Normally, when a story pops up about fossil fuels, it has to do with global warming. People are typically concerned with the greenhouse gasses that are emitted and how much that might contribute to altering the climate. However, there is another, more immediate issue at hand regarding fossil fuels – how pollution affects health.
Naturally, everyone sees those smokestacks coming out of coal, oil, and natural gas plants. All that smoke is left over particulates that are getting sent into the atmosphere. It would be nice to think that all of that gets sent up into the upper atmosphere, never to return but nothing really works that way. What goes up must come down and all those little particles float down and find their way from the smokestacks into our lungs. Not to mention getting into our food. Get a toxicology report done on yourself and you will probably find that your body is full of tons of things that shouldn’t be there. How much is this really affecting people? According to an article in Bloomberg, it might be up to 8.7 million globally every year. That is twice the amount of previous estimates. Now, given the disparity, someone’s method is very, very wrong. Which one? I’m not equipped to say. However, even 4.35 million annually is an awful lot of dead people.
This should provide great motivation to find alternatives to fossil fuels. Why not just shut them all down? Because they provide the vast majority of electricity in the world, something that has saved more lives than can be counted. Cutting off fossil fuels all at once with no plan just isn’t going to happen, it would plunge the world into chaos and kill a lot more people. So, we need a plan. We already have well developed nuclear technology that has been operating since the seventies with very little pollution. There are even newer, safer, and more efficient designs like thorium reactors that we could take advantage of if there were the political will to help people get over their visceral fear of the word ‘nuclear’. Additional research should also be done on other alternatives like geothermal and solar power. They can be very effective in certain applications, the initial investment just needs to get cheaper. I would mention wind power but I’ve known too many people who have worked in that field, from the engineers that design the blades to the guys climbing the ladders to fix them and they all agree that wind power isn’t viable.
We should also continue to develop better technologies to make fossil fuels cleaner in the meantime. Fortunately, this is something we have gotten much better at in recent years. Scrubbers on coal and oil plants have greatly reduced the amount of pollution emitted in the air. Natural gas burns a lot cleaner than both of them, making it a good transitional power source. We’ve gotten better with pollution in general, in the air and in the water. I clearly remember going through Gary, Indiana back in the day and the stench was…impressive, even with all the bus windows up. Now, I can drive through the heavily industrial town and barely even notice the smell. Though I still keep the windows up. We haven’t had a Great Lake or a river catch on fire in a very long time, and we aren’t currently filling up the Chicago River with literal garbage.
While all of that is great, there is clearly still a long way to go. Not just on the energy production end of things but on the consumption side as well. If we bought less stuff or used less electricity, we would be polluting less, which means less of that in the air and in our lungs and consequently fewer people dead. That seems a worthy goal, doesn’t it?
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Normally, when a story pops up about fossil fuels, it has to do with global warming. People are typically concerned with the greenhouse gasses that are emitted and how much that might contribute to altering the climate. However, there is another, more immediate issue at hand regarding fossil fuels – how pollution affects health.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome to TARTLE Cast with your hosts, Alexander McCaig and Jason Rigby. Where humanity steps into the future and source data defines the path.
Alexander McCaig (00:24):
Welcome back to TARTLE Cast. This is going to be our last episode today. We're getting a little-
Jason Rigby (00:28):
We're going to talk about dinosaurs.
Alexander McCaig (00:30):
... mentally toasted here. And I'm not talking about any sort of drug, I'm just wasted. Now, actually, I'm not even talking about drinking either. I'm just exhausted.
Jason Rigby (00:37):
Yeah, exhausted, yeah.
Alexander McCaig (00:38):
Toasted, wasted, exhausted.
Jason Rigby (00:40):
Well, I think the amount of work that has to get done for TARTLE being a new technology company and then coming into as disruptive as we are.
Alexander McCaig (00:54):
Yeah.
Jason Rigby (00:55):
You know, it's literally pushing that snowball up the hill and it's growing bigger every time, the more steps you take.
Alexander McCaig (01:03):
You know the mountain that the Grinch is on?
Jason Rigby (01:04):
Yes.
