Buy

Books
Click images for more details

Twitter
Support

 

Recent comments
Recent posts
Currently discussing
Links

A few sites I've stumbled across recently....

Powered by Squarespace

Discussion > Drs against Diesel : A subsidy mafia Front

Thu Times : Children in polluted areas ‘more likely to get depression’
short article

" the quarter exposed to the highest levels of pollution were "
.. The study did NOT measure the amount pollution each child was "EXPOSED to"
The metric was "Children living in polluted areas"

The amount of pollution each child was "exposed to " might be completely different, cos they don't spent their days standing next to a roadside pollution monitor.

Even yards away measurements might be quite different, But they spend 2/3 of their time INSIDE their home , where the air might be completely different ..eg log fire, smoker parent , kitchen chemicals , garden pollen etc.

Most of the rest of the time they spend INSIDE a school building again where pollution might be quite different.

But the Times will print whatever vague study it can find about London air pollution.

Jan 31, 2019 at 11:18 PM | Registered Commenterstewgreen

Surely, there are not that many young Victorian ladies around, nowadays, are there, Mr Hart?

Feb 3, 2019 at 7:12 PM | Registered CommenterRadical Rodent

The German lung doctors' study summary:

https://www.lungenaerzte-im-netz.de/fileadmin/pdf/Stellungnahme__NOx_und__Feinstaub.pdf

There's a link to the full paper too for those who want to practise their knowledge of German compound nouns.

Feb 3, 2019 at 10:27 PM | Unregistered CommenterIt doesn't add up...

Wednesday : The Times DieselsRpaedos writers guys have 2 articles on pg4 today

- Wake up to damage caused by dirty air, doctors warn parents
"Nine in ten paediatricians said that dirty air was harming children"
FFS how do you think they would respond to such a loaded question ?
80 children’s doctors carried out by Unicef and the Royal College of Paediatrics

It quotes Mike Penrose, executive director of Unicef UK
and Jonathan Grigg
and Navene Alim, a mother of two from London, " I’m certain her health problems are caused by air pollution.”

==========

#2 article is extremely abbreviated online
"The boom in online shopping has helped make transport the sector with the highest greenhouse gas emissions"

Times commenters as usual are mostly skeptical
"No one makes you live on a busy road in crowded capital city, just move"

they make the good points
- these are activist group opinions
- where is the empirical evidence from taxi driver studies

It really does look like pollution scare is their own little empire building
.. You don't make changes without doing proper cost benefit studies

Feb 6, 2019 at 4:53 PM | Registered Commenterstewgreen

Jeez Prof Tony Frew suddenly died in November
Great old school scientist who went with maths not the groupthink

RIP .. As always the bad "PR not news" guys will win
Here's A reminder of his explanation on the 40K Air Pollution
theoretical equivalent lives stat
Youtube

Feb 8, 2019 at 8:34 PM | Registered Commenterstewgreen

BBC More Or Less is now dealing with the claim domestic wood/coal burning generates 38% of PM2.5 micro-particles
Its from 2015 figs modelled figs

They're saying yes cos such huge amount of heating fuel is burnt, it is much more than road transport.

Users burn 40 hours/week winter and 20h/w in Summer

Some one tried to check with real world sampling
It shows that including natural or imported (a different metric to the UK manmade sources only)
... then wood/coal is 10% of PM 2.5 in the air

They argue the modelling assumes older not clean burn stoves are being used
Seems it is really difficult to get proper figs
The clean burn stoves are still not great.

I say, pollution OUTPUT is the wrong metric
cos what counts is INPUT,
ie what enters your lungs,
that's not same as roadside monitor
The input source is often your kitchen/bathroom

You spend 23 hours/day in your home or school etc.

Feb 8, 2019 at 8:40 PM | Registered Commenterstewgreen

Vile Invention

Dark was that day when Diesel conceived his grim engine that begot you, vile invention, more vicious, more criminal than the camera even, metallic monstrosity, bale and bane of our culture, chief woe of our Commonweal. How dare the Law prohibit hashish and heroin yet license your use, who inflate all weak inferior egos? Their addicts only do harm to their own lives: you poison the lungs of the innocent, your din dithers the peaceful, and on choked roads hundreds must daily die by chance-medley. Nimble technicians, surely you should hang your heads in shame. Your wit works mighty wonders, has landed men on the Moon, replaced brains by computers, and can smithy a "smart" bomb. It is a crying scandal that you cannot take the time or be bothered to build us, what sanity knows we need, an odorless and noiseless staid little electric brougham.

