Environment & Energy

Last edited Sat Sep 13, 2025, 03:14 PM - Edit history (1)

the study you reference and so I encourage you to perhaps ask someone in the medical field to explain what is meant by "risk factors in attributable deaths". A factor showing up in x number of deaths as a high risk factor from an estimation calculation does not mean that x number of people are known to have died from that risk factor. In fact you might want to read up on the problems of using such estimation calculations etc. cited here for example in Lancet, unless you now consider them unreliable, as published in Volume 20 Issue 12 December 2020.

Your purpose in pointing out the problems of sanitation for some people doesn't let you escape from your apparent inability to provide your transportation proposals since even if you could snap your fingers and we would instantly have all generation of electricity be from nuclear power you are still left with the transportation question. Tunnel vision on one aspect of source pollution doesn't cut it as I explained previously. So what is your remedy for transportation as a source of pollution? Unless you have one then your cries about fossil fuel pollution are poorly thought out, not comprehensive and in the end merely complaint with only a fraction of a solution.

Years ago when engineers would come to me with myopic proposals some would find it instructive to be told to broaden their consideration to include other aspects of a system or problem and engage other engineers etc. with specialty in those aspects. Others would take it as some kind of attack that they must defend. The better course is the first since the engineer will become more educated in the application of engineering. Some engineers are destined, when they can't grasp broader implications of a problem, to be someone who can design but have given no thought, or think there is no need, to the consequences to the system of the application of their design. Other engineers learn to look at problems comprehensively and usually enjoy better success in applying themselves to questions with broad implications.

If you had your wish instantly granted and all power generation were nuclear we are still left with massive source pollution from transportation. Your option as I said is myopic. I think you can do better since I do believe you have the skills if you broaden rather than fixate. You can do better. Railing against air pollution from fossil fuels is correct but having a proposal to eliminate only one source, keeping in mind the fossil fuel pollution the solution would generate from construction/operation/maintenance, while being adamantly against additional source pollution reduction by using the product of your solution in a mixed use transportation strategy to reduce overall fossil fuel pollution is a justification at odds with itself.

Massive reduction in fossil fuel use in transportation is not an overnight thing and it requires an approach that takes many parts to the mix. While we transition and develop technologies we certainly may be using some technologies that also have some negative environmental impacts. But this is the case for many things we engineer and apply as our solutions develop for many different things in our world. Battery technology for example is moving along and we certainly are mindful of environmental problems associated with current technology and indeed it provides some of the push to develop battery technology that moves away from those problems. Other generation technologies as well develop and change over time.

Your solution is incomplete, has unaddressed problems of it's own, has a quite long time frame for implementation and while it may be a long term answer in a mix of technologies it is not a comprehensive answer that can be relied upon yet for many years to come due to these cited factors.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30485-0/abstract