Thanks, Conks: America's 20 Dirtiest Cities...SMFH

[Ibanez]

Or what? What's going to happen to me?

Discuss. I hate NASCAR

You will have your moderator salary cut in half.

Ooh. Snap. Quickly, what's 6.93 divided by 0?

I can't afford a pay cut in this economy.

[grizzaholic]

Or what? What's going to happen to me?

Discuss. I hate NASCAR

You will have your moderator salary cut in half.

And be given ban privileges back and will be forced to take over Mr. T status.

[ASUG8]

time, energy, money, land. There are better things to put on TV than a fucking 300 constant left turn race.

Like GOLF, Bowling, WSOP, Soccer, Justin Beiber (sp?), Coastal Carolina, Stephen A. Smith, The Kardashians (sp)...shall I go on.

I like NASCAR, and you had better change your tune. The owner does also and I don't think he will be too happy that you are talking shit about his third favorite sport....behind chasing tail and Griz football

Don't forget all his time in front of the camera - any camera.

[JohnStOnge]

By no reasonable standard is the air in any city in the United States generally "dangerous."

[biobengal]

By no reasonable standard is the air in any city in the United States generally "dangerous."

I simply don't understand this attitude... scoff, scoff... science... blah, blah, blah.

Any reasonable person can do a simple search and find evidence showing increased particulate pollution leads to increased DEATH. IMO, an increase in a risk of DEATH is dangerous.

Here's one citation...... there are literally hundreds, maybe thousands of epidemiological studies relating air pollution to increased rates of death and disease.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa0805646" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Gil Dobie]

By no reasonable standard is the air in any city in the United States generally "dangerous."

I simply don't understand this attitude... scoff, scoff... science... blah, blah, blah.

Any reasonable person can do a simple search and find evidence showing increased particulate pollution leads to increased DEATH. IMO, an increase in a risk of DEATH is dangerous.

Here's one citation...... there are literally hundreds, maybe thousands of epidemiological studies relating air pollution to increased rates of death and disease.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa0805646" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Lets build some more nuke plants and get rid of the coal burners. Might be beneficial to spend some money on research to reuse the spent fuel rods so we don't have people worrying about storage of the spent rods. If not we are going to need many more coal burning plants to fuel the future electric car boom.

[andy7171]

By no reasonable standard is the air in any city in the United States generally "dangerous."

Meh. August in Baltimore. When there is no wind and the humidity sets in. Air quality here is pretty miserable. I don't know what exactlyt Code Red means, but they say the elderly to not go outside or anyone do anything physical outside if you don't absolutely need to.

[Gil Dobie]

By no reasonable standard is the air in any city in the United States generally "dangerous."

Syntax Error is a victim of Cap'n Cat's methane blast

[CID1990]

Hey D, you need to come back and own this failbot of a thread you started.

You must be bucking for a job with CNN with that pic of a Korean city. What American city did you think it was?

[LeadBolt]

Ahhh, love that clean mountain air.

But seriously, Cappy, 7 of the top 10 are in California.

If 7 of top 10 are in California, and California has the strictest emissions regulations in the nation, does this mean stricter emissions regulations cause pollution?

[JohnStOnge]

I simply don't understand this attitude... scoff, scoff... science... blah, blah, blah.

Any reasonable person can do a simple search and find evidence showing increased particulate pollution leads to increased DEATH. IMO, an increase in a risk of DEATH is dangerous.

Here's one citation...... there are literally hundreds, maybe thousands of epidemiological studies relating air pollution to increased rates of death and disease.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa0805646" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

That's an example of why I cited environmental epidemiology as an example of a problematic field in that other thread (settled science). That is observational study. Observational study cannot be used to infer cause and effect. Not if you're following the rules. But it's done in environmental epidemiology all the time. In the case of the study you linked the authors start off by stating it the way you're supposed to state it. They talk about an association. But then they turn right around and infer cause and effect.

Besides, I didn't say there are no cities in which the risks of certain things might not be somewhat greater than what the risks of those particular things would be if there were none of the substances you're talking about in the air. What I said is that no city in the United States has air that is "dangerous" by any reasonable standard of what "dangerous" is. I do not think zero risk is a reasonable standard. What we are talking about, even if we ignore the fact that cause and effect cannot legitimately be inferred by statistical analysis of observational data, are very small risks that are increased to somewhat larger but still very small risks. We willingly take risks that are orders of magnitude higher in the daily pursuit of our lives.

