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Diesel Cars Contribute To 5,000 Premature Deaths a Year In Europe, Says Study (phys.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: Emissions from diesel cars rigged to appear eco-friendly may be responsible for 5,000 air pollution deaths per year in Europe alone, according to a study published on Monday. The numbers are in line with previous assessments of deaths due to the so-called "Dieselgate" scandal, which erupted when carmaker Volkswagen admitted in 2015 to cheating on vehicle emissions tests. Many other carmakers have since fallen under suspicion. The researchers from Norway, Austria, Sweden and the Netherlands calculated that about 10,000 deaths in Europe per year can be attributed to small particle pollution from light duty diesel vehicles (LDDVs). Almost half of these would have been avoided if emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) from diesel cars on the road had matched levels measured in the lab. If diesel cars emitted as little NOx as petrol ones, almost 4,000 of the 5,000 premature deaths would have been avoided, said the authors. The countries with the heaviest burden are Italy, Germany, and France, the team added, "resulting from their large populations and high share of diesel cars in their national fleets." Touted as less polluting, the share of diesel cars in Europe rose fast compared to petrol since the 1990s, and now comprise about half the fleet. There are more than 100 million diesel cars in Europe today, twice as many as in the rest of the world together, said the study authors. Diesel engines emit less planet-warming carbon dioxide than petrol ones, but significantly more NOx. The study has been published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.
Are, are contributing...
Then we're even, right?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Usually, if you read the small print, it means something like 'someone who was seriously ill and would have died a few weeks later anyway.' In other words, pretty much totally irrelevant to anything but the Green agenda.
What's the definition used in this study?
The biggest factor should be that technology and industries move a lot faster than bureaucrats. By the time laws get passed, what they're trying to regulate has already changed.
#DeleteFacebook
Not sure about the study, but the author of the article clearly has no clue what he/she is writing about. First the article says "10,000 deaths in Europe per year can be attributed to small particle pollution..." and then it continues "Almost half of these would have been avoided if emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) from diesel cars on the road had matched levels measured in the lab".
These two types of emission must be viewed separately. While small particles are solid particles in the size of less than 10 m, while NOx is an odorless gas. Both can be harmful, but in completely different ways. If you reduce the NOx emission, it will not reduce the healt impact of small particles in any way.
The author should read a book before writing about a subject that he/she doesn't understand.
Signature deleted by lameness filter.
cars do use it
Illegal aliens are killing more tham 5000 people per year? What are you smoking?
Does their deceit about the emissions levels on VW diesel engines, that contributes to deaths, lead to any criminal charges? Nope. Just fines and a round of golf. Corporations have no true accountability when the leaders get to go home and a lonely engineer is set up to take the fall.
I doubt greatly that the emissions is contributing that much to the health of individuals.
All it says is "premature" death. What is not clear is by how much - shaving a day off the average life of 5,000 people is not that much statistically speaking. Shaving 10 years off is a lot. I also have to wonder that if diesel cars are having this much effect what is the effect of diesel lorries? These burn a lot more fuel than cars per kilometre and are driven far more too. If the effect of lorries is to cause the premature deaths of 50,000 people by whatever standard they are using then we should not be worrying about cars.
The amount is 10x that when the pollution abatement algorithm of the car's ECM sn't running :)
I hate to say it but so what? I tend to be on the left environmentally but that statistic is not compelling at all. Five thousand people out of the hundreds of millions in Europe die early deaths because of diesel emissions? Far more deaths can be attributed to all kinds of every day things then that.
I think significantly altering our atmosphere is a bad idea and I like clean air and all but that statistic isn't compelling in the least.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
And then you look at the following:
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/...
That makes the diesel exhaust problem marginal.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Just look at smoking-related deaths and you see that the diesel figures are no more than marginal noise.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
You, sir, are the problem here.
The cars "passed the test". How much of your science syllabus do you remember after the final exam? The politicians only asked them to pass the exam, not to meet the requirements on the road. being good Germans, they "Obeyed the law".
