From the “settled science” department of the UNIVERSITY OF YORK and possibly inspired by Volkswagen…
The research, led by the International Council on Clean Transportation and Environmental Health Analytics, LLC., in collaboration with scientists at the University of York’s Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI); University of Colorado; and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, examined 11 major vehicle markets representing more than 80% of new diesel vehicle sales in 2015.’
Of these markets, they found vehicles emitted 13.2 million tons of nitrogen oxide under real-world driving conditions, which is 4.6 million tons more than the 8.6 million tons expected from vehicles’ performance under official laboratory tests.
Chris Malley, from the SEI, University of York, said: “This study shows that excess diesel nitrogen oxide emissions effect crop yields and a variety of human health issues. We estimate that implementing Next Generation standards could reduce crop production loss by 1-2% for Chinese wheat, Chinese maize, and Brazilian soy, and result in an additional four million tonnes of crop production globally.”
Nitrogen oxide is a key contributor to outdoor air pollution. Long-term exposure to these pollutants is linked to a range of adverse health outcomes, including disability and reduced life expectancy due to stroke, heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and lung cancer.
Josh Miller, researcher at the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), said: “Heavy-duty vehicles, such as commercial trucks and buses, were by far the largest contributor worldwide, accounting for 76% of the total excess gas emissions.
“Five of the 11 markets that we looked at, Brazil, China, the EU, India, and the US, produced 90% of that.
“For light-duty vehicles, such as passenger cars, trucks, and vans, the European Union produced nearly 70% of the excess diesel nitrogen oxide emissions.”
The study estimates that excess diesel vehicle NOx emissions in 2015 were also linked to approximately 38,000 premature deaths worldwide – mostly in the European Union, China, and India.
Susan Anenberg, co-Founder of Environmental Health Analytics, LLC, said: “The consequences of excess diesel NOx emissions for public health are striking. In Europe, the ozone mortality burden each year would be 10% lower if diesel vehicle nitrogen oxide emissions were in line with certification limits.”
At a global level, the study estimates that the impact of all real-world diesel nitrogen oxide emissions will grow to 183,600 early deaths in 2040, unless something is done to reduce it. In some countries, implementing the most stringent standards – already in place elsewhere – could substantially improve the situation, according to the researchers.
###
The study was funded by the Hewlett Foundation, ClimateWorks Foundation, European Climate Foundation, Energy Foundation China, and the NASA Health and Air Quality Applied System Team.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Does the paper have a title?
Even just the journal name would be a start at locating it.
Searching on author names got this link:
Impact of excess diesel emissions on premature mortality, Nature (2017). DOI: 10.1038/nature22086
Paywalled:
https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature22086.html
I always liked diesel engines, now I like them even more.
Thanks for the heads up.
Well whoop de doo !
When you burn air in a high compression high Temperature engine, you get to burn some of the nitrogen in the air as well. That’s why our USA gasoline cars are required to work properly on ordinary 87 octane gas, to force the compression ratios down.
G
When I was much younger, I heard a discussion between two gear heads who were talking about injecting a small amount of water into the cylinder along with the gasoline. The idea was to cool reaction to help produce less NOx and at the same time the expanding water vapor would help recover some of the power lost from the cooler temperature.
I can only presume that problems were found trying to implement this because I’ve never it in any on the road vehicle.
MarkW, in the 1990’s Caterpillar did extensive work on water injected diesel. In fact, the exaust w as cleaner. But there were major disadvntages also. In the end, the project was abandoned.
They used als water injection in the WWII Messerschmidt ME 109 to get a bit more power.
george e. smith May 15, 2017 at 9:08 am
Well whoop de doo !
When you burn air in a high compression high Temperature engine, you get to burn some of the nitrogen in the air as well. That’s why our USA gasoline cars are required to work properly on ordinary 87 octane gas, to force the compression ratios down.
Actually George you’d rather have higher octane to get higher thermodynamic efficiency, the NOx in gasoline engines is removed by the catalytic converter. This is not so simple in a diesel because there’s a conflict between reducing NOx and particulates. US gasoline is lower octane no. than in the UK for instance because it optimizes the profit to be made from a barrel of oil (different product mix).
Well Mark, maybe you were just never young enough. Water injection was very common and you could buy the kits at any car part store. It can cool the fuel air mixture, or just the air before opening the intake valve which gets more air mass into the cylinder, which increases the power.
I’m quite sure I had one on my car for a while; back when you were aloud to do your own mechanical things. It is a better way to increase the power with water, than adding the water to the fuel molecule by turning an alcane into an alcohol.
G
And Phil left to their own ends, mechanics would rather do all kinds of things, in search of higher power.
Do you have any peer reviewed papers that claim that the premium fuels sold at gas stations, produce more energy when used in a given engine, than the standard 87 octane. I’ve been told the heat of combustion of premium fuel is actually lower than regular gas.
But if you use premium fuel in a fancy car, it will likely run for a greater distance before it starts knocking, thereby conning you into believing you can go further between tune ups.
I can discern NO improvement whatsoever by using premium fuel.
G
The standard 100 octane reference fuel is iso-octane. The standard zero octane fuel is n-Heptane.
Heptane has one less Carbon than octane so it has a lower Hydrogen to Carbon ratio.
Methane is 4:1 H/C and it slowly drops down to 2:1 for longer molecules.
So methane should have a higher heat of combustion than Octane for example but it is too low an octane value to use in a standard IC engine.
G
If you want to increase the HP in a engine, try injecting NOx it is not aloud in dragsters can more than double the power.
george e. smith May 15, 2017 at 10:47 pm
And Phil left to their own ends, mechanics would rather do all kinds of things, in search of higher power.
Do you have any peer reviewed papers that claim that the premium fuels sold at gas stations, produce more energy when used in a given engine, than the standard 87 octane. I’ve been told the heat of combustion of premium fuel is actually lower than regular gas.
But if you use premium fuel in a fancy car, it will likely run for a greater distance before it starts knocking, thereby conning you into believing you can go further between tune ups.
