that probability can tell us anything useful (or with any certainty), then you deny your very existence because all of quantum mechanics (and hence everything that governs atoms and chemical bonding) is governed by probability.

Anonymous said...

OK, I see that a bunch of people I never heard of before have published in defence of tobacco, probably in many cases with funding from tobacco companies, denying the connection between smoking and lung cancer. They seem to have published material sceptical of AGW as well. Thanks for pointing me to it, will have to read it to decide if its any good. One of these days.

We have to conclude they are not very credible, but who cares if we had never heard of them before anyway?

Or are we saying there are no intellectually respectable AGW sceptics? If we are saying that, its a different matter, and I flat out do not believe it. Or are we saying that the main source of AGW scepticism is oil or tobacco companies? I don't believe that either.

I still figure its an awful lot simpler to just say clearly whatever the hell it is you mean, rather than all these fancy allusions and links and making the reader try to decipher something that may not even be there anyway. But I guess that's academics for you.

Anonymous said...

"Or are we saying there are no intellectually respectable AGW sceptics? If we are saying that, its a different matter, and I flat out do not believe it."

End of discussion. Anonymous "flat out" does not "believe" it. End of discussion.

-- bi, International Journal of Inactivism

Anonymous said...

"I flat out do not believe it."

Seems to me that's the "Flat Earther's" mantra too.

Anonymous said...

Anon, you wrote: Or are we saying there are no intellectually respectable AGW sceptics?

Reply: got it in one. (I feel a need to qualify this in some way, out of fairness, but I can't figure out how)

Anonymous said...

MarkeyMouse says: Forrester, don't you think it strange that they were still looking for the cause of lung cancer in 1996, 40 years after the supposed discovery of the link to smoking through statistical analysis?

Secondly, the paper you provide says a substance is "implicated" because it is found at the site of cancers. This is like saying a person is guilty if found at the scene of the crime. It is not in any way proof of the cause of cancer.

Proof would be to take a substance, add it to living tissue, and produce a cancer. Bet you can't find one.

Anonymous said...

One day MarkeyMouse should try to add a stem cell from Mikhail Gorbachev to himself, and then see whether he starts to "believe" in global warming as a result. It's the same standard of proof, right?

Or he can just go on wearing his tinfoil hat.

-- bi, International Journal of Inactivism

Anonymous said...

Sadly, no, he can't.

http://www.google.com/search?q=tin+foil+hat+MIT

Anonymous said...

Hank Roberts,

Those filthy librul MIT elitists are just trying to stop good Americans from protecting themselves with tinfoil hats. I'm sure if you connect the dots, you'll find that the MIT elitists are linked to various Soviet puppetmasters with names ending in "-ov", "-ev", "-in", and "-ski". Bwahahahahahaha.

(MarkeyMouse should really just go see a doctor.)

-- bi, International Journal of Inactivism

Anonymous said...

Malarkey Mouse keeps on showing he is ignorant of just about everything to do with medical science.

There are hundreds of papers showing carcinogens producing cancer in living tissues (that is why they are called carcinogens). There are also numerous examples of carcinogens causing human cancers. Check out scrotal cancer in young chimney sweeps, the incidence of cancers in workers producing dimethylaminoazobenzene (butter yellow), lung cancers in asbestos workers and coal miners. The list goes on and on.

You are one very ignorant person or are a stupid supporter of the very industries which are causing cancer in the human population.

Get a life.

Anonymous said...

forrester. They were still looking for proof in 1996.

We are talking about proof that tobacco smoking causes lung cancer.

Got any?

Anonymous said...

Malarkey Mouse is as ignorant as ever.

The only way to get the "proof" you seem to want is to take 50 cretins like you, split them into two groups, subject one group to live in a constant stream of tobacco smoke for ten years or more then count the cancers in that group and compare them to the group who got to breathe in fresh sea air for the same length of time.

Unless you can get another 49 idiots like you (since they "know" that their health won't be compromised) you will never get the "proof" you so stupidly think is necessary.

As for other animals, there are lots of papers showing that constituents in tobacco smoke cause cancers (real cancers Mousey), aren't you lucky you weren't picked for life as a lab mouse?

As I said earlier, get a life.

Anonymous said...

Now "question everything", my mate;
But "know" that greenies freedom hate,
That Gorbachev's a commie chief,
Who wants the US as his fief;

So ready up your tinfoil hats,
And feed your doubts all to the rats --
For questions are for th' other side;
Our Truths are perfect, minds are wide...

MarkeyMouse, go see a doctor. Really.

-- bi, International Journal of Inactivism

Anonymous said...

forrester. There is no published paper that shows animals got lung cancer from smoking. Show me one?

Anonymous said...

