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WHO: Air Pollution 'Killed 7 Million People' In 2012
dryriver sends word of new figures from the World Health Organization that estimate around 7 million people died in 2012 as a result of their exposure to air pollution. "In particular, the new data reveal a stronger link between both indoor and outdoor air pollution exposure and cardiovascular diseases, such as strokes and ischaemic heart disease, as well as between air pollution and cancer. This is in addition to air pollution’s role in the development of respiratory diseases, including acute respiratory infections and chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases." The Organization says the bulk of the deaths occurred in South-East Asia and the Western Pacific Regions (PDF), with indoor air pollution causing more deaths than outdoor pollution in those areas, largely due to the use of coal, wood, and biomass stoves for cooking.
Lets ban nuclear power for this crime!
South-East asia? You mean the bulk of China, right? Considering the amount of smug they have and little to no effort being done to get rid of it.
Because I am sure they'd be thrilled to return 400 million people to Medieval poverty.
The problem is sorting itself out.
This pretty much says that ~56 million people died in 2012.
Given that we have 7 billion people living on this rock, 56 million deaths implies an average lifespan of 125 years. While living to 120+ would be kind of interesting, I somehow doubt that that will be happening too often soon.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
This right here is something that anyone who lives in a highly polluted urban area knows instinctively. You don't need studies and scientists to point out that pollution(air) is not healthy, and that exposure to it over time(years) is bad and probably contributes to Asthma and Emphysema(would appear obvious) and also things like Lung Cancer and Heart Disease... Common sense would dictate this observation.
This Common Sense observation, that air pollution is bad, is my main, MAIN point of animosity towards all the "there is no human caused global warming due to pollution or putting carbon into the atmosphere" douchebags.
Who gives a flying f*&k if the billions of tons of air pollution each year are causing climate change? Really! Why worry and argue about that when we know beyond any sort of Koch brothers funded propaganda that air pollution, the same air pollution putting billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere, is also killing the oceans via acidification, browning the forest and(drum roll please...) killing humans.
We should be doing everything in our power to reduce the amount of air pollution we put into the air, if not for what it is doing to the climate, at least for what it is doing to our health.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Utter bullshit......
Could you share the math on that?
This is a meaningless statistic. Serious medical researchers report this in person-years lost, not in meaningless "millions of deaths". To illustrate, let's suppose those 57 million people were infirm and about to die, but pollution hastened their demise by one second. Then this is not a big deal. Personally I would happily shorten my life for exactly one second in exchange for the conveniences of modern life. On the other hand if these people had their lives substantially shortened then this is a veritable tragedy.
However such misleading headline doesn't surprise me: the UN is a master of over-hyped sky-is-falling chicken-little statistics.
I hope there is intelligent life, somewhere out in space, 'cause there is bugger all down her on earth.
You can't walk through any populated area in Southeast Asia without breathing the stuff.
WHO: Air Pollution 'Killed 7 Million People' In 2012
How many of those were in China?
(and since it is the WHO which is part of the UN and thus kowtows to China, we'll have to subtract the numbers from Taiwan ourselves)
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
If we multiply that by 10 we have balanced the excess births and stopped the population explosion :p
thegodmovie.com - watch it
We should be doing everything in our power to reduce the amount of air pollution we put into the air
Yes we should.
But AGW Warmist Fanatics such as yourself don't want to reduce the air pollution that causes health issues (Carbon MONOXOIDE, Sulfur dioxide, CFC, various particulates, etc) - they want to reduce CO2.
So you force efforts and money away from REAL pollution reduction to waste on reduction of a pretty much harmless gas that the entire biosphere of Earth has spent millions of years evolving to process in mass quantities.
This is in fact really my only beef with AGW religious fanatics such as myself, otherwise I wouldn't care how much you lie or mislead to make your case. But you are harming the environment directly, which is why I work to stop your dark and twisted philosophy from taking root where possible.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
OH PLEASE insulate me from this madness.
Yes insulation... we need more of it.
Lots more of it.
Dense living + acoustic insulation lets you sleep in quiet while your neighbors party
yet be able to walk to most markets. Dense living can save on many energy fronts
and not impact the environment by a sprawl out on farm land.
Hot or cold thermal thermal insulation is undersold for locations that need heating and cooling.
Windows are so bad thermally that it makes sense to replace most with insulated
wall and with a small camera invite view of the outside in. LED TV with an aero-gel
backlight for some locations.
Review your local building codes. Remove penalties for improvement and
demand better total insulation packages for homes and businesses.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
Can't wait!
The two biggest forms of biomass are wood, and methane reclaimed from landfills. They are considered renewable because it's "new" carbon and so is considered carbon-neutral. As opposed to the "old" carbon locked up in fossil fuels which is released when burned. This ignores the pollutants it releases into the atmosphere other than CO2.
Of the electricity generated in the U.S., 7% comes from hydro, 3.5% from wind, 1.4% from biomass, 0.4% from geothermal, and 0.1% from solar. So it's actually the third-biggest form of renewable electricity in the U.S. For overall energy used (i.e. including wood burned for heating), it is the biggest form of renewable energy, accounting for almost half of renewable energy produced in the U.S.
So take the stats saying "we're getting x% of our energy from renewable sources" with a grain of salt. It may not be as clean as you think it is.
If doomsayers used a number such as 6,967,231 nobody would believe the report. Yet somehow saying 7 million is totally believable. Humans are such a gullible species.
Air pollution kills more than communism did!
Regardless of the "rounded" number, it all sounds like it is on track then! /facepalm @ maddening stupidity of the W.H.O.
I think you need to wait for a supernova for everything beyond iron.
If you're unbelievably unhealthy and some bad air pushed you over the edge, that's not what killed you. Unclear air at that level alone also cannot kill you. That means the vast majority of these people should have simply gotten some exercise regularly.
Have fun shivering in the dark! There's only going to be enough wind and solar energy available on the grid for left wing politicians and other elitists. Everyone else will get nothing!
Take a look at this graph: Nuclear Electricity Production. It's quite easy to spot 1986 on this graph (Chernobyl). That's where the trend of acceleration in nuclear power growth has reversed into deceleration. No such reversal has occured in demand for electric power, of course. The shortfall has been largely picked up by coal.
The number of people that have been killed by air pollution from coal as an indirect result of the nuclear stagnation after the Chernobyl accident is well into the millions.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.