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Secondhand Smoke, Lung Cancer, and the Global Warming Debate
The American Thinker ^ | December 19, 2010 | S. Fred Singer

Posted on 12/19/2010 1:42:54 AM PST by Scanian

In 1993, the EPA published a report claiming that secondhand smoke (SHS -- also sometimes known as environmental tobacco smoke or ETS) causes three thousand deaths from lung cancer every year. Anyone doubting this result has been subject to attack and depicted as a toady of the tobacco lobby. The attacks have been led by a smear blog called DeSmogBlog, financed by the Canadian PR firm of James Hoggan, and have been taken up with great enthusiasm by self-styled "science historian" Professor Naomi Oreskes.

The tobacco smoking issue has also become a favorite tool for discrediting climate skeptics. A prime example is the book Merchants of Doubt by Oreskes and Eric Conway, which attacks several well-known senior physicists, including the late Dr. Fred Seitz, a former president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Physical Society, and (most recently) Rockefeller University.

No matter what the environmental issue -- ozone depletion, acid rain, pesticides, etc. -- any and all scientific opposition based on objective facts is blamed on an imagined involvement with tobacco companies. None of this is true, of course. Oreskes and Conway claim to be academic historians, yet they have consistently ignored factual information, have not bothered to consult primary sources, have never interviewed any of the scientists they try to smear, and generally have operated in a completely unprofessional way.

Oreskes' and Conway's science is as poor as their historical expertise. To cite just one example, their book blames lung cancer from cigarette smoking on the radioactive oxygen-15 isotope. They cannot explain, of course, how O-15 gets into cigarettes, or how it is created. They seem to be unaware that its half-life is only 122 seconds. In other words, they have no clue about the science, and apparently, they assume that the burning of tobacco creates...

(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: badscience; desmogblog; drfredseitz; globalwarming; tobaccocompanies
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1 posted on 12/19/2010 1:43:05 AM PST by Scanian
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To: Scanian

If second hand smoke was so terrible I should have died 20 years ago. Both parents smoked and filled the house with a blue haze. I grew up with that and the only ill effects was a hate of smoking that caused me to never take up the habit.


2 posted on 12/19/2010 2:11:28 AM PST by Forward the Light Brigade (Into the Jaws of H*ll)
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To: Forward the Light Brigade

Same here.

I can’t stand the stuff yet I’ll defend anyone’s right to do it most anywhere they want other than places with obvious safety hazards, certain public buildings (schools, libraries), and private property where smoking privileges should be at the owner’s discretion.


3 posted on 12/19/2010 2:24:56 AM PST by Scanian
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To: Scanian

it is all part of the govt ‘ farming people ‘


4 posted on 12/19/2010 3:04:20 AM PST by SF_Redux (the scarier part about all these Marxists is, that a few of them can breed .. with the opposite sex)
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To: Scanian; meyer; Normandy; Whenifhow; TenthAmendmentChampion; Clive; scripter; Darnright; WL-law; ...
 


Beam me to Planet Gore !

5 posted on 12/19/2010 3:47:59 AM PST by steelyourfaith (ObamaCare Death Panels: a Final Solution to the looming Social Security crisis ?)
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To: Scanian

Think of the trillions wasted on the AGW and second hand smoke scam. Breath taking.


6 posted on 12/19/2010 4:54:57 AM PST by y6162
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To: Forward the Light Brigade
"second hand smoke"

Ditto. I had the same experience with both parents being heavy smokeers. I don't smoke, and I hate shs. However, if this latest scare were true, we would be seeing millions of people dropping over dead from heart attacks, because so many people smoked forty to fifty years ago. The ill effects of shs would be obvious. That isn't happening.

7 posted on 12/19/2010 4:55:48 AM PST by driftless2 (For long-term happiness, learn how to play the accordion.)
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To: y6162

Unfortunately, our waste of money on GW has only just begun, like the Coal powered Chevy Volt, CFL Lightbulbs, Ethanol subsidies for ADM,Big Awl,Cost of food. None of this will be reversed by the Shiftless, Pubbies. Credit where credit is due. The Pubbies have handled the lame duck uncharistically well.


8 posted on 12/19/2010 5:34:47 AM PST by barb-tex (What else did you expect from the likes of 0? BTW, What ever happened to Rhodesia?, Oh, yes, Zimbabw)
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To: barb-tex

“Credit where credit is due. The Pubbies have handled the lame duck uncharistically well.”

So far so good huh? I guess a big election victory gets the testosterone flowing. I hope they stop START.

I am more distressed by the witches of Eastwick more ever day. I hope the Tea Party gets them.


