NHS Chief Says We Have A “Health Emergency”, As Well As A Climate One!
By Paul Homewood
h/t Philip Bratby
The boss of the NHS has declared an air pollution "emergency" as a major study today shows it causes hundreds of heart attacks and strokes every year.
Simon Stevens says we must act now to avoid so many "avoidable deaths" after figures reveal days of high air pollution trigger an extra 124 cardiac arrests, 231 stroke admissions and 193 hospitalisations for asthma across nine major UK cities each year.
Health charities today warn the figures could be just the “tip of the iceberg”, as often those suffering asthma attacks do not go to hospital.
The research by King’s College London, which is due to be published next month, is believed to be the first of its kind to analyse the impact of air pollution on health across different UK regions in this way.
In response to the findings Mr Stevens, chief executive of NHS England, said: “As these new figures show, air pollution is now causing thousands of strokes, cardiac arrests and asthma attacks, so it’s clear that the climate emergency is in fact also a health emergency.
“Since these avoidable deaths are happening now – not in 2025 or 2050 – together we need to act now. For the NHS that is going to mean further comprehensive action building on the reduction of our carbon footprint of one fifth in the past decade.
“So our NHS energy use, supply chain, building adaptations and our transport will all need to change substantially.”
The new figures show the immediate, short-term impact of air pollution on the public. Previous estimates have shown the long-term impact of air pollution cause up to 36,000 deaths every year.
Days where air pollution is more prominent typically occurs on hot, sunny days with little wind, because air pollution stays concentrated and closer to the ground
The nine cities analysed were London, Birmingham, Bristol, Derby, Liverpool, Manchester, Nottingham, Oxford and Southampton.
The risk of having a cardiac arrest on the street or in your home is 2.2 percent higher in London on high air pollution days, than lower air pollution days.
This equates to 87 more people on average suffering cardiac arrest each year, while 74 children are admitted to hospital for asthma, and 144 adults are admitted for strokes.
Talk about a shonky analysis!
If it is true that there are more cardiac arrests on “high air pollution day”, this does not necessarily mean that pollution is to blame. As the article notes, these days tend to be hot, sunny days as well, which are far more likely to be the trigger.
It is also nonsensical to blame one day’s pollution for a heart attack. Heart attacks and strokes result from long term factors, such as lifestyle, smoking, diet and environmental conditions over decades. Something may trigger them on a certain day, but they are events which would happen anyway sooner or later.
As for Simon Stevens’ solution –
For the NHS that is going to mean further comprehensive action building on the reduction of our carbon footprint of one fifth in the past decade.
“So our NHS energy use, supply chain, building adaptations and our transport will all need to change substantially.
This is a case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater!
For a start, what on earth does “carbon footprint” have to do with air pollution?
And how much will all of this cost the NHS? Surely that money would be much better spent on health care, not green virtue signalling? (Not that the NHS’ carbon footprint is significant anyway).
Meanwhile, back in the real world, air pollution has declined to record low levels in the last few years. In particular, periods with high pollution have been cut to extremely low levels.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/air-quality-statistics
Sadly the Telegraph’s reporter failed to do her job, and pose these questions. Particularly poor reporting, since the commenters have spotted the obvious errors for themselves!
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
This is utter rubbish. They’re taking facts from 1800s London, modern BeiJing, etc, and applying it to England!
I have IQ Air, a free air quality app. The UK’s air is unbelievably clean – regularly in single digits, for London, Exeter, Blackpool (where my relatives live). China’s is in the 150+ most days.
These mortality stats relate to highly polluted countries.
More fakery from people who want more government funding!