In reality, the problem is not 1.6 litre Volkswagens its the laws. If you want cars not to pollute on the road, pass a law that says "don't pollute on the road". Since trucks have 16 litre engines (not 1.6 litre), they produce a lot more NOx. Also, they run for about 6 hours a day, in place of about 2 (figures made upon the spot).
The real problem is Urea injection (AdBlu). This was introduced to neutralise the NOx emissions in the tailpipe of Diesels. However, due to low power to weight ratio, when you drive a truck in traffic, your foot is typically "on the floor" or "off the pedal". This means the exhaust temperature goes between 900 deg C and 0 deg C and back in seconds. The amount of N2 in the exhaust depends on temperature in the combustion chamber, not the amount of Diesel burned - the N2 comes from the air, not the Diesel. How is the microprocessor going to know how much Urea to inject when it cannot know how much N2 has been dissociated? It can't.
However, the AdBlu process has been favoured by politicians over other solutions to meet the very tight controls on CO2 (There are other solutions, but they do not involve selling large quantities of pig's piss to trucks).
In short, The vehicle manufacturers did as they were told, and the result was predictable. No one wants to admit it for political and financial reasons, and Volkswagen is not American.
Disclaimers: Yes I am an engineer, was a truck driver, live in Europe, am not German, and don't currently own a car of any type.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Without agreeing to or objecting to the specific number of deaths per year attributable to cheating on environmental testing compliance, it would appear that Brad Kuhn (former Exec. Dir. of the Free Software Foundation, current Distinguished Technologist at the Software Freedom Conservancy) was right in his article "Software Freedom Doesn't Kill People, Your Security Through Obscurity Kills People":
This is the time to cite the cheating scandal as a reason why car owners should actually own their car including the complete corresponding software for the car and the software build instructions. We know what happens when the manufacturers are allowed to use the power of a proprietor. It's time we get vehicles that respect our software freedom.
Digital Citizen
In November the EEA reported that air pollution is causing 467,000 premature deaths in the EU, which would put it in the same league as smoking. The 5,000 figure quoted is additional deaths just caused by the misreported dieselgate vehicles; diesel as a whole expected to contribute twice that many to the total.
> reality is that powering electric vehicles with coal-generated power is worse than just letting people by gasoline-powered vehicles.
study : http://www.ucsusa.org/clean-ve...
yeah, because the free market regulates itself soooo great in the US.
what in the actual fuck is wrong with you?!
...so it is statistical noise.
The US - which includes Silicon Valley - doesn't have a far left. You have a far right, and a further right.
Socialists are left, communists are far left. Heck, over here, even the social democrats have become right over the last decade or two.
In the UK, you can't smoke in a pub, but you can smoke in the pub's garden (which is typically an enclosed space with no wind, so a good place for passive smoking) and you can smoke just outside the door, so non-smokers have to walk through a thick cloud of smoke to get inside. Actually, Dublin was worse for this than anywhere I've been in the UK: a load of pubs had a dozen or more people huddled around the doorway smoking.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Diesel isn't the problem, particularly with super-clean fuel. The problem is diesel when there isn't enough oxygen ... for example when accelerating.
If mechanical super chargers are made mandatory the particle emittions problem is eliminated. Add mandatory pre-heaters and AdBlue with a big tank for NOX reduction and it becomes cleaner than gasoline, with better fuel economy to boot -- which means fewer tons of carbon emissions.
Note: Diesel engines benefit from super chargers more than mechanical engines.
Yet, it doesn't have to be deadly (in the sense of causing cancer, for which the potential is certainly there, judging from the substances contained in second-hand smoke) in order to be detrimental to health.
To cite Nicko McBrain: "Now, stuff that in your bleedin' pipe and smoke it".
This means the exhaust temperature goes between 900 deg C and 0 deg C and back in seconds.
These figures are definitely wrong. Exhaust temperature is never as cool as 0 degC, and almost certainly never rises 900 degC (exception might be a particulate filter regeneration event, still 900 degC is a high estimate). More realistic figures would be ~400-450 degC for 'normal' usage.
