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Post by marchesarosa on Dec 16, 2012 23:03:24 GMT
That, if I may so so, is a polemical response not a scientific one, aubrey.
People are NOT "killed by pollution" in the UK today.
Pedestrians are killed in road accidents. But even then the cause may not be unequivocal. They and not the driver may have been to blame.
It is not as easy as you apparently believe always to definitively allocate a cause where health and mortality are concerned. As you would know if you had read and understood what Ross McKitrick's papers explained.
How would you start to define the "cause" of your own ill health, for example? How was it "preventable"? Who was to "blame"?
Your approach to understanding and accounting for morbidity is grotesque.
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Post by visitor on Dec 17, 2012 8:47:12 GMT
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Post by marchesarosa on Dec 17, 2012 9:37:53 GMT
A "Contributory factor" is not a "cause", visitor. The abstract of the research states: Combustion emissions are a major contributor to degradation of air quality and pose a risk to human health. We evaluate and apply a multiscale air quality modeling system to assess the impact of combustion emissions on UK air quality. Epidemiological evidence is used to quantitatively relate PM2.5 exposure to risk of early death. We find that UK combustion emissions cause 13,000 premature deaths in the UK per year, while an additional 6000 deaths in the UK are caused by non-UK European Union (EU) combustion emissions. The leading domestic contributor is transport, which causes 7500 early deaths per year, while power generation and industrial emissions result in 2500 and 830 early deaths per year, respectively. We estimate the uncertainty in premature mortality calculations at −80% to +50%, where results have been corrected by a low modeling bias of 28%. The total monetized life loss in the UK is estimated at £6–62bn/year or 0.4–3.5% of gross domestic product. In Greater London, where PM concentrations are highest and are currently in exceedance of EU standards, we estimate that non-UK EU emissions account for 30% of the 3200 air quality-related deaths per year. In the context of the European Commission having launched infringement proceedings against the UK Government over exceedances of EU PM air quality standards in London, these results indicate that further policy measures should be coordinated at an EU-level because of the strength of the transboundary component of PM pollution. The whole basis of this "research" is a model, not empirical findings. My statement that "people are NOT 'killed by pollution' in the UK today" stands. Perhaps you should address that statement rather than spin it into something that was not claimed. You would do well to read the McKitrick papers, too, before swallowing whole the usual scaremongering. Many things "contribute" or are "linked`' to morbidity including genetic pre-disposition and the growth of allergies which are not understood. The epidemic of asthma, for example is not "explained" by air pollution, although some have latched on to it. Correlation is not causation in this matter any more than a period of correlation between CO2 and temperature demonstrates causation. You are, as usual, too easily pleased with the "findings" of a model. "London is currently in violation of air quality standards set by the E.U." The trick to remedy the problem of traffic pollution would seem to be applying the Clean Air Act properly. |
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Post by jean on Dec 17, 2012 10:19:57 GMT
A "Contributory factor" is not a "cause", visitor. Except in China, obviously. |
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aubrey
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Seeker for Truth and Penitence
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Post by aubrey on Dec 17, 2012 10:34:53 GMT
People with asthma and other respiratory illnesses are killed by pollution. Maybe they wouldn't die if they didn't have asthma, but they do, and they do.
My condition might have been caused by arthritis, or by high blood pressure, or by something else.
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Post by marchesarosa on Dec 17, 2012 11:22:51 GMT
China has not tackled its air pollution yet, jean. It does not have the Clean Air legislation that the West has. That is why it is such a problem - probably much worse than it ever was in the industrial heartland of the UK at the height of the industrial revolution. Air pollution can be remedied, however, given the political will, the resources and time WITHOUT stopping the burning of fossil fuels which would be, I suppose, your "green" remedy. How would you improve China's air pollution, jean, without stopping its economic growth which has taken so many out of poverty and deprivation in view of the fact that "China's demand for electricity increases an estimated 10 percent each year" and "wind energy supplied about 0.4 percent of China's total electricity" last year?www.worldwatch.org/node/6255Practicalities, jean, practicalities! You have to start from where you are not from where you fantasise you can be. Hydro-electricity is the only renewable worth investing in but that, too, has social costs when valleys are flooded to create hydro-electic dams. I dare say "greens" are not too worriedly that! |
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Post by ncsonde on Dec 22, 2012 18:47:52 GMT
There was a truly beautiful epidemiological paper in Nature back in the early 90s giving a statistical analysis of the prevalence of asthma and other dramatically rocketing childhood ailments and the then half a dozen or so proposed causes for them. Predictably enough there was a marked correlation with the use of household anti-bacterial cleaners, and artificial carpeting, which may or may not be coincidental - because the overwhelming correlates were with the incidence of ultrasound scans in pregnancy. The graphs comparing asthma incidence and ultrasound use were almost identical - as they were with the incidence of "glue ear". This finding eventually led to a tenfold decrease in the permissable strengh of ultrasound waves used in such scans.