Dave
On Mon, Oct 21, 2019 at 5:39 PM NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT wrote:
> Paul Homewood posted: “By Paul Homewood h/t Philip Bratby The boss > of the NHS has declared an air pollution “emergency” as a major study today > shows it causes hundreds of heart attacks and strokes every year. Simon > Stevens says we must act ” >
Paul, brilliant work as usual. Anything for a headline and note there is a big air pollution conference in Britain this week – and they needed to grab our attention. Also note that Dr James Le Fanu comments in his column in today’s Daily Telegraph that pollution levels have plummeted in recent decades – 70-95% in the last 50 years – and the levels of heart attacks etc. have not changed at all.
Pity people will only read the misleading headlines from our expert leaders, and not bother to dig a little deeper…
Is there anything that cannot be linked to and made wore by, climate change?
It is often repeated in the media that there is an air pollution crisis and that air pollution is causing a public health crisis. However, many people will remember the air pollution of the 1950s. Most industrial towns and cities were permanently enveloped in polluted air resulting from coal burning by industry and from coal fires in most houses. Victorian stone buildings were black from the effects of smoke and soot. The turning point was the great smog of London in December 1952. For five days London was enveloped in a smog resulting from the soot and sulphur emitted by industry and homes combined with the effects of cold still air with a temperature inversion. Visibility through the yellowy-brown air was down to a few feet in many places. The city was paralysed and estimates made afterwards suggested that up to 12,000 people, mostly the elderly, the young and people with respiratory problems, died as a result of the smog.
Following a government investigation, the Clean Air Act of 1956 was passed. This restricted the burning of coal in urban areas and the setting up of smoke-free zones. Smoke-free fuels were developed to replace coal and homeowners received grants to convert from coal to alternative heating systems. The transition away from coal as the primary heating source toward central heating using gas, oil and electricity took years.
Air pollution in the UK has been falling steadily since the Clean Air Act of 1956 was passed. There remain blackspots in towns and cities where air pollution, mainly in the form of PM2.5, results in harm to human health and contributes to significant numbers of early deaths. A large proportion of the air pollution in urban areas is secondary PM2.5 resulting from ammonia emissions from agricultural activities (mega dairy and beef farms etc). That is where major action should be taken, but the government is slow to react.
There is no air pollution crisis. But regulators need to keep their jobs going and so they will always say there is a crisis and thus the need for ever tighter regulations.
It really is a sign of a poorly run education and health service when one of the top London universities and the head of the NHS can produce such nonsense. Pollution falls but death rates are in crisis because a very small % in heart attacks and asthma occur on hot or sunny but cold days when anticyclonic weather occurs and pollution is higher. The figures would be expected when people with these conditions are outside taking exercise!
In London the boroughs with the longest lifespans are Kensington and Westminster but the shortest is a Tower Hamlets but they have similar pollution.
They repeat the same false claims of deaths numbers that the late respiratory expert called zombie statistics because, no matter how many times you knock them down, they get up again.
The whole campaign against diesel was based on statistics from the USA when they used different fuel and pollution was higher in poor urban areas but no allowance was made for poverty- just as in Tower Hamlets. Even so, the difference was a small % but when multiplied by the whole population the figures of equivalent deaths look terrible and mass hysteria starts with people afraid to go outside and claiming that they can smell the fumes causing the health emergency.
It has been shown that using their own figures the extension of life by banning cars altogether would be in weeks over 80 years. This would not even be measurable.
Are these highly paid civil servants fit to be let loose on national health service,?
The respiratory expert was Tony Frew, who tragically died last year. He treated me and was a fount of wisdom.
Tony Frew a true hero.
Just read the article in full. A 2.2% increase in admissions on hot sunny days, with cyclists directed in new cycle lanes along previously flowing arterial roads, now jammed, and Mayor Khan concludes that London’s air is ‘lethal’. How do we pick em?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06478pz
Simon Stevenson and Mayor Khan could do worse than to listen to Prof Frewin this BBC rare intelligent programme.
Reblogged this on Climate- Science.press.
2.2% is lost in the noise
Did this patchy study map death rates to activity levels? perhaps on those warm days with higher pollution iore people were playing sport. more sport leads to more heart attacks. these ‘studies’ dont factor in all the other issues that could be relevant. more university junk studies and an idiot in charge of the NHS; no wonder its a failure.
