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Every Day 10k People Die Due to Air Pollution from Fossil Fuels

140 points by ericdanielski 6y ago

crispyporkbites 6y ago
We really need to ramp up on nuclear. Either by building more traditional fission power plants, figuring out fusion, or capturing more of the energy from the giant, infinite nuclear reactor in the sky.
- 0xfaded 6y ago
  It's too late for nuclear. If the last 30 years had seen R&D anything like wind and solar we'd be in a much better place. And the battle for public opinion is lost. Unfortunately, there's no time left for nuclear (fission), so the best we can do is jump on the renewables bandwagon.
  - ethanbond 6y ago
    Could you offer some insight into why you believe this is the case? As someone in my 20s, I don’t think I know anyone who is opposed to nuclear. From my vantage it’s not clear why this would be considered a lost battle.
    - hvs 6y ago
      I think he's saying that research is far behind on fission because it hasn't been supported, and since it takes so long (and so much money) to spin up new plants, that it's better to invest that money into renewables. That's the impression I got. I don't know enough about the specifics to say if I agree with it or not. The opposition to nuclear was so effective in the 70's and 80's that they shutdown any further development on it. That's probably why you don't know anyone opposed to it. It's not really even an option anymore.
    - onelastjob 6y ago
      In my opinion, the biggest issue with nuclear energy is that you have to trust the competency of both the companies running the plants and the governments of the countries those plants exist in. The Fukushima disaster is a good example. The plant was set up to switch to backup power generators in the event of an earthquake, but those generators were located in basements that would flood in the event of a tsunami. Since a tsunami is usually caused by an earthquake, this was a bad plan. A Fukushima employee testified that the vice president of the company running the plant knew from a 2008 safety test that the sea walls were too low, but ultimately scrapped plans to improve the sea walls [1]. If this can happen in a country like Japan, how can we assume nuclear power plants in countries with struggling governments can be maintained safely? https://www.newsweek.com/fukushima-nuclear-plant-owners-face-trail-one-worlds-most-radioactive-886025 https://www.newsweek.com/fukushima-nuclear-plant-owners-face...
      - imtringued 6y ago
        At that point the entire plant should have been shut down and decommissioned and a new one should have been built in its place. It would have been the one best investments in the entire history of the Japan. Fukushima is just a bottomless money pit now.
  - tasty_freeze 6y ago
    It seems like China could change this -- they have a dire need for vastly more energy as their per-capita GDP grows, and they are well aware of the problems caused in the big cities from burning coal. Nuclear could provide far more power and improve air quality. The government could simply prioritize development of modern nuclear power without much worry about NIMBY pushback.
    - loeg 6y ago
      Unlike the US, China is building new nuclear plants.
      - alacombe 6y ago
        The US has 2 reactors under construction...
        joelhoffman 6y ago
        Is that a reference to these? "...The first new nuclear power plant to be licensed and begin construction in the United States in more than three decades." We've closed a few dozen plants over the same time. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-nuclearpower-vogtle-idUSKCN1R31X9 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-nuclearpower-vogtle-i...
        loeg 6y ago
        Good to see, although they won't be onlined until 2021 (per Wikipedia). China is onlining 5-10 a year.
  - bassman9000 6y ago
    There's been much R&D, 4th gen coming. Third gen is ready. Public opinion is lost because of posts like yours, and it adds up in terms of costs. Millions of people dying every year from carbon burning power stations cannot wait for a 100% renewable cycle.
    - metta2uall 6y ago
      I really hope 4th gen succeeds since in high-population areas without much land for wind/solar it's badly needed. However the fact it's taking so long suggests there are serious challenges. For example, there is the neat idea of a fail-safe freeze-plug to stop a damaged molten salt reactor - but what happens next? The corrosive nuclear fuel needs to be safely contained for a long time or safely removed for re-processing.
      - bassman9000 6y ago
        It's taking long because it's absolutely taboo to even discuss these topics. We're suffering a series heat wave in California, power shutdowns loom, and we're asked to turn down the AC and don't use appliances. Sacramento voted to close a nuclear power plant not that long ago. And the same people that complain about the power outages vote against the only reliable, carbon-free energy source we have now.
  - orangecat 6y ago
    Unfortunately, there's no time left for nuclear People have been making that argument for at least 30 years; renewables have always been just a few years away from being cheaper than coal and obsoleting nuclear. I remain skeptical. And the battle for public opinion is lost. I also question this. Countering FUD about nuclear power seems much more feasible than the Green New Deal approach of trying to ram through trillions in spending and substantial lifestyle changes.
    - tialaramex 6y ago
