![PM25-LONDON[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/pm25-london1.jpg?quality=83)
London’s Dirty Secret: Pollution Worse Than Beijing’s
Reader Drew H. submits this story.
It’s the law of unintended consequences at work. European Union efforts to fight climate change favored diesel fuel over gasoline because it emits less carbon dioxide, or CO2. However, diesel’s contaminants have swamped benefits from measures that include a toll drivers pay to enter central London, a thriving bike-hire program and growing public-transport network.
Successive governments knew more than 10 years ago that diesel was producing all these harmful pollutants, but they myopically plowed on with their CO2 agenda,” said Simon Birkett, founder of Clean Air in London, a nonprofit group. “It’s been a catastrophe for air pollution, and that’s not too strong a word. It’s a public-health catastrophe.
Europe-wide policy triggered the problem. The “dieselisation” of London’s cars began with an agreement between car manufacturers and the EU in 1998 that aimed to lower the average CO2 emissions of new vehicles. Because of diesel’s greater fuel economy, it increased in favor.
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Well, this was predictable. You don’t need to know much about all these issues to know diesel doesn’t burn as cleanly.
It’s worse than we thought!
So kill the life essential gas! But increase the life inhibiting ones.
Yep! That sounds like the alarmists.
Using logic and reason with Utopians is like arguing with an adolescent.
As a cyclist as well as driverin the UK I know which type of fuelled vehicle
I want passing me, a choking diesel or petrol giving off some Co2 me and
the roadside plants agree it’s petrol every time.
I don’t know where Bloomberg is getting their information, but this story seems wrong. I biked in central London for a week, and it was no worse than any major American city, possibly better. I think someone needs a reality check, and it’s not me. Now Mexico City during a smog alert… that’s some pollution.
A “What were we thinking” moment.
et dire que la solution existe !!!
Technology may yet come to the rescue of incompetent govts: New cotton-derived battery developed in Japan over a multi-year period now about to go into prototype production later this year. If this battery can do everything they claim, goodbye gas powered cars. And quickly. It will be like the silent movies after talkies were invented.
Burning petrol in Britain is like burning gold – it costs more than milk, around £1.50 / litre (just under $10 / gallon). I always drove a diesel car – diesels get 700 miles per tank, out of a 40 litre tank, well worth the slightly higher maintenance cost.
Todays diesel engines (euro 5 or euro6) are far from dirty. I dont know how old vehicles they drive in London but in Helsinki area in Finland there is no smoking diesel engines and air pollution has decreased a lot.
And hardly a CNG bus or truck in London, which requires only a small capital input, for dual fuel kit, for standard diesel engines (and good CO2 reduction).
UK politicians are on a different planet, spending a fortune on not reducing CO2
Paris is already so smoggy that they are about to reduce the whole city to a 19 MPH speed limit:
http://gizmodo.com/what-will-happen-when-all-paris-traffic-slows-to-19-mil-1580711098
I run and cycle daily in central London and the choking filth coming out of buses and especially crappy old black cabs defies belief. What I’d give for carbon dioxide instead of soot. More BS and misery caused by swampy and his idiot mates. Oh and my cars are 911 GT2 and Jag XKR so I’m no eco-nut
Sounds good but the reference is not convincing. 3389 “probable” deaths from PM2.5 in London (2010) is not from the 2010 study cited in the reference and must be some estimate of an estimate of deaths by modeling attributable to PM2.5. Any actual assigned causes of death to PM? No mention of the percentage of light duty vehicles that are diesel, nor any environmental data over time showing any sort of correlation between number of CI engines and pollution.
Diesel engines can be tuned to burn cleaner than pertrol engines, and in general do because they burn hotter and produce more power. The issue is how to deal with the particlate emissions (PM), particularly PM5 and PM10 emissions. Where ALL petrol engines MUST have a catalyzer in the UK today, not all diesels vehicles require catalyzers (Or not yet anyway), so, as in smog ridden London of the 1950’s, we now have air “pollution” because there are more diesel powered transport systems. Not only do dielsel engines need a catalyzer, they need filters too (For the PM5 and PM10 emissions). One reason why diesel has not been taken up as easily in the UK as in the rest of the EU is that diesel is SO much more expensive than petrol. It’s one reason why the Deltic Diesel Electric locomotive was banned. Brilliant in technology, but being two-stroke, very smoky.
Hey and they make it with corn, a food crop! So your diesel costs 1.50 quid a litre and your food has doubled in price. Eco-nomical I guess.
“If you’re against CO2 regulations, you’re FOR pollution”.
Does this get filed under “We can’t just do nothing — now is the time to act?”
Not so sure about the up to date facts of this report. Aren’t the current diesel emission standards strict? As ‘Olavi’ states above “euro 5 and euro 6 engines are far from dirty”. Even the euro 4 engine was far from dirty.
Surely withdrawing the older higher emission vehicles makes more sense?
The new way of counting who dies from CO2. If you are old and you die, you have died from too much CO2. Duh.
@Pamela Gray – The irony is, they lived to be “old” due to CO2. So CO2 does kill you, but old age does not (and neither does any of a myriad of diseases that felled millions in the past).
Latest Diesel tech in cars results in very good emissions, but I would guess that the bulk of heavy haulers and buses, not to mention older cars, do not have these systems yet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_exhaust_fluid
But as others have remarked it just goes to show that the tunnel vision of the greens seems to be causing a lot more problems than in is curing.
Seems to be that just about every touted green measure has serious downsides that would not be allowed if they were being produced by conventional power sources.
The International Association for Research on Cancer (IARC), a sub-association of the World Health Organisation had declared diesel particulates as carcinogenic.
Lyon, France, June 12, 2012 ‐‐ After a week-long meeting of international experts, the International
Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which is part of the World Health Organization (WHO), today
classified diesel engine exhaust as carcinogenic to humans (Group 1), based on sufficient evidence
that exposure is associated with an increased risk for lung cancer.
continue reading here:
http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/pr/2012/pdfs/pr213_E.pdf
@pete Ross
LIFE is a carcinogen.
arthur4563 says:
May 29, 2014 at 4:44 am
Won’t happen. Batteries become more dangerous than gas when they are forced to hold massive amounts of energy. Re the Tesla. How many fires so far? Boeing 787, how many delays so far?
“Hot under the collar says:
May 29, 2014 at 5:22 am”
Also requires “cleaner” fuels, and fuels with very low sulfur content so they can be used in EFI systems. If, say, you could obtain a circa 1980’s diesel car, with a distrbutor pump, you could run it on used chip fat cooking oil with some filtering and adjustments. But in the UK don’t get caught using red diesel on the road.
“Stephen Richards says:
May 29, 2014 at 5:37 am”
That is why we are seeing the the likes of the Mclaren P1 and Porche 918. I still like the Fisker Karma, petrol-electric…or fossil-fuel-electic a proven technology!