WashPost: Green Car Incentives Backfire in Europe, Create ‘Deadly’ Air Pollution(DOH!)

newsbusters.org ^ | 12/21/2016 | Sam Dorman

[rktman]

As with the economy, government intervention can have unintended consequences. In Europe, the push to go green actually endangered lives through noxious air pollution.

London, Paris and European governments “aggressively promoted diesel vehicles,” The Washington Post reported on Dec. 20. Why? For the environment, of course. Governments used policy to steer people away from carbon-dioxide emissions and toward diesel as the better choice.

But the attempt to go green backfired as nitrogen dioxide emissions from diesel vehicles are shortening lives and clogging lungs, according to the Post’s London bureau chief Griff Witte.

London has become the “global leader” in nitrogen dioxide pollution which reduces lifespans of “thousands” per year.

Witte specifically blamed the diesel pollution to “decades of government incentives designed to spur the purchase of supposedly cleaner diesel cars and trucks.” “All manufacturers followed this political direction,” the European Automobile Manufacturers Association told the BBC in 2015. While the move made Europe’s overall air “cleaner” than many other places,“it still can be and often is — deadly.”

He noted that nitrogen dioxide was linked to a host of health complications.

“It’s been a public health catastrophe on an unimaginable scale,” said Simon Birkett, founder and director of the advocacy group Clean Air in London. “We’ll probably never know the full extent of the impact.”

[rktman]

WOW! The law of unintended consequences does exist. Thanks greenie eco wankers.

[posterchild]

Diesel doesn’t produce CO2? Either the gov’t agencies are confused or the journalist is.

[JerryBlackwell]

Noticed the air was heavy with diesel exhaust the first time I visited Europe in the 90s.

[stocksthatgoup]

Diesel fuel is organic. Everyone knows that! /s

[Paladin2]

NO2 clogs lungs? Particulates, way more likely.

[marktwain]

The evidence seems at the fringes of detectability.

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/411756/COMEAP_The_evidence_for_the_effects_of_nitrogen_dioxide.pdf

[rktman]

The union of concerned scientists probably was told to exclude that from it’s evaluation. Not that they would ever cook the books just for some measly research grants.

[D Rider]

Euroweenies never think things through, just like liberals here. They got rid if the incandescent light bulb to reduce energy usage, but energy usage went up because of it. Denmark now gets 18% of its energy from wind which resulted in coat power plants producing 36% more carbon pollution. The list goes on. It is always the secondary effect of unintended consequences, always at the hands of politicians jumping in with both feet after listening to the “experts.”

[D Rider]

Coat=coal

[BBB333]

“... emissions..are shortening lives and clogging lungs...”

How much shorter?

How clogged?

[HamiltonJay]

NOX is far worse than CO2 when it comes to general air quality... the people who pushed this were idiots.

[cloudmountain]

WOW! The law of unintended consequences does exist. Thanks greenie eco wankers.

You would THINK, that with all that I.Q. rolling around, that there would be nothing "unintended" about greenie actions.

[RegulatorCountry]

Owning and driving a private car in London is a privilege on the level of Midtown Manhattan, they’re far more costly to own and operate than we can envision here. The diesel exhaust issue has been there for as long as I’ve been alive, you could smell it distinctly in the 90’s last I was there for any length of time. They’ll spend a half million pounds apiece for electric buses plus who knows how much for the recharging infrastructure, and pat themselves on the back. However, the reality will be that they’re shifting the pollution to another locale away from London. Large scale solar won’t cut it in cloudy England, wind? Maybe but it’s not a mature technology. Nuclear power would work but berserk environmentalists would never allow it.

[hal ogen]

ha (cough) Ha (cough) Ha (cough).

[hal ogen]

Ha (cough) Ha (cough) Ha (cough).

[43north]

Every time I read one of these fear mongering articles I notice two things:
1.) Claims of horrible health effects to “thousands” of people and
2.) Absolutely no proof of same.

[capt. norm]

They need to convert that NO₂ to N₂O just for LAUGHS!<>

Hidden chemistry joke in there somewhere.

[rktman]

Ob”NOX”ious. LOL!

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Diesel produces less CO2 than four-cycle for the same available output power, because they run hotter and have a higher thermodynamic efficiency. But running hotter also means more NO2, since nitrogen burns better at higher temperature. Production of NO2 is actually endothermic, so producing NO2 robs a small amount of power. NO2 is relatively short lived, about two days in the atmosphere. CO2 has a half-life in the order of decades.

[PeteePie]

For the most part I respect the traditional Brits but in this instance I gotta say, what a collective bunch of dumbasses. Do they never learn? Flasback, 1952, the great "coal fog."

"There was no panic, as London was renowned for its fog. In the weeks that ensued, however, statistics compiled by medical services found that the fog had killed 4,000 people. Most of the victims were very young or elderly, or had pre-existing respiratory problems. In February 1953, Lieutenant-Colonel Lipton suggested in the House of Commons that the fog had caused 6,000 deaths and that 25,000 more people had claimed sickness benefits in London during that period."(source: "The Great Smog of 1952". metoffice.gov.uk.; "Coal: Nutty slack". Commons Sitting of 16 February 1953)