The real question is : "Is environmental activism today more dangerous than it was yesterday". The typical way of computing "dangerosity" is through a ratio. Eg: number of death / kilometer for transportation systems, number of injury / game for sports, ...
Why should the dangerosity of the "environmental activism" activity be computed differently, by only taking into consideration a numerator, and dismissing the denominator ?
>The real question is : "Is environmental activism today more dangerous than it was yesterday".
Why would that be the "real question"? Just because all we have is the hammer of statistical analysis?
More people are getting killed, whether they are environmental activists is not that relevant.
What's relevant is that there is increased willingness to kill in favor of anti-environmnet interests.
>Why should the dangerosity of the "environmental activism" activity be computed differently, by only taking into consideration a numerator, and dismissing the denominator ?
It shouldn't be computed at all, the concern here is not to give people some dangerocity score to help them avoid being killed.
The concern is to stop the interests that kill -- that is, to stop the murders and the murderers, not to avoid them by having people not be environmental activists or be more careful about it.
(Same way we would want to reduce racist crime, not e.g. tell blacks to be more careful. We might also want that, but not as a first priority, as a treatment to the symptoms, not the cause).
Despite this weird sub-thread, the article isn’t talking about “dangerosity”. They’re reporting on the increase in evil activities by anti-environmental mega corps, who are also murdering opposing activists.
The article isn't original reporting at all, it is basically a press release for a report generated by an NGO. It's fine to question the source material here.
What indication do we have that environmentalally unfriendly companies are murdering activists?
I cannot imagine that being their best PR strategy, not to mention the fact that murdering your opposition attracts a lot of scrutiny, investigation, and which corp exec would want to risk going to jail for ordering a hit on an activist. Far more practical to lobby or spread counter marketing spin.
>I cannot imagine that being their best PR strategy
The "backend" 80% of the world doesn't work with PR strategies.
Nobody cares if an activist is murdered in Nigeria or Mexico etc., same way few care about journalists in those area. There will be some reports (if that), most will never even reach your preferred news outlets, and that's it.
And in more subtle areas (outside the developing world) they can always make it look like a "mysterious" homicide case, despite e.g. known threats, beatings, etc, that had been reported prior to the murder.
There are interests of billions to be made, from mega-corps, local lackeys, corrupt politicians and cops on their pockets, and so on.
Same way nobody cares for 10-100 million dollar bribes all too common in big construction, supply, procurement, finance, and so on, tenders. One in 100 might get some scrutiny (usually after the party doing it is out of power with no way to be re-elected, so those affected don't have any clout anymore).
>not to mention the fact that murdering your opposition attracts a lot of scrutiny, investigation, and which corp exec would want to risk going to jail for ordering a hit on an activist.
Lol. No exec "orders a hit" (except if it's some local representative or director and knows the ropes in that area).
Foreign execs convey a message that "this thing is an inpediment", "something must be done" and so on, in the vaguest (but clear) possible ways, and people with a lot to gain locally, paid for those deals, know how to take care of things, with several layers of indirection.
Same way sweatshops and child labour (all the way to small kids working on cobalt mines) have "plausible deniability" from industry execs, and several layers of contractors between them.
Not everywhere is the First World. In many places of the world, you can buy protection from scrutiny and investigation of the local authorities, and remote authorities in London or New York won't likely give a damn about what happened somewhere in eastern Indonesia, for lack of jurisdiction.
Plus, given how dangerous some places are even for locals, you can always plausibly deny your involvement: oh, it was the bandits, they are awful to everyone.
Arguably, if journalists and activists get a credible understanding that investigating this activity is likely to just get you hurt or killed without achieving anything, that "a good deed won't go unpunished", then this reputation would decrease scrutiny and investigation.
> They’re reporting on the increase in evil activities by anti-environmental mega corps
Is there an increase, though?
The BBC has sadly become known to be rather loose with facts. The answer to the upstream question here would let us know if there is an increase and what kind. Absolute? Relative? How big of a problem is this, really, or is it more of the BBC fomenting noise and anxiety for clicks.
We're trying to get information to understand the world better. People who run around insisting that x piece of information is irrelevant and how dare you ask either don't understand the question or have something to hide
You know what? Sure, let’s assume the BBC is “FUDing for clicks”. We’ll ignore the source report, and general common sense.
Do you think that these murders (as stable or as decreasing as you believe them to be) should not be reported on? And that your statistical skills somehow matter to the real world activists dying?
> Do you think that these murders (as stable or as decreasing as you believe them to be) should not be reported on?
Personally, I don't like this kind of discourse. It gets people excited, anxious, and not thinking clearly, as intended. That would be ok with me maybe, if there ever were some good results from that (e.g. effective environmental control, or good legislation), but there never, ever is.
I could go through and answer your questions as if we were talking for real, but your response is kind of a poison pill, designed to put me on the defensive ("Oh, of course I didn't mean...")
No. The adults in the room do need to know if activists are being murdered at an ever increasing rate, or if we can devote our limited time and attention to other very important matters. We don't like to be guided to the "proper" opinion by people who will shout But it's murder,
you cold-hearted nerd! if we go off track and ask for accurate information
Effectively you’re saying that a status quo of stable-percentage murders is okay. I (and others on this post) are saying that any non-zero percentage is bad. So I guess we fundamentally disagree then.
Nobody thinks murder is okay, and if this is the way you conduct discourse you're probably working against your own goals.
There is a lot more behind a statistic than just a number or trend-line, one which often requires single or multiple policy changes that could take years. So yes, observing that the trend line goes and keeps going down is good, a sharp rise is a cause for concern. That is not the same thing, at all, as thinking the status quo is just fine.
The article premise was not "Environmental Activists continue to be murdered at a rate higher than the general populace".
It instead implies that it is an increasing problem, without giving us the tools to evaluate the claim or understand the scope of the problem.
If you want to accept such claims as true, go ahead. That practice won't arm you to understand your world better, but will instead make you excitable and easily swayed.
> The real question is : "Is environmental activism today more dangerous than it was yesterday".
Why would that be a real question? The activism itself should not be life threatening activity. If the amount of killed activists is proportionally the same every year ... then there is still have real issue.
So if bands of luddites stated murdering software developers, this would not be a problem if the overall growth of the industry was larger than the rate of murders?
Yes, seriously. Number one failure in sensationalized reporting is base rate fallacy: they point out a high absolute number, implying something strange is going on, whereas usually the denominator - which they neglect to mention - has rose proportionally, meaning there's nothing newsworthy there.
I don't mean this is the case here (I'm yet to read the article itself) - but this failure mode in reporting is so common that it's a good habit to immediately look for / question lack of base rate data.
I get that at some point murder becomes statistics, but I still feel the need to re-emphasize that this is murder. Not more folks getting the flu because there are more folks.