Correlation is not causation.
In the USA there is a 99.2% correlation between the number of suicides each year and the federal science budget. obviously if they cut the science budget they’ll cut the suicide rate!!!
Garbage. He says air pollution “is now causing” severe health problems. Didn’t it cause health problems in the past as well?!!!!
Apparently when levels were three times higher it caused no problems at all…
Paul, here is earlier data going back to 1970.
It shows about a 90% reduction in most polution.
Click to access Emissions_of_air_pollutants_1990_2017.pdf
Yes, I wonder why they have started their new graphs from the 1990s?
Great post. Thanks. That darn CO2 must be a creation of the devil. The cause of all things bad from strokes to climate change and the death of coral reefs.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/08/11/ipccisun/
Note that major of London chipped in with some stuff about “London are being lethal …”.
air
Sadiq Khan should be more concerned about other causes of death in London:
“As of September 29, there have been 110 violent deaths in the capital”
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8104412/london-stabbings-2019-knife-crime-statistics/
Rather than this “emergency” story.
ONS figures for Mortality etc show The average life expectancy of a person in UK is greatest in London and the South east which has the highest levels of air pollution. Go figure!
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthandlifeexpectancies/bulletins/healthstatelifeexpectanciesuk/2015to2017
Also the air pollution reports from PHE say air pollution might represent somewhere between 0% -5% of your “mortality burden”. That means 95% of your mortality burden is something else, as we all will achieve 100% mortality.
I recall that Conan Doyle (a Medico) in his stories about Sherlock Homes made mention of air quality in London.
I also recall that 50 years before, Professor Owen made his way on foot one early morning, by touching buildings and counting the gaps as streets/lanes etc. from his memorising of the map, made his way to his destination (a slaughterhouse in Whitechapel). He then retraced his steps using the same method. Possibly he got the idea from a then popular author, one C. Dickens, who stressed the apearance of London Particulars.
If air quality is an issue obviously all those (London) people must have gone to an early grave.
Dickens 1812 – 1870
Owen 1804 – 1892
Conan Doyle 1859 – 1930
I remember coming home to Liverpool in the early 1960’s, having lived in Manchester for some years. Coming out of Lime Street station, I was surprised to see that St George’s hall opposite wasn’t black! A hundred years of dirty air had been cleaned off – and KEPT off by the Clean Air Act. Now THAT was pollution! Relative to the ‘old days’ whatever the extra-sensitive instruments are finding cannot be compared!
If they’re serious – and who would doubt it! – why is no mention made of the NO2 emissions at Heathrow from jet aircraft approaching, taxiing and taking-off there immediately upwind of western and central London? So the NHS will spend billions reducing its carbon footprint while Heathrow gets a third, and ultimately a fourth, runway.
It is. Read Heathrow’s plans for ensuring there is no increase from the third runway. If there are “pollution” problems at Heathrow it is the M4/M25 plus those who drive to the airport.
The NAEI pollution maps clearly show the footprint of aircraft generated NO2 between central London and LHR on the flight path.
Trusting they never use diesel-fuelled ambulances to deliver supposed ‘victims’ to A&E.
As Phillip Bratby explains, the Clean Air Act caused a step change in air quality. What is often missed is that this was at a reasonable cost to provide a massive benefit to everyone. It has, arguably, also caused the increase in sunshine-hours that have warmed the earth since the 1970’s when the effects came through fully and reversed the cooling that was then a “climate emergency”.
To improve the lot of the world’s population clearly needs improvements in the atmosphere, but the cost / benefit is far lower than other needs in most of the world. The “Emergency declaration” approach is purely a political approach to forcing people to follow paths that are not economically (or even scientifically) justifiable. As with the climate change emergency this health scare is an abuse of science and economics by the comfortably off semi-numerates of the west.
