I just passed the steelworks and there was an abnormally larfe iron oxide particles cloud
but you couldn't see it from the next angle.
Maybe they were clearing the filters or something
nothing alarming
but occasional dust is part of that industry.

Wednesday : Four in five *urban areas* have illegal air pollution levels as progress stalls
..Well my rule is that grand claims in headlines rarely stand great scrutiny.

Under what metric ?
First they talk about NOx

"London was twice the legal limit"
what the heck does that mean ? where/when
cos NOx varies eg fall at night

They use the unit mcg to mean microgram
that say London is twice the 40mg limit

"urban areas" not all
just the 43 where they measure
and you tend not to measure CLEAN areas

"stalls" #FakeNews
one more of the 43 meets the limit this year than last year

Source : Client Earth is quuoted

Thu 19th pg 12 the Times #DieselsRpaedos team at work with 3 stories

- Eon calls for Electric Car planning ..more substations for homes, a gas scrappage scheme etc.
- Longer lasting phones
- The rate in decline in UK emissions fall as powerdemand has risen

Monday pg1 Pollution lowers grades
pg3 Oxford college will have green wall

Today the team are on pg 38

#1 Green walls and street closures clean school
actually they list various schools
and one guy calling it vanity

#!2 XR spends £1m to blockad.e capital for 2 weeks

..... AFAIK people can sue them

Fri pg 12
#1 XR fire engine fiasco

#2 Chess players make more mistakes when air is polluted
paper about German chess comps by Dr Prestel

Oh God, Boris promises Green Crap bil

The Times frontpage : PM backs clean air law
The environment bill "will set a framework of far-reaching, legally binding targets to reduce plastics, restore biodiversity, improve the quality of our water and... clean up our air”.
@BorisJohnson in @thetimes

Lot of Public Relations trickery
as a load of accounts are all tweeting the same words of praise for
Boris Johnson's new Environment Bill

The Mail has a similar exclusive full of promises on plastic.

Fri : A quart of London spaces put children at risk ?

Do they ?
What are the NOx readings ?
Tge average reading in some areas is 60 whereas the legal limit is 40

Yes but what counts is what reaching the kids lungs

eg at rush hours maybe the readings are huge
and maybe at weekends when you take your kids its very low

Tuesday "Polluted Air linked to miscarriage"
..... ah the study is about Beijing not the normal world.
eg Beijing has PM5 reading of 72
and London is just a sixth of that
In Nature Sustainability

Wednesday : Frontpage : Air pollution takes decade off memory study suggests
... hyperbolic headline

They actually mean
that a 50 year old living in Chelsea has the same word remembering score of a 60 year old in Plymouth
ie the test breaks the All other things being equal rule
.. cos there is a mass of variables

Large sample size clImed of 34,00 people
Quotes Andrew Oswald of Warwick who is a pop scientist who puts out PR stories

Doesn't say who did the real research
Published in Ecological Economics

ITV local news just had a narrative pushing item
..'ooh air pollution , ooh kiddies , ohh people idling theier engines outside schools.
.. ooh Sheffield will implement fines to make air clean'

all the usual rubbish to claim air pollution comes from modern cars
and no recognition it's actually the 1 in 100 dirty vehicles
The also failed to mention the M1 goes through the Sheffield Meadowhall shopping zone.

Philips "who make air purifiers" is sponsoring a project within 20 Greater Manchester primary schools
whereby some classrooms will have air purifiers

other effects like glue and nearby traffic will be involved also

... The Times doesn't mention the financial involvement until the end.

Tge charity is Global Action Plan

Today's big news is the Simple-Simon-Trick-report

Context : Wednesday they have #CleanAirSummit. for the #EnvironmentBill
So what have they done ?
Today they've come up with a hyperbolic PR stunt about CleanAir

The report is shonky , and full of flaws
So more #PRtrickery was used they FRONTEDt with a big Argument-from-Authority figure
to con you right in... before you looked at the details

They'd have you walk away with the idea that Air Pollution is causing proven heart attacks in London every week
..actually after torturing the data , they conclude their could be 2 a year

Paul H has done a debunk
and in the comments I linked to Ben Pile's debunk of the BBC article

This seems a gran conspiracy of PR and green cult people , the Telegraph the BBC etc.
when in fact journos should be doing their effing job of calling out such PR trickery

GreenBlob do what they do partially cos they are in a cult
but this time it is not just a case of wasting our freedoms and tax money, but real humans health

With proper science &cost/benefit Analysis you can save the maximum life days across ALL the population's health
But instead the PR people are using asthma patients hijacking people concerns about them
They are going to end up wasting a £billion on Greenblob stuff that makes little difference to an asthma patient
when in fact £50m on a drug will make a massive difference.