The larger point is that some (very small) percentage of people will be murdered every year. If the number of climate activists increases, the chance of one of them being murdered increases with it - possibly just by being involved in a random shooting or family drama, completely unrelated to their activism.
I agree that murder is horrible, but the article seems to try to sell that these murders are related to their activism, which is not something you can say just based on the absolute number. You need to have the ratio to compare to the last year and to the base rate in the general population to make a better statement. Without it, we can't be sure of the real cause and might try to fix this at the wrong place, leading to us to not prevent murders effectively - so yes, you need to get your statistics right, even when talking about horrible incidents.
i disagree with the implication that murder somehow shouldn't be looked at in statistical terms. I am not saying it should only be looked at in statistical terms, but it is one important way of looking at it.
>whereas usually the denominator - which they neglect to mention - has rose proportionally, meaning there's nothing newsworthy there.
there is not necessarily a reason to assume that the percentage of murder of activists is going to stay the same if you increase the number of activists, although it may be the case.
The point of having the denominator is so that you don't need to assume anything, you can just know which way the rate is going.
Perhaps you're right that in this case, the rate isn't going to stay constant. But in general, with news reporting, I found it safe to assume that if the rate was rising, they would've reported on the denominator too - the reason to omit it is usually because it would kill the story.
EDIT:
To expand on this further - and again, I'm defending the original question as a perfectly legit one, not trying to diminish the fact that we're talking about murders here - you always want to see the whole fraction spelled out, numerator and denominator, because the other common trick to deceive with numbers is by providing only the ratio itself. E.g. "over past year, incidents of $crime rose by 80%", or "$substance increases your cancer risk by 300%", where the unmentioned denominator is "3" and "0.00001", respectively.
The way I see it: even if we're talking about clear tragedies or acts of evil, it's always better to have an accurate picture of what is being talked about.
> there is not necessarily a reason to assume that the percentage of murder of activists is going to stay the same if you increase the number of activists
If activists are being murdered for activism, the rate among activists will go up. If a greater share of the population is becoming activist, and are being randomly murdered for non-activist reasons, that’s a different story.
if the number of police rise does the ratio of police being killed on the job stay the same?
what if 5% of the workers at big corporations are willing to kill activists for activism, those 5% are busy killing activists, if the activists increase unless the corporations increase the number of people they have willing to kill activists it follows that there are not going to be a significant increase in the number of murdered activists.
In short there can be all sorts of reasons why the percentage of activists killed for activism would not remain constant.
All you wrote is exactly why you want to know the base rate (or several, against different possible hypothesis). Otherwise, it's not possible to even speculate about these things productively.
as you'll notice in my first reply to you I never said I did not want to know the base rate - what I said was - first quoting you
>whereas usually the denominator - which they neglect to mention - has rose proportionally, meaning there's nothing newsworthy there.
then in my reply to you
>there is not necessarily a reason to assume that the percentage of murder of activists is going to stay the same if you increase the number of activists, although it may be the case.
again, nothing about not needing to know the base rate, just noting that there might reasons for the rate of murders to not rise proportionally.
After writing something so straightforward that it might as well be observing that water is wet I've gotten a number of responses from people whom, just as straightforward, seem to want to inform me that the sun is out today and are intent on hammering it into my thick skull despite my never having said otherwise.
This assumes that there is an infinite capability and willingness to kill activists.
If you have 100 ppl demonstrating against a hydro dam and 1 gets murdered later that night it does not follow that there likely would have been 2 killed if 200 ppl demonstrated.
These are murders of people. The pertinent comparison (for those interested in the whole "murders" thing) is with how many murders there were in previous years, whether it's gone up, etc, information which is covered in the article. To say there's nothing newsworthy about these murders, just because you were personally interested in a number you couldn't find in the article, is crass.
No. These are murders of "people who do XYZ". If we looked at murders of people who play Fortnite from 5 years ago until now, we'd see a clear trend, for no reason other than the fact that the number of people who play Fortnite has ebbed and flowed.
I don't know anything about this particular situation, but your callous dismissal of this indisputably correct warning is wrong.
I didn't say there's nothing newsworthy about these murders. I said, in my paragraph, that sensationalized articles in general (and note that I didn't say this one definitely is in this category) often don't report the base rate, because it would reveal they're reporting a non-story. And I said that to counter cenophor's objection to ArchieMaclean's question, by pointing out it's pretty much the first question one should be asking when discussing an article/report that doesn't provide that number.
> The pertinent comparison (for those interested in the whole "murders" thing) is with how many murders there were in previous years, whether it's gone up, etc, information which is covered in the article.
It wasn't, at least not directly. The numbers I saw are:
- 227 activists killed in 2020, the titular record number
- 4 activits / week on average being killed since the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2015[0]
You can tease out some insight from deconstructing the average (e.g. the 2020 number is above the average), but not much really. Not enough to tell you whether something has changed about this situation.
Also, please don't assume people asking for more clarity and better data are ignoring the human life context of the story.
--
There seems to be an error in the reported context of that figure - Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015, but signed in April 2016 and became effective from November 2016 - per - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement.
Of course we should be doing all we can to prevent murder! It is just always hard to tell with statistics and having a more honest statistic (that, say, shows that murder rates have doubled while number of activists have increased 30%) would be preferable.
The increasing number of activists murders to me only indicates that the killers and especially whoever is behind them isn't being caught and is still free to eliminate again and again people they find inconvenient for their businesses. If each one of them was arrested and given a life sentence after each murder, whether committed or by contract, we probably would have solved the problem ages ago.
Those people have shitloads of money at disposal for hiring gunmen, so I expect they can buy other people among the local law enforcement too.
I’m not sure what kind of number you’re looking for. There’s no global registry tracking the population of environmental activists - just that when people are murdered by anti-green corporations, we can figure out that the person’s activism is what caused it.
Quoting from the methodology section of the report:
> To meet our criteria, a case must be supported by the following available information:
> Credible, published and current online sources of information.
> Details about the type of act and method of violence, including the date and location.
> Name and biographical information about the victim.
> Clear, proximate and documented connections to an environmental or land issue.
When people are murdered, we can't be sure who did it unless there's evidence. The methodology doesn't seem to include gathering evidence of who the murderer was, only that the murder happened to an activist. Saying "when people are murdered by anti-green corporations" is begging the question, because the report doesn't pass on any evidence that they were murdered by anyone in particular.
> Who else do you think is going around conveniently getting rid of activists that oppose profit and greed?
You're missing the point. People are murdered all the time for all sorts of reasons, including people who happen to be activists. The question is: are activists being murdered for their activism or for some other reason? Until you can demonstrate that, you simply don't have grounds to suspect megacorps or their agents are doing the murdering.