The amount of N2 in the exhaust depends on temperature in the combustion chamber, not the amount of Diesel burned - the N2 comes from the air, not the Diesel. How is the microprocessor going to know how much Urea to inject when it cannot know how much N2 has been dissociated? It can't.
Yes, it can. That's why there are sensors in the exhaust aftertreatment system. E.g. sense NOx values upstream, inject AdBlue downstream. Furthermore, the NH3 generated upon urea decomposition is partially stored on the SCR brick's (selective catalytic reduction) surface, so there's a bit of a buffer.
Yet, I agree with you that the AdBlue solution for reducing NOx has its drawbacks (e.g. deposit formation), so researching alternative catalytic systems is highly desirable
The free market is much better at properly allocating resources than bureaucrats could ever hope to be
Interesting. In the age of machine learning and Big Data, is that assertion valid?
The way that Uber, Amazon and Facebook work (other examples exist) suggests to me that while free markets yield better results than 1950s central planning, the central planning of this decade and the next one can be even better!
The real reason we have a lot of Diesel cars in Europe is because of taxes.
Gasoline is taxed more than diesel and cars tend to consume more. People are quick to do the maths and opt for the more economical solution, especially those who drive a lot.
Should make a study about Diesel trucks, especially in the US where trucks have barely any emissions restrictions.
And then you look at the following:
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/...
That makes the diesel exhaust problem marginal.
No, it merely confirms that tobacco, diesel engines, alcohol, food additives, and addictive painkillers are all legal because death is necessary and by design, backed by government policy and regulation.
And then you look at the following:
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/...
That makes the diesel exhaust problem marginal.
I see, Well then following your logic, we shouldn't have any pollution controls on diesel engines because smokers.
Oh - wait - that's just rephrasing what you wrote. My bad.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
There is still no proof of second hand cigarette smoke causing a single death (unsubstantiated unscientific claims but why should science matter?) but the freedom of choice brigade is there to tell you what to do in all public space. Now shut up and inhale this diesel exhaust. Bah!
Oh hell, the smoking fascists are on to 3rd hand smoke by now. People have to hate something, I guess.I suspect many of the people who believe this also believe in crystal resonances and astral projection.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Is there anything more useless than a Meta-analysis?
How many times have eggs been bad for you, then good again?
Butter?
Fats?
Etc?
Brought to you by Meta-analysis.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The article seems to mix small particle and NOx emissions in a way that is confusing. These are two very different forms of pollution. It doesn't appear there is a link to the original study, unless I've missed it. I would lean to the microparticle pollution being the cause of the deaths.
If you don't want second hand smoke, stay out of the buildings where smokers smoke. Why must you ban smoking in ALL private businesses?
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Far left? No, more like weenie corporate all-things-to-all-people PC left. SV companies will pride themselves on their transgender bathrooms while censoring viewpoints they consider "radical" from their parts of the Internet.
I know it's Europe and European bureaucrats involved, but maybe they should just stop with all of these artificially-imposed economic distortions and just let the free market make decisions like this. The free market is much better at properly allocating resources than bureaucrats could ever hope to be.
I wish that libertarians would, someday, take the trouble to learn some real economics. Maybe take an introductory course in it, why not. Economics is actually a very interesting field, but just blindly saying "the free market solves everything and has no problems" isn't really economics. Even Adam Smith pointed out the problems as well as the advantages of free markets, and he was writing well over two hundred years ago, before economics really even existed.
A free market is good at allocating some resources in some situations. A free market does not deal at all with some things, however, and one of the things it does not deal with is the case where there is a resource that is not owned. In the case of pollution, cars take in a resource that is not owned-- air-- and then rejects waste without cost into the air. Humans also use that same resource. But the air isn't owned-- you can't say "OK, I will buy all the air in this city, and therefore we can breathe only clean air. "
The biggest factor should be that technology and industries move a lot faster than bureaucrats. By the time laws get passed, what they're trying to regulate has already changed.
History simply shows that this is not true.
I wish that libertarians would, someday, take the trouble to learn some real economics. Maybe take an introductory course in it, why not.
