[Stoves] Off-topic: Berkeley Earth - "To kill 1.6 million people.." (Was cigarettes and cooking smoke - Crispin, Andrew)

Nikhil Desai pienergy2008 at gmail.com
Fri Nov 16 09:50:19 CST 2018


Crispin:

Wow. "To kill 1.6 million people  ..." says Berkeley Earth
<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fberkeleyearth.org%2Fair-pollution-and-cigarette-equivalence%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7C7fd2613a4f304365effd08d647366200%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636774696232418251&sdata=mhYYVJTBeWH4cQcIbB5u%2FP1NbRtPeGo%2FrLMxdWy2sZk%3D&reserved=0>,
the enviable father-daughter Mullers enterprise.

Earth?? They are loose fireballs. A front for the academia pushing shale.
None on their Team and none of their Directors seem to have an iota of
experience in health, just manipulating PM data. The Mullers are a
celebrities marketing fracking
<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.berkeleyearth.org%2Fpdf%2Fwhy-every-serious-environmentalist-should-favour-fracking.pdf&data=02%7C01%7C%7C7fd2613a4f304365effd08d647366200%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636774696232418251&sdata=lRtb5kOYCp5GPcWAaX7Sqa0dYuodczQUApaYLa%2Fj1oU%3D&reserved=0>
 and nuclear waste disposal
<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bloomberg.com%2Fnews%2Farticles%2F2018-03-20%2Fthis-father-daughter-team-says-it-has-a-cheaper-safer-way-to-bury-nuclear-waste&data=02%7C01%7C%7C7fd2613a4f304365effd08d647366200%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636774696232418251&sdata=eHQINV%2FybzSg6L4fTav8Ifnio2IyOp0BD%2FouPFQCkbw%3D&reserved=0>.
By crowdfunding
<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.crowdfunder.com%2Fdeep-isolation-inc&data=02%7C01%7C%7C7fd2613a4f304365effd08d647366200%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636774696232418251&sdata=gi7SKZ7ubxAbUOD%2Bl0UQsANwFq6jR6cogDNYNqz4AQQ%3D&reserved=0>;
$5 million to date.

With experts like these, who needs idiots? Arden Pope - the economist doing
"integrated risk function" for GBD - the junk of Burnett et al. (2014) I
have panned here several times? Richard Muller's quantification of air
pollution deaths in China
<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fberkeleyearth.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2015%2F08%2FChina-Air-Quality-Paper-July-2015.pdf&data=02%7C01%7C%7C7fd2613a4f304365effd08d647366200%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636774696232418251&sdata=exNstWjm%2BBDtrk1a7T5fPXNl0elwYXVoGz0zFJg61RI%3D&reserved=0>
is
based on the same nonsense. Murders by assumption.

Get over it. There is no there there.  Stop looking for substance and
integrity from Berkeley this or Berkeley that. This is an ideological war;
these academics are the new suppliers of ICBMs, missiles, submarines. It is
not at all about tobacco or coal, biochemistry or public policy; it is
strictly about manufacturing hysteria and getting grants. They are Hell's
Angels of the academia-industrial complex.

But it is getting both macabre and frightening; not easy to dismiss. Is
PM2.5 dust the new nicotine? (You know, "dust" is PCP, or Angel's Dust.)

Macabre because it reminds me of the routine mass murders in US by
semi-automatic weapons. Models are semi-automated. For all I can tell, GBD
papers and press releases are written with Artificial Intelligence.

Elizabeth Mueller's LinkedIn page says "Berkeley Earth is a public-benefit
organization that is using modern statistical techniques to address major
environmental concerns such as global warming and air pollution. Berkeley
Earth conducts all of its analysis in a transparent way, and makes its data
and analysis techniques available to the public. "

Yeah, right. Her or her father's track record inspires no credence on air
quality analyses and management. This is like Kirk Smith Enterprise, except
that the Mullers know nothing about health and medicine. The dad was played
up because he was a skeptic who turned a believer in climate change;
nuclear and fracking businesses come in handy when you do that, as also
does a Berkeley professorship. Academic prostitution.

IER (Integrated Exposure Response) is the new 007. Licensed to Kill.

GBD is now Juul <‎https://www.juul.com/>. (You know, one of the
e-cigarettes.) Addiction for the next generation.

HAPiT is the new heroin. Gas and electricity are alternatives to food and
medical care.

Frightening because these cabalistic recitations can be counter-productive.
No doubt pollutants cause diseases; that is the definition of pollutants.
But when you fail to, refuse to, identify pollutants, ingestions, disease
incidence, in real people and smoke them away in the joints of dope rolled
in peer-reviewed paper, what happens?

