Another application of the Grecian government formula blows up in their faces.
From EuroNews:
Smog hits Athens as cash-strapped residents choose fire over fuel
Bad news for austerity-stricken Greeks is also proving to be bad news for the environment – specifically the air quality in Athens.
Wood has soared in popularity, with many of the city’s residents using it to heat their houses, after an increase in duty has seen the price of heating oil double in two years.
====================================
Also, via The Raw Story:
Air pollution in Athens has surged in recent days because of people choosing wood over more expensive fuels to heat their homes in the grips of a continuing economic crisis, the environment ministry said Friday.
Particulate matter has been measured at 150 milligrammes per cubic metre, or three times the danger level, especially in the northern and western suburbs of the Greek capital, the ministry said.
The visible smog is reminiscent of that which cloaked the mountain-ringed city before it modernised its cars and buses.
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150 mg/m3 is a lot. Flue gas from power plants is usually lower than that.
So apparently Greece Fires cause smog
Remember Denver during the Arab oil embargoes of the 1970s?
Power plants work hard to reduce their pollution levels, and of course regulators in North America insist that they do so.
Greece doesn’t have the manpower to police all the homeowners who choose to pollute.
Carbon-neutral too. Help Greece hit their CO2 reductions. Wood isn’t “fossil fuel” you know — a little/sarc
It is so sad, decades of lying to the public are bearing poisonous fruit.
The poorer we are, the more we pollute, but the warmists solution is more poverty.
Truly, this is a fight well-worth fighting.
Thank you for bringing this to the forefront. If they get their way, the enviro-nuts will have half of New England burning firewood for heat.
Supply of low-cost electricity to South Africa’s historically Black segregated townships has resulted in an unbelievable improvement in the quality of the air, especially in winter. I remember many evenings in the mid-1990’s driving into Kathlehong when visibility was as low as a hundred yards. Respiratory diseases in children have dropped by nine tenths.
What say you now, all you carbon taxers? Next a chimney tax?
Depends on what kind of pollution was the tax supposed to diminish. If it was about decreasing “fossil CO2 pollution” then it’s a clear success. And everybody knows that global warming-related policies are not healthy.
Andres Valencia says:
January 2, 2013 at 12:36 pm
The poorer we are, the more we pollute, but the warmists solution is more poverty.
………………………
And this, in a nutshell, encompasses the lunacy of the eco-fascists. Well stated. The eco-loons’ warmist agenda is little more than a war on prosperity that must be resisted.
@ur momisugly glynMhor. An unfortunate turn of phrase. The Athenians are not choosing to pollute, they are choosing to keep warm, hygenic and eat hot food. Your statement shows little idea that you appreciate just how bad things are for the Athenian man in the street. When you are poor, survival takes precedence over ideology.
I am burning wood for heat about half the time in Oklahoma because wood is a lot cheaper than anything else. Thank the chicken littles for their ingnorance of the scientific method and their wild scare mongering. A real scientist will produce all original data, records of where the data came from, what time periods of the station data was used, the methods were used to ‘cook’ the data, the finalized dataset, and then that real scientist would DARE anyone to find a flaw. However the ‘climate scientists’ refuse to provide the original data, the records of the stations used, the time periods of those stations, or the methods used to cook the data. The only thing the chicken little charlatans will provide is end result dataset and they demand you accept it. They are more like like stage magicians than scientists.
There has been no measurable warming since 1997. THAT is a fact.
Biomass power plants are filthy. Lots of VOC’s and CO2. But they are “green”.
/sarc on
Wood is renewable energy.
Just plant a lots of tree’s. Less fosil fuel and you get a CO2 capture for free.
Our ancestors used wood and did’t cause AGW.
/sarc off
Btw.: I’ve seen on German TV a report that people just go out and cut tree’s and the government is controlling this. Job creation? They listen out for chainsaws as this is the only way to capture them.
The wood sellers have also multiplied. Job creation?
GlynnMhor says:
January 2, 2013 at 12:33 pm
—
Using wood because you can no longer afford fuel oil is now “choosing to pollute”?
Talk about blaming the victim.
Not a big surprise. I use fuel oil here in Ontario, and am paying $1.04/L($3.90/gal), wasn’t more than last year I was paying $0.84/L($3.15/Gal). I’ve noticed a massive increase in the number of people who’ve added wood burning stoves or fire places to their houses this year even in Canada.
Same thing is true of diesel vehicles in Europe. Tax policy favors diesel vehicles, but the comparatively lax European emissions standards and densely populated cities means that people are exposed to elevated ground level PM.
The increase in fuel taxes has nothing to do with lowering air pollution but is one of the many measures to reduce the national debt of Greece.
The obvious answer is to cut down all the trees so they have no wood to burn–You just wait and see.
As usual the Warmista Grennie policies lead to deterioration in health, civilisation and an increase in old fashioned pollution. The sins of the fascist controllers fall upon the poor as a retribution for their innocence.
mpainter says:
“What say you now, all you carbon taxers? Next a chimney tax?”
Back to the future……!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearth_tax
This lunacy has progressed to the point that a fellow just got a govt timber grant, to cut down trees and turn them into pellets, here is northern Canada.
To reduce co2 emissions of course.
Never underestimate the stupidity of politicians and bureaucrats.
It seems to escape their comprehension that burning trees as firewood is the least oil consuming option , and their fix is the most wasteful of oil based energy
I’ve noticed the same sort of haze in New England, on mornings where the air is still. I have supposed people are dusting off the wood stoves, which became less popular when the economy was better, back before the economy crashed back in 2008. Who wants the bother of all the ashes, and the crawling bugs and critters that come indoors with the wood? However there’s a heck of a lot of wood laying around in the woods up here, and all it takes is excursive to get it, for lots of landowners appreciate having the deadwood cleaned out, especially since a bad ice-storm we had four years ago broke down big limbs and entire trees.
The pity is, if you build a good fire there shouldn’t be so much smoke. (Indians tried to avoid the smoke, because it gave away the whereabouts of where they were camping.) What smoke amounts to is: Flame that didn’t ignite.
I imagine the government regulators will come waltzing in and tax stoves, require licenses and inspections, and even make cutting a tree on your own property illegal. That will make you a sort of outlaw for having a warm home…. but might turn out to be fun: Behaving in a way that made you an old-fashioned, old anachronism in 2008 could become the behavior of a glamorous Robin Hood-like character, who poaches wood from the Sherriff of Nottingham and builds smoke-free blazes for poor, old widows. I can see the movie now: “Chainsaws Under The Moon.”
Unintended? Or just plain stupid? It does not take an historian or economist to see what happens when you make something more expensive.
Insanity – trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result each time.