For completeness, I should add that I also wish that conservatives and liberals would take the trouble to learn some real economics.
Ignoring economics when it's inconvenient is a feature of pretty much all political ideologies, not just libertarians. (It's just more annoying with libertarians, because their ignorance is so jarringly at odds with their rhetoric.)
They did not "obey the law, being good Germans." They cheated on the tests. Period.
If you want cars not to pollute on the road, pass a law that says "don't pollute on the road".
Gosh, so simple!
Uh, how do you check whether cars "don't pollute on the road" to know if they're breaking that law? Oh, wait, yes-- that's obvious: you check that by testing the cars.
Which is exactly what the laws did.
Because of the employees, maybe?
Its even worse than that. NOx reacts with Methane to remove it from the atmosphere, and Methane is much MUCH worse that CO2 with regards to greenhouse effects.
News flash: oxygen reacts with methane to remove it from the atmosphere. Nitrogen oxides are 0.00003% of the atmosphere. Oxygen is 20% of the atmosphere. Putting more nitrogen oxides into the atmosphere has a negative effect on health, but doesn't reduce the amount of methane in the atmosphere enough to notice.
Estimates vary, however the accepted figure appears to be that the net effect of global diesel use is 20% net cooling effect.
Another news flash: making shit up really isn't a substitute for science.
So yes, Diesel contributes to global cooling! Climate change! Disaster!
To repeat: making shit up really isn't a substitute for science.
(Also, lightning creates about the same amount of NOx as small vehicles, and both are much less than shipping, aircraft, or heavy industry..)
Lightning produces some nitrogen oxides. Specifically, "over the United States lightning accounts for only about 5 percent of the total U.S. nitrogen oxide annual emissions and about 14 percent of the total emissions in July."
And lightning-produced nitrogen oxides are randomly distributed through the atmosphere. Nitrogen oxides produced by automobiles are concentrated where the most automobiles are, which coincidentally happens to be where people live. Lightning-produced nitrogen oxides are important to global atmospheric chemistry, but they're not a major player in pollution. https://www.nasa.gov/home/hqne...
Or all those resulting from the government-imposed "War on Fat"... Why, shouldn't it be criminal to even produce the murderous butter, much less offer it to children?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Why did you reply to me instead of the parent, which you quoted?
#DeleteFacebook
> There is still no proof of second hand cigarette smoke
Sure. Because smoke in general is just SO HARMLESS. You have to be fucking kidding me. Even in the 15th century they were bright enough to realize that smoking was inherently dangerous.
Cigarette smoke contains nasty industrial pollutants.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
> If you don't want second hand smoke, stay out of the buildings where smokers smoke. Why must you ban smoking in ALL private businesses?
It will be like binding arbitration clauses in contracts or businesses that don't allow blacks or gays. Good luck finding some place where you don't have to risk your health just to work or shop.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
> So because people smoke we can't look at any other respiratory irritants? Great logic, you should be a politician.
No. You should be. You want us to get into a fit of hysterics over a number that is obviously small. From a mathematical and engineering perspective, this is assinine.
No. You're the one that should be the politician.
You can subject everyone to nonsense that's highly disruptive and expensive for no other reason than "good intentions".
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
>> "Far left, politically."
>
> Only to someone on the far right. See how this works?
No. It's BULLSHIT.
I used to consider myself center-left and I agree with the OP.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Perhaps you don't remember this far back, but "global cooling" actually was the widely hyped fear back in the 1960s and part of the 1970s.
No, it wasn't. That claim is something deniers say all the time, but it just isn't true. Here, for example, is the American Meteorological Society: http://journals.ametsoc.org/do...
I know a lot of people today (many of whom were born in the 1980s or even the 1990s!) will wrongly claim that it was only "the media" pushing those claims back then, but the media was just reporting on what those in various scientific fields were claiming.
I was born in the 1950s, and you are wrong.
It wasn't until into the 1970s that the "global warming" hype really started up.
Wrong again. Here's the American Institute of Physics's history of Global Warming: https://history.aip.org/climat... -- the effect has been known for well over a century.
