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Air pollution is worse than we thought
- WhyIsItLikeThis 6y agoRich people knew. Rich people have always known how important air quality is, its why we have large yards in suburban areas, electric cars, go to summer homes and vacation far from major cities. The poor die disproportionately of preventable lung disease, that is by design.
- jeffreyrogers 6y agoI think they overstate the case for clean energy being cheap. It is cheap because the costs of storage are externalized. If you don't have fossil fuel producers then suddenly you have to add a lot of storage into the mix, which is not cheap. Of course, if it's doable in practice I'm all for it, and if clean energy is really as cheap as they claim, then we'll get there pretty soon just on economics.
- leoedin 6y agoThis is something I don't think is fully understood by most people. Most people think "clean energy is just about building solar panels" - it's viewed as this linear process. I think the media often present it this way. But in fact, between us and a society run by clean energy is all sorts of huge technical hurdles we haven't solved yet. Adding 10,20% renewables is simple enough - but 100% renewables without daily blackouts is incredibly hard. We need many orders of magnitude more battery storage to get there (or some other storage technology). It's the same for electric cars. The cost of electricity to run an electric car is small, so people assume that if everyone has an electric car, running costs will be low. But currently electric cars are subsidised by fuel taxes, and low emissions vehicles are encouraged by low vehicle taxes. When every vehicle is low emission, we still need to get the cost of maintaining the roads from somewhere. And electric car charging at home works because only a handful of people do it. When every car on the road is plugged in every night the distribution networks to every street will need to be massively upgraded. It's a problem because it means most people don't appreciate how far we have to go before a clean energy society is possible. We need to increase investment into this technology by an order of magnitude to have a hope of implementing before climate change has significant effects.
- bryanlarsen 6y ago- the majority of the cost of road construction and maintenance comes from general taxes. Fuel taxes haven't paid the majority since the 80's. - 100% renewables is hard. 90% renewables is straightforward. - electric cars generally charge at night and use about the same amount of power as an electric oven. Distribution network changes are not required.
- read_if_gay_ 6y ago> electric cars generally charge at night and use about the same amount of power as an electric oven. That does not sound right. Napkin math: A tiny Renault Zoe has a 52kWh battery. Even assuming 100% charging efficiency, charging for 8 hours over night you’re looking at 52/8=6.5kW per hour. That’s already more than twice as much as an oven, and an extremely conservative approximation. edit: thanks for pointing out what I missed. I was somehow fixated on full recharges.
- bosie 6y agothose 52kwh are a few hundred kilometers of driving. wouldn't assume that to be the daily norm. say you only do 30km, you only need to charge a fraction
- aaronblohowiak 6y agoWho charges from 0 every night?
- maccard 6y agoMost cars don't need to be recharged fully every night, and don't need a full recharge in 8 hours. If you get home at 8pm and leave at 7pm, that's 4.7Kw/h for 0-100. (I checked my oven and it peaks at 4.5Kw out!) A Zoe has a 245 mile range on said battery, but assuming you drive at 25% efficiency for 20 miles to and from work, you'll use about 30% of a zoe's battery in a day, which spread out over our 11 hours from earlier gives about 1.5Kw per hour.
- audunw 6y ago
- dumbfoundded 6y agoHow much is that due to a lack of investment? How fast could we build that storage if we really wanted to? A fraction of $700B a year seems like it could really change that quickly. Many of the problems related to storage don't seem like a technology problem. They appear to be a commercialization problem. We're not waiting on some fundamentally new tech. From elevated water to liquid metal batteries to compressed air, many technologies are all being commercialized right now. It feels like we have the ability to really push that forward in a big way.
- ggm 6y agoI think they overstate the case for clean energy being cheap. I think you misunderstood what cheap means, in the context of public health and a nation scale economy. Cheap is code for "do we want to" and if you implement storage as a public utility there may be no price problem. It makes jobs, it fuels industry. Do you think building out coal and oil and nuclear power was "cheap"?
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- Erlich_Bachman 6y ago(In case it will change, original title was "Air pollution is much worse than we thought") The whole piece reads like political propaganda anti fossil fuels. (Which might be what you are looking for, but not what I expected from the title). Only about 10% of the text is about the air pollution aspect of using fossil fuels, these 10% are buried somewhere in the middle and basically come down to linking to a couple of studies. Are they even new studies? Additionally there is some mentioning of the phrase "air pollution" in sentences that give no new information whatsoever and discuss the various political and societal movements tangentially related to it... If you are looking for legit reliable information, this piece will hurt your mind to even read. Even the writing style feels like political agitation and not information. (It would actually make more sense if GPT-3 wrote this.)
- rootsudo 6y agoWelcome to VOX, The Internet and news sites few weeks before election. I agree.
- refurb 6y agoYup. It’s kind of amazing seeing the “news” shift as the election gets closer. A bunch of articles that indirectly support one or the other candidate all while trying their best to not look like that’s what they are doing.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nicoffeine 6y ago> If you are looking for legit reliable information, this piece will hurt your mind to even read. Even the writing style feels like political agitation and not information The article is filled with information on air pollution and its economic effects, making the point that the savings in health care and recovered productivity would more than pay for a transition to a vastly cleaner and more sustainable energy model. If a brief historical overview, excerpts from congressional testimonies, and summaries from scientific studies are "hurting your mind", I don't think the article is the source of the pain.
