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Saturday, February 16, 2013

Vitamin D links

see wikipage: http://www.vitamindwiki.com/tiki-index.php?page_id=1817
http://www.vitamindwiki.com/Diseases+which+are+related+due+to+vitamin+D+deficiency

  Abstract of "An estimate of the economic burden and premature deaths due to vitamin D deficiency in Canada." from Canada's National Centre for Biotechnology Information
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20352622
Vitamin D deficiency has been linked to many diseases and conditions in addition to bone diseases, including many types of cancer, several bacterial and viral infections, autoimmune diseases, cardiovascular diseases, and adverse pregnancy outcomes. ......

    It is estimated that the death rate could fall by 37,000 deaths (22,300-52,300 deaths), representing 16.1% (9.7-22.7%) of annuals deaths and the economic burden by 6.9% (3.8-10.0%) or $14.4 billion ($8.0 billion-$20.1 billion) less the cost of the program. It is recommended that Canadian health policy leaders consider measures to increase serum 25(OH)D levels for all Canadians.

       Canada's population is 34 million so on a population basis that would average around just over 5,000 deaths annually. I assume the economic costs are based on welfare spending not GDP but proportionate to population that would be over £1 bn.

      Actually the vast majority of Canadians live within 100 miles of the US border (54th parallel) which goes through ---- so Scotland is worse off, indded with, because we, particularly the west, are warmed by the Gulf Stream, which creates clouds, quite a bit worse off.

The citizens of Scotland have a very poor health record and a life expectancy that is one of the lowest in the Western world. This poor health record holds true for all social classes. It is now known that living in Scotland also results in extreme Vitamin D deficiency due to chronic lack of sunlight. (164) While deficiency in the UK is widespread the situation in Scotland is worse than for the rest of the country.


Scotland receives 30-50% less ultraviolet radiation (UVB) from the sun than the rest of the UK due to its high latitude and persistent low cloud cover. Vitamin D levels are consistently found to be even lower in Scotland than the rest of the UK. (168)(165)(166) (167)


Indeed, Glasgow, with one of most cloudy climates receives a similar amount of UVB as Kiruna in Northern Sweden which is way above the Arctic Circle.....


Experts in Vitamin D now suggest that Scotland's poor health record is a direct consequence of Vitamin D deficiency particularly in childhood.
To maintain an adequate level of vitamin D in Scotland there is little choice but to take supplements. Normal levels of Vitamin D cannot be achieved through diet alone.
http://www.vitamind3uk.com/VitaminD_Scotland_deficiency.html


book length pdf by Doctor Oliver Gillie
Scotland's Health Deficit: An Explanation and a Plan
http://www.healthresearchforum.org.uk/reports/scotland.pdf

in Australia only, manufacturers must add vitamin D to edible oil spreads (e.g. margarine); http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/consumerinformation/fortification.cfm

I had previously suggested adding it to salt, to which iodine has been added in several countries for similar purposes. Also salt is something that every human eats to roughly the same extent so that it would seem appropriate if you want to reach everybody. However this is a technical matter and I would be perfectly willing to accept some other staple food.


"We found a highly significant relationship between MS patient-linked admissions and latitude (r weighted by standard error (rsw) = 0.75, p = 0.002). There was no significant relationship between smoking prevalence and MS patient-linked admissions.

This metasurvey  (ie combining all the results from all published surveys) of mortality amonng people taking supplements showed "The summary relative risk for mortality from any cause was 0.93 (95% confidence interval, 0.87-0.99)"  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17846391 ie a 7% reduction in mortality. Note, however, that this is for all published research, relatively little of which will have taken place in anywhere nearly as sunless as Scotland so the effect in the country with the highest MS rate in the world is virtually certain to be greater.

