Italy: The Virus Hits Polluted Areas. Is There a Correlation?

The coronavirus pandemics: a consequence of the human impact on the ecosystem

The Italian situation: on the left, pollution levels of microparticulate. On the right, the diffusion of the Coronavirus pandemic. Image from the article by Setti et al. 

Below, I report an English translation (slightly modified) of an article that I submitted today to the Italian newspaper "Il Fatto Quotidiano." Sorry that the text is a little Italy-centered and all the links point to pages in Italian. Nevertheless, I thought that the story of a possible correlation of the coronavirus diffusion and the level of pollution was interesting also for the readers of "Cassandra's Legacy." 

For some additional considerations, take a look at the picture above: the correlation of the virus diffusion with the most polluted areas of Italy seems evident. It is, of course, a hypothesis to be taken with plenty of caution, but it has some logic in it. The Val Padana, the Northern plains of Italy, is a region stuck between two mountain chains, the Appennini and the Alps, blocking winds coming from the North. The result is that air stagnates and pollution accumulates, creating what's probably the most polluted area in Western Europe. Considering that also Wuhan, the other center of the coronavirus epidemic, is located in a highly polluted area, central China, it makes sense to think that the infection does more damage to the already weakened lungs of people affected by pollution. Indeed, I had already noted how epidemics tend to strike mostly populations already weakened by other factors, typically famines and wars -- pollution is just another factor that has the same effect. According to the data, it may also be that the virus is carried by flying microparticles and that makes the infection spread faster.

The discussion is ongoing in Italy, with some people vehemently rejecting the idea that pollution may have anything to do with the pandemic. They tend to negate the correlation using the concept that "correlation doesn't mean causation" as a little mantra to dispel ideas they can't accept. There is a certain logic in this attitude, too. If the epidemic is reinforced by pollution, it means that the virus is not just an act of God, unpredictable and nobody's fault. It means that we have created the disaster by our neglect of the damage we are doing to the ecosystem and that, eventually, comes back to us with a vengeance. It is understandable that some people take the hypothesis as a direct attack on their non-negotiable lifestyle. But so it goes, we are all human beings. 


The Coronavirus epidemic and pollution: is there a correlation?
by Ugo Bardi
Submitted to "Il Fatto Quotidiano" 22 March 2020

There is an ongoing debate about the possible correlation between the coronavirus epidemic and pollution. A recent study by Leonardo Setti and colleagues examines this correlation in Italy. The result is that particulate matter appears to act as a carrier of the virus and accelerate its spread. This would be in accordance with the fact that the maximum spread of the epidemic is in Val Padana, probably the most polluted area in Italy.

The article does not explicitly say that pollution may also have weakened the immune defenses of victims, but this is the result of other studies. For example, a recent study shows that this specific virus preferentially attacks the lungs of smokers, and smoking does similar damage as pollution to lungs.

These are possible hypotheses but, of course, it does not mean that they correspond to reality. In fact, Setti's article also generated negative reactions. The Italian Aerosol Society (IAS) intervened with a document that points out that correlation does not mean causation, that the data are uncertain and that we need to study much more about it before we can determine if the atmospheric particulate matter has any effects on the epidemic.

Who's right? For most of us, it is difficult to give an informed judgment on such a specialized and complex subject. One thing we can say, however, is that here we have a correlation based on data – albeit uncertain- backed by serious people. Nothing to do with the various follies that you can read all over the Web, that the epidemic is all the fault of 5G, of chemtrails, or who knows what other ongoing monstrous plot created by the powers that be.

Another thing we can say is that this story is a good example of how scientific progress works: we start from a correlation, often initially uncertain, and then try to arrive at an explanation. Perhaps you remember the case of the English doctor John Snow, who in the 19th century had noticed a correlation between the number of cases of cholera in London and the distance of the homes of people sick from a certain public fountain. He shut it down and so he managed to stop the epidemic. Much later, it was discovered that the fountain fished near a well that contained infected fecal matter.

Today, it seems obvious to us that Snow was right but, in his time, the role of bacteria in infectious diseases was not known and his idea was initially opposed. It may be that someone had also said to him that " correlation does not mean causation!" But if Snow had waited for certainty, people would have continued to drink from that fountain and die of cholera.

