Vienna - Wednesday April 10, 2019 - What happens if we end global air pollution?
I was in Vienna to attend The European Geophysical Union General Assembly. The meeting included lectures of general interest, including "Effects of fossil fuel generated and total anthropogenic emission phase-out on public health and climate", presented by Jos Lelieveld. In other words, what health benefits might we experience if we abandoned fossil fuels?
The aim is to quantify what will turn out to be significant health benefits.
He began by describing his method.
Air pollution reduces life expectancy. The biggest effect is from heart disease ("IHD").
Air pollution effects can be quantified in terms of either lives lost per year or reduced average life expectancy. When the same problem is measured in two different ways, we get two slighly different results. The "lives lost" metric (left) shows a bigger impact on populous countries. Such is science.
The impact on the US is 283,000 lives per year. That's about 8 times traffic crashes and 10 times gun violence. When we abandon fossil fuels (we have no choice), we will all live longer.
In the USA the biggest source of air pollution is power plants (e.g., coal). In India it is residential energy, such as wood burning stoves.
Air pollution (upper left) kills more people than violence (upper right), communicable diseases (lower left), and dysentery (lower right).
Air pollution contains gases that both heat and cool the atmosphere. Abandoning air pollution won't stop global warming as quickly as some activists say because the chemicals that cool the air don't persist as long as CO2 does. This presenter states that we are already facing 2 degrees Celsius, higher than was promised in the Paris accord.
Here's the thing. Scientists are a very conservative lot. They hate saying "this will be big" and then getting something small. They love saying "I think this might be big" and having it turn out bigger.
Scientists are also human. You know how it is hard to get a bold statement out of a committee? Or how "designed by a committee" is a recipe for a boring result? Science committees are like that, too.
My point: When a very large committee of scientists says "humanity my be facing a crisis," you can be certain that we are in a lot of trouble. On the positive side, if we address the trouble, we see significant health benefits.
Later in the week, miles away from any major city, I noticed that many of the houses have solar panels. Another day, another ray of hope.
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Vienna 10 April 2019 / Jonathan Krall / revised January 2020