Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The Guardian has published a hilariously confused post, which seems to claim that climate change is important, vital, and big, but we should focus on other issues, and kindof let climate take care of itself.
It is the greatest environmental hazard of the age. Nothing focuses our concern for the future more, divides rich and poor, exercises science, business, politicians, old and young. It is an existential threat, a generational battle. All political and financial resources must be concentrated on stopping climate change.
But now that governments have signed up to the unambitious Paris climate agreement and pledged to try to limit greenhouse gas emissions, we must ask whether we have lost sight of everything else. Is the environment just about carbon and parts per million of gases in the atmosphere? What about the environment that we can smell, see and touch today?
For 20 years or more concerns about nuclear waste, food production, the quality of river water, the health of our soils and seas, the fate of our forests, the impact of road-building and many other important ecological issues have been steadily marginalised, starved of resources or pushed off the agenda by climate change.
…
Most heinous of all the sins of emissions is what has happened to our air quality since climate change climbed the political agenda 20 years ago. No government wants us to know that far more people will suffer grievous illnesses and will die from the filthy air shrouding our cities than from any warming of the atmosphere in the next 30 years. Climate change may give us a glimpse of the terrifying future we are heading towards if we don’t change our ways, but toxic air is already here, and killing us in ever greater numbers.
…
We have been distracted by climate change and have let governments dictate the agenda. Now we must return to basics, and address all those issues that have been conveniently dropped. Who will get angry about the degradation of water quality, the plague of plastic in our seas? Mining? What about computer and smart phone waste? Litter? Population control? Endangered species? Unless we address mass consumption – the root of our environmental crisis – climate change will not only worsen, we will be left with a degraded world.
Rather than solely trying to tackle the vast problem of climate change, we must address all the many factors which make it worse. It’s a case of looking after the green pennies and letting the green pounds take care of themselves.
A few days ago, WUWT highlighted how greens are trying to find a replacement for the failed climate scare. I think the plastic pollution crisis is pulling ahead of the field, but the filthy air crisis might still be in the race.
Enviros looking for a job to keep them going after the cagw scam falls apart.
+1001
I think even a lot of of the UK’s greeny urban armchair warriors were forced to “take stock” of their perceived “The Science is Settled”, “CO2 is the Devils farts”, “nothing else is remotely important” ideology when the proof came in in spades that because of this ridiculous tunnel vision/myopia on CO2, diesel cars were given incredible tax incentives for urban transport.
The result being that people actually died and are still dying and will continue to die because of the diesel particulates and NO2 emissions.
As far as the “true believers” are concerned – they would have supported vehicles that belched Cyanide and Plutonium as long as its CO2 footprint was zero.
So whilst this article is confused (and it does make one cringe at the authors likely need of a good Proctologist due to their desperate fence sitting) it is surely to be welcomed due to the breath of reality it indicates just may be on the horizon?
Is it possible that the good solid standards of Environmental Science could be making a comeback from the spin and political doctrine we have all seen it be dragged down to?
Not all diesel cars. Only the recent ones, usually with turbos, get the reduced VED. The worst kind for NOx emissions, in fact, because of the high combustion pressures and temps.
As I have pointed out to our MP, this makes no sense at all from a pollution point of view, but it also makes no sense from a climate change point of view either (assuming you consider that a valid problem) because it is actually giving a tax incentive to higher performance cars which will likely be driven faster and use more fuel, and therefore emit more CO2 per mile.
In one such case a 175bhp saloon capable of 140mph is taxed at £100, whilst a 75bhp runabout from the same manufacturer is taxed at £220 simply because it is non-turbo. The two vehicles return a similar measured fuel economy, although since this is at the same speed for both, you betcha the saloon will use more diesel in practice.
To cap it all, the VW cars involved in emissions test cheating are seemingly not going to have to pay the tax that should apply to their level of pollution.
For goodness sake it’s not “Enviros looking for a job to ….. ” they are journalists , not climatoologists.
Why decry those you disagree with when they show a grain of common sense?
Quit the yaboo! , we told you so, attitude. If enviros are starting to recongise that they need to refocus on the REAL environmental issues happening now instead of what they mistakenly think may happen in 100 or 1000y times. GREAT. A bit freaking sense is coming back into the argument.
