Discussion > Drs against Diesel : A subsidy mafia Front
No I got the dates wrong The letters were in Wednesday s and articles in Tuesdays
Fridays has a letter claiming specifically that traffic pollution causes reduced birth weights signed Robin Russel-Jones
stewgreen
JLE is recalling 44K cars cos they emit more CO2 than claimed
stewgreen
Basildon dual carriageway reduced from 70mph to 50 to cut NOx
stewgreen
stewgreen
iirc tucked away in the reporting of JLR recall is the fact that they're petrol cars.
Still ... there's quite a few recalls on at the moment - BMW have had to recall 300,000 UK vehicles due to a fire risk from defective exhaust components associated with the anti pollution EGR valves - but the bits aren't available - 5 week delays common and some owners are looking at months without a car if it's an unusual model.
The BBC JLR recall report had the petrol attribution buried right at the bottom of the article - which was a bit of a surprise.....
tomo
LBC ads running today
"With the Mayor London's low emission zones coming in
I can earn £3.5K if I scap my van
.. and £6K if I go electric
I want a cleaner future for my children
..and with the Mayor London's vehicle scrappage scheme..."
stewgreen
stewgreen
TfL have clocked the existential threat from van driving tradesmen in a 30 mile belt around the capital and are applying liberal dollops of taxpayer's money.
I suspect enough money to bribe off the van drivers will *never* be available and it's being deployed to in part as a tactic to portray van man as uncaring slobs - think of he children.
TfL as presently constituted are grasping parasitic scum.
tomo
US law has opened a new front against VW
'they sold $13bn in bonds at the same as covering up the emissions scandal"
stewgreen
15:30pm Clean Air for Kids : Costing the Earth
\\ Clean air – the fightback: Tom Heap investigates the problems caused by air pollution, and asks how it affects children’s health. He visits schools in Manchester and London and finds out about new initiatives which hope to try to reduce pollution around school sites //
I don’t mind proper science
but instead of science this prog promises “Think of the children! ” #EmotionalBlackMail #PRnotNews
.. and gimmicks
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0003d03
stewgreen
Times DieselsRpaedos team
pg16 today
: Councils face legal threat over failure to tackle diesel fumes
quotes Client Earth mostly , then one sentence from FoE
: Drivers back tolls to replace road taxes in electric future
... "twice as many backed the charge as opposed" says Institution of Civil Engineers
Funny how it fits their 4 year campaign
"Nov 7, 2015
News: The Institution of Civil Engineers #Scotland is calling for the introduction of tolls on the nation's roads" etc
Their tweet links to report
which is mostly PR
and has this phrase
"YouGov polling for ICE found that 47% of GB adults would support a pay-as-you-go model, if it replaced both VED and fuel duty – with just 23% opposed."
stewgreen
Times March 22nd "Fumes Limit libido"
... tiny article claiming air pollution could be linked to erectile dysfunction
Chinese study it rats.
stewgreen
Times reports this Greenpeace/ Mary Creagh story
\\ Major chemicals firm Ineos has asked the government if it can avoid the costs of meeting environmental requirements at its Seal Sands acrylonitrile plant.
Group director Tom Crotty wrote to business secretary Greg Clark in October, asking if there are “any mechanisms that we could employ to defer compliance” with its legal obligations. Doing so would protect the jobs of its 300 employees and 2,000 the plant supports in Middlesbrough as a whole, he claimed.
The vast but ageing works, one of only three of its kind in Europe, produces a compound that has variou...//
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sir-jim-ratcliffe-s-firm-ineos-made-threat-over-dirty-air-rules-3qzgwxrcg
stewgreen
The Coventry pilot to bribe people out of their cars with £3,000 loaded onto travel cards
This trial by @coventrycc
(funded by a @transportgovukaward)
in which 100 motorists in Coventry could each be given up to £3,000 to surrender their car for a period & instead ride a bike/use public transport //
stewgreen
On The Times DieselsRpaedos page today
- Dirty vehicles dodge ULEZ
... tells us what we know that even though a Clio passes a 2015 emissions lab test, it dies far worse in real road conditions
- Commuters only use their season ticket 378 times/year not the assumed 480
stewgreen
Times Tuesday 28th
City air pollution 'link to teenage psychotic experiences' explored in a study of 2000 teenagers, that appears in JAMA Psychiatry
stewgreen
no doubt there are some insane tosspots who will now link London air pollution to knife crime - probably already in hand at TfL / Mayor of London PR offices.
If they can pleasure themselves by making the link - they will.
tomo
Tues 9th on pg 10 The DieselsRpaedos usual page
by busy road linked to slow child development
Who does it quote at the end ?
