Deaths From Coal Pollution Have Dropped, But Emissions May be Twice as Deadly (nytimes.com) 83
Coal, the dirtiest of fossil fuels, is far more harmful to human health than previously thought, according to a new report, which found that coal emissions are associated with double the mortality risk compared with fine airborne particles from other sources. From a report: The research, published Thursday in the journal Science, linked coal pollution to 460,000 deaths among Medicare recipients aged 65 and older between 1999 and 2020. Yet the study also found that during that period the shuttering of coal plants in the United State, coupled with the installation of scrubbers in the smokestacks to "clean" coal exhaust, has had salubrious effects. Deaths attributable to coal plant emissions among Medicare recipients dropped from about 50,000 a year in 1999 to 1,600 in 2020, a decrease of more than 95 percent, the researchers found.
"Things were bad, it was terrible," Lucas Henneman, the study's lead author, and an assistant professor in environmental engineering at George Mason University, said in an interview. "We made progress, and that's really good." Researchers from six universities collected emissions data from 480 coal power plants between 1999 and 2020. They used atmospheric modeling to track how sulfur dioxide converted into particulate matter and where it was carried by wind, and then examined millions of Medicare patient deaths by ZIP code.
Though the researchers could not identify exact causes of death, the statistical model showed that areas with more airborne coal particulates had higher death rates. Some 138 coal plants each contributed to at least 1,000 excess deaths, and 10 plants were linked to more than 5,000 deaths apiece, the researchers found. While fine particulate matter, known as P.M. 2.5, is frequently examined for its health risks, the researchers found that inhaling those fine particles from coal exhaust was especially deadly.
"Things were bad, it was terrible," Lucas Henneman, the study's lead author, and an assistant professor in environmental engineering at George Mason University, said in an interview. "We made progress, and that's really good." Researchers from six universities collected emissions data from 480 coal power plants between 1999 and 2020. They used atmospheric modeling to track how sulfur dioxide converted into particulate matter and where it was carried by wind, and then examined millions of Medicare patient deaths by ZIP code.
Though the researchers could not identify exact causes of death, the statistical model showed that areas with more airborne coal particulates had higher death rates. Some 138 coal plants each contributed to at least 1,000 excess deaths, and 10 plants were linked to more than 5,000 deaths apiece, the researchers found. While fine particulate matter, known as P.M. 2.5, is frequently examined for its health risks, the researchers found that inhaling those fine particles from coal exhaust was especially deadly.
Salubrious effects (Score:5, Funny)
But what was the impact on the emissions tendency to obnubilate the area with umbraeic crepuscular impacts under halcyon conditions, only disappearing under ephemeral zephyrian conditions, which merely caused them to peregrinate? Our society's kakorrhaphiophobia has led to futilitarian attitudes toward addressing these pernicious nubilous emissions previously.
Re: (Score:2)
But what was the impact on the emissions tendency to obnubilate the area with umbraeic crepuscular impacts under halcyon conditions, only disappearing under ephemeral zephyrian conditions, which merely caused them to peregrinate? Our society's kakorrhaphiophobia has led to futilitarian attitudes toward addressing these pernicious nubilous emissions previously.
Interesting question.
In contemplating the reverberations of emissions within our milieu, a nuanced interplay emerges, characterized by the propensity to enshroud the locale with umbrageous crepuscular nuances during halcyon epochs. Their evanescent dissipation solely transpires amidst zephyrian ephemera, thereby compelling a nomadic perambulation. The specter of kakorrhaphiophobia within our societal psyche begets a paradigm wherein endeavors to ameliorate these nefarious nubilous emanations are entrenched
Re:Salubrious effects (Score:4, Informative)
Huh? I don't understand what you mean.
Okay, for anyone else having trouble understanding the AC, I ran it through a translator. What they actually mean is:
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Salubrious effects (Score:2)
Worldwide (Score:4, Interesting)
This research focuses on the United States, with a population of 336 million. In summary, within a nation that closed some coal plants and equipped the remaining ones with scrubbers, 460,000 deaths were attributed to coal emissions between 1999 and 2020.
If we extrapolate this data to the global population (8 billion), it suggests a potential 11 million deaths worldwide linked to coal emissions. However, the actual figure is likely higher, possibly doubling or tripling, given that many emerging countries increased their number of coal plants from 2000 to 2020, with limited emphasis on installing scrubbers. This points to an estimated 30 million deaths associated with coal emissions.
