
Every Day 10k People Die Due to Air Pollution from Fossil Fuels - ericdanielski
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerpielke/2020/03/10/every-day-10000-people-die-due-to-air-pollution-from-fossil-fuels/
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laser
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/1...](https://academic.oup.com/cardiovascres/advance-
article/doi/10.1093/cvr/cvaa025/5770885) over 55 million globally annually

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

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Alex3917
> 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.

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zdragnar
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.

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taylorlunt
You completely ignored what the person above you wrote.

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zdragnar
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.

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Alex3917
> You don't actually get one without the other, and understanding the cost of
> the alternatives is how it is "put into perspective".

The benefits of fossil fuels come from the energy output. The air pollution
deaths come (mostly) from fine particulates. You could easily get the exact
same set of benefits with like 99% fewer fine particulates.

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mint2
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.

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GhostVII
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.

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ekianjo
> 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.

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GhostVII
I think most people can agree that up until this point, burning fossil fuels
have been a net positive. But as renewables get cheaper and more useful, at
some point it becomes worth it to pay the cost of renewables rather than
continue to have a ~1 year reduced life expectancy. So I think the most
important comparison is renewables vs fossil fuels.

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ekianjo
> But as renewables get cheaper and more useful, at some point it becomes
> worth it to pay the cost of renewables rather than continue to have a ~1
> year reduced life expectancy

Why is nobody talking about nuclear though? The energy density of nuclear
blows everything else out of the water, and so far it's been CO2 free for the
most part and safer or at the same level of safety as renewables (btw there is
no such thing as 'renewable' energy, it's an abuse of language).

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imtringued
Nuclear is dead because nobody is willing to pay for it. Building safe nuclear
reactors is just a money thing. Disposing of waste is all about money.
Decommissioning unsafe reactors is also just a matter of money.

Before you tell me that regulations are a waste of money think about the two
easily preventable nuclear accidents we have already had in the past simply
because the people responsible weren't willing to spend money.

Here is my advice. Build products (read reactor designs) that people are
willing to buy today and you'll find lots of customers.

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thangalin
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.

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

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crispyporkbites
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
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.

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orangecat
_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.

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metta2uall
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-
wi...](https://reneweconomy.com.au/new-csiro-aemo-study-confirms-wind-solar-
and-storage-beat-coal-gas-and-nuclear-57530/)

~~~
orangecat
_" New CSIRO, AEMO study confirms wind, solar and storage beat coal, gas and
nuclear"_

I've seen stories like that for at least a decade as well. If true, then how
is climate change not a solved problem? Build lots of solar and wind,
decommission all coal and natural gas (and apparently nuclear), profit! Yet
according to the most prominent environmentalists, we need massive new
spending and regulations, and we'll have to significantly change our
lifestyles and give up on the idea of economic growth.

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imtringued
The amount of curtailed energy produced by renewables is like a sad joke in
Germany. It's not enough to deploy renewables, you also need to shut down the
existing coal plants.

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8bitsrule
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.

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renewiltord
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.

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throwawaygh
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.

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throwaway88483
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.

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Gibbon1
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.

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

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

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

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metiscus
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.

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

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akamaka
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.