[JohnStOnge]

Biobengal I broke my response into two parts because this part is going to be long. You may have seen me post it before but I'm going to post an excerpt from a statistics textbook. I typed and saved the exerpt up so I can copy and paste it whenever conversations such as this come up. I copy and paste the entire discussion so people will know I'm not taking anything out of context but I'm going to bold and underline the parts I want to emphasize.

Aside from the general principle expressed by the excerpt, I'm going to point out that when people are modeling observational data they have a lot of influence on how the analyses come out. They can potentially come out in a lot of different ways. And in today's computer enhanced world one can try a bunch of different models until one gets a model that turns out like one wants. No, they don't have to. But they can. If someone starts off wanting to show that some environmental contaminant cuases some problem and the first model they try doesn't show that they can just do another one. You probably will never know about the ones they tried that didn't work out like they wanted them to. Or they can even just run a program to do a whole bunch of models at once then pick the ones they like best to sort through.

It is not like a situation in experimental science where they do an experiment then someone else can try to reproduce it to see if it works the same way. Maybe someone else can run a model that doesn't show the same thing but that doesn't really necessarily change things. It's a different model.

But the BIG thing is that people should NOT be creating the impression among the public that they have shown cause and effect through an observational study such as the one described at the link you provided. And it's done ALL the time. There's an epidemic of it. To me, the fact that someone can easily point to a bunch of observational studies purporting to show cause and effect relationships between pollutants and health problems is exactly the problem. Most in the general pulbic do not know to immediately dismiss the idea that such studies can infer cause and effect. Here is the excerpt I talked about in that regard:

From Ott, R. Lyman (1992). An Introduction to Statistical Methods and Data Analysis. Chapter 2, pages 31 – 32. Belmont California: Duxbury Press

Before leaving the subject of sample data collection, we will draw a distinction between an observational study and a scientific study. In experimental designs for scientific studies, the observation conditions are fixed or controlled. For example, with a factorial experiment laid off in a completely randomized design, an observation is made at each factor-level combination. Similarly, with a randomized block design, an observation is obtained on each treatment in every block. These “controlled” studies are very different from observational studies, which are sometimes used because it is not feasible to do a proper scientific study. This can be illustrated by way of example.

Much research and public interest centers on the effect of cigarette smoking on lung cancer and cardiovascular disease. One possible experimental design would be to randomize a fixed number of individuals (say 1,000) to each of two groups – one group would be required to smoke cigarettes for the duration of the study (say 10 years), while those in the second group would not be allowed to smoke throughout the study. At the end of the study, the two groups would be compared for lung cancer and cardiovascular disease. Even if we ignore the ethical questions, this type of study would be impossible to do. Because of the long duration, it would be difficult to follow all participants and make certain that they follow the study plan. And it would be difficult to find nonsmoking individuals willing to take the chance of being assigned to the smoking group.

Another possible study would be to sample a fixed number of smokers and a fixed number of nonsmokers to compare the groups for lung cancer and for cardiovascular disease. Assuming one could obtain willing groups of participants, this study could be done for a much shorter period of time.

What has been sacrificed? Well, the fundamental difference between an observational study and a scientific study lies in the inference(s) that can be drawn. For a scientific study comparing smokers to nonsmokers, assuming the two groups of individuals followed the study plan, the observed differences between the smoking and nonsmoking groups could be attributed to the effects of cigarette smoking because the individuals were randomized to the two groups; hence, the groups were assumed to be comparable at the outset.

This type of reasoning does not apply to the observational study of cigarette smoking. Differences between the two groups in the observation could not necessarily be attributed to the effects of cigarette smoking because, for example, there may be hereditary factors that predispose people to smoking and cancer of the lungs and/or cardiovascular disease. Thus, differences between the groups might be due to hereditary factors, smoking, or a combination of the two. Typically, the results of an observational study are reported by way of a statement of association. For our example, if the observational study showed a higher frequency of lung cancer and cardiovascular disease for smokers relative to nonsmokers, it would be stated that this study showed that cigarette smoking was associated with an increased frequency of lung cancer and cardiovascular disease. It is a careful rewording in order not to infer that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer and cardiovascular disease.

