Nitrogen dioxide emissions drop over Italy • Hacker News Board

Re: Nitrogen dioxide emissions drop over Italy

#51

Post by pmoriarty » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 1:32 PM UTC

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…

Well, in the affected parts of China enforced isolation is in effect, and satellite imagery has shown that the air in these areas is dramatically less polluted now, so the effects are mitigated for now. Also, they're only testing in affected cities, not in rural areas, where the virus could be much more prevalent for all we know.

Their reporting of test results is unreliable anyway as they could be distorting numbers to make it seem like they have less of a problem than they do or to make it seem like their containment measures are working, and the tight control over the media and their totalitarian society makes it very difficult to independently confirm their numbers.

So I would take any reports coming out of China with several large heaps of salt.

Re: Nitrogen dioxide emissions drop over Italy

#52

Post by taeric » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 1:33 PM UTC

adrianN wrote: post #9

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…

Poor air quality is correlated with population density. As is spread of infectious diseases.

While true, I bet you could also correlate lung damage to population density. Thing is, we know there are causal attributes to some of these places to poor lung health.

Re: Nitrogen dioxide emissions drop over Italy

#53

Post by lm28469 » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 1:39 PM UTC

easytiger wrote: post #22

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…

Airline co2 emissions represent an irrelevant amount compared to the great benefits it provides

CO2 isn't everything, what about disrupted air streams or high altitude pollution (NO2, NOx, PM2.5, &c.) ? Surely burning 1L of jet fuel at sea level is not the same as at 15k feet (ozone layer ?)

It's very easy to focus on CO2, it's probably the least harmful thing a jet engine will exhaust.

Re: Nitrogen dioxide emissions drop over Italy

#54

Post by adrianN » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 1:43 PM UTC

taeric wrote: post #52

adrianN wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poor air quality is correlated with population density. As is spread of infectious diseases.

While true, I bet you could also correlate lung damage to population density. Thing is, we know there are causal attributes to some of these places to poor lung health.

You can correlate all kinds of things to population density. This is why you need to do proper science instead of relying on vague intuitions.

Re: Nitrogen dioxide emissions drop over Italy

#55

Post by adrianN » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 1:45 PM UTC

taeric wrote: post #49

kurthr wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In many places, the tests run are well behind people already recovering from the mild cases. Would they show as negative or positive? (Genuinely asking.)

Tests are negative once you're recovered. The tests check for the presence if viral RNA.

Re: Nitrogen dioxide emissions drop over Italy

#56

Post by taeric » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 1:51 PM UTC

adrianN wrote: post #54

taeric wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While true, I bet you could also correlate lung damage to population density. Thing is, we know there are causal attributes to some of these places to poor lung health.

You can correlate all kinds of things to population density. This is why you need to do proper science instead of relying on vague intuitions.

This is why I'm asking on this forum. If folks have good data sources to watch for to disprove this, please let me know.

You can see my perspective on why I have this hypothesis below. I give good odds that I already had covid. Hit me really hard, but the same symptoms for the rest of my family have been very mild. We all got fevers. We all got coughs. I couldn't breath well enough to say three words at a time.

Could be plenty of things, so I'm socializing this hypothesis to help disprove it.

Re: Nitrogen dioxide emissions drop over Italy

#57

Post by BlargMcLarg » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 1:56 PM UTC

growlist wrote: post #50

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.

Have to say our leaders, the EU and globalism in general seem to be looking decidedly worse off: many leaders are following rather than leading; the EU love-fest has disintegrated into closed borders and selfish refusals for assistance; and globalism looks to have delivered us a rapid, efficient and apparently unblockable conduit for spreading a dangerous disease to all corners of the earth. Yay open borders!

Was surprised to hear it was China that was offering help to the EU first, yet none of the other countries seemed to care for Italy. So much for the United States of Europe ever forming.

Its also surprising so many people thought globalism would be with no significant downsides whatsoever. A virus wreaking havoc was waiting to happen, and we never thought about creating a plan. You'd figure these are the times you'd call people to duty; not to go to war, but to do the small things (medical, transportation or other essential stuff) that others can't do or to help handle to load. In case of emergency, I'm sure I'd prove a lot more useful transporting hospital beds than fixing JIRA tickets for a SaaS company in finance. But maybe that's just me.

Re: Nitrogen dioxide emissions drop over Italy

#58

Post by squiggleblaz » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 3:06 PM UTC

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…

> this is WW3 The World vs a Virus

if only we were so unified though. It would be a great ww3 if we were all fighting this together, but it seems like when it was in China the west was like "this is a chinese problem" and now it's in the west and almost dead in china it's more like "this is a democratic problem" (since allegedly democracies were too brittle to be able to respond until it was too late - democracies dither while autocracy hide).

it could have been fought together but instead it's only about us vs them.

Re: Nitrogen dioxide emissions drop over Italy

#59

Post by Zenst » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 3:15 PM UTC

selimthegrim wrote: post #36

Zenst wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

DOh - thanks, alas missed edit window, my bad :()

Re: Nitrogen dioxide emissions drop over Italy

#60

Post by squiggleblaz » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 3:23 PM UTC

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…

With respect, travelling to relocate for work or to visit family seem like they fall into the category of necessary flights - I mean, if you said to everyone "you can only take 10 return flights in your life from now on", people would spend them on relocating and family visits with considerable ease. They would think twice about that ski trip though.

As you say, the average business trip is more about status and could easily be dropped. But it's not fair to put relocation for work into that category.