9 posted on 12/19/2010 5:44:07 AM PST by y6162
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To: Scanian
The left has always loved the label “science” but it has never accepted the idea of objective reality. “Science”, to the left, is simply a handy word to fool the public into backing their powerhungry schemes.
10 posted on 12/19/2010 5:55:29 AM PST by marktwain
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To: y6162
I hope the Tea Party Gets them

I've pretty much decided any contributions I give in the near future will be to the Tea Party folks opposing the Witches of Eastwick. Snowe gave us ObamaCare! Remember when she had the deciding vote on committee and it could have been killed right there? (Snow(e) Creates Slippery Slope). These women need to go. They have caused way too much HIGH PROFILE damage to conservative values. I'm putting my "meager" money where my mouth is, time to shovel out some Snowe! Time to put them in the Tea Party's cross hairs.

11 posted on 12/19/2010 6:53:16 AM PST by ThePatriotsFlag (You are just jealous because the voices aren't talking to YOU!)
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To: Scanian

Have we ever had a surgeon general that any sensible people would allow to treat them medically.

All I remember is a bunch of Kooks, including one appropriately named Kook.


12 posted on 12/19/2010 7:37:02 AM PST by altura
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To: Forward the Light Brigade

.
.
http://fumento.com/smoke/
.

Fumento blew the lid off the propaganda a long time ago


13 posted on 12/19/2010 8:55:44 AM PST by Para-Ord.45
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To: Scanian
Oreskes' and Conway's science is as poor as their historical expertise. To cite just one example, their book blames lung cancer from cigarette smoking on the radioactive oxygen-15 isotope. They cannot explain, of course, how O-15 gets into cigarettes, or how it is created. They seem to be unaware that its half-life is only 122 seconds. In other words, they have no clue about the science, and apparently, they assume that the burning of tobacco creates isotopes -- a remarkable discovery worthy of alchemists. As an aside, when not engaged in smearing scientists by linking them to the tobacco lobby, Oreskes' and Conway's book claims that opposition to environmental regulation of greenhouse gases and other "pollutants" is based on anti-communism!

LOL! Well watermelons, if the shoes fit, wear them!

14 posted on 12/19/2010 2:24:51 PM PST by neverdem (Xin loi minh oi)
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To: driftless2

I try to tell my grandkids how it was for us growing up. So many people smoked that you couldn’t escape it. They smoked in the Dr’s. office, they smoked in the grocery store, the doctor and the dentist smoked, in the office, often while they were working. Okay, I don’t remember anyone smoking in church but you got 2nd hand smoke at home, at your friend’s houses and just about anywhere you went in public.


15 posted on 12/19/2010 8:58:19 PM PST by tiki
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To: marktwain

exactly, to the commtards, ‘science’ is used to attempt to prove their pet theories, rather than to exhaust all possibilities of disproving them...


16 posted on 12/19/2010 10:32:14 PM PST by Gilbo_3 (Gov is not reason; not eloquent; its force.Like fire,a dangerous servant & master. George Washington)
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To: Scanian

In Seattle they banned the smoking of the E-cigarette in the same places where real smoking is forbidden by the state, such as restaurants, bars and workplaces. “By returning smoking to the public eye, public e-cigarette use threatens to undermine the social norming impact” of the smoking ban, testified Scott Neal, manager of the tobacco prevention program for Public Health — Seattle & King County.


17 posted on 12/20/2010 2:59:18 AM PST by jonrick46 (We're being water boarded with the sewage of Fabian Socialism.)
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To: jonrick46

These people are obsessed by the control and domination of other people’s lives.

Health has less to do with the smoking debate than does power and the abuse of power.

Their side views it as a way to make people fall in line; libertarian-minded conservatives see personal choice and freedom as the crux of the matter.


18 posted on 12/20/2010 3:28:51 AM PST by Scanian
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To: tiki
“I try to tell my grandkids how it was for us growing up. So many people smoked that you couldn’t escape it. They smoked in the Dr’s. office, they smoked in the grocery store, the doctor and the dentist smoked, in the office, often while they were working. Okay, I don’t remember anyone smoking in church but you got 2nd hand smoke at home, at your friend’s houses and just about anywhere you went in public.”

Yes, and we were a much freer society.

19 posted on 12/20/2010 4:22:34 AM PST by marktwain
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To: Forward the Light Brigade

Ditto that — both parents smoked, and I hate it to this day. But I should have been long dead according to the ‘research.’ (I use the word loosely).


20 posted on 12/20/2010 6:40:28 AM PST by bboop (Stealth Tutor)
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