https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2019/10/21/nhs-chief-says-we-have-a-health-emergency-as-well-as-a-climate-one

Always assume green news is PR
..cos it rarely stacks up

Powerful Times headline : Government lied over fracking clean-up
..it claims a NAO National Audit Office says this.
It gives the last paragraph to Rebecca Long-Bailey

Tues : Walking to school using back streets,
instead of main roads
halves pollution

Why its PR BS
#1 It only talks about NOx not all pollution
#2 The primary thing effecting NOx is whether its RAINING
then the count on all streets will be low
#3 Is a quick high NOx route worse than a slow low NOx route ?
.. is there a safe limit ?
cos half of nothing is still nothing.

Mon : Pollution charge for diesels has cut toxic fumes by a third
instead of main roads
halves pollution

Why it's PR BS
#1 It only talks about NOx not all pollution ..again
#2 Claim its down from 85 to 57 ..that is 1/3 drop
#3 but Correlation is not causation
..engines are a bit cleaner as well
NOx can also come from other things
but most at the roadside detectors should be from nearby sources

Who is the man that is in charge of London's police and should be getting a grip on knifecrime
but prefers to go and on about Air Pollution
Sadiq
Sadiq who inssists that evryone elsemuch get cleaner vehicles
"Since taking charge of City Hall Sadiq has done surprisingly little to clean up the 1,034 vehicles in his GLA fleet
– just 7% of which are zero-emission.
93% of Sadiq’s fleet fails to meet the lofty standards he aims to force on Londoners…"

"The mayor is not on track to meet any of his lofty green promises
. In 2016 he promised Londoners he would plant over two million trees during his first term in office. "
He stands no change of achieving this

via Guido
https://order-order.com/2019/10/23/sadiqs-clean-air-hypocrisy

Wednesday : Bristol plans to ban all diesels even the cleanest

Why it's PR BS
#1 The newest diesels are very clean so Bristol is just virtue signalling
Why ban something when it is not polluting
In a just world the courts wouldn't allow it.

Wednesday : NHS should change inhalers
Inhalers make up 3.9% of the NHS CO2 footprint

Why it's PR BS
#1 It doesn't say how much that 3.9% will be reduced
It does say that 1 in 10 could be switched to cheaper dry-powder
and that would save 58,000 tonnes
.. that number seems suspiciously large
There are 50m inhalers do 5m really emit
that much ?
5,000 emit 58tonnes ?
thats 1 tonne for 100 inhalers
that 10Kg each per year !

BBC prog item " the impact of moor fires on our health" just been repeated on BBC North East
I think I have mentioned this item a few weeks ago

PM2.5
Atmosphere causes the pollution to drop into areas dozens of miles away
"There was a spike in asthma emergency admissions"
Scientist before the moor fires it was 10 ㎍ at the peak it was 50 ㎍
Presenter "80% more than it should be"
..that looks like the presenters words have been edited in
and BTW there is no general "SHOULD BE" ..that is an artificial concept
particle count in a natural enviro will vary widely ..eg if it rains
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000b32m

Times : Red Box
Between 2011 and 2017, the UK spent £4.9 billion on the International Climate Fund, designed to help people in poorer countries to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Over a similar period, 2010-16, UK Export Finance supported £4.8 billion in fossil fuel projects — nearly the same figure — worsening climate change and completely undermining our laudable aid goals. Even the international trade select committee has called Britain’s aid policy “incoherent” because of the huge support given to fossil fuels.

*Fossil fuels don’t reduce poverty – they make it worse.*
(flip that is an extraordinary claim cos every time you spend £1.30 on petrol a £1 ends up in governments funds)

Fossil fuels don’t help developing nations with energy security – they lock developing countries into fossil fuel development. Like a deadly, addictive drug it’s hard to get off the fossil path once you start, and the UK is feeding the habit

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-governments-fracking-pause-is-a-hollow-hypocritical-gesture-kgscdpzjl

Thu pg 16 : Dirty air causes increased risk to brain cancer

Why it's PR BS
#1 infinity times zero is zero
You wont get brain cancer
so an increased risk is still nothing
#2 Its Canada
#3 Its in the Lancet
#3 They use particles per cc to get a big scary number
#4 "particles" they don't specify of what or what size
Probably PM5
The difference between living in a quite or busy street means 1 extra case of brain cancer per 100,000 residents.

#5 As ever its QALYs tgat count not cases
if you get brain cancer at 108, it makes little difference does it ?