Science as a blunt instrument

No doubt anyone who's followed the debates on global warming that occur on the blogosphere have noticed the reference to tobacco industry scientific studies and in particular that S. Fred Singer and perhaps a few others were involved in downcrying the science that second hand smoke causes cancer. What I'm wondering though is why anyone needed a scientific report to call on any ban for smoking? As I just read a lawyer repeating, "my right to swing my fist ends just before it touches your nose". Well substitute blowing smoke for swinging fists and you have all the justification you need. For all the blather that selfish smokers make about society impinging on their liberties they don't ever consider for one second that us non-smokers find smoke offensive and that our right to not breath their pollution far outweighs their rights to do it. The case is this simple; you can smoke as much as you like as long as you don't blow any over anyone else. It doesn't even matter whether it causes cancer or not, the mere fact that it is disgusting is sufficient reason to send the buggers outside.

A similar report was recently released on the health effects of Diesel. Apparently long distance lorry drivers are showing certain signs of something or other. This is no doubt another effort to undermine fossil fuel use in some way. That I saw it on the green car congress blog confirms the audience for this stuff. But again it wasn't necessary because everyone agrees that diesel smoke and soot is particularly disgusting and I'd have thought pedestrians are more at risk than anyone. So who needs a report? Answer - absolutely nobody. People get bogged down arguing on scientific reports that show spurious correlations and talk about statistical significance (a phrase that should be outlawed in my opinion) in order to invoke some health law. Yet they don't need that - they can turn to civil liberties laws instead.

And of course the upshot is that even smokers prefer to be in a smoke free environment. This is why they blow it out so far in the first place. Now that discos have become smoke free zones, my smoking friends remark that it's much more pleasant and they are quite happy to go outside to prevent the inside getting smoky.

I guess I'm particularly cranky about smoke because one of these 2000 poisons gives me a migraine from time to time. It took me a while to narrow it down to smoke but then I narrowed it down even further to US cigarettes. Ah the US free market economy - allows you to consume all the junk you like and a lot more you didn't know about! Have some growth hormones with that steak won't you? By the way, did anybody ever tell you you're beginning to resemble a bullock? What happened to the science that investigated that anyway? Maybe the entire grant went towards investigating truckers lungs. Or maybe the fossil fuel industry is fair game but the food industry gets a free ride for some reason.

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