It's disheartening to consider that developed countries, such as Germany, can close down nuclear facilities and actively hinder nuclear deployment, opting instead to increase coal consumption (and of the worst kind, they are burning lignite). This seems contradictory to genuine environmental efforts. I am eagerly anticipating the expected comments from typical trolls defending this stance. As you respond, please consider the impact of those 30 million deaths that may be linked to the consequences of your actions.
Re: (Score:1)
Nuclear will ensure an area is unusable for millenia.
What nonsense is this? Do you have any technical understanding of how nuclear plants operate or is this just another "Nukyloor + Ignorance == Scary" diatribe?
Re: (Score:3)
If a nuke plant goes off, yeah, it sucks. But we're far away from 11 millions dead per two decades.
If the official numbers are anything to go by (I highly doubt it, to be honest) we're looking at less than 1000 dead from nuclear plant failures in the history of nuclear plants. But even taking the far more likely closer to reality numbers that various non-governmental organizations, and by far not all of them favorable to nuclear energy, propose, we're still far away from a single million.
In about 70 years.
W
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Depends on how you want to measure their costs vs their value vs the cost/value of whatever could have been built at the time instead.
These numbers are easily manipulated to come up with any result.
Re: (Score:3)
That depends entirely on what you factor in.
Quite frankly, no matter what you spin, someone can spin it the other way around. So it costs the population when the nuke plant goes off since the company running it goes *poof* the same second that plant goes? Ok, so let's compare it to the benefit the population has from cleaner air and fewer lost work days because of fewer sick days due to no noxious fumes that the coal plants give off every single day, not just if there's an accident.
And yes, accidents in coa
Re: (Score:3)
The problem is that we need to do something now, and the perfect is the enemy of the good. So far, nuclear has a good reputation. It is only going to be more necessary when most of the world moves to BEVs, which are not something that can be charged at peak, and require increased base load capacity (mainly because many work/office parking spots don't have chargers available during the day), so it is either more polluting fossil fuel plants, or nuclear.
Nuclear is evolving. Thorium has gone from just menti
Re: Worldwide (Score:2)
Re:Worldwide (Score:5, Interesting)
What about the economics? How much have Chernobyl & Fukushima cost so far? How much more are they likely to cost?
We don't base the economics of an entire industry based off the outliers.
If we based our perception of BEVs only on the Tesla Roadster then the impression would be that BEVs are luxury sport cars that only the "one percent" can afford. If we base our perception of BEVs on what GM has produced then people might be left with the idea that BEVs are severely limited in range like the EV1 and/or fire hazards like the Bolt. On the whole nuclear power is safe, affordable, reliable, and likely to improve if only we allow ourselves to improve the technology. If we gave up on improving battery-electric cars because of what we saw with the first GM EV1 models then we would not have Tesla cars today. It turns out that lead-acid batteries are not great for powering a car, and perhaps Li-ion aren't great either. LFP looks like it could work out for us, perhaps even a return to NiMH, or maybe we find something better. We won't know if we don't experiment with real world BEVs.
What of the economics of nuclear power? We can't know what they cost if we aren't building them, and we can't improve the economics of them if we aren't building them. Nobody can claim with any authority what a new nuclear power plant will cost because there are so few recent examples to draw from to tell us what they cost. Bringing up Hinkley Point as an example doesn't tell us much as we know of a number of factors that drove up costs and created delays there. We have an example out of UAE that tells us we can build a nuclear power plant without massive cost overruns and delays, but we also won't know the economics of the operation for years. So far UAE looks to be doing well enough to try again elsewhere with something similar, and I expect many more like it to follow.
Re: Worldwide (Score:3)
economics? (Score:1)
What about the economics? How much have Chernobyl & Fukushima cost so far?
If you judged the economics of air travel by focusing only on the crashes, you would conclude there is no way an air travel industry could be viable. If you look at the total economics of old-tech nuclear, it was a bargain. Back then, only nuclear and hydro were in a strong position to displace coal. Hansen calculates the net number of lives saved by nuclear power at around 1.8 million. What dollar figure should we put on those lives? Also avoided millions of serious illnesses, and many hundreds of bil
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So why do you think we use so much coal instead of nuclear? It's not the activists - since when have they been able to stop anything when money is involved? If they could we wouldn't still be using petrol, or for that matter coal.
