From University of Southern California another lesson from the economic train wreck that is Greece; people stop worrying about the environment when you make cleaner fuels too expensive to use.
The price for heating oil has skyrocketed in Greece over the last two years (the government raised the taxes on heating oil 450% this fall alone), and now many residents are turning to wood burning for winter heat since they can’t afford the oil, which has affected the city’s air quality:
Greek economic crisis leads to air pollution crisis
Levels of dangerous air particulates jump 30 percent as people turn to burning cheaper fuel sources
In the midst of a winter cold snap, a study from researchers in the United States and Greece reveals an overlooked side effect of economic crisis – dangerous air quality caused by burning cheaper fuel for warmth.
The researchers, led by Constantinos Sioutas of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, show that the concentration of fine air particles in one of Greece’s economically hardest hit areas has risen 30 percent since the financial crisis began, leading to potential long-term health effects.
These fine particles – measuring less than 2.5 microns in diameter (approximately 1/30th the diameter of a human hair) – are especially dangerous because they can lodge deep into the tissue of lungs, according to the EPA.
“People need to stay warm, but face decreasing employment and rising fuel costs,” explained Sioutas, senior author of the study in the journal Environmental Science & Technology and Fred Champion Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the USC Viterbi School. “The problem is economic hardship has compelled residents to burn low quality fuel, such as wood and waste materials, that pollutes the air.”
Unemployment in Greece climbed above 27 percent in 2013. Meanwhile, heating oil prices have nearly tripled in Greece during the Greek financial crisis of the last few years – driven in part by a fuel tax hike. Cold Greeks, it would appear (according to the air quality), have turned to wood as a major fuel source.
In their study, the researchers collected air samples that supported anecdotal evidence of Greek residents burning of wood and trash for heating. Taken over two-month stretches in Winter 2012 and again in Winter 2013, the samples reveal a dramatic increase in airborne fine particles since the beginning of the economic crisis.
The concentration of these particles, which has been linked to increased risk for heart disease and respiratory problems, rose from 26 to 36 micrograms per square meter over the study period, the researchers found. The EPA standard in the United States is an average of 20 micrograms per square meter over a 24-hour period. Worse yet, the concentrations of carcinogenic organic compounds such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) increased five-fold during the study period, the researchers found.
The concentration of the particulates was highest in the evening, presumably when more people were burning fuel for warmth, the study found. An analysis of the air samples also showed a two-to-five-fold increase in the airborne concentrations of organic compounds such as levoglucosan, mannosan and galactosan, which indicate the burning of biomass. The presence of these compounds has been strongly correlated in past research to oxidative stress in human cells, which is linked to inflammation, aging and the development of age-related diseases.
“Wood’s cheap, but it’s having a major negative impact on air quality,” Sioutas said. The authors recommend active involvement of public authorities and local agencies to implement effective air pollution control strategies. They suggest increasing natural gas distribution in residential areas as a practical long-term solution. Catalytic domestic wood burners and increasing the energy efficiency of existing buildings might be additional possible solutions, according to the report.
Sioutas collaborated with researchers from USC, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and the University of Wisconsin-Madison on the study. Arian Saffari, a Provost PhD fellow at the USC Viterbi School, is lead author of the study. The research was funded by the USC Provost, the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and the City of Thessaloniki Mayor’s office.
Berényi Péter says: CO2 linked to overforestation
That is a very interesting article. There is little doubt that changing atmorpheric concentrations of CO2 are not only going to affect climate, they will affect ocean chemistray, all sorts of weather events and, of course, all sorts of ecosystems.
It is good to see that some studies have been done. I have been observing woodland and grassland interactions on- and off- for over five decades. In relation to the particular study, I did a quick scan but noted no reference to fire and changes in herbivory regimes as inputs.
If fire and herbivory regimes have not been integrated with the studies, then I suggest that the findings should be taken as tentative, at best.
I accept that it is very highly likely that changing CO2 concentrations will change plant growth significantly but beyond that the future is highly uncertain.
Grasslands can turn into forests in ways other than responses to atmospheric CO2 concentrations. When land managers tried to conserve US prairie systems by excluding fire, the prairie systems turned into forests.
When foreingn herbivores where introduced into the Australian rangelands, vast shrublands started to form. One reason: the shrubs were inedible to the introduced herbivores but had previously been controlled by wild fires. The problem was that the introduced herbivores ate all the grasses and forbs. The result was that is no longer sufficient fuel to burn out the shrub layer. (I suspect that mesquite in the US has a similar dynamic).
Anyhow, we are conducting a one-off gigantic experiment with the planet by putting billions of tons of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Blind faith that all the changes will be good is blind faith.
jim
There is no need to get over-excited. You could always just try to discuss the issues in a reasonable fashion.