Writing in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, Joshua Wolf and Robert Salo of our Royal Children's Hospital say this delusion was a "previously unreported phenomenon".

"A 17-year-old man was referred to the inpatient psychiatric unit at Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne with an eight-month history of depressed mood . . . He also . . . had visions of apocalyptic events."

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23991257-25717,00.html

Anonymous said...

Now "question everything", my mate...
Except when I say, "Shut up, Nate!"
For peer review means squat to me,
While pundits know the Truth that Be...

So ready up your tinfoil hats,
And feed your doubts all to the rats --
For questions are for th' other side;
Our Truths are perfect, minds are wide...

-- bi, International Journal of Inactivism

Anonymous said...

Speaking of apocalyptic events, how's the Great Armageddon against the Phantom Soviet Empire going, MarkeyMouse?

Do you need bigger and better tinfoil hats?

-- bi, International Journal of Inactivism

Anonymous said...

Malarkey Mouse said: "There is no published paper that shows animals got lung cancer from smoking".

Why do you keep on showing us how stupid you are? If you really were interested in finding such papers I would direct you to them. However, I don't think that is what you are about.

You are a sad, sad person who seems to have let any understanding of science pass them by.

For your information there are lots of papers describing the induction of lung cancer in animals through simulated smoking.

Libraries are full of books and journals which are full of scientific information. I suggest that you pay a visit to your local library before making even a bigger fool of yourself.

You are a poor example of humanity with the rubbish you post here and I assume elsewhere.

Get a life.

Anonymous said...

MarkeyMouse quotes: "In spite of extensive studies, pathogenic pathways to lung cancer in both smokers and never-smokers remain poorly understood."

Neoplasia. 2006 January; 8(1): 46–51.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1584289

See the Climate Alarmists, same as the Cancer Fraudsters are relying on you not being able to understand simple English.

Doesn't it shock you that all that money has been spent trying to find a cure for lung cancer, when they don'y even know what causes it,after 50 years, and Billions.

Anonymous said...

Now "question everything", my mate,
And play up cancer doubts to date;
Yet now when Gorbachev is spake,
Then, no room's there for doubt to make;

So ready up your tinfoil hats,
And feed your doubts all to the rats --
For questions are for th' other side;
Our Truths are perfect, minds are wide...

MarkeyMouse, instead of wasting time quote-mining, how about seeing a doctor?

-- bi, International Journal of Inactivism

Anonymous said...

And again MarkeyMouse, how's your Great Apocalyptic Armageddon against the Phantom Soviet Empire going, ? I thought you said apocalyptic visions are ridiculous?

Are you still getting your science from newspapers?

What's the exact cellular mechanism by which Gorbachev causes "belief" in global warming?

Do you still need a tinfoil hat?

-- bi, International Journal of Inactivism

Anonymous said...

Malarkey Mouse said: "See the Climate Alarmists, same as the Cancer Fraudsters are relying on you not being able to understand simple English.

Doesn't it shock you that all that money has been spent trying to find a cure for lung cancer, when they don'y even know what causes it,after 50 years, and Billions".

This man is so sick he should be banned. I have had relatives die from lung cancer (all were smokers). For anyone to suggest it is a fraud is despicable. Get rid of this moron.

Anonymous said...

MarkeyMouse says: forrester. Do you have a Peer reviewed paper that shows proof of the mechanism of alleged smoking caused lung cancer? Do your families Doctors? Does the CDC? If not, on what basis were your relatives told that smoking had caused their regrettable lung cancer?

By the way, a lot of my relatives smoke, and none of them died of lung cancer.

Anonymous said...

Why not identify yourself, you slimeball?

You are a pathetic and stupid low life.

Just because the molecular mechanism is not known in detail does not disprove that smoking causes lung cancer.

The molecular pathway between conception and birth is not known either, do you actually believe that sex is not the cause of a new born?

You are pathetic and should be banned.

Anonymous said...

Shorter MarkeyMouse: I'M GOD!!! PROVE ME WRONG!!! PROVE ME WRONG!!! PROVE ME WRONG!!! PROVE ME WRONG!!! PROVE ME WRONG!!! PROVE ME WRONG!!! PROVE ME WRONG!!! PROVE ME WRONG!!! PROVE ME WRONG!!! PROVE ME WRONG!!! PROVE ME WRONG!!! PROVE ME WRONG!!!

Anonymous said...

Now that I think of it, MarkeyMouse certainly is a very special sort of climate troll with a very unique troll personality -- he certainly deserves a place in the anals of climate history.

All climate trolls are equal, but some climate trolls are more equal than others.

-- bi, International Journal of Inactivism

EliRabett said...

and sometimes they work, and sometimes they don't. Addicition, it's special