The analogy with the current situation is obvious. Also for the coronavirus epidemic, we have an analysis of the location of the cases that establishes a correlation with highly polluted areas. On this basis, an action strategy can be devised. For cholera in the days of Snow, it was enough to close a fountain to stop the epidemic, for the coronavirus you have to reduce air pollution. That's not so easy, but we can at least try. If it turns out the correlation didn't exist, well, we'll still have done something good.

All this does not mean that it is the only pollution that causes the epidemic, absolutely not. But if it's an important factor, then we have to take it into account. If the air in Lombardy had been less polluted, it would have been easier to control the spread of the virus and mortality would have been lower.

Once more, we see how the damage we do to the ecosystem comes back to us. At this point, it is useless to blame the Chinese bat-eaters or the government that did not close the borders in time. To a large extent, the blame lies with all of us who, with the excuse of "development", have not done enough to combat air pollution. It will take time to remedy, but, at least, the coronavirus is teaching us that there is no development if it is not sustainable and that sustainable development respects both the ecosystem and human health. Hopefully, we'll remember that in the future.

h/t Sylvie Coyaud and Alex Saragosa.



A comment by Ugo Bardi's Personal Troll, Mr. Kunning-Druger

So, mr. Bardi. I see that you finally had what you wanted. You and your friends, including the little witch with braided hair, you must be very happy at seeing people die of the virus. Isn't it a good way to reduce what you call "pollution"? You will stop at nothing to impose your twisted ideology of hate on the world, right? And I figure you must be gloating at seeing the fall of the concentration of CO2 that you call "greenhouse" gas but is instead food for plants. Very well, one point scored by you watermelons, those who are green outside and red inside. I figure that the next step will be trying to force Communism on us with the excuse of the pandemic. Sure, but you'll see that it won't be so easy. Not easy at all.

The West Fades. The Center Quietly Returns: The New Silk Road

An image from the workshop on desalination and mineral extraction from seawater organized by Sharif University in Teheran this week. In the photo, you can see people from Oman (3), Iran (3), South Africa (1), India (1), and Bangladesh (1). It was not only a multi-ethnical group but also a Eurasia-centered one. It gave me some impression of the shifting balance of power in the world, from the West to the Center, and inspired this post. 

If you think about that, it is funny that we tend to define ourselves as "Westerners." Most civilizations and cultures in history have tended to see themselves as the center of the world, just think of China: it is supposed to be "the Middle Kingdom". This idea that we are on an edge is something that we've probably inherited from the ancient Greeks, when everything west of them was seen as a land of mystery, peopled with savages, monsters, and Gods. 

But the fact that we call ourselves Westerners doesn't mean we think we are a periphery of the world, not at all. Most Westerners seem to cherish the idea that we are the real center, the most advanced, enlightened, and powerful area of the world. The rest of is, well, it is mostly inhabited by turban-wearing barbarians, savage tribes, or, at best, ancient and decadent empires on their way to dissolution. These Non-Westerners need our guidance if they have to attain the nirvana as defined here: democracy and economic liberism.

But the world is vast and things change. Empires are born, reach their pinnacle of greatness and then collapse while still claiming that they will last forever. That may be the destiny of that great world empire, the "Western Empire," that started with the British and continues with the Americans. The center of the world may well be returning to what it used to be up to a few centuries ago, gravitating around that "geographical center" sometimes said to be in Egypt, sometimes in Turkey, sometimes in Syria. It doesn't matter where it is exactly: it is at the heart of the gigantic landmass of Eurasia, somewhere in the region we call the "Middle East."

Chess players know how important it is to dominate the center if they want to dominate the game. Not for nothing, indeed, the game of Chess was developed not far from the center of the world: somewhere in Persia. But to dominate the center, you need to be able to move in and out of it and in the real world that takes roads. In ancient times, the center of Eurasia was crossed by the Silk Road: a long and winding road that went through mountains and deserts, including also coastal sea lanes. It was the realm of commercial caravans with their camels slowly marching from one edge to the other of a Eurasian supercontinent and to Africa as well, carrying gold, silver, ivory, spices, silk, and much more.