Eric Worrall says:
December 19, 2013 at 1:57 pm
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Actually, depending on your location, I think sustainable burning of wood makes perfect sense. Heating fuel and electricity costs have increased significantly due to “deregulation” where I live. I built my heavily insulated house in 2003 around a large high efficiency masonry fireplace. I heat most of 3600 square feet with wood (six cords or so a year, and I burn excess deadfall in fire pits on summer evenings). Also have water to water heat pump and a fish pond; some supplemental heat from a propane hot water tank when it gets below 30C below and windows designed for winter heat gain. I will never run out of wood. I could run out of grid electricity or propane with little consequence. With a hot fire, the only evidence is a bit of water vapour drifting into the cold blue atmosphere. Probably not good in a population dense area, but when you live 40 km from the nearest town, and 5 km to the nearest neighbour, I doubt there is much of a “pollution plume”. When you live in a province with just 5.5 people per square km wood heating is more than self sustaining. But simple high efficiency wood heat is not a solution for high density populations. Nice thing about rural living, my own wood lot. Get heated 7 times by the same wood – cutting it, splitting it, stacking it, hauling it in to the house to fill the wood box, burning it and hauling the ashes out. Now, with a population density of 90 people per square km, Greece is another matter.
@ur momisugly Jim –> Pellet stoves do work well and a lot cleaner than split wood.
Delbeke
Sounds ideal to me.
As another poster pointed out, it’s more than just ‘renewables’ that go into the fire and up the chimney; think anything combustible such as plastics, cardboard (and the glue used), colored wrapping paper from Christmas presents, ‘pallet’ wood, wood siding, plywood (glues and all!), treated woods, other scavenged wood products EVEN THOUGH it is advised against to burn these materials in a domestic fireplace!
Not everyone, not all nationalities ‘respect’ what may or may not be burnt in a fireplace …
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Attempts to manipulate the public by tweaking money supplies and other rich-man-games always backfire. The ordinary Joe is not as stupid as those in Ivory towers like to think, nor are those in Ivory towers as smart as they tell the face in the mirror, as they kiss the cold glass in the morning.
I have worked a lot of grunt work in my time, working beside average Joes, and also have associated with the elite, and chit-chatted at tables with silver spoons and linen napkins. If you were to ask me who is smarter, I would say it is the average Joe, because he knows he isn’t smart, and is just a backbone. The elite, on the other hand, have been blessed, privileged, highly educated, and somehow wind up more stupid than teenagers joyriding in tanks. Why? Because they often opine that a brain without a backbone is a good thing.
Hey, I just moved to Florida… No need to burn fuel or trees. At the swimming pool last Saturday, this Sunday supposed to be good sunny pool weather too… 80 F range IIRC. Figured out it stays warm when Thermohaline circ slows and Europe freezes. Summer wasn’t bad either despite car AC being out. I like it 🙂
“Overlooked side effect”
Only by myopic bureaucrats and overeducated nitwits.
Well, I m Greek and live in Greece.
The problem for politicians at this moment in time is to get a balanced budget, that is not to spend as a country more than is gathered in taxes, that is the austerity program imposed by the lenders who took us out of bankruptcy in 2010 by lending us an enormous amount of money so as to be able to pay the interests and maturing bonds. Our happy go lucky politicians had , during the period of the fat cows, thought that money grew on the trees and we only had to ask for it.. Now it is the lean cows.
So the same ( as a class) politicians are trying to get money out of a rapidly diminishing GDP, so rapidly that the percentage of the debt is higher than when the lenders came to the rescue!
Among the measures to get money they address the problem of tax evasion, and in the case of oil it is this:
Oil always had a very high tax, but for heating purposes the tax was reduced so that the market price for heating oil was half of that for boats and other uses. This had led to enormous tax evasion, people using heating oil when they should have been getting the high tax oil. Heating oil was always colored artificially but that did not affect the tax evaders.. So they made the price uniform at the high level. This stopped a lot of the tax evasion traffic but also the tax income from heating oil dropped because people stopped using it: they use air conditioners, and fireplaces in apartment houses, wood stoves and fireplaces in houses. Whole apartment buildings have stopped completely the central heat. The tax income in total must be having a positive effect on the budget though, because one believes that they would not keep this high tax up if it were not so. ( of course the troika of the lenders who is in control finally might be stupid enough).
Of course the practically 30% unemployment and the 50% cuts in the incomes of those who are still employed and of the pensioners, those who central heating before the crisis, is taking its toll in this energy and tax balance account.
Maybe in ten years we may be back to normal
“These fine particles – measuring less than 2.5 microns in diameter (approximately 1/30th the diameter of a human hair) – are especially dangerous because they can lodge deep into the tissue of lungs, according to the EPA.”
Yeah, the EPA. They claim these particles are lethal and then got volunteers to breath 100 strength of what they claim is lethal and nothing happened. They buried results. The EPA is a fraud.
And, we have cilia and mucus in our lungs to clear out particulates. Unless you are a smoker and destroyed this ability, you will be healthy.
On the present trajectory, very, very unlikely. Don’t imagine it can’t get a lot worse.
A huge example of un-environmental response to economic difficulties is the denuding of vegetation in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere to use for fuel. Oh, but der Fuehrer tells Ghanaians and people in Soweto that they must use their “bounteous resources of biomass” instead of far cleaner and less destructive fossil fuels. Go figure.
