
Mystery of London fog that killed 12,000 finally solved - Mz
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/12/13/scientists-say-theyve-solved-mystery-1952-london-killer-fog/95375738/
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sctb
Recent discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13001806](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13001806)

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davidwtbuxton
A picture of pedestrians in the London smog, 6 December 1952 -

[https://twitter.com/robnitm/status/806167347807535104](https://twitter.com/robnitm/status/806167347807535104)

Lots more great pictures from London's past on Rob Baker's Twitter feed and
his blog.

[http://www.nickelinthemachine.com/](http://www.nickelinthemachine.com/)

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bluedevil2k
Just watched this minutes ago on The Crown on Netflix. Interesting that they
made it so political even back then.

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manachar
This idea that politics or partisanship is something new to the modern world
is fascinating.

I see it constantly among people that have little exposure to actual
historical documents.

I suspect its origin is a bit of nostalgia for the "simpler times" of the past
and the often horrendously bad methods many people learn history.

Often history is presented as a cleaned up and certain narrative - At
simplest, a history of events that happen on dates. They often leave out the
machinations, plotting, betrayals, and intrigue that was almost always
present.

We strip the messy humanity from history as we build simplistic narratives.

Looking back it may seem to be obvious that Nazis should not have been
appeased, but at the time there were many intelligent and informed people who
thought otherwise. Same with the US getting involved in the War.

Politics have been a thing as far back as we have written records.

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Brakenshire
Would be interesting to focus on one particular event by first looking at the
publicly available information at the time, then looking at the primary
documents released later to see what was going on internally, then reading a
general history book to see how all the complexities and inconsistencies are
tidied up.

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manachar
That would be a fantastic way to learn history!

Only thing I'd add is that the written historical record only tells part of
the story and can often get amazing insights from other sources such as the
material record (i.e. archaeology).

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fiftyacorn
the article could have covered the reason the UK was burning poor quality coal
was that we were pretty much bankrupt by the war so needed to sell our good
coal, and burn the cheaper bad coal

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hendler
Important because SO2 has recently proposed as a way to combat global warming.

also posted related
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13160453](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13160453)

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earthtolazlo
I think at this point it's basically inevitable. It's way too cheap and
effective in the short term not to happen.

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StavrosK
What happens in the long term? Also, how is it effective? What does it do?

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earthtolazlo
It's hard to say for sure. Assuming it works (which seems likely given past
volcano eruptions), it could reduce planetary temperatures by up to a couple
of degrees, giving us a few extra decades to get emissions down to zero.

Downsides are it does nothing to address ocean acidification, once we start we
really can't stop ever, it'll kill N thousand people yearly from
pollution/ozone depletion, potential for increased drought in some regions and
political issues (eg it greatly benefits China but India suffers devastating
droughts as a result).

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jpeterman
> and measuring the atmosphere in China, which is home to 16 of the 20 most
> polluted cities in the world.

I wonder what the source is on this.

I only spent a minute Google searching, but the numbers I'm seeing put China
WAY below 16 of the top 20.

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dajohnson89
>"[...]Interestingly, while the London fog was highly acidic, contemporary
Chinese haze is basically neutral,” he added.

This kind of weasel-wording is a smirch upon science. It's either basic, or
neutral.

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grzm
Is this missing a sarcasm tag or are you honestly arguing that he's being
weaselly about pH?

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hota_mazi
No need to be so salty.

~~~
grzm
Point taken.

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Mz
(cough) I think that was probably chemistry humor. Acids. Bases. Salts.
(cough)

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vollmond
I'm getting a Bad Request no matter what I try. Anyone have an alternate link?

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voltagex_
"Answer a survey from a third party researcher to gain access to premium
content. Surveys longer than 3 questions provide a survey-free experience for
7 days."

Blargh, no.