Alexander McCaig (01:06):
Just imagine that sort of like that base angle that you would have, and the amount of force and the weight of that thing. I'm not complaining. Nobody gives a shit. Sorry.
Jason Rigby (01:16):
No, no, we're not complaining. There's just a mass amounts of... and there's a time frame with it.
Alexander McCaig (01:20):
Yeah. People need it now.
Jason Rigby (01:23):
I mean, not only are you dealing with lawyers, but you're dealing with investors and then you've got UX design and you've got... You're with me and marketing side of things.
Alexander McCaig (01:32):
Dealing with you is like freaking something else.
Jason Rigby (01:35):
Yeah, that's the worst. So let's talk about... Speaking of mountains, let's talk about mountains and mountains of dinosaurs that are in-
Alexander McCaig (01:41):
Dinosaur mountain.
Jason Rigby (01:42):
That are down in the ground, and then we're taking those dinosaurs and doing something with them.
Alexander McCaig (01:46):
Can I... I want to talk about this. So the title of the article... Hit that real quick.
Jason Rigby (01:53):
Fossil fuel pollution kills 8.7 million a year, twice previous estimates.
Alexander McCaig (01:58):
Okay. So they think that... Not they think. The data that they've taken here shows that air pollutant from burning of fossil fuels is preventing people from... I don't know, whatever. It's causing them to die early. Let's talk about what a fossil fuel is. This is here on Wikipedia, and I just want to talk about the logical chain of events here.
Alexander McCaig (02:20):
Fossil fuel is a fuel formed by natural processes, such as anaerobic decomposition. I don't even have to get into the rest of this. Anaerobic. No oxygen. It's this fermenting process of things breaking down and dying and turning into carbon. Anaerobic. What do humans rely on apart from water? Oxygen, right?
Jason Rigby (02:48):
Yes.
Alexander McCaig (02:50):
Aerobic, not anaerobic. When a cell becomes anaerobic it gets closer to a cancerous state, does it not?
Jason Rigby (02:55):
What's aerobic?
Alexander McCaig (02:56):
So we're burning a thing which is already the thing that's come from a process that is already negative in this creation to what is required for a human being to thrive, where are the things on this planet. That right there, right there, shut it down.
Jason Rigby (03:15):
Yeah, exactly.
Alexander McCaig (03:15):
Do I have to say any more?
Jason Rigby (03:17):
Yeah, no, no, no. I get the-
Alexander McCaig (03:18):
On burning an anaerobic thing?
Jason Rigby (03:19):
Yes.
Alexander McCaig (03:21):
It's different than them saying, "Oh, my factory lets out aerobic stuff."
Jason Rigby (03:24):
Yeah, yeah. Well could-
Alexander McCaig (03:25):
We have a nuclear power plant that just lets off pure, clean oxygen.
Jason Rigby (03:29):
Energy is energy.
Alexander McCaig (03:30):
Yeah.
Jason Rigby (03:30):
I mean, you remember when that collider, the CERN or whatever.
Alexander McCaig (03:34):
Large [crosstalk 00:03:35]. Hadron.
Jason Rigby (03:34):
And they were so worried about are we going to create, when we split all these atoms, are we going to create something that is going to [crosstalk 00:03:42].
Alexander McCaig (03:41):
Rip a black hole in the air.
Jason Rigby (03:43):
Yeah, yeah. Even here, they were worried about that in New Mexico here.
Alexander McCaig (03:45):
Yeah. But do you see my point? Why are we not... It's anaerobic?
Jason Rigby (03:51):
Yeah.
Alexander McCaig (03:52):
It's anti-life.
Jason Rigby (03:53):
Yes.
Alexander McCaig (03:54):
It's a dead thing, anyway. You're burning a dead thing.
Jason Rigby (03:57):
And we're getting energy off of something that's dead. That's our whole society.
Alexander McCaig (04:06):
So how-
Jason Rigby (04:06):
Okay, we're done.
Alexander McCaig (04:07):
Yeah. Can we just... How many people died last year because of this air pollution issue?
Jason Rigby (04:12):
Previous high estimates of fine particle pollution mortality, and three times the combined number killed by HIV, AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. So more people were killed by fine particle pollution mortality than HIV, AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined.