C Wozniak says
‘A huge example of un-environmental response to economic difficulties is the denuding of vegetation in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere to use for fuel. Oh, but der Fuehrer tells Ghanaians and people in Soweto that they must use their “bounteous resources of biomass” instead of far cleaner and less destructive fossil fuels. Go figure.’
Reductio ad Hitlerum. FAIL.
Brian H says:
‘On the present trajectory, very, very unlikely. Don’t imagine it can’t get a lot worse.’
Agree. Things get to a certain stage and there are only bad and less bad choices left.
caleb
Yep. The elites run the place. How could that happen when they are so stupid?
climateace says:
let me kill this thread.
and he does.
The EU and its supporting cast of politicians in the subject nations, are increasingly like uncle Joe Stalin. All this suffering is necessary to enable the glorious EUSSR to succeed. The climate scare is just another useful tool to control the “sheeple”.
Caleb says:
December 19, 2013 at 7:30 pm
“The elite, on the other hand, have been blessed, privileged, highly educated, and somehow wind up more stupid than teenagers joyriding in tanks. Why? Because they often opine that a brain without a backbone is a good thing.”
I sympathize with the notion; a lot of the average Joes are more self-reliant than I will ever be, and a lot of the elite really believe their own propaganda messages, i.e. we must save the planet with wind turbines or somesuch.
BUT you shouldn’t overgeneralize. The strategies are made by a handful of the elite, whose success in clinging to power rests on a very good understanding of all the information available (no, not what goes for information in the media). These people stay in the background most of the time. Kissinger or Maurice Strong come to mind; that type of people; very cunning. Sometimes they make mistakes – like Kissinger as he admitted himself when causing the 1973 oil price shock – and that was a mistake of colossal proportions – but most of the time they just get it right enough to keep control.
““Wood’s cheap, but it’s having a major negative impact on air quality,” Sioutas said.”
Only if it is burned in crummy stoves and furnaces, often designed to burn something else. If you put some kerosene into your gasoline engine because it is cheaper and you hope to go a little further per $, you may have some smoke to deal with. The Europeans make some of the cleanest biomass burning devices around. That they are not used is no reason to blame ‘wood’ for causing the smoke. All emissions are a combination of three things: the device, the fuel and the operating method. If the result is not to your liking, change one or more of the parameters.
Thanks for the Maurice Strong quote. I think it was at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, but that’s a quibble. His goal of global governance—he never says directly who is going to be in control, or who he’s working for—was averted at Copenhagen in 2009. Mother Nature isn’t complying with the plan concocted 40 years ago to use global warming as the template for succumbing to all things global. And they didn’t plan on the climate gate leaker and the criminal mortgage bankers waking people up from their sleep and, at least, noticing what was going on.
Now they’re using the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) to get people used to the idea of a global body (and transnationals) with the power to override the laws of any nation, the most pernicious piece of legislation inour country’s history that no one knows about.
The figures you cite are the monetary base, not the money supply. The central bank’s assets in 2008 were $800 billion; now just over $4 trillion because of QE. That hockey stick rise after 2010 on the Fed chart you link to is QE. When the Fed purchased those securities, it effectively took the interest income from them out of the economy—to the tune of nearly $100 billion/year–because it must return that interest income by law to the Treasury every year. That has the net effect of making the dollar scarcer (increasing its value not devaluing it) and being a tax on the economy.
But rather than blame the Fed for doing whatever it is legally allowed to do under monetary policy, the real culprits are Congress who have failed abjectly, despicably, horrifically to enact fiscal policy to fix this mess as is their duty under our Constitution as the only legal entity who can.
What should our currency look like if it wasn’t “fraudulent currency and depreciated paper?”
Policycritic says:
December 20, 2013 at 7:02 am
“But rather than blame the Fed for doing whatever it is legally allowed to do under monetary policy, the real culprits are Congress who have failed abjectly, despicably, ”
The senate hasn’t made a budget for years as would have been their duty; so for what spending should Congress have made tax laws?
Policycritic says: @ur momisugly December 20, 2013 at 7:02 am
The figures you cite are the monetary base, not the money supply…..
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That website states: The fundamental concept of the monetary base, or “high-powered money,” is the sum of total balances maintained by depository institutions at the Federal Reserve plus currency in circulation.
“the sum of total balances maintained by depository institutions at the Federal Reserve” is the amount of money (Reserve Requirement) that allows the banks to lend out more printed out of nothing fiat funny money based on the fractional reserve banking
fraudconcept. So increasing the monetary base is actually worse that increasing the money supply since it allows the banks to create ten times as much or more debt “money” in the USA. This multiplier factor is why it is called “High Powered Money”SEE US Banks Operating Without Reserve: http://www.marketskeptics.com/2009/03/us-banks-operate-without-reserve.html
Of interest is this from A PRIMER ON MONEY, COMMITTEE ON BANKING AND CURRENCY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
WRIGHT PATMAN Chairman 1964
Tricky devils aren’t they?
Here is a tip that works well, quick and easy.
How to make newspaper logs for your fire – Instructables.com **
http://www.instructables.com/id/Intro_1/ – Proxy – Highlight
This instructable shows you how to make a newspaper log in less than two minutes …
http://www.instructables.com/id/Intro_1/