The Silk Road lost importance and then disappeared with the arrival of the Westerners who monopolized commerce with their ships and power with their armies. The concept of national borders had never existed before but it was the death toll for the old caravans, now confined within states. Commerce was taken over by Westerners with their container ships, crossing the oceans in a gigantic network that created the empire we call sometimes "Globalization." Not just a commercial empire but a military one as well, dominated by the mighty armies of the West.

Empires are run by a combination of commerce and military power and it is the balance of costs and profits that keeps them together. The old Silk Road never turned into a continental empire because it was just too expensive to move armies along it on long distances. But the agile camel caravans provided the link that was needed for the road to remain open: a low-cost system that didn't need a military governance system and couldn't afford it anyway, Instead, the modern sea lanes of the current World Empire are kept together and controlled by the mighty carrier strike groups of the American Navy: nothing and nobody would even dream of challenging their power, so far. But the carrier group is a behemot that needs to be fed, and for how long will that be possible?

Things keep changing, as they have always been doing. The old Silk Road is being revamped with the name of the "Belt and Road" initiative. It is the revenge of the land over the sea: the lanes of the new silk road are nearly invulnerable to the naval power of the Westerners if nothing else just for the sheer vastity of the territory it connects. Think about that: the population of Eurasia and Africa, together, make almost 6 billion people. The rest of the world is a periphery. 

So, the Western domination may be fading and much of what we are reading in the news nowadays is a reflection of this decline. With the depletion of the resources that created the Western Empire, first coal, then oil, the center is returning where it used to be and the great road that links Eastern and Western Eurasia is going to be again the pulsating artery of the world. Maybe Eurasia will be crisscrossed by fast trains powered by solar energy, or maybe the old camels will return: solid, resilient, unstoppable.

And the Westerners? They will return to their ancient role of seafaring pirates: coming and going like storms, leaving little trace. Curiously, though, they'll be leaving a reverberation of their presence with the English language, initially carried into Eurasia by the American Legions, now the tool of choice by Eurasians to understand each other.

Perhaps English is the true reason for the use of the term "The West" since it did originate on the extreme Western edge of Eurasia. But that's just a quirk of history: once, at least four languages were spoken along the old silk road: Mongolian, Persian, Arabic, and Turkish, while Chinese and Greek were spoken at the two ends. English as the dominant language may make things simpler and continue being used during the 21st century, and even farther in the future. Or we may switch to some other language: perhaps "googlish" or some other pidgin language. Who knows? As always, life is a journey, not a destination.

The Stuff of Our Lives: The Seneca Collapse of Relocating

The experience of relocating is curiously similar to an archaeological excavation of the ruins of a disappeared empire. Above, you can see two jars filled with old coins recovered from the nook and crannies of my house after emptying it of everything. Mostly these are old Italian "lira" coins, others are foreign coins and, in the smaller jar, you can see an Italian "gettone" used for making calls at public phones up to a few decades ago. These old coins have no monetary value, they are just markers of time passing. 

You know that the "Seneca Effect" has to do with overshoot and collapse. From the time when the Roman philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca noted that "growth is slow, but ruin is rapid," I keep finding new examples of application of the idea. One that I recently experienced had to do with relocating: moving away from the home where my family had been living since 1965. From then,  the 340 square meters (ca. 3600 ft2) house had been gradually filling up with all sorts of stuff. Emptying it in a couple of months of work was quite an experience. "Sobering" is the correct word, I'd say.

I don't know if you are all good followers of Feng Shui, striving for good vibes and not too much junk in your home. I didn't consider myself as an adept of that philosophy, but I didn't see myself as a serial accumulator of junk, either. Well, I had to reconsider my position. I was a serial accumulator. Really, the amount of stuff that came out of my place was so large to be bewildering. And so much of it we had to throw away -- bewildering, too. We are still a little bewildered, but the most intense part of the saga seems to be over, so maybe I can report about my experience in this post.