There is a definite latitudinal effect on MS risk across Scotland"
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0014606

MS prevalence worldwide http://www.whilesciencesleeps.com/pdf/354.pdf
Canada a prevalence of MS averaging around 90 per 100,000
Rochdale, close to the 54th paralle that forms Canada's southern border - 112 per 100,000
Scotland "highest anywhere in the world for large populations" - 187 per 100,000
Orkney 193 per 100,000 - world's highest

Taking the estimate that 37,000 deaths could be saved in Canada by D supplements, based on Canda's 34 million and Scotland's 5 million population, and assuming the full range of harm caused by lack of vitamin D is proportional to the MS rate, we come to the best estimate that adding sufficient supplements would save 11,000 lives annually.

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Friday, February 15, 2013

Scientific Consensus Averages Far More Sceptical of Warming Than Most Sceptics

 A peer-reviewed survey of 1077 geoscientists and engineers finds that "only 36 percent of geoscientists and engineers believe that humans are creating a global warming crisis," according to James Taylor, writing at Forbes.com. As he points out, if there is a scientific consensus at all, it would have to be skepticism toward anthropogenic global warming.....
... merely 36 percent of respondents fit the "Comply with Kyoto" model. The scientists in this group "express the strong belief that climate change is happening, that it is not a normal cycle of nature, and humans are the main or central cause."


The authors of the survey report, however, note that the overwhelming majority of scientists fall within four other models, each of which is skeptical of alarmist global warming clamour.

   Actually it is far better (or worse from the official viepoint) than that.

   Firstly this in onlu of respondents. Now we know that the ecofascists ate happy to use 77 replies out of 10,000 questionaires as evidence of the whole body of opinion but no honest statistician would do so. The question is how does the lack of answers slant the results and in circumstances where promotion and even keeping ones job, in government financed circles, depends on not expressing the "wrong" views it is certain that the real split must be far more than 64/36%. Indeed a num,ber of econazis have called for sceptics to be imprisoned. Clearly the answer is that this must slant the answer by persuading many of a sceptical opinion to keep silent while incentivising no alarmist to do so.

    Secondly "climate change is happening, that it is not a normal cycle of nature, and humans are the main or central cause" is very far from the alarmist position. I know that a large proportion of sceptics would hold that view. Personally I would not exclude the possibility that there ahs been a certain amount of manmade warming. Bjorn Lomberg quite openly holds this view and he has been demonised by the econazis.

   No the alarmist position is that not only is climate chabge happening but that it is seriously damaging, indeed more damaging that the hundreds of billions which have been spent allegedly to ameliorate it. Obviously if it is less damaging than that there can be no justification for spending that money. The 64% are not only sceptics but are so far from the government enforced view that there is no point of contact.

  So if the 34% includes the large majority of the sceptic communnity it can only, at most, be 1/3rd, 11%, who hold the alarmist position. And if the atmosphere of ecofascist intimidation has deterred only half of those who doubt the official view (a far higher proportion of Soviet scientists were deterred from speaking out against Lysenko) the alarmists cann hardly be more than 5.5%.

     Which certainly gives us a scientific consensus for scepticism. as indeed it should since any "scientist" who isn't a sceptic, fails one of the basic principles of science and by definition, isn't a scientist at all.

    Expect this to be heavily covered ny all those parts of the British MSM that aren't corrupt fascist poodles. IE none of them

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Thursday, February 14, 2013

Shale Gas Worth £5 bn to Scotland

   That is the headline the Scotsman put on it, thereby being equivocal about the fact that it is £5 bn a year.

SCOTLAND is sitting on up to £5 billion of natural gas reserves which could be extracted using the controversial technique known as fracking, financial experts said today.



A report from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) said Scotland is in a prime position to “capitalise” on shale gas, which is produced by fracking, due to the expertise that already exists in the country’s oil and gas sector.

Reserves of the gas, which has helped transform the fortunes of the United States economy, potentially lie beneath a huge swathe of central Scotland stretching from Aberdeenshire to Dumfries and Galloway.


But the moratorium has now been lifted by the UK government, with large parts of Scotland such as Fife, Stirling and Aberdeenshire now being viewed as ripe for the dash for shale gas.


The PwC report Shale Oil – the Next Energy Revolution said fracking could boost the UK’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by around 2 to 3.3 per cent by 2035 – worth about £30bn to £50bn.

    That gives us about 10% of the UK reserves, just over our population %.