Prof Grigg again .. see bottom
\\ The study, published in the journal Environmental Research, involved 5,825 children living in upstate New York. Researchers mapped their home and childcare addresses to find proximity to major roads and used air pollution data.
Every four to six months between the ages of eight months and three years, the children were scored on a developmental questionnaire.
The study found that children born to women who had been exposed to higher levels of traffic-related pollutants in pregnancy had a small increase in their likelihood of developmental delays //
\\ The study did not prove cause and effect but the researchers attempted to adjust for factors other than air pollution such as a mother’s education level.//
\\ Jonathan Grigg of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health said: “Although we are not yet in the position to be certain that air pollution is toxic to the developing brain, these results are compatible with previous studies.” //
stewgreen
my typo
The title is : Living by busy road linked to slow child development
stewgreen
Thursday's DieselsRPaedos story
UK air is worst in Europe for causing child asthma
Looks like activist s trying to build narrative
#1 Modelling is not real world evidence
#2 They assume a kids NOx input is proportionate to local traffic
You can't just assume a persons daily Nox intake comes from traffic. Most of it might well come from INSIDE the house like gas appliances, bathroom chems, log burning etc.
"A fifth of new childhood asthma cases in Britain are the result of toxic nitrogen dioxide in the air an international *calculation* indicates."
That means it's MODELLING rather than actual real world measurement
and thus you can fiddle your model to get whatever agenda you desire
"American scientists have used .. local levels of NO2 .. to ESTIMATE the global toll of traffic fumes."
. .. There we go modelling
"X per cent of new cases are the result of fumes"
that X is just a guess, not measurement
there are masses of factors eg immigration from sunnier countries, where people get more vitamin D from sun etc.
"280 new asthma cases a year per 100,000 children caused by pollution"
Do they really mean that over 20 years 5,600 of the same 100K batch would get asthma ?
\\ senior author of the study, said: “Nitrogen dioxide pollution ..//
em she can't make any new observations about the harm of NOx
.. cos the stats all come from her ASSUMPTIONS about NOx that she's built into the modelling.
“Our study indicates that policy initiatives to alleviate traffic-related air pollution can lead to improvements in children’s health.”
Again I don't think he should be emphatic like that, cos his study depends on the ASSUMPTIONS they put into the modelling.
AFAIK the Lancet has published a lot of activist science in the past which has not stood the test of time.
AFAIK hospital admissions for asthma still correlate to grass pollen releases. Not to say that NOx might not make such attacks worse or something.
Another paper in the same journal states attacks are increasing cos of pollen
"recent temperature increases, propelled by climate change, are in fact contributing significantly to longer and more intense pollen seasons."
stewgreen
Commenter : This survey contradicts a recent more extensive Greenpeace report.
Europe's most polluted cities are in Italy and Poland.
Sofia capital of Bulgaria was placed the most polluted EU city.
Where did all of Northern Europe's dirty diesel cars go? Eastern Europe.
stewgreen
Times : New Lewisham development get planning permission
despite the road NOx level being 56
when the legal limit is 40
stewgreen
British Science Association tweeted
\\ Air pollution is deadly, taking more lives every day than HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and car accidents combined.
Why have we got to this stage and what can be done about it?
@TimSmedley, author of Clearing the Air, breaks it down:
https://www.britishscienceassociation.org/blog/tim-smedley-clearing-the-air-the-beginning-and-the-end-of-air-pollution … @sigmascience
supposed science org talks about raw deaths not QALDS
stewgreen
\\ Air pollution could be contributing to lung cancer deaths in those who’ve never smoked
- today #YouandYours @BBCRadio4 hears from campaigners
@MumsForLungs & environmental journalist @TimSmedley //
R4 played a mum activist saying the Richmond ring road air is NOT so bad that she would move
..then Tim Smedley plugging his book ..he focused on #DieselsRpaedos
..didn't mention indoor NOx etc.
stewgreen
Always read end of article first
Title claim : last year's warm summer led to highest ozone in 10 years
End : NoX continues its downward trend
Particulates : for smallest PM2.5 in 6 or the 7 highest areas that was due to continental pollution blowing in
stewgreen
Thursday the Times launched " The Times Clean Air For All Campaign"
with a 5 point manifesto
Day #2
Friday : a special from the Times #DieselsRpaedos team
Front page : "Wake up to air pollution"
Quotes - Health Minister Matt Hancock
I'll write more later
stewgreen
not today, those letters and Griggs were in Friday's.
Thursday's pg4 had a European Heart Journal article which has bumped up air pollution death estimates to 8.8m worldwide
and 64K in UK
.hmmm no one actually dies of it in the UK so their modelling must be equivalent deatgs like tge 40K stat
Anyways they are saying air pollution kills more people than cigarettes worldwide
.. I would expect that actually you cant separate the two causes easily.