Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nitrogen dioxide emissions drop over Italy

esa.int

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 66 posts

Re: Nitrogen dioxide emissions drop over Italy

#31

Post by snazz »

KarlKemp wrote: post #16
taeric wrote: post #6

This lines up with a hypothesis I've got that this is causing severe cases in places where there is a high baseline of lung damage. Either from asthma or other genetic conditions, or from exposure to poor air quality. Such that these lock downs are preventing more bad cases, but not by preventing the spread of covid, but by limiting exposure to other things. In this case, it could be lowering emissions period, which…

Air quality in (parts of) China is much worse than any part of Europe, even northern Italy. To be proportional, deaths in China would need to be a magnitude higher. On the other end of the scale, Switzerland would need to be almost free of fatalities, etc. You also don’t have much of a model. It would be strange for one virus to show an extreme sensitivity to existing environmental lung damage when all our experience…

Smoking is also more common (to my knowledge) in Italy. That could have something to do with it.

Re: Nitrogen dioxide emissions drop over Italy

#32

Post by Zenst »

rubyfan wrote: post #17
Zenst wrote: post #3

Reduced travel and industry will see this happen and saw this in China, globally over the year the effect will be interesting and whilst it will do wonders for the climate. One aspect that I'm currently pondering is the winter 20/21. Reason being that it has been shown that less planes flying means temperature difference day/night, slightly warmer during day, but also colder at night. As we saw for the days post 9/11…

It seems like this is a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of all the pollution that’s happened over the last 150 years. Is it reasonable to expect a lasting effect here?

Once the dust settles, the data and more so, political and populus consensus will be more pro good air quality than currently and the momentum will see much change. That's my prediction of how this will traction over the years ahead.

Certainly see airplane tickets become more expensive as the days of cheap subsidized (low fuel tax's/duty) flights are in the end of days. Airlines running on razor thin margins will not survive this and personally, that's a good thing given the that IMHO the overall impact is a false-economy upon the environment.

Though that will only see more investment into electric planes, which will have a fair chance with a fair market for such competition.

Interesting times ahead, kinda focusing on the positives over the loss of life that will drive such change.

Re: Nitrogen dioxide emissions drop over Italy

#33

Post by fyfy18 »

paganel wrote: post #23

I really do hope that this event will give a big blow to the mass-tourism industry. It doesn't feel right to catch a flight from Europe to half-way around the world (Thailand, let's say) for just a few hundred euros, there are lots of externalities not included in that price. To say nothing of the Dutch-disease-like effects brought by mass tourism to those tourist places.

Business travel is also something we should look to curtail. I expect there are a high number of business trips that could be replaced with virtual meetings if they needed to be (say, if there was a global pandemic restricting travel). In the US around 1/5 of domestic flights are for business purposes [0]. If you also include people who relocated for work, and are travelling to visit family, I expect it would be much higher.

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/207103/forecasted-number...

Re: Nitrogen dioxide emissions drop over Italy

#35

Post by leftyted »

bamboozled wrote: post #12
Zenst wrote: post #3

Reduced travel and industry will see this happen and saw this in China, globally over the year the effect will be interesting and whilst it will do wonders for the climate. One aspect that I'm currently pondering is the winter 20/21. Reason being that it has been shown that less planes flying means temperature difference day/night, slightly warmer during day, but also colder at night. As we saw for the days post 9/11…

This is 100% anecdotal but I saw it snow the other day in Tokyo in March and it’s been very cold. It’s been a while since it’s snowed in March I’m sure. I’ve also noticed the Japanese alps we’re having a super bad winter until a few weeks back when things kicked into gear and the snow started falling again. I have absolutely no idea but Is it possible to have a short term decrease in emissions change the weather like…

> I have absolutely no idea but Is it possible to have a short term decrease in emissions change the weather like this ?

no

Re: Nitrogen dioxide emissions drop over Italy

#36

Post by selimthegrim »

Zenst wrote: post #18
bamboozled wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is 100% anecdotal but I saw it snow the other day in Tokyo in March and it’s been very cold. It’s been a while since it’s snowed in March I’m sure. I’ve also noticed the Japanese alps we’re having a super bad winter until a few weeks back when things kicked into gear and the snow started falling again. I have absolutely no idea but Is it possible to have a short term decrease in emissions change the weather like…

Yes you will get events outside the norm, it is not the single events but the whole period average you need to look at, like looking at a single day or week of weather note and remembering the whole period around that single event. Yet the whole winter period would be warmer. Then you can have one part of a large country have it colder than normal and yet the other parts has it warmer and the average for that whole c…

You double pasted

Re: Nitrogen dioxide emissions drop over Italy

#37

Post by Brakenshire »

paganel wrote: post #23

I really do hope that this event will give a big blow to the mass-tourism industry. It doesn't feel right to catch a flight from Europe to half-way around the world (Thailand, let's say) for just a few hundred euros, there are lots of externalities not included in that price. To say nothing of the Dutch-disease-like effects brought by mass tourism to those tourist places.

It’s also unsustainable with our current capacity (both technology and logistics) to track and block the movement of diseases. We’ve already had problems happen with wildlife, moving trees or bees around without sufficiently advanced and rigorous tests has already created pandemic-like conditions for various species, and the same applies to humans.

Re: Nitrogen dioxide emissions drop over Italy

#38

Post by cglace »

snazz wrote: post #31
KarlKemp wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Air quality in (parts of) China is much worse than any part of Europe, even northern Italy. To be proportional, deaths in China would need to be a magnitude higher. On the other end of the scale, Switzerland would need to be almost free of fatalities, etc. You also don’t have much of a model. It would be strange for one virus to show an extreme sensitivity to existing environmental lung damage when all our experience…

Smoking is also more common (to my knowledge) in Italy. That could have something to do with it.

More common than China? I highly doubt it.

Re: Nitrogen dioxide emissions drop over Italy

#39

Post by kurthr »

taeric wrote: post #6

This lines up with a hypothesis I've got that this is causing severe cases in places where there is a high baseline of lung damage. Either from asthma or other genetic conditions, or from exposure to poor air quality. Such that these lock downs are preventing more bad cases, but not by preventing the spread of covid, but by limiting exposure to other things. In this case, it could be lowering emissions period, which…

In many places the number of tests run (on suspected cases not just random) is 10x the positive cases... and still there are thousands positive. I don't think the exponential growth is behind us... even in China.

Re: Nitrogen dioxide emissions drop over Italy

#40

Post by Brakenshire »

fyfy18 wrote: post #33
paganel wrote: post #23

I really do hope that this event will give a big blow to the mass-tourism industry. It doesn't feel right to catch a flight from Europe to half-way around the world (Thailand, let's say) for just a few hundred euros, there are lots of externalities not included in that price. To say nothing of the Dutch-disease-like effects brought by mass tourism to those tourist places.

Business travel is also something we should look to curtail. I expect there are a high number of business trips that could be replaced with virtual meetings if they needed to be (say, if there was a global pandemic restricting travel). In the US around 1/5 of domestic flights are for business purposes [0]. If you also include people who relocated for work, and are travelling to visit family, I expect it would be much…

Yes, although it’s worth saying that at least in Britain business trips are a strong minority of flights. With Heathrow expansion the case was made that it was vital because capacity was stretched, and businesses in general needed the extra flights, but in fact most flights are tourism. And even within that category there’s a lot of frivolous travel, people flying for a night or two, or even commuting by plane.
Post reply on HN