And ideological ones as well.
I would think that Lloyd Alter, a former architect, entrepreneur, and professor at Toronto Metropolitan University, would better grasp small and large numbers and how they interplay for setting Contexts. Yes, with a capital “C” as he, along with many other Eco-Socialists, continuously try to use “small number anecdotes” to wedge their ideologies into the larger population policies realm. And yes, if you are a first-time reader here at the ‘Grok, he’s willing to “Eat the Rich” from time to time, which lets us know the vast differences between him and me (at Carbon Upfront!).
This means he’s a perfect foil in the discussions of the Hobbesian Collective and Lockian Individualism. And that he’s terrible, as I said, this time at numbers. So, in a post, “Ultrafine particles are killing us, and most of us have never even heard of them,” he starts a rant about extremely small airborne particles. The gist of his short post:
I have also often written about the dangers of PM2.5 (particulate matter smaller than 2.5 microns) most recently in Particulate Pollution Is Worse Than We Knew, and Is Damaging ‘Every Organ in the Body’ Now new research looks at the dangers of a subset of PM2.5, Ultrafine Particles (UFP) which are PM0.1 or less than a tenth of a micron, or 100 nanometers. Scott Weichenthal, an Associate Professor in McGill’s Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and Occupational Health, describes them:
“Ultrafine particles are incredibly small, allowing them to penetrate deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream. Increasing evidence suggests these pollutants may contribute to heart and lung diseases, as well as certain forms of cancer.”
Go ahead and read the rest of it – it will only take a few minutes. But the underlying thesis is WHY isn’t anyone doing anything about it in our cities and city dwellers? But then, again, he rants about a lot of stuff that doesn’t fit his ideologicalness. However, here, the comments went WAY beyond the length of his post (he eventually turned them off as “too…confrontational for me. I want this to be a happy place”. Well, *I* certainly was happy to engage him and other leftward wanderers as it forces them to think outside their boxes (er, does that make me an equivalent of Grokster Ian and making THEIR heads hurt? Or angina?). And it shows that he has thin skin as he never seems to be able to rebut me, Vindaloo Bugaboo, Bob Baal, COJ1, and a couple of others as he has little experience, as many on the Left have, in dealing with points of views from outside their normal bubbles.
So there are several “sections” to the 87 allowed comments, and the first was about the small/large numbers:
It concluded that “long-term exposure to UFPs with a 7.3 per cent increase in the risk of non-accidental death. Respiratory deaths saw the highest increase, at 17.4 per cent, followed by a 9.4 per cent rise in deaths from coronary artery disease.” That’s 1,100 deaths per year in the two cities.
The two are Montreal and Toronto – millions of people. Spoiler alert: “insignificance territory” ahead:
Once again, Lloyd, you’ve left your context incomplete. The total population of Toronto and Montreal is 4,200,000 against your reported 1,100 deaths. That’s a 0.026% – again, rounding error territory.
Yes, the obligatory that any death is a tragedy but you should not create public policy on such a minuscule number. And once again, I point out, what is the cost to achieve your end goal of no risk of anything to anyone at anytime? And that includes both the financial cost AND the political costs of running up the old truism of the 80/20 Rule.
Except you’re trying to solve the 98/2 rule – tremendously more expensive. And while you are railing against the problem, what is your real world solution that is achievable? THAT I want to see (although I already know, in part, what that is after reading your posts for years now).
And then I came at him from a direction I don’t think he was expecting:
“As urban areas continue to grow,”. This must gall you as a New Urbanist – see, it’s the CITIES that are the problem! Decentralize everything – including population centers! Wouldn’t you agree with me on that point?
I could tell he wasn’t pleased and tried to ramp up the numbers – a lot. However, given two major cities “of Context”, it still was a fail:
the number of people whose quality of life is ruined might be 20 times as high.
He shoulda added another zero to the left of the decimal place. And he also didn’t bother to answer the Costing problem (that also galls him, I think, which is why like the pit bull that catches the rear bumper, I can’t let it go. And “personal agency” seems to be a black hole to him in that he never takes into account that people can make Individual Changes for themselves. He, like most Leftists believe that people cannot “save” themselves from harm – only the actions by Government can do so:
That would be 22,000. Percentage? 0.52%. Is that sufficient to make large changes to everyone else’s lives and wallets to solve that problem, Lloyd?