W.H. Auden (1907-1973), A Curse:

Feb 8, 2019 at 9:39 PM | Registered Commentertomo

Times Feb 1st : \\ About 50 water-spraying drones were flown over Bangkok yesterday morning as part of frantic efforts to tackle surging air pollution levels that have caused school closures and prompted fears of a public health crisis.

Officials launched the drones and small aeroplanes to drop water over the haze of dust that had engulfed much of the city for weeks.

The Thai capital has a population of ten million. Yesterday 437 schools were closed to protect children from pollution. The air measured 175 on the Air Quality Index (AQI) on Wednesday night. The World Health Organisation has ruled that levels over 25 are unacceptable.//
A reading above 100 in London would be kind of be impossible
20 or 30 is more likely with peaks of 50 or 60 some days
UK AQI indexes
..take any source with a pinch of salt

I'm betting that many places are using modelling rathr than measurement
And on Twitter some people are showing handheld pen like devices that are surely too small.
There is a reason why roadside stations are so large.

Feb 10, 2019 at 4:44 PM | Registered Commenterstewgreen

I wonder what west African dust levels get to during the Harmattan?

Feb 10, 2019 at 7:22 PM | Registered Commentertomo

I used to live in West Africa..Ghana mostly ..Been to Togo and Benin
..Since the subcontinent is stuffed with AIDS, malaria corruption
.. air dust was not a priority.
Women cooked over over open wood/dung fires
..and god knows what the lungs of the minibus drivers are like
..#FirstWorldProblems

I've been in the interior in dry times and there can be a lot of dust
.. seen same in Morocco /Tunisia/ Egypt near Sahara

Feb 11, 2019 at 1:06 PM | Registered Commenterstewgreen

Times : february 7 2019,
Capaign column : Electric delivery vehicles would help clean our filthy air

journo Edward Lucas seems to be in a green cult.
: Invent a demon (air pollution)
: Invent a holy green magic solution (electric vans)
EL's arguments seem to be all emotion rather than all data.
True the air you breathe knocks days off everyone's lifespan.
But how much of that air pollution that INPUTS your lungs actually originates from the OUTPUT of diesel vans ?
#1 You spend 22 hours/day indoors home/school/office, and the air inside is quite different from the air outside

There was Times article last month about how Geely had delayed their Electric Van rollout prog due to lack of demand

Feb 11, 2019 at 1:09 PM | Registered Commenterstewgreen

Times journo Edward Lucas is back pushing electric cars in the Thunderer campaigning column.
"We could curb the emissions kill 40,000 people a year by charging old cars more than new ones and *electric cars not at all "

Jesus so much FakeNews in one sentence
He implies that if all cars were electric 40,000 people a year would not be killed.
#1 zero people die of ALL pollution not 40,000.. if you check proper stats
#2 life days are lost cos of ALL pollution
... however vehicles are only responsible for a certain portion of pollution that enters your lungs.
... and cars are only responsible for a certain portion of that
so car regulation might only cut 5%
.. Electric cars are not zero pollution; they have tyre pollution and power station pollution and manufacturing pollution.

His article is about congestion ..and road rationing to reduce that
He then assumes pollution is the same thing.
Thats not true , You can get roads crowded for a few hours
vs a road that has a steady flowing traffic that thus generates more 24hour pollution.

He comes up with the idea thst road pricing is unfair on the poor, so everyone will get limited coupons with their VED

Feb 13, 2019 at 4:52 PM | Registered Commenterstewgreen

Times : A third of patients have to go to ateas that breach air pollution to get to their GP

... FFS what a BS PR story

quotes Penny Woods of British Lung Foundation

ah the report comes from UK100 .."a network of council leaders that campaign on environmental issues"

Feb 13, 2019 at 6:20 PM | Registered Commenterstewgreen

pg 40 two articles
- One from Greenpeace about VOCs in the home

- Another about Killingholme bankrupt waste pile
... article just used to fill space ..no new news

Feb 16, 2019 at 3:12 PM | Registered Commenterstewgreen

Times journo Edward Lucas is back pushing electric cars in the Thunderer campaigning column.
"We could curb the emissions kill 40,000 people a year by charging old cars more than new ones and *electric cars not at all "

Jesus so much FakeNews in one sentence
[...]
Feb 13, 2019 at 4:52 PM | Registered Commenterstewgreen

To say something positive about the BBC, for a change, I actually heard this challenged on Radio 4 a couple of days ago.