I can discern NO improvement whatsoever by using premium fuel.
If you use a higher octane fuel then you will be able to change the timing and get a higher efficiency, the optimum is to set up to be just shy of ‘knocking’.
george e. smith May 15, 2017 at 10:58 pm
The standard 100 octane reference fuel is iso-octane. The standard zero octane fuel is n-Heptane.
Straight chain hydrocarbons (n-xxxxx) auto-ignite at lower temperatures so they make great diesel fuels but poor spark ignition fuels, whereas branched hydrocarbons (iso-xxxxx) have a higher autoignition temperature so are poor diesel fuels but good spark ignition fuels. n-Octane has an octane number of -20!
Heptane has one less Carbon than octane so it has a lower Hydrogen to Carbon ratio.
Methane is 4:1 H/C and it slowly drops down to 2:1 for longer molecules.
So methane should have a higher heat of combustion than Octane for example but it is too low an octane value to use in a standard IC engine.
Methane is a great spark ignition fuel, it has an octane number of 120! Methane has a higher heat of combustion than octane or heptane but there is virtually no difference between those two.
Ziiex Zeburz May 16, 2017 at 12:28 am
If you want to increase the HP in a engine, try injecting NOx it is not aloud in dragsters can more than double the power.
Not NOx but Nitrous oxide, N2O, it’s the equivalent of running with 33% O2 instead of 21%.
MarkW, Water injection works well in internal combution engines, it was used with The 1962 Oldsmobile F85 , the Corvair Spyder, Saab 99 Turbo, a version of the BMW M4 GTS and numerous fighter aircraft in WW-2.
Paul Jackson. (Replying to MarkW)
Sort of. The water (in water injection) does NOT actually “burn” (cause more heat energy to be generated in the engine), but DOES cool the inlet air significantly. It ALSO adds significant “weight” (mass) to the incoming air mass, thus it causes significantly greater mass to be accelerated as it goes through the engine and is accellerated out the back of the gas turbine. Thus, in gas turbines in early jet-propelled aircraft and in the today’s newer gas turbine power plants running in very hot inlet air conditions, you get greater thrust or better fuel economy.
In the first jet aircraft – most notably B-47 and B-52 – which were large enough to carry the extra weight of the pure water-injection systems at takeoff, compared to the much smaller fighter jets of the time, the added mass accellerated gave them enough thrust to take off faster and in less runway length. Both important to reduce the chances of getting caught on the ground by a surprise nuclear blast. The weight of the water was blown out through the engine unburned but blackened the engine exhaust significantly. Yet, after take-off, the water was gone, and the jet could fly at a reduced weight (compared to rocket-assisted take-offs which the B-47 needed as well.) The B-52’s and B-47 (and B-58 especially) needed re-fueling anyway pretty soon if they had a long mission under heavy loads.
Gas turbines use it in the very hot weather for similar reasons: Cools inlet air, adds mass going through the exhaust blades. No extra burning efficiency, but better overall economy. And, a ground-mounted GT doesn’t care about the weight of the water carried aloft – unlike aircraft. It does increase compressor blade erosion and wear, and – if not perfectly treated to remove solids or dissolved chamicals – will coat the exhaust blades and burners quickly. THAT causes much, much future efficiency losses and maintenance costs, rebuild costs.
So, water injection is NOT “free” energy. You have to pay for the ultra-pure water, the system itself, and (in an aircraft) the time and money to support the system, to fill the pure water tanks on the base, to keep them from freezing (on a runway in the plane in winter, in the tanks on the ground, in the trucks on the ground), the people to fill the tanks and the systems and the trucks, the maintenance on ALL the systems on the ground, on the base, on the planes, on the trucks, the tanks, the trucks, the aircraft systems, the weight of the airborne systems and empty tanks and the full tanks, the instruments, the wiring, the motors, the valves …
Adds up!
Internal combustion water injection? Can’t address it.
This from a rally car web site: Good background on internal combustion engine wate rinjectin:
http://rallycars.com/technical-stuff/water-injection-a-technical-description/
And, then again, much of the above is repeated here:
http://www.enginerunup.com/
SO, which source copied the other’s words first?
Well Phil, as I said IANAC.
And as far as I am concerned, YOU are as good as any “peer reviewed paper”.
So I’ll take YOUR word for it, and thanx as always for the lessons.
G
Actually, many American cars recommend premium fuel, and many engines have 10:1 compression ratios. Yes these engines will run on 87 octane, at a lower performance. Modern engines on average have higher compression ratios than old engines with carburetors (and minimal pollution controls) ever had. It is not compression ratio, but exhaust gas recirculation and precise fuel ratio control that keep NOX levels down in modern cars. Turbocharged gasoline engines like Ford’s Eco Boost can have much lower compression ratios, but that is because the incoming air is already pressurized. But even 10:1 is much lower than the typical 19:1 ratio of diesels. It is difficult to lower the compression ratio of a diesel and still get it to start reliably.
It seems like you just can’t ever get to the end of some stories.
YES ! I know that some American sold cars DO RECOMMEND that you use premium fuel.
And it is required (not by the selling manufacturer) that they operate properly on standard regular 87 octane gasoline; or in some parts of the west at high altitudes, the regular is 86 or 85 octane. Translation: the manufacturer can not REQUIRE you to use premium fuel in your USA street legal soup mobile.
And if you keep on running them on premium (OK by me; have at it) you will believe their hype about going 50,000 miles without a tune up.
I am all for free enterprise, and if you take pride in your whizz bang hot car on roads with 55-70 MPH speed limits to the tune of another 20-30 cents per gallon; pardon me, I’ll hold your hat while you go for it.
PS: no matter what street legal in USA hot rod YOU are driving , just don’t even try your hand against a Tesla Model S. That is ONE thing that electric cars are good at.
G
One can argue that the gross amount of NOx produced is not relevant in regard to environmental/health effects, but the local concentration. Millions of tons of whatever sounds much scarier, though.
Tom H
The local concentration is an ‘indicator’, not an effect. Only exposure to the indicator species can be modeled to be an attributed ’cause’. In other words the alarmism is worse than you thought.
