IanD

If you seriously believe that BS about mRNA vaccines, there's no point continuing this conversation. All drugs including vaccines have side-effects, but in most cases -- mRNA vaccines included -- these are rare, and far outweighed by the positive effects. And that was my point, which you've missed -- when the tetragenic properties emerged, science changed its view. All drugs -- and many other things -- are discovered by scientists, but promoted by drugs companies -- who may well have a commercial reason for ignoring or minimising side-effects. Thalidomide is one example, fentanyl is another. Science discovers things, and without it many of the good things we have today would simply not exist. What then happens with these discoveries -- good or bad -- is largely down to companies and governments, who are rather more driven by profit or politics than scientists, and this is often where things go wrong... 😞

Maybe you should put your tinfoil hat on and lock yourself in the house, so you don't risk catching any nasty diseases that might need a vaccine, mRNA or otherwise, or give you cancer if you're vaccinated... 😉 (and I certainly wouldn't take any decree by a senior US court as the gospel truth since they are famously illiterate as far as science is concerned...) If you think the PM2.5 issue is "scientific nonsense", that simply shows you don't understand science -- like some US judges... 😉 Science is not about opinions, it's about facts which can be demonstrated to be true and explained reproduced. It's also about realising that science can change as new discoveries are made -- there are many examples over the years, the health problems caused by PM2.5 particles being one of the recent ones, earlier ones including smoking, asbestos, lead in petrol, DDT, thalidomide...

https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/new-car-speed-limiter-laws-takes-effect-next-month-what-you-need-to-know-aGhzM8o8XXcf You can turn them off (each time you start the car) if you want to, but if you don't your speed observation problem will be solved 🙂

You won't have that problem any more though when speed limiters become compulsory... 😉

It lasted me about 2 pigs... 😉

I've only been shouted at once on my (series hybrid) boat, we were passing them slowly (no wake at all) with the (very quiet) generator running and he gave me a mouthful about boats not slowing down. Obviously wasn't taking any notice of how fast we were actually going, just heard a 1500rpm engine note and went off on one... 😞

Split hardwood like this (cherry, apple, ash...) takes about a year to dry outside with the top covered with a tarp and the sides open...

When I looked at this last year made2measuremattress had various good-quality choices, and were considerably cheaper than Edwardian Bedding. https://www.made2measuremattress.co.uk/narrowboats-mattresses/ I went for the Hybrid Memory 1000 (pocket spring + memory foam, custom sized (tapered edge at bottom of one side to fit where the hull starts to taper in) and it's *extremely* comfortable -- in fact more so than our mattress at home... 😞 https://www.made2measuremattress.co.uk/narrowboats-mattresses/hybrid-memory-1000.html

Yes PM2.5 from woodburning is putting others at risk when there are multiple polluting burners in a small area, that's the entire point -- are you deliberately misunderstanding this, or just looking for an argument? 😞 (BTW your level of 5ug/m3 is well below the advisable "healthy/no risk" level of 12ug/m3, so I don't see what you're complaining about anyway) https://www.indoorairhygiene.org/pm2-5-explained/ The difference is that there's no debate or difficulty or argument about where a house is located and what else is near it, and no action to be taken unless somebody breaks the law by burning wood in urban areas -- which will have to be done anyway if a ban is brought in. It's a completely different case to child benefits, so I suggest you don't try and lump the two together just because you lost that argument 🙂 Of course they could just ban *all* woodburners *everywhere*, it wouldn't bother me -- but it would genuinely cause problems for this in remote places (including boats) who rely on wood for heating. Presumably the government would also have to compensate them for the cost of installing alternative heating, which would cost a fortune. Why would you season whole logs and then split them, that's bonkers? Far easier to split them when green and then season the split logs, for which a year is probably fine going by my experience. The places likely to be doing this (farms and isolated houses) are likely to have plenty of space for a log pile, because that's exactly what they do today. To repeat the obvious, the number of farms/houses (and boats) we're talking about here is very small, my guess is at most 1%*** of the 35M UK houses/flats, and for this number wood is not only an acceptable solution but a good one. Like HVO -- no chance of having enough supply for 35M cars, but no problem for 35k boats which it's a great solution for. *** found some numbers here, choose which ones you want -- I believe that "sparse setting" is the category that means "not near any other houses", and by pure coincidence these add up to 1% of the population... 😉 https://www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=/methodology/geography/geographicalproducts/ruralurbanclassifications/2011ruralurbanclassification/rucoaleafletmay2015tcm77406351.pdf

PM2.5 inside can indeed be a health hazard, but that's your problem not somebody else's outside. We have a general principle that if people want to do risky things to themselves (within limits) then that's their decision, but they shouldn't be allowed to do things that needlessly risk other people -- secondary smoking, drunk driving, woodburning in towns... Using kiln dried wood for burning is stupid because of the energy required. Seasoning felled wood outdoors