First of all, we (me and my wife) tried to be good citizens and separate/recover/reuse what we could. It was one of those experiences where you note the divergence between theory and reality.

Let me start with the furniture. A lot of it was modern pieces of the kind made in laminated wood, bought in places like Ikea. We had a few of these pieces re-assembled in our new home, but the result was something that looks like it was salvaged from a shipwreck -- this furniture is not made to be reused. Indeed, the employees of the company that transported our stuff told me that most people just throw away the old furniture and buy new pieces: it is cheaper and easier. Another field of our society where the concept of "circular economy" just doesn't seem to apply.

Here is a photo of some (just some!) of our old furniture disassembled and ready to be taken away by the local waste management company. I have no idea of what they do with it, but I am sure there is no way to recycle it. It has to be landfilled or incinerated. Furniture is NOT environmentally friendly.

Then, we had plenty of things that were still perfectly usable-- even brand new -- but that we couldn't take to our new, much smaller home. Here, we tried to avoid throwing stuff away, but it was hard work, time-consuming, and not a very satisfying result in the end. Here is an image of one of the several carloads we transported to a local charity -- I counted at least six trips like this one.

At the charity, they took most of the things we brought, but a little grudgingly. They told us that they are full of clothes, books, toys, tools, tableware, appliances, trinkets, and the like. The poor can have these things aplenty, but what they need is not that: they desperately need money for food and for the rent. But that's, obviously, not what you want to dispose of when you are relocating.

Then, eventually, a lot of things had simply to be thrown away: not good enough to go to charities, too big to be stored somewhere, useless in our new home. Here, you see me throwing away my old globe of when I was a kid -- note the burned area near Australia. Maybe I was playing a nuclear war game, or maybe I was already a catastrophist at that time!

Note also that the globe is going into the "undifferentiated" bin. It is plastic, theoretically it could be recycled, but the Italian law considers only food containers to be recyclable. So, a lot of plastic objects we threw away will never be recycled and every item I dumped in the bin, shoes, tools, trinkets and more, gave me an eerie sensation of a "revenant." One day, I would find again that plastic in the air I breathe after it will be incinerated, or maybe in the form of small chunks in the sushi I eat. Not that if it were possible to recycle it, things would change so much. The thought that my old junk could be turned into a garden bench doesn't comfort me too much: also that bench would end, eventually, in my sushi.

How much stuff did we throw away? I can't say, hundreds of kilograms, at the minimum. And it is impressive to think that most homes in the Western will have the same problem, one day or another. I don't know about your experience but, after I went through all this, I cannot visit a friend at home without noting how much stuff is accumulated there. Some places are even more encumbered with all sorts of junk than our home -- getting rid of all they contain is going to be a nightmare for the owners.

Where will all this stuff end up? And how to manage it in a future in which, probably, transportation is going to cost much more than today? Maybe it will remain where it is, slowly buried by the ruins of our civilization. A treasure for the archaeologists of the future, if there will be any. But it is, after all, just entropy doing its work.

For Whom is Peak Oil Coming? If you own a Diesel Car, it is Coming for you!

At the beginning, the idea of "peak oil" seemed to be relatively uncomplicated: we would climb from one side and then go down the other side. But no, the story turned out to be devilishly complex. For one thing, there is no such a thing as "oil" intended as a combustible liquid -- there are tens, perhaps hundreds, of varieties of the stuff: light, heavy, sour, sweet, shale, tight, dumbbell, and more. And each variety has its story, its peculiarities, its trajectory over time. Eventually, all the oil curves have to end to zero but, in the meantime, there is a lot of wiggling up and down that continues to take us by surprise. Mostly, we didn't realize how rabidly the system would deny the physical reality of depletion, much preferring to "legislate scarcity" on the basis of pollution.

Here, Antonio Turiel writes a fascinating post telling us how the peak is coming "from below," affecting first the heavy fraction of crude oil: diesel and fuel oil. That's already causing enormous problems for the world's transportation system, as well as for the owners of diesel cars, and the situation will become much more difficult in the near future. The light fraction, the one that produces gasoline, seems to be still immune from peaking, but that will come, too.(U.B.)

The Peak of Diesel Fuel: 2018 edition. 

By Antonio Turiel (translated from "The Oil Crash")

 

Dear Readers,

Six years ago we commented on this same blog that, of all the fuels derived from oil, diesel was the one that would probably see its production decline first. The reason why diesel production was likely to recede before that of, for example, gasoline had to do with the fall in conventional crude oil production since 2005 and the increasing weight of the so-called "unconventional oils," bad substitutes not always suitable to produce diesel. With the data of that 2012, I wrote "The Peak of Diesel". At that time, there was a certain stagnation of diesel production, but it seemed to be too soon to venture if it was final or if it could still be overcome. I reviewed the issue in 2015, in the post "The Peak of Diesel: Edition of 2015." The new data from 2015 showed that in 2012 there had really been no peaking, although diesel production had grown less strongly if we compared it with the previous historical rate, and even the last 18 months of the period studied at that time showed a certain stagnation. Now it has been another three years, and it is a good time to look at the data and see what happened.

Before starting, I would like to thank Rafael Fernández Díez for having the patience to download the JODI data, for having elaborated the graphs I show here, slightly retouched, and for having made me notice the problem that is being raised with the refining of heavy oils (We'll see more below). He hasn't had time to finish this post and that's why I'm the one who wrote it, but what follows is actually his work.

As in the previous two posts, we will use the database of the Joint Oil Data Initiative (JODI). This database provides information about most of the world's oil and refined products, but not all of them. The countries not included are countries with serious internal problems and a great lack of transparency, either because of wars or because they are very tight dictatorships. For this reason, the figures that I will show are around 10% lower than they should be if they were representing the whole world. However, given the characteristics of the excluded countries, it is most likely that their data did not change the observed trends, only the total amounts.

All the graphs that I will show are seasonally adjusted, that is, the points are the average of the previous 12 months. In this way, the effects of the variation due to the season are avoided, the graphic is less noisy and trends are better seen. The graphs will always be expressed in millions of barrels per day (Mb/d). First of all, I show you the graph of the evolution of diesel production over the past years:

 
As seen in the graph, the year 2015 marked the maximum so far. There had not been such a marked drop in production since the crisis of 2008-2009, but in the case of the fall of 2015 we find that 1) there has not been a serious global economic recession; 2) the descent is lasting longer and 3) the levels of diesel production show no sign of recovery. Although it is still a little early to ensure that the peak of diesel has occurred, stagnation - even falling - is starting to drag on for too long to be ignored.

Looking at the data of JODI, two other very interesting things are observed. On the one hand, if one analyzes the production of all the fuel oil that is not diesel (fuel oil) it is found that its production has been in decline for years.

As the graph shows, since 2007 (and therefore before the official start of the economic crisis) the production of fuel oils is in decline and it seems to be a perfectly consolidated trend. The diehard economicist interpretation is to consider that there is simply no demand for these fuels (which, although of the same family, are heavier than diesel). When oil is refined, it is subjected to a process called cracking, in which the long molecular chains present in the oil are broken (by means of heat and other processes) and then the molecules are separated by their different properties of fluidity and density. The fact is that if you have made changes in the refineries to crack more oil molecules and get other lighter products (and that is why less heavy fuel oil is produced), those molecules that used to go to heavy fuel oil now go to other products. By logic, taking into account the added value of fuels with longer molecules, it is normal that these heavy fuel oils are undergoing cracking, especially to generate diesel and possibly more kerosene for airplanes and eventually more gasoline. We must not forget that from 2010 the fracking in the USA began to take off, flooding the market with light oil, which is not easy to refine to make diesel. It is therefore quite likely that the refineries have adapted to convert an increasing amount of heavy fuel oil into light fuel oil (diesel). It reinforces this idea that, if we add the volumes of the two previous graphs we have, there is a certain compensation for the trends of diesel production, increasing until 2015, and the long-term trend of decrease of the rest of the fuel oils.

This figure shows that, after the 2008-2009 slump, it has been very hard to raise the total production of fuel oils, which peaked in 2014 and have remained there for almost a year; and at the moment it is suffering a resounding fall (about 2,5 Mb/d from the levels of 2014).

