Mystery of London fog that killed 12,000 finally solved | Hacker News Reader

Mystery of London fog that killed 12,000 finally solved

usatoday.com

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Recent discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13001806

A picture of pedestrians in the London smog, 6 December 1952 -

https://twitter.com/robnitm/status/806167347807535104

Lots more great pictures from London's past on Rob Baker's Twitter feed and his blog.

http://www.nickelinthemachine.com/

Just watched this minutes ago on The Crown on Netflix. Interesting that they made it so political even back then.

This idea that politics or partisanship is something new to the modern world is fascinating.

I see it constantly among people that have little exposure to actual historical documents.

I suspect its origin is a bit of nostalgia for the "simpler times" of the past and the often horrendously bad methods many people learn history.

Often history is presented as a cleaned up and certain narrative - At simplest, a history of events that happen on dates. They often leave out the machinations, plotting, betrayals, and intrigue that was almost always present.

We strip the messy humanity from history as we build simplistic narratives.

Looking back it may seem to be obvious that Nazis should not have been appeased, but at the time there were many intelligent and informed people who thought otherwise. Same with the US getting involved in the War.

Politics have been a thing as far back as we have written records.

Would be interesting to focus on one particular event by first looking at the publicly available information at the time, then looking at the primary documents released later to see what was going on internally, then reading a general history book to see how all the complexities and inconsistencies are tidied up.

That would be a fantastic way to learn history!

Only thing I'd add is that the written historical record only tells part of the story and can often get amazing insights from other sources such as the material record (i.e. archaeology).

Yes, a quick look at the late Roman Republic period makes our modern politics look down right polite and restrained. Certainly all the same themes as we see in modern politics, but turned up several levels in intensity.

I dual majored in history, and I always chuckle whenever I hear people complaining about partisan media.

US Revolutionary war papers make current day talk radio seem balanced!

You seem to know your stuff. Do you have any history book recommendations?

Not a book (and I'm not the OP) but I was listening to a lot of Robert Murrow broadcasts on the internet archive, and the interesting part about it is his opinion is almost always made obvious.

Most people refer to his time period as the golden age of news, and I don't think many people realize that reporters of that era took politicized stands. He was actively against McCarthy for example.

One thing that is different is he was always fair. Ensuring he gave adequate time to the other side - and taking people of substance from that side. In the case of McCarthy he gave him an entire episode (which McCarthy wasted).

the article could have covered the reason the UK was burning poor quality coal was that we were pretty much bankrupt by the war so needed to sell our good coal, and burn the cheaper bad coal

Important because SO2 has recently proposed as a way to combat global warming.

also posted related https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13160453

I think at this point it's basically inevitable. It's way too cheap and effective in the short term not to happen.

What happens in the long term? Also, how is it effective? What does it do?

It's hard to say for sure. Assuming it works (which seems likely given past volcano eruptions), it could reduce planetary temperatures by up to a couple of degrees, giving us a few extra decades to get emissions down to zero.

Downsides are it does nothing to address ocean acidification, once we start we really can't stop ever, it'll kill N thousand people yearly from pollution/ozone depletion, potential for increased drought in some regions and political issues (eg it greatly benefits China but India suffers devastating droughts as a result).

> and measuring the atmosphere in China, which is home to 16 of the 20 most polluted cities in the world.

I wonder what the source is on this.

I only spent a minute Google searching, but the numbers I'm seeing put China WAY below 16 of the top 20.

>"[...]Interestingly, while the London fog was highly acidic, contemporary Chinese haze is basically neutral,” he added.

This kind of weasel-wording is a smirch upon science. It's either basic, or neutral.

Is this missing a sarcasm tag or are you honestly arguing that he's being weaselly about pH?

No need to be so salty.

Point taken.

(cough) I think that was probably chemistry humor. Acids. Bases. Salts. (cough)

I imagine they mean "basically" in the sense of "in the most essential respects; fundamentally" rather than "the opposite of acidic."

It's ok buddy, I laughed.

thank you (hugs)

I'm getting a Bad Request no matter what I try. Anyone have an alternate link?

"Answer a survey from a third party researcher to gain access to premium content. Surveys longer than 3 questions provide a survey-free experience for 7 days."

Blargh, no.

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