Don’t expect total capitulation, a U-turn , or anyone one to stand up and say : OK we scewed up and got it all completely wrong. Give the rat a way out the corner, don’t force it to jump and start clawing at your face or die.
If they are finally realising that there are more urgent and real issues: great! Maybe we can work together on that.
As global cooling really gathers speed which it might if the sun goes ‘quiet’ with few sun spots like it did during the Little Ice Age, ‘Climate Change’ will make a very swift U turn. In less than five years.
agree:-) there really IS serious pollution requiring cleanup
the crap from all the Rare Earth mining n processing for turbines and lekky cars for one problem
the agw scam really has taken the attention n funding that would have been far more usefully spent sorting real problems out for over 20 years.
Most of north America has not had a smog warning day in the decades. Who’s exaggerating now?
“Breakdown, go ahead and give it to me”
-Tom Petty
The rats cannot run fast enough:
UN climate chief Christiana Figueres to step down
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35612559
This has always been one of my main objections to this climate change meme, that climate change is the only environmental problem worthy of consideration. I taught science for 27 years, and throughout that time, I could count the number of students on one hand who had even heard of the Love Canal. But every last festering one of them had heard of climate change. I tried my best to remedy that situation, but the problem festers worse than ever, I’m afraid.
kamikazedave –
I’m of an age that I saw the TV and print reports of Love Canal as the story unfolded. That was nasty stuff!
As a child I grew up in housing that had lead paint on all the trim and windows, not to mention, the outside of the house. As a teenager and adult I drove cars using (gasp!) leaded gasoline. You probably believe we were busy poisoning the environment, but it was mostly propaganda. Had proof been required about the paint the propagandists would have been laughed out of court. It was an excuse to label black inner city kids as damaged instead of correcting the education systems in inner cities. Good Democrats at work.
The clouds of pollution over many cities came about from nitrogen compounds spewed by the new unleaded gasoline we were burning in our cars. The excuse used there was the finding of lead compounds along roadsides. I don’t remember anybody mentioning studies to find out just how harmful it was. I do remember a lot of propaganda. The real danger in Washington, DC, was from carbon monoxide, which reached such high levels, occasionally, in the suburbs we were told not to barbecue in our backyards.
I consider that stuff to be right up there with the banning of DDT and a horror of nuclear power plants.
The Love Canal horror was real, however, even tho there was much leftist propaganda made out of it.
Dave, you have that right. Of course it is far worse than that. The same children (I am hesitant to call them students) are being taught by teachers that entered teaching to avoid STEM. Their understanding of science is whatever the politicos deem as “consensus”. And then these folks are advising the EPA that carbon dioxide (or carbon) is a pollutant! And our courts agree!
In the US and Europe clean water and clean air legislation has made a significant positive impact. London, Pittsburgh and LA are no longer perpetually shrouded in smog (now that has shifted to Beijing and Delhi). People fish in the rivers surrounding NYC and the conditions of the Great Lakes no longer is dire.
The warmist crowd is supporting the power grab in government sucks up money to support the warmist causes. This draws funding away from all sorts of functions and the public. This cycle continues to be the toughest to break.
In England, cities such as Sheffield, Birmingham and the Potteries 5 towns were far worse than London because that was where all the heavy polluting industries were situated following the Industrial Revolution. The Clean Air Act was introduced in 1956 because of the smog in London in 1952, but the worse situation in the other cities had been ignored until London started to suffer from the effects of domestic coal-fires. It has always been thus – the rest of the country is ignored by the ‘elite’ in London.
Now the Lord can make you tumble
And the Lord can make you turn
And the Lord can make you overflow
But the Lord can’t make you burn
Burn on, big river, burn on
Burn on, big river, burn on
-Randy Newman
https://youtu.be/VtW8RkI3-c4
The global warming advocates have a minor little problem that people remember their dire predictions. Al Gore predicted doom by last year sometime. However, the other Greens have the problem that Paul Ehrlich and The Club of Rome predicted doom thirty or more years ago. Barring a “1984” ministry like Winston Smith worked in to continually correct history to fit political concerns, they cannot avoid looking silly.
Most people never heard their dire predictions, much less remember them. They do note that there doesn’t appear to be much change in summer weather and that winters in the middle of the country and back East are getting snowier and colder. For the average citizen, whose big deal for the day is to go to work or line up in welfare offices, its just weather, and they know it has to be lived with, regardless.
