5 ms·

How are deaths related tk falsified fuel emissions calculated? Edit: a word

by cced 10y ago

rdtsc 10y ago
You can build a model perhaps if toxicity of emissions, how it spreads, absorbs, affects human body are known.
Unklejoe 10y ago
There's no way they can reliably calculate that. Any increase in deaths could just as easily be attributed to the increase in popularity of country music and therefore diesel truck sales. All we can reliably say is that the environment is worse off. Also, 59 seems like a statistically insignificant number when compared to the overall population. Or maybe I'm interpreting it incorrectly?
- wavefunction 10y ago
  >Also, 59 seems like a statistically insignificant number when compared to the overall population. Or maybe I'm interpreting it incorrectly? What if you were one of those people? Or someone you loved?
  - ccallebs 10y ago
    I don't think he's calling the deaths insignificant. He's only saying it's statistically insignificant given N.
- ams6110 10y ago
  I sit in stunned amazement at the foaming-at-the-mouth outrage being expressed on this thread. There is no way you can pin the death of anybody on VW diesel emissions. It's a statistics game that that's it. You might as well blame Tesla for the extra deaths caused by the increase coal plant emissions created by owners charging their cars. Or make up any other example of any activity that increases some polutant. The only difference is that VW violated an arbitrary number in a government regulation. There are millions of vehicles on the road today with worse emissions than the violating VW diesels. They are all killing people (statistically) and the government and therefore you and I are complicit in this murder by allowing it to continue. I am sure everone on this thread will endorse punitive tax increases to punish us all for our negligence, and to buy out the owners of these polluting cars so that they can all buy clean-and-green new ones (conveniently ignoring the rather massive environmental impact and attendant premature deaths caused by junking and replacing perfectly serviceable vehicles).
  - dontreact 10y ago
    Actually yes, a carbon tax that priced in externalities such as excess deaths would be a great idea and many people in this thread would support it.
  - Unklejoe 10y ago
    Exactly. It's understandable to be angry about this, but I think many people overestimate the magnitude of the issue here (or perhaps have misplaced their anger). Consider the fact that in some states, heavy duty diesel trucks (8,500 lbs or more) and trucks older than 1997 are completely exempt from all emissions testing. I bet a single one of those trucks produces more emissions than the "actual vs claimed" emissions delta of dozens of VWs combined.
  - brc 10y ago
    Not to mention the car transporter ships which pump out bunker oil soot and Nox while idling at port while the VWs get unloaded. An extra 30 minutes of that is probably worse than all the extra emissions combined.
  - RGamma 10y ago
    Additionally, I find it quite extraordinary how such huge settlements over a bit more car exhaust in a country with lots of emissions-testing-exempt trucks and massive hydraulic fracturing programs can exist at the same time, but who said that government policy needs to be consistent?
  - kharms 10y ago
    > It's a statistics game that that's it. That's a bullshit attitude. How about cancer from smoking? Is that also a statistics game? The effect of NOx on human health was studied the same way that smoking was.
- dontreact 10y ago
  1. I am not an expert here, but unless you are too I wouldn't refute claims made by peer-reviewed publications without at least offering an argument against the analysis made. http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/11/114005/meta;jsessionid=CBB0DEF280F6107CE4771D4142C8BA0D.c5.iopscience.cld.iop.org http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/11/11... If you agree that the environment is worse off and that the environment being worse off causes more deaths, then you agree that they caused deaths. Then it becomes a question of magnitude, which they tried as best as possible to estimate. 2. There is a confidence interval around 59 in the study which doesn't include 0, so it is statistically significant according to the analysis they did. Not sure what sort of analysis would say that 59 deaths is statistically insignificant unless it was a difference between two groups, but that's not the case here. 3. There's a problem here with news articles boiling down an estimate with a wide confidence interval to a single number. There needs to be a way for the public to start understanding statistical conclusions and confidence intervals.
  - Unklejoe 10y ago
    > [If you agree that the environment is worse off and that the environment being worse off causes more deaths, then you agree that they caused deaths.] ...I should have said “worse off than if VW had not cheated and all other variables remained the same”. I don't question that more emissions results in more deaths. I question their ability to reliably calculate the number of deaths caused when dealing with numbers that small (~0.0003%) and leaving out some very important variables (which they do reference but don't incorporate). Of course, the publication was meant to compare the claimed vs actual emissions, but I'm talking in the more general case of overall emissions. The publication claims that: >> [Finally, we note that there may have been environmental benefits of the defeat device that we have not computed. For example, the reduced use of diesel exhaust fluid in selective catalytic reduction may potentially have also reduced ammonia slip, and therefore associated PM2.5 exposure and health impacts. In particular, Dedoussi and Barrett (2014) find that total PM2.5 exposure attributable to road transportation is caused approximately equally by NOx and NH3 emissions.] I can think of a few more inadvertent environmental/health benefits of the defeat device: For example, suppose that VW hadn't cheated and instead spent more time and money on R&D to come up with a legitimate solution. They would then have to pass this cost on to the consumers in the form of a more expensive car. Would all of the people who purchased diesel VW's still have purchased them if they were more money? If not, would they have purchased a car that produces worse emissions instead? The VW Jetta has a 5 star crash rating. Would all of the people who purchased other cars purchased cars with the same crash rating, or perhaps a car with a worse crash rating? There are a bunch of things that you could list that could all have an impact that rivals the 59 cited in the publication. We're talking about 59 out of 17,500,000 (number of annual deaths integrated over 2008-2015). It wouldn't take much to actually find out that the VW emissions scandal actually resulted in more lives saved. EDIT: That said, the publication isn't really trying to measure the amount of deaths caused by the scandal itself, but rather the increased emissions portion of it. Perhaps my original comment was out of line now that I think about it.
- jbangert 10y ago
  This argument will seem a bit more empathetic if you don't consider it as killing 59 people outright, but increasing risk factors so that on average 59 additional deaths occurred(unclear over what timeframe and what the methodology is). Spread out over the world population (we share the same air) that is a relatively short amount of lifetime. On the other hand, consuming more fuel, making car ownership more expensive etc also carries real costs. People can't get work done, spend more of that lifetime tAking less efficient means of transportation, doing less enjoyable things like waiting on a greyhound bus, etc. The sensationalist 'caused x deaths' headlights are very hard to reason With and usually one sided. That being said, car emissions are still a problem and there is a reason for these(and other public health) rules -- the response should perhaps be a little bit less emotional though. ( there are plenty of scandals that are probably more worthy of this emotional response, e.g. Illegal dumping or contamination, unhealthy foods, antibiotic overuse, etc.)
a3camero 10y ago
The method for the paper that is quoted in the Wikipedia article can be found starting on page 2 (the full text is available for free): http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/11/114005/pdf http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/11/11.... It's three and a half pages long and includes many citations to other published articles.

