Jun 28, 2023·edited Jun 28, 2023Liked by Bentham's Bulldog
Excellent article. Interesting that both are due to what we inhale into our lungs. On the impact of fossil fuels on pollution, I suspect coal is many times more harmful than natural gas since presumably it's PM2.5 particles that are doing the damage and coal has much more of them than oil/gas.
I've believed for a while now that the focus on climate change was a massive tactical error in trying to convince people to switch away from fossil fuels, and that the pollution based effects are both in some ways larger and also much easier to measure and understand, therefore easier to explain to the public.
How many excess deaths are caused by smoking? While shortening lives is obviously terrible, if smoking only lowers life expectancy for 480,000 people by 1-2 years and just manifests symptoms before the usual cancers and heart diseases, it seems misleading to say ending it would be like ending the war in Yemen.
Excellent article. Interesting that both are due to what we inhale into our lungs. On the impact of fossil fuels on pollution, I suspect coal is many times more harmful than natural gas since presumably it's PM2.5 particles that are doing the damage and coal has much more of them than oil/gas.
I've believed for a while now that the focus on climate change was a massive tactical error in trying to convince people to switch away from fossil fuels, and that the pollution based effects are both in some ways larger and also much easier to measure and understand, therefore easier to explain to the public.
How many excess deaths are caused by smoking? While shortening lives is obviously terrible, if smoking only lowers life expectancy for 480,000 people by 1-2 years and just manifests symptoms before the usual cancers and heart diseases, it seems misleading to say ending it would be like ending the war in Yemen.
480,000 is 1 in 5 deaths? CDC says, "A total of 3,383,729 resident deaths were registered in the United States in 2020."
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db427.htm