Just because something is emitted does not mean it remains concentrated,
and just because there is a concentration does not mean anyone is exposed to it,
and just because someone is exposed to it does not mean there is a negative health response,
and just because there is a negative health response does not mean it leads to an earlier death than might otherwise have been the case.
All this is based on Global Burden of Disease stuff, otherwise known as GBD and GoBble-Degook . It is models all the way down, folks – no one has NOx on their death certificate.
Also, no one knows what the effect of future NOx pollution will be going forward, because no one knows what other exposures (or not) everyone will, on average, experience. GBD numbers are about past exposures and attributable causes of death for people born in or later than 1931.
The fact that lab tests and real world tests show a huge difference is because the test method is (obviously) defective and/or unrepresentative. You can’t regulate what you do not measure. It is obvious the performance test in the lab is not representative of use ergo its usefulness is now in doubt. Performance tests should be contextual and reflect expected conditions of use.
Crispin in Waterloo – May 15, 2017 at 10:20 am
Yup, …… and no one has “cigarette smoke” on their death certificate …… even though it is blamed for millions n’ millions of deaths each and every year.
Well, let’s be frank. A few of the problems with your argument are obvious. These are produced by passenger cars. The emissions come in cities and near roads, where people routinely congregate and build businesses.
The reactions to NOx formation are well known, and it’s a well-proven precursor to ozone (if nothing else because NOx reductions have worked so well at improving air quality). Furthermore, mobile sources are currently our primary source of NOx. 4 million tons is nothing to sneeze at. It’s almost half of Americas total annual NOx emissions (which are about 10 million tons annually). Yes, it’s spread out over the total of the world, but that’s a serious underestimation of one of the primary criteria pollutants.
http://www.ems.psu.edu/~radovic/NOx_emissions_2017p.pdf
Let’s not confuse healthy skepticism, like laughing at the lunatic specificity of their predicted negatives from this, with absolute nihilism. Pollution does cause damage to society and the environment, and this is not a small amount of pollution. The test methods have caused us to optimize our engines to pass a test and not function properly at actual driving conditions.
I totally get what you’re saying, Ben. Too many little diesels doing what gasoline engines do just fine. I can’t see paying more for the diesel option, more for maintenance and more for fuel (+ additives and DEF) unless you have to have the towing power. Diesels “stink” even with the current tech, but torque is torque and that’s what pulls big loads. I think the diesel pollution factor should be charged appropriately to the wind power industry because it relies so heavily upon diesel backup systems.
Diesel “fuel” is slightly more stable than gasoline. Therefore safer and less expensive to transport and store.
Diesel fuel is actually fairly hard to ignite. Volatile gasoline, not so much.
In urban areas, the NOx creates ground level ozone under the Sunlight. Ground level ozone has direct impact on human health,
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Yet, across MOST of the Southeast United States, the measured “high ozone levels” are due to the NATURAL ozone and NOx precursors NATURALLY released by the tens of trillions of pine trees across the region. That “high level” of background NOx causes artificial gasoline restrictions to be forced down the throat of cities. People. And industries.
But the trees are ignored. Like the natural background of higher radon and natural radiation in the higher Rocky Mountain and Sierra locations. They get higher radiation levels per year than (most) nuclear workers do. But nobody is forced to evacuate Colorado six months of the year..
““This study shows that excess diesel nitrogen oxide emissions effect crop yields and a variety of human health issues. ”
There is no way that they can say this as there are so many other factors out there that affect crops and human health. Tai statement has the same veracity as the claims of second hand smoke—no study has every been able to tease the effects of second hand smoke from the multitudinous and more influential factors in the real world. The above guys simply say so, so it must be true. I would love to see the studies that this statement implies. Aging while I wait, I guess.
I really have to laugh every time I read the “claim” being touted by the “fearmongering” anti-cigarette smoke advocates that …….. “cervical cancer is caused by secondhand cigarette smoke”.
It should makes the females worried about who they should choose as a sexual partner, right?
I’m trying to see how I can tie-in this growing threat to the also growing productivity and production of Brazilian soy over these past years, all taking place at exactly the same time as Brazil was experiencing an economic boom which lead to exponential growth in the transport of goods across the nation, mostly in diesel-powered trucks.
NOx molecules are bad for us, but when dissolved in rain water they provide fixed nitrogen for use by plants. Perhaps I ought not to mention that lightning discharges also produce NOx molecules, since at high temperatures the endothermic reaction N2 + O2 = 2NO is shifted to the right (LeChatelier’s Principle), so they help nourish plants (someone might want to pass legislation banning lightning).
NOx is a REAL pollutant. Not so for CO2. I’m all for stringent controls on NOx.
Even with NOx, there are points of diminishing returns where the cost of new controls exceeds the benefit from reduced pollution.
True, there are diminishing returns, but all of America makes only 10 million tons of NOx annually. The possibility of reducing global emissions by 4 million (or even 1 million) by retuning engines is a possible major reduction for relatively low cost, something we haven’t had in a while.
http://www.ems.psu.edu/~radovic/NOx_emissions_2017p.pdf
Of course the NOx is concentrated in urban areas and downwind. The urban concentrations are what brings natural emissions up to “pollution” levels. The goal of urbanizing population is concentrating pollution.
ben, there is a cost, lower fuel economy.
Is it a REAL pollutant only if it is produced by cars but not if it is produced by lightning? Or is it a REAL pollutant regardless how is it produced, naturally or anthropologically?
Is smoke not a real pollutant because it also occurs naturally? Pretty sure there are documented case of that pollutant killing people. A real pollutant such as lead occurs naturally and can be spread by man. Your argument is specious.
The effects of this? meh
It’s a real pollutant either way.
One is more preventable than the other.
Radiation ya know is also naturally occurring.
Just because a pollutant is also produced by nature is not evidence that it isn’t a pollutant. Much of the
NOx that is produced by lightning is washed out of the atmosphere by the accompanying rain.
