The *cause* of asthma is unknown and under intense study. The *fact* that it is a disease of the immune system is not disputed. We know that all allergies are autoimmune disorders - we just don't know why some people get them and others don't.
As for air pollution sensitivity - again, if pollution triggered asthma you would expect places like Mexico City and urban China to be suffering from asthma epidemics. This is not the case - instead, asthma seems to be a first world disease.
Now, this could be caused by some air pollutant that occurs widely in the USA but never used in China or Mexico, but that's hard to believe - if pollution was the cause, you'd expect that the wholesale export of manufacturing from the USA to places like China and Mexico would have exported the asthma, too. Instead, asthma has risen as both US air quality has improved and US industrialization has diminished.
Finally, I wish I could find a cite, but I was listening to a doctor on NPR the other week who actually apologized to his asthma patients. For years he had been telling them to make their houses as dust free as possible, seal the bedding, etcetera - only to read a study that said none of these things reduced the number of asthma attacks a person was likely to have.
First, the roman thing is a myth. The romans were aware that lead is poisonous and preferred terra cotta pipes.
Second, no causal relationship between ingested DDT and egg thinning was ever found. The collapse of the eagle population was caused by hunting and loss of habitat.
The important point is that the trend of toxin accumulation is observed. It should be monitored so that correlations become better known. In this industrialized world, it ain't goin' away!
Please remember that inflammation and scarring are not asthma. Please also remember that I did not say air pollution was benign - I said that there is no correlation between it and *asthma*.
Asthma is not an scarring and is not primarily an inflammation. It is, in effect, an allergy that affects your lungs. While it can be triggered by dust and mites and soot these are not the things that caused the disease in the first place.
I'd be interested in cites relating income level to asthma if you have them - I found some reporting a correlation between asthma morbidity and income - but that's probably related to access to asthma medications rather than increased causation.
Unfortunately, that one is a non-starter. Asthma is an autoimmune disorder and, yeah, you would think there would be a connection between it and dirt and chemicals in the air. But the asthma rates aren't correlated with pollution. For example, the US has higher asthma rates than Mexico, but Mexico city is one of the most polluted places on earth.
Instead, asthma rates appear to be correlated with high levels of pediatric care. In other words, there is some evidence that asthma is caused by not getting enough real infections as a kid - the immune system doesn't get properly trained and starts overreacting to benign substances.
Please note I'm not saying this is a definite fact; the matter is still under considerable study.
"These chemicals prevent thousands of deaths each year, but we must ban them because they might be causing tens of deaths each year."
And, no, "my kind" are the people who say that you must compare the benefits with the risks before making a decision. "My kind" are the kind of people who actually know chemistry, for example.
Oh, and some cites that cancer rates are really increasing (as opposed to the cancer detection rate) might be nice.
"These chemicals prevent thousands of deaths each year, because they might be causing tens of deaths each year."
And, no, "my kind" are the people who say that you must compare the benefits with the risks before making a decision. "My kind" are the kind of people who actually know chemistry, for example.
Sure, let's let toddlers die in flammable pajamas, the 3rd world die of malaria, because you think cancer is on the rise.
Except, the only reason cancer is on the rise is because (a) we can diagnose it better and (b) we've gotten so good at stopping the infectious diseases that used to kill everyone before they got old enough to come down with it.
But, who needs proof or rational thought when there are scary things running loose!
It's this kind of thinking that exterminated wild cats and wolves. After all - they're dangerous, right? We have to get rid of them!
In this context, "live" virus is able to infect and reproduce. "Killed" virus has been damaged to the point that it cannot infect a cell. Hence the concern over using "live" virus vaccines - the vaccines use a damaged or weakened virus that the body can easily defeat - but occasionally a few full strength particles get through and trigger the disease instead of vaccinating against it. "Killed" virus vaccines use fragments of destroyed viruses, ensuring you can't get sick from them, but possibly not as effective as the live kind.
Yellow skies are bad? For whom? Why? How much "yellow" is bad? Adding acid to water can have a buffering effect to neutralize alkalis dissolved in the same - as any aquarium owner can attest.
And, you say clear skies are good. For everyone? Not for plants that wither in direct sunlight, nor animals that depend on a good amount of rain to thrive.
You make the same argument global warmers make - warming is bad. Why? Because it's change. Yet in the past the world *was* much warmer than it is now and, inevitably, it will someday be much colder, too. At which point shall we freeze this natural cycle, in order to conform to your idea of a "reference" ecosystem?
Ditto for extinction and preservation. What, exactly, is preservation good for, except preventing evolution?
Originally, the earth's entire biosphere was anerobic. Are you saying we should strip the oxygen from the atmosphere and return to that as a starting point? After all, that was the best possible biosphere for anerobic life forms - creatures now unfairly restricted to a few niche ecosystems.