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Post by marchesarosa on Dec 23, 2012 13:36:37 GMT
Very, easy, for ignorant laymen to latch on to what they see as "obvious" causative relationships between variables, Mr Sonde.
Interesting about the ultrasound. I wonder if asthma rates have fallen since the change in strength of ultrasound scans?
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pippop
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Post by pippop on Dec 23, 2012 14:36:24 GMT
Very, easy, for ignorant laymen to latch on to what they see as "obvious" causative relationships between variables, Mr Sonde. Interesting about the ultrasound. I wonder if asthma rates have fallen since the change in strength of ultrasound scans? Is the ultrasound also an obvious causative relationship between variables, I wonder... |
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Post by pippop on Dec 23, 2012 14:37:15 GMT
There was a truly beautiful epidemiological paper in Nature back in the early 90s giving a statistical analysis of the prevalence of asthma and other dramatically rocketing childhood ailments and the then half a dozen or so proposed causes for them. Predictably enough there was a marked correlation with the use of household anti-bacterial cleaners, and artificial carpeting, which may or may not be coincidental - because the overwhelming correlates were with the incidence of ultrasound scans in pregnancy. The graphs comparing asthma incidence and ultrasound use were almost identical - as they were with the incidence of "glue ear". This finding eventually led to a tenfold decrease in the permissable strengh of ultrasound waves used in such scans. Link? |
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Post by marchesarosa on Dec 23, 2012 14:49:35 GMT
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Post by ncsonde on Dec 27, 2012 7:32:11 GMT
Very, easy, for ignorant laymen to latch on to what they see as "obvious" causative relationships between variables, Mr Sonde. Interesting about the ultrasound. I wonder if asthma rates have fallen since the change in strength of ultrasound scans? I don't know - I suspect not. Judging by the friends of my niece and nephew that I meet, it seems to be getting more and more common - along with allergies of every variety. Of course, it doesn't mean that ultrasound scans are not at the bottom of a lot of developmental damage. It's perfectly plausible that the strength of the ultrasound has nothing or little to do with it - it may very well be frequency, or pulse shape: we know that these are the most significant characteristics of em waves that are biologically effective, rather than their amplitude. |
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Post by ncsonde on Dec 27, 2012 7:36:50 GMT
Very, easy, for ignorant laymen to latch on to what they see as "obvious" causative relationships between variables, Mr Sonde. Interesting about the ultrasound. I wonder if asthma rates have fallen since the change in strength of ultrasound scans? Is the ultrasound also an obvious causative relationship between variables, I wonder... I was careful to stress it was a statistically correlative study. The same sort of study that has led to everyone stating as proven fact that smoking causes cancer, for example. It's not possible to ascribe causation on the basis of correlation alone. Hume argued that there was never any basis for doing so, in fact. He was very mistaken about that; but he was right to this extent - in order to ascribe a causative link one needs to thoroughly understand (be able to specify all the connecting relations) the mechanism behind the correlation. And no one is able to do that in this case, as far as I'm aware. |
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Post by ncsonde on Dec 27, 2012 7:43:22 GMT
No, sorry. If you dig you might find some reference to it - late 80s or early 90s. But somehow I doubt it. Many such papers pointing to explosively inconvenient possibilities are very effectively stamped on. I'm not being a paranoid conspiracy theorist - that's just the way it is, and has been for decades, where the government is the main or only funder of scientific research. You'll find very little on the net about the lengthy and furious debate about the "ideal" blood pressure debate, either, for example. Or studies into the manyy deletorious side effects of statins. Or, as in the recent heartrending case, on alternative therapies to radio/chemotherapy for tumours. |
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Post by pippop on Dec 27, 2012 12:27:00 GMT
Okay, thanks.
I was really surprised as I'd never heard of the possible link with ultrasound and as I said I know some people who have asthma and wanted to tell them about it. (It's a bit late now for them - but have some pregnant women started to opt not to have the ultrasound because of these fears?)
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