How are deaths related tk falsified fuel emissions calculated? Edit: a word

by cced 10y ago

How are deaths related tk falsified fuel emissions calculated? Edit: a word

rdtsc 10y ago

You can build a model perhaps if toxicity of emissions, how it spreads, absorbs, affects human body are known.

Unklejoe 10y ago

There's no way they can reliably calculate that. Any increase in deaths could just as easily be attributed to the increase in popularity of country music and therefore diesel truck sales. All we can reliably say is that the environment is worse off. Also, 59 seems like a statistically insignificant number when compared to the overall population. Or maybe I'm interpreting it incorrectly?

wavefunction 10y ago
>Also, 59 seems like a statistically insignificant number when compared to the overall population. Or maybe I'm interpreting it incorrectly? What if you were one of those people? Or someone you loved?
- ccallebs 10y ago
  I don't think he's calling the deaths insignificant. He's only saying it's statistically insignificant given N.
ams6110 10y ago
I sit in stunned amazement at the foaming-at-the-mouth outrage being expressed on this thread. There is no way you can pin the death of anybody on VW diesel emissions. It's a statistics game that that's it. You might as well blame Tesla for the extra deaths caused by the increase coal plant emissions created by owners charging their cars. Or make up any other example of any activity that increases some polutant. The only difference is that VW violated an arbitrary number in a government regulation. There are millions of vehicles on the road today with worse emissions than the violating VW diesels. They are all killing people (statistically) and the government and therefore you and I are complicit in this murder by allowing it to continue. I am sure everone on this thread will endorse punitive tax increases to punish us all for our negligence, and to buy out the owners of these polluting cars so that they can all buy clean-and-green new ones (conveniently ignoring the rather massive environmental impact and attendant premature deaths caused by junking and replacing perfectly serviceable vehicles).
- dontreact 10y ago
  Actually yes, a carbon tax that priced in externalities such as excess deaths would be a great idea and many people in this thread would support it.
- Unklejoe 10y ago
  Exactly. It's understandable to be angry about this, but I think many people overestimate the magnitude of the issue here (or perhaps have misplaced their anger). Consider the fact that in some states, heavy duty diesel trucks (8,500 lbs or more) and trucks older than 1997 are completely exempt from all emissions testing. I bet a single one of those trucks produces more emissions than the "actual vs claimed" emissions delta of dozens of VWs combined.
- brc 10y ago
  Not to mention the car transporter ships which pump out bunker oil soot and Nox while idling at port while the VWs get unloaded. An extra 30 minutes of that is probably worse than all the extra emissions combined.
- RGamma 10y ago
  Additionally, I find it quite extraordinary how such huge settlements over a bit more car exhaust in a country with lots of emissions-testing-exempt trucks and massive hydraulic fracturing programs can exist at the same time, but who said that government policy needs to be consistent?
- kharms 10y ago
  > It's a statistics game that that's it. That's a bullshit attitude. How about cancer from smoking? Is that also a statistics game? The effect of NOx on human health was studied the same way that smoking was.
dontreact 10y ago
1. I am not an expert here, but unless you are too I wouldn't refute claims made by peer-reviewed publications without at least offering an argument against the analysis made. http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/11/114005/meta;jsessionid=CBB0DEF280F6107CE4771D4142C8BA0D.c5.iopscience.cld.iop.org http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/11/11... If you agree that the environment is worse off and that the environment being worse off causes more deaths, then you agree that they caused deaths. Then it becomes a question of magnitude, which they tried as best as possible to estimate. 2. There is a confidence interval around 59 in the study which doesn't include 0, so it is statistically significant according to the analysis they did. Not sure what sort of analysis would say that 59 deaths is statistically insignificant unless it was a difference between two groups, but that's not the case here. 3. There's a problem here with news articles boiling down an estimate with a wide confidence interval to a single number. There needs to be a way for the public to start understanding statistical conclusions and confidence intervals.