You make no sense. Lomberg (not "lornberg") took the sensible step of pointing out that there is no absolute reference point for environmental science - there is no place or time that you can point to and say "this is when the environment was ideal and in equilibrium" because it never was - the environment has been and will always be in flux and will always suit some life forms more than others.
Given that we have no frame of reference, it isn't surprising that Lomborg said, quite explicitly, that all we can do is compare the environment of today with the environment of some previous time and get an idea of what's changing and where the problems and answers lie.
Finally, whether or not people are hyping environmental problems is actually the most important issue - hype and fear are what are driving things like arsenic regulations that won't save lives, while letting us ignore more rational and important changes we should be making, like raising fuel efficiency standards.
Hype and fear are what drives us to force 3rd world countries to stop using DDT as an indoor pesticide - condemning tens of thousands to malaria.
Hype and fear are what drives us to declare the "red wolf" to be an endangered species, when geneticists are quite certain that there is no such species - red wolves are simply what happens when the coyote and grey wolf ranges over lap. So again, wasted money and energy for zero benefit.
Finally, hype and fear are what are driving the Kyoto protocol when, again, implementation of Kyoto would severely harm the prospects of hundreds of millions of workers but would not, actually, prevent climate change.
Science via headlines is the cowardly trick of people who cannot tolerate peer review.
Because it's hard to budget for the unanticipated cost of spending decades litigating whether or not your plant will ever be built or allowed to operate?
Of course it's unfair - it's a blatant hatchet job, which is peculiar coming from a publication that's been harping about the importance of skepticism for the past few years.
Their attack of Lomborg is why I won't be renewing my subscription.
Yes there is evidence that we developed blue sensitivity last, say 10,000 years ago or so. But that's not necessarily why greeks and bible writers would describe things differently. Color blindness, for example, is fairly common among men and, guess what, the most common form is the inability to see blue.
Slashdot Mirror
The *cause* of asthma is unknown and under intense study. The *fact* that it is a disease of the immune system is not disputed. We know that all allergies are autoimmune disorders - we just don't know why some people get them and others don't.
As for air pollution sensitivity - again, if pollution triggered asthma you would expect places like Mexico City and urban China to be suffering from asthma epidemics. This is not the case - instead, asthma seems to be a first world disease.
Now, this could be caused by some air pollutant that occurs widely in the USA but never used in China or Mexico, but that's hard to believe - if pollution was the cause, you'd expect that the wholesale export of manufacturing from the USA to places like China and Mexico would have exported the asthma, too. Instead, asthma has risen as both US air quality has improved and US industrialization has diminished.
Finally, I wish I could find a cite, but I was listening to a doctor on NPR the other week who actually apologized to his asthma patients. For years he had been telling them to make their houses as dust free as possible, seal the bedding, etcetera - only to read a study that said none of these things reduced the number of asthma attacks a person was likely to have.
First, the roman thing is a myth. The romans were aware that lead is poisonous and preferred terra cotta pipes.
Second, no causal relationship between ingested DDT and egg thinning was ever found. The collapse of the eagle population was caused by hunting and loss of habitat.
The important point is that the trend of toxin accumulation is observed. It should be monitored so that correlations become better known. In this industrialized world, it ain't goin' away!
Yes. Exactly.
Despite the scare caused by Silent Spring I don't think it was ever proved that DDT caused the thinning of bird's eggs.
Please remember that inflammation and scarring are not asthma. Please also remember that I did not say air pollution was benign - I said that there is no correlation between it and *asthma*.
Asthma is not an scarring and is not primarily an inflammation. It is, in effect, an allergy that affects your lungs. While it can be triggered by dust and mites and soot these are not the things that caused the disease in the first place.
I'd be interested in cites relating income level to asthma if you have them - I found some reporting a correlation between asthma morbidity and income - but that's probably related to access to asthma medications rather than increased causation.
That graph shows a 10% change over a 30 year period, with an absolute change from 180/100000 to 200/100000.
Wow! It's an epidemic!
Unfortunately, that one is a non-starter. Asthma is an autoimmune disorder and, yeah, you would think there would be a connection between it and dirt and chemicals in the air. But the asthma rates aren't correlated with pollution. For example, the US has higher asthma rates than Mexico, but Mexico city is one of the most polluted places on earth.
Instead, asthma rates appear to be correlated with high levels of pediatric care. In other words, there is some evidence that asthma is caused by not getting enough real infections as a kid - the immune system doesn't get properly trained and starts overreacting to benign substances.
Please note I'm not saying this is a definite fact; the matter is still under considerable study.
"These chemicals prevent thousands of deaths each year, but we must ban them because they might be causing tens of deaths each year."
And, no, "my kind" are the people who say that you must compare the benefits with the risks before making a decision. "My kind" are the kind of people who actually know chemistry, for example.
Oh, and some cites that cancer rates are really increasing (as opposed to the cancer detection rate) might be nice.
"These chemicals prevent thousands of deaths each year, because they might be causing tens of deaths each year."