This last observation is quite relevant because if, as you can guess, the industry is cracking less heavy fuel oil to ensure that the production of diesel does not go down too much, the rapid fall of heavy fuel oil will quickly drag down the diesel production. In fact, the graph shows that, after falling in 2015 and 2016, in 2017, it was possible to stabilize the production of all fuel oils, but it is also seen that in recent months there was a quite rapid fall. Surely, in this shortage, we can start noting the absence of some 2.5 Mb/d of conventional oil (more versatile for refining and therefore more suitable for the production of fuel oil), as we were told by the International Energy Agency in his last annual report. This explains the urgency to get rid of the diesel that has lately shaken the chancelleries of Europe: they hide behind real environmental problems (which have always troubled diesel, but which were always given less than a hoot) to try to make a quick adaptation to a situation of scarcity. A shortage that can be brutal, since no prevention was performed for a situation that has long been seen coming.

The followers of that religion called economic liberalism will insist with all their strength that what is being observed here is a peak of demand, that old argumentative fallacy that does not agree with the data (who can think that people are stopping to consume oil because they want? Maybe because they have better alternatives? Which ones?). They will argue that there is a lower demand for diesel and that this is why production stagnates and that the production of fuel oils drops because, as they are more polluting fuels, the new environmental regulations do not allow their use. It's a bit of the old problem of who came first, the chicken or the egg. With regard to the fact that the demand for diesel does not increase, prices have a considerable influence: this is how shortages are regulated in a market economy. And, as for the environmental reasons, the production of heavy gas oil has been dropping from 2007, when there was not as much regulatory interest as there seems to be now. There is one aspect of the new regulations that I think is interesting to highlight here: from 2020 onwards, all ships will have to use fuel with a lower sulfur content. Since, typically, the large freighters use very heavy fuel oils, that requirement, they say, makes one fear that a shortage of diesel will occur. In fact, from what we have discussed in this post, what seems to be happening is that heavy fuel oils are declining very fast and ships will have no choice but to switch to diesel. That this is going to cause problems of diesel shortage is more than evident. It is an imminent problem, even more than the peaks in oil prices that, according to what the IEA announces, will appear by 2025.

The second of the interesting things that the JODI data shows us is how the volume produced of all petroleum products has evolved.

The volume produced has been able to continue increasing during these years thanks to the energy subsidy that the US is giving to the world by means of fracking. However, fracking oil only serves to make gasoline and that is why the diesel problem remains. But you can also note how the end of the graph above shows the same trend in the production of diesel, with a drop of more than 2 Mb/d. What does that mean? That the contribution of fracking to the whole volume is also hitting the ceiling, it does not get any higher. It is a further indication that we are already reaching the peak oil of all petroleum liquids.

That is why, dear reader, when you are told that the taxes on your diesel car will be raised in a brutal way, now you know why. Because it is preferred to adjust these imbalances with a mechanism that seems to be a market (although this is actually less free and more adjusted) rather than telling the truth. The fact is that, from now on, what can be expected is a real persecution against cars with an internal combustion engine (gasoline will be next, a few years after diesel). Do not say that you were not notified (and I was not even the first to do it in this blog). And if it does not seem right, maybe what you should do is to demand that your representatives explain the truth.


Regards

AMT

Note: this post was translated from Spanish using Google Translate, which did a pretty good job, necessitating only some retouches -- although the result is still somewhat "Spanish-sounding" even in English! One problem is the use of the Spanish terms "gasoil" and "diésel" which may not mean the same thing as they do in English (in Italy, btw, diesel fuel is always termed "gasolio"). But these two terms indicate a very similar entity, even though maybe not identical. So, I reworked Turiel's text a little in order to use only the term "diesel".

What is the worst product ever marketed?

The worst product ever marketed: the disposable butane lighter. Wasteful, expensive, non-recyclable, using non-renewable materials, having benign alternatives (matches). In short, evil. And yet, it was hugely successful. Image from Wikipedia.  