I remember the greenhouse effect being discussed in my science classes back in high school. Of course, back then it was "here's an effect that, if we keep on burning fossil fuels, might be measurable sometime by the 1990s or 2000" (which seemed impossibly far in the future back then.) Well, guess what: we kept on burning fossil fuels, the 1990s and then 2000 came, and the effect was measurable.
When it became clear by the late 1990s that we weren't really seeing any significant warming, the name was changed again to the much vaguer "climate change".
Wrong, and wrong. We were seeing significant warming by the late 1990s (check the data), and the name was changed by the Bush administration in order to get people less excited about the effect.
This is convenient, because it allows any normal variation in the Earth's dynamic, chaotic, and unpredictable weather systems to be claimed to be evidence of this alleged "climate change".
Now, on that one I'll agree with you: it annoys me when people attribute weather events to global warming. No single weather event, no hot summer in one location, no warm winter in another location, can be particularly attributed to global warming. Global warming is real, and is well understood-- but it is a long-term, global phenomenon. It is not a local thing.
> Socialists are left, communists are far left.
The only difference between those two is the matter of degree and whether or not you think that somehow big government will eventually lead to a libertarian paradise.
Either one still leads you to living with your parents because there is a shortage of housing.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
>>he thinks the US is anywhere other than far right on the spectrum
>
> enjoy your for-profit healthcare. im sure you matter almost as much as their profits. keke
Profit means that there are people lining up to sell to me. That means a wide array of excellent options. It doesn't matter if it's housing, lattes or hospitals.
I benefit greatly from this as an actual patient. I wouldn't trade my land of plenty in for any free garbage anywhere else.
Government doesn't set prices and government control supply. That works out very well actually.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
> Doesn't matter, these myths are about scary foreigners. The details are irrelevant.
These details are VERY relevant. There are subtle distinctions between INDIVIDUALS. The individual needs to be judged based on their own circumstances and behavior.
The distinctions do matter. They aren't all just "immigrants". That's just liberals trying to cloud the issue.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Tabloid journalism? It's the liberal media that distorts this stuff. They will take a criminal and pretend the person is just an innocent slob trying to make a living.
Illegal aliens are just the undocumented. They could be harmless.
The real distinction is criminal aliens where they have made it clear that they aren't just here to "pursue the dream".
Criminal aliens have been the priority during the current US administration as it was in the previous one. Within those people, certain crimes are spelled out as a high priority for deportation.
Being flooded with war refugees and migrants that have no interest in assimilation is a different kettle of fish. Compared to that Mexicans aren't so bad and Tea Baggers should lay off a little.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
If all of the propaganda about solar being cheap is not total bullshit, then the market again will sort all of this out. Daddy Warbucks doesn't want to pay more for something than he has to. He's no different than anyone else in this. If anything he is MORE pragmatic and not prone to conspicuous consumption nonsense.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I was replying to both the parent (first comment) and also your comment on it (second comment).
I did assume that slashdotters recognize the doubled quote-bar to show when it is the grandparent being quoted and commented on, and the single quote bar showing that it is the immediately preceding comment being quoted and commented on. Possibly some newer slashdotters in fact don't understand the quote protocol, but they can glance upward to see who said what.
I suppose I could have made two separate comments, but since the two were immediately adjacent, one comment doesn't fork the threads quite as badly.
What is the basis for your doubt? I find it interesting that you cite your personal doubt as if it actually proves something.
Doubt doesn't prove anything. You find people who doubt literally anything. There are people who doubt the moon landing was real, or that the Earth is spherical. And what sustains them is that they find other people who have the same doubts, and they take that somehow as confirmation.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
In the short run, yes.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
An older story from 500K, back when the US was in peak Climate Alarmisim.
http://fortune.com/2015/11/30/diesel-emissions-deaths-europe-ee/
At the end of the day the only thing that this latest study proves is that you can still literally make anything say anything with the right kind of half baked study. Especially when you take into account that a lot of EU nations use way more diesel powered personal vehicle than the US and other nation states or blocks do.
Please check other causes of death.
