Pollution mortality

[Wheyibuggermair]

The journal "Nature" has a claim that half of all air pollution deaths in the UK are Agriculture related, is this widely known or is it or is it a new claim?

 

[Wastexprt]

The journal "Nature" has a claim that half of all air pollution deaths in the UK are Agriculture related, is this widely known or is it or is it a new claim?

I thought VW were to blame for them all??

 

[Cowabunga]

It will soon become received wisdom and repeated, with some conviction and authority, by idiots like Monbiot.

 

[Davos]

Talk on the radio the other day by Freinds of the earth saying 50,000 deaths a year caused by diesel emissions.
What utter bullsh1t.

 

[Cowabunga]

Even during the great London Smog of 1952 the death figure was officially 4000 to 5000 deaths and that was a really toxic pea-souper that was full of tarry sulphurous acidy coal smoke with visibility down to a few yards.
The FotE figure is, of course, absurd. It only has the slightest credibility because someone assumes it must be based on some measured fact. Like many such figures it is actually an estimate biassed towards the answer someone has decided beforehand.

"Hey Joe! Does a death figure of 20,000 due to diesel vehicles sound good?" Joe replies, "no Jemima, lets make it 50,000 and they'll swallow it just as surely and it sounds much more serious than only 20,000 and the press will love it"

 

[Paddington]

So half the number of people dying from air pollution live in the country ? Don't see that many John Deeres down Regent Street .

 

[Cowabunga]

Methane emissions from wetlands make up a massive amount of the world's total warming gas emissions.
This could be virtually eliminated by efficient and effective mass drainage of course.

 

[Davos]

Pollution levels must have gone down, after all there aren't many Ford tractors about nowadays.You could tell it was a Ford by the plume of black smoke, even if it was over a hill.

 

[Dr Evil]

On the topic of Monbiot-


http://www.theguardian.com/environm...g-is-benign-our-rivers-tell-a-different-story

 

[llamedos]

From the Article.

Credit http://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1038/nature15371 The contribution of outdoor air pollution sources to premature mortality on a global scale

 

[llamedos]

On the topic of Monbiot-


http://www.theguardian.com/environm...g-is-benign-our-rivers-tell-a-different-story

http://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index....rs-tell-a-different-story.85962/#post-1673274

 

[Wheyibuggermair]

I thought VW were to blame for them all??

They must be responsible for the other half, farting cows have doomed us all

 

[Davos]

They must be responsible for the other half, farting cows have doomed us all

Weren't they responsible for the hole in the ozone layer.? You don't hear anything about that now.

 

[Wastexprt]

Weren't they responsible for the hole in the ozone layer.? You don't hear anything about that now.

That got mended when we got bored of hearing about it...... (Actually it shrank once we reduced our use of CFCs)

 

[Cowabunga]

That got mended when we got bored of hearing about it...... (Actually it shrank once we reduced our use of CFCs)

Yes, but I'm sure people were saying that cows were responsible for a good part of it at one time when it was topical. Now its cows responsible for massive pollution and deaths worldwide. Hey ho! Next it will be cows responsible for global wars and religious clashes.

See this from today's news…….

India to test 'illegal' cow exports amid beef controversy

 

[Wheyibuggermair]

On the topic of Monbiot-


http://www.theguardian.com/environm...g-is-benign-our-rivers-tell-a-different-story

The replies to the article esp those commenting on AD make interesting reading.

 

[Pasty]

I don't think it's cows in general but the way they are kept that is the problem. It's an odd one. We take on huge debt to put up big sheds. We fill them with cows and then have to bring their food to them in the form of soil depleting maize and then we have to deal with their crap in lagoons which are potential disasters in terms of flooding risk etc., rather than it going back into the land directly and largely harmlessly. We do all this to create a product that is sold so cheaply that we can't make any money on it.

The methane argument is probably a nonsense. Pasture creates it anyway as it rots. The cows just do a quicker job. Monbiot also ignores the work of pioneers such as Alan Savory who have shown that bovines especially are priceless in stopping and even reversing the desertification problem that arable causes in many drier parts of the world.

I think his arguments are very UK centric. We are lucky here in that we have a temperate climate with plenty of water and not too many extremes so we can get away with a lot. His 'conservation by abandonment' ideas will not work so well in other places, especially if we still want to take a crop.

 

[Wheyibuggermair]

I don't think it's cows in general but the way they are kept that is the problem. It's an odd one. We take on huge debt to put up big sheds. We fill them with cows and then have to bring their food to them in the form of soil depleting maize and then we have to deal with their crap in lagoons which are potential disasters in terms of flooding risk etc., rather than it going back into the land directly and largely harmlessly. We do all this to create a product that is sold so cheaply that we can't make any money on it.

The methane argument is probably a nonsense. Pasture creates it anyway as it rots. The cows just do a quicker job. Monbiot also ignores the work of pioneers such as Alan Savory who have shown that bovines especially are priceless in stopping and even reversing the desertification problem that arable causes in many drier parts of the world.

I think his arguments are very UK centric. We are lucky here in that we have a temperate climate with plenty of water and not too many extremes so we can get away with a lot. His 'conservation by abandonment' ideas will not work so well in other places, especially if we still want to take a crop.

Also,hard to take him seriously after his complete about turn on the nuclear issue.

 

[Gong Farmer]

So half the number of people dying from air pollution live in the country ? Don't see that many John Deeres down Regent Street .

Having struggled to agree with a doctor a cause of death for FIL's death certificate, I can't believe many would put down 'died from air pollution', so where do these figures come from?

 

[Wheyibuggermair]

Methane emissions from wetlands make up a massive amount of the world's total warming gas emissions.
This could be virtually eliminated by efficient and effective mass drainage of course.

Aye but GGs aren't usually a contributor to pollution related disease.