It is only a big deal to those of us who hang out at online spaces like WUWT and attend various climate conferences.
Are they saying we should attempt to restrict actual pollution?
Got to admit, at least that make more sense than what the CAGW, the IPCC, and the Paris folks want to do with the non-polluting CO2.
Well, duh!
“Rather than solely trying to tackle the vast problem of climate change,…”
“Rather than solely trying to tackle the half-vast problem of climate change,…”
There – fixed it.
/grin
There – fixed it.
If you pronounce “half-vast” your meaning becomes clear.
Thanks Donna, it is good to know someone is following along.
I got it too. So that there is no misunderstanding, however, I might offer the rejoinder that the CAGW “problem” is not even “half-vast”. : – )
Where are the corpses? Show me the death certificates that list “Toxic Air” as the cause of death.
Chai Jing documents the effects of PM<2.5 micron particulates in Under the Dome – Investigating China’s Smog. Some ~10 million views on Yoku from within China itself before it was 404’d last March. Over a million views since on youtube, amazing for a 2 hour documentary in this attention deficit era. China is the canary, in the continental US and Europe better emission controls and atmospheric circulation help to reduce the impact of coal.
It is a well-known internet fact that the person who wrote this quote is now dead from breathing TA (toxic air).
there are virtually none in the U.S. or any of the developed nations. China, India and the like have reportedly had issues- – -although even there, no bodies are shown- –
Where are the corpses? Show me the death certificates that list “Toxic Air” as the cause of death.
Well they show up as lung cancer, emphysema, extreme asthma and many many other ’causes’
When did you last see a death certificate with ‘tobacco smoking’ or ‘habitual drunkeness’ on it?
Done be more inane than is utterly necessary.
The assumption that “Toxic Air” is the cause of an increasing number of deaths is a false one. I don’t know whether statistics support that statement, but I do know that my wife, along with many other asthma sufferers have suffered asthma since birth, and cannot be attributed to toxic air. My wife can have an attack in a clean air environment, but has never had an attack on the many occasions we have been in London and Athens; both cities reputed to be dangerously high in toxic fumes. Likewise I know of emphysema sufferers who have been plagued with the disease for most of their lives, with little relief from a clean air environment. The implication that lung cancer is caused by toxic air is also unproven; I’m sure the illness would not be eradicated were it possible to provide clean air for all of us. And incidentally my mother smoked heavily all her life and died at the early age of 92, I warned her that smoking would get her in the end!
I agree it’s not air quality that’s the issue. I found that food additives (particularly 220s) caused breathing and other health problems for me. Government “ideals” of high carb/low protein didn’t help either. I’ve taken charge of what I put into my system, avoid packet foods, and my health has improved tremendously.
Lordy, you are young! I remember LA in the sixties when the wind stopped and the toxins made the air brown and it peeled paint and breathing was very difficult.
Our Prime Minister in Canada seems to think the budget will balance itself. He said that.
It seems these people have a deeper understanding of these things than an average shmoe like me. 8^D
“This is the way the world ends, Not with a bang but a whimper.”
T.S. Eliot’s poem, possibly alluding to Guy Fawkes’ death whimper, Guy Fawkes being the inspiration for that ubiquitous Fawkes/vendetta mask that is the required affectation for the properly posed on-camera anarchist, perfectly describes what suddenly seems to be happening to man-made global warming post-Paris.
Nobody’s going to come right out and say, “Nevermind, sorry for any inconvenience.” No, it will end like this, with articles saying “Climate Change, its important and all, but just for right now we need to focus on this other pressing issue.” And as these articles stack up, CAGW will recede in the public imagination the same way Population Bomb did. Never actually refuted, just possibly postponed by the continued stubborn insistence of humanity on adapting to a changing world as we always have.
you could add to that the Ozone Hole issue supposedly “handled” by the Montreal Protocol’s elimination of chloro-fluorocarbons in 1987. Since then, the hole has waxed and waned in size but no real progress in closing that hole has been exhibited. But interest in the topic died when legislations was passed. Maybe the same will happen now that Paris has “solved” the CO2 problem?