This is also discussed in “The Surgery” column today’s paper Telegraph.
James Le Fanu summarises the side effects and the dramatic pollution reductions since the 1970’s , then says
“Logically then over this period, one would expect all those grevious pollution-related health problems to have declined precipitously, But their incidence remain pretty much unchanged.”
20 to 30% of heart attacks and strokes are caused by gum/ tooth disease. The No Hope Service won’t fund paying dentists so ignore the facts.
You have to remember that people such as the Boss of the NHS are in post to promote the UN Agenda 21 which now drives all government thinking through the UN and the EU. We have to believe that they will deliver us from doom. Oh! and gives us your money.
This is all part of Common Purpose – and remember David Cameron told us he was involved with Common Purpose.
Their approach doesn’t require facts, just purpose.
100% correct. Common purpose people run virtually all institutions.
Very badly.
So Birmingham is twice as bad as Manchester? Why?
And do these numbers really represent anything other than noise? Are there any figures that show lower admissions on low pollution days- I bet there are not?
Just garbage.
Well Phoenix, it just is see. It has nothing to do with pollution though.
Sorry Brummies I love you too. Some of my best friends are Brummies.
The facts speak for themselves. The Telegraph, once one of the few media outlets to publish rational material has descended to the depths of scare journalism in recent months. I have been a subscriber for about 20 years but no longer wish to read the tabloid style garbage its pages now trumpet. To think the great and late lamented Booker once graced its pages….
We are still waiting for research to answer the question of why in cleaner air is asthma increasing.
And when talking of levels, how do we know that the much quoted WHO limits are correct?
The causes of asthma are varied and complex. Aerial pollutants are only one element, so directly linking pollutants to asthma is misleading and confusing.
If the UN really was concerned about reducing illnesses resulting from air pollution they would concentrate on third world housing, where cooking and heating is by internal wood stoves with no flue. This really is a problem. But they decided to lower the limits below already strict EU limits in Europe and N.America to levels way below those normally found in Asia and Africa.
It has to be because the WHO medics are producing the regulations in order to facilitate A21. After all they must value their high pay and Geneva.
No one ever got funding for saying something isn’t a problem and doesn’t need investigation.
“There was a time when popes and kings had astrologers at court to help them plan for the future. Nowadays government departments have statisticians for the same purpose…It simply cannot be chance that the gentlemen engaged on this work are always making gloomy forecasts with never the slightest suggestion that things will grow better…What a sad thing it is that the popular superstition in any age is so popular!”
Facts From Figures
M J Moroney
Pelican Books
1951
Illustrates yet again the utter shambles of The Telegraph editorial policy. On page 9 Lizzie Roberts (who she?) quotes practically verbatim the NHS emergency scare and on page 21 Dr LeFanu rubbishes it with the data Paul quotes. From the editor? No comment. What are people who don’t dig a bit deeper and lack the scepticism needed to digest contemporary MSM news supposed to think?
“Our dirty air is killing us” screams the headline. Ok then, show me all those death certificates with ‘dirty air’ or even ‘air pollution’ listed as a cause of death. I won’t be holding my breath…..
‘36,000 deaths every year’
M’kay. Give us the names of a few.
What? You can’t? You say there are 36,000 of them!
Give us names, or you are lying.
Yep, “The show me the bodies” rule applies
Habeas corpus.
It’s not Habeas corpus.. that is different
In U.S. jurisprudence, Habeas corpus means “show us the body.”
A writ of Habeas corpus is an order to “Bring them before the court.”
The principle of Habeas corpus is that the police or ruler can’t just arrest and detain people will nilly
“a legal action demanding that a prisoner be brought before a judge *to make sure that he or she is not being held illegally*
I checked and I don’t think the US definition is different.
Sorry, stewgreen. You are just wrong.
https://www.answers.com/Q/What_is_a_writ_of_habeas_corpus
‘major study shows our dirty air is killing us’
Notice that the Telegraph gets to decide what is a major study. If it supports their agenda seems to be the key criteria.
Simon Stevens – NHS England
Simon Stevens is a British health manager, public policy analyst and politician. His appointment as chief executive of NHS England with effect from 1 April 2014 was announced in October 2013, succeeding David Nicholson. He was said by the Health Service Journal in December 2013 to be the second most powerful person in the English NHS, even though he had not yet taken up his appointment.
Born:Shard End, Birmingham, England
Political party:Labour Party
Alma mater:Balliol College, Oxford, University of Strathclyde
Well he was a LabourParty councillor in Brixton from 1998 to 2002
but on Twitter people are quick to refer to him as a Tory Party stooge
Plus he had 10 years in the private sector for the worlds biggest private health care group
From 2004 to 2014 Stevens was a senior executive at UnitedHealth Group. Initially appointed president of UnitedHealth Europe, he became CEO of UnitedHealthcare’s $30 billion Medicare business, and then corporate Executive Vice President and president of its global health businesses spanning the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa. He also was a director of Brazil’s largest hospital group AMIL.
“Heart attacks and strokes result from long term factors, such as lifestyle, smoking, diet and environmental conditions over decades. Something may trigger them on a certain day, but they are events which would happen anyway sooner/ or later”
“Sooner” Indeed – here’s two cases locally this year:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-norfolk-48874413/wymondham-girl-10-making-full-recovery-from-stroke
https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/health/girl-10-has-stroke-while-getting-ready-for-school-1-6312113
Neither appear to be overweight, and while both Wymondham & Long Sutton are on busy main “A” roads, there is zero chance that these children have been exposed to the sort of pollution that my parents suffered in London’s 1952 “Smog”. Even during my childhood, in the 60’s & 70’s, open coal fires were common, and the majority of commercial vehicles and buses would emit varying degrees of black smoke whilst accelerating or climbing hills. Nowadays that would be the exception, although a few cars and light vans occasionally chuck out a thick smoke trail – indicative of blocked Particulate Filters, or other emission control systems.
As for the Socialist Republic of Norwich™, the council make regular pronouncements about needing to deal with air pollution reaching “Illegal” levels in the city centre. Which is unfortunate for them, as much of it is now out of bounds to all traffic except buses & taxis, and most of the public transport is operated by First Bus, who have a policy of moving older (typically 10+ years) vehicles from the big cities to provincial sites like Norwich…
Really is cause for concern in what you would hope was a science based organisation. If this is the level of stupidity in the upper echelons, no wonder the NHS is so poor at its job.
Common purpose over promoted morons run the No Hope Service. See Nicholson and Staffs. hospital deaths.
“The research by King’s College London, which is due to be published next month, ”
#1 Klaxon : Straight to the press route instead of publishing and peer review first : that’s a red flag
“air pollution cause up to 36,000 deaths every year.”
#2 “upto” Klaxon : “upto” is a PR word not science
#3 Klaxon : There are no real world deaths from air pollution in the UK, such stats are “theoretical equivalent deaths” made by adding up the life days we all lose.
The text should have stated this.
#4 Klaxon : Raw deaths is not a scientific stat. it should be QALDs
Life Days lost
“major study today shows it *causes* ”
#5 Klaxon : Correlation is not causation
#6 False equivalence Klaxon : A spike in hospital admissions is not a spike in deaths
On a rainy unpolluted day I might avoid going out ..and even die at home
On a sunny polluted day I might take more exercise and give myself a heart attack.
\\ Simon Stevens says we must act now to avoid so many “*avoidable deaths*” //
#6 Klaxon : Death is not yet *avoidable” , we ALL die
what counts is life days lost.
There’s more
“we need to act now. ”
#7 Klaxon : dramaqueening … urgency of action depends on cost/benefit NOT emotion
“For the NHS that is going to mean further comprehensive action building on the reduction of our carbon footprint of one fifth in the past decade.”
