NPR - a viral overload of cognitive pollution

This is truly astonishing.  

Physicians are starting to see the effects of a warming planet in the exam room, now medical residents are being educated on how to speak and write publicly about the intersection of health and climate change. https://t.co/VeDMdW1ZY5

— NPR (@NPR) October 12, 2020

It is pure advocacy dressed up as . . . well what?  It is certainly not science.  Climates are always changing for multiple reasons, most having little to do with AGW.  The most significant local climate change arises from land use changes rather than AGW.  

The article is chock-a-block full of anecdotes rather than science.  The long discredited claims of California wildfires as evidence of climate change (forestry management practices rather than AGW) and increasing hurricane frequency (normal weather patterns, no increase in hurricanes) are both invoked.  

Several of the anecdotes are evidence of globalization rather than AGW with introduction of non-native insects and animal life.

This is not about science or medicine.  It is pure political advocacy.

As Basu learned, rising temperatures offer longer breeding seasons for mosquitos, boost the virus replication rate, and make mosquitos more active. Basu now teaches about these and other effects of climate change in an elective course he offers residents. Residents in this course get more than 100 hours of advocacy training including how to speak and write publicly about the intersection of health and climate change.

At least they mention some sane doctors.

But some doctors worry about what will be left out of residency training to make room for climate change. Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, the former associate dean for curriculum at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, says during the pandemic, for example, hospitals need to add training in intensive care medicine to more residency programs.

Goldfarb says hospitals should focus on training doctors, not advocates for social or political causes. He worries that discussing climate change with patients might create mistrust.

"There are concerns about getting into the political sphere," he says. "I'm against anything that's going to represent a barrier between patients and physicians being comfortable with each other." 

 But the reporter, Martha Bebinger of Brown University, of course, returns to her true believer advocacy.

This is just simple gaslighting with no pretense of rationalism, evidence or logic.  

We know about real world health problems right here right now.  Indeed, we are still getting our hands around even the beginning of useful knowledge about a global pandemic where the intersection between a little understood health threat and a massive public policy overreaction has led to catastrophic consequences.  And Bebinger wants to focus on possible future climate changes which are even less understood and even more warmly contested?

Goldfarb has it right.  Stick to your knitting.  Focus on health and not on theoretical future possible dangers on which there is little or no consensus.  Who is responsible for the decline in societal trust and the death of expertise?

Look no further than NPR and Martha Bebinger.