Greens often exaggerate in inviting people to save energy and be happier by staying in the dark and eating insects. However, it is also true that sometimes wastefulness goes a few notches higher and becomes truly a scandal. It is the case of the ordinary disposable lighter. Bic alone produces almost a billion lighters per year and has produced some 20 billions of them in the past 30 years. The whole world production is probably of a few billion per year. A good example of a successful product, but is it a good product?

The disposable lighter is surely practical but also, if you think about it, a very bad deal. It contains some 5 cc of butane, that you pay, typically, more than $1. That means around $200 per liter, or $800/gallon. You wouldn't be happy to pay that kind of money when you refill the tank of your car. And, being powered by a fossil fuel, butane, every time you light up one you add some CO2 to the atmosphere, some of which will stay there for tens of thousands of years.

Then, the disposable lighter doesn't contain just non-renewable fuel but plastics manufactured from fossil fuels and also polluting. Then, it contains metals such as cerium, lanthanum, neodymium, praeseodymium and more. These metals are classified as "rare earths;" they are not so rare as the name seems to imply, but they are not so common, either. And the lighter is thrown away after use and it will never be recycled. The rare earths it contains will be lost forever.

Is all that enough to qualify disposable lighters as "the worst product ever marketed"? Well, everything can be questioned, but if you line up the characteristics of a bad product as 1) uses rare and non-renewable resources, 2) is not recycled and not supposed to be recyclable, 3) is manufactured on a large scale, 4) it has non-polluting and less expensive alternatives, there are few examples other than lighters for which you can tick all the four boxes. I can hardly think of anything so wasteful to set something on fire, no matter whether you are a professional arsonist or simply an ordinary smoker.

After all, what was so wrong with using the old matches? Matches contain only recyclable materials: wood, paper, phosphorous, sulfur. I can't see anything that can be done with a lighter that cannot be done with a match, except that a lighter can burn steadily for a longer time. But if your purpose is to light up a cigarette or a kitchen burner, it makes no difference. And, by all means, there is no way that a lighter would cost less than a match, at least if manufactured on a comparable scale.

So, disposable lighters are all an example of how a combination of financial factors and government regulations can push a bad product to dominate the market. It is, after all, what has happened with fossil fuels, still gathering large government subsidies, despite the damage they are doing to all of us.

In the case of lighter vs. matches, the playing field has been made unfavorable to matches from the beginning, because they have been traditionally taxed by governments (also lighters, in some cases, but not always). Add to that the rapid expansion of the cigarette market during the past decades, with some six billion cigarettes sold worldwide every year, and growing, some large companies saw their chance. They engaged in the large scale manufacturing of lighters and they crushed the match manufacturers, mainly small companies that couldn't match (indeed!) the financial power of large corporations. The advertising power, too,  played a big role, with the appeal of colored and fashionable items that could also be collected. And it was world domination for the disposable lighter.

Could we reverse this demonic trend? Maybe there are signs of an inversion of the tendency and, not long ago, I saw again courtesy matchboxes appearing in an Italian Hotel. Maybe it was because finally (in 2015) the Italian government decided to abolish the tax on matches, a good idea that, unfortunately, arrived at least 50 years too late (the French Government did that in 1999). Whatever the case, it is high time that someone realizes that some ideas, such as disposable lighters, are evil to the bone. And that the mythical "free market" cannot turn evil into good.

But maybe you think that the old matches are passé? In this case, we have technologies for getting rid of the obsolete propane lighters without having to get back to the somewhat primitive matches. For instance, we have spark lighters that use only electricity. They are a solid state alternative to propane lighters in the same way as photovoltaic energy is a solid state alternative to fossil energy. In the picture, you see one of these super hi-tech lighters in the hands of my daughter, Donata.

So, eventually, we learn what's the good way to do things. Too bad that it is almost always too late.

The Volkswagen scandal: say goodbye to the internal combustion engine!

By now, I guess that everyone in the world has heard of how Volkswagen cheated consumers by falsifying the results of the emission tests from their diesel engines. It is a true witch hunt unleashed against Volkswagen. Maybe there are good reasons for it, but I think it is also something that should be taken with caution. A lot of it.

