Air pollution drops in European cities: how does your street look? | Hacker News Reader

Air pollution drops in European cities: how does your street look?

sifted.eu

33 pointsallnet11 comments

I find headlines like this problematic. Yes, NO2 and CO2 levels are decreasing, but they will return back to previous levels as soon as possible or maybe even increase. [1]

The problem is, that due to headlines like this, the general population will believe, that our world can reduce C02 simply as soon as it will be necessary due to climate change. But then, it will probably already be too late.

We humans have a hard time coping with slow processes, which applies to things like corona virus and climate change alike.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-51944780

i find the title a bit misleaing. "your street" only if it is in Madrid, Brussels or Paris.

Actual source of the maps has more cities: https://air.plumelabs.com/bruxelles-air-quality-map-bKDg

Is there a slide map for London?

And it's more quiet.

Not in Berlin, everyone is still traveling around in cars...

But it did snow yesterday as a pleasant surprise, it did not snow for whole winter, I am not sure if it is related to social quarantine procedures, because industry slowed down massively.

Traffic congestion is way down in Berlin, just like almost everywhere else that has a coronavirus outbreak: https://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/traffic-index/berlin-traffic

Can confirm, you hardly see more than 5 cars waiting at a stop. (Mid Berlin)

Driving in Munich is really pleasant. Stress level is very low, people do dot drive aggressively like earlier.

If you live close to a ER location or on the road to a ER location then that is not really the case. Source: me, living one tram station away from my city's biggest ER hospital and 3 tram stations away from the city's infectious diseases hospital (which is now a covid hospital). But there's definitely less (almost no) people honking anymore, that's a huge plus.

Well, it's obviously going to get busy around the hospitals.

What I observe is that there are way less of small cars, some buses got shorter and almost nobody drives at night.

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