#8 Klaxon, Klaxon, Klaxon : Mixing topics Fallacy
Climate Change and CO2 is one topic
… whereas Air Quality is a different topic
eg CC policy like Burning wood at Drax theoretically reduces CO2
but actually worstens Air Quality
\\ “So our NHS energy use, supply chain, building adaptations and our transport will all need to change substantially.” //
PR BS
“Days where air pollution is more prominent typically occurs on hot, sunny days with little wind, because air pollution stays concentrated and closer to the ground”
… AFIK Main factor is RAIN washes air pollution out of the air
#8 is actually falsely equating Clean with Green
Clean n Green is a PR buzzword
… it can often SEEM to be true
..sometimes it will be true
eg replacing a coal boiler shower with instant Electric wins on both
but instant gas shower might be better on both counts as well
If you have an old dirty petrol car
An electric car seems CLEANER on the road, but once you account for manufacturing CO2 it might be higher CO2
than a brand new small diesel
which is also pretty clean on the road
Old, dirty PETROL car? How old? 25 years plus, maybe. Any fairly recent (15 years or less) CLEANS city air it combusts. Diesel is filthy, even with added urea.
“filthy” there is a dramaqueen word
Diesel trucks are particularly clean
There was an issue with smaller cars
cos the smaller engines are less good with urea systems
but they should catch up even they haven’t already.
What comes out is NOT filthy
However as a cycle you notice that 1 in every 100 or 200 cars is actually filthy with it’s exhaust ..that does need tackling , not eh 99 clean ones.
How much of small particulates is actually tyre beads and brake dust, not out of the tailpipe of cars?
It’s even more complicated than that
a PM10 measurement of 1234
is NOT equivalent to another PM10 measurement of 1234
cos it depends the substances that make up the particles and their toxicity
A lot of it is from Gas Boilers and Wood Burning stoves, according to the governments own research.
If they were really serious about air quality around roads then they would be washing and sweeping the roads clean of the particles accumulated on them and they don’t.
The Up in the Air document produced by King’s College statisticians gives the figure at 60%. In other words, replacing all ICE vehicles with electric would reduce 40%.
The way that this document has been manipulated from a reasonable statistical summary to a political agenda is interesting. The latest version has two extra authors and talks about health crises. The first had a pie chart showing that diesel cars in Central London produce 5% of NOx. After people used this to calculate that all the banning would increase lifespan by days, they changed the chart to show the figure as 40% over London. To do this they changed the date to 2025, omitted the, 50% background NOx and must have assumed that other vehicles had become, NOx free after the ULEZ measures.
I’m not sure about Paul’s NOx graph
All main graphs show most pollutants drastically falling over decades.
I think I have seen some localised graphs with a NOx spike in a couple of years back
.. I think due to heavier traffic in certain spots, before Ad Blue tech came in
As ever don’t assume ROAD air = Lung Air
cos you spend most time indoors
So other factors like antiperspirant, pets, log fires may be a much higher factor in your air quality compared to your neighbours.
Of course it is total bollocks.
But then, there is another agenda here – as we well know.
False tales, shocking the people with shite statistical analysis is part of the propaganda programme. As we see, it then provides the pretext for all sorts of authoritarian edicts and ‘air pollution’ measures, not least banning and phasing out private auto vehicular transport – that’s the plan, period.
good observation
A sustainable development professor
recommends this
… is it the same PR BS ?
Ben Pile has a good thread on the NHS Telegraph article
What’s that phrase? Correlation is not causation.
Claim
“The Sun Triggers Heart Attack, Black Hole Image? | S0 News Oct.21.2019”
6 mins into the vid the Claim is that space weather causes electric fieilds which cause some vulnerable people have more heart attacks.
So the claim is like EM & 5G conspiracy theorists
who don’t understand the inverse square law that means that at any distance from the source EM wave energy is tiny
“…source EM wave energy is tiny.”
It is a little more complicated than that.
Physical electric current building in space, around the Earth, gradually stores energy in the associated MAGNETIC field. Any sudden reduction in the current causes the magnetic field to collapse and the released energy can appear in various ways, as a power surge. It is the principle of the spark plug, invented by Sir Oliver Lodge at the beginning of the automotive age to get “more bang from a buck.”
As regards susceptibility of cellular membranes to low-level EM radiation, it can certainly be demonstrated in vitro. Whether this equates to reduced function in normal tissues in situ – who knows?
The Sun remains spotless.
@Dave : You made a strawman
I didn’t say what you wrote in quotation marks did I ?
The full phrase is different
Great source for real climate news! Oct 20, 2019 Earth is ‘not in a period of extinction’
Geologist and earth scientist Ian Plimer says the globe is not facing a climate emergency, telling Sky News that “we are actually still living in an ice age.”
The article has been through a number of stealth edits
a new paragraph has been tacked on
..it’s as if to address concerns raised here
Hmm it is kind of the nature of technological progress that, as you try to get engines more efficient their pollution gets lower …even without special interventions.
Sorry that is the BBC article that has been edited not the Telegraph one.
According to Junk Science website research data on the dangers from particulates and NOx is dubious at best. Lots of information on misleading research by EPA aimed at declaring CO2 a pollutant.
“NHS Chief Says ”
Really ?? Sure it wasn’t the Pope, or God ?
Simon Stevens name might be on all the PR material for The-Simple-Simon-Report, but I suspect its just their to con us with Argument from Authority.
(which is a logical fallacy)
Was he put on the media ?
Did he sound like he knew what he was talking about ?
GreenBlob said buy an Electric car and keep voting for Sadiq and our stooges
So now they are saying “Simple-Simon says”
“buy an Electric car and keep voting for Sadiq and our stooges”
It’s a PR stunt for Wednesdays event
The Up in the Air document produced by King’s College statisticians gives the figure at 60%. In other words, replacing all ICE vehicles with electric would reduce 40%.
The way that this document has been manipulated from a reasonable statistical summary to a political agenda is interesting. The latest version has two extra authors and talks about health crises. The first had a pie chart showing that diesel cars in Central London produce 5% of NOx. After people used this to calculate that all the banning would increase lifespan by days, they changed the chart to show the figure as 40% over London. To do this they changed the date to 2025, omitted the, 50% background NOx and must have assumed that other vehicles had become, NOx free after the ULEZ measures.
I think it would be revealing to be able to subtract the most recent pollution levels from those in earlier years. I’m sure the data exist still for earlier years by grid square. I can find old low resolution maps such as the ones in this from 2005;
Click to access 0803111358_NAEIMappingMethodReport2005-v3_issue1.pdf
It’s clear that higher levels of NOx are confined much more to the main motorways and airports these days. Grid square data probably reveals something of our industrial decline.
The Telegraph Moderator has deleted my innocent comment.
That is disgusting Guardian like behaviour.
My comment has been replaced by
My comment did not break those rules
I said something like ‘This article is PR, and is loaded with flaws and is exposed by Paul Homewood’s blog.
I’d recommend that the Telegraph directly employs PH to fill the slot Christopher Booker used to fill
(I didn’t include a URL link)
======================
Media : Here is a dramatic claim
Me : It will be PR, not news cos that is the way you guys work.
Dramatic science claims are almost always PR not news
I’d ask reader here to regard all MSM : BBC, ITV, Sky, Mail, Indy, Guardian
not as NEWS sources, but rather PR agents
And not to waste time with them, but rather invest their time in glancing at the debunking forums
and see if someone says they can’t see flaws in the claim
We should revisit this when the paper is published and we can see the error margins in the statistics (or more likely, their failure to indicate them) as well as the methodology for eliminating other correlated features, such as temperatures. What’s the betting they hide behind an expensive paywall?