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Coal has killed tens of millions from air pollution alone. Civilian nuclear power has probably killed on the order of a few thousand, at most. The studies that

by evilos 3y ago

Coal has killed tens of millions from air pollution alone. Civilian nuclear power has probably killed on the order of a few thousand, at most. The studies that say millions have died as a result from Chernobyl is propaganda funded by Greenpeace and friends.

_heimdall 3y ago
> Coal has killed tens of millions from air pollution alone. That stat is effectively impossible to nail down after the fact. Air pollution is one metric of am extremely complex system, and coal or any other energy source is one of countless inputs impacting the environment simultaneously. At best we can design and run models to help get clues on what impact any one input has, but those models will always be rough hints at correlation with results that are heavily influenced by the assumptions used when designing the model. You are correct that any studies claiming to put a number on how many deaths should be attributed to Chernobyl is propaganda. That holds true for the rest as well though, including any claims of exactly how many have died due to coal or cow farts for example.
- evilos 3y ago
  > That stat is effectively impossible to nail down after the fact Sure, but given how long we've been burning coal and how dirty it is I'm positive that tens of millions is a gross undercount. It's not about getting an exact number. We're looking for orders of magnitudes here.
  - _heimdall 3y ago
    Orders of magnitude really don't gloss over huge confidence intervals though, that's just attempting to game the stats. I get what you're going for and anecdotally that number doesn't even seem crazy if you're going back through our entire history of coal. At the end of the day that number simply didn't exist though, and any time someone uses a start like that to bank up an argument it's just propaganda. Having a bunch that number should be accurate is very different from being able to use it as part of a larger discussion of what the biggest problems are and how to improve it.

by evilos 3y ago

_heimdall 3y ago

> Coal has killed tens of millions from air pollution alone. That stat is effectively impossible to nail down after the fact. Air pollution is one metric of am extremely complex system, and coal or any other energy source is one of countless inputs impacting the environment simultaneously. At best we can design and run models to help get clues on what impact any one input has, but those models will always be rough hints at correlation with results that are heavily influenced by the assumptions used when designing the model. You are correct that any studies claiming to put a number on how many deaths should be attributed to Chernobyl is propaganda. That holds true for the rest as well though, including any claims of exactly how many have died due to coal or cow farts for example.

evilos 3y ago
> That stat is effectively impossible to nail down after the fact Sure, but given how long we've been burning coal and how dirty it is I'm positive that tens of millions is a gross undercount. It's not about getting an exact number. We're looking for orders of magnitudes here.
- _heimdall 3y ago
  Orders of magnitude really don't gloss over huge confidence intervals though, that's just attempting to game the stats. I get what you're going for and anecdotally that number doesn't even seem crazy if you're going back through our entire history of coal. At the end of the day that number simply didn't exist though, and any time someone uses a start like that to bank up an argument it's just propaganda. Having a bunch that number should be accurate is very different from being able to use it as part of a larger discussion of what the biggest problems are and how to improve it.