      > renewables have always been just a few years away from being cheaper than coal Because coal costs money wind farms are cheaper to operate than a coal plant and have been for many years. So then the question becomes is it cheap enough to offset the cost of building and installing the turbines? And in many places the answer to that has been "Yes" too for some time now. Energy producers in the sector can profitably build and run an onshore wind farm in the UK on the expectation of being paid about £50 per MWh which is a pretty typical market price. If it gets much cheaper it starts to compete with the open market price for coal ignoring the price of a power plant to burn it, and staff to run the plant. Natural gas is more competitive, because that's more efficient (more electricity for the same price of fuel), but it also doesn't cause air pollution deaths (it just drives climate change because it's shoving CO2 into the air) unlike coal which causes huge amounts of death and disease. Also: I've seen several reactions in this thread that express doubt that it can possibly be this bad, surely if burning coal emitted poisonous fumes that kill people we'd have noticed. But We did that's why that coal power plant has big chimneys, when people first built large coal powered machines they discovered the fumes are incredibly toxic and began choking people and so they... built taller chimneys to send the problem further away. But the problem wasn't gone, it was just dispersed. 5000 people get lung problems in the surrounding counties instead of five people choking to death in front of your eyes.
    - metta2uall 6y ago
      In Australia new renewables plus storage are already cheaper than new coal or nuclear. Ref: "New CSIRO, AEMO study confirms wind, solar and storage beat coal, gas and nuclear" https://reneweconomy.com.au/new-csiro-aemo-study-confirms-wind-solar-and-storage-beat-coal-gas-and-nuclear-57530/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/new-csiro-aemo-study-confirms-wi...
  - p1mrx 6y ago
    It's never too late, if there is no alternative. How will renewables keep people warm all winter? Perhaps we could hope for a planet-scale superconducting grid, or a cheap way to make methane from sunlight, but those seem less practical than nuclear, which already works. Though it'd be nice if we poured more investment into "walk away safe" reactor designs.
  - opo 6y ago
    >...Unfortunately, there's no time left for nuclear (fission) France was able to go from nothing to getting almost all of their electricity through nuclear in a couple of decades. It is possible that we will be able to ramp up grid storage enough that we don't have to rely on natural gas to make up for the intermittent nature of renewables, but there is no guarantee that will happen. Saying "it is too late" or "there is no time" for other options ignores the fact that we only have a fraction fo the grid storage we would need if we want to eliminate burning natural gas. >...And the battle for public opinion is lost. Even with a growing anti-science movement in the US, people are about evenly divided on nuclear power which is about a 5% improvement since 2016. https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/US-public-opinion-evenly-split-on-nuclear https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/US-public-opinion-ev...
mint2 6y ago
Forbes also just ran a piece claiming California’s renewable energy push caused the recent rolling black outs . This new article seems better supported but the one on California was a pile of unsupported and even just false claims. Like when it blamed jerry brown for being the cause of SONGS, the nuclear plant, shutting down. No mention of competitiveness or the years of repair need led or massive repair bill contributing, only jerry brown was the cause as far as the Forbes article was concerned. But this article seems more based in reality, but coming from Forbes doesn’t help it. I just find it weird they publish opposite articles without any reconciliation or quality control on at least one of them.
renewiltord 6y ago
So we would reduce deaths by 7% by abandoning fossil fuels. Hmm, seems like a low priority by itself but I could be misjudging the significance.
- throwawaygh 6y ago
  1. No, that is huge in a vacuum. If there were a no-cost/no-tradeoff way to save 7% of deaths then it would be a huge priority. 2. Obviously, ending use of fossil fuels is nowhere near no-cost/low-tradeoff. So abandoning fossil fuels probably would not reduce deaths by 7%. Or possibly even cause a lot more death especially in the short term. But again, if it did, that would be a huge deal.
Bostonian 6y ago
How much has life expectancy been boosted by universal access to electricity in the Western world enabled by hydrocarbons aka fossil fuels?
- akamaka 6y ago
  Fossil fuels have boosted our quality of life so much that we have no really big industrial problems left except for getting rid of fossil fuels.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
vsviridov 6y ago
How many thousands get to not die because of use of fossil fuels? Just for perspective...
- Alex3917 6y ago
  > Just for perspective... How does that give you any perspective? A huge percentage of the air pollution in NYC is from the same couple dozen buildings that were grandfathered into not needing to meet air pollution laws, as well as things like construction vehicles and cruise ships, which are completely unregulated. There is almost zero relationship between the benefits from fossil fuel use and the deaths from air pollution due to fossil fuels.
  - zdragnar 6y ago
    Fossil fuels are responsible for a majority of our current heat and electricity generation as well as logistics for medications and emergency transportation. We technically could transition, but doing so would be massively expensive (whether we went with nuclear or renewables), and some industries would simply not be cost effective or would be eliminated entirely. The consequence of that cost is the stress of financial burden and a slower economy- leading to a spike in suicide and all manner of diseases that can be induced by such stress. Alternatively, massive taxation and wealth redistribution schemes could be tried to alleviate the self-inflicted poverty, but it would require rewriting the laws and constitutions of many countries to do so effectively across the world, and there's no telling what the consequences of that would be.
    - taylorlunt 6y ago
      You completely ignored what the person above you wrote.
      - zdragnar 6y ago