It's because coal is cheap. Or at least it was. And a lot of countries have coal, so it offers some security.
Building really expensive nuclear plants is not how we get away from coal and gas. We need to build stuff that is cheaper, that wins the economic and commercial arguments. B
Re: (Score:3)
When it comes to buck per KW/h, it's pretty hard to compete with fossil. Well, it was, until the Russian war, when prices for liquids and gas skyrocketed. So we now have coal, which is dirty as fuck or gas and petrol, which are expensive. Nobody wants to touch either if there's a way around it.
So far, the good news.
Nuclear plants are expensive to build and expensive to tear down. It's the time in between that makes them attractive and that's also their key problem: Nobody cares about the cost in 30ish years
Re: (Score:2)
It's not the activists - since when have they been able to stop anything when money is involved? [...] It's because coal is cheap
You contradict yourself in the span of two sentences, and you don't even realize it. Anti-nuclear activists could stop and slow down nuclear deployment because money was involved.
Those who oppose nuclear energy bear responsibility for this inconsistency. In a time when coal was cheap, anti-nuclear activists, including yourself, propagated misinformation, favoring coal over one of the few low-CO2 emission energy sources: nuclear power. Your opposition is one of the main reason costs of nuclear have risen in
Re: Worldwide (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
>
> We will likely at some point have some sort of mishap in a nuclear facility.
We've already had that, at Three Mile Island (Londonderry Township, Pennsylvania) on March 28, 1979:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident
I'm not anti-nuke, nukes have their place. Several problems though are NIMBYs, low-bid construction, and poor design.
Re: (Score:2)
Ok. 44 years, not 50. Great.
I hope we can agree on there having been quite the developments in those 44 years. Frankly, if I had to choose between a coal plant being constructed a mile from here and a nuclear plant, I'd probably prefer the nuclear one. Depending on model and variant, of course, but the likely impact on my health is very likely lower.
Re: (Score:2)
One major problem I see is construction costs for nuke plants keeps rising, and it's us the local rate payers who end up paying it.
I retired eight years ago after over 33 years in the PA state transportation agency, SEPTA, who had to use "Low Bid" contract bids for everything. That was a problem sometimes as anyone could (and did!) bid on projects and various materials that SEPTA needed. This c
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not in general a nuclear support (for cost reasons), but your statement is nonsense. Indeed, if they're anything remarkable about nuclear disasters, it's how few people kill. For the general public outside a plant, they're accidents in slow motion. You have time to flee (unless you're under say the USSR trying to hide it or whatnot... even there, not many people died). Indeed, most of the lives lost in normal situations are due to the evacuation, not the accident - Fukushima for example had zero death
Re: Worldwide (Score:3)
Your points about renewables and batteries is supported by this recent article [reuters.com] discussing the nearly 70 planned gas power plants worldwide that have been paused or cancelled due to the economics of batteries rapidly improving. That's a small dent in the scheme of things (20 are expected to come online in 2024-25 in the US alone), but it does point to a difficult future for the technology. Work on sodium-ion grid-scale batteries has the potential to further harm the economics of gas plants, and other tech su
Re: (Score:2)
* Long-distance (such as HVDC) transmission (greater geographic diversity = less weather randomness)
That might work in nations with large flat plains like Canada, Russia, USA, China, and India but what is the rest of the world to do?
The many small nations in Europe could potentially ask Russia nicely for use of their large flat plains to put up windmills but I suspect that would only end in another dispute like what is going on now with natural gas. Nations like Israel isn't likely to get along with the neighbors for a supply of energy from solar panels in some desert. Japan, South Korea, and many other
Re: (Score:2)
Europe is none of the following:
* Abnormally densely populated
* Abnormally rugged
You also, strangely, implicitly imply that offshore wind is onshore.
You also go on to wrongly imply that batteries take up any meaningful amount of space (they do not).
Re: (Score:2)
Europe is none of the following:
* Abnormally densely populated
* Abnormally rugged
That doesn't matter. It is a matter of simple arithmetic. How much power does a nation consume per area? How much power can be extracted from wind and sun in that nation per area? If the consumption exceeds production then that makes renewable energy not viable sources. Even then renewable energy could be nonviable because people need land that is exposed to the sun to grow food, covering large areas with solar panels means that area is not available for crops. Whenever I bring that up there's someone
Re: Worldwide (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
A country doesn't necessarily need to produce all its power domestically.