The numbers mentioned here for diesel cars are nowhere near those.
Also the study fails to mention the benefits of diesel cars that outweigh insignificant death numbers.
5000 in Europe, that is over 742 million people or so. (see wikipedia)
With how many dieing from other things? smoking? bad diets? falling down the stairs? pills abuse? alcohol? cancer?
You get the idea.
tobacco is in the far end of the Laffer curve, i.e. the more you tax, the less the government gets. Since gasoline is not yet there, Governments have a vested interest in driving individuals from driving diesel cars, since Diesel is used in close range transport. Once you ban diesel use for private self transport, you can tax gasoline on the pretext of Global Warming, and make a killing.
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
How many lives are saved per yer simply due to modern technology. Trucks bring products to build generating stations that provide electricity that allows for advanced research into medicines, fresh food available all the time, cars allow deathly ill people to reach hospitals in time before they die, refrigeration keeps people from getting sick, cell phones allow you to call for help when you're in danger, everything we take for granted as simple "creature comforts" are actually prolonging our lives. You know, modern society. I wonder what the number of ((lives modern society saves) - 5000) is? Or rather, what percentage of (lives modern saved by society) is this horrible number 5000. I wonder how many zeros would come after the decimal place before the significant figures start.
More sky-is-falling, flat-earth bullshit from liberals who would rather have us live in mud huts and bathe in our own filth than have a modern free society.
And really kill the economy of the world at the same time. Time to breed horses!
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Contribute To Over 5,000 Premature Rapings a Year In Just One Country In Europe, Says Study.
What if the employees all smoke? What if the employers specifically hire smokers just to allow smoking in the business?
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
You'd think the "world is overpopulated" bunch would love this! With 5,000 per year, along with the other deaths, the overpopulation problem will resolve itself!!!
> If you don't want second hand smoke, stay out of the buildings where smokers smoke. Why must you ban smoking in ALL private businesses?
It will be like binding arbitration clauses in contracts or businesses that don't allow blacks or gays.
I didn't know that "non-smokers" was a protected class.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
In the US, this is state by state. In my state, buildings that aren't residences are non-smoking.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
What you mean is that there is not a single death that can be positively attributed to second-hand smoke. This is true of first-hand smoke as well. It's largely statistical, and based on health studies of people who share quarters with smokers, as well as what we know the crap in second-hand smoke can do.
There's lots of things in public health that have to be statistical, because not everything that kills kills immediately all the time..
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Is anyone talking about getting into a fit of hysterics here? It's useful to know what's killing people, even if it isn't the biggest killer.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Tobacco taxes are not to raise money for general revenue. They discourage smoking and provide some revenue to pay for what the smoke does. Gasoline and diesel fuel taxes are not in the same category, since people have to use them or the economy collapses.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
And you're prepared to lie about conditions in Europe to suit your ideology. Right.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The native americans, who introduced smoking to Europeans, held that abusing tobacco was a taboo over at least 1,000 years earlier, but probably longer.
Actually, it works out poorly. The US pays far more for medical care per capita than literally any other country on the planet, and it's nowhere near close. The difference between 2014 US per capita medical costs and the runner-up Swiss per capita medical costs comes to a little under a trillion dollars a year that the US would save if it only had the second most expensive medical care on the planet.
You can also look at public health measures, and see that the US doesn't do very well compared to other developed countries.
It this is "very well actually", I'd hate to see something you considered merely above average.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Electrical motors are much more efficient than internal combustion engines, and there are ways of generating electricity that don't involve coal.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Politicians love when somebody thinks that revenues are closely linked to expenses. in reality, there's no such thing: everything goes in the general pool and finances everything. that perception bias allows them to impose "benevolent taxes", like...... "climate change taxes". now, every time this happens and a corresponding matching revenue is not cut in the same law...... think "money grab".
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
Everything goes into the general pool one way or another, but different taxes have different purposes. Carbon taxes would be used to correct for serious market externalities. What we were discussing is whether the purpose behind tobacco taxes would be considered successful based on people quitting smoking or money taken in, which are obviously incompatible.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes