Posted on 01/24/2017 4:56:24 PM PST by SMGFan
Air pollution in London passed levels in Beijing this week, figures have shown, with popular wood burning stoves blamed for exacerbating the problem. On Monday London mayor Sadiq Khan issued the highest air pollution alert in London for the first time, and said on Tuesday that the capital’s ‘filthy air’ is now a ‘health crisis.’ Readings at 3pm on Monday showed that air at locations in the capital were worse than in notoriously smoggy Beijing, hitting a peak 197 micrograms per cubic metre for particulate matter on the Air Quality Index. Pollution in the Chinese city only reached 190, which is still deemed ‘unhealthy.’
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
I was just thinking of that, it was recently portrayed in the excellent BBC series about the young QEIII, The Crown. That was a disaster.
“. . . a wood burning stove is carbon neutral (whatever that means) . . .”
For those worried about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (I’m not in that crowd) it means the following:
wood + oxygen -—————> CO2 and water; then
CO2 + water (powered by sunlight) —————> trees (wood) + oxygen
So it’s essentially an endless cycle (with a bit of lag time while you wait for the
trees to grow) by which you convert the energy in sunlight to the heat energy
of burning wood.
Which is fine as long as you don’t denude your forests and as long as you realize that wood contains stuff that doesn’t burn cleanly and can give rise to smoke, smog, poisonous carbon monoxide and other fun stuff that enviro types would piss and moan about if somebody was generating those things industrially.
That would be QEII. Lol
I was just thinking of that, it was recently portrayed in the excellent BBC series about the young QEIII, The Crown. That was a disaster.
I was in London for several days before Christmas. It was cold enough for fireplaces to be in use, yet I never noticed any chimney smoke. Had a really good view of the city, too, but smoke at dawn and dusk was just not noticeable. in fact, the only fireplace that I saw in use was out at Hampton Court, in Henry VIII's kitchen. HUGE rotisserie!
With the way that the city collects garbage several times a day, I don't doubt that some people try to reduce the volume by burning it. You never smell the smoke, though. Not even diesel exhaust is really noticeable, despite the many London taxis clattering around.
I wasn't there long enough to experience a wide variety of London weather, so there may be some conditions that aggravate the "smog". Didn't look like a big issue to me, it's probably just an enviro-nazi buildup to banning diesel cars from the city.
You’re asking me? I don’t know.
That’s why we must persuade the Brits to use American LNG for home heating and cooking.
The plug a lot of goats.........
I believe it was in this which I used to have years ago. I’ve had several other books back then.
Account of the new invented Pennsylvanian fire-places:
http://digitalcollections.powerlibrary.org/cdm/ref/collection/SLP2005001/id/1058
American LNG, American wood pellets, American charcoal, American heating oil, American clean coal etc
I read 4000 died elsewhere, but still.
Probably the only Freeper that was there at the time. I came down from Scotland by long distance coach to Finchley, North London. A non-smoker and only 21 years old, I remember breathing in and it cut like a knife.
The bureaucrats of the "Yes Minister" type claimed it was only old people who died. They said they were ready to die anyway. There was an immense cover up. The coal mine owners had a huge investment in coal for the fire place. A most wasteful use of fuel, since it went up the chimney first.
I knew of a smokeless fuel called "Coalite". It was burnt in enamel stoves in the kitchen. Someone got the Nobel Prize posthumously for bringing it into use. Pity they did not use more of it.
“The recent spell of unhealthy pollution was the worst since April 2011.”
I agree that this is suspicious. I was in London two months ago and discovered London to be clean, friendly and safe. The air was crisp and watching the hundred’s of bicycle riders in the cold 40º rain gave my self esteem a demotion.
Mayor Sadiq Khan? Really, of London? SMH.
Interesting that they have man made logs.
Correct. There has been an unusually prolonged blocking high (displaced Azores High) over southern Britain for most of the past month, with very light winds and subsiding air. (In the South West, where I live, we're about to break the January sunshine record).
The notorious London smogs of the 19th and earl 20th centuries, referred to in the article, were caused by the burning of untreated coal in open fires, which were then the main source of domestic heating. That changed with the introduction of the Clean Air Acts of the 1950s/60s, which made treated ('smokeless') coal obligatory in the cities. Nowadays hardly anyone has open fireplaces, except for effect.
Switch to coal.
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