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Every Day 10k People Die Due to Air Pollution from Fossil Fuels

forbes.com

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Re: Every Day 10k People Die Due to Air Pollution from Fossil Fuels

#21

Post by wsc981 »

rfw300 wrote: post #14
vsviridov wrote: post #7

How many thousands get to not die because of use of fossil fuels? Just for perspective...

Plenty, but just the same number + 10k for moving to renewables, if a bit more expensive at this point in time.

Seems that if reducing the amount of deaths involved with generating energy is the goal, nuclear energy is still the number 1 choice [0]:

> That’s right – even when including seemingly catastrophic incidents such as Chernobyl and Fukushima in the calculations, the math says that the amount of energy generated by nuclear is so vast that it more than outweighs these incidents over the long-term.

> The reality is that nuclear energy is much more comparable to renewables like solar or wind, in terms of safety. More importantly, it’s on the polar opposite of the spectrum from coal, which manages to kill 4,400 people daily in China alone.

These numbers are especially interesting when considering that nuclear seems to provide more energy (4.9%) compared to wind (https://www.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-safest-source-energy...

Re: Every Day 10k People Die Due to Air Pollution from Fossil Fuels

#24

Post by onelastjob »

ethanbond wrote: post #8
0xfaded wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's too late for nuclear. If the last 30 years had seen R&D anything like wind and solar we'd be in a much better place. And the battle for public opinion is lost. Unfortunately, there's no time left for nuclear (fission), so the best we can do is jump on the renewables bandwagon.

Could you offer some insight into why you believe this is the case? As someone in my 20s, I don’t think I know anyone who is opposed to nuclear. From my vantage it’s not clear why this would be considered a lost battle.

In my opinion, the biggest issue with nuclear energy is that you have to trust the competency of both the companies running the plants and the governments of the countries those plants exist in. The Fukushima disaster is a good example. The plant was set up to switch to backup power generators in the event of an earthquake, but those generators were located in basements that would flood in the event of a tsunami. Since a tsunami is usually caused by an earthquake, this was a bad plan. A Fukushima employee testified that the vice president of the company running the plant knew from a 2008 safety test that the sea walls were too low, but ultimately scrapped plans to improve the sea walls [1]. If this can happen in a country like Japan, how can we assume nuclear power plants in countries with struggling governments can be maintained safely? https://www.newsweek.com/fukushima-nuclear-plant-owners-face...

Re: Every Day 10k People Die Due to Air Pollution from Fossil Fuels

#25

Post by GhostVII »

I think talking about deaths is too binary when we are looking at air pollution, since I would imagine most of the deaths are from peope who have other conditions that air pollution is making worse, as opposed to things like car crashes where even very healthy people are killed. Looking at how much air pollution reduces life expectancy is a better measure, and is what they talk about in the study linked to by this article. According to the study:

Finally, we calculated to what extent LLE from ambient air pollution could be reduced by removing the avoidable anthropogenic emissions in our atmospheric model. We find that the global LLE of 2.9 (2.3–3.5) years (Table 1) could be reduced by 1.7 (1.4–2.0) years through the removal of all potentially preventable anthropogenic emissions and by 1.1 (0.9–1.2) years through the removal of fossil fuel-related emissions alone.

So they estimate air pollution from fossil fuels lowers the average life expectancy by 1 year worldwide. Pretty significant.

Re: Every Day 10k People Die Due to Air Pollution from Fossil Fuels

#26

Post by loeg »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #16
0xfaded wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's too late for nuclear. If the last 30 years had seen R&D anything like wind and solar we'd be in a much better place. And the battle for public opinion is lost. Unfortunately, there's no time left for nuclear (fission), so the best we can do is jump on the renewables bandwagon.

It seems like China could change this -- they have a dire need for vastly more energy as their per-capita GDP grows, and they are well aware of the problems caused in the big cities from burning coal. Nuclear could provide far more power and improve air quality. The government could simply prioritize development of modern nuclear power without much worry about NIMBY pushback.

Unlike the US, China is building new nuclear plants.

Re: Every Day 10k People Die Due to Air Pollution from Fossil Fuels

#27

Post by aaron695 »

vsviridov wrote: post #7

How many thousands get to not die because of use of fossil fuels? Just for perspective...

Billions.

Everyone would die sooner. You'd expect a 20% drop in life expectancy on average (that's using the massive gains in medicine etc we have already made using fossil fuels)

The rich in the West, would lose years, the poor would lose decades.

People don't cook with wood, which then kills them early, because the cooking is bad. The wood cooking extends their life, but if you could get them to coal power, then it extends their life more.

Also the research is BS, a lot of the air pollution deaths are not Fossil Fuels.

A lot, perhaps most, are renewables like wood smoke and dust and pollen and manual work that creates airbornes. I'd almost include smoking, since people need to know dust is the same as smoking.

Re: Every Day 10k People Die Due to Air Pollution from Fossil Fuels

#28

Post by Gibbon1 »

GhostVII wrote: post #25

I think talking about deaths is too binary when we are looking at air pollution, since I would imagine most of the deaths are from peope who have other conditions that air pollution is making worse, as opposed to things like car crashes where even very healthy people are killed. Looking at how much air pollution reduces life expectancy is a better measure, and is what they talk about in the study linked to by this ar…

> So they estimate air pollution from fossil fuels lowers the average life expectancy by 1 year worldwide. Pretty significant.

There is also quality of life issues with things like asthma and lung disease. That's harder to quantify than excess deaths and years of life lost but very real. I also had the experience as a kid of living in LA for two years. There was something icky and gross about the air in LA compared to Santa Clara. Which itself wasn't great. So that's also real.

Re: Every Day 10k People Die Due to Air Pollution from Fossil Fuels

#29

Post by CyberDildonics »

29athrowaway wrote: post #20
vsviridov wrote: post #7

How many thousands get to not die because of use of fossil fuels? Just for perspective...

If only we had a huge fusion reactor floating in the sky that gave us energy for free.

The source isn't the problem, it is hooking up to it.

Re: Every Day 10k People Die Due to Air Pollution from Fossil Fuels

#30

Post by zdragnar »

Alex3917 wrote: post #13
vsviridov wrote: post #7

How many thousands get to not die because of use of fossil fuels? Just for perspective...

> Just for perspective... How does that give you any perspective? A huge percentage of the air pollution in NYC is from the same couple dozen buildings that were grandfathered into not needing to meet air pollution laws, as well as things like construction vehicles and cruise ships, which are completely unregulated. There is almost zero relationship between the benefits from fossil fuel use and the deaths from air po…

Fossil fuels are responsible for a majority of our current heat and electricity generation as well as logistics for medications and emergency transportation.

We technically could transition, but doing so would be massively expensive (whether we went with nuclear or renewables), and some industries would simply not be cost effective or would be eliminated entirely.

The consequence of that cost is the stress of financial burden and a slower economy- leading to a spike in suicide and all manner of diseases that can be induced by such stress.

Alternatively, massive taxation and wealth redistribution schemes could be tried to alleviate the self-inflicted poverty, but it would require rewriting the laws and constitutions of many countries to do so effectively across the world, and there's no telling what the consequences of that would be.

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