Aylwyn Scally
Human evolutionary genetics, University of Cambridge; Darwin College. 🇮🇪
- I've seen the claim many times recently that wood-burning stoves and fires produce more pollution than road traffic. It seems to be based on this paper, which studied particulate matter in air at two Birmingham locations in 2021/22. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- The authors used a matrix factorisation approach to infer source contributions based on chemical composition, and found a contribution of 19% for signatures associated with seasonal softwood burning, 6% for year-round burning (e.g BBQs, garden waste), & 22% for traffic-related sources.
- Clearly, reducing any source of emissions will improve air quality. But the fact that both sample sites were distant from major roads, where traffic and diesel emissions in particular might be more prevalent, and which most of us have to encounter regularly in our lives, is important context.
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View full threadBut even focusing on stoves, it would be interesting to know what proportion of them are used only a few days a year vs all winter as a primary source of household heating, and how this varies by rural/urban setting. A blanket ban seems to make as much sense as banning BBQs.
- Yeah, that's not how it works. Long way to go yet.
- Most won't be able to read this as it's paywalled, which is a shame because it's a savage and accurate indictment of Blair and Mandelson, and by extension a whole shower of New Labour types, many of whom can now be found as advisers and backers of Keir Starmer.
- Jayz I'd forgotten about the crappy old core utilities on macOS.
- Right now a lot of politicians and celebrities are nervously searching their names in the Epstein files, worried that they weren't important enough to be mentioned.
- Imagine thinking it was some sort of defence to claim 'no record or recollection' of getting $75k from the known paedophile.. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
- What an absolute creep.
- Noel Hawkins was one of the great barmen. Seeing him there inside in Mulligans, each time I returned to Dublin, his familiar smile and manner as he poured the pints, was a link to memories of so many great evenings. It's a sad loss.
- I've lived in England half my life, but observing this weird new behaviour has caused me genuine culture shock. www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...
- Initially I assumed it was tourists or visitors who were in a pub for the first time. But apparently not. Is it some sort of delayed pandemic effect?
- Oh and on the topic of odd English things, this article proposes the laughable conjecture that "It may be that the queue to pay respects to Queen Elizabeth II in 2022 changed people’s attitudes to queueing".. Have you ever read such shite in your life.
