Comment by ankit219 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ankit219 | Hacker News Reader

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There is a recent article by Max Roser on air pollution, providing a much needed context on what is happening: https://ourworldindata.org/data-review-air-pollution-deaths

One key point:

> More recent studies tend to find a higher death toll than earlier studies. This is not because air pollution – at a global level – is worsening, but because the more recent scientific evidence suggests that the health impacts of exposure to pollution is larger than previously thought

Most studies est the death toll to be around 7M per year. In no way a low number. Problem is articles like these serve to create panic more than educate people. Maybe panic is the way forward, and it probably works, just that it is unsettling and manipulative when you can read the correct facts elsewhere. Indoor air pollution - caused by burning coal etc to cook food mostly in poor household - accounts for 40% of the deaths. We dont even seem to want to address that.

The mental image this headline creates is pollution by burning fossil fuels outdoor due to which air quality worsens. true to an extent, but there is indoor polluton, then natural causes like dust, fires, pollen, volcanic eruption, agriculture too.

I wish we trust people to behave as adults, or at least have faith, and move away from creating mass panic to solve such problems.

Edit: The number from natural sources is not insignificant. Out of 8.8M deaths, 5.5M were due to anthropogenic sources. Rest is natural causes of air pollution. And from anthropogenic sources, 2.2M came from indoor air pollution (by the same study I think)

> The mental image this headline creates is pollution by burning fossil fuels outdoor due to which air quality worsens.

Yes, that's the mental image. That's what they're going for. It's not terribly controversial, I don't think: fuels burn, bad stuff goes into air.

> true to an extent, but there is indoor polluton, then natural causes like dust, fires, pollen, volcanic eruption, agriculture too.

What's your point? The article's about air pollution, and the author wants to do something about that. That's what he cares about right now. Those other things? Very bad. But: this article's about this specific thing. There are always lots of things in the world, but we can train our attention on only so many at once.

> Problem is articles like these serve to create panic more than educate people.

Create panic in who, exactly? I'm trying to figure out how you can speak for other people on this. Personally, I'm not panicked by the headline or the article. More sad, maybe, and curious about how I might be able to affect the problem positively.

I'm not even sure what exactly it is about the article that's so manipulative to you. I read a lot of systematic reviews in my research, and the tone of this article is pretty similar to many of those. Just because the article's scary for you doesn't mean someone's out to manipulate you. Emotional responses between people "take two to tango": there's as much work being done by the reader as the writer, in this instance.

The article's about air pollution, and the author wants to do something about that. That's what he cares about right now. Those other things? Very bad. But: this article's about this specific thing.

Read the list of "other things" carefully. They all contribute to poor air quality / air pollution!

I sometimes wonder if sensible people tend to lose the war in politics because we will lament if something is not quite level headed and fair enough, if it is a little bit too much like propaganda. Meanwhile industries wanting to pollute will happily spend millions to scream lies and propaganda with no shame, buy politicians, create news networks that never paywall you to repeat the lies, meanwhile we bicker about whether someone was perhaps 20% sensationalist about their death accounting.

Partly agree with you. My issue is just that nothing good was ever achieved by creating mass panic in uninformed public. And, we have had more than a few cases like that with far too many unintended consequences. In this case you may know what is good and here propaganda is perhaps justified as you know a lot about this topic, and the rest of the world is not taking it as seriously as it should. Would that hold true in cases where you dont have a deep understanding and instead of giving you information, experts are hell bent on creating mass panic?

It's a weird reinforcing loop. Institutions like WHO and others would publish a study with good research but also doomsday scenarios w low probabilities. Journalists and publications (institutions of trust #2) pick it up, and in order to simplify and get attention, focus more on doomsday scenarios. The other institutions (eg: govt. or non profits and advocacy groups) and fact checkers pick up same story believing the doomsday scenario to be the most likely one. They publish more opinions, studies, articles, reports etc. and end up creating a situation where no one can get a good understanding of the topic outside of her field. There is so much information that it is hard to gain a handle on that, and here is where I think even 20% propaganda may not be justified.

On the other hand, there is nothing good propaganda has that could be reliably used to distinguish it from bad propaganda (if you are not an expert in the field in question). So unconditionally throwing out _all_ propaganda and discounting credibility of its sources is the only workable choice we have.

The first rule of political change is that if you want an inch, you have to vehemently demand a mile, and then compromise down to wherever you can get.

That's the playbook your opponents will use - and if you want to get anything done, or prevent things from backsliding, you have to follow suit.

Hate the game, not the player. People don't make decisions based on rationality, they do it based on emotional appeals.

This is true because "novel" news spreads faster than facts. So people will happily share doomsday predictions but not levelheaded news.

There's also the folks that want to look smarter than scientists pointing out problems with the way we've done things. Finally, they have an advantage because of their secret or suppressed knowledge.

And to be fair, evolutionarily this is a sensible heuristic.

Learning about novel risks can keep you alive, through preparation and/or action.

While on the other hand nobody tries to fix good news.

> I wish we trust people to behave as adults, or at least have faith, and move away from creating mass panic to solve such problems

The problem is that the adults in the room are unable to do anything about it - and certainly "having faith" isn't going to solve anything.

We live in a capitalist society, and part of that is a perverse incentive to make money in the short-medium term, even at the expense of people's lives and eventually destroying our planet.

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