And, no, "my kind" are the people who say that you must compare the benefits with the risks before making a decision. "My kind" are the kind of people who actually know chemistry, for example.
given up using every technology they had on the odd chance that *one* of them was harmful.
And there never would have been a roman empire. Not to mention the lead poisoning thing is a theory not fact.
Glad to see there's some one around here who knows the basic principle of toxicology: poison is in the dose, not the substance.
Sure, let's let toddlers die in flammable pajamas, the 3rd world die of malaria, because you think cancer is on the rise.
Except, the only reason cancer is on the rise is because (a) we can diagnose it better and (b) we've gotten so good at stopping the infectious diseases that used to kill everyone before they got old enough to come down with it.
But, who needs proof or rational thought when there are scary things running loose!
It's this kind of thinking that exterminated wild cats and wolves. After all - they're dangerous, right? We have to get rid of them!
In this context, "live" virus is able to infect and reproduce. "Killed" virus has been damaged to the point that it cannot infect a cell. Hence the concern over using "live" virus vaccines - the vaccines use a damaged or weakened virus that the body can easily defeat - but occasionally a few full strength particles get through and trigger the disease instead of vaccinating against it. "Killed" virus vaccines use fragments of destroyed viruses, ensuring you can't get sick from them, but possibly not as effective as the live kind.
I thought modern diesel electric trains used direct drive as well.
they would certainly shake things up a bit.
Yellow skies are bad? For whom? Why? How much "yellow" is bad? Adding acid to water can have a buffering effect to neutralize alkalis dissolved in the same - as any aquarium owner can attest.
And, you say clear skies are good. For everyone? Not for plants that wither in direct sunlight, nor animals that depend on a good amount of rain to thrive.
You make the same argument global warmers make - warming is bad. Why? Because it's change. Yet in the past the world *was* much warmer than it is now and, inevitably, it will someday be much colder, too. At which point shall we freeze this natural cycle, in order to conform to your idea of a "reference" ecosystem?
Ditto for extinction and preservation. What, exactly, is preservation good for, except preventing evolution?
Originally, the earth's entire biosphere was anerobic. Are you saying we should strip the oxygen from the atmosphere and return to that as a starting point? After all, that was the best possible biosphere for anerobic life forms - creatures now unfairly restricted to a few niche ecosystems.
I remembered that the most common form is called "red/green" but for some reason I misremembered "red/green" as meaning "can only see red and green".
Thanks.
what problem are we supposed to be solving?
what's the problem?
You make no sense. Lomberg (not "lornberg") took the sensible step of pointing out that there is no absolute reference point for environmental science - there is no place or time that you can point to and say "this is when the environment was ideal and in equilibrium" because it never was - the environment has been and will always be in flux and will always suit some life forms more than others.
Given that we have no frame of reference, it isn't surprising that Lomborg said, quite explicitly, that all we can do is compare the environment of today with the environment of some previous time and get an idea of what's changing and where the problems and answers lie.
Finally, whether or not people are hyping environmental problems is actually the most important issue - hype and fear are what are driving things like arsenic regulations that won't save lives, while letting us ignore more rational and important changes we should be making, like raising fuel efficiency standards.
Hype and fear are what drives us to force 3rd world countries to stop using DDT as an indoor pesticide - condemning tens of thousands to malaria.
Hype and fear are what drives us to declare the "red wolf" to be an endangered species, when geneticists are quite certain that there is no such species - red wolves are simply what happens when the coyote and grey wolf ranges over lap. So again, wasted money and energy for zero benefit.
Finally, hype and fear are what are driving the Kyoto protocol when, again, implementation of Kyoto would severely harm the prospects of hundreds of millions of workers but would not, actually, prevent climate change.
Science via headlines is the cowardly trick of people who cannot tolerate peer review.
Because it's hard to budget for the unanticipated cost of spending decades litigating whether or not your plant will ever be built or allowed to operate?
And who is doing the suing? Hmm?
Of course it's unfair - it's a blatant hatchet job, which is peculiar coming from a publication that's been harping about the importance of skepticism for the past few years.
Their attack of Lomborg is why I won't be renewing my subscription.
In particular, it explains why Lomborg was demonized when his actual conclusions are much milder than is suggested by his detractors.
If people actually went and educated themselves on the issues before forming opinions it would be the end of western democracy!
Much better to have voters like the guy on kuro5hin who informed me that he didn't need books to tell that the environment was messed up.
Yes there is evidence that we developed blue sensitivity last, say 10,000 years ago or so. But that's not necessarily why greeks and bible writers would describe things differently. Color blindness, for example, is fairly common among men and, guess what, the most common form is the inability to see blue.
IIRC, there is evidence that CO2 was higher back then. It was also warmer, and a big chunk of North America and Europe were under water.
It's not often you order something over the net, and it comes with a *hand written* thank you note.