Alexander McCaig (04:26):
So burning of fossil fuels, literally harming the climate, is killing people directly. You didn't even have to wait 70 years till the earth just burns up or turns into a giant ice ball. It's killing you right now. Look, this is... Listen, we have to be aware of the data. If it is screaming at you in the face-
Jason Rigby (04:51):
Well, the data was even off, because in the beginning, they said they thought it'd be like 100,000 to 150,000 people were dying every year.
Alexander McCaig (04:57):
But it was more.
Jason Rigby (04:57):
It was 350,000. How off is that data by percentage-wise?
Alexander McCaig (05:01):
Can we just... Oh, gosh. Can we talk about something? One hundred fifty thousand people died because of air pollutant.
Jason Rigby (05:09):
Yes.
Alexander McCaig (05:11):
Let's bring all those companies together that are doing the air pollutant or whatever it might be. I want to sit them down and then I want to stack up a pile of bodies 150,000 people high. I don't care if it was low. That is too many dead people. There should be zero dead people because of an air pollutant.
Jason Rigby (05:29):
Well, and here's the sad part too. We're working on countries that.., Of course they said in the article the wealthier countries are the ones that have better air quality. So, duh. So how do we fix that problem, you know what I mean? And then how do we have the ability to influence? I know how we... So you take your wealth and you influence for the greater of mankind and humanity, and you go to these other countries and say, "Hey, if the air quality is at this level, we'll be able to trade, we're going to be able to do these things." Why can't that be listed off of? And I know we just entered back into the [crosstalk 00:06:03].
Alexander McCaig (06:02):
And don't be a freaking hypocrite. U.S., you're still burning fossil fuels, but you don't want developing countries to burn them? How are they supposed to get where they were going? You use the same thing. And in their mind, they're like, "Well, why can't we use this?" So you're almost like inhibiting their development because you haven't given them an option, you've just restricted them.
Jason Rigby (06:20):
Or find whatever the safest is and then incentivize those countries to build those. They can build that. Or have some of our top scientists in the UK and United States and Canada, and China and India come over and help these other countries. Why can't we help?
Alexander McCaig (06:35):
I don't know. I'm a little disappointed at myself.
Jason Rigby (06:37):
At yourself?
Alexander McCaig (06:38):
Yeah. Because, and I've just... This just hit me in awareness. One hundred fifty thousand people. If I think about the context of this article, you know how it said it was low? I don't care if it was low or high. That's a number of people that died because of a fossil fuel emission, a pollutant.
Jason Rigby (06:59):
Well, they said it's 350,000. So now you're looking at a medium-sized city dying.
Alexander McCaig (07:03):
But that's the... It's not even that. Dude, think about it. People are dead. And I look at it as like, "Oh, it was only 100,000?" What are you talking about? Have you ever seen 100,000 dead bodies?
Jason Rigby (07:13):
Yeah, it's horrific. Yeah.
Alexander McCaig (07:15):
It's horrific if you actually consider that aspect. And because of the fact it's not right in front of your eyes, you're not interacting with it directly, you become unfazed. But now I'm looking at it I'm like, "I don't care if the estimate was low, I want the estimate to be zero. And in what the high of that zero to still be zero." I'm thinking about myself like, "What an insane..." It was almost like, oh, I was okay with it for a second. Do you see what I'm getting at?
Jason Rigby (07:40):
Yeah, no. I see. And you know, they've even... And in this study they were talking about, they even knocked it down to the one that's giving the real health effects and that's the PM 2.5. So now you've put the... Type that in, PM 2.5. It's the deadliest type of airborne particulate matter. It's 2.5 millionths of a meter.
Alexander McCaig (08:02):
That is super, super tiny.
Jason Rigby (08:04):
Yeah. So we've brought it down to this level and now we can specifically bring it to here's this table, here's where we're at, this is where we need to be. That should be... Climate stability is number one for a reason on our big seven.
Alexander McCaig (08:21):
Numero uno. People can't have educational access if there's dead. I can't give a book to 100,000 dead people, can I?
Jason Rigby (08:29):
No.
Alexander McCaig (08:30):
I can't give them economic access to anything if they're dead.