I addressed that earlier in this thread.
You could argue that this has strategic consequences, and it can, but the cat has been out of the bag with respect to food and energy for around 150 years.
That is my argument. A nation that is overly reliant on foreign nations will face strategic consequences. This goes double for nations with political aims that contradict their own. It is one thing for the UK to depend on the USA for food imports and another to rely on Russia for natural gas imports. The USA and UK generally get along and so it is unlikely that the USA would deny food to UK as leverage to get them to act as they like. Russia is perfectly willing
Re: (Score:2)
It is one thing for the UK to depend on the USA for food imports and another to rely on Russia for natural gas imports.
It doesn't do either, though. In terms of food, the uk in 2021 imported only 2.2% from the USA and gas from Russia 4%.
Re: (Score:2)
Here's the surface area to power the world with solar alone [landartgenerator.org].
Solar and wind can both use the same space.
Both can also be offshore.
Both (by far easier with solar) can be atop buildings.
Agrovoltaics is a thing (many crop plants benefit from shade).
Space is a non-issue. Period.
Re: Worldwide (Score:2)
Re: Worldwide (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Coal definitely creates global pollution that persists for centuries. I assume you're aware of the physical properties of carbon dioxide, and its behavior in the atmosphere. (If not, come back once you've graduated high school.)
Radioactive releases from power plants are local or regional, depending on the scenario, the wind patterns on that day, etc. Also, these releases are avoidable, unlike the production of greenhouse gasses when burning coal. If you're scared of Fukushima and Chernobyl, your problem i
Re: (Score:2)
Editors - better article? (Score:4, Interesting)
TFA is (a) behind a paywall and (b) not the actual source. Would be nice if the editors linked to the actual source, and not behind a paywall.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
If only we could use a search engine to get the actual source in less than 10 seconds (including typind the query, clicking search, and taking a sip of coffee).
Here is the study [science.org].
Re:Editors - better article? (Score:4, Insightful)
If only we could use a search engine to get the actual source in less than 10 seconds (including typind the query, clicking search, and taking a sip of coffee).
Here is the study [science.org].
If only the editors had done that for us. That's 10 extra seconds we could spend not reading the study, but still telling everyone exactly how and why we think the study is wrong.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If only we could use a search engine
If I wanted to use a search engine I wouldn't come to a news aggregator. Why do you excuse other people's piss poor work making you have to exert effort? Are you bored? Maybe you should become an editor if you're bored and have nothing better to do than other people's jobs.
Re: (Score:3)
What are the editors for if not to clean up very basic elements of front page articles?
No other news aggregator makes me google for an article. They give me the article right there on the front page.
This isn't my mom's Facebook friend sending me a crap link. This is a business.
Re: (Score:3)
> If only we could use a search engine to get the actual source in less than 10 seconds (including typind the query, clicking search, and taking a sip of coffee).
The point of good editing is specifically so that thousands of people don't have to do just that.
loss of time (Score:2)
Rather than lambasting the people lamenting the first scenario , you should be lambasting , throwing poo at the OP which generate such an immense waste of resource both finite (our time on earth and energy). Look a
Re: (Score:2)
Tell me what is more insightful. Let us say 1 person post the non source 10000 person read the article. So you are saying essentially 10000*10 seconds of time should be lost (about 28 hours) + whatever kWh lost doing that search ? The OP would have lost 10 seconds by posting the original source.
I'm suggesting a more constructive approach: look up the study and share the link as a comment, rather than simply complaining without taking any action. Linking the actual source is precisely what I did, and I believe my post with the link was more beneficial than the original poster's complaints. The advantage is that the other 9999 people don't need to search for it; they can just click on my provided link.
Your ire is utterly misplaced. The poster is right to have asked for a non paywalled source, and at least a primary source. Instead you attack the WRONG person.
The person posting could have been more helpful by investing just 10 seconds to find a freely acces
Age 65 or older? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
People also move around. The odds the people dying in those zip codes all lived in those zip codes for any arbitrary duration is zero.