Right MarkW, the local concentrations of any airborne substance are what defines noxious pollution. The solution to pollution is dilution.
Use LNG engines on all vehicles and the emissions will just be water vapour and CO2! This facility has been available for at least 40 years. Just think how much pollution and bad health could have been avoided if the Green’s fixation with CO2 had been laughed at and ignored – as it should have been!
I drive a natural gas-powered pickup in South America. Too bad they’re not available in the US.
LNG is completely impractical for the typical motor vehicle because its boiling point is -162°C — you can’t stop it from boiling and have to use it at a rate equal to the boil off. LPG (Liquified Propane Gas) on the other hand would work dandily. That’s what warehouse forklifts run on (Home Depot and other big-box stores use electric ones). But LPG has roughly 75% of the volumetric energy density of gasoline, and must be stored in pressure containers made to ASME standards capable of withstanding 250 psi, so small vehicles will end up with significantly less fuel capacity using LPG instead of gasoline.
So just what does Exon Mobil put in your regular gasoline that is left out of your natural gas ??
I think they put carbon and hydrogen in my regular gas: well in California we also get to pay the oil company for some water in the form of oxygen in the gas as an alcohol. We got rid of the ether additives, and the lead additives too, so just that pesky vodka stuff they added.
Well I suppose they have some ” Techroline ” in there. That’s like adding STP to your engine oil; or is it the gas tank you put it in. Well in either case they are just selling you STP or Techroline.
That’s fine by me; I use ARCO myself. Dunno what additives they put in that.
G
Would this be a good time to mention that nuclear reactors don’t produce any NOX?
La-la-la-la… wind and solar are virtue signals… la-la-la-la-…
/snark
These theoretical deaths from pollutant X are as shaky as stats come. And 38,000 or 186,000/year globally it’s probably 10 or 12 or none in actuality. Just bureaucrats in public health nuts trying to justify their existence and make a buck
I suspect it is the same 38,000 unfortunate soles with existing health issues who will also die from CO, PM10, PM2.5, ozone, lead, PAH, POM, second hand smoke, etc. Still weighting for news of any pathologist listing ambient NOx exposure as a cause of death.
(waiting)
Linear-No threshold calculations of premature deaths are only slightly better than “we pulled the number out of our backsides” in reality.
(souls)
Do you have any stating lead exposure as cause of death, besides bullets? If not, would you let kids play with lead?
Get a better argument.
Lead (Pb) is definitely a cause of stupidity.
The theoretical deaths are calculated from the attribution of multiple causes to premature deaths. Note that they do not consider (at all) post mature deaths, with all the exposures to all pollutants assigned a portion of the extended lifetime. Weird huh?
The standard age is now 86. If someone dies after this age (which is the expected median) they are experiencing a ‘post-mature death’. To what should these post mature deaths be attributed? Why is it that anyone who dies naturally at 85 has to have their ‘missing year’ assigned to multiple exposures to pollutants?
If someone dies at 96., what was the cause of their longevity? Was it exposure to the cleansing oxidation of ozone that killed pathogens? Was it exposure to sweet-smelling second hand smoke that created happiness and lowered the cortisol level a little each day?
The only practical use of GBD numbers is the allocation of health expenditure on a macro scale. This business of turning estimations of global disease burdens into actual, countable deaths is hocus-pocus.
They are calculated from …… just about anything that you can “think up” that can be remotely associated with a human activity that a portion of society doesn’t approve of.
For instance, …… the “number of death” each year that are attributed to and/or blamed on “cigarette smoke”.
Bet you don’t know where those government bureaucrats get those “death numbers” from, …. do you?
Well “DUH”, ….. they are “calculated” via use of “fuzzy math” ……. and the “check-marks” on patient Records maintained by Doctors, Health Providers and Hospitals.
It’s the “check-mark” ….. in the “YES” box …. in answer to the question of: “Do you or have you ever smoked cigarettes” ….. that those government bureaucrats are interested in.
Like the Climate Modeling Computer Programs that were created and are used by government bureaucrats, ……. there is also Deaths Caused by Cigarette Smoke Modeling Computer Programs that were created and are used by government bureaucrats ….. to calculate a ratio or percentage of …… “deaths to tick-marks” per # of packs of yearly cigarette sales.
ironargonaut, when we were kids we played with lead foil all the time. Same thing with mercury. It was fun to watch it run off you hand. Fact is, icicles for Christmas trees were made of lead foil, Funny, but I don’t even recall people chewing on paint back then, but it must have happened, or it became a new delicacy at some point. Hate to tell you, bud, but the case against lead is as overblown as most cases of dire horrifics about everything else. Best I can figure, by making lead a horrible thing, we were able to spend far more for the things that replaced it. Of course, the battery industry certainly benefitted by making lead a bad boy since that dropped the price of lead, but didn’t drop the price of lead/acid batteries. A lot of horror stories really have a financial driver, not a health driver.
Tom O, don’t forget about all the fighting, arguing, banning, unbanning, and more Laws passed, rescinded, proposed, etc., ……. for prohibiting/permitting the sale and or use of lead “shot” for shotgun shells, lead fishing sinkers, etc., etc. And it has been on-going now, for what, almost 30 years.
There are thousands of pounds of metallic lead sitting on the bottom of San Francisco Bay, and also out in Monterey Bay and other NC coastal waters.
It comes in 2 pound chunks that get dropped automatically, when a salmon grabs your baited hook, or spoon.
I’m not sure if they outlawed that or no yet. I took care of it, by adding a second reel to my salmon pole with a strong thin line that tied firmly to the lead ball so that when the salmon ate the lure and tripped the dropper, my 2# ball was safely hanging on its own line to be retrieved at will while I played the salmon on a free line.
G
No it’s basic observational science.
Ya know smoking kills too.
I smoke. I choose to.
Other folks don’t like that I pollute their air.
The science on that is shaky but..
By blowing my smoke in their air I expose them to a risk
However small or uncertain that they may not want to take.
You might drink urine. It’s harmless. But that doesn’t imply you have the right to pee in the pool or my drinking water.