For example, the number of people who listen to Ed Sheeran music has risen enormously in the last decade. So has the number of Ed Sheeran listeners who were murdered. It doesn't follow that they were murdered because they have dubious taste in music—just that as the population of Sheeran fans grows so does the number of people in it being murdered. That might happen even if the overall murder rate was going down.
nope. What has that got to do with my comment? Someone was implying that it was impossible, I was saying that claim was implausible. People estimate those kinds of numbers all the time for statistical purposes.
It's important to see the direction we're going in. If the number of activists increased by an order of magnitude (for example), we would be on a great trajectory to reduce these murders. If the number of activists stayed the same, this would be a horrible development.
Of course corporate murder is horrible, but the world is on fire (quite literally). Without putting the numbers in perspective, there's no way to tell whether we need to put our resources towards fighting activist murders or, for example, clan criminality.
It's not the first time I complain about these articles from the same company popping up onto the front page, and I am really wondering how they are consistently doing this.
For a format that is easier to consume and isn't marketing content, see:
> I am really wondering how they are consistently doing this.
Because they're useful articles?
As for what you linked, the second edition book about classes isn't even started, and the first edition book only goes up to ES6. If I'm here for the thing in the title, class static blocks, that doesn't help at all.
Thanks for saving us from potential frustrations and for reminding us that helping others can be simply an act of kindness without a monetization scheme attached.
You can say the same things about a lot of things in many countries, someone can probably say the same about the one you live in.
I suspect the censorship that you talk about are not as black and white as you seem to be trying to project. It's easy to cherry-pick the things that you don't like to get your own view across.
Not really sure what you are trying to achieve here than to push your own personal viewpoints on things that you don't like? I mean, I could say something like "I'm always kind of surprised by people who want to move to the US because the lack of gun laws", and what does that achieve?
> Not really sure what you are trying to achieve here than to push your own personal viewpoints on things that you don't like? I mean, I could say something like "I'm always kind of surprised by people who want to move to the US because the lack of gun laws", and what does that achieve?
The previous post simply engaged the original with additional comments on why someone might not want to move to Australia. You could always counter with your own thoughts on the matter. This is a place to discuss ideas. The post hardly felt pushy to me, and I don’t understand the skepticism of the poster’s intentions.
> The post hardly felt pushy to me, and I don’t understand the skepticism of the poster’s intentions.
Two things that lead me to thinking that:
* Blanket statement on censorship without providing further details and references
* Picking a policy that affects a small part of the population and referencing articles that already say that many experts already find problematic
I think it's great that you could read the comment with good intentions, but the way that the details are presented and cherry-picked doesn't sit right with me.
I can only agree to disagree on your point that's just part of how we communicate.
> I've heard from various Mainland Chinese people: that many of them thinks western media brainwashes us (think the thing about Olympic photo coverage of Chinese medalists) and many condemn westerner take on social matters (the US' handling of [COVID], for example, is seen as a "proof" that the our infatuation with freedom has severe failings).
That's clearly anecdotal because I worked and lived there for a year recently and what you said is only what *some* of them think.
I have spoken to many people, particularly those who are yonung and educated, who don't think like what you have said. Many people are also very eager to speak to foreigners about their governments and, in some extreme cases, they openly criticize their own for exactly the same reasons that much of the HN crowd probably would. Also, I was just a regular worker who wasn't anyone's boss, and I spoke to them in Chinese.
I'm not interested in debating against anecdotes with more anecdotes, but I think what you said is not the whole story of "their side" and is potentially manipulative even if it wasn't your intention to be.
I also don't think "authoritarian" is a loaded word, it's just an indication of how likely or unlikely someone is willing to work with others openly. The important thing is what to do to fix it, hopefully, together, after realizing what the issues could be, not toning in down and making everyone comfortable with some illusions in the first place.
What I'm reacting to is the general tone that the CCP just forces draconian measures down everyone's throats as if no one could possibly ever agree, but also not dare speak up. What I mean is that the characterization that the whole populace just puts up with crap is a bit inaccurate because there are in fact supporters, just like there are both supporters and detractors to controversial government decisions on this side of the pond.
As someone else pointed out, these initiatives get passed precisely because there's enough support for it at some relevant branch of government, rather than being some sort of dictatorial whim of the party leader. And this process doesn't strike me as being super different from the way our democratically elected representatives bring up new bills.
No offense but I used to do this and I now think of it as a means of lying to myself that I have covered myself from the "edge cases" that don't support my obviously non-neutral arguments.
> And this process doesn't strike me as being super different from the way our democratically elected representatives bring up new bills.
This is the reason that I disagree with the rest of what you said.
There are no democratic elections in China, and the people who often end up making decisions for everyone else are selected and groomed to do that *according to the party's values* early on in life. What that means is that you won't be making any decisions in the first place if they feel that your values and motives do not, or have a chance that they will not, align with the part's interest.
So who gets in? It's people who are truly patriotic (and probably getting exploited for that), people with the relevant lineage, or mostly people who are just in it for career progression, power and money because the states control so much that you just simply can't advance without being part of the party.
In non-authoritarian countries you often have some means of recourse, including putting pressure on the government with media, if the government screws up. You can't even disagree with the CCP to begin with because the means of communication for most people are censored by the government. There are literally laws that the government can punish you with even if you just remotely disagree with the government.
Most people just want to live a normal life and value their assets and family above all. The country is generally growing well economically, so there are no real reasons for them to risk what they have in exchange for some intangible idealistic things that they have never experienced. This is literally the citizens self-policing themselves because control is deliberately built into every layer.
It is super different.
People literally do not dare to speak up, it's not anti-CCP people making up antagonistic stories.
> because there are in fact supporters, just like there are both supporters and detractors to controversial government decisions on this side of the pond.
I'm sure there are in fact supporters for pervasive control and surveillance in the name of protecting children and society. However, at least on "this side of the pond" we can oppose it without fearing any repercussions from the government. I can trash the policy all I like on any social media platform I want, I can write opinion pieces and submit to newspapers, I can organize groups to oppose the policy — all without fearing repercussions from the government. Can you do any of that under the CCP?
Get a piece of paper, divide it into acceptable and unacceptable, write down the things that fall into each category that align with your core values, then come back to read your arguments.
If you don't think there are any contradictions, great. If there are, perhaps there is nothing wrong with "the general tone" that you find problems with.
Your description sounds pretty on point with what I've observed as well, and I want to clarify that I'm not defending China nor trying to belittle the very real differences between China and US ideology.