    £5bn comes to £1,000 per head per year. In fact if it meant we didn't have to pay for the extortionate windmillery and thus electricity and gas prices came down to a fraction of what they currently are, rather than rising another 60% as the politicians want, it would have an effect several multiples of that effect and certainly get Britain and Scotland out of recession.

   In reporting this the Scotsman chose to give the views of the Green party and the state funded Campaign Against Fracking in Scotland, whose views were obvious ,plus the SNP, who avoided saying anything and the Conservatives whose support of ending recession was lukewarm. but not of UKIP, the only party unequivocally in favour of lower energy prices and thus ending the recession.

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Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Irrefutability - On Ed Davey & The "Libdems"Being Corrupt

  Ed Davey the Pseudo-Liberaldemocrat minister for energy, climate change and murdering pensioners, made a speech to the government funded fakecharity (£50m annually) formerly known as the Royal Society.

It is fair to say that trust in politicians is not something the public has in abundance.


That is why, when it comes to climate change, it is so important that all the rigours of the scientific method are applied.

... We heard earlier from the Chief Scientist Sir John Beddington, and from other distinguished guests about the overwhelming scientific evidence for climate change.


Overwhelming evidence, yes....

Two hundred years of good science - teasing out uncertainties, considering risk - has laid the foundation of what we now understand.


It screams out from decade upon decade of research.

The basic physics of climate change is irrefutable.

Greenhouse gases warm the atmosphere and cause changes to the climate.

Human activity is significantly contributing to the warming of our planet....

Because the stark fact is this – climate change is happening.


We can’t reverse it, but we can limit it.

AVOID highlights the importance of keeping temperature increases below 2C

To do so global emissions need to be reduced urgently and sustained deep cuts are required long term....
We can all be proud of the Climate Change Act of 2008 - the first comprehensive economy wide climate legislation of its kind.


Committing the UK to achieve at least an 80% cut in carbon emissions by 2050....

But as the Prime Minister set out last week, reaffirming our shared commitment to being the greenest government ever:


“We are in a global race and the countries that succeed in that race, the economies that will prosper, are those that are the greenest and the most energy efficient.”

AVOID has shown that to achieve a 50% chance of limiting warming to 2°C, global emissions need to peak in the next few years and be followed by rapid long-term reductions.

Thanks to programmes like AVOID the science, the risks, the impacts and the way ahead have never been clearer.


You know, when I am confronted by some of the most dogmatic and blinkered people who deny that climate change is happening, I am reminded of the sentiment of the famous USA Today cartoon.

“If we really are wrong about climate change, we will have created a better world for nothing”.

In reality, those who deny climate change and demand a halt to emissions reduction and mitigation work, want us to take a huge gamble with the future of every human being on the planet, every future human being, our children and grand children, and every other living species.

We will not take that risk.

  With the exception of the first 2 lines about the lack of trust in politicians (at least politicians like him)  and the need for real science I don'y thjink there is anything there that is, as he claims, "irrifutable".

    Indeed I don't think there is anything that is not clearly and deliberately dishonest. Anything that undicates a personal level of integrity of Mr Davey in any way greater than that of the late Dr Goebbels.

   I sent this to the Pseudo-LibDem party and a number of prominent members
  Ed Davey is to speak to a Royal Society seminar today on the subject of climate change. Apparently he will argue that

"the science of climate change is "irrefutable" and man is making a "significant" contribution to rising global temperatures."



Clearly it is possible to refute that claim, if only because there is currently no rising global temperature.



By definition if something Mr Davy, knowingly claims to be irrefutable isn't then it becomes irrefutable that Ed Davy is a corrupt liar whose word can never be automatically taken on any subject whatsoever.



In turn I ask your party to publicly dissociate yourselves from his claim. Or alternately to prove that currently there is such warming; that there could be no other possible explanation (e.g. solar cycles) which could have such influence; and that you have "irrefutable" proof of this.

Obviously the only possible remaining alternative, which if you do not do either of the first 2, would automatically be irrefutable, is that it is not only Mr Davy that is a corrupt liar who can never be trusted to tell the truth, it is the "Liberal Democratic" party who knowingly endorse such deliberate lies as well.