        Not really, I only responded to the line > There is almost zero relationship between the benefits from fossil fuel use and the deaths from air pollution due to fossil fuels. You don't actually get one without the other, and understanding the cost of the alternatives is how it is "put into perspective". The bit about NYC was largely irrelevant, imho, to the rest of the discussion, given that the issue is far larger than one city's bad policies and lack of jurisdiction over cruise ships. Also, NYC isnt going to be going without construction vehicles anytime soon.
laser 6y ago
The underlying research is suggesting that air pollution is the primary cause of 1/6 deaths worldwide [1], and fossil-fuel air pollution specifically 1/15. I'm not sure it passes the sanity check (wouldn't we have noticed sooner?). If air pollution is really responsible for 1/6 deaths then we've got a massive low-hanging fruit to greatly improve our life expectancy and quality of life that we should take advantage to remedy with gusto! But—I would like to see the counters and follow up studies with more conservatively tuned variables to see if they've over-projected by an order of magnitude or more. Regardless, we should reduce air pollution, but the science should inform our level of resource allocation and intensity. If it's really responsible for 16% of all deaths, then resources at least equal to those spent fighting comparable sources of death should be spent eliminating air pollution. [1] 8.8 million per year in abstract: https://academic.oup.com/cardiovascres/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cvr/cvaa025/5770885 https://academic.oup.com/cardiovascres/advance-article/doi/1... over 55 million globally annually
maallooc 6y ago
How about calculating the lives lost by manufacturing solar panels, batteries and wind turbines?
- metiscus 6y ago
  That's probably not the right way to go about countering the argument. Nuclear is the real baseline power option right now. Most renewables don't have the continuous output capability needed. Enhanced hydro power and nuclear build out could help to move things in a better direction relatively quickly.
thangalin 6y ago
Kurtis Baute is actively protesting against pipelines by camping betwixt two trees. In the video he shares some envelope math on how many lives we'll lose from using the fuel that the finished pipeline would transport: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3hXMsJbt3c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3hXMsJbt3c We absolutely must stop burning fossil fuels.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  Yes, but not overnight. A transition of this magnitude will take time otherwise the cure will be much worse than the disease.
throwaway88483 6y ago
Are the vast majority of these deaths specifically from coal? I didn’t see numbers split out by fossil fuel and thought that’d be interesting.
- Gibbon1 6y ago
  I tried looking up pollution from heating. Found one source that said PM2.5 from oil fired furnaces in New York creates 50% more PM2.5 than auto's, trucks, and buses. Also noted that even Nat Gas furnaces produce NOx.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
GhostVII 6y ago
I think talking about deaths is too binary when we are looking at air pollution, since I would imagine most of the deaths are from peope who have other conditions that air pollution is making worse, as opposed to things like car crashes where even very healthy people are killed. Looking at how much air pollution reduces life expectancy is a better measure, and is what they talk about in the study linked to by this article. According to the study: Finally, we calculated to what extent LLE from ambient air pollution could be reduced by removing the avoidable anthropogenic emissions in our atmospheric model. We find that the global LLE of 2.9 (2.3–3.5) years (Table 1) could be reduced by 1.7 (1.4–2.0) years through the removal of all potentially preventable anthropogenic emissions and by 1.1 (0.9–1.2) years through the removal of fossil fuel-related emissions alone. So they estimate air pollution from fossil fuels lowers the average life expectancy by 1 year worldwide. Pretty significant.
- Gibbon1 6y ago
  > So they estimate air pollution from fossil fuels lowers the average life expectancy by 1 year worldwide. Pretty significant. There is also quality of life issues with things like asthma and lung disease. That's harder to quantify than excess deaths and years of life lost but very real. I also had the experience as a kid of living in LA for two years. There was something icky and gross about the air in LA compared to Santa Clara. Which itself wasn't great. So that's also real.
- carrolldunham 6y ago
  >So they estimate air pollution from fossil fuels lowers the average life expectancy by 1 year worldwide. Pretty significant. Surely it doesn't need to be said that all of the industry facilitated by the fossil fuel use, raises average life expectancy by a lot more. I mean, we will do well to move beyond it, but this article saying it's "staggering" etc. is akin to saying that human activity vs. no activity causes staggering impacts.
- ekianjo 6y ago
  > So they estimate air pollution from fossil fuels lowers the average life expectancy by 1 year worldwide. Pretty significant. At the same time the opposite point can be made: fossil fuels have disproportionately increased life expectancy worldwide from pre-industrial levels, and made us able to sustain way more human beings on Earth. Talking only about the negative aspects is only half of the discussion.
jijji 6y ago
are they including smokers who die of COPD in those numbers?
yters 6y ago
how many people are able to live due to fossil fuels?
Proven 6y ago
In other words social cost of fossil fuels is relatively low. Without fossil fuels billions wouldn't be born, let alone live longer.
effnorwood 6y ago
They don’t
8bitsrule 6y ago
Too bad we can't count the number of deaths which will result from each of our todays that we stall off on eliminating that death trap. Because it'll make that number into a rounding error.