It would be cheaper just to buy them a home in the country and get them out of your polluted cities, than (edited here – corrected in comments at CC) infringe on everyone else, right?
However, Lloyd, you forget one thing. The MOST important thing – to decide what is best for oneself considering all factors.
They have CHOSEN to live in that environment. They have deliberately decided that such a risk, along with all of the others that you’ve pointed out over the years, is acceptable to them. After all, the freedom to move is still present in Canada, n’est pa? But they’ve chosen not to move.
Tag, you’re it!
And then VB, Bob Baal, and I initiated the “confrontational pileup” that he didn’t seem to like, especially the “change something here and something happens over theah you didn’t expect”:
Bob: “Is that sufficient to make large changes to everyone else’s lives and wallets to solve that problem, Lloyd?”
Again, you have found” the point of the needle”. Many people are pushing well meaning policies without realising that in the grand scheme of things they are not important.
Even if we do make the changes they want, will they have any meaningful effect? What will be the cost of that change (I don’t just mean money there).
Will their change make something else worse?
VB inserts more things to consider – far more than Lloyd wants to allow into his mental model of how his World is supposed to look like:
Exactly. I foresee the Law Of Unintended Consequences at play here.
Unless these scientist modelers who predict ‘x’ number of deaths and ‘y’ number of adversely impacted disability-adjusted life years can also accurately predict remediation efforts will result in ‘z’ number of fewer deaths and DALY’s, I’m ignoring anything they have to say.
Because life.
Because costs.
Because freedom.
Because onerous regulatory oversight by unelected bureaucrats.
Because of any number of other metrics one wishes to consider.
The take-away from these kinds of articles that are constantly pushed by climate zealots make it sound like if we just did away with fossil fuels we’d all be living pristinely healthy lives for at least 200 years. And that can’t be further from the truth.
… but you’re never going to have climate change pundits say otherwise, because it would undermine the entire paradigm of this redistribution scheme.
As Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals puts it: “RULE 3: “Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.” Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty. (This happens all the time. Watch how many organizations under attack are blind-sided by seemingly irrelevant arguments that they are then forced to address.)“
Lloyd just can’t handle things that he either hasn’t though about before or hasn’t wanted to think about.
So with that, let me bundle three more comments and this “Section 1: numbers and context” will be over:
The most important of those you listed. However, we both have observed over the years, most people don’t even think about losing it.
It’s like that old 60s song “you don’t know what you’ve got ’til its gone”.
Again, Life is multidimensional and most militant advocates only care about THEIR issue and denigrate others who believe other things are more important than the advocate issue.
Bit harsh there but still an important point.
One of the reasons that it is very hard to make changes in the Aero industry, even when it is clearly a common good, is because you have to prove that your change no matter how well meaning, or apparently minor will not result in an issue or problem appearing somewhere else.
I am yet to see “activists” doing similar due diligence to the changes they push.
You know, I really do like skewering folks like Lloyd because, not because that they’re not smart but that they don’t think things through. They can’t play checkers, chess, GO, or Othello (sometimes called Reversi) and see how there IS no status quo when you start changing things.
And they find it almost impossible to understand that other people don’t think like them yet continue to demand one-size-fits-all solutions.
And next up will be “Arthur” someone that believes that EVERYONE on Earth is part of the same tribe and that we ALL share common outlooks for the future.
Yeah, you can guess where that one is going to go…
Spot on, Bob. Most people do NOT think in terms of systems – only in “point solutions”. As in 1 thing at a time and always thinking “everything else stays status quo“. While that MIGHT happen in the most trivial of trivials, most things like this aren’t. Doubt me, folks?
How about the acknowledgement, finally, that forcing the maritime industry to shift to much lowered sulfinated heavy fuel oil. Sure, an “air pollutant” was reduced and the advocates were filled with joy…
…until years later (that is, just recently), it was determined that doing so actually raised global temps as the former sulfide aerosols were no no longer present to reflect sunlight back outside the atmosphere.
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