Apparently it’s 2.85 times. But yeah, that’s just the state of Texas alone. We’re tiny in comparison.
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Apparently it’s 2.85 times. But yeah, that’s just the state of Texas alone. We’re tiny in comparison.
bimble
floofy
This is the same logic as the map all bigly red because of how much all the fields and rocks love mr trump.
SheilaNaGig
Break requested
I just threw in the towel. It became obvious that it was a futile endeavour. BIt I’ll continue to watch the efforts of others.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
No we're not. We have twice the population.
No, the act of smoking will place additional stress on the lungs that will act to make things worse. If there is a positive effect, it will have to be the nicotine.
That’s backed up in theory too, because it’s known that nicotine has an effect on acetylcholine receptors. It therefore makes sense that it support impact this condition. The question has always been whether the effect is enough to actually have a meaningful impact.
Smoking itself directly has a 50% fatality rate, even leaving aside secondary impacts, by the way. So smoking to prevent a disease with a 1% fatality rate if you actually catch it would be the height of lunacy.
NoXion
Craicy the Squirrel
It will solve the problem if combined with a push to decarbonise the energy grid. That's part of the reason why shifting from fossil fuels to fission and renewables is so important. We should be doing that anyway.
Frankly, unless public transportation is made free at the point of use, I'm very leery of ideologically-motivated measures to dissuade emission-free private vehicle usage. "Small world" hippies can fuck right off.
two sheds
Least noticed poster 2007
Partially true - as I said in the post after teuchter's, non-exhaust emissions are as much of a problem. Brake pads particularly because unlike from tyres they're airborne and contain chemicals like copper. At least they don't contain asbestos though, which they used to.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
No it won't - the reasons have already been mentioned.
What kind of ideology are you worried about?
Private vehicle usage should be dissuaded wherever there is affordable and available public transport.
We're going off topic here though.
NoXion
Craicy the Squirrel
If you're going to include stuff like what comes off the brake pads, then no technology in the entire history of human engineering can ever be called "emission-free".
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
I liked that and it makes good points, but hopefully there is one thing that may come from this that didn't - and should have - come from 2008, and that is some critical thought about indebtedness. A whole world cannot be indebted - debts are owed to somebody. Not in some magical way to the past, nor to the future - to an identifiable somebody in the here and now. One person's debt can only exist on the balance sheet as another's credit. (A partial exception to this is quantitative easing - central bank writing an iou to itself, but in this case, it can still choose whether or not it needs to destroy the money in the future.)
How we manage that debt-credit relationship is indeed going to be key, but there will be way more freedom of action than many will suggest (including simply cancelling the debts). We've already seen Cunt Osborne calling for more austerity, but that is in no way mandated by this crisis any more than it was mandated by the 2008 credit crunch. There can be a tendency here to confuse the symbol with the thing that it represents - ultimately money is merely a representation of a set of promises. You choose to keep or to break those promises.
One difference between 2008 and now is perhaps that there is nobody to blame for any debt crisis resulting from this. No reckless Greeks to be disciplined. I sincerely hope the narrative that 'the world is now in debt' does not take hold. No, we will just have lost the value of a few months' worth of work. Can make that up easily in a year or so.
2hats
Dust.
Protects you for the next couple of mutagenic cycles/global pandemics but then SARS-CoV-5 kills you in your 60s due to greatly impaired lung function?The French are exploring whether the use of nicotine patches may protect against the virus.
French researchers to test nicotine patches on coronavirus patients
Study – which stresses serious health risks of smoking – suggest substance in tobacco may lower risk of getting coronaviruswww.theguardian.com
Supine
Newt Member
2hats
Dust.
I like to think ahead.It's the optimism I like about urban75
Yossarian
⏭️
I think "protects you from pandemics" is going to join the legendary "auntie who was told by a doctor that she had been smoking for so long it would be dangerous to quit" in people's top 5 reasons for not quitting smoking.
two sheds
Least noticed poster 2007
teuchter
je suis teuchter
I wonder how much 'work value' we will actually have lost. Obviously some people are continuing to work through this anyway. But also, there will be lots of work that hasn't been done, but doesn't actually need to be replaced. For example if the entire tourism industry shuts down, then the consequence is that no-one really goes on holiday, and everyone who would have been cleaning hotels and driving buses isn't doing that this summer. But it doesn't mean that all that work has to be caught up on next year (unlike, for example the enormous backlogs there are going to be in hospitals). How much of our economy is stuff that needs to be done, vs stuff that is nice to do, but if we don't do it, it doesn't actually need to be done in the future?
teuchter
je suis teuchter
True. So what?
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Yeah, and that. Our rather dull existences currently are part-payment already for the lost work. Just emphasises the idiocy of the idea that we will have to be paying for this for a decade to come. We might well be made to pay for a decade, but it won't be because of this temporary slow-down, and we need to call out that lie whenever we see it.
lefteri
Well-Known Member
given the fact that propylene glycol in aerosol form has a mild anti-viral effect then vaping must be the answer!
NoXion
Craicy the Squirrel
It's the mark of a pedantic dickhole to equivocate the relatively minor effects of certain types of byproduct - brake pads, for fuck's sake - with those that are by far the overwhelming contributors to global atmospheric damage and human mortality, i.e. CO2 and nitrous oxide, and then use that to attack the colloquial usage of "emission-free", as if any of us here are writing a scientific paper where that level of definitional precision is warranted.
Electrification of the entire transport network will be a great good, as will phasing out the combustion of fossil fuels. Quibbling over fucking brake pads is petty hair-splitting.
Another consideration that pedantic pissants miss out on is the role of rhetoric and framing. "Emission-free" as I have seen the term used is shorthand for getting rid of the smokestacks and exhausts, most people in their every day lives don't walk around with a dictionary lodged in their fucking ear, ready to pounce on someone else for daring to lack their idea of linguistic precision.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
We were talking about air pollution specifically, and the difference the inhabitants of various cities have noticed as the result of a massive reduction in motor transport. It was suggested that this was a preview of the electric (or decarbonised or whatever) future. I am trying to make the point that changing the energy source does not fix the air pollution problem. It helps but it does not fix it, because particles from brakes, tyre and road wear, and dust recirculated by the constant motion of heavy traffic are significant contributors to the air pollution problem. There is some dispute about exactly how much they contribute but the effects are not, as you say, "relatively minor". If you want to educate yourself on the subject you can read this report.
teqniq
DisMembered
One concerning aspect of the outbreak in Harbin is that:
from
www.la-croix.com
from
En Chine, nouvelle éruption du coronavirus à Harbin
Les onze millions d’habitants de la ville chinoise de Harbin, capitale de la province du Heilongjiang, à la frontière russe, ont été isolés mercredi 22 avril en raison d’une nouvelle vague de pandémie du coronavirus provenant de Chinois rentrés de Russie. Un virologue chinois parle d’une...
Sadly, vaping is already being shown to cause its own unique impairment to the lung’s immune system. Vaping risks undoing any benefit the nicotine adds, in other words.
cupid_stunt
Chief seagull hater & farmerbarleymow's nemesis.
FFS, can people please stay on topic, and take the shit elsewhere?
lefteri
Well-Known Member
sorry, what is off-topic?
lefteri
Well-Known Member
Do you have a source for this? it's the first I've heard and I would really like to know more