I have been a consultant for the automotive industry for some 20 years and I think that I know the way they operate. And I can tell you that they are not equipped for "cheating", intended as willingly ignoring or breaking the law. They just don't do that, they understand very well that the result could be something like what's happening to Volkswagen nowadays; something that could lead to their end as a car manufacturer. On the contrary, carmakers tend to be extremely legalistic and apply to the letter the current laws and regulations.

This said, it is also clear that car makers are there to make a profit and their managers are supposed to "get results". So, if the laws and the regulations are not clear, or do not explicitly say that something is forbidden; then, if that something is supposed to provide some advantage to the company, it may be done.

This is, I think, what happened in this case. It is very well known that the results of the pollution tests made in the lab are always much better than those made on the road. And it is very well known that the performances of cars as measured in standardized tests are always much better than those of real cars. It is all very well known and documented: look for instance here and here. (h/t G.Meneghello).

So, if cheating is so diffuse, why was Volkswagen singled out in this scandal? Maybe they were doing something especially bad, but I would be surprised if they were to turn out to be the only ones using the trick they have been accused to use for hiding nitrogen oxide emissions. Besides, I am sure that, before doing what they did, they checked with their legal department and got some kind of green light: possibly reasoning that if it was not explicitly forbidden it was not illegal. Anyway, I leave to conspiracy theorists the obvious implications that could be derived from this story.

Rather, I would point out something that I learned in my work with the automotive industry. It is that the story of pollution abatement in internal combustion engines is a good example of the diminishing returns of technology. And not just that, it also illustrates very well how good intentions can easily conflict with reality and actually backfire.

It is a long and fascinating story that, here, I can just sketch it in its main lines (*). Anyway, the concept of "pollution" became popular in the 1970s and it quickly became clear that a major culprit were the emissions from car engines. That led to a major debate: some thought that it was necessary to get rid of internal combustion engines and replace them with electric motors, others that it was possible to reduce pollution from engines to acceptable levels. The latter position won (do you remember the "who killed the electric car" movie?)  and that led to a long series of legislative actions, especially in Europe, aimed at the development of less polluting and more efficient engines. On the whole, the results appear to be good (see, e.g. here).

However, what the Volkswagen scandal tells us is that, likely, most of the recent improvements may have been obtained, if not by cheating, at least by a creative interpretation of the rules. An especially telling point, here, has to do with the specific point that led to incriminate Volkswagen: the abatement of nitrous oxides. The problem is especially nasty because it arises from conflicting needs. One is of having low pollution, the other high mileage. To have high mileage, you need to increase the efficiency of the engine, and this can be done using diesel engine instead of the conventional gasoline engines. Diesel engines work at higher temperatures and pressures, and that makes them more efficient. But that makes them also produce more nitrous oxides. It has to do with the thermodynamics of combustion and you should know that if you try to fight thermodynamics, thermodynamics always wins. The problem is basically unsolvable, at least at costs compatible with the price of a normal car. And when you face an unsolvable problem, often the reaction may be to cheat. This is, evidently, what happened with the automotive industry and the results have been exposed by the Volkswagen scandal.

But, if it is true that we cannot win against thermodynamics, it is also true that we don't need to fight against it. A battle against the combustion engine was lost in the 1970s, but the war can still be won: the electric car is making a spectacular return. Electric motors do not produce any gaseous pollution, they are much more efficient than internal combustion engines, and, in addition, they are compatible with renewable energy. What can we ask more? This time, let's try to avoid the mistakes we made in the past.






 (*) this is something that I hope to be able to describe in detail in a new book that I am working at. 

  

Breath of Life: the elders speak

This recent film by Susan Kucera is a survey of the sad state of the world. The film presents stunningly beautiful imagery together with together with interviews with a group of scientists and intellectuals (including myself). The overall impression is of something primeval, certainly consistent with the many sections of the film shot in Hawai'i. The people speaking on screen give the definite impression of being the elders of the tribe telling to the young hunters that they should not kill that mammoth; it could be the last they'll ever see! But the young hunters don't listen. It is the story of our species.   

Watch it, if you have a chance.  Here is the film's site.