To try to address the root of your objection: the main difference IMHO is the idea of disagreeing/activism being based on notions of arbitrary freedom vs the one-way-or-highway approach being based on a notion that there is such a thing as "what's good for you". I think there are good and bad examples of both approaches/outcomes, both in this thread and various recent news topics (e.g. your point about how freedom of speech is a good thing(tm) vs the whole "mah freedom" thing backfiring royally as far as Covid goes)
If we look from this angle, neither ideology really "wins unequivocally", so I don't think I should get to call which framework is ethically acceptable or unacceptable. Instead, I'm trying to call out biases - particularly westerner-leaning ones given that this is a westerner forum talking about an article from a westerner source that quotes western-sympathetic ideas while conveniently not extending the favor to the other side. If you scroll around, you may notice that there are several comments effectively crying "dictatorship", and many failing to grasp the nuance about how this specific policy affects companies more so than children per se, mirroring an overarching anti-China narrative that I've been seeing a lot of lately. If I felt that the reporting was truly unbiased and accurate and that people were interpreting it with unbiased lenses, I wouldn't be taking the position I am here (I am, in fact, largely playing devils' advocate, as my own personal opinions fall more in line with westerner sensibilities)
It depends on your environment. Say if you are at a university or something with students it will be very different than if you are working for a tech company with your Chinese co-workers. Also, southerners tend to be less nationalistic than northerners, so if you are in Beijing it is very different than if you are in Shanghai or Shenzhen (though if you are working at a tech company, your co-workers will be from all over China).
I've had co-workers who were really harmonious river crab, and some that were very non-harmonious grass mud horse...all in the same team. Outside of work, I didn't really talk about politics at all, it just never seemed to be that important beyond a lunch topic.
China was going in the right direction under Hu, if only because Hu was a weak leader. The authoritarian uptick really came back with Xi, and now that Xi has basically become president for life, it is really reinforced. It is a bit disheartening to see China move to being more liberal to more authoritarian all in a few short years. The trend probably won't change for a generation or two.
> It depends on your environment. Say if you are at a university or something with students it will be very different than if you are working for a tech company with your Chinese co-workers.
That's what I thought before I went there but it turned out to not be the case. What I am about to say is anecdotal so take it with a grain of salt.
I actually worked in Beijing. The work I did involved both tech companies and students, and I took the time outside of work to mingle with the locals at restaurants and shops. The amount of people who don't agree with the government was generally "surprisingly" high across all groups.
I should also point out that I never took the initiative to talk about politics, so in all cases it was either people being curious about the culture outside of China or, presumably, I was an outlet for them because I was clearly not affiliated with the government in any way.
I'm just going to leave it at that because anything I say past this point are even more subjective opinions.
I was at Microsoft China from 2007 to 2016 in Zhongguancun, so I probably had similar experiences to you (we had lots of interns as well from local and nation-wide universities).
Politics eventually comes into play, but it was more likely we would talk about the Great Firewall, or some kid getting arrested by the party police during a rave, things like that. Politics came into play when there was some heated event, like the South China Sea dispute, that someone (usually more nationalistic) was really passionate about in the moment.
>the right direction under Hu, if only because Hu was a weak leader
Seems you imply that the right direction for China is having weak leader, which historically it was disaster. That aside, lots of the ugly things on China you heard like airpocalypse, corruption, inequality and weak governance expanded steply under Hu, so there's that.
> There’s an interesting discourse about whether gacha games are anti-consumer or not which I don’t have enough space to do justice to here. Broadly I think they have some challenges similar to gambling, insofar as many adults gamble recreationally and enjoy it, while some are clearly harmed by it. I used to think that free-to-play games’ dependence on whales was strong evidence that they were a negative development, but I heard an argument from the CEO of Kongregate which changed my mind. Distilled to its essence, it is that “Many whales are simply employed professionals who enjoy what they enjoy, and professionals historically spend a lot of money on what they enjoy. Why should we have contempt for this in a video game when we don’t if it is e.g. figure skating or wine?” I recommend reading or watching the entire talk if you’re interested in this topic.
I find it pretty disingenuous to put this in the footnote and brush it off as "not having enough space", and then went on to justify it with an opinion from someone who clearly has stake in this space.
Equating whales with professionals is just completely missing the point, and is simply marketing speech that masks the underlying problem.
A lot of mechanisms in Gacha games are engineered dark patterns whose sole purpose is to make money. They are basically there to exploit those who are psychologically more susceptible.
It's ironic that the author uses Genshin Impact as an example and then went on to say something about spending more money in Gacha game is a reflection of professionalism. In Genshin Impact you can power up A LOT by spending money on Gacha because you can get substantially better equipment that is otherwise unavailable through normal game play, or you can power up your existing characters, too. Can someone instantly become better at skating with a better pair of skates?
Actually, one of the reasons Genshin is lauded by it's player base is that you can clear the hardest content with free to play characters. The 5 stars have way flashier looking abilities and get more face-time in the narrative, and are generally a bit more meta, but are not leaps and bounds stronger. So Genshin has at least proven that "selling broken OP characters" is not a necessary ingredient to making a $2B hit. That said, other gacha games are definitely all about selling that power.
This reeks like a con-artists rephrasing perfectly normal and mundane observations into scary-sounding situations so that people would buy the air-filter companies that are funding your research.
I'm all for cleaner air and I don't doubt that the already well-established negative effects of high CO2 or VOC concentrations on us, but can we at least keep any discussion to non-anecdotal, strong scientific evidence? None the articles linked both here show any rigorous statistics that pinpoint cause and effects, it's all handwavy conjectures with "common sense" evidence and statistical dressing to show correlation. Correlation doesn't even necessarily mean causality. Some of the articles even have *may" in the title, you can be the judge.
Probably an unpopular opinion given the large amount of anecdotal science already posted.
Dust on carpet is bad and particularly if you don't clean it and let stuff grow - we all know that already and we don't need a laser pointer to show kids how scary it is. Just because you can see it doesn't necessarily mean it's worse, and just because you can't see it doesn't necessarily mean it's better.
It's just insanity that everyone is suddenly a scientists with a few anecdotes or links to articles that show correlation but not causality.
"Data from the UK National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory
indicate that particles from brake wear, tyre wear and road surface wear currently constitute
60% and 73% (by mass), respectively, of primary PM2.5 and PM10 emissions from road
transport, and will become more dominant in the future. Currently they contribute 7.4% and
8.5% of all UK primary PM2.5 and PM10 emissions. Therefore to achieve further gains in PM2.5
and PM10 air quality in relation to road transport sources requires attention to reducing non-
exhaust emissions, not solely a focus on lowering exhaust emissions.
The magnitudes of non-exhaust emissions are, however, highly uncertain, particularly when
compared to data for exhaust emissions."
Ah yes, the countryside. Not quite sure how we're going to be housing 7+billion in the countryside.
Doesn't seem like a practical solution. Not in the least because moving the countryside will increase car dependence and pollution. But I guess the view might be nicer in the short term.