140 points by ericdanielski 6y ago

We really need to ramp up on nuclear. Either by building more traditional fission power plants, figuring out fusion, or capturing more of the energy from the giant, infinite nuclear reactor in the sky.

0xfaded 6y ago
It's too late for nuclear. If the last 30 years had seen R&D anything like wind and solar we'd be in a much better place. And the battle for public opinion is lost. Unfortunately, there's no time left for nuclear (fission), so the best we can do is jump on the renewables bandwagon.
- ethanbond 6y ago
  Could you offer some insight into why you believe this is the case? As someone in my 20s, I don’t think I know anyone who is opposed to nuclear. From my vantage it’s not clear why this would be considered a lost battle.
  - hvs 6y ago
    I think he's saying that research is far behind on fission because it hasn't been supported, and since it takes so long (and so much money) to spin up new plants, that it's better to invest that money into renewables. That's the impression I got. I don't know enough about the specifics to say if I agree with it or not. The opposition to nuclear was so effective in the 70's and 80's that they shutdown any further development on it. That's probably why you don't know anyone opposed to it. It's not really even an option anymore.
  - onelastjob 6y ago
    In my opinion, the biggest issue with nuclear energy is that you have to trust the competency of both the companies running the plants and the governments of the countries those plants exist in. The Fukushima disaster is a good example. The plant was set up to switch to backup power generators in the event of an earthquake, but those generators were located in basements that would flood in the event of a tsunami. Since a tsunami is usually caused by an earthquake, this was a bad plan. A Fukushima employee testified that the vice president of the company running the plant knew from a 2008 safety test that the sea walls were too low, but ultimately scrapped plans to improve the sea walls [1]. If this can happen in a country like Japan, how can we assume nuclear power plants in countries with struggling governments can be maintained safely? https://www.newsweek.com/fukushima-nuclear-plant-owners-face-trail-one-worlds-most-radioactive-886025 https://www.newsweek.com/fukushima-nuclear-plant-owners-face...
    - imtringued 6y ago
      At that point the entire plant should have been shut down and decommissioned and a new one should have been built in its place. It would have been the one best investments in the entire history of the Japan. Fukushima is just a bottomless money pit now.
- tasty_freeze 6y ago
  It seems like China could change this -- they have a dire need for vastly more energy as their per-capita GDP grows, and they are well aware of the problems caused in the big cities from burning coal. Nuclear could provide far more power and improve air quality. The government could simply prioritize development of modern nuclear power without much worry about NIMBY pushback.
  - loeg 6y ago
    Unlike the US, China is building new nuclear plants.
    - alacombe 6y ago
      The US has 2 reactors under construction...
      - joelhoffman 6y ago
        Is that a reference to these? "...The first new nuclear power plant to be licensed and begin construction in the United States in more than three decades." We've closed a few dozen plants over the same time. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-nuclearpower-vogtle-idUSKCN1R31X9 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-nuclearpower-vogtle-i...
        loeg 6y ago
        Good to see, although they won't be onlined until 2021 (per Wikipedia). China is onlining 5-10 a year.
- bassman9000 6y ago
  There's been much R&D, 4th gen coming. Third gen is ready. Public opinion is lost because of posts like yours, and it adds up in terms of costs. Millions of people dying every year from carbon burning power stations cannot wait for a 100% renewable cycle.
  - metta2uall 6y ago
    I really hope 4th gen succeeds since in high-population areas without much land for wind/solar it's badly needed. However the fact it's taking so long suggests there are serious challenges. For example, there is the neat idea of a fail-safe freeze-plug to stop a damaged molten salt reactor - but what happens next? The corrosive nuclear fuel needs to be safely contained for a long time or safely removed for re-processing.
    - bassman9000 6y ago
      It's taking long because it's absolutely taboo to even discuss these topics. We're suffering a series heat wave in California, power shutdowns loom, and we're asked to turn down the AC and don't use appliances. Sacramento voted to close a nuclear power plant not that long ago. And the same people that complain about the power outages vote against the only reliable, carbon-free energy source we have now.
- orangecat 6y ago
  Unfortunately, there's no time left for nuclear People have been making that argument for at least 30 years; renewables have always been just a few years away from being cheaper than coal and obsoleting nuclear. I remain skeptical. And the battle for public opinion is lost. I also question this. Countering FUD about nuclear power seems much more feasible than the Green New Deal approach of trying to ram through trillions in spending and substantial lifestyle changes.
  - tialaramex 6y ago
    > renewables have always been just a few years away from being cheaper than coal Because coal costs money wind farms are cheaper to operate than a coal plant and have been for many years. So then the question becomes is it cheap enough to offset the cost of building and installing the turbines? And in many places the answer to that has been "Yes" too for some time now. Energy producers in the sector can profitably build and run an onshore wind farm in the UK on the expectation of being paid about £50 per MWh which is a pretty typical market price. If it gets much cheaper it starts to compete with the open market price for coal ignoring the price of a power plant to burn it, and staff to run the plant. Natural gas is more competitive, because that's more efficient (more electricity for the same price of fuel), but it also doesn't cause air pollution deaths (it just drives climate change because it's shoving CO2 into the air) unlike coal which causes huge amounts of death and disease. Also: I've seen several reactions in this thread that express doubt that it can possibly be this bad, surely if burning coal emitted poisonous fumes that kill people we'd have noticed. But We did that's why that coal power plant has big chimneys, when people first built large coal powered machines they discovered the fumes are incredibly toxic and began choking people and so they... built taller chimneys to send the problem further away. But the problem wasn't gone, it was just dispersed. 5000 people get lung problems in the surrounding counties instead of five people choking to death in front of your eyes.
  - metta2uall 6y ago
    In Australia new renewables plus storage are already cheaper than new coal or nuclear. Ref: "New CSIRO, AEMO study confirms wind, solar and storage beat coal, gas and nuclear" https://reneweconomy.com.au/new-csiro-aemo-study-confirms-wind-solar-and-storage-beat-coal-gas-and-nuclear-57530/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/new-csiro-aemo-study-confirms-wi...
- p1mrx 6y ago
  It's never too late, if there is no alternative. How will renewables keep people warm all winter? Perhaps we could hope for a planet-scale superconducting grid, or a cheap way to make methane from sunlight, but those seem less practical than nuclear, which already works. Though it'd be nice if we poured more investment into "walk away safe" reactor designs.
- opo 6y ago
  >...Unfortunately, there's no time left for nuclear (fission) France was able to go from nothing to getting almost all of their electricity through nuclear in a couple of decades. It is possible that we will be able to ramp up grid storage enough that we don't have to rely on natural gas to make up for the intermittent nature of renewables, but there is no guarantee that will happen. Saying "it is too late" or "there is no time" for other options ignores the fact that we only have a fraction fo the grid storage we would need if we want to eliminate burning natural gas. >...And the battle for public opinion is lost. Even with a growing anti-science movement in the US, people are about evenly divided on nuclear power which is about a 5% improvement since 2016. https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/US-public-opinion-evenly-split-on-nuclear https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/US-public-opinion-ev...

mint2 6y ago

Forbes also just ran a piece claiming California’s renewable energy push caused the recent rolling black outs . This new article seems better supported but the one on California was a pile of unsupported and even just false claims. Like when it blamed jerry brown for being the cause of SONGS, the nuclear plant, shutting down. No mention of competitiveness or the years of repair need led or massive repair bill contributing, only jerry brown was the cause as far as the Forbes article was concerned. But this article seems more based in reality, but coming from Forbes doesn’t help it. I just find it weird they publish opposite articles without any reconciliation or quality control on at least one of them.

renewiltord 6y ago

So we would reduce deaths by 7% by abandoning fossil fuels. Hmm, seems like a low priority by itself but I could be misjudging the significance.

throwawaygh 6y ago
1. No, that is huge in a vacuum. If there were a no-cost/no-tradeoff way to save 7% of deaths then it would be a huge priority. 2. Obviously, ending use of fossil fuels is nowhere near no-cost/low-tradeoff. So abandoning fossil fuels probably would not reduce deaths by 7%. Or possibly even cause a lot more death especially in the short term. But again, if it did, that would be a huge deal.

Bostonian 6y ago

How much has life expectancy been boosted by universal access to electricity in the Western world enabled by hydrocarbons aka fossil fuels?

akamaka 6y ago
Fossil fuels have boosted our quality of life so much that we have no really big industrial problems left except for getting rid of fossil fuels.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

vsviridov 6y ago

How many thousands get to not die because of use of fossil fuels? Just for perspective...

Alex3917 6y ago
> Just for perspective... How does that give you any perspective? A huge percentage of the air pollution in NYC is from the same couple dozen buildings that were grandfathered into not needing to meet air pollution laws, as well as things like construction vehicles and cruise ships, which are completely unregulated. There is almost zero relationship between the benefits from fossil fuel use and the deaths from air pollution due to fossil fuels.
- zdragnar 6y ago
  Fossil fuels are responsible for a majority of our current heat and electricity generation as well as logistics for medications and emergency transportation. We technically could transition, but doing so would be massively expensive (whether we went with nuclear or renewables), and some industries would simply not be cost effective or would be eliminated entirely. The consequence of that cost is the stress of financial burden and a slower economy- leading to a spike in suicide and all manner of diseases that can be induced by such stress. Alternatively, massive taxation and wealth redistribution schemes could be tried to alleviate the self-inflicted poverty, but it would require rewriting the laws and constitutions of many countries to do so effectively across the world, and there's no telling what the consequences of that would be.
  - taylorlunt 6y ago
    You completely ignored what the person above you wrote.
    - zdragnar 6y ago
      Not really, I only responded to the line > There is almost zero relationship between the benefits from fossil fuel use and the deaths from air pollution due to fossil fuels. You don't actually get one without the other, and understanding the cost of the alternatives is how it is "put into perspective". The bit about NYC was largely irrelevant, imho, to the rest of the discussion, given that the issue is far larger than one city's bad policies and lack of jurisdiction over cruise ships. Also, NYC isnt going to be going without construction vehicles anytime soon.

