Doug wrote:

On Apr 23, 9:52*pm, Sleepalot wrote:
Doug wrote:
The TV news this morning showed the appalling smog over London and
people with breathing difficulties were advised to stay indoors.
Doesn't it seem strange though that individuals are actually allowed
to cause such harm to others with their polluting motor vehicles and
why is there no legal redress to this?

A lot of those vehicles are there because of you.

All I know about you is that you ride a bicycle.
You probably regard bicycles as cheap and clean, yes?
But they're only "cheap" because they're made efficiently, and they're
only "clean" because the pollution arising from their manufacture and
use is not near to you (though nearer than you think).

A bicycle is made of metals and plastics, which requires metal-ore mining
(which requires mining machinery), refining (which requires an electricity
industry), oil drilling and the chemical industry (plastics), fabrication of the
parts, electroplating, paint, and so on.

So you've got mining and oil industry, energy industry (all forms), chemical
industry (lots of), manufacturing, and of course transport (all forms). * * * *
Those things all rely on education, construction, security and emergency
services, health services, and of course food. *

Now, you consider using your bicycle to be pollution-free, because you don't
burn petrol to move it, but you eat food, so we're back to oil drilling, and
tractor manufacture, and transport (all forms) and the chemical industry, and
we should also throw in the water and sewage industry, and yet more consruction,
which is all backed up by education and health and security and so on, and so
on.

Utter rubbish! People require those things in order to live not just
to use bicycles.

No. For most of the time humankind has existed, they've done so without
all those things... "and their lives were nasty, brutish and short."


http://airtext.infoshows how the pollution is distributed over London
this morning.

Yes, shame on you!

More shame on you because your car construction involves much more
pollution than a bicycle

So we know you're a whore, and we're just arguing about the price.

and your car pumps out pollution all the time while it is in use, unlike a bicycle.

So let's look at this alleged "pollution".

Combustion of hyrocarbons produces;

1. water vapour (up to 4% of the natural atmosphere is water vapour - it's
essential to life)

2. carbon dioxide (the food supply for the whole of life on this planet)

That's almost the whole it, and so far, it's exactly the same as your body
produces.

There are _trace_ quantities of other things; NOx (plant fertilizer), CO (short-
lived, reacts to form water and CO2), soot (black carbon - a soil conditioner),
ozone (O3 short-lived oxidizing agent). Did I miss anything?

Your body also produces other emmissions: CH4 (short-lived, reacts to
form water and CO2), CO (short-lived, reacts to form water and CO2), hydrogen
sulfides (forms acids),...

All those things are either useful and beneficial, or are quickly converted to
useful, beneficial things. What's the fuss about?