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Decades of air pollution undermine the immune system

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Re: Decades of air pollution undermine the immune system

#51

Post by roflyear »

macNchz wrote: post #29
acabal wrote: post #6

The pictures of those lymph nodes are shocking. In the Methods section, they state that > LN tissues were obtained from [...] LiveOnNY, the local organ procurement organization for the New York metropolitan area. which makes it sound like the samples came from residents of NYC. NYC air quality probably isn't great , but those lymph nodes looked so bad that I assumed they must have come from a hyperpolluted megacity l…

NYC air quality is quite good, especially considering the density. I agree in principle re society's addiction to cars and I'd love if there were fewer in NYC, but, interestingly, the subway system actually has orders of magnitude worse air than street level: https://www.curbed.com/2021/02/mta-subway-air-quality-pollut... .

But we really fuck up Canada. Sorry Quebec.

Re: Decades of air pollution undermine the immune system

#52

Post by jonstewart »

Syonyk wrote: post #44
borissk wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

In other words, you've not talked to many (any?) Trump supporters, and are just speculating about what evilly evil things they might evilly support for their own evil ends. Or something of the sort. The conservative end of the spectrum is generally more concerned with things like "a stable power grid with enough power at all times " than carbon emissions, though I know quite a few pretty hard conservatives with solar…

> If coal with carbon capture has a future in the power grid... so be it.

It doesn’t. Coal’s sinking like a lead balloon because it’s too expensive. It is far cheaper to build ridiculous overcapacity of wind and solar, with moderate storage, than to pursue other energy sources, like nuclear or coal.

Live by the market, die by the market.

Re: Decades of air pollution undermine the immune system

#53

Post by Syonyk »

jonstewart wrote: post #52
Syonyk wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words, you've not talked to many (any?) Trump supporters, and are just speculating about what evilly evil things they might evilly support for their own evil ends. Or something of the sort. The conservative end of the spectrum is generally more concerned with things like "a stable power grid with enough power at all times " than carbon emissions, though I know quite a few pretty hard conservatives with solar…

> If coal with carbon capture has a future in the power grid... so be it. It doesn’t. Coal’s sinking like a lead balloon because it’s too expensive. It is far cheaper to build ridiculous overcapacity of wind and solar, with moderate storage, than to pursue other energy sources, like nuclear or coal. Live by the market, die by the market.

For now, certainly. We'll see what it looks like long term. Of course, we've let China dominate the production of wind and solar equipment... which won't come back to bite us as a trade war continues heating up.

Of course, nobody is willing to have conversations about just using radically less energy. Can't have that...

Re: Decades of air pollution undermine the immune system

#54

Post by bitL »

Syonyk wrote: post #28
borissk wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're an optimist - if we end up with a nuclear war (which was avoided a few times by pure accident) or runaway global warming, future generations, if any, may think of current times as a golden age...

That's not how history typically works. The group that destroys the place is not regarded as heroes, they're regarded as a warning of things to be avoided. If any of those things happen, there will be very strong taboos against anything that would begin to lead down the same roads again.

Memory of a civilization only lasts a few generations and at some point all lessons are forgotten. You can see it already wrt lessons from WW1 and WW2 in Europe.

Re: Decades of air pollution undermine the immune system

#55

Post by ripley12 »

VancouverMan wrote: post #50
soperj wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly feel that people have got away with one with this type of thinking. In my province (British Columbia), there's a few major issues that have all been attributed to climate change; forest fires, flooding & decline of the salmon populations. Since there's this big boogeyman that they can't solve themselves (climate change), they don't even have to look into their forest management practices (spraying round-up…

The government-imposed greenbelts around some major Canadian cities have also backfired. The reduced supply of land drives up prices within the urban area surrounded by the greenbelt. This in turn just encourages more sprawl on the outer edges of the greenbelt, where land can be cheaper. Those living in these new developments often commute into the urban area for work or other reasons, and now have to drive much fart…

Ehh. The Agricultural Land Reserve really isn't the problem in Vancouver.

Cities already have a ton of land where they can+should be allowing more housing but aren't (ex: the vast majority of residential land in Vancouver bans townhouses+apartments+condos). With the exception of maybe some parts of Richmond, I don't think there's much a case that the ALR is the problem here.

Re: Decades of air pollution undermine the immune system

#56

Post by jimmygrapes »

borissk wrote: post #19
ldh0011 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Quoted post unavailable.

You might be interested to learn that the tribalistic strawman you've created is not entirely accurate, and that some of the staunchest conservatives are more on the side of anti-pollution and environmental conservation than their jet-setting counterparts.

For me the best example is Thomas Massie: https://www.hobbyfarms.com/thomas-massie-off-grid/

Re: Decades of air pollution undermine the immune system

#57

Post by maxbond »

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?…

(See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33713513 )

> 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?

Pardon? Factories have caused all sorts of problems with discharge, intentional or unintentional. Here's some from the top of my head:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster (mismanagement at a pesticide factory causes an explosion, poisoning many people and permanently contaminating the surrounding landscape).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamata_disease (a factory discharged mercury into the sea for years, where it interacted with anaerobic bacteria in the sediment to become incredibly deadly organic mercury and poisoned an entire town)

Keep in mind, these are from the top of my head and I am a nonexpert; we have environmental regulations because people have been hurt or killed by pollution numerous times.

Here's a quote that I hope will emphasize just how powerful pollution can be on an industrial scale:

> Pollution was so heavy at the mouth of the wastewater canal, a figure of 2 kg of mercury per ton of sediment was measured: a level that would be economically viable to mine. Indeed, Chisso did later set up a subsidiary to reclaim and sell the mercury recovered from the sludge.

They literally dumped enough mercury into the river to turn it into a mercury mine. If that doesn't convince you that factories haven't simply been operating with "nothing going wrong", then I don't know what to say.

Re: Decades of air pollution undermine the immune system

#58

Post by Aeolun »

newsclues wrote: post #41
ldh0011 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

> but they still sell plastic garbage bags

You ever tried to put the drippy nasty stuff in a paper trash bag?

Re: Decades of air pollution undermine the immune system

#59

Post by anigbrowl »

WalterBright wrote: post #48
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…

Because the government uses ban hammers instead of simply taxing the amount of pollution emitted.

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 the enforcement has teeth, which you would be happy to see implemented here even though it might come with short-term costs.

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