Do carbon emissions pose a health risk?

A new ploy from the Warmists. But since cold weather is much more likely to kill you than warm (NOBODY was killed by Australia's recent great midsummer cyclone) the argument is an absurdity. Cold is life-threatening. Warmth is simply uncomfortable.

It is true that there is a lot of disease in the tropics but I come one of the few areas of white settlement in the tropics (N. Qld.) and we have long had appropriate public health measures in place -- so mortality from tropical diseases is rare, unlike mortality from winter ailments and accidents in colder climes

When Republican lawmakers introduced legislation this week to block efforts by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate carbon, environmental groups pushed back hard. And this time, the groups stepped up their efforts by attempting to shift the argument from being about climate change science and green jobs to public health safety.

In a press release sent out Thursday, the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) attacked the proposal as a “serious health setback.”

“This is unprecedented political interference with sound science and enforcement of clean air safeguards, which have improved our water and air for the past four decades,” said NRDC climate and air legislative director Franz Matzner.

“Politicians should not block EPA scientists from continuing to reduce carbon dioxide, mercury and other life-threatening pollution. Big polluters cannot be allowed to continue spewing unlimited amounts of carbon pollution into our air.”

When contacted by The Daily Caller, an NRDC spokesperson referred to a 2008 NRDC fact sheet that lists health risks from carbon dioxide that include a more intense “allergenic pollen season” and an increase in droughts and floods.

Even Democrats on the Hill have taken up the argument shift to public health. “These attacks on the Clean Air Act will only take us backwards to a time when big polluters dirtied our air with impunity and hurt the health of our children,” said Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland Thursday. “If Republicans want to tear down the progress we have made to make air cleaner in America, they’re going to get a fight from those of us who are committed to the public health of our communities.”

A spokesperson for the American Public Health Administration (APHA) also told TheDC that the organization supported “reducing carbon emissions to protect public health. In a response to the proposed legislation, the APHA called on Congress to defend the Clean Air Act and the EPA’s attempts to regulate carbon as a matter of public health.

But for some, the threat of carbon dioxide on public health is exaggerated. One scientist even described CO2 to TheDC as a “beneficial gas.” In an interview with TheDC, Joe D’Aleo, a meteorologist and executive director of the International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project (ICECAP), called the public health argument “nonsense” and “absolutely ludicrous... Since we emit 2.7 pounds of CO2 per person per day from respiration, it is clearly not harmful,” said D’Aleo.

He also pointed out that in classrooms, auditoriums, and especially submarines, carbon dioxide levels are always higher than they are in the open air. “And they don’t die in submarines from carbon dioxide,” said D’Aleo.

“The EPA has admitted that its cap-and-trade agenda won’t have any meaningful impact on climate,” said Matt Dempsey, spokesperson for Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, one of the co-sponsors of the legislation. “One wonders, then: how could stopping something with no impact have any impact on public health?”

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