I agree that air quality is probably neglected. Mechanical ventilation (with or without heat/enthalpy recovery) with filters seem like a net win in every dwelling. I haven't had to open a window since installing mine. Less pollen, way less mosquitos, and constant fresh air. A lot cheaper in the long term than those gimmicky devices which circulate indoor air and filter out a bit. If it's in your house, you've already inhaled it.
Seems like on of those cases where "what is good for the individual is bad for the whole population if every body follows the advice" I remember seeing this when I took economics but I can't remember how it is called.
The universal principle of Kant's categorical imperative is likely this.
Something like, take actions that were the principles behind them applied to and adopted by all of society, that society would still be one you'd like to live in.
FWIW, I moved outta the city and bought a farm and it's been the best move of my life.
It sounds like you violated the very imperative you mentioned, though. If everyone did what you did, the world would be worse. This doesn't address the problem at hand.
First off, there's not enough land for the world's population to live like that. If everyone tried to do that, there'd actually be more stress because people would be fighting over their precious extra acre.
>Everyone here seems so insanely focused on carbon emissions
Given climate change and what drives it, is it any wonder? Creating some disasters in the future so we can have less stress now isn't a very good tradeoff.
It's like voting--if you know game theory, you know that voting is a waste of your time.
If I spent all my life avoiding "car dependence" at all, much less with the goofy fervor of the virtue-signalling green crew on the internet, I'd have roughly zero impact on climate change.
As it stands, I get to enjoy big ol' diesel trucks and dirtbikes and motorcycles.
Plenty of people don't enjoy these things and are happy sitting on the bus and enjoying things in cities, movie theaters or museums or whatever.
I just have different preferences.
Luckily, my preferences seem rare, so it's no worry.
Also, the biggest driver of climate change is the sun.
Sounds like a prisoner's dilemma, where from an individual perspective it makes sense to make a certain decision, but the same holds true from anyone else's perspective, and when everyone does it you end up in a worse-off situation than if everyone had cooperated.
Having lived in the "countryside" most of my life, it would absolutely increase "car dependence" (and thus pollution) for people to move there. Public transportation simply isn't possible on those scales.
We had maybe a dozen neighbors within a mile of us. Town was 5 miles away. School was in town. We had a nursery next to us, but the next nearest job was in town.
Even if you restricted what you're saying to the actual towns, that town currently has 3000 people in it. It only had 1000 when I lived there.
I just checked, and they do apparently have "public transportation" there now. They recommend that you book it 3 days in advance to make sure there's availability. It's pretty clearly designed for people who can't otherwise get around, but does clearly state that it's available for everyone.
>Having lived in the "countryside" most of my life, it would absolutely increase "car dependence" (and thus pollution) for people to move there. Public transportation simply isn't possible on those scales.
It's also not needed most of the time, and surely not everyday.
Plus, the US model of "countryside" life is not the same as in Europe or elsewhere: e.g. "We had maybe a dozen neighbors within a mile of us. Town was 5 miles away. School was in town. We had a nursery next to us, but the next nearest job was in town."
That's not countryside, that sounds like some a rural desert.
Countryside in most of Europe e.g. is networks of villages, that are more or less autonomous.
> networks of villages, that are more or less autonomous.
Apart from the fact that most people there have to do a big shop once a week at the nearest supermarket, or that all the professionals commute out of the countryside to their urban workplaces?
Only the islands are properly autonomous, and even then that just increases the length of time between supermarket trips.
Yes, they have all three. They have pipes connecting them to the country-wide electrical and phone network, and the regional water system.
Autonomous as in "you don't need to visit some city to get all your basics nor you need a car to go miles away to some Walmart to shop", not as in "they make their own electricy locally".
In that most of the month you just walk around your village, go to your shop, your field, the grocers, the super/mini/medium-market, to neighbors and friends, etc, and don't need a car.
You might use it a few times a month if you need something special, to visit another village or the nearest city, and that's it.
So like 1/20 to 1/50 the car use of the average suburban dweller.
Mechanical ventilation (with or without heat/enthalpy recovery) with filters -- what should one look for when evaluating what to purchase? Do you recommend specific brands?
* Do try to get an HRV/ERV if you live in places where the outside air temperature gets >30C or <10C. Otherwise bring in fresh air will cause issues.
* Make sure your system can handle MERV16 filters: they catch more things, but may create more back pressure, so the system has to be designed to handle it. Further nice-to-have upgrades would be HEPA capabilities, and (if you live in wildfire zones) charcoal filters (for smoke/fire smells). You don't have to (always) use the finer filters, but having that option is useful.
* The filter should ideally be 4"/10cm, as they have more surface area, so reduce back pressure and often only have to be swapped every 6 months (sometimes even every 12). They do cost a bit more because of the extra material, but you get convenience. Don't go less that 2"/5cm though.
* The mentioned Zehnder is a good brand, but AFAICT, are higher end systems, and so may be a bit more pricey:
* Consider getting a separate whole house dehumidifier, depending on your climate: sometimes the indoor air temperature may be comfortable (20-25C), but if the relative humidity (RH) gets too hight (>60%) it will feel hot. But the AC won't run because its thermometer will say everything is fine. Temperature and moisture needs to be dealt with via separate mechanical systems.
>Temperature and moisture needs to be dealt with via separate mechanical systems.
Are there dehumidifiers on the market that aren't air conditioners with a bucket under the condenser coils to collect the water? And if you have a whole-house version of one of those, do you need another whole-house air conditioner?
It's a matter of volume: one of the portable ones could be useful in a small apartment/condo, or (if you close the door) a bedroom. But if you have something that is 1000 sq. ft. / 100 sq. m. or larger, you may need multiple portable units. It may be simpler to just install a fixed unit and patch it into your existing ducts.
There's also the fact that you have to empty the portables, so they may stop at 'random' times until you do so. Not sure about their efficiency, given that have space-volume and weight constraints compared to a fixed whole house unit. Plus you have the noise of the unit running in your living space, compared to having it in your mechanical area.
I don't see how what you just wrote supports your assertion that "temperature and moisture needs to be dealt with via separate mechanical systems" or answers my question, "Are there dehumidifiers on the market that aren't [essentially just] air conditioners?" but you don't have to explain if you don't want to.
Yes, a dehumidifier does work on a similar principal as an air conditioner: there's a cold (metal) surface that causes condensation to remove moisture from air as it passes over.
An AC system would then take the heat that is also removed from the air and send it via a refrigerant loop to some place else (usually an outside device). A dehumidifier simply takes the extracted heat to another coil inside itself and reheats the air to (roughly) the same temperature.
The purpose of a furnace is to put heat into air, of AC to take heat out† (which just so happens to also change the RH), and that of a dehumidifier is to remove moistures while not altering temperature.
