Where I live, in nearby villages of 300-500 people living in sparse uninsulated family homes you can almost faint from air pollution (temps at +-0C). Wood (>10tn per 100sqm) or coal can severely impact the local environment. So a dozen dirty chimneys are enough let alone thousands of people allowed to burn anything flammable. No industry can rival this.
Kraków, Poland in top 5 worst air quality worldwide
151–158 of 158 posts
Re: Kraków, Poland in top 5 worst air quality worldwide
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not just poverty, but education about pollution and a common view in the post-communist countries that the common good (clean air in this case) isn't so important. It's the same with things like noise or graffitis for instance. In Latvia you commonly see rich people with BMW SUVs behaving like this. My friends see no problem with having coal barbecue or very heavy music in the center of Riga. We often have to re…
I wonder why post communist countries lagged behind so much in this regard? Seems like this awareness only really hit the US in the late 90s and early to mid 2000s, well after the iron curtain came down. I guess mass media must have been still siloed by language and there might not have been much english language media presence by that point sharing these ideas.
You are right in the language silo, many of those countries have also small populations, which means fewer content to consume, and a certain intellectual insularity.
Re: Kraków, Poland in top 5 worst air quality worldwide
#153I can't blame them. They're having a harsh winter. What else can villages do to keep warm without some eco-friendly nonsense that doesn't work?
Re: Kraków, Poland in top 5 worst air quality worldwide
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Open fire with the products ending up in the room has no negative influence on the air quality in the room" is the hypothesis you failed to prove.
Did you read the part in their paper where they were only able to measure any change in air quality by taping up all the vents and sealing the room, and then actually burning food in the pan? How often do you cook in a completely sealed airtight box?
I don't even know which paper you are raging against here, but there are several studies which confirm what is already obvious. Have a look at this one for example:
https://publications.tno.nl/publication/34641471/zD0Xiz/TNO-...
Re: Kraków, Poland in top 5 worst air quality worldwide
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not clean, nuclear is dirty as hell.
Nuclear is one of the cleanest sources of power, if not the cleanest period. It requires least mining and materials over lifecycle vs any alternative per KWh. It requires least land. It's final waste volume is similar to renewables while both sectors do create toxic waste that must be stored forever (used fuel in case of nuclear and forever toxic chemicals like arsenic/lead in case of renewables) Saying nuclear is di…
Read stuff, you polluter: https://www.nirs.org/wp-content/uploads/factsheets/nuclearen...
Re: Kraków, Poland in top 5 worst air quality worldwide
#156I used to live in Gdansk, and later Gdynia, and let me tell you - as soon as it's cold outside, people burn all kinds of shit at home, the air's so thick you can practically cut it with a knife. We theorized that the smog's mainly from residential burning of coal, but of course who know's what's in the stove. All I know, is that it smells really unhealthy, and the smoke coming out of houses is a deep, black colour, a…
Danzig or war? (Hoi4 reference)
Jokes aside, this sounds terrible. What are the policies in place to prevent this?
Re: Kraków, Poland in top 5 worst air quality worldwide
#157iqair has pretty sparse coverage, especially in developing areas. A lot of places with really shitty air do not hit the top simply cause the service is effectively blind in those places.
However, I regularly see a lot of Balkan cities hitting the top 10. Sarajevo was #1 quite a few times. Not sure whether it's really worse than Delhi or Beijing, but sometimes it's really really bad. Like, if you imagine the most smoky bar you ever visited, where you see nothing but the cigarette smoke and can't breath. That's how you feel on the street.
Re: Kraków, Poland in top 5 worst air quality worldwide
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nuclear is one of the cleanest sources of power, if not the cleanest period. It requires least mining and materials over lifecycle vs any alternative per KWh. It requires least land. It's final waste volume is similar to renewables while both sectors do create toxic waste that must be stored forever (used fuel in case of nuclear and forever toxic chemicals like arsenic/lead in case of renewables) Saying nuclear is di…
Read stuff, you polluter: https://www.nirs.org/wp-content/uploads/factsheets/nuclearen...
Thank you for proving yet again how misinformed you are, up to even spreading some nonsensical links...
Here, read these as a starting point Carbon Neutrality in the UNECE Region: Integrated Life-cycle Assessment of Electricity Sources-> https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2022-04/LCA_3_FINAL%20...
Other stats too: https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/low-carbon-technologies-need-far-... Or even from nrel https://docs.nrel.gov/docs/fy21osti/80580.pdf
Or health impact in say Germany https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10640-025-01002-z
Those guys in nirs are clearly some wannabe antinuclear influencers which are concerned about nuclear supply chain and it's overall impact but are fine with ren supply chain with even bigger impact. They seem to be concerned about CO2 impact of nuclear due to concrete but fail to mention lifecycle data per kwh as in links I've provided. They are concerned about radioactive waste but not concerned about other toxic chemicals like arsenic. They are concerned about tritium when it's a low level emitter which you can drink and occurs naturally due to the sun. Most releases of tritium, including in Fukushima are below WHO limits.
They are even concerned about some french units going offline during summer due to heat, but fail to mention even then France is top net exporter on the continent, avg heat impact affecting about 0.18% of production per year. They also fail to mention this is happening in units without cooling towers and edf isn't fixing it precisely because there's no financial value- France is exporting like crazy in this period - can check the data this summer on energy charts for confirmation. The 'article' is written in a childish manner by someone cherry picking everything to confirm own bias
I heavily recommend you to look at this topic pragmatically instead of listening to some influencers like in your link or even greenpeace which did even more damage to the environment. Germany now is suffering due to such antinuclear movements. Not only more people died due to coal still being used, but existing nuclear fleet was cheapest firm power on the grid based on merit order data, while receiving significantly less subsidies than renewables. In fact, per official bundestag inquiry and later a parliament inquiry in Bavaria, nuclear in Germany didn't receive special subsidies for production at all, unlike renewables with EEG, which alone already outpaced the cost of all french nuclear fleet
And naming me a polluter just confirms your bias and unwillingness to be informed about the topic, only to attach labels to people with different point of view