- Unklejoe 10y ago
  > [If you agree that the environment is worse off and that the environment being worse off causes more deaths, then you agree that they caused deaths.] ...I should have said “worse off than if VW had not cheated and all other variables remained the same”. I don't question that more emissions results in more deaths. I question their ability to reliably calculate the number of deaths caused when dealing with numbers that small (~0.0003%) and leaving out some very important variables (which they do reference but don't incorporate). Of course, the publication was meant to compare the claimed vs actual emissions, but I'm talking in the more general case of overall emissions. The publication claims that: >> [Finally, we note that there may have been environmental benefits of the defeat device that we have not computed. For example, the reduced use of diesel exhaust fluid in selective catalytic reduction may potentially have also reduced ammonia slip, and therefore associated PM2.5 exposure and health impacts. In particular, Dedoussi and Barrett (2014) find that total PM2.5 exposure attributable to road transportation is caused approximately equally by NOx and NH3 emissions.] I can think of a few more inadvertent environmental/health benefits of the defeat device: For example, suppose that VW hadn't cheated and instead spent more time and money on R&D to come up with a legitimate solution. They would then have to pass this cost on to the consumers in the form of a more expensive car. Would all of the people who purchased diesel VW's still have purchased them if they were more money? If not, would they have purchased a car that produces worse emissions instead? The VW Jetta has a 5 star crash rating. Would all of the people who purchased other cars purchased cars with the same crash rating, or perhaps a car with a worse crash rating? There are a bunch of things that you could list that could all have an impact that rivals the 59 cited in the publication. We're talking about 59 out of 17,500,000 (number of annual deaths integrated over 2008-2015). It wouldn't take much to actually find out that the VW emissions scandal actually resulted in more lives saved. EDIT: That said, the publication isn't really trying to measure the amount of deaths caused by the scandal itself, but rather the increased emissions portion of it. Perhaps my original comment was out of line now that I think about it.
jbangert 10y ago
This argument will seem a bit more empathetic if you don't consider it as killing 59 people outright, but increasing risk factors so that on average 59 additional deaths occurred(unclear over what timeframe and what the methodology is). Spread out over the world population (we share the same air) that is a relatively short amount of lifetime. On the other hand, consuming more fuel, making car ownership more expensive etc also carries real costs. People can't get work done, spend more of that lifetime tAking less efficient means of transportation, doing less enjoyable things like waiting on a greyhound bus, etc. The sensationalist 'caused x deaths' headlights are very hard to reason With and usually one sided. That being said, car emissions are still a problem and there is a reason for these(and other public health) rules -- the response should perhaps be a little bit less emotional though. ( there are plenty of scandals that are probably more worthy of this emotional response, e.g. Illegal dumping or contamination, unhealthy foods, antibiotic overuse, etc.)

a3camero 10y ago

The method for the paper that is quoted in the Wikipedia article can be found starting on page 2 (the full text is available for free): http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/11/114005/pdf http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/11/11.... It's three and a half pages long and includes many citations to other published articles.