Jason Rigby (08:35):
Yeah, you can't [crosstalk 00:08:36] -
Alexander McCaig (08:36):
A dead person is not focusing on-
Jason Rigby (08:37):
Healthcare to somebody that's... 350,000 people that are dead.
Alexander McCaig (08:40):
How can I have global... How can I have public health if the people are already dead? There's no one to keep healthy at that point. This is a reason why this thing is number one. Wake up. Seriously, snap out of it. I don't care if that number seemed low and it was a low estimation. That is still a human being on the other end of here that's suffering.
Jason Rigby (08:59):
Maybe that $1.8 trillion that we here in the United States-
Alexander McCaig (09:03):
That we spent on the F-30... or $1.9 trillion on the F-35 fighter jet.
Jason Rigby (09:07):
I wonder if we could solve a way to handle the PM 2.5 with that?
Alexander McCaig (09:10):
I don't even know what the hell PM 2.5 is. Now I got to look at it. It doesn't even explain it.
Jason Rigby (09:14):
Yeah. It's a pollutant.
Alexander McCaig (09:16):
One in a-
Jason Rigby (09:17):
Here I can-
Alexander McCaig (09:17):
Just this website... On physics.org, they said fossil fuel pollution causes one in five deaths globally.
Jason Rigby (09:23):
One in five. One in five.
Alexander McCaig (09:26):
One in five is because we're burning something anaerobic and it's killing us.
Jason Rigby (09:30):
And how much money would it take to cure that?
Alexander McCaig (09:33):
Dude, that's just human beings. Think about the animals.
Jason Rigby (09:37):
Yeah, the plants.
Alexander McCaig (09:37):
Think about the plants that have to deal with it.
Jason Rigby (09:37):
The trees.
Alexander McCaig (09:39):
Think about the plankton in the water.
Jason Rigby (09:40):
Ecosystem... Yes. The list goes on and on.
Alexander McCaig (09:42):
Oh, gosh.
Jason Rigby (09:43):
Yeah, so this is a huge issue. Climate stability, number one. I want you to close on this, Alex. When we're looking at not-for-profits on TARTLE that are wanting to help with climate stability, how is TARTLE... because I know you've been having a lot of conversations here lately with this. How is TARTLE going to infuse themselves with not-for-profits and then how can people... companies purchase data and help climate stability?
Alexander McCaig (10:11):
This is great. So in the new system of TARTLE in the marketplace, individuals have the choice of sharing their earnings that they've got through sharing their data, right? Being paid to share. They can give those earnings towards causes they care about: non-profit organizations, charitable organizations, activism groups, whatever it might be. And so we're having conversations with these groups to say, "Do you want to come and show who you are on TARTLE?" I'm not asking anything of you. Just saying, "Do you want to put your brand here? And do you want to open yourself up to more donations from people that care about these causes?"
Jason Rigby (10:48):
Yes.
Alexander McCaig (10:49):
Let's put you in the limelight. This... It costs you nothing, legitimately. This costs you nothing. It will cost you maybe 20 minutes of dealing with me on the phone.
Jason Rigby (11:00):
Yes.
Alexander McCaig (11:00):
Right? But in doing so we can open up the awareness to these things. Towards all the people in 175 countries that currently interact with TARTLE, let's open this up now to these not-for-profits or these people that are trying to champion these things that fall under the big seven. Because this is so deeply important. And by the way, if you're a business on there and you're buying data, you can still choose just outright to even look at things you want to donate to.
Jason Rigby (11:25):
Yes.
Alexander McCaig (11:26):
Do that also. If you're going to buy some data, chuck off some shekels too to donate. Because all these other people that you're paying to acquire their data, they still see the greater good, the higher cause here, and they're still giving that money back, money that they need and that they deserve to have in the first place. And they still choose to give it back.
Alexander McCaig (11:45):
So if you are a not-for-profit, if you do align with our mission, vision, principles, our big seven, and you don't want to see one in every five people dying because of a PM 2.5 air pollutant, because we're burning an anaerobic thing that was already dead? Come have a talk with us.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
Thank you for listening to TARTLE Cast with your hosts, Alexander McCaig and Jason Rigby. Where humanity steps into the future and source data defines the path. What's your data worth?
