‘There are no safe levels of pollution’: an interview with wildfire researcher Sam Heft-Neal
But there are levels that we’ll willingly put up with. Simply because we desire the things that require pollution to create. Like, you know, plentiful food, warmth, all that.
There’s lots of strange stuff in this article. It seems to have been written by someone doing a school project. It is full of glib unsophisticated observations and farcical “solutions”.
An example:
There’s no policy we can implement that will eliminate or reduce wildfires dramatically in the short run. And so instead, the main policy is just telling people to protect themselves.
Well there are lots of things – forest management and clearing dead scrub is the most effective. Do they still have adverts on telly in the US with the bear in the ranger’s hat ?
A propos air purifiers. I bought my mum one a few months ago. She loves it, the improvement of air quality in her house is dramatic. I keep on meaning to get one but constantly forget to do so, but my house is bigger and the air circulates more, although dust is a huge problem. I saw one in Aldi for about £60.
The ridiculous thing is that pollution is far lower than it used to be. I have a friend who remembers walking in London pea-soupers. What stuck in my mind was his comment that you had to bend over to read the street signs to check where you were, because if you stood upright the smog was too thick for you to be able to read them.
I’m old enough to remember annual stubble burning and driving through scenes that looked like something out of Dante. At the time we accepted it as perfectly normal.
The Linear No Threshold Hypothesis resurfaces. Like a zombie, you just can’t kill it.
Clearly there are safe levels as human population growth continues unabated, and has done so for millennia
If we kill all the plants we won’t have to suffer the pollen. Better do the fungi too, those spores are deadly. And dust, don’t talk to me about dust.
Round here, the birds perch on the trees along the streets leaving shit all over the pavements. Pollution!
Kill all sparrows!
95% of all the ‘CO2 pollution’ is naturally occurring. What do these morons propose to do about that?
– “It seems to have been written by someone doing a school project.”
More precisely, a North Korean doing a school project.
@Southerner – August 8, 2022 at 8:09 am
The Linear No Threshold Hypothesis resurfaces. Like a zombie, you just can’t kill it.
Indeed… You’d have thought that some of these “experts” might, just, have heard of Paracelsus!
@AtC
I grew up in London smogs. I can remember walking to school (about a mile) & crossing London streets you couldn’t see the opposite pavement before you set out. When it cleared, the filth was hanging from the telephone wires in strings. Mum used to put a white handkerchief across my mouth & by the time I’d got there the centre was black.
Oh, and I used to do that walk alone. Including crossing a main road. I was 7. It was a different London & not just the air. The high pollution is now of a different kind.
There are no safe levels of ionising radiation, yet daily tens of millions of radiological procedures are carried out, millions of people travel the skies exposed to cosmic radiation.
It’s called trade-off.
Once Heft-Neal has eliminated all human caused pollution, and found a way to stop wildfires, is he going to wave a magic wand and prevent volcanoes from erupting?
‘There are no safe levels of ionising radiation,’
Perhaps not John B. The hormesis hypothesis suggests that sufficiently small doses of radiation are beneficial. Since life evolved when radiation levels were considerably higher.
You’ll have noted that life in the mountains is generally considered more healthy than further down. Even though you’re exposed to more cosmic rays.
John B: there are safe levels of radiation – the ones we live with all the time. That includes Radon in granitey locations. It’s true that the odd person will develop cancer from that, or cosmic rays, and die, but the death rate from that cause is probably not a major contributor to early deaths. We have evolved to cope.
The body is quite marvellous in the way it can recover from all sorts of assaults on it, both from the environment and self-inflicted. If it wasn’t so Homo Sapiens and probably most mammals, reptiles, etc wouldn’t be here.
The moaners like the subject of the article, and the reporter, conveniently forget that because it negates their argument.
@Arthur the Cat,
I started work in central London at the time (1969) when lots of buildings were being washed, and London wasn’t All Black any more. But I’d still come home from work with black round my collars and cuffs.
@Tim the Coder,
Didn’t Mao try that?
When we started Latin at school we learnt that the Romans thought Britannia a foggy place. It made no sense – fogs were very rare for us.
I mean, there must have been some but none that I can actually remember. I remember floods, ice, sun, rain, snow but not fog.
When I lived in Edinburgh we did get haar on some summer mornings.
Dearieme
It was foggier then, it was a lot swampier, especially around London..
No doubt the fog will come back when England warms up to the same average as in Roman times.
Human beings evolved using fires. Indeed it was the ability to use fires that allowed them to survive. So we’ve been breathing smoke for all of our existence.
The abos for example would huddle up around the fire at night to stay warm. And some would roll into the embers while asleep.
@dearieme
Just reflects where you went to school. The Thames floodplain has always been foggy. Dagenham’s known for it. In winter, more often foggy than not.
So which bit of the British Isles were most Romans seeing? The floodplains of rivers. Look where their cities were.
Here’s a thing. Dagenham has a bit of a micro-climate. It’s to the east of London & the prevailing winds are westerlies. So the convection over a warmer London partially shields Dagenham from winds. Hence the fogs. Of course, if you get an easterly in winter you’d think you were in Siberia
Oh! Forgot the point of that comment.
So where have they put 3 of those fucking windmills? By the A13 near Fords. I must have been up & down that road a hundred times since. I don’t think I’ve ever seen them turning
Another thing about London is that is not just a valley running down to the Thames. It is a big geological bowl, so fog that might have risen from the Thames and its tributaries and the swampy floodplain had nowhere to go unless there was a strong wind to blow it away.
I remember fogs up north, even pea-soupers before the Clean Air Act killed the smoke from all the mill chimneys. Of course higher up it was cloud coming down rather than radiation fog developing under a temperature inversion, though we got that too sometimes.
I used to get black collars and black snot from visiting London, but I think a lot of that was from dust in the Tube.
There are no safe levels of pollution’
So no camp fires when we’re all reduced back to tribal hunter gatherer lifestyles.
Cos they cause pollution.
You’ll just have to freeze to death. For your health and safety obvs.
I’m old enough to remember annual stubble burning and driving through scenes that looked like something out of Dante. At the time we accepted it as perfectly normal.
There is a lot to recommend the occasional stubble burning. Kills lots of nasties that without it need spraying after incorporation.
So no camp fires when we’re all reduced back to tribal hunter gatherer lifestyles.
The secret is to bang the rocks together, guys !
There are no safe levels of pollution
We’ve been here before with the assertion that there is no safe level of drinking. Based on studies which accidentally show that zero drinking is not a safe level. But there might be an optimal level.
@Harry Haddock,
When the stubble of sugar cane is burnt, the air fills with a delightful toffee smell. It isn’t all bad!