There is no science that indicates that second hand smoke is a health hazard.
Second hand smoke also stinks & is easily absorbed by clothing material, which then also stink.
It’s somewhat like playing with your poop in public.
Don’t be ridiculous Mark. There’s lots that indicate that secondhand smoke is a health hazard. There’s just not much in the way of hard proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
I know there are people who simply think cigarettes just don’t kill quickly enough; like before they get to breeding age. Well there are some.
To each his own.
G
If correct, it is a huge rounding error.
Business as usual …
This sounds like another threat which should be treated with suspicion. Does anyone know what the residence time for NOx is? And whether a LNT model is appropriate for things like crop yields?
From my understanding, NOx combines with VOCs to produce ozone. And ground level ozone is bad stuff.
The key point is, as ChrisW notes below. Real world measurements of NOx are declining already.
I suspect that ground-level ozone has a very short life – it’s quite reactive, isn’t it?
What’s really missing from these continual scares is an appreciation of what pollutants a typical body comes into contact with throughout the course of an average day, and what defences the body has against them…
And in a twinkling of an eye, ground level ozone can become ground level O2. You just have to look cross-eyed at it.
G
That is mi understanding too. And yes, real world measurements of NOx are declining. They could never be zero since there is also a lot of natural NOx production by lightning.
http://www.aqmd.gov/images/default-source/Student-Web/stage1.gif
Pic: Ozone levels in Southern California. Source: http://www.aqmd.gov/home/library/public-information/publications/50-years-of-progress
Ozone bad. .. bet someone here will doubt that just because.
Steven,
Ozone is good or bad depending upon its altitude. High up, it’s probably essential for multicellular life on land. We can thank Precambrian cyanobacteria for the evolution of us terrestrial creatures.
It is short lived yes, however as a kid groing up near LA I remember having to stay indoor because the smog was so bad that it hurt to breath.
Ozone is like a steak knife.
Used as appropriate, each is quite useful.
Neither should be ingested or tested on body parts.
The biggest issue is the sheer magnitude of this underestimation. America in total only emits 10 Mton annually. You can’t get NOx reductions on the Megaton scale for any cost anymore. If something like this was hiding under our noses, we might have a significant, easy reduction just by retuning engines.
Well high altitude Ozone is just the evidence that Oxygen is doing its job at absorbing high energy UV photons to make atomic oxygen, which quickly makes Ozone as a waste product, indicating a job well done.
And just for good measure, the solar radiation can also destroy the Ozone, even in the visible spectral range. Yes if it wasn’t for the Oxygen all the way up, we wouldn’t have any O or O3.
I think the sun can destroy low level Ozone too.
G
I’ll bet they never considered the hormetic effects either.
Yet national ambient NOx emissions have been declining since 1980. 2015 ambient NOx concentration is down 59% from 1980. Here is a link to EPA’s Clean Air Markets Division NOx trend: https://www.epa.gov/air-trends/nitrogen-dioxide-trends#nonat
What were the test conditions, the testing equipment and what were the controls? What was the sample size? What was the time-frame for the tests? Or is this just another of the watermelon’s “estimates” studies, ie Wild Ass Guess type of propaganda? The list of funding and “participation” organizations looks rather suspect to me.
SHOW ME THE DATA…….. or it’s another BS bogus “study”.
vehicles’ performance under official laboratory tests.
tests were jiggered…..VW
Not fair to single out VW. All the manufacturers’ products failed because they were all cheating in one way or another, and/or the test is not meaningful. Both apply. One a couple of vehicles tested by The Guardian passed in the real world. I think their testing was unbiased.
Crispin
Where have you read that manufactures other than VW & corporate siblings were cheating?
BTW If you define cheating s “results different than real world(?) driving, guess there are 2 ways to cheat:
1) “VW” method
2) “follow the government protocol” method
I believe the point of the study was that real world driving conditions are not similar enough to the “tests” for the tests to be valid.
Let’s ban diesels, oil, coal, and fracking.
Let’s not.
What I think he means, the environmentals would prefer to see all combustion type engines banned. To produce Diesel, oil must be extracted, just like petrol, so it is inherently ‘bad’. Not suggesting NOx is a good thing but this study has all the earmarks of CO2 propaganda with worst case projections – death and destruction. Life expectancy in general is going up but we’re all going to die nonetheless. If there is ever a day when all cars run on Hydrogen, there will be studies stating how bad this is, ice covered roads, run off into water sheds and of course copious amounts of energy to make H2 in the first place (unless from solar panels of course). Even with all these death-machines running around, my recent trip to Germany, I did not notice a thing, very clean. When the “International Council on Clean Transportation” tells you someday that cars are ‘clean’, I would be very worried pigs have learned to fly.
Duncan, that’s more properly put “pigs are on the wing”.
Wouldn’t it be easier to ban breathing?
As long as it also includes civil penalties for dying thereof.
1950: a little girl runs crying to a Grandma in a city park: Grandma, I got stung by stinging nettles. Grandma: Child, the nature is wise, let’s find a plantain plant and treat your pain.
2017: a little girl runs crying to a Grandma in a city park: Grandma, I got stung by stinging nettles. Grandma: Let’s sue the city.
Curious G
“Let’s ban diesels, oil, coal, and fracking.”
Stir fry cooking produces huge clouds of organic PM2.5 particles – far in excess of the WHO’s somewhat questionable ‘guidelines’.
We would have to ban high temperature cooking to reduce exposure much. Maybe some PM2.5 is good for you – after all women do most of the cooking and usually live longer than men. WUWT?
LOL. But keep your day job.
Not necessarily true. For example, in some places like India, cooking can be down right dangerous; even fatal . Probably bad stove design.
G
Link …
New study quantifies global health, environmental impacts of excess nitrogen oxide emissions from diesel vehicles [press release]
http://www.theicct.org/news/nature-impacts-diesel-nox-may2017
Have we heard of farmers noting a downturn in yield blamed on this?
