Saturday's PR

pg18 The Times
"Air pollution on busy roads as bad as passively smoking 10 a day "**
That 10 cigs/day claim was previously made in an old Greenpeace report and was described as ridiculous and irresponsible by an expert (Fulton?) on BBC MoL

The Times quotes Grigg "preliminary results"* "to be published in the journal Thorax" "links their breathing to pollution in their home area"
* preliminary findings! are not worth anything cos they haven't been peer reviewed. Even then they should be treated with caution before multiple independent replication.

** Also in Mail

In the past I can see press reports have quoted other Grigg research in a similar fashion "preliminary results say"

Here's an old published paper similar to his new.

Effect of exposure of children to particulate matter air pollution on airway macrophages and dendritic cells.

Times pg26
Letter from Sustainability prof at Heriot-Watt
Complaining lorry fridge units TRUs emit dozens of times more, run on red diesel.
But uses melodramatic greenie language.

pg18 The Times
Sadiqs new toxicity T-charge from November applies to vehicles not meeting Euro4 (pre 2006) & includes PETROL
It's a£10 surcharge on top of the congestion charge

The column is pure PR
It ends "overwhelmingly backed by Londoners because they wanted immediate action to tackle air pollution"
that's mere assertion.

Times Biz section
News-vert for CleanSpace owned by former Labour minister Lord Drayson
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/plucking-energy-out-of-thin-air-to-see-how-thick-it-is-with-pollution-x8cd5099s
It markets phone size device which monitors air quality
and sends it to an app
"in this post truth world..."
Funny he says that cos when I check what this device measures -All it measures is carbon-monoxide and then NOx and PMs are inferred from that
The device is just a phone with a CO sensor added
http://www.iphoneness.com/iphone-accessories/air-monitors-for-iphone-ipad/

Thursdays PR Times front page
"Britain receives final warning on 'shameful' air pollution levels"

#1 So Time's is running Sadiq/Grigg PR everyday

#2 It's heavy spin not to mentioned all the main EU counties have been warned and its not just the UK

Inferring by CleanSpace
https://our.clean.space/support/faq
"The Tag measures carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide (CO) is a poisonous gas. "
"Carbon monoxide outdoors is produced by internal combustion engines, such as diesel and petrol vehicles and is an indicator of overall vehicle pollution, which is made up of a number of pollutants such as small particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10), nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and ozone (O3). In general, if carbon monoxide is high it is likely that most of the other pollutants will be high also, depending on the mix of vehicle types on the road, such as the proportion of diesel vehicles."

"It's a£10 surcharge on top of the congestion charge"
last time I looked ..most vehicles prefered to stay out of that zone and not pay the congestion charge
..so surely that zone is not the most car polluted zone in London anymore ?
Is excluding some more diesels going to make any difference ?

Another thing R4 Inside Science was making a big deal of a student exercise to modify "please turn off you engines at Level crossings"
#1 Many new cars have Stary/stop tech which shuts off idling.
#2 Its not 1950s India , where people are gunning their engines.
So when the gate comes down your engine doesn't do that much extra work
.. I don't see a difference in fuel use between someone who switches off their engine and someone who doesn't.
capisce ?

oops typos
Another thing R4 Inside Science was making a big deal of a student exercise to modify "please turn off you engine" signs at Level crossings
#1 Many new cars have Start/stop tech which shuts off idling.
#2 Its not 1950's India , where people are gunning their engines.
So when the gate comes down your engine doesn't do that much extra work
These days .. I don't see a difference in fuel use between someone who switches off their engine and someone who doesn't. ........................capisce ?

Last Wednesday's PR was huge
Page in Mail Get diesel cars off the road, urge doctors: 300 sign letter to the Prime Minister over 'health emergency'

Is that actually a new letter or just a ref to the Dec one?
Times had a double page plus letter's page had 3letters inc one from Grigg* but not the 300 one.

* First of all he claims public transport is not a source of pollution ... Doh of course it is.. It facilitates journies that would not be made. Ridiculous amounts of commuting.
But then Grigg highlights'we urgently need to find source of London Underground black particles.
Doh Jesus get your science right before screaming to ban diesels.

"Reducing air pollution would increase life expectancies by many more months than the elimination of passive smoking"
Red herring given stats on passive smoking are ropey.
And Griggs stats are over certain.

Julia Hartley Brewer vs One Paediatrician who is one of the 300 signiatories.
Julia Hartley-Brewer challenges doctor over air pollution premature death statistic in Doctors Against Diesel call to action
#1 The Dr understands that children get respiratory problems.
But her signature is meaningless cos clearly doesn't understand the maths.