The Diesel car is promoted as good green transport as it will reduce carbon footprint per journey.
I have UK road tax of £30 instead of £180 for an equivalent petrol car.
However the journey produces more particulates and NO2 giving rise to serious air pollution in towns with health implications for the vulnerable.
Many UK cities have air pollution well above danger level on an almost permanent basis.
air pollution well above danger level
================
ah, but you have saved the earth from 0.00000000000001 C of warming.
Yep. These herd followers know we’re way above the danger level. But they can never name one person who has died from CO2 ‘pollution’…
I’ve been blocked from the Guardian comments and had so much deleted for pointing out that real biopartiulate nanotech and chemical pollution (like C8 that you probably all have in your bodies) that are worth tackling.
The thing with those particular problems is you have to take on the corporate world, something the greenies won’t do because well, it just wont happen.
One problem is nano and biotech pollution in the oceans, some of the former kills photo plankton by reacting with UV.
C8 is in the blood of most Americans (not an exaggeration) and is passed from mother to fetus, it does not break down, thanks Dupont.
NANO pollution is a present danger, and one worth keeping an eye on as some of it can pass right through your skin
Why does anyone read that rag anyway?
Because that’s how you find out what the “greenies” are up to!
Mark, this is the trouble with these things. Like a little bit of knowledge, a little bit of pollution of a certain kind breeds unnecessary alarm. Yes we should aim for as clean an environment as we can. But the effect on longevity seems to be barely noticeable. It’s like US gov tallying BS statistics on galloping incidents of asthma with rising CO2. Here is the longevity statistics by country:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2102rank.html
Note that Hongkong, Macau, Singapore and Japan are in the top 7 – mainly Chinese and Japanese countries. Pacific islands with a whole half a world of ocean fresh air aren’t doing as well as North America and Europe where all this arcane pollution is supposed to be taking place. Look at the list. It’s not the ambient environment but rather economics, hygiene, medicine, and diet. US is a bit below Canada and most European countries probably because of highway deaths, murder and a generally more harried lifestyle.
Keep things in perspective Mark. The nano and bio stuff probably in balance enhances longevity. The incidence of the problem?? I don’t even know what C8 is and aren’t motivated to find out.
3M and DuPont apparently knew the dangers of C8 decades ago, but continued to produce the chemical because something like $1 billion in profit depended on it.
…C8 is in the blood of most Americans (not an exaggeration)…
The mass spectrometer must be a favourite tool of the environmentalists. With it, you can detect an atom of ANY element anywhere you look…
mate theyre using it in foods and supplements and grandfather it..even though they admit it changes properties dramatically for many compounds..
they can use far less ingredient
and theres NO regulatory body or oversight for it
the cat got loose way ahead of the watchdog even waking up
They’ve discovered a new bogeyman – “mass consumption”. Hey, I know, let’s just kill economies, especially the nasty, richest ones like in the US. We need more recessions and even depressions. “Problem” solved.
Do you see anyone listening to this? REALLY? Hand-wringing Kafka-reading undergrads giving up their Nikes, their IPhones and their air travel anywhere YOU’VE been? It’s really easy to appear Earnestly Concerned by clucking and shaking one’s head while plugging the phone-charger into the car, that takes you to the plane, that takes you to a place where you can pig out on foods grown on the far side of the earth and shop duty-free stuff that rode a container ship in from China. Tired of these greenwashing hypocrites!
As for air quality, plant billions of trees in and around cities, that’s gotta help, I live in Helsinki, I don’t know how the air quality is, but there is so much land for trees and vegetation that it must help air quality surely? I’m assuming here of course, massive concrete jungles without substantial areas of plant life you would think would lead to reduced air quality
funny thing is?
theyre ripping trees OUT of cities and suburban areas in Aus
because?
they drop leaves or gumnuts and the risk of accident claims…
or the leaves making a “mess”
upsets the tidy town ftards who think an artists pic of tortures plants in tubs and astroturf is how the world should look to be neat n tidy and aseptic
“In order to make diesel cars more competitive, weaker toxic emission standards were granted
compared to petrol cars (e.g. for nitrogen oxides, or NOx) from the mid-1990s.European emissions legislation allowed – and continues to allow – lower air pollution standards for diesel, as set out in a series of regulations known as Euro 0 to Euro 6.”
http://green-budget.eu/wp-content/uploads/2016-02-17_Helmers_European-diesel-car-bias-makes-climate-worse1.pdf
Impacts of inadequate engine maintenance on diesel exhaust emissions:
http://tra2014.traconference.eu/papers/pdfs/TRA2014_Fpaper_18454.pdf
“Mining.” It strikes me that the writer of this drivel lacks imagination. Without mining, we are back to the Stone Age. Mining is evil?
The left contend that CAGW is caused by wasteful lifestyles, once again, lacking imagination. They want everyone to turn off the heat and lights, and stay home all day leaving the car in the garage?
My sister is on her second Prius, and yet has bought a second home down South for the winters. Amazing…
Funny how she appears to have worries about global warming but through her own actions unknowingly admits warmer is better.
..as long as we’re all aware that we’re all being played
I lived in New Haven, Connecticut 25 years ago and when the summer wind was blowing from the south it got so hazy you couldn’t see the Knights of Columbus building from a mile away. That air was blown in from New Jersey and New York. It was terrible. But now I live on the southwest coast of Florida where we always have clean air and because idiots went chasing after CO2 instead of the real pollutants, I don’t give a rat’s ass about it. Let them breathe cake.
G On Feb 20, 2016 4:09 PM, “Watts Up With That?” wrote:
> Eric Worrall posted: ” Guest essay by Eric Worrall The Guardian has > published a hilariously confused post, which seems to claim that climate > change is important, vital, and big, but we should focus on other issues, > and kindof let climate take care of itself. It is the g” >
[??? .mod]
The claims illustrate a lack of historical context: “toxic air is already here, and killing us in ever greater numbers.”. In developed countries, the air is massively cleaner than 50 years ago. Air pollution only is killing more people now because there are more people and globally more have moved into cities. This ignores two things, however:
1) In the same countries that are urbanizing and smog is “killing more people”, lifespans have increased. So net effect of urbanization and development is positive.
2) Indoor air pollution from cooking/heating fires in the poorest homes is far worse than smog in a city. Go share a hut with someone who cooks with dung or branches and then tell me their rural lifestyle is “healthy”.
It is of course a good thing to clean up the air, but let’s have our facts straight.
…but let’s have our facts straight….
New to the activism game, are you?
The Guardian article has it mostly right — except for the alarmist tone. Where air pollution is a real problem — the mega-cities of China and India, for example — it should be vigorously addressed by local and national governments. In Africa and some other third-world countries, where women still cook inside over smokey wood/dung fires, indoor air pollution is another real problem that affects the health of real people.
The “shocking statistics” on deaths by air pollution are an epidemiologists dream — cobbed together by massive statistical chicanery from huge masses of incoherent data. The fact that the statistics and claims are hugely exaggerated doesn’t mean that there isn’t a real problem. The “deaths” stat is another of the “fruit salad metrics” — they combined the problem of outdoor/industrial air pollution with that of the non-industrial third-world indoor cooking fire air pollution. Try to find a common solution?
I grew up in Los Angeles, California in the days when school had to be let out on some days and children kept indoors because of the smog.
In the developed world, air pollution has been reduced to almost nothing — except in those few places that have geography problems — valleys prone to inversion layers [a layer of the atmosphere in which there is a temperature inversion, with the layer tending to prevent the air below it from rising, thus trapping any pollutants that are present.] like Los Angeles, Denver (I think), Mexico City, etc.
Enviro-numpties wail and moan about “toxic air” and other environmental problems (both real and imagined), yet never seem to get the fact that it is wealthy economies which are able to address said issues. They despise wealth, the very thing that enables us to clean up the environment. They actually use “the environment” as a means to an end. They don’t give a damn about people.
Read between the lines. They have vague inklings that their lives are to be spent in corporate slavery, pushing meaningless pixels for The Man. The economy enslaving them is therefore the cause of all human misery, and if they could only “return to the garden” of Nature, all would be well–organic veggies, flat abs and hot sex three times a day. Because all they know about “Nature” is what they read in publications from NatGeo and WWF, they think “natural” is “beautiful” and “peaceful.” These twits think ski resorts are “winter,” and they’re all “activists” who need a “cause” for their life on social media.
Global Cooling!
The activists problems are solved!