From some quick research, at least NO appears to get fixed into soil, and is beneficial to some plants, I would also assume “nitrogen fixers” also use these gasses, but didn’t really see that.
Clearly they were making a nod to crop yields when they said ” emissions effect crop yields “. If they were uncertain of the effect they would have said “affect crop yields” but to effect crop yields means to cause crop yields- definitely a good thing.
Exactly. Plants need CO2 as a source of carbon. They also need a source of nitrogen. But plants cannot use atmospheric N2 because is so non reactive (that is what nitrogen means, does not generates anything, as opposed to oxygen, which generates oxides.)
So, apart form fabaceae (the beans family) which have nodules in their roots containing N2 fixing bacteriae, plants have to take nitrogen containing molecules from the environment, to produce aminoacids. One of the sources is NOx produced by lightning during storms, as it is or modified by bacteria, I can´t remember the exact pathway.
Very often that source of nitrogen is not enough so farmers add other sources of nitrogen (and phosphorus) to their crops, organic fertilizers (BS).
Organic fertilizers have a problem, they are a source of transmission of certain pathogens; bacteria and parasites. So we invented synthetic fertilizers such as ammonium phosphates.
Nitrogen oxide; Which one(s) are they talking about? From Wiki:
Nitrogen oxide
Nitrogen oxide may refer to a binary compound of oxygen and nitrogen, or a mixture of such compounds: Nitric oxide, also known as nitrogen monoxide, nitrogen oxide Nitrogen dioxide, nitrogen oxide Nitrous oxide, nitrogen oxide Nitrosylazide, nitrogen oxide Dinitrogen trioxide, nitrogen oxide Dinitrogen tetroxide, nitrogen oxide Dinitrogen pentoxide, nitrogen oxide Trinitramide, nitrogen oxide Plus the unstable radicals.
Without more specificity, I think Craig@8:46am nailed it is as a “BS bogus study.”
It’s NOx. The X is from algebra, not chemistry. Also called “Nitrogen Oxides” plural. This is a mix of NO, NO2, and N2O. They are all created in a variable mix by all combustion, albeit to various degrees. They are treated as a single unit for emissions purposes. NOx is one of the primary criteria pollutants since it reacts with Volatile Organic Chemicals (VOCs) in the atmosphere.
Seriously, don’t comment on something until you know something first. This is really basic from an environmental side.
“Nitrogen oxide is a key contributor to outdoor air pollution. ” This is a quote, so I wondered which one(s) they were talking about, so I could look into their fancied effects, which they do not mention, just vagaries wrt being bad.
You didn’t mention that the source of that nitrogen in those oxides, is the 79% component of the atmosphere. ARCO doesn’t put any nitrogen in their gasoline, but my car still makes NOx.
G
NO3, NO4 (Funny. I typo’ed those as no3, no4 at first .. Might be more correct that way) Plus the oddballs N2O3, .N2O4..
Hewlett Foundation, ClimateWorks Foundation, European Climate Foundation, Energy Foundation China, and the NASA Health and Air Quality Applied System Team
say Cholera in Yemen is dismissiable when there’s maybe
38,000 premature deaths annually caused by NOX.
Premature deaths is a statistical term. It cannot be verified in any way. It’s not science.
Nobody dies prematurely. Just when life runs out.
g
You live because nothing has managed to kill you yet.
A true “premature” death would require killing something before it started living. An impossibility.
Thanks Sheri for confirmation. Fifty per cent of all people die post maturely, by definition. We should learn from these post mature deaths as those people were also exposed to the same environment as the premature cohort.
“The study estimates that excess diesel vehicle NOx emissions in 2015 were also linked to approximately 38,000 premature deaths worldwide…” and that’s not nearly enough.
—————-
Whenever I see statements from the Green press talking about premature deaths, my mind adds that italicized extension, as indicative of what the pronouncement really means.
There is a considerable body of quotes from the Greens and their fellow travelers, which shows that their largest agenda (besides self- enrichment,) may be the wholesale and drastic reduction of human populations, by whatever means.
As just one example, witness the recent statements from noted “feminist” Gloria Steinem, in which she declared that the greatest cause of climate change is the fact that women have been having children, instead of aborting them*.
*paraphrased
War causes a lot of premature deaths. Nothing statistical about it.
Apart from those premature deaths becoming statistics…
I think you meant: people dying in war, die because they are killed, not because of statistics.
However, accounting for the dead is another story. Until fairly recently, the USSR claimed 22M WWII war dead (vs about 7.8M German). Now days, Putin claims 42M USSR war dead. Somebody’s got some serious ‘splaining to do.
Part of the explanation might be Stalin’s reluctance to admit he was so incompetent as a war leader that 42M USSR citizens died helping kill 7.8M Germans (a lot of whom were killed in other theaters). Russia, then or now, is not exactly a paragon of statistical accuracy.
Javert,
I didn’t know that Putin had accepted the new estimate of 42 million Soviet Great Patriotic War dead, ie about 19 million soldiers and 23 million civilians. Dunno if that includes the Winter War with Finland and 1939 invasion of Poland or not, nor the postwar campaign against Ukrainian rebels.
http://russialist.org/a-message-to-putin-from-42-million-dead-the-soviet-unions-world-war-ii-losses-may-far-exceed-the-official-count/
The source for that figure appears to be “legislator Nikolai Zemtsov, who was one of the (Immortal Regiment) movement’s early organizers and one of the strongest officialization advocates, delivered a somewhat unexpected contribution.
“In a report to the hearing, Zemtsov said that according to data declassified in the post-Soviet years, 41.979 million Soviet citizens died in World War II.”
Javert,
Death estimates on the Eastern Front are all over the place, and often subject to political influences.
Millions of civilians were killed collaterally or murdered on both sides, as were PoWs. Even the lowest estimates are horrific. But it’s not as if 42 million Soviet subjects died killing eight million invading German soldiers. Germany had allies, as did the USSR. Millions of the Soviet dead were innocent civilians, to include millions of Jews and other groups massacred in genocidal campaigns.
Any fair accounting would include those captured soldiers and enslaved civilians who died in the USSR after the war.