If your thermostat already reads (say) 25C, but your RH is 70% (e.g., due to a lot of cooking), then it's going to feel much higher than 25C. So do you crank the AC? You drop the temperature down to 20C, but the RH may still be 60%, and still feels too warm/muggy for you. Do you crank it to 18C? Running the AC, even though the thermostat says things are "fine", can use a lot of energy just so you can feel comfortable. There's a reason why the "humidex" / 'feels like' concept is often mentioned in weather reports: it has both psychological and physiological effects (wet-bulb 35C is a real thing).
Also note that, in winter, even if the temperature and humidity are okay, it may still feel too cold because of mean radiant temperature:
MRT is why people feel a "draft" near windows. There is 'extra stuff' going on the walls and windows and thermal bridging. Do a search for ASHRAE 55 for various factors that go into making a comfortable (indoor) environment:
† AC was actually originally created for humidity control by Willis Carrier specifically for printing, to keep the ink and paper consistent and not runny. Cooling humans was only "discovered" as a use case later.
I opted for Zehnder using a DIY package. If you have basic DIY skills you can install it yourself in a couple of days. Comes with semi-flexible ducting, which is super easy to use. I have fresh air delivered to the living room & bedrooms, and extraction in the kitchen/bathroom/utility room. The unit does heat recovery in winter, which ought to save a bit on the heating bill. It's early days, so we'll see how that goes.
Many electric cars use the motors for regenerative braking instead of the actual breaks. I also have no sources at hand, but I believe brake dust is greatly reduced with electric cars.
Tire wear, well, from what I can tell electric cars seem to chew through tires more quickly due to the weight of the vehicles and the high torque. No sources at hand for this, either…
Even in a PHEV that effect is very noticable. I have a Volvo XC60 T8, 2.2 tonne SUV, and 10k miles in the brake pads are like new. When I had the car serviced recently all pads measured the same thickness as new pads - I'm 100% convinced it's because I just use regenerative breaking all the time, extremely rarely engaging actual brakes. In a car this heavy the pads should be at least half gone after 10k miles, but since they are rarely used they just don't wear out.
>>Tire wear, well, from what I can tell electric cars seem to chew through tires more quickly due to the weight of the vehicles and the high torque.
I think part of it is the incidental result of most electric cars being both very high torque and very high horsepower. Any 400bhp+ car is going to chew threw tyres quickly, and that's what a lot of the big expensive EVs are. I'd like to see if something like the the Leaf or ID3 use tyres anywhere near as quickly - I suspect very much not.
The value priced EVs typically come with narrow low rolling resistance tires that have the kind of friction coefficient that tends to get online comment sections whipped into a frenzy of pearl clutching about safety when poor people buy them for their 20yo ICE cars. It's hard to make a 1 for 1 comparison with the luxury EVs that use soft wide tires to take advantage of all that torque.
Nitpick: Most EVs are pretty low horsepower. You just don't care because you have ~100% of it available at any RPM.
Not as quickly as the Teslas, but my 21K mile LEAF is due for front tires soon. That’s significantly sooner than OE tires on a typical competitive car.
> electric cars seem to chew through tires more quickly due to the weight of the vehicles and the high torque. No sources at hand for this, either…
A Nissan LEAF weighs about the same as a Honda CR-V. Smaller EVs weigh less.
A large-battery EV will weigh more. The Tesla Model S, for example. But not all EVs have large batteries.
As for living near roadways in general, it has an unhealthy effect on "30%-45% of the North American urban population" according to the American Lung Association. [1]
Despite the screeching of many an online commenter ICE vehicles can make similar torque in normal driving situations. Most new cars can roast the tires through the first several gears if the traction control will let you.
I think the difference is that EVs make no extra noise when you step on it so people feel more free to use more of the acceleration capability of the vehicle.
The other difference is that for most modern ice, you get plenty of torque, but only a quarter second after you asked for it due to turbo lag. With an EV, the torque is instant.
> Best personal solution would probably to move to the countryside.
Depends on the country. In Central and Eastern Europe countryside often has worse air quality than cities during winter (because in the cities there's central heating system and co-generation and in the countryside almost each house burns coal for heating).
Not all countryside have clean air. Air from more polluted areas can carry pretty far (like Wildfire smoke, Ozone).
For current air quality levels and maps, you can check AirNow[1] for US and Canada, or IQAir[2] for anywhere in the world.
It fluctuates every day (like today for me it's just under 50 or 'good', but just yesterday it was over 100) so it's better to look at trends. AirCompare EPA[3] can tell you how many poor air quality days over the past several years on a county by county basis, although not every county reports this (and probably generally the more rural counties don't).
Reducing car dependence really ought to be in the top 3 of environmental action points. Clean up energy production, reduce car dependence, start removing CO2 from the atmosphere. There are about 1 BILLION cars in use. It boggles the mind.
This is the big thing hidden behind all projects (renewables, capture, efficiency upgrades) that claim "this is the equivalent of taking 60,000 cars off the road." Think of the savings for health and the environment if we just spent the money trying to get an actual 60,000 cars off the road in the first place.
The country side is not a silver bullet. It has its own set of problems with pesticides and second-order pollution such as ozone which can be higher than in urban areas. And as other have pointed out, moving to the country side does induce significant extra driving.
>>In some countries they're also displacing leaded gasoline which is a double win when it comes to intelligence affects of pollution
Excuse me, but what? Leaded petrol has been phased out almost everywhere in the world, even according to wiki:
"only Algeria, Yemen, and Iraq continue widespread use of leaded gasoline. None use it exclusively".
I doubt any of those countries are seeing significant EV uptake either.
The only potential real connection here is how in some countries where leaded petrol is still legal but extremely rare(UK), and pretty much only ever used by classic car owners and even then rarely due to its extreme cost, maybe some of these cars are getting converted to EV drivetrains and therefore don't actually burn leaded petrol anymore. Maybe. But that will be extremely negligable, and literally a statistical error compared to the amount of leaded fuel still being burnt by the aviation industry.
I have never heard the brake and tire argument, but it sounds like the 'batteries are worse for the environment than gas' argument which is not very accurate.
Makes you wonder if there are companies who benefit from information such as this being believed. Companies such as Shell maybe?
Edit: Not saying it isn't true! Just saying there might be more sides to this.
Tire wear is a matter of friction. Higher weight, higher friction, thus more wear. In this isolated instance, electrical cars are likely to be worse off than regular cars due to generally higher weight. Perhaps this is offset by regenerative breaking systems though. I'm sure you could make that argument on other parts of the EV as well.
Outside of isolated areas like that, I would be seriously surprised if electrical cars comes worse off than gasoline cars on the whole. There has been some talk about CO2 emissions made when making hydro electric dams, for instance, but then there's also CO2 emissions when making oil platforms, and so on, so IMHO those kinds of discussions quickly become very theoretical. Either way, I'm sure EV's are better off in terms of local emissions, meaning that they reduce local smog, and so on.