- anarbadalov 6y agoIt's good that pollution's immense consequences on public health get more attention, so I like the piece for that. Though a little puzzled about why the author approached, for his main source, an earth scientist and physicist, not someone with an epidemiology background. No disrespect to that source, whose work sounds important and very interesting.
- calibas 6y agoI wonder if the fact that it causes brain damage has something to do with our collective reluctance to address this enormous human health and environmental issue.
- asdfman123 6y agoNo, because people in cities, breathing in that particulate matter daily, actually want to do something about it.
- latchkey 6y agoAfter living in Vietnam for 4 years, which has massive air quality issues, I wouldn't say they want or even care to do something about it. They just live with it.
- bluGill 6y agoYou need a certain level of prosperity to care. If you have enough to eat and that is about it you don't care, you would prefer other nice things in life first. Eventually your house isn't too crowded, you can get to enough places you want to go, you have good enough medical care, some education for the kids, and a few other nice things in life. Eventually you cross the line to where clean air to breath becomes important. Vietnam has a lot of problems they need to solve before clean air gets to the top of their priorities. It is a long road but it will come to the top. They are making good progress on the other issues, but we are talking about decades, so no surprise they don't care yet. Give it time.
- latchkey 6y agoAnyone who thinks Vietnam is poor, is mistaken. They are the epitome of capitalism gone to the greedy. The richest of the rich and the poorest of the poor. It is the wealthy who are often the worst offenders, not the people struggling to make ends meet. The culture is literally to not care about these sorts of things because it is someone else's problem. You see it in the day to day living... endless numbers of people routinely just throw their plastic cups carried in plastic bags, into the sewer on the side of the street. Knowing full well, it will either just sit there or one of the govt. sponsored cleanup people will pick it up. I spent two years actively refusing plastic and it is impossible to convince every single person you deal with that you don't need yet another plastic bag. Covid will end up being a giant reset for this country and I'm less enthusiastic about the future than you are. It will be interesting to watch for certain.
- belorn 6y agoI like the strategy proposed (linked in the article). In increased production capacity: 4x electric vehicles, 16x batteries, 12x wind turbines, 10x solar modules. 2x the nuclear capacity. 25% of the energy grid converted into communal/consumer owned renewable production. Basically full production in every technology that result in zero air pollution for the energy grid. Full production in all technologies also allow us to see which clean technology is cheaper in practice without people sitting still while arguing over which strategy they should use.
- ljf 6y agoI've spent a lot of my life opposed to nuclear power - but I'm slowly feeling that even with the currently unsolved long term storage issues - that it is better than the alternatives (carrying on burning fossil fuel until some point in the future when storage is good enough.) I'd love to be wrong and I'd love to see renewable energy and storage solved in the next 10 years (though likely take longer than that to scale up nuclear).
- verdverm 6y agoThere are many types of nuclear power, with thorium salt reactors being one of the most effective possible components to an overall solution. These could be scaled up quickly. The problem is public opinion and the lack of nuanced understanding of the differences.
- abj 6y agoA 2019 OECD paper analyzing European satellite data estimates "that a 1 µg/m³[!] increase in PM2.5 concentration (or a 10% increase at the sample mean) causes a 0.8% reduction in real GDP that same year. Ninety-five per cent of this impact is due to reductions in output per worker, which can occur through greater absenteeism at work or reduced labour productivity." [1] https://patrickcollison.com/pollution https://patrickcollison.com/pollution
- amatecha 6y agoI got a reality check recently about air pollution being worse than I thought, when I was cleaning the dust/dirt off my patio railing. I noticed the dust was particularly black, and the whole time I was cleaning it, a familiar smell was in the air. I finally realized: it's brake dust!! While I live on a street with many cars driving by all day, I thought being a few storeys up would reduce the amount of pollution from vehicles... apparently not at all!
- abledon 6y agothe people who live by our roads pay for our travel luxury with their health
- randycupertino 6y agoI wouldn't even say the US has travel luxury. imo "luxury" is being able to travel via an interconnected train system and not having to drive! More like US has system of inconvenience and pollution.
- kunai 6y agoWhile I would love HSR in the US (and there is definitely a pitch to be made for it in the Eastern US where population density is similar to Western Europe) there are negative externalities incurred with high speed rail as well. Metal-on-metal friction caused by going around bends releases particulates as well, and air currents can be disturbed by trains traveling at speeds in excess of 250km/h. It is preferable to having to drive in back-to-back traffic though, I agree.
- BossingAround 6y agoI think we all pay for it. Unless you live in a very remote area, the air will be polluted nevertheless (though to a lesser degree, sure).
- jandrese 6y agoAren't you glad we finally phased out asbestos in brake pads...uh, real soon now?
- germinalphrase 6y agoI live about two blocks from a four lane road (functionally - a highway). We don’t have forced air. I have considered in-room air filtration, but have heard mixed reviews on efficacy. Anyone have relevant experience with in/room filtration machines?
