Year 4, Month 1, Day 12: ‘Twas In Another Lifetime, One Of Toil And Blood

A doctor dude named Howard Frumkin waxes shrill on the pages of the Seattle Times, discussing the large-scale health impacts of climate change:

HERE’S a riddle: What do the Oklahoma dust bowl, smoke in Wenatchee, mold on Long Island and Washington’s oyster industry have in common?

And why would a doctor, like me, care?

The common link is climate change. We must act now to stop it.

Ken Burns’s PBS documentary, “The Dust Bowl,” recounts how reckless land management, combined with severe heat waves and drought during the 1930s, triggered a catastrophe — loss of soil, destruction of farms, displacement of people.

Record-breaking wildfires dominated the news last summer. Vast tracts of forest and grassland in central Washington and across the west were destroyed. People breathed higher levels of smoke than on the most polluted days in Beijing or Mexico City.

“Rockaway cough,” not to mention rashes, asthma, injuries and carbon-monoxide poisoning, are filling the emergency departments and relief centers of Long Island and New Jersey, as the victims of Superstorm Sandy endure numerous hazardous exposures in their efforts to clean up and rebuild.

The guy is obviously a supporter of the Kenyan usurper, so we should discount everything he says. Sent January 7:

Dr. Howard Frumkin’s column is a crucial reminder of what the climate crisis portends for our future. That this includes a diverse array of public-health impacts is undeniable to any who can examine the evidence without first donning the distorting lenses of anti-science conservatism. Unfortunately, the Republican climate-denial mechanism is well-funded (thanks to the generosity of the oil and coal industries) and well-promoted (thanks to a complaisant media which values irrelevant controversy over facts and expertise).

A physician like Dr. Frumkin will recognize this behavior. Just as a patient may vehemently reject a frightening diagnosis, the GOP’s blustery avoidance of an inconvenient reality is merely a childlike form of magical thinking. But climate-change denial is no match for the obdurate, implacable laws of physics; the sooner conservatives realize this, the more chance we have of rising to meet the challenges of the coming centuries.

Warren Senders