[JohnStOnge]

but they say the elderly to not go outside or anyone do anything physical outside if you don't absolutely need to.

That's probably because it's hot. But then I guess we can get into the "global warming" thing.

[AZGrizFan]

Ahhh, love that clean mountain air.

But seriously, Cappy, 7 of the top 10 are in California.

If 7 of top 10 are in California, and California has the strictest emissions regulations in the nation, does this mean stricter emissions regulations cause pollution?

7 of the top 10 are in California, and California has the most liberals in the nation, so this means liberals cause pollution.

[Ibanez]

If 7 of top 10 are in California, and California has the strictest emissions regulations in the nation, does this mean stricter emissions regulations cause pollution?

7 of the top 10 are in California, and California has the most liberals in the nation, so this means liberals cause pollution.

and historically, liberals aren't Catholic so this isn't a Catholic issue. I had to put that out there because you know who is probably combing through HuffPost archives trying to find evidence of he Vaticans involvementp


Sent from my iPhone using my mind powers.

[travelinman67]

Drill, baby, DRILL!!!

Cappy...you're senile.

Of the top 10, you'll note that excepting San Diego and L.A., all the others reside in the CENTRAL VALLEY, and the major pollutant is PARTICULATE!!!!

I realize it's been a few years since you lived in CA, but any central valley resident can tell you the largest producer of "pollutants" is farming, not fossil fuel. During the early spring (planting) and harvest seasons, the entire central valley is covered under a dust/pollen cloud. That's simply a byproduct of farming in a valley, Werner.

To boot, one of the photos displayed "typifying" pollution was water vapor rising from a nuclear cooling tower.

Centralized population centers(progressive policy), result in concentrated pollution zones which increase health problems. Expanded resource management (water, energy) and decentralized population allows for improved productivity and fewer pollution zones.

[JohnStOnge]

BTW, I read the entire paper Biogengal linked. To me it is an example of the fact that "peer review" is not a quality control process. It's also an example of something that really concerns me: The aura of a prestigious journal like the New England Journal of Medicine is overwhelming. It is largely futile for a "regular guy" like me to attempt to make people see that something published in it is problematic. Nevertheless, that article should never have been published as written. The authors clearly violate the rule about not inferring cause and effect from statistical analysis of observational data. They tried to argue that it was like a "natural experiment;" which is nonsense. Even in terms of looking at association while tryinig to control for other factors potentially affecting life expectancy they failed to include obvious factors such as declines in traffic fatality rates.

But, really, there is no way they could possibly include every factor that might affect life expectancy. Which is why they shouldn't be trying to infer cause and effect without a controlled experiment. In a controlled experiment, factors you don't specifically consider or even that you don't know about are effectively "accounted for" by randomization. Randomization is crucial to statistical cause and effect inference. Without it, no such inference can legitimately be made. Period. No exceptions.

Anyway, there are all sorts of problems with what they did. But it's in the New England Journal of Medicine so anybody that says so is going to be ignored. They think "peer review," particularly in association with a journal with a reputation like that of the New England Journal of Medicine, automatically means that everything was done correctly and that the work actually supports the conclusions.

It is, I think, a very bad situation. But I understand why nobody believes me.

[grizzaholic]

If 7 of top 10 are in California, and California has the strictest emissions regulations in the nation, does this mean stricter emissions regulations cause pollution?

7 of the top 10 are in California, and California has the most liberals in the nation, so this means liberals cause pollution.

It comes from them opening their yappers.

[89Hen]

and historically, liberals aren't Catholic

Just a sidebar... I'm not sure where you are getting your info. Catholics are pretty evenly split politically, matter of fact, I think you'd have a hard time finding any kind of cohesive group that is so evenly split. Right now there are 24 Catholics in the Senate, 15 are Dems, 9 are Reps. Just sayin.