At best, nothing. People will get inured to lies like they do to Trump's
tweets. Who'd've thought the Berkeley professoriat as Trump-in-disguise?
(Sycophancy to Modi was a clue.)

At worst, a "compassion fatigue" would set in. "Another million murdered by
semi-automatic military grade assumptions? Who cares?"

In the meantime, ten more PhDs will be generated and processed through
post-doc careers to turn into new frogs croaking aDALY songs for Goldman
Sachs and Gold Standard.

California fires <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CEAYth1h7E> have been
emitting millions of tons of pollution, equivalent to a billion cigarettes
an hour, for the last few days. Already 63
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/energy-environment/staggered-evacuation-plan-questioned-in-fires-aftermath/2018/11/15/b52231d2-e937-11e8-8449-1ff263609a31_story.html>
people
have been killed. Give IHME or Berkely Earth $500k and they will
automatically churn out how many additional deaths are attributable to
these fires. (Like what was done with Puerto Rico hurricane.)

Maybe we needn't bother, and I should not ridicule WHO or IHME or CCA. They
are useful idiots for Modi, Trump, and the oil companies, and if I believed
that the ends justify the means, I should praise them to  high heaven as I
once did. No health minister is going to listen to WHO bombast - harmless
nuisance - and request subsidies for gas and electricity.

I for one believe in subsidies for cleaner air. I am afraid Berkeley this
and that may lose the plot. For now, the Mullers are having a laugh of
their lives and pocketing kudos and money
<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.linkedin.com%2Fcompany%2Fdeep-isolation%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7C7fd2613a4f304365effd08d647366200%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636774696232418251&sdata=jC%2F2iaAMVuPkNniRR1%2BkeWrZIhXgEcFV5mE%2F%2BCHm8fQ%3D&reserved=0>.
‎ Swindlers
thrive because a sucker is born every minute.

Nikhil

PS: Health Canada has bought into smoke generation too. See Burnett et al
(2018)
<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fpmc%2Farticles%2FPMC6156628%2Fpdf%2Fpnas.201803222.pdf&data=02%7C01%7C%7C7fd2613a4f304365effd08d647366200%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636774696232418251&sdata=sqrrFle%2B4qoi3h8Brc7grENUj126c%2Bn%2BhYUvay6zgC8%3D&reserved=0>
Global estimates of mortality associated with longterm exposure to outdoor
fine particulate matter, 9592–9597 | PNAS | September 18, 2018 | vol. 115 |
no. 38 www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1803222115
<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pnas.org%2Fcgi%2Fdoi%2F10.1073%2Fpnas.1803222115&data=02%7C01%7C%7C7fd2613a4f304365effd08d647366200%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636774696232418251&sdata=vphL%2BSI81zbHBddfS1nJL8mtMwlogt8pj%2F3J44rtsrE%3D&reserved=0>.
This paper purports to rely on "cohort studies", something you referred to
in a recent post but I haven't reacted to. The fundamental problems are
that i) there are no exposure measurements; ii) the hazard ratios are
derived from non-comparable cohorts and applied indiscriminately; and iii)
PM2.5 equitoxicity is assumed.

This is preposterous poppycock, has no relevance to stove design, and the
ISO TC-285 needs to be shut down instantly. Even ANSI has abandoned the
Chair. Enough noise by illiterate professoriat mobs out of control. Tragedy
of the wretched of the earth.


------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nikhil Desai
(US +1) 202 568 5831
*Skype: nikhildesai888*



On Thu, Nov 8, 2018 at 6:42 PM Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <
crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:

> Dear Andrew
>
>
>
> >Crispin I was after a source for the amount of PM 2.5 from a standard
> cigarette, I had already come across some comparisons with particulates
> produced by a cigarette verses a diesel car idling
>
> I just Googled it and found various references. I was using 45 mg for a
> while but later found there were some claims of 40 mg.
>
> The mass of tobacco in a cigarette is about 0.9 g. A PM2.5 mass of 45 mg
> is the equivalent of 50 g per kg (exactly). This is a believable amount for
> smouldering biomass that has no flame.
>
> The CO is 0.5% to 5% of the gas volume
> <https://faculty.washington.edu/djaffe/ce3.pdf> with perhaps a typical
> range of 1.2-3.7%. (same source).
>
> As for the ridiculous (that is the only word for it) numbers give for
> “exposure” I found the source document at Berkeley here
> <http://berkeleyearth.org/air-pollution-and-cigarette-equivalence/>. The
> argument, which is foolish, presented is presented as
>
> “Now let’s consider air pollution. The most harmful pollution consists of
> small particulate matter, 2.5 microns in size or less, called PM2.5. These
> particles are small enough to work their way deep into the lungs and into
> the bloodstream, where they trigger heart attack, stroke, lung cancer and
> asthma. In the Berkeley Earth review of deaths in China we showed that 1.6
> million people die every year from an average exposure of 52 μg/m3 of
> PM2.5. To kill 1.6 million people would require, assuming 1.37 x10-6 deaths
> per cigarette, 1.1 trillion cigarettes. Since the population of China is
> 1.35 billion, that comes to 864 cigarettes every year per person, or about
> 2.4 cigarettes per day.
>
> Thus the average person in China, who typically breathes 52 μg/m3 of air
> pollution, is receiving a health impact equivalent to smoking 2.4
> cigarettes per day. Put another way, 1 cigarette is equivalent to an air
> pollution of 22 μg/m3 for one day.”
>
>
>
> This argument is so foolish one has to wonder what they are smoking in
> Berkeley. One cigarette produces about 45 mg of PM2.5. Spread through 10 cu
> m of air (what a person breathes in a day) would create air with 4,500 μg/m
> 3 yet they claim it is 22. That is a big difference, an error of 200 fold.
>
>
>
> The calculation is based on a calculation that assumes all PM2.5 in China
> comes from cigarettes – is that correct? Or only in the case of the 1.6m
> they say die from…what exactly…air pollution?  There is no information to
> support such statistic in China.  That have to have made it up.
>
> Conclusion: “In China the numbers are far worse; on bad days the health
> effects of air pollution are comparable to the harm done smoking three
> packs per day (60 cigarettes) by every man, woman, and child. Air pollution
> is arguably the greatest environmental catastrophe in the world today.”
>
> Yeah well, the death of responsible statistics looks like a catastrophe of
> similar proportion.
>
> There is a reference to another opinion: “Arden Pope, had previously
> calculated that average pollution in Beijing is similar to smoking 0.3
> cigarettes per day – and that this comparison is used to reassure people
> that the pollution really isn’t that bad.”
>
> Well, let’s look at that “reassure” idea. Pope looked at the amount of PM
> absorbed, but I have not read much of his work yet. He is pretty well
> respected in this field and he disagrees
> <https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa0805646> profoundly with
> Berkeley’s numbers. His methodology is well explained in that reference and
> involves drawing “associations”, not getting medical diagnoses (because
> there is no data on anyone’s personal exposure).
>
> From what I can understand, Pope’s China calculation is based on what PMO
> absorbed from a cigarette, not the exposure to it (inhaled) as most is
> exhaled (90%?). He seems to assume that ambient air pollution is absorbed,
> not 10% of what is inhaled (which seems odd). He arrives at a 1/6th of a
> cigarette per day for living in Beijing
> <http://www.myhealthbeijing.com/china-public-health/air-pollution-or-smoking-which-is-worse-a-letter-from-dr-pope/>
> (2013). That reference gives as the inhalation volume 18 cu m per day, not
> 10. (13-23). He correctly calculates the exposure (inhalation) as the mean
> concentration * volume to arrive at 90 µg/day up to 1,800 µg/day in a
> highly polluted city (100 µg/m3).
>
>
>
> An interesting observation can be made comparing the figure from the
> Berkeley paper (22 µg/m3 = 1 cigarette/day equivalent) and Pope’s second
> hand smoke value which is that living in an apartment with someone who
> smokes 1 pack per day exposes other people in the flat to 20 µg/m3. This
> is a very big mismatch. Pope has it that the total exposure in the breathed
> air of a second hand smoke recipient is 360 µg/day, while Berkeley’s
> calculation has it that living in the same flat breathing that 20 µg/m3
> air (Spengler 1991) is the same as smoking 16 cigarettes! So one guy smokes
> 20 cigarettes per day, and the other guy sharing the flat inhales another
> 16 in the form of second hand smoke? Now consider that the first guy who
> inhales all that original smoke gets another 16 cigarettes worth just be
> staying indoors. So he gets 36 cigarettes worth of smoke while only buying
> and smoking 20?
>
>
>
> No wonder Pope doesn’t believe Muller’s calculations.  They are
> unbelievable. They do not even consider ozone
> <http://www.myhealthbeijing.com/china-public-health/move-over-pm2-5-ozone-is-the-new-black/>.
>
>
>
>
> Regards
>
> Crispin
>
>
>
> http://berkeleyearth.org/air-pollution-and-cigarette-equivalence/
>
>
> http://www.myhealthbeijing.com/china-public-health/air-pollution-or-smoking-which-is-worse-a-letter-from-dr-pope/
>
> Here is the Berkeley model applied to large cities based on the 22µg/m3:
> https://www.citylab.com/environment/2018/04/how-much-are-you-smoking-by-breathing-urban-air/558827/
>
> Spengler JD. 1991. Indoor Air Pollution: A Health Perspective. Baltimore:
> Johns Hopkins University Press, pp 33-67.
>
>
>
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