- the_economist 6y agoRunning any air filter (cheap, expensive, etc) lowers the PM2.5 count in my home (adjacent to a busy 4-lane road in San Francisco) from ~40 to near zero. This is the tool I use to measure PM count: https://www.iqair.com/us/air-quality-monitors/airvisual-pro https://www.iqair.com/us/air-quality-monitors/airvisual-pro https://twitter.com/typesfaster/status/1116732197031956480?cxt=HHwWgMCmlYeBt_8eAAAA https://twitter.com/typesfaster/status/1116732197031956480?c...
- mrfusion 6y agoI’m unpopular at parties because I’m more worried about other pollutants vs co2. (Not that co2 isn’t bad)
- tashi 6y agoThe only way I could see that making you unpopular is if you heard people talking about global warming and you changed the subject to talk about other pollutants instead.
- white-flame 6y agoBut CO2 isn't bad, nor is it a pollutant. The rate of CO2 increase in the atmosphere is what's bad. I understand the intended implication, but the vernacular is pendulum swinging too far in the wrong way factually against CO2. Nitpicky, but hey this is HN, and I can be unpopular at this party, too! :-P
- philipkglass 6y ago"Pollutant" depends on context. Plants need nitrogen and phosphorus compounds to grow, but when fertilizers run off farmland into rivers and lakes those same compounds are pollutants. The same goes for carbon dioxide. It is essential to plant life, and it is also a pollutant when dispersed into the environment in large quantities.
- reeddavid 6y agoFor anyone wondering about immediate solutions in your own home, I can say: Indoor air filtration really works. I now use this industrial-level laser particle counter to verify my indoor air quality: https://www.iqair.com/us/commercial/air-quality-monitors/particlescan-lite https://www.iqair.com/us/commercial/air-quality-monitors/par... I currently live on an arterial road, about 2 blocks from a major Interstate (I-5). I'm very concerned about air pollution. Pollution here (Seattle, Downtown / Capitol Hill area) is bad enough I can see it in the form of black dust which comes in even through closed windows. And that's just the particles big enough to see. I placed 4 HEPA filters throughout the house, and I run them constantly on a low setting. Based on square footage, I would only need 1-2 of these filters. But I wanted extra filter capacity in each main room. One annoyance is that my particle counter returns a particle count (per cubic meter, I think?) which doesn't have an exact conversion to the standardized AQI (Air Quality Index). I found a plausible conversion guide, surely not exact but close enough. Here's what I learned: - Indoor air filters make a dramatic improvement to air quality. When the outdoor particle count is ~1M, my indoor count can be well under 100K. That's 90% reduction. – When I approximate AQI, it's common for outdoor air (https://cfpub.epa.gov/airnow/index.cfm https://cfpub.epa.gov/airnow/index.cfm) to be in the "Moderate" scale, and my indoor air to be at the floor (best) of "Healthy". – The IQAir HealthPro Plus (https://www.iqair.com/us/room-air-purifiers/healthpro-series https://www.iqair.com/us/room-air-purifiers/healthpro-series) is incredibly effective. It lowers particle count to zero at its outlet. – My other air filters are still effective, even though they don't get the particle count down to zero. They are the RabbitAir minusa2, and two Blueair Classic 205 units. I was also very surprised when I carried the particle counter around my neighborhood. The quiet streets often have worse air quality than the arterial! And the particle count on the arterial was just as bad as on the Interstate 5 overpass. I think the better airflow on the arterials may help get the pollution out of the area. I really expected the quite streets to have fewer pollution particles. I have not ventured into testing for C02, other gasses, or Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs). But I'm very curious and may try to measure that myself someday soon.
- AstralStorm 6y agoCO2 and VOC trend to be less problematic, though my sensor does pick up some 200 PPB VOC sometimes indoors in a relatively new building with adaptive energy saving ventilation system. Outdoors is below 40 PPB or better, near busy street some 120 PPB.
- zahma 6y agoPlug for open-source air quality monitoring: https://sensor.community/en/ https://sensor.community/en/ Build your own sensor for about 50-60 dollars. The community has a DIY guide. There used to be a guide that didn't require soldering, but the current guide still isn't very complex.
- oxymoran 6y agoThis is what I never understood about people that don’t think anthropomorphic climate change was a thing. Like ok, forget the warming of the planet, we still are making our air, water, and soil unhealthy at alarming levels.
- totetsu 6y agoSome more discussion of this topic I have come across recently. - Dying to breathe: Mongolia's polluted air (babies with pneumonia) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUNuHxrd7Y0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUNuHxrd7Y0 and these two podcast describing who is most effected by these issues. - OPPRESSIVE HEAT: CLIMATE CHANGE AS A CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUE https://www.climateone.org/audio/oppressive-heat-climate-change-civil-rights-issue https://www.climateone.org/audio/oppressive-heat-climate-cha... - Broken Ground: Robert Bullard On Environmental Justice https://www.democracyworkspodcast.com/broken-ground/ https://www.democracyworkspodcast.com/broken-ground/