Predictive Equations For Energy Needs For The: Fill & Download for Free

NO NO NO. Choosing to follow the unfounded man made climate change leaves many millions in energy poverty. To deny valuable cheap energy from fossil fuels like coal is not caution it is a type of genocide for the > 2 billion living off the grid and exposed to the health dangers of outside cooking. WHO research finds living off the grid causes > 4 million deaths annually. “It is the largest environmental threat in the world today” according to Harvard research.Think about the fact there is not one electric grid anywhere in the world powered exclusively by wind and solar as fossil fuels are essential as back up and primary especially in Africa, India and China. There is no such thing as a 100 % renewable grid electricity because of intermittency. This means waiting for a new cleaner (for the developed world) energy transition is waiting to die.The consequences today of voting for the Paris Accord and man made climate change when the science is not settled and much in dispute is devastating on the developing world living without electricity for cooking a warmth. People kill themselves with the air they breath to live.GREAT ENERGY CHALLENGECookstove Smoke is “Largest Environmental Threat,” Global Health Study Finds1 MINUTE READBY MARIANNE LAVELLEPUBLISHEDDECEMBER 13, 2012In a finding that confirms the devastating health impact of energy poverty, the landmark Global Burden of Disease study published today tallied 3.5 million annual deaths from respiratory illness due to burning of wood, brush, dung, and other biomass for fuel.Cooking on traditional cookstoves is a far greater risk factor than poor water and sanitation, lead or radon pollution, or smog (ozone) and outdoor soot, according to the study in today’s Lancet, the largest ever systematic effort to describe the global distribution and causes of mortality. The data indicate that respiratory illness from breathing the emissions from inefficient cookstoves causes more than double the annual deaths attributed either to malaria (1.2 million) or to HIV/AIDS (1.5 million)….Seven research institutions from around the world, including Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, Imperial College London, the University of Tokyo, and the World Health Organization (WHO), collaborated on the study, which was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. (Related: “How Healthy is the World?”) The research was much expanded in scope from the 1990 Global Burden of Disease study funded by the World Bank.The new study, if compared to the figures from 20 years ago, marks a decline in global deaths due to cookstove pollution (which stood at 4.6 million in the 1990 study.) But it is roughly double the 2 million annual figure that WHO has been attributing to deaths due to indoor smoke from solid fuels.“These results provide further momentum to our mission to ensure that cooking doesn’t kill,” said Radha Muthiah, executive director of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, a public-private partnership that has been working to deploy cleaner, safer cookstoves.Added Kirk R. Smith, a professor of global environmental health at the University of California, Berkeley, and a co-author of The Lancet article, “One of the most alarming findings is that smoke from cooking fires was found to be the largest environmental threat to health in the world today.”Cookstove Smoke is “Largest Environmental Threat,” Global Health Study FindsFor more on this issue, see our previous coverage:“Protecting Health and the Planet With Clean Cookstoves”“The Solvable Problem of Energy Poverty”Coal is plentiful and cheap energy essential to bring these billions out of the grid poverty.THE SOCIAL INJUSTICE OF ENERGY POVERTYEnergy Poverty is devastatingEnergy poverty is devastating for more than 2 billion impoverished peoples living without electricity for light and heat. Cooking happens the way it has for centuries before – over smoky indoor fires that do no favors for lungs or life expectancies. I witnessed the tragedy first hand working in the China countryside in the winter where peasants are forced to live with their animals in a vain attempt to keep warm. Their weathered faces from the harsh life in the dark without heat is very sad.Once upon a time, social justice was synonymous with equal access to modern amenities — electric lighting so poor children could read at night, refrigerators so milk could be kept on hand, and washing machines to save the hands and backs of women. Malthus was rightly denounced by generations of socialists as a cruel aristocrat who cloaked his elitism in pseudo-science, and claimed that Nature couldn't possibly feed any more hungry months.Now, at the very moment modern energy arrives for global poor — something a prior generation of socialists would have celebrated and, indeed, demanded — today's leading left-wing leaders advocate a return to energy penury. The loudest advocates of cheap energy for the poor are on the libertarian Right, while The Nation dresses up neo-Malthusianism as revolutionary socialism.Left-wing politics was once about destabilizing power relations between the West and the Rest. Now, under the sign of climate justice, it's about sustaining them.Left-wing politicians like Al Gore, Obama and Naomi Klein crusading against cheap coal and efficient fossil fuels represents the greatest progressive reversal in history.http://***http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/voices/michael-shellenberger-and-ted-nordhaus/its-not-about-the-climate***This is immoral.Climate movement’s immoral spendingBy Tom HarrisThe consequence of overconfidence about climate science is tragic. According to the San Francisco-based Climate Policy Initiative, of the $1 billion spent worldwide each day on climate finance, 94 percent goes to mitigation, trying to control future climate. Only 6 percent of global climate finance is dedicated to helping vulnerable people cope with climate change today. In developing countries, even less, an abysmal 5 percent, goes to adaptation. Based on a theory about climate, we are letting people die today so as to possibly help those in the distant future."Providing the world’s most deprived countries with solar panels instead of better health care or education is inexcusable self-indulgence. Green energy sources may be good to keep on a single light or to charge a cellphone. But three billion people suffer from the effects of indoor air pollution because they burn wood, coal or dung to cook. These people need access to affordable, reliable electricity today. Too often clean alternatives, because they aren’t considered “renewable,” aren’t receiving the funding they deserve.We all know how well its access could help lift those without it out of poverty.The UN is more interested in chasing the chimera of “global warming” and its unproven science. The reason, of course, is power. Money and control equal power."Is the focus on "global warming" immoral?Tom Harris: Climate movement's immoral spendingWorld Bank Document/IEAWith respect to electricity, the global access deficit amounts to 1.2 billion people. Close to 85 percent of those who live without electricity (the “nonelectrified population”) live in rural areas, and 87 percent are geographically concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia (figure O.2). For cooking, the access deficit amounts to 2.8 billion people who primarily rely on solid fuels. About 78 percent of that population lives in rural areas, and 96 percent are geographically concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Asia, Southern Asia, and South-Eastern Asia.LOW PROBABILTY OF TOO HOT CLIMATEEarth’s climate system is unfathomably complex. It is affected by innumerable interacting variables, atmospheric CO2 levels being just one.The list of variables that shape climate includes cloud formation, topography, altitude, proximity to the equator, plate tectonics, sunspot cycles, volcanic activity, expansion or contraction of sea ice, conversion of land to agriculture, deforestation, reforestation, direction of winds, soil quality, El Niño and La Niña ocean cycles, prevalence of aerosols (airborne soot, dust, and salt) — and, of course, atmospheric greenhouse gases, both natural and manmade. A comprehensive list would run to hundreds, if not thousands, of elements, none of which scientists would claim to understand with absolute precision.Why are climate-change models so flawed? Because climate science is so incomplete - The Boston GlobeCanada’s national newspaper the Globe & Mail first published my research on the climate issue in 1991 ( ..) I urged a wait and see view as the science was not settled and any action by Canada would have no effect “like a drop in the ocean.”My article published in 1991 by the GLOBE urged "MORE RESEARCH" on global warming theory . C02 is essential to plant life. GLOBAL WARMING IS NATURAL. Climate is always changing. Canada is - "ONLY A DROP IN THE OCEAN."I relied on the safety research of Aaron Wildavsky who said if the risk is predictable or low probability then resilience is the right action. Overconfidence has been called the most “pervasive and potentially catastrophic” of all the cognitive biases to which human beings fall victim. It has been blamed for lawsuits, strikes, wars, and stock market bubbles and crashes. I blame it for the devastating impact of misguided climate alarmism called human made global warming denying cheap electricity to > 2 billion living in the dark and needing coal fired power.Overconfidence effect - WikipediaMy view hasn’t changed and the fear of unprecedented warming by fossil fuels is a very low probability and more untrue today than in 1991. Solar radiation has gone into decline making winters earlier, colder with more snow around the world. Climate is complex with many influencing variables.Earth’s climate system is unfathomably complex. It is affected by innumerable interacting variables, atmospheric CO2 levels being just one. The more variables there are in any system or train of events, the lower the probability of all of them coming to pass.The list of variables that shape climate includes cloud formation, topography, altitude, proximity to the equator, plate tectonics, sunspot cycles, volcanic activity, expansion or contraction of sea ice, conversion of land to agriculture, deforestation, reforestation, direction of winds, soil quality, El Niño and La Niña ocean cycles, prevalence of aerosols (airborne soot, dust, and salt) — and, of course, atmospheric greenhouse gases, both natural and manmade.Measuring human impacts on climate is indeed “very challenging.” The science is far from settled. That is why calls to radically reduce carbon emissions are so irresponsible — and why dire warnings of what will happen if we don’t are little better than reckless fear mongering.JEFF JACOBYWhy are climate-change models so flawed? Because climate science is so incompleteBy Jeff Jacoby Globe Columnist,March 14, 2017, 3:40 p.m.Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt said on CNBC's Squawk Box that he does not believe that carbon dioxide is a primary contributor to global warming.MELISSA PHILLIP /APWhy are climate-change models so flawed? Because climate science is so incomplete - The Boston GlobeMANY LEADING CLIMATE SCIENTISTS AGREE WITH HIM.Dr. Willie Soon versus the Climate ApocalypseGuest Blogger / December 2, 2018More honesty and less hubris, more evidence and less dogmatism, would do a world of goodDr. Jeffrey Foss“What can I do to correct these crazy, super wrong errors?” Willie Soon asked plaintively in a recent e-chat. “What errors, Willie?” I asked.“Errors in Total Solar Irradiance,” he replied. “The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change keeps using the wrong numbers! It’s making me feel sick to keep seeing this error. I keep telling them – but they keep ignoring their mistake.”Astrophysicist Dr. Willie Soon really does get sick when he sees scientists veering off their mission: to discover the truth. I’ve seen his face flush with shock and shame for science when scientists cherry-pick data. It ruins his appetite – a real downer for someone who loves his food as much as Willie does….Dr. Soon never sought the job of defending us against the slick, computer model-driven, anti-fossil fuel certainties of Climate Apocalypse. Willie just happened to choose solar science as a career and, like many solar scientists, after nearly three decades of scientific research in his case, came to believe that changes in the sun’s brightness, sunspots and energy output, changes in the orbital position of the Earth relative to the sun, and other powerful natural forces drive climate change. In brief, our sun controls our climate.Even the IPCC initially indicated agreement with him, citing his work approvingly in its second (1996) and third (2001) Assessment Reports. That later changed, significantly. Sure, everyone agrees that the sun caused the waxing and waning of the ice ages, just as solar scientists say. However, the sun had to be played down if carbon dioxide (CO2) was to be played up – an abuse of science that makes Willie sick.Unfortunately for the IPCC, solar scientists think solar changes also explain Earth’s most recent warming period which, they point out, began way back in the 1830s – long before we burned enough fossil fuels to make any difference. They also observed the shrinking of the Martian ice-caps in the 1990s, and their return in the last few years – in perfect time with the waning and waxing of Arctic ice caps here on Earth.Only the sun – not the CO2 from our fires – could cause that Earth-Mars synchronicity. And surely it is no mere coincidence that a grand maximum in solar brightness (Total Solar Irradiance or TSI) took place in the 1990s as both planets’ ice caps shrank, or that the sun cooled (TSI decreased) as both planets’ ice caps grew once again. All that brings us back to Dr. Soon’s disagreements with the IPCC.The IPCC now insists that solar variability is so tiny that they can just ignore it, and proclaim CO2 emissions as the driving force behind climate change. But solar researchers long ago discovered unexpected variability in the sun’s brightness – variability that is confirmed in other stars of the sun’s type. Why does the IPCC ignore these facts? Why does it insist on spoiling Willie’s appetite?It sure looks like the IPCC is hiding the best findings of solar science so that it can trumpet the decreases in planetary warming (the so-called “greenhouse effect”) that they embed in the “scenarios” (as they call them) emanating from their computer models. Ignoring the increase in solar brightness over the 80s and 90s, they instead enthusiastically blame the warmth of the 1990s on human production of CO2.In just such ways they sell us their Climate Apocalypse – along with the roll-back of human energy use, comfort, living standards and progress: sacrifices that the great green gods of Gaia demand of us if we are to avoid existential cataclysms. Thankfully, virgins are still safe – for now.Surely Willie and solar scientists are right about the primacy of the sun. Why? Because the observable real world is the final test of science. And the data – actual evidence – shows that global temperatures follow changes in solar brightness on all time-scales, from decades to millions of years. On the other hand, CO2 and temperature have generally gone their own separate ways on these time scales.Global temperatures stopped going up in the first two decades of this century, even though CO2 has steadily risen. The IPCC blames this global warming “hiatus” on “natural climate variability,” meaning something random, something not included in their models, something the IPCC didn’t see coming.This confirms the fact that their models do not add up to a real theory of climate. Otherwise the theory would be falsified by their incorrect predictions. They predicted a continuous increase in temperature, locked to a continuous increase in CO2. But instead, temperature has remained steady over the last two decades, while CO2 climbed even faster than before.IPCC modelers still insist that the models are nevertheless correct, somehow – that the world would be even colder now if it weren’t for this pesky hiatus in CO2-driven warming. Of course, they have to say that – even though they previously insisted the Earth would not be as cool as it is right now.Still, their politically correct commands stridently persist: stay colder in winter, stay hotter in summer, take cold showers, drive less, make fewer trips, fly less, don’t eat foods that aren’t “local,” bury your loved ones in cardboard boxes, turn off the lights. Their list of diktats is big and continuously growing.Unlike the IPCC, Willie and I cannot simply ignore the fact that there were multiple ice ages millions of years ago, when CO2 levels were four times higher than now. And even when CO2 and temperature do trend in tandem, as in the famous gigantic graph in Al Gore’s movie, the CO2 rises followed temperature increases by a few centuries. That means rising CO2 could not possibly have caused the temperature increases – an inconvenient truth that Gore doesn’t care about and studiously ignores.Unfortunately, through their powerful political and media cadres, the IPCC has created a highly effective propaganda and war-on-fossil-fuels vehicle, to herd public opinion – and marginalize or silence any scientist who dares to disagree with it. For better or worse, richer or poorer, my dear, passionate Dr. Soon is one scientist who is always ready to stand in the path of that tank and face it down: anytime, anywhere.I’m frightened by the dangers to Willie, his family and his career, due to his daily battles with the Climate Apocalypse industry. I can’t get it out of my mind that the university office building of climatologist John Christy – who shares Willie’s skepticism of Climate Apocalypse – was shot full of bullet holes last year. But let’s not let a spattering of gunfire spoil a friendly scientific debate. Right?Willie’s courage makes me proud to know him, and to be an aficionado of science like he is. When it comes to the long game, my money is on Dr. Willie Soon. We the people hunger for truth, as does science itself. And that hunger will inevitably eclipse our romantic dalliance with the Climate Apocalypse.Dr. Jeffrey Foss is a philosopher of science and Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, CanadaDr. Willie Soon versus the Climate Apocalypse

This question seems to have attracted a larger than usual number of climate deniers. Let’s do this with some information: Charctic Interactive Sea Ice Graph This website is updated daily. The entire span of human impact on climate, which departed from the global mean temperature expected due to solar cycles and orbital shifts around 1978, has been confusing for people who do not understand the science because ordinary factors, like the sun’s cycle that most people know as the sunspot cycle, is larger than the impact of greenhouse gas warming. What that means is that while we have seen steady warming at an increasing rate since 1978, we have still seem warmer years followed by slightly cooler years.This allows people like the fellow who thinks a pond forms at the North Pole to mangle all sorts of real and imaginary facts and confuse the public on a matter which we seriously need not to be confused about.Look at the chart at the link above. Two weeks ago 2020 looked like a cooler year than the last several. You can populate this chart one year at a time to see the steady gradual reduction in sea ice at the North Pole. The ice at the North Pole isn’t solid any more. It has been melting, not only in extent, but in thickness, and today the North Pole is covered with chunks of ice floating in a slush of salt water. It gets thicker and covers more of the sea in the Winter months, but things are different than they used to be, and this is exactly what the science has led us to expect.I choose my words carefully, because deniers come in all sorts of flavors, and some of them will pick on incautious words and bend the conversation until it isn’t about climate impacts at all. In truth, the science is no longer relevant to the conversation, unless you are personally interested in becoming educated enough to understand what this talk is about. So when I say the science led us to expect this, I mean that we have known that the poles would warm faster than the mid-latitudes or the equator. We do not have the ability to predict with precision. And a lot of deniers would rather die than have a small amount of imprecision in the basic knowledge that makes climate change an issue we can be confident is real and serious.Take, for example, the other fellow who thinks it will take 6500 years for Greenland’s ice to melt. The problem is that he has failed to follow the science, which has tracked Greenland’s melting for decades, and it is now melting fast enough that most of the ice will be gone in less than a thousand years. And yet even the scientists fail to communicate clearly. The most recent “rate” was announced by scientists who turned their work over to someone - junior staff, reporters, their kids, I don’t know - who failed to observe that the rate is not staying constant. James Hansen, the scientist a lot of deniers try to pretend is the only voice concerned about climate, noted last year that the rate of Greenland’s ice melting looks more like the bottom of a sinusoidal curve. That’s an “S” shape. The point being, that today’s rate means one thing if it is a rate that will not change (it isn’t) and something completely different if it is accelerating fast (it is).I’m going to spend a little more time on science, before I take this where it needs to be taken: Nobody lives at the North Pole, so the fact that it may be ice-free in a few years won’t mean a whole lot to people. The ice at the North Pole is floating, which means that if it melts it won’t alter sea level. Greenland is the largest body of ice in the world which is at risk of melting and which will contribute to sea level as it melts. If it melts completely it will raise sea level everywhere in the world about 18 feet.Because much of Greenland is far South of the North Pole or relative to any land covered with ice at the South Pole and it is also affected by warming atmosphere only, we can make reasonable predictions of the general conditions. Reasonable doesn’t mean that we can predict the weather on a particular day thirty years from now. The other large body of ice above sea level which is considered to be at risk of melting is the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), which is the “little” tail that stretches from Antarctic in the general direction of Argentina.WAIS is not melting. It is a large body of ice which would flow as glaciers, into the sea. The reason it doesn’t is because the potential glaciers are frozen, all the way into the ocean, by huge plugs of ice we call ice shelves. Scientists are concerned that the collapse of these ice shelves will allow the larger mass of WAIS ice to flow into the ocean much faster. The ice shelves are collapsing, and the ocean is warming much faster than was expected, and recent trips by scientists to WAIS is revealing much faster than expected erosion of the ice shelves, as warmer sea water flows under the shelves and makes the ice melt, a complex set of interactions with fresh water flowing under the glaciers is being observed, and acceleration of the various trends is being noted. All this boils down to a simple statement that pointing to facts and estimating possible future events is a whole lot more complicated at WAIS than it is in the case of Greenland.The largest body of ice above sea level in the world is the Eastern Antarctic ice. Scientists do not expect it to melt as a result of human impact on climate. The large body of ice is cold enough that a fifteen or twenty degree warming would not take it above freezing.So we’re mostly concerned about a total of roughly 72 feet of sea level increase. The part we can see most clearly is Greenland. The current rate of melting is going to remove more than half, and possibly more than about three quarters of total Greenland ice. We do not know if today’s total impact of greenhouse gases and other warming factors will cause the last of Greenland’s ice to melt. A lot of the projected sea level rise is due to thermal expansion of sea water, and not melting anything.Here’s the problem though. Although humans have been adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere for more than 175 years, half of all greenhouse gases have been added to the atmosphere in the last 30 years. The rate of our emissions is increasing so fast that we haven’t yet felt the full impact of the stuff we’ve already put out, and we can’t possibly stop raising atmospheric greenhouse gases overnight. I talk about ending fossil fuels in 20 years. That’s about as fast as I can imagine us doing it.If we stop using fossil fuels and stop the other things that are causing warming in about 20 years, we will not raise the rate of warming so much that Greenland’s rate of melting will increase from almost a thousand years, to less than 200 years. We will not raise global temperatures so much that we will surely see the collapse of the ice shelves holding WAIS back. And a whole lot of other things we have seen as problems will slow down enough that it won’t reach the level that creates most of the concern. I regard ocean pH change as a greater threat than warming. I also regard rapid and large shifts in rain and droughts as a greater threat.It is a wide open question how bad things could get. It’s impossible to be precise or even closely accurate with general projections, if we don’t know where we are planning to stop using fossil fuels. And that brings me to the last issue.Arguing about the relative impact or concern or threat of any aspect of climate change is a diversion. Climate deniers make use of human nature, but it is human nature which is driving most of this diversion of attention from what matters. What matters is how fast we can stop climate change.In late 2017 the cost of new utility scale wind and solar plants dropped far below the cost of operating existing fossil and nuclear plants. Nuclear power doesn’t emit greenhouse gases, but the existing plants won’t last much longer, and new nuclear plants are insanely expensive, so without a cheap renewable option, they would be replaced with fossil fuels. Energy efficiency is the other leg of the end of fossil fuels. I won’t give you all the information I often to to prove that wind and solar are now cheaper than fossil fuels. This message is already getting too long. But it’s not hard to find if you are tuned in to the right issues.The entire world has access to sunlight and wind. Most of the world’s countries do not think that production of fossil fuels is important. We could look at this as if the steady erosion of fossil fuel consumption by other countries impacting the price of fossil fuels, and therefore the U.S. ability to produce them, but that’s really another diversion.What matters is that fossil fuels kill 100,000 U.S. citizens every year from soot and smog. We have known this for more than 30 years, but it slipped from the public awareness because the 1998 health standards which the EPA imposed took fossil fuels to the limits of pollution controls, and as long as no one took it seriously that we could afford to replace fossil fuels, that was the “best” we could do. Or perhaps it was the best result that could be produced by the mix of fossil fuels and nuclear advocates in the U.S. Congress.Fossil fuel soot and smog send 10 million U.S. citizens to the doctor every year. This is a significant fraction of total medical costs, and ending it will make a sensible Federal health care program more affordable.The virus has given us a glimpse of what a future without fossil fuels might look like. The virus has also aggravated a weak U.S. and global economic drag. And solving climate change gives us a great solution.Utility scale wind and solar will go a long way to repairing the economy. I like the idea of about $80 billion per year in new economic activity, but of course it is much larger. We don’t just build wind and solar farms. We build electric cars, heat pumps, and many other things most people never think about, which change due to the renewable revolution. Rooftop solar and offshore wind are more expensive than onshore utility scale wind and solar farms, but they will be built.Efficiency is already adding a lot to this, and it can add more.So we have these problems: terrible impacts from soot and smog - much more terrible in developing nations where pollution laws are weak or nonexistent, than in the U.S. Although the U.S. has done a good job with visible pollution, it hasn’t done so good at limiting the fine particulates which are what actually kill most of those people, and sicken most of them. We have an economic problem on top of an economic problem. The income disparity being worse than at any other time in the last two centuries is a huge problem which was here before the virus. (Don’t fail to note that the virus seems to have a worse impact on people whose health is impaired by respiratory and lung problems).So we can fix all these things, and lower the cost of electricity at the same time. And incidentally, we also eliminate 90% of our CO2 emissions and 75% of our methane emissions. You may have heard other values for different shares of methane. There’s a lot of BS in the talk about the role of cows and climate change. 75% of our total global methane increases come from fossil fuels production and waste.This won’t solve all of global warming. There are other things to be done.But if we do end fossil fuel use, all the other things become easier, and we are wealthier, so we can afford to do those things. If we don’t end fossil fuel use, there is literally no point in pursuing any of the other good work which is needed to end climate change. Planting trees doesn’t matter if temperature is rising, rainfall is shifting, and droughts and floods will kill trees faster than we can plant them and keep them alive.So if you are seriously interested in the science surrounding Arctic ice in the time of climate change, take some time with that link I gave you, follow the links there, and figure out if or how you want to get involved with any of the people who are working on those things.I’ve worked for many years with the major environmental groups. I find their approach to clean energy seriously flawed. Figure out who is working to promote utility scale wind and solar, or utility efficiency programs, and help them. Otherwise you are on the fringes of this issue. Rooftop solar is going to happen, but it isn’t going to solve the problem because it is still too expensive to push all the fossil plants out of the way.This message has already become too long. I apologize, but it isn’t simple. Are we going to diminish the quality of the planet for the next ten or twenty generations because we don’t like complexity? That will be up to all of us together. It’s not a question a single person can answer for themselves.

You already have an excellent answer but I will add another perspective to this. I was taught at UNC Chapel Hill that it is virtually impossible to take a narcotic daily for 6 weeks and not become addicted to it. Now that I have said that not everyone who becomes addicted to narcotics will go out seeking more of the medication by lying to medical professionals or stealing them out of friends medicine cabinets or through some other method. My wife was on them for about 5 weeks. She decided to quit taking them cold turkey. She did not know what happened to her. She assumed she was sick and wanted to know what illness I brought home to her. I saw the goose bumps on her arms and the look on her face then I asked when did she have the last dose of pain killers (she had recently had surgery). She said about 2 days ago. I told her she was fine but was going through withdrawals. She got mad and said she was no drug addict. I said in a manner of speaking yes and then again no. I told she would be fine in 24 hours and she was. She did not think she could not live without the medication nor did she like the way they made her feel. She normally just got pain relief and no euphoria.I tell that story to say this if the person is over prescribed pain killers and the person likes the way they make him/her feel then some issues are going to arise quickly. I say over prescribed as to mean more than the patient needed and in a longer period than they should have been prescribed. Too many MD’s are overworked and so as a consequence do not pay attention to patients medication intake. The patient should be seen sooner and the MD should taper the person down or cut them off all together. As a sidebar I was once prescribed steroids for my respiratory issues. They made me feel great and I had tons of energy. My MD said how are they working and I gave him the good report. He said I would have to come off of the medication due to damage to my body (specifically my liver). I said I can deal with it but can not live without a liver. My MD did good follow up and patient education as they should. This is the kind of medical care folks need especially when taking addictive/dangerous medication(s).Some say the pharmacist should educate the patient about the medication and they do put information in the bag when you purchase your medication. Pharmacists tend to know more about drugs than doctors. Doctors do not want their patients being told medical advice by a pharmacist! Pharmacists have told me stories of their customers calling in needing a prescription although it is not time for it to be refilled. It is never heart medication or insulin or antibiotics but the tranquilizers and pain killers/narcotics that they need refilled. They were eaten by the cat or fell in the toilet!Another issue with pain killers is some doctors are afraid the person will just go to another doctor to get a prescription. Pharmacists do not want to lose a customer. Also remember a doctor has a prima facia duty to make his/her patients well or feel better and alleviation of pain is part of that equation. I wish MD’s would get a good history from their patients to include a family history of addiction or mental illness. I also wish patients would tell their MD’s the truth as TV’s Dr. House said “everyone lies”. If the MD’s know of a patient’s family history they might be better able to predict who is going to love the feeling of those medications and continue taking them long after the medical need is no longer present. The pharmaceutical companies are looking to make a dollar and that they do very well. We the general public also need to show some more responsibility and realize we can get hooked on this stuff and should therefore behave accordingly. So we all should have some of the blame regarding prescription drug misuse and addiction. Obviously some people more than others!