Lets get some perspective here (Score:2)
Our ancestors managed to make it through the industrial revolution when atmospheric pollution in cities was probably 100 times worse than now (in the west anyway, India and China are probably still that bad) or we wouldnt be here.
I managed to make it out the 70s with leaded fumes from cars without any ill noticable effects.
Point is , when pollution is reduced then the baseline for "bad" pollution reduces with it but the scare stories seem to get worse.
CO2 aside, the atmosphere over most of the west is a LOT
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
We already have VERY clean air compared to even recent past generations. Which part of that simple point didn't you get? Look at pictures of the smog over LA or London even in the 1970s, never mind 1870s.
Re: Lets get some perspective here (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If we only look at whether the species as a whole will survive, then sure. Do whatever.
But usually we look at whether we, personally, and those nearest and dearest to us will survive. That is not the same thing.
Re: (Score:2)
I've been to Beijing. I wouldn't call being unable to see 3 blocks through the pollution "living", but you're just trolling anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
So go complain to the chinese government. Did you miss the part where I specifcially mentioned China as being still that bad?
Re: (Score:2)
Nope, didn't miss it at all. I also didn't miss how you said that when the west was that bad it wasn't a big deal because we're still here.
That was exactly my point and what I was responding to.
It -was- super fucking horrible even if humanity wasn't completely wiped out in the early Industrial Revolution in the west.
Your standard of "well, we didn't genocide ourselves so it's ok" is uhm... interesting.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Me: posts anecdote
AC: replies having entirely missed the point and context of the anecdote within the thread
Me: not surprised
AC: expected to respond with direct ad hominem and/or mod down with sock puppet
Me: lol
Just saving you the trouble of continuing this. It always goes the same way.
Re: (Score:2)
Our ancestors also died when they hit 50, and that's still true in large parts of India and China. Take a wild guess why.
If you don't mind following them, then yes, we have no reason to change our pollution standards.
Re: (Score:3)
"Our ancestors also died when they hit 50"
Not all of them and the vast majority of those deaths were from disease, not air pollution. If you think asthma is bad, try cholera.
Re: (Score:2)
No, not all of them. Hey, not all of them smokers died from lung cancer either, my great-grandma lived to 94 and she smoked like a stove. Others like my mom don't even make it to 55.
The point is that on average, people died earlier. Twice so if they had to live in bad conditions. Hell, my grandpa looked at 50 like my dad does now at 70, and I at 50 look more like my dad did with 30. All of this due to pollution? Certainly not, but it probably contributed.
We today have higher standards when it comes to the q
Re: (Score:2)
I managed to make it out the 70s with leaded fumes from cars without any ill noticable effects.
The grammar and spelling errors in that sentence are the perfect demonstration of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually it was a cut and paste fuckup on a phone. Dunning-Kruger tends to be far more prevalent in the sort of people who use it as a drop-the-mic against any poster they disagree with.
Re: Way to go, Germany (Score:2)
Correlation study warning ... (Score:2)
I note that the study was of the correlation of population death rates with pollution from coal plants. Attributing the entire improvement to the coal pollution reduction misses things like coal-polluted areas tending to have lower average income than cleaner ones, with all the other health hazards and service shortages that brings. It's across time, and as the areas clean up they also tend to gentrify, changing that factor. (Though some of the resulting mortality improvement might fairly be credited to
bad always bad (Score:2)
Remember, even if it is good, it is still bad.
the original research (Score:2)
..by Harvard:
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/n... [harvard.edu]
""Exposure to fine particulate air pollutants from coal-fired power plants (coal PM2.5) is associated with a risk of mortality more than double that of exposure to PM2.5 from other sources, according to a new study led by George Mason University, The University of Texas at Austin, and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Examining Medicare and emissions data in the U.S. from 1999 to 2020, the researchers also found that 460,000 deaths were attributable to
Energy Production will Always Have Negative Effect (Score:1)
Huge mistake (Score:2)
A while back, we, and by "we", I mean academics and government (but we (the actual "we" this time) didn't stop them, so I'm not letting us off the hook), decided that it was perfectly valid to start publishing "research" linking air pollution to death where no exposure to air pollution was measured and no deaths were investigated.
This particular genre of fiction is now dominant in a number of notionally reputable journals. I don't think I've read a story about air pollution in a decade or more where the ac