[D1B]

7 of the top 10 are in California, and California has the most liberals in the nation, so this means liberals cause pollution.

and historically, liberals aren't Catholic so this isn't a Catholic issue. I had to put that out there because you know who is probably combing through HuffPost archives trying to find evidence of he Vaticans involvementp


Sent from my iPhone using my mind powers.

Don't need to, fuck head. Overpopulation is the root of all our problems and the catholic church and capitalists like Tman have been fanning the flames of overpopulation for thousands of years.

Read a book every once in a while and you'd know this.

[andy7171]

and historically, liberals aren't Catholic

The fuck, say what!?! Liberals aren't Catholic? Since when?

[biobengal]

The authors clearly violate the rule about not inferring cause and effect from statistical analysis of observational data. They tried to argue that it was like a "natural experiment;" which is nonsense.
It is, I think, a very bad situation. But I understand why nobody believes me.

Anyway, the above clearly is your source of objection. I'll speak to this, causal inference is something I know a bit about. Causal inference is increasingly being used in decision making to weigh published "evidence". Causal analysis weighs evidence in this way: manipulative experiments (direct manipulation fo the treatments) > natural experiments (treatments applied by nature); additional weighting involves the replication, use of controls, random application of treatments, etc.. Does the fact that manipulative data > observational data imply natural experiments are worthless? Hardly, much has been gained by careful observation. Ultimately, most of the known universe has been supported by mostly observational data: heliocentric theory, gravitational theory, general relativity, etc.. Obviously, many things just can't be manipulated.

Here's an example illustrating the utility of observational studies:

You're looking to investigate the effect of phosphorus loading on algae growth in lakes. You could take two approaches: manipulative and observational; most researchers actually do both. An observational study would estimate phosphorus in MANY ponds and correlate it with algae growth across many environmental gradients. Thus, extensive replication: a good observational study would analyze 10's or 100's of ponds. A manipulative study would add large amounts of phosphorus to one pond while not adding phosphorus to a control pond and observe the effects. Both of these studies have their benefits: 1) the observational study has generality and replication, 2) the manipulative study has strong inference. Ultimately, both are useful.

Regardless, this is the most reasonable thing we can take from epidemiological studies:

Perhaps the most realistic conclusion on causal inference was drawn by Weed who stated that the purpose of epidemiology is not to prove cause effect relationships but to acquire knowledge about the determinants and distribution of disease and to apply that knowledge to improve public health. Weed DL. Environmental epidemiology: basics and proof of cause-effect. Toxicology 2002

In the end, the decision to act upon the evidence should depend upon the TOTAL weighted evidence (natural or otherwise) and our adherence/acceptance of the precautionary principle.

[Ibanez]

and historically, liberals aren't Catholic

The fuck, say what!?! Liberals aren't Catholic? Since when?

I'm using D1b's logic. See, Liberals are the salt of the earth, therefore they cannont be Catholics. Catholics are inherently evil and all of lifes problems are because of that.

[travelinman67]

and historically, liberals aren't Catholic so this isn't a Catholic issue. I had to put that out there because you know who is probably combing through HuffPost archives trying to find evidence of he Vaticans involvementp


Sent from my iPhone using my mind powers.

....capitalists like Tman have been fanning the flames of overpopulation for thousands of years.

Read books that validate a myopic preconcieved view of the world and you'd know this.

FIFY

There's scientific law that apparently exceeds your grasp, D. Open your eyes.

[Ibanez]

and historically, liberals aren't Catholic so this isn't a Catholic issue. I had to put that out there because you know who is probably combing through HuffPost archives trying to find evidence of he Vaticans involvementp


Sent from my iPhone using my mind powers.

Don't need to, fuck head. Overpopulation is the root of all our problems and the catholic church and capitalists like Tman have been fanning the flames of overpopulation for thousands of years.

Read a book every once in a while and you'd know this.

Thounsands of years? I've read quite a bit on a range of topics including History, Business, Religion, Sociology (to name a few) I'll give you that Catholicism is roughly 2000 years old. However, most experts will suggest that Capitalism didn't come around until the 16th Century. Meanwhile, The overpopulated countries of China and India, are not Catholic. Stop using generalizations.

Why is it the most liberal people, who say we should love one another and be good, are so damn intolerant? Read something.