5 ms·
Pollution is the enemy not carbon.
by rtx 6y ago
Pollution is the enemy not carbon.
- yreg 6y agoWhat do you mean by 'polution' in this case and why do you consider it more important than the carbon emissions in this case?
- inglor_cz 6y agoAs someone who grew up in Ostrava, a city then full of heavy industry (nowadays it is rust belt): pollution in the form of flying ash and solid particles is absolutely horrible for your health. It can be seen in autopsies, where lungs of non-smokers resemble those of smokers. As kids, we were sick with all kinds of respiratory disease all the time and the air stank like burnt tires. Burning coal is dirty, dirty, dirty.
- yreg 6y agoI agree with that, however I would say that runaway climate effect and its impacts on the planet outweight (in importance/severity) the issue of decreased life expectancy of beings living in cities/near factories. Therefore I don't think its misguided to "see the carbon as the enemy". By the way I live in Slovakia and I was baffled by our previous government stubbornly keeping the dirty hornonitrianske coal mines open through public funding. Even though they are loosing money and it would be cheaper (and much much cleaner) to just pay the miners to do nothing.
- rtx 6y agoBecause carbon is a byproduct of our lifestyle. Tomorrow we will replace it with something else. Fighting carbon is a feel good intiative. Where as thousand of other pollutants are being released everyday, example microplastics. Fighting carbon could be as simple as wearing sweaters at home instead of heating it.
- djsumdog 6y agoOr not putting plastic in all our clothing.
- gostsamo 6y agoI'm comfortable with having multiple enemies and fighting all of them at the same time.
- hutzlibu 6y agoSounds very dramatic ... so let's just assume your actions reflect your words. Anyway, I don't think the martial wording is appropriate in most cases. For example I don't want to fight carbon dioxide. I rather want our technology to not disturb the global biological/chemical balance much more. So I support better adopted technology. And fighting pollution, well, I actually have to restrain myself not to physically attack people who I witness dropping plastic garbage into nature. But the pollution which is already there, I can only clean up. So fighting polluters, yes. But fighting pollution sounds like a oxymoron to me, because fighting in itself is mostly dirty and damaging by its definition. War just leaves a mess. So I don't think the martial language really helps the cause.
- pjc50 6y agoCarbon dioxide in excess is a pollutant. Carbon dioxide can of itself reduce human cognitive capability as well as causing surface heating, which is why it should be kept to roughly the pre-industrial atmospheric homeostatic level in the atmosphere. Someone will probably mention plants. It's required for plants, yes, but we're not plants.
- jansan 6y ago>Carbon dioxide in excess is a pollutant. Carbon dioxide can of itself reduce human cognitive capability That's also the reason why people should spend more time outside.
- kolinko 6y agoThe „fresh” air we have outside now (415 ppm) was „indoor well ventillated” two centuries ago, when outside air was 250ppm. Our generation never experienced real fresh air - we don’t know how it smells or feels.
- jansan 6y agoCry me a river, life expectancy was about 40 years two centuries ago, so CO2 levels are obviously not that much of a health issue nowadays.
- Pfhreak 6y agoAverage life expectancy includes a lot of children who didn't survive. Once you got past childhood, you typically lived past 40.
- kortilla 6y agoThere is no evidence of 415ppm having any impact on cognitive capability.
- erdewit 6y ago> Carbon dioxide can of itself reduce human cognitive capability That seems to be only when the CO2 concentration is raised abruptly. After that the body compensates. For example, submarine crews operate perfectly fine in an atmosphere of 2 to 5% CO2 (roughly 100x what is normal), for weeks on end.