I await seeing if any of you will choose either of the 1st 2 options or, by default, endorse the 3rd and prove yourselves, one and all, corrupt lying fraudsters.

    I am in no way surprised to be able to say irrefutably that not a single one of them has been able to substantiate a single thing he said and that thus every single one of them knows CAGW to be a lie. That the entire party is irrefutably corrupt and lying. That irrefutably the entire party are obscene, thieving, child abusing, murdering Fascist scum.       As, irrefutably, is any beeboid, whorrnalist or other Labnatcongreen cartel member who denies it.      No offence to more traditional Fascists gor being linked to parasites like this.

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Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Against Ideological Subsidy Junkies - 2 Letters, 1 Published, 1 Not

   I had this letter published on Monday by the Metro. Quite surprised since it was written to get annoyance off my chest rather than expectation of publication. As the last and second last lines show - I thought any journalist would delete both of them but in fact the Metro kept in the 2nd last and I have thus boldended the last.

The SNP have decided to spend £2.6 million on building 250 power points for electric cars. There are believed to be 60 electric cars in Scotland. That is a subsidy of £43,000 per car.

Yet more proof that the SNP are ideological subsidy junkies, deliberately trying to create the world's highest electricity prices and actively preventing Scotland ever getting out of recession.

This is now clearly something no remotely honest SNP supporter, party member or journalist, can now deny or ignore and indeed which no remotely honest one has.

Whatever one thinks of their Green referendum allies at least they have the honesty to say they do not want an end to recession. 

  --------------
  The Metro don't do the deeply intellectual debates the Scotman and Herald aspire to. As an example of their house style my letter just had the signature "Neil" though I had included the full thing, including UKIP membership. But it was the letter of the day.

   In their praise let me say that the Metro regularly have sensible science articlse, not complicated but correct, understandable, and apolitical which is something I would not look for in the Guardian.

   Also in an era when papers are whining about losing readers to the "unfair" internet competition it is good to see a paper that has a successful business model. I suspect my letter reached a larger readership than it would in the Scotsman or Guardian.

   Incidentally this news from the Edinburgh Evening News confirms the SNP know perfectly well what a fraudulent rip off that £2.6 million is:

"John Curtis, former head of low carbon vehicles and fuels at Transport Scotland, revealed it would take up to three-and-a-half hours to charge an electric car at one of the 7kW posts set to be installed around Edinburgh.


.....Mr Curtis admitted: “Honestly, no, I don’t [think they will get used]. But we need to have a safety net to encourage people to buy the electric vehicles in the first place."

       And then by comparison, since both letters went out to all and sundry, here is the more deeply intellectual letter the papers
I normally aim at, claim to be interested in.

      The subject, the massive increase in shale gas reserves, should be the most important news item of at least the week, since it means we definitely have the potential for as much cheap energy as we want for centuries and can thus easily get out of recession.

      If Google News is to be believed, and it isn't entirely, this letter was unpublishable. It would be too long to fit the Metro house style but I doubt if anybody in the "serious" press doubts it is entirely true:

The British Geological Survey is understood to have increased dramatically its official estimate of the amount of shale gas to between 1,300 trillion and 1,700 trillion cubic feet, dwarfing its previous estimate of 5.3 trillion cubic feet.


This would heat every home in Britain for 1,500 years.

This is from government figures not yet published but perhaps they will be in due course with sufficient fanfare despite Ed Davy having previously counterfactually told Parliament the "leading companies" in the shale gas industry told him there was less than they had claimed back then and they needed more regulating.


Gas generation, like nuclear, currently costs about 30% of the average of the basket of power we use. In America shale gas has reduced gas prices to 1/4 of what they were. The arithmetic is obvious. We can end fuel poverty, and a recession caused by having some of the world's highest energy costs, any time our parasitic politicians are willing to allow it.

UPDATE  I have been told that the Sunday Post also published a letter of mine about electric cars  on Sunday (17th feb) which must be the first one here.

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