The best German military loss estimates come from Rüdiger Overmans in 2000. His team found that about 5.3 million German troops died in the war, whether KIA, died of wounds, in captivity or permanently missing, including not just Wehrmacht, but Waffen SS, Austrians, conscripted ethnic Germans, Volkssturm, and other paramilitary forces, but not prisoners held by the Western Allies.
His rough estimate is that about four million died on the Eastern Front and one million in the West.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_casualties_in_World_War_II#Das_Heer_1933.E2.80.931945_by_Burkhart_M.C3.BCller-Hillebrand
Estimates of German/Austrian/ethnic German civilian deaths present even more problems. Perhaps the chief uncertainty is how many civilians died during the expulsion of Germans from Poland and the East, or in Soviet slave labor camps after the war. The higher range from those causes alone is over 2.5 million. Combine that with Western Allied air raids, N@zi murders of Jews, Gypsies, Communists, the disabled and other unwanted Reich citizens during the war and civilian mortality starts to approach the military deaths.
When/if I grow up I will be a statistic.
I am in training at present.
We are all statistics in waiting.
So far I’ve managed to remain at large as a fugitive from the law of averages. Not for want of trying to get caught.
Is this what you call fake news?
In the UK we are being bludgeoned and pulverised by the media with the statement “UK air pollution causes 40,000 deaths each year” then after some time the word “premature” was inserted. Then on the 18th of January Andrew Neil on Sunday Politics interviewed the statistician who explained where the 40k deaths came from which was a computer driven statistical survey of large towns and cities in America which compared overall death rates with levels of air pollution which appeared to show that people living in towns and cities with higher levels of air pollution had higher rates of death. Simplistic because there was no correlation made with employment, industry, general health, income, housing, live style, population and ethnicity. And from this study came the extrapolation of 40,000 premature deaths.
Now from the article above we get the number of 38,000 which is not just the UK but China, EU and India. Earlier this year the WHO said 6.5 million people across the planet were dying from air pollution without mentioning that this is also the number reputed to die from toxic emissions caused by having to eat inside over dried animal [dung] because the WHO, World Bank and Obama [are] using their influence to stop 1.3 billion poverty stricken people from having access to coal or gas fired generation because Co2 is about to destroy the planet.
Andrew Neil also interviewed Prof Tony Frew who said that the UK has dramatically reduced its nox and particulate levels and that we are now very close to the Gothenburg standard, it has also been mentioned that bad levels of air pollution in the UK only exist for maybe 11 days of the year because of huge volumes of air pollution blowing across the UK from the EU, Germany burns of lot of coal and most EU cars are diesel.
Prof Frew also explained contrary to what Greenpeace and John Sauven want us to believe that the world premature [deaths] should be related to individuals who may already be suffering from multiple ailments who might die 30 days earlier than would otherwise be the case. As there is no way you can determined whether some has died 30 days or 30 months earlier than they should this becomes just one more war of statistics.
Greenpeace said that living in London was the equivalent of smoking 15 fags a day which would according to Prof Frew take ten years off of your life but in fact it is more like 2 fags a day which might end your life 9 months early. Thing is Prof Frew said that even if we took all road traffic off of the roads it would only reduce air pollution by just 2ug/m3 or almost nothing.
This is backed up by this:
Many of the so-called experts are only interested in self-promotion and winning their next research grant, and I think you have hit the nail on the head as regards the symbiosis they have with the media that is only interested in a good “bad news scare stories”!
Apart from not checking on the facts they ignore:
• Particles from tyres/road wear brake linings which will not be reduced by banning diesel engines.
• Natural NOx produced by grassland and microbes.
• NOx produced the photocatalytic action of urban grime
• NOx produced by central heating (condensing boilers especially)
• The very high concentrations of iron oxide in underground stations due to brake/track wear ( that is what causes that characteristic “tube smell”)
• The static air conditions we had a few times this winter with stagnant polluted air from the continent drifting across.
• Indoor particulates and VOCs from upholstery, paint etc…
All in all the media has a lot to answer for and it is sad to see some normally rational people sucked in by their antics!
With best wishes
Pete
Professor Peter J Dobson OBE
The Queen’s College,
Oxford OX1 4AW
and this:
Whilst there, I learned of a very interesting bit of research carried out at the end of WW2. Lord Penney (Rector of Imperial College at the time) commissioned some work by my first boss to check to see that the nitrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere would not all be combined by the heat of an atomic bomb. They proved it could not be as catastrophic as feared, but it is part of the reason for the NOx problem….the modern diesel and even modern petrol engines do run much hotter and hence a small amount of the gases in the air combines to form the nitrogen oxides.
Needless to say I am going to fight the media and bad scientist/medics rather robustly.
Diesel engines are not the biggest cause of air pollution they are just another convenient political target like Co2 where the science is inverted and exaggerated because to environmentalists like Client Earth – lawyers not scientists – the ends always justify the means.
Just to get away from environmentalists and environmentalism I might just hook up a diesel to my letter box because it couldn’t be worse.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/04/the-epas-unethical-pm2-5-air-pollution-experiments/
Which actually supports what Prof Frew said to Andrew Neil basically if you are already on your way out of the door current levels of air pollution might assist your progress but at worst by just 30 days but if your fed up to the back teeth with WWF asking you to adopt an Amur Leopard when you know that cash will be spent on demonising Co2 air pollution could be a blessing.
Link Link Link!
Further, no one, not a single person in the entire world, has died from NOx emitted by transportation engines — not even those committing suicide by auto-exhaust (these die from CO, cardon monoxide).
The epidemiological fantasies begin to get boring after a while. They simply are not valid. “Excess deaths” and “early deaths” are statistical inventions that have no actuality — reducing NOx will not “save lives” or “prevent X early deaths”. Reducing NOx emission will also not increase crop yields.
Reducing NOx emissions will clean up the air in places suffering inversion ;layers etc that lead to smog conditions, and is worth doing for its own sake.
But diesel vehicles are less vulnerable to EMP.
