BongoBongo123 wrote:mikeonb4c wrote:BongoBongo123 wrote:
Not sure they can be compared with value, they both are potentially capable of causing illness I bet. Different timescales, but ultimately there is only so much poison a human can take on board before things go wrong, slowly or quickly.
But compare them we must unfortunately. It is how risk/cost/benefit analysis is done. And it is those analyses that ultimately determine policy. Not quite correct. In a democracy, the public voting with their feet can influence policy more than rational analysis, but not necessarily (in hindsight) for the better. You're right though when you hint that timescales are often not considered enough. On which score, considering it possible to contain something toxic for 10,000 years is something that I can get nervous about.
Pesticides main cause of illness is in the consumption by eating. Fuel is burned I am not sure why they need to be compared quite. They are both happening irrelevant of health effects and no comparison is required. Both bad for the environment and us, to what degree ?
If you really want to have something to ponder and be concerned about look up "peak phosphorus". An element essential for growing anything now made from powdered rock and in relatively short supply.
This will start us off:
http://oilprice.com/Metals/Foodstuffs/D ... rming.html
Finite supply and is only available in a few countries. China is no longer selling it on the open market as they use tonnes. Modern agriculture has made us 100pct dependent on this and once gone we are basically extinct given our reliance on dumping tonnes of inorganic fertilizer on land (because it is literally devoid of any organic nutritional goodness) in the existing modern agricultural world.
Certainly a few things that need addressing in our worlds near future.
They certainly do, though as that article discusses a lot can happen to restore the balance between phosphate demand and availability. Around 1969 I asked my stepfather, a senior civil servant whose work and interests meant he knoew a lot, when the world would run out of oil. I was 17 years old and getting interested in stuff like that. He told me that from all the data available, and based on known exploitable reserves and forecast growth in demand, the world was expected to run out of oil c1990. Scary stuff. Then the 1973 oil crisis happened, oil prices rose, demand magically plummeted (though motorists didn't appear to have to curtail their habits), and exploration of North Sea oil became commercially viable. All of a sudden the picture changed beyond recognition. From that experience I learned never to unquestioningly believe what the experts say.
Returning to the diesel/pesticide debate, you've pretty much shaped the answer to your own question I reckon. It's not so much that we're directly comparing diesel (or petrol) and pesticides (Shall I top up your diesel tank with pesticide Sir?) as considering that the dilemma facing us in respect of each is in many ways similar :
* Both are very important to economic existence
* Each carries a risk, and each carries a benefit
* At what point, and under what circumstances, does the risk of each begin to outweigh the benefit each brings
* Are we stuck with one or other or both of them, like it or not
* If we are stuck with them, what can be done to limit the damage they might do, within the limits of what the economy can absorb and public opinion can be expected to follow
For both diesel and pesticides, exposing high concentrations of people to high concentrations is undesirable. Once the concentration of either (or both) becomes less, then the upside/downside balance changes.
Fertilisers too are a concern - nitrates and other agrochemicals getting into the water table is a big issue. Maybe that's where we'll find the driver for addressing the phosphate shortage?