by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Cutting global warming pollution, so newly released studies say, would not only make the planet healthier, it would make people healthier too.
Now who would have thought that reducing pollution would have a beneficial impact on heath. <sarcasm off>
Was that not the very reason why in the 1960s already voices were raised against the industrial pollution, the smog and all that? It indeed was. At the same time when we also all became aware of “acid rain”, resultant from coal and oil fire power station.
Slashing carbon dioxide emissions could save millions of lives, mostly by reducing preventable deaths from heart and lung diseases, the studies show. They were published in a special issue of The Lancet British medical journal, released in December 2009.
The calculations of lives saved were based on computer models that looked at pollution-caused illnesses in certain cities. The figures are also based on the world making dramatic changes in daily life that may at first seem too hard and costly to do, researchers conceded.
Cutting carbon dioxide emissions would also reduce other types of air pollution, especially tiny particles that lodge in the lungs and cause direct health damage, doctors said. Other benefits could come from encouraging more exercise and less meat consumption, to improve heart health, researchers said.
Now, instead of just calling it “reducing pollution”, for it is that that causes the lung and heart diseases, they are all jumping on the CO2 bandwagon. Pollution is not just equal to CO2 emissions; far from it. When are scientists going to – finally – be truthful?
Reducing greenhouse gases, said Christopher Portier, associate director of the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, would not only help save the planet in the long term, but it is also going to improve our health virtually immediately.
They do like to band about the words “greenhouse gases” and such at present without regard of whether or not they are making sense; all in order to bamboozle the public.
The emissions that cause health problem are not carbon dioxide or methane but they are the emissions from burning fossil fuels per se, and the particles that are in such emissions and the heavy metals and such like.
Sometime in the middle of 2009 they found, at great cost again, I should think, that the particles in the exhaust fumes from diesel engines, including those from trains and ships, are the causal agent for asthma and other respiratory diseases in children and adults alike and are, more than likely, the very reason for why cases of asthma in children and adults are on the increase all over the developed world.
What was failed too be highlighted in that report was that bio-diesel, for instance, will have worse emissions of such dangerous particles than fossil oil based diesel.
Instead of looking at the health ills causes by future global warming, as past studies have done, this research looks at the immediate benefits of doing something about the problem.
Some of the benefits would only come from dramatic – and what could be considered unlikely – changes in everyday life, such as more bicycling and walking and reduced meat consumption. Other proposals studied are more concrete and achievable, such as eliminating cook stoves that burn dung, charcoal, wood and other polluting fuels in India and the rest of the developing world. All are part of a number of proposals examined by researchers that are aimed at cutting global greenhouse gas emissions, mostly from the burning of fossil fuels, by 50% by 2050.
Now it is even getting people healthier by prescribing them more exercise such as walking and cycling instead of going everywhere by car wrapped in the mantle of “reducing carbon emissions”. It is becoming rather tedious to see all this
Also, it must be considered that cycling in air polluted by vehicle exhaust fumes is doping very little for people's health; the opposite rather. While they may be getting exercise and getting the heart rate up nicely they also breathe in all the lovely particles from the burned fossil fuels that, while, then their heart is getting better, the lungs will fail.
Our cities must be changed before we can really see any benefit of any of such actions. This means we must reduce the use of motorcars with ICEs, whether gasoline or diesel, or bio-fuels or hybrids, off the streets and replace them by electric cars and vans, and also by cycle deliveries and a return tot he horse and cart. No, I am not saying we should go back into caves, before anyone screams such a thing.
One study found that, for example, switching to low-polluting cars in London and Delhi, India, would save 160 lost years of life in London and nearly 1,700 in Delhi for every million residents. However, if people also drove less and walked or biked more, those extra saved years would soar to more than 7,300 years in London and 12,500 years in Delhi because of less heart disease.
As said before, however, only a removal of oil burning vehicles, whether fossil or bio, from the roads of our cities will give us the clean air needed to enable people to cycle and walk without further risk to their health by breathing in fumes.
Alone walking in London at time when I have to go into the city and breathing in the crap leaves a bad taste, literally, in my mouth for about a day, and that with using toothpaste and mouthwash even.
While nowadays there is no lead anymore in the fuel of the cars I remember the taste of lead that would be on one's tongue after a visit of a couple of hours to the British capital, for instance.
We must clean up the air and that will go a long way towards a healthier population in the cities and, if, in addition to that, as they will have to when the polluting vehicles are removed, they have to walk and cycle, then their health will improve even more.
To wrap this all in the “reducing greenhouse gas emissions”, however, is nothing but an attempt to bamboozle the public and does climate science no favor whatsoever. No wonder scientists are not trusted by the man in the street.
© 2010