On the other hand, EV's can very well run on coal, if that's how your local electricity is produced. In that case, how well EV's do environmentally speaking is due to the total effort made by society. For that reason I'd love to see a comparison of gasoline and diesel versus coal. Which one is the cleanest?
AFAIK there are some real issues with the way lithium is mined for the batteries, however, that doesn't strictly involve emissions. So there are many pros and cons in the debate on electric vs gas cars that aren't obvious to the casual on-looker.
I don't have a particular horse in this race myself, but I do note that those who do, tend to offer arguments that are more strongly coloured by their preference.
Personally environmental safety isn't the only deciding factor. There's also such things as cost and reach. And I don't just mean how many miles a car can run on one tank, but also its longevity. On the whole it seems to me that EV's have a higher capital cost (up front cost), that might not make up for the savings you make by running it.
On the whole it seems to me that gasoline cars have far better overall longevity than EV's, with the offset that EV's are cheaper to run, though with slightly more hassle in the "refuelling" department. For me personally, winter cold is an issue, since it severely affects battery capacity. On the other hand, those Teslas do look pretty cool.
> electrical cars are likely to be worse off than regular cars due to generally higher weight.
Given that a Nissan LEAF weighs about the same as a Honda CR-V, and that there are many EVs that have the same weight or are lighter than the Nissan LEAF, I would say that you are considering only a select group of EVs.
Here are some examples of popular electric cars and how much they weigh in order of weight:
Model X Long Range – 2459 kg without passengers or fuel (7 adult capacity).
Tesla Model S Performance – 2241 kg without passengers or cargo (5 adult capacity).
Tesla Model S Long Range – 2215 kg without passengers of cargo (5 adult capacity).
Model 3 Performance and Long Range AWD – 1847 kg without passengers or fuel (5 adult capacity).
Nissan Leaf – 1775 kg without passengers or fuel (5 adult capacity).
Chevrolet Bolt – 1616 kg without passengers or fuel (5 adult capacity).
Opel/Vauxhall Ampera-E – 1611 kg without passengers or fuel (5 adult capacity).
Renault Zoe, 44 kWh – 1480 kg without passengers or fuel (5 adult capacity).
Hyundai Kona – 1399 kg without passengers or fuel (5 adult capacity).
BMW i3 – 1343 kg without passengers or fuel (5 adult capacity).
Based on this, and the upcoming plans of many automakers to launch pickup truck and SUV type EVs, I would say that a significant portion of EVs will be heavier than the average car on the road currently.
The EV market is about 2% of car sales in the US. I doubt that we would be right to predict double-digit growth happening suddenly.
A Ford F150 (the most popular pick-up truck) weighs about the same as the Tesla Model 3. The top-selling vehicles in the US are all pick-up trucks.
The Toyota Camry (a popular sedan) weighs about the same as the Nissan LEAF. The Prius Prime is also in this weight range.
A Honda Fit (a popular small car) weight about the same as a Smart EQ. Small cars are not what US consumers are choosing.
Your argument is a hypothetical projection of Tesla-class EVs into a very large market-share. In reality, consumers are choosing larger, heavier ICE vehicles.
Your argument proves my point. The customers that are currently choosing larger, heavier ICE vehicles will choose the same form factor of EV when given the option, and that F150 which currently weighs the same as a Tesla Model 3 will add on however many hundreds of pounds a battery pack weighs. Same goes for the Camry, it weighs the same as a LEAF (a much smaller car) now, but when you add the battery pack in the bottom, now it weighs the same as a Model S.
I see, you imagine the current ICE-Vs with batteries. But US consumers want large vehicles and ICE-comparable range.
Very large EV batteries are expensive. Your conjecture may hold if the cost of Tesla-sized batteries becomes much cheaper (approximately half the current 2021 cost).
EVs are likely to remain a small market in the US. Hybrids make more sense for cost and range. In Europe, the EV market is growing rapidly. Although some people can afford the Tesla, small EVs are popular in Europe. And the small EVs are not especially heavy vehicles, as the data show.
* Weight of the average Small family car (C) (same class as the Nissan Leaf): 1,365 kg ^[1]
* Weight of the Nissan Leaf: 1,560 kg ^[2]
Difference: 1,560-1,365 = 195 kg.
So about two washing machines in difference... :) And that's by giving you credit by comparing the heaviest average within the same car class. The lightest one yields a three washing machine diff.
I think we differ in our perception of "small" and "mid-size" car.
But even so, 195 kg is the weight of a driver and passenger. If we consider this to be a decisive factor in pollution, we had better also consider the obesity epidemic as a factor in tire wear. ^_^
One possible explanation is that I live in a different market. In any case, the weight comparisons are the real data to use. The Nissan LEAF is heavier than some cars, but much lighter than the most popular ICE-V choices being made by consumers.
Our two cars are a 2015 LEAF and a 2005 CR-V. These aren’t directly competitive cars IMO. The CR-V has much more interior and cargo space, obviously longer range, and better winter road performance.
The LEAF is more directly comparable to a Nissan Versa in size and capability (3500# vs 2500# curb weight).
> I have never heard the brake and tire argument, but it sounds like the 'batteries are worse for the environment than gas' argument which is not very accurate.
It's not quite the same thing as "the long tailpipe fallacy".
Electric cars are great, but let's be clear about what issues they will solve, and which they will not. They will produce _less_ particulate matter pollution due to not having an Internal Combustion Engine, but will not eliminate all sources of particulate matter pollution.
Or even come close - the last link above estimates 60% is "Non-exhaust emissions" from "brake wear, tyre wear, road surface wear and resuspension of road dust"
It's not a showstopper, because the environmental argument for EVs is CO2 and climate change rather than PM2.5 and air quality. But it's worth bearing in mind that they only solve the former.
>>But it's worth bearing in mind that they only solve the former.
That's....almost categorically not true, the PM2.5 emissions should be solved with in ICE cars with inclusion of DPF and GPF filters, but there is plenty of cars without those still on the road. A taxi driver sitting outside of my house at night in his 10 year old Skoda Octavia diesel is definitely contributing to the air pollution around me, and that wouldn't be a problem if he drove an EV or a modern diesel with all the filters functional - but the economics of taxi driving mean they almost always drive crappy old cars which pollute a lot.
> the PM2.5 emissions should be solved with in ICE cars with inclusion of DPF and GPF filters
Unless they filter the tyres, this will not be "solved".
"Non-exhaust emissions (NEE) .. are currently believed to constitute the majority of primary particulate matter from road transport, 60 percent of PM2.5 and 73 percent of PM10"
I can't find it but I did recall there was some rule in France or some Scandinavian country that banned early childhood centres away from within certain distances to highways and a like
How can it not be causality when it's a double-blind intervention? This isn't an epidemiological study that is merely observing correlations in the wild.
> How can it not be causality when it's a double-blind intervention?
The design of the study looks solid and results are certainly statistically significant. With N=24 and the limitations quoted below, I think it's fair to take these results with a grain of skepticism.
But on balance, I found the criticism in GP's comment to be a little over the top.
- "By testing on subsequent days, it is possible that effects from one condition were reflected in the scores obtained on the next day."
- "The environmental factors that were not experimentally modified exhibited some variability owing to changes in outdoor conditions and participant behavior."
- "This study used a controlled environment to individually control certain contaminants. Assessments performed in actual office environments are important to confirm the findings in a noncontrolled setting."
It's not just N=24 because those same participants took 9 independent tests which generates more data. Also, the p-value should be considered along with the N, since the sampling variance of the test statistic will go up with a small N and this is accounted for in the test thresholds, which somewhat offsets that limitation.
But, a larger N and replication studies are needed.
> I'm all for cleaner air and I don't doubt that the already well-established negative effects of high CO2 or VOC concentrations on us, but can we at least keep any discussion to non-anecdotal, strong scientific evidence?
They're so well established that there are industry guidelines, ASHRAE 62.1 and 62.2:
Pull/return air from places like bathrooms and kitchens, and supply air to (e.g.) bedrooms, and in between temper the filtered, fresh air you bring in from the outside with an HRV/ERV:
I agree with your point that this article does use a lot anecdotes and not enough strong evidence to back up the terrifying conclusions it suggests and throws around "may" quite a bit.
I will say though, that similar to investigations on microplastics exposure and health impacts, it can be prohibitively difficult to really have "rigorous statistics" or fully control in studies when it's become so ubiquitous in nearly every environment and when the exact types of pollutants people are exposed to can be very hard to quantify. For any of the more complex compounds it will be very hard to discern what aspect of it causes what exact health outcomes. For example, with microplastics its nearly impossible to find any population without exposure to or detectable amounts of microplastics in their bodies, meaning fully controlling for it in the stats is not possible. The types of plastics people are exposed to can also be very difficult to quantify meaningfully as they don't all accumulate in our tissues and as a result it can be difficult to quantity the actual exposures people have to what pollutants, short of some very unethical experiment designs.
Yes, and maybe we should start doing the science before we make stuff ubiquitous in our environments, rather than trying to figure stuff out after the fact. Leaded gasoline is an example where it took us a long time to understand the effects, and we'll never really be able to quantify the damage caused. And the data you get later from phasing something out at a systemic level gives you only a kind of crude single crossover result, with lots of potential confounding variables. Why did crime in the US decrease in the 90s? We can't be sure.
I'm not saying microplastics are like lead of course. Just that in some cases, we're pretty sure we've caused a lot of damage by filling our environment without sufficient advance consideration.
Yeah it's a really tough problem with no clear answers.
Microplastics and other pollutants with potential long-acting health impacts are very hard to predict far in advance. Strong evidence for or against any adverse health effects would take considerable effort to gather while in the mean time they offers such clear advantages and solve so many problems. Plastics have massively reduced costs in almost every industry and have become almost irreplaceable in some applications such as medical equipment (think packaging for syringes, surgical tools, or anything that requires contamination control).
With lead there were viable cost-effective alternatives, it wasn't in nearly every product we consume, and we already had pretty clear evidence that its highly toxic so the only evidence needed was to show that the low levels being used in gasoline, while not acutely toxic, could be harmful given enough exposure to it over time.
I doubt anyone working on plastics early on anticipated microplastics would end up in nearly all of our food, living spaces, and even build up in our bodies. By the time there would be any alarm bells sounding, it would've been too late, the sheer number and ways it solves problems makes it far too difficult to retreat from when, due to the nature of how its potential effects could arise, wouldn't give any strong evidence that its harmful.
Outside of plastics many air pollutants are similar in that manner. The processes that release them are so convenient and solve so many problems, while any health effects would be long-term and extremely difficult to gather strong evidence for.
There are also many more legitimate studies (and decades of experience) showing that submarine crews working at an order of magnitude or more of CO2 concentrations experience no cognitive effects.
It’s very likely the study you linked is flawed or there is a confounder.
Having worked in filtration, aerosols and the built environment - this has been known for years, the challenge was creating broader understanding of the value of better iaq.
I agree, there is a lot of already well-established knowledge on the topic. I'd also argue though that a lot of ordinary people probably don't know much about the importance of air quality in the home. I never thought about it until I had a house. I suspected something in it was making me a little ill and so I looked into it and bought an air quality testing device. The illness went away so I don't think it was sick building syndrome (unless me using all the water outlets in the house again helped make it go away), but I did find that in my basement, CO2 tends to build up quite a bit. I never knew that this was something that could happen, and that I should open the windows once in a while. So maybe articles like this might raise awareness?
> already well-established negative effects of high CO2 or VOC concentrations on us
I don't know about this. Research is mixed and the US military has tested supposed mental impairment at higher levels of CO2 in sailors inside submarines and found nothing suggesting CO2 levels can effect noticeable cognitive performance.
There are studies on AQ and classroom performance[1][2] that seem to arrive at similar conclusions. Obviously there can be conflicts of interest if the backers manufacture air filters, but I don't see any disclaimers on those, at least.
As my family of 5 wakes up, the CO2 comes down with them as their bedroom doors open (CO2 is heavier than air), and the CO2 level spikes downstairs - and can take a couple hours after opening the windows and doors to get down to the outside baseline CO2 level of about 420 ppm.
Here is a visualization where I did not open the windows right away, and had to close again due to the heat: https://i.imgur.com/1alDAfB.png
On summer days, my servers don't love the heat and humidity of outside air, otherwise I've learned to keep the windows open all day. I do seem to notice a difference in how I feel if the level goes over 1000ppm, but that's really hard to quantify.
Yes, unfortunately houseplants don't do much for air quality[1]. But they do look nice, and they can be satisfying to take care of (unless you kill them, that is).
I lived with some roommates for a year in a big house covered in carpet and we never vacuumed, not once. One of them allegedly had asthma too. We were all fine and I couldn't tell the difference between that place and a vacuumed place. It validated my lifelong supposition that vacuuming is truly a waste of time, a bizarre cultural neurosis we would all be better off without.
I can assure you, as an allergy sufferer, that vacuuming makes a huge difference in my well-being. Dust and pollen build up and make me miserable. Carpet is tougher to clean, and we're having wood floors installed in part to make cleaning easier.
There is probably nothing logically wrong with that question, and you are probably right that there is a correlation. But... seriously?