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

Decades of air pollution undermine the immune system

cuimc.columbia.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 150 posts

Re: Decades of air pollution undermine the immune system

#141

Post by newsclues »

megablast wrote: post #64
newsclues wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a bike riding hippie in the age of video meetings and streaming, explain to me why the world elite need to fly all over the world in private jets to discuss climate change? Can you tell me why my grocery store stopped giving out free plastic bags by charging for them, and now phasing them out for paper, but they still sell plastic garbage bags and I can't reuse the grocery store bag for my garbage bag now? Can you…

Bunker fuel is being phased out.

Far too late and slowly and I’m skeptical of the enforcement.

The cargo ship owning class of wealthy people don’t not care about laws.

Re: Decades of air pollution undermine the immune system

#142

Post by CrypticShift »

ldh0011 wrote: post #5
dagmx wrote: post #2

Anecdotally, moving from India to North America really helped my health. I know this study is about long term effects but I believe even short term , it’s quite noticeable. It’s why I find it perplexing why so many people in the US want to do away with EPA regulations. Not only was pollution rampant in many Americans lifetimes, it’s completely observable how bad pollution is elsewhere in the world for people.

On a tangentially related note, it confuses me why so many people seem to think that the only reason to do away with fossil fuels as much as possible is climate change. Millions die prematurely from air pollution every year. Even if climate change was fake we should still be trying to use cleaner energy.

Because major environmental actors (big NGOs...) are mostly engaging in a PR exercise to incite fear into our collective lizard brain. As Attenborough said: "saving our planet is now a communications challenge"

Linking Climate to life-threatening scenarios like Hurricanes (that hit you in-your-face) and food crisis, are more apt to rattle us into panicky action.

Slow, inconspicuous, decades-in-the-making ill-health (but not sudden death) inducing chemicals in our water, air and food will never make it through our current processes of media and political decision-making.

Re: Decades of air pollution undermine the immune system

#143

Post by rayiner »

themitigating wrote: post #122
rayiner wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This assumes there is no cost to the change.

The real question is if the cost to change is less than the current or future costs of inaction. I find what you said a manipulate style of argument used frequently today. "What about lithium mines" ignoring the various oil disasters and the effects of drilling "What if the vaccine had a 2% chance of killing me" ignoring the probability of dying from covid (made up numbers here) I'm not claiming which side is right b…

But the premise of the point made by @jrussino is that the avoided costs of mitigating climate change turn out to be less than anticipated. In that case, we will have spent a lot of money for little benefit. The snarky joke doesn’t make logical sense.

Re: Decades of air pollution undermine the immune system

#144

Post by AtlasBarfed »

fragmede wrote: post #45
newsclues wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a bike riding hippie in the age of video meetings and streaming, explain to me why the world elite need to fly all over the world in private jets to discuss climate change? Can you tell me why my grocery store stopped giving out free plastic bags by charging for them, and now phasing them out for paper, but they still sell plastic garbage bags and I can't reuse the grocery store bag for my garbage bag now? Can you…

I don't know about the others, but for the last one, "reduce pollution" only works if people, who aren't bike riding hippies by a large margin, see any point in reducing pollution. Why is pollution even bad, anyway? Seriously, factories have been working for centuries and nothing has gone wrong, so why should we regulate where they can pour their waste or make them pay for environmental nonsense like carbon capture?…

And yet people are terrified of radiation at any level, of carcinogen at aspartame level danger, from "toxins", from evil Chinese poisoned food, from modified genetics plants and foodstuffs.

But a direct scientific link to ... well, almost all of those fears is totally acceptable because we love our cars?

The world... is insane.

Re: Decades of air pollution undermine the immune system

#145

Post by anigbrowl »

WalterBright wrote: post #68
anigbrowl wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if they tax it, people will complain about cost-shifting, saying the consumer should pay, and accuse the taxes for driving inflation etc. I am in favor of making polluters account for negative externalities, it's been a long-theme of my comments here), but I've noticed that people are adept at inventing new bases of objection. Perhaps you could suggest a place where the pollution taxation approach has worked and…

Cost incentives work. It's why people buy cars that get more mpg. Why wouldn't they prefer to buy a car that engenders a lower pollution tax?

I was hoping for examples of incentives for this specific problem you considered successful and would express support for if implemented here.

Re: Decades of air pollution undermine the immune system

#146

Post by WalterBright »

maeil wrote: post #132
WalterBright wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they tax the rate of emissions, or the amount emitted? It's important to tax the latter.

Both. The former directly through taxes on the cars themselves and the latter indirectly through fuel taxes, which while imperfect works well as a proxy.

Fuel taxes work well for CO2 emissions, but not for other emissions, where the design of the ICE can reduce them dramatically.

Re: Decades of air pollution undermine the immune system

#147

Post by WalterBright »

chillwaves wrote: post #138
WalterBright wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pollution is caused overwhelmingly by the rich Then they'll be the ones overwhelmingly paying the pollution taxes.

Because the poor have no resources to tax -- it makes no sense to tax them. And it doesn't mean the rich will be paying a fair share, just that they will be paying more than the poor.

If the taxes on pollution are flat, they are by definition paying their fair share.

Re: Decades of air pollution undermine the immune system

#148

Post by themitigating »

rayiner wrote: post #143
themitigating wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real question is if the cost to change is less than the current or future costs of inaction. I find what you said a manipulate style of argument used frequently today. "What about lithium mines" ignoring the various oil disasters and the effects of drilling "What if the vaccine had a 2% chance of killing me" ignoring the probability of dying from covid (made up numbers here) I'm not claiming which side is right b…

But the premise of the point made by @jrussino is that the avoided costs of mitigating climate change turn out to be less than anticipated. In that case, we will have spent a lot of money for little benefit. The snarky joke doesn’t make logical sense.

I replied to your comment of "This assumes there is no cost to the change." which is not nor is it ever the case.

Re: Decades of air pollution undermine the immune system

#149

Post by rayiner »

themitigating wrote: post #148
rayiner wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the premise of the point made by @jrussino is that the avoided costs of mitigating climate change turn out to be less than anticipated. In that case, we will have spent a lot of money for little benefit. The snarky joke doesn’t make logical sense.

I replied to your comment of "This assumes there is no cost to the change." which is not nor is it ever the case.

Except it is the case in the joke I was replying to:

> "What if it's a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_if_it%27s_a_big_hoax_an...

This joke asserts that climate change mitigation measures would be justified even if climate change was a hoax. And that joke only works if you assume that those measures are free, or at least very cheap.

Re: Decades of air pollution undermine the immune system

#150

Post by ldh0011 »

rayiner wrote: post #149
themitigating wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I replied to your comment of "This assumes there is no cost to the change." which is not nor is it ever the case.

Except it is the case in the joke I was replying to: > "What if it's a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_if_it%27s_a_big_hoax_an ... This joke asserts that climate change mitigation measures would be justified even if climate change was a hoax. And that joke only works if you assume that those measures are free, or at least very cheap.

That isn't necessarily true if the benefits unrelated to climate change are also high, which it seems to me that they are. If millions of premature deaths are prevented yearly the measures can actually be pretty darn costly and still worth taking. And that is just one of many upsides.
Post reply on HN