I don't know the interviewer or who was being interviewed, but it sounded as if it might actually be the Mayor of London, given the braggadocioid [*] nature of what he was saying regarding what "we" have recently done and 'will do' in London

However, the BBC interviewer not only cited a recently-interviewed Cambridge Professor saying that the London air was much cleaner than two decades ago, but also that the 40,000 deaths trope was something neither believable, nor founded in good science.
I was slightly stunned for a couple of seconds.

The extra reason I think it might have been the Mayor of London who was being interviewed, is that he broke into immediate flat-out apoplectic denial, causing me to quickly switch channel.

Most Conservative politicians generally seem to be far too cucked to take that line with the media these days.


[* I claim first use of that word, whether merited or not. Maybe it should have a double c?]

Feb 17, 2019 at 2:09 AM | Unregistered Commentermichael hart

there was a typo of course
The claim is "emissions THAT kill 40,000"

Feb 21, 2019 at 4:47 PM | Registered Commenterstewgreen

Newcastle : claim the city downtown Tyne bridges will impose a £1.70 pollution charge.
FFS I didn't notice much of a pollution problem in Newcastle and much of the bridge traffic is buses .
80% of the city is on the northbank anyway so it wouldn't drop city centre traffic by much

Feb 21, 2019 at 4:51 PM | Registered Commenterstewgreen

Wednesday : I'm a bit behind I haven't done last weeks paper yet
Times Today the DieselsRpaedos PR team are back on pg 4
Almost 2,000 areas blighted by ‘unforgivable’ toxic air pollution
PR not news
Source : FoE
Errors
- "Diesels are the largest source of NOx"
..even if that were true it's the wrong metric..What counts is INPUT into the lungs and that could well be most from sources inside the house like kitchen like open fires etc
- The report is NOT about all pollution, but just NOx

and we know the German expert report said that NOx is not a health problem

Feb 27, 2019 at 3:01 PM | Registered Commenterstewgreen

Times has photos of pink smoke in London
its Uber drivers protesting against Sadiq's air cleaning congestion charge
'Since most Uber drivers are non-white, it's RACIST that they have to pay and black cab drivers don't'
So they are suing him
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/uber-drivers-sue-sadiq-khan-over-racist-congestion-charge-b68tvv8tb

Mar 2, 2019 at 1:52 PM | Registered Commenterstewgreen

..

Mar 2, 2019 at 2:19 PM | Registered Commenterstewgreen

Times : Emissions rise as motorists give up diesel
changed from 43% marketshare to 29%
thus UK CO2 rising

hmm
#1 New car sales make up small percentage of cars on the road.. so shouldn't actually change output by much


Also Times says
said
"diesel less CO2,
several times more NOx
a gas linked to thousands of deaths"
They need ti substantiate that last bit,
cos AFAIK NOx appears on almost zero death certificates.

also The "several times more NOx" bit is flake news also
cos surely there is massive variation in NOx output from different models
... plus your lungs NOx input may well mostly come from indoor sources AFAIK

Mar 6, 2019 at 5:55 PM | Registered Commenterstewgreen

Monday 11th the Public Health England PR was released
.. "Think of the children ..switch off your engine outside the school"

at 7:47am Radio5Live tweeted

BBC Radio 5 Live @bbc5live
Leaving your car idling outside of school? You may as well feed children poison.

Prof Paul Cosford, Director of Health at @PHE_uk
wants cars banned outside schools to stop children being breathing polluted air.

Mar 11, 2019 at 10:25 PM | Registered Commenterstewgreen

I doubt I'm alone in wanting PHE banned on the basis that the Oxygen they steal / waste could be put to far better use elsewhere.

I hope that there's only secure bicycle storage and no car parks or lifts installed at their expensive new HQ so that they can lead by example.

I guess that's what you get when a product of medical training can't be trusted near actual patients.

Mar 11, 2019 at 11:10 PM | Registered Commentertomo

Jonathan Grigg has a letter in the Times today calling for particulate emissions testing for motor bikes and scooters.

... I'm not sure about that I very rarely see them in the roads in our county.
Is it the case that they are polluting a few streets in London ?

Seems to me that better off doing random checks on those streets rather than introducing testing for whole country.

Mar 16, 2019 at 2:57 PM | Registered Commenterstewgreen

It's one of 3 letters in the wake of the PHE PR, another letter is from Max Davie, who promises magic results if we reduce pollution near schools.

Mar 16, 2019 at 2:59 PM | Registered Commenterstewgreen