No they are not. you will get random pre-ignition from those huge electro-magnetic megawatt surges, and the engine may fire, even with no fuel in it. I have seen traces on an oscilloscope screen, even when the instrument was not turned on or even plugged into the power.
Yes it was some HAM clown playing around with a toy Yagi antenna and a pulse generator.
g
Only modern Diesels with ceramic cylinders are so vulnerable.
Not sure how you would get pre-ignition in a classical compression ignition (diesel) engine especially if it has no fuel in it.
Modern diesels have electronic controls which could be fried but that would kill the engine. I think. YMMV.
George,
All diesel vehicles are less vulnerable than comparable gas vehicles, especially than recent models so reliant upon solid state circuitry.
As with gas vehicles, older diesels are less vulnerable than more recent designs.
But any vehicle can be protected while not running by being kept in a properly constructed metal garage, which acts as a Faraday cage.
I never saw your admission that you were incorrect in that thermonuclear weapons do indeed contain depleted uranium jackets, contrary to your assertion.
Includes EMP tests on vehicles:
http://ycms.info/C/S/REPORT~OF~THE~COMMISSION~TO~ASSESS~THE~THREAT~TO~THE~UNITED~STATES~FROM~ELECTROMAGNETIC~PULSE~EMP~ATTACK.PDF
Well roving, the sole purpose of the fuel is to provide waste heat to raise the Temperature and pressure of the air that is ingested into the engine. You could supply that energy in the form of a laser pulse; but it would have to be at wavelengths for which that air was nicely opaque and strongly absorbing.
Well EMP would do that heating for you; but maybe only for one single down stroke, before the engine block melts. Well EMP can melt a one hundred ton transformer that takes a year to build in communist red China. so it can surely melt your diesel engine.
G
If the diesel engine is strictly mechanical, it is not vulnerable at all.
Well that depends on what your definition of ” if ” is . I was taught that it also involves combustion chemistry, which is NOT exactly mechanical. And I would think that melting the crankshaft bearings to the crankshaft pins would be purely mechanical and stop it from running.
So some contrary evidence I think .
g
George,
EMP can’t melt an engine or crankshaft bearings. If it “melts” a transformer, that’s because of the power surge through its wiring.
You might want to study the topic before commenting upon it, as at my link above, or here:
http://www.ddponline.org/ppt/06cikotas.pdf
From the article …
But this is not just a defeat device problem. Both light-duty and heavy-duty diesel vehicles emit more NOx in on-road driving conditions than during laboratory certification testing, for reasons that may range from details of the engine calibration to equipment failure, inadequate maintenance, tampering by vehicle owners, the deliberate use of defeat devices, or simply deficient certification test procedures.
While “laboratory certification testing” methods are designed to be related to “on-road driving conditions” they are actually a method for regulating emissions and for comparing one vehicle’s emissions to another not predict real world emissions. So many people in the real world understand this that YMMV is a popular (and now archaic) slang expression.
“real-world driving conditions”
That’s what happens when multi-billion dollar agencies like EPA bother to look or pay an outside engineering consultant to do it. The same goes for models vs. reality.
“This study shows that excess diesel nitrogen oxide emissions effect crop yields ….”
So the dramatic global rise in crop yields is due to people jumping ahead on this issue even before the research came out. I think not.
should “effect” be “affect”?
Effective immediately.
More junk science. Even after emitting more NOx in real world conditions, the regulations are so strict and biased against diesel that it makes no difference. That’s because NOx is rarely (almost never) the limiting factor in ground level ozone, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are. Recent studies have even found an inverse relationship between NOx and ground ozone.
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-24478-5_56
Pedantic alert!
Chris Malley, from the SEI, University of York, said: “This study shows that excess diesel nitrogen oxide emissions effect crop yields and a variety of human health issues…”
Water and fertilizer, planting and tilling effect crops while pollution affects crops.
Actually, the statement went on to say that crop yields are projected to increase, due to greater diesel NOx emissions, so effect may actually have been correct.
note to self: WTH am I doing, discussing this…
rotfl…………
The dose makes the poison. It’s as true today as it was when Paracelsus said it over 500 years ago…except in modern environmentalism. In the new religion of environmentalism, poison is everywhere, and no matter what the dose, some people are dying from it. Therefore, no dose is acceptable.
In actuality, it is likely that no one has died from NOx inhalation, unless it was some kind of industrial accident. NOx is likely one of hundreds or even thousands of confounding factors that may have contributed to an individuals death. In the absence of NOx, the individual would still have died, but perhaps a little later. It is even possible they would have died a little sooner. There is no way of knowing.
I think we can all agree that NOx is a pollutant, and keeping it as low as possible is a worthwhile goal, but it is extremely misleading to attribute deaths to it. I guess it is effective propaganda, but it is scientifically wrong.
If this type of ‘reasoning’ is to be allowed, then we must add up the lives saved by the work done by all diesel powered vehicles, including emergency vehicles and trucks transporting food and other vital goods, for comparison. My computer model indicates that 18,785,243 lives were saved by the work of these vehicles. (sarc…sort of).
EXACTLY! WELL SAID!
Rounding errors
Country Population (millions) Premature Deaths
Mexico 123 907
China 1,373 31,397
EU 515 28,456
India 1,266 26,739
Russia 142 3,380
US 324 2,982
I think it was in elementary school that I learned about “significant digits.” It’s interesting that the study authors were able to make their calculations to five digits.
The Nature article is here …
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature22086.html
Pay walled of course.
And yet I walk to a job site in Mexico next to an open-air sewer (yes, it DOES smell like an open-air sewer), watching the open-air street vender a few yards away cooking their open-air barbecue lunches with chicken and fresh vegetables on open-air grills, to later serve them on open-air tables using open-air dishes not washed at all since the last meal the previous night.
927 premature deaths in Mexico?
From NOx??????
Here is the full article including supplementary info
It was originally submitted about a year ago, but does include more recent info such as Volkswagen trickiness.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/75831381/Anenberg%20diesel%20emissions%20of%20NOx.pdf