#2 JHB understands that the stats are fishy but also doesnt understand the maths.

She thinks the 40K annual death stat is made up.

No it is a proper number it's just the extrapolation is not robust.

A cleaner US cities have a longer lifespan stat than a dirtier ones.
- Experts said that is partially due to pollution and calculated life days lost.
-;politicians requested a different format
So the experts said when you get cancer or heart disease you lose life days. So when you die early from them so many life days have been cut off your life.
Experts might say that is number the same as 100 people who lose say 30 days off their lifespan due to pollution
Hence come up with a THEORETICAL number of pollution deaths.

It's the stats guys who are the experts not the doctors.

Ah Kings college produced a report which goes into details about Theoretical London deaths
..so that is better than just assertions
But still questions arise as to its robustness.

It gives death predictions for NOx pg 25
Which seems strange to me given the mechanism for NOx harming people is unclear
pg 115 has a large number of caveats

The report makes predictions such as lives will be saved if vehicles removed.
But such reports assume "all other things are not equal
.for example in future more people will get more effective antibiotic treatments .

...............................
BTW I just found another report about an idea for copper catalysts to clean exhaust gases off NOx.

Today's PR pumped out by team Sadiq & friends.
"ResPublica proposes giving drivers of polluting cars £1000 voucher and closing car parks ... so making it more difficult for drivers"

Why this campaign is making London now dirtier.
..Before the hype ..people would have replaced their cars on a normal cycle.

Now with talk of coming CASH for scrappge scheme ..everyone is going to hold on to their OLD dirtier diesel until/if such a free £3,000 scheme comes in.
.............................................

BTW I note the promises can never be proved :
- The 9,500 deaths per year are entirely theoretical,
............... so it's almost guaranteed that in 20 years time there will not be a list of 190,000 people who might otherwise be dead.

When you get into the studies, they are CORRELATION not causation studies.
Yes increased asthma in children is not pleasant and seems higher in urban areas than country
So you'd think that is pollution ..and surely it must be partially, but the exact mechanisms for PM and especially NOx are not known.

So on Diesel panic ..we have a false narrative being pushed
"The science is settled diesel is killing people today and we have to do something right now."

#1 take care with the provenance of the evidence cos studies are based on extrapolation of "CORRELATION not causation studies"

#2 Where are the bodies ?
Neither diesel nor air pollution appear on any UK death certificates as a primary cause (nor secondary AFAIK)
Quoted death stats are an artificial construct by adding up theoretical shorter lifespans of some people.

#3 Those theoretical death stats come from CORRELATION not causation studies.

#4 MattRidley in the Times last week pointed out that people believe another false-narrative

Do you think London’s air quality is better or worse than 20 years ago? I am willing to bet that most people would answer “worse”. They would be wrong. London’s air quality, though bad, has been getting steadily better. The average concentration of particles 10 microns or smaller (known as PM10) is about 20 per cent less than it was 20 years ago and the average concentration of nitrogen dioxide is 30 per cent less.

Today@ Ian Wilson Feb 27, 2017 at 3:41 PM draws our attention to the law of unintended consequences
The danger of rushing from diesel cars to much MORE FLAMMABLE petrol

while it may contribute to some deaths in urban areas, some of the figures being hurled around look no more substantiated than the scare stories on climate change and it should be remembered that diesel is a much less explosive fuel than petrol and must reduce the risk of dying in car fires - a singularly unpleasant way to die. Substituting petrol for diesel would surely increase such deaths. Remember the tragic loss of 13 young people in the petrol-fuelled Hagley minibus crash. The fact that the two survivors were hardly injured points to the unpalatable probability that it was the explosion which killed.
In the early days of jet airliners some airlines insisted on using JP4, a petrol type fuel, while most opted for safer kerosene, fairly comparable to diesel on this count. It took a campaign by pioneer aviator Lord Brabazon and sadly a couple of tragedies involving unnecessary deaths in JP4 powered airliners before that fuel vanished from the airways.
Personally I would like to see petrol likewise disappear from the roads.

BTW In the Times article Matt Ridley advocated moving to CNG gas cars as a realistic alternative to waiting for sustainable feasible electric cars

Counter view a Times letter last week Refrigerated delivery vehicles cause FAR more NO2 and Particulates than diesel-engines cars. Signed Prof Toby Peters f Heriot Watt Uni