MDs on climate – what can go wrong?

 Medical Doctors espousing on Climate are outside their field. Here is "A Chemist in Langley" on topic.

I've seen other examples concerning firearms and economics where MDs have no idea what they are talking about.

Here is the link.

Here are some excerpts.

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Regular readers of this blog know of my ongoing disappointment with the MDs at the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE). No group has so consistently disappointed me with the variance between the reports they are capable of producing and their actual output. As I have detailed in previous blog posts, they have produced bad research on BC LNG, bad epidemiology, bad takes on projects like the Site C Dam and the Trans Mountain Expansion Project, and their biggest and ongoing bad work on natural gas flaring, fugitive emissions and the climate effects of natural gas.

Naturally this led me to approach their latest campaign: Fossil Fuel Ads Make Us Sick with a jaundiced eye. What I have determined is this campaign builds on the misinformation and bad epidemiology described above and then adds new bad angles and newer bad data. The crux of their campaign is that:

air pollution from the burning of fossil fuels is one of the leading causes of premature mortality in Canada

In a recent article in the National Observer: “Doctors know banning fossil fuel ads is a matter of life or death” they have added another questionable claim that:

fossil fuel air pollution is responsible for one in seven premature deaths in Canada

As is normal with the work by CAPE, there is always a sliver of truth in their articles and campaigns but invariably their campaign seem to be built on an incomplete (or simple misreading) of the the underlying research. That being said, now I need to support my claims with actual research. So let’s begin:

Let’s look at that claim that: “air pollution from the burning of fossil fuels is one of the leading causes of premature mortality in Canada”. Their claim links to a Health Canada report with the title: Health Impacts of Air Pollution in Canada: Estimates of morbidity and premature mortality outcomes – 2021 Report. Upon reading this report one thing becomes abundantly clear: the claim made by CAPE is not supported by (or even made in) the report.

Reading the Health Canada report I was most struck by the absence of any significant statements about fossil fuels. Specifically, the term “fossil fuels” appears only a single time in a discussion about the formation of nitrogen dioxide compounds. The report does indicate that fossil fuels are a leading cause of premature mortality in Canada.

The Health Canada report identifies “air pollution” as a major cause of premature mortality and then it goes on to discuss the causes of air pollution but in doing so it provides the data to point out that the burning of fossil fuels represents only a very minor cause of that air pollution.
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Yes, you read that right, the “Oil and Gas Industry” and “Transportation and Mobile Equipment” contributed 48,000 tonnes of PM2.5 to the national emission total…out of a total of 1,600,000 tonnes! Doing the math fossil fuels contributed approximately 3% of the total anthropogenic PM2.5. Notice that qualifier: “anthropogenic”. That is an incredibly important proviso because forest fires produce almost the same amount of PM2.5 as humans activities but are not included in the accounting in this report (“fires” in the report represents cooking fires) but absolutely affect human health.