laser 6y ago

The underlying research is suggesting that air pollution is the primary cause of 1/6 deaths worldwide [1], and fossil-fuel air pollution specifically 1/15. I'm not sure it passes the sanity check (wouldn't we have noticed sooner?). If air pollution is really responsible for 1/6 deaths then we've got a massive low-hanging fruit to greatly improve our life expectancy and quality of life that we should take advantage to remedy with gusto! But—I would like to see the counters and follow up studies with more conservatively tuned variables to see if they've over-projected by an order of magnitude or more. Regardless, we should reduce air pollution, but the science should inform our level of resource allocation and intensity. If it's really responsible for 16% of all deaths, then resources at least equal to those spent fighting comparable sources of death should be spent eliminating air pollution. [1] 8.8 million per year in abstract: https://academic.oup.com/cardiovascres/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cvr/cvaa025/5770885 https://academic.oup.com/cardiovascres/advance-article/doi/1... over 55 million globally annually

maallooc 6y ago

How about calculating the lives lost by manufacturing solar panels, batteries and wind turbines?

metiscus 6y ago
That's probably not the right way to go about countering the argument. Nuclear is the real baseline power option right now. Most renewables don't have the continuous output capability needed. Enhanced hydro power and nuclear build out could help to move things in a better direction relatively quickly.

thangalin 6y ago

Kurtis Baute is actively protesting against pipelines by camping betwixt two trees. In the video he shares some envelope math on how many lives we'll lose from using the fuel that the finished pipeline would transport: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3hXMsJbt3c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3hXMsJbt3c We absolutely must stop burning fossil fuels.

jacquesm 6y ago
Yes, but not overnight. A transition of this magnitude will take time otherwise the cure will be much worse than the disease.

throwaway88483 6y ago

Are the vast majority of these deaths specifically from coal? I didn’t see numbers split out by fossil fuel and thought that’d be interesting.

Gibbon1 6y ago
I tried looking up pollution from heating. Found one source that said PM2.5 from oil fired furnaces in New York creates 50% more PM2.5 than auto's, trucks, and buses. Also noted that even Nat Gas furnaces produce NOx.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

GhostVII 6y ago

I think talking about deaths is too binary when we are looking at air pollution, since I would imagine most of the deaths are from peope who have other conditions that air pollution is making worse, as opposed to things like car crashes where even very healthy people are killed. Looking at how much air pollution reduces life expectancy is a better measure, and is what they talk about in the study linked to by this article. According to the study: Finally, we calculated to what extent LLE from ambient air pollution could be reduced by removing the avoidable anthropogenic emissions in our atmospheric model. We find that the global LLE of 2.9 (2.3–3.5) years (Table 1) could be reduced by 1.7 (1.4–2.0) years through the removal of all potentially preventable anthropogenic emissions and by 1.1 (0.9–1.2) years through the removal of fossil fuel-related emissions alone. So they estimate air pollution from fossil fuels lowers the average life expectancy by 1 year worldwide. Pretty significant.

Gibbon1 6y ago
> So they estimate air pollution from fossil fuels lowers the average life expectancy by 1 year worldwide. Pretty significant. There is also quality of life issues with things like asthma and lung disease. That's harder to quantify than excess deaths and years of life lost but very real. I also had the experience as a kid of living in LA for two years. There was something icky and gross about the air in LA compared to Santa Clara. Which itself wasn't great. So that's also real.
carrolldunham 6y ago
>So they estimate air pollution from fossil fuels lowers the average life expectancy by 1 year worldwide. Pretty significant. Surely it doesn't need to be said that all of the industry facilitated by the fossil fuel use, raises average life expectancy by a lot more. I mean, we will do well to move beyond it, but this article saying it's "staggering" etc. is akin to saying that human activity vs. no activity causes staggering impacts.
ekianjo 6y ago
> So they estimate air pollution from fossil fuels lowers the average life expectancy by 1 year worldwide. Pretty significant. At the same time the opposite point can be made: fossil fuels have disproportionately increased life expectancy worldwide from pre-industrial levels, and made us able to sustain way more human beings on Earth. Talking only about the negative aspects is only half of the discussion.

jijji 6y ago

are they including smokers who die of COPD in those numbers?

yters 6y ago

how many people are able to live due to fossil fuels?

Proven 6y ago

In other words social cost of fossil fuels is relatively low. Without fossil fuels billions wouldn't be born, let alone live longer.

effnorwood 6y ago

They don’t

8bitsrule 6y ago

Too bad we can't count the number of deaths which will result from each of our todays that we stall off on eliminating that death trap. Because it'll make that number into a rounding error.