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A copy of this commentary in PDF format is available
here...
A copy of a graphical presentation of the context and fact in PDF format is
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A copy of the associated notes and observations in PDF format is
here...
UK Air Quality
A commentary on the current (2017/2019) media and campaigning discussion
As the UK and the world’s population, life expectancy and wealth
have increased over the last 200 years or so, and quite dramatically
over the last few decades throughout the world, so the recent clamour
by some campaigning causes has grown ever more shrill.
Whilst
most of the campaigning to continuously improve people’s lives
throughout the world was and is justified, sadly, in common with the
current instant judgement “sound bite” approach to
discussion of important matters, many campaigns now “make a
drama out of a crisis” and they clearly put their
moral judgement, ladled with liberal doses of self-righteous
indignation, ahead of balanced facts and consequent reasonable
action.
One
such is the widespread campaigning regarding UK air quality in the
21st century.
Without
any doubt, and by any measure, the air quality in the UK is better
now than it has been, at least since the industrial revolution (with
it’s consequent, ultimate, rise in living standards for the
vast majority of people in the UK).
Before
that time, in the bucolic age imagined by today’s dreamers,
of course the air quality was cleaner; but the vast majority of
people died by their mid-thirties. So much for clean air!!!!
And
although in certain respects, the recent rate of improvement
in London has slowed during the current century, UK air quality still
remains cleaner than ever, even in London; well at least since London
has been larger than a small developing town.
Those
with any knowledge of the actual measures and known historical facts
know this to be the case.
The
most extreme recent (post Second World War) example of dreadful and
deadly air quality was the infamous coal burning smog’s of the
1950’s.
They
rightly set the course for the year on year improvements, every
year since.
These
modern campaigns, by latching on to the recent COMEAP (2010) and
Royal College of Surgeon’s (2015) reports on the effects of
particulates and Nitrogen Dioxide on human health, and their
statistically calculated “premature” death rates
(with extremely large range of uncertainties), combined with
their recent successful legal actions against the government (thanks
to EU imposed legal limits), have caused the “temperature”
of the issue to be raised to “crisis” and thence
“drama”, and gradually public perception is moved
to some vague new state, mostly one of Chicken Little panic!
The
campaigning tone and supporting media obfuscation, such as “the
growing problem of air pollution”, is simply not supported
at any time or place by the actual measurements from any
location in the UK, including even London.
Everywhere in the UK air pollution is
currently declining year on year, including every year this century.
If,
according to the COMEAP/RCS statistical estimate, 40,000 people in
the UK were dying “prematurely” due to air
pollution in 2010, including 9,400 people in London, it follows
inevitably that in the 50 years before 2010 (probably even
200 years), due to air pollution being worse year on year before
2010, the numbers dying “prematurely” due to air
pollution were higher and higher. And yet life expectancy soared in
those 50 (and 200) years, every year!
Since,
after 2010, air quality has continued to improve every year, it
again follows inevitably that the number of people calculated to
be supposedly dying “prematurely” each year must
have fallen, year on year, every year since!
Note also as referred to
previously, the huge uncertainty about this statistical construct.
This uncertainty yields confidence range limits from as low as just
1/6th of the estimate or 6,700, to as high as double the estimate, or
80,000, for the UK, and therefore from 1,600 to 19,000 for the London
estimate!
In
contrast to all such campaigns conceived on the zealous moral high
ground, the prosaic actual facts, be they economic, financial,
mathematical, chemical or physical, by all measures, show that we are
healthier, wealthier and long lived than ever in human
history.
No matter the naysayers and
hand-ringers clamour that the sky is falling, that we are all dying
(even prematurely), we still remain healthier, wealthier and
long lived than we poor everyday folk have EVER been in the whole of
human history.
And yet the wealthier and healthier
we have become the more miserable, niggardly, gloomy and doom laden
many have become; it seems not also wiser!
Perhaps those same doom merchants
would do as well to live the lives of the majority of the world’s
population, or the lives of their parents or grand parents, to put
modern life in the UK for most in real perspective.
This
is no call for complacency or rampant, unbridled emissions of air
pollutants. There remain many, many issues to tackle, including
slack, lazy government and rich individual and corporate greed, plus
every day ignorance and complacency.
Rather
it is a call for reason, balance and fact based argument,
before dubious hysterical, zealous and knee jerk judgement.
And
above all a call for firm, continuing governmental support for the
REAL sustained improvements that have been wrought, so far, in
people’s lives in the last 100 years.
Rather
than the modern penchant to ban or subsidise everything in a panicked
sop to a minority of vitriolic dreamers, government, entirely paid
for by the taxpayer (“there is no such thing as public money
– there is only taxpayers’ money”), should
honestly and forthrightly live up to the broad social contract; to
keep the nation safe, prevent excess of greed and set and impose
the legal limits to balance economy and environment for everyone’s
benefit, but with a light touch.
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