Speaking at a townhall event in VA today President Obama claimed that emissions from coal fired power plants cause asthma. There’s one problem–there’s no science to back the claim. While many studies, including those performed by the NIH, argue that some pollution caused by burning coal, like ozone, may trigger asthma attacks, none argue that it causes the condition. In fact empirically there seems to be a negative correlation (not causation) between instances of asthma and ozone pollution. Over the past 30 years ground level ozone has declined quite dramatically while at the same time children with asthma (per 100,000) have increased. And while correlation does not prove causation, lack of correlation does prove lack of causation. What’s even nuttier is that Obama, proving himself to be the “junk scientist in chief,” actually suggested that one of the “pollutants” causing asthma is CO2 (that’s right, we are apparently causing asthma among our neighbors’ kids by exhaling). Here’s what he said:
“You got asthma? Okay. And so sucking that stuff in is not ideal. So what we’ve said is, let’s invest in clean coal technology that potentially can capture some of these particulates and some of the carbon dioxide that’s going into the atmosphere.”
And we wonder why our school children are way behind the rest of the developed world in science and math.
