Rules to improve air quality are under attack
heatpumped.org
heatpumped.org
Dramatic fall in London’s levels of deadly pollutants after Ulez expansion
People in London have been breathing significantly cleaner air since the expansion of the ultra low emission zone (Ulez), a study has found.
Levels of deadly pollutants that are linked to a wide range of health problems – from cancer to impaired lung development, heart attacks to premature births – have dropped, with some of the biggest improvements coming in the capital’s most deprived areas.
HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43288041
Who'd have thought vehicle emissions were so bad and that life could be better by reducing usage in dense urban areas?
It was a bit of a pain for me as I ended up swapping my 31 year old car for a 12 year old car but I'd rather have clean air and the 31 year old was getting a bit rusty anyway.
The change in air quality has made a big difference for me, I've been central for ~18 years and was thinking of moving out because the pollution was making my eyes sting all the time but it's much better now. Partly ULEZ and partly other stuff like the taxis going electric and the busses getting better engines.
In London it’s 0.76 which is still far, far from “a small number”
Not to mention that many poorer households don't even have a car in the first place.
Also the genuinely poor tend to not have a car.
Poor people.
I know this shocks boomers but the poorest people in any city don't own cars because they can't afford them - and they subsidize the vehicle owners through the taxes they pay.
Is there a steelmanned argument on why this matters for anyone atm?
This is a technology forum, we are all aware of the law of large numbers. Is (100,000) an acceptable rate or note
The zero net emission (NZE) scenario was chosen because of the effect that it would have on the climate, not because some "guy wants to be a perfectionist". See also: https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-and-climate-model/...
The climate is a complex matter and we globally have many bright people on the problem. If you see yourself armchairing on that topic, you might consider that you just don't know enough.
It is a bit like doing an emergency break with a train that is about to roll into a pit filled with lava. You need to break way ahead to avoid the lava pit.
80/20 breaking still lands you in the lava pit. And the later you decide to break, the harder that breaking will have to be. Until at some point breaking alone is no longer enough. That is where we are.
Science is not based on agreement or consensus, it is based on evidence. Arguing that there's scientific agreement or consensus for anything is anti-scientific.
Do you imagine that in a world of scientific men and women engaging in empiricism, we should disregard the agreement in our discussions and simply rediscover medical science again and again from ground zero? We're going to tell patients "Oh, wait a few lifetimes, we're busy reconfirming everything because credibility and consensus is anti-scientific."
That's what it means to disregard consensus. At some point you have to trust an entire discipline of professionals if you want to do Enormous Scale Medicine, not just singular pinpoint arguments or results.
Also: The math on the costs of the consequences of climate change overwhelmingly shows that every proposed measure is a no-brainer from an economic standpoint. But this is also widely known knowledge.