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Pollution causing more deaths than Covid, action needed, U.N. expert says

reuters.com

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Re: Pollution causing more deaths than Covid, action needed, U.N. expert says

#61

Post by OJFord »

londons_explore wrote: post #50
pjc50 wrote: post #39

Meta-discussion, but I think "statistical deaths" - deaths where the causation has to be inferred, rather than being completely obviously monocausal - have been a big feature of quality of life improvement in the 19th and 20th century, but are now running into an informational problem. Namely that you have to believe the statistics in order for the process to work, but it's increasingly common to lie with statistics.…

I propose a system where deaths are statistically assigned to causes. Eg. if a person dies of lung cancer, then we roll a dice and say "theres a 1 in 6 chance that was due to pm2.5 emissions". If the dice rolls a 1, then we look around the town for sources of pm2.5, and we find that 1/6 comes from a candle factory. We roll another dice, and if that comes out with a 1, then we say "This factory emitted air pollution t…

If we know that a candle factory is causing 1/36 deaths to lung cancer, we don't need such a mechanism (or the involvement of an arbitrary family) to take the operator to court. At least not in the UK.

Re: Pollution causing more deaths than Covid, action needed, U.N. expert says

#62

Post by jillvs34 »

londons_explore wrote: post #50
pjc50 wrote: post #39

Meta-discussion, but I think "statistical deaths" - deaths where the causation has to be inferred, rather than being completely obviously monocausal - have been a big feature of quality of life improvement in the 19th and 20th century, but are now running into an informational problem. Namely that you have to believe the statistics in order for the process to work, but it's increasingly common to lie with statistics.…

I propose a system where deaths are statistically assigned to causes. Eg. if a person dies of lung cancer, then we roll a dice and say "theres a 1 in 6 chance that was due to pm2.5 emissions". If the dice rolls a 1, then we look around the town for sources of pm2.5, and we find that 1/6 comes from a candle factory. We roll another dice, and if that comes out with a 1, then we say "This factory emitted air pollution t…

Then, the candle production was moved to China. The end.

Re: Pollution causing more deaths than Covid, action needed, U.N. expert says

#63

Post by OJFord »

usrusr wrote: post #38
skummetmaelk wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few countries in Europe ban face coverings in public. Mainly driven by fear of people wearing burkas.

I'm only aware of a small subset of laws existing in Europe, but every single example of restrictions to face hiding I can think of predates Muslim presence by many decades. No, those are not driven by fear of people wearing burkas.

'predates Muslim presence by several decades'?

When exactly do you think 'Muslims appeared' in Europe?

Re: Pollution causing more deaths than Covid, action needed, U.N. expert says

#64

Post by yosito »

pjc50 wrote: post #39

Meta-discussion, but I think "statistical deaths" - deaths where the causation has to be inferred, rather than being completely obviously monocausal - have been a big feature of quality of life improvement in the 19th and 20th century, but are now running into an informational problem. Namely that you have to believe the statistics in order for the process to work, but it's increasingly common to lie with statistics.…

I think a problem with statistical deaths is that deaths can be double counted. If you did a meta-study and added up all the claimed deaths, wouldn't there be more statistical deaths than actual deaths? I also suspect that it's fairly likely that statistical deaths are based on comparing actual deaths to a hypothetical model in which the statistical cause of death is removed, but if the assumptions of the model are wrong, the statistical deaths it implies will also be wrong, even by orders of magnitude. How do we prove that the models make valid assumptions?

Re: Pollution causing more deaths than Covid, action needed, U.N. expert says

#65

Post by penjelly »

severino wrote: post #10

Maybe we can keep using masks? Now that we already got used to them, we may reduce the effects of pollution with good filtering masks. Of course this doesn't mean we shouldn't address what's causing the pollution in the first place.

our brains are wired to read faces because weve been doing that since we were apes, theres no way masks dont have a negative psychological and social impact on our lives when used longterm

Re: Pollution causing more deaths than Covid, action needed, U.N. expert says

#66

Post by postsantum »

bleuchase wrote: post #46
BoxOfRain wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Climate lockdowns' are already an established conspiracy theory among the nuttier end of society, I really think the news industry has a moral responsibility to avoid alarmism because of its inherently destabilising effect on society. Of course, alarmism is excellent at driving engagement and ad revenue so I might as well have asked for someone to write a program that solves the halting problem. I don't know how inv…

Quoted post unavailable.

Conspiracy theory is a thought-terminating cliche, it's like offering a bumper sticker as an argument. I wish there was a neutral website that tracks fringe theories and their development

Re: Pollution causing more deaths than Covid, action needed, U.N. expert says

#67

Post by londons_explore »

OJFord wrote: post #61
londons_explore wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I propose a system where deaths are statistically assigned to causes. Eg. if a person dies of lung cancer, then we roll a dice and say "theres a 1 in 6 chance that was due to pm2.5 emissions". If the dice rolls a 1, then we look around the town for sources of pm2.5, and we find that 1/6 comes from a candle factory. We roll another dice, and if that comes out with a 1, then we say "This factory emitted air pollution t…

If we know that a candle factory is causing 1/36 deaths to lung cancer, we don't need such a mechanism (or the involvement of an arbitrary family) to take the operator to court. At least not in the UK.

My backyard bonfire in the UK produces so much smoke I'm sure someone somewhere will be given lung cancer from it. Yet, it's perfectly legal and there is no carrot or stick to encourage me to buy an incinerator or start composting.

Having a small chance of a knock on my door and someone saying "Excuse me, but you killed grandpa, plz pay for his funeral" probably would make me change.

Re: Pollution causing more deaths than Covid, action needed, U.N. expert says

#69

Post by JulianMorrison »

londons_explore wrote: post #50
pjc50 wrote: post #39

Meta-discussion, but I think "statistical deaths" - deaths where the causation has to be inferred, rather than being completely obviously monocausal - have been a big feature of quality of life improvement in the 19th and 20th century, but are now running into an informational problem. Namely that you have to believe the statistics in order for the process to work, but it's increasingly common to lie with statistics.…

I propose a system where deaths are statistically assigned to causes. Eg. if a person dies of lung cancer, then we roll a dice and say "theres a 1 in 6 chance that was due to pm2.5 emissions". If the dice rolls a 1, then we look around the town for sources of pm2.5, and we find that 1/6 comes from a candle factory. We roll another dice, and if that comes out with a 1, then we say "This factory emitted air pollution t…

Trouble is that those statistics are educated guesses. It's not like we have a precise table of fractional causes that could be split up via dice rolls. The first thing the lawyers for the factory would do is challenge the probability estimates.

Re: Pollution causing more deaths than Covid, action needed, U.N. expert says

#70

Post by gjulianm »

rosndo wrote: post #56
gyulai wrote: post #34

We're not even squarely on the other side of Covid yet, and I'm already sick and tired of the "worse than Covid" trope.

It’s a very reasonable comparison though. Billions of man-years have been ruined by the COVID fearmongers. It’s perfectly reasonable the much scarier stuff we aren’t panicking about.

I am not sure how many man-years would have been lost if nobody had done anything regarding COVID.
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