The White House wants your doctor to teach you about global

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Would you answer if you thought it was relevant? For example, if you drank heavily and were shown to have mysterious liver damage, or had a persistent cough and smoked 10 a day?

why is pollen climate and not weather? The earlier spring starts the longer the growing season, okay fine but it's steadily getting earlier? It doesn't change from year to year? Like I remember plenty of years where spring came late, it was always seemed late in Wisconsin since we'd have snow on the ground until like May sometimes. There doesn't seem like there is much consistency from AGW proponents as far as what is just weather and what is climate change, it seems like its just what fits their argument.

On the one hand, there are strong arguments for global warming increasing pollen counts.

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/impacts/warmer-temperatures-allergies.html#.VYyRTflVhBc

On the other hand, I am not comfortable with doctors just assuming that increased pollen counts are why a particular person is having worse allergies.

http://www.health.com/health/m/gallery/0,,20846709_2,00.html

^^above is list of some things that can make allergies worse, inlcuding cross-reacting proteins on produce and stress. Just saying "global warming" when the patient asks "why are my allergies worse recently?" is sloppy diagnostics.

For every medical visit in my adult life, I have received exactly the care I expected and desired because I have largely steered the discussion to allow my self-reporting and patient history. If my refusals of their government-mandated questions wasted anyone's time, it was the fault of those requiring and asking irrelevant questions. Under Obamacare, physicians are required (and paid) to ask these questions which include questions about sexual activities as well. But, no U.S. resident is required to answer the questions. So, I self-enforce the part of the law which fails to require my compliance. Strangely, my physicians have each learned my strategy and tactics, and have stopped asking the questions altogether. It would seem that all my physicians, at least, agree that their time is wasted as well.

After all, at the moment I attend them, I am their employer, am I not?

not every medical problem blares it's existance, some symptoms can be comorbid. I hope you've not got cancer or something nasty because you're too busy stonewalling the medical professionals you're consulting.
ex: http://www.webmd.com/eye-health/feature ... our-health
and no, you're their client, not their employer.

Did I ask for a medical assessment and prognosis?

Not sure what you're asking that for considering you're the one bringing your medical visits into discussion. It was just a expression of hope that you've not stonewalled yourself into something nasty, not an interrogative or an insinuation that I would wish such things on anyone.

Ah, that is good because I don't share my personal facts at WrongPlanet.net beyond what I have already disclosed throughout.

Keep politics out of the doctor's office

If you can prove there's some connection between a physical symptom and "global warming", then cool.

At that rate I'd also demand that my weatherman educate me on cholesterol.

Can you imagine what the physicians are thinking? "I spent eight years in medical school, one year internship and three years in residence so I could be some elected official's personal nudge?!?"

Does this include veterinarians, too? That's the only doctor on my payroll. He's definaty a conservative and I seriously doubt he buys into global warming.

Maybe my doctor is weird and/or too close to retirement to care but i've never been asked any non-medical questions.

Refusing to answer whether you use tobacco, drugs, or alcohol puts you at risk of a few things. For one, it may confound their ability to properly diagnose what you are visiting for, but more importantly it will almost certainly either limit their choice of pharmaceutical treatment options to those which are unlikely to have complications combined with tobacco, illicit drugs, or alcohol -- or, maybe they assume wrong that you don't use those things, and you end up with a prescription that is fundamentally incompatible with your lifestyle.

Refusing to answer whether you've had cold or flu-like symptoms in the recent past may hinder diagnosis of a more serious issue as well. They could, for example, suggest a diagnosis of appendicitis that otherwise would be missing key pieces of the puzzle, and that's just my guess as a non-doctor because a friend of mine had some infrequent nausea and related digestive distress -- every couple months for something like two years -- that eventually turned into an emergency appendectomy.

I agree that it's not really my doctor's business if i wear a seat belt, and that while I think doctors should be informed that pollen trends have consistently trended up for several years now which means that people will present with more and more severe pollen allergy symptoms than before, it seems odd to make them utter the words 'climate change' -- but the doctor's office is somewhere where candor is called for, in your own self-interest.

good point, how dare those students of science promote sound science.


the one thing that irks me most about the right is their anti-intellectual stance on issues.
Were it not for that, i'd probably be rightleaning

I have to say that i think it's odd that "global warming" / "climate change" continue to be a political issue.

You may be skeptical of causes. You may be skeptical of long term projections. But if you've lived more than 20 years or so you should be able to observe that "normal" has been changing.

For example, as illustrated by XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1321/

People freaking out because there were a few cold days in St. Louis? There used to be a lot more cold days in St. Louis.

Whether you believe dire long term projections or not, all of the ways we can scientifically look into prehistory and guess at weather patterns suggest that stasis isn't a thing on the geological time scale.

I could see arguing that we are in a "normal" swing of the pendulum and eventually it will swing the other way, but arguing that it's not happening?

I'm sorry, the denial is starting to look silly.

I haven't been on this earth long enough to have a sample size relevant enough to make that statement, 24 years is a pretty insignificant amount of time and so it an entire lifetime really considering the Earth is billion of years old. There have been warm years and cold ones, long winters and shorter ones, its hasn't steadily changed, it just seems like weather. Like I said, most AGW proponents aren't particular educated on the subject and have this habit of crying whenever uses weather to disprove their theory but then turns around trying to claim whatever random weather event that fits their narrative was caused by AGW and will increase. You can't have it both ways, either its relevant or its not. Didn't some dodo try to claim a couple years ago that the earthquakes that happened were the result of global warming? There is so much confirmation bias in AGW that its hard to believe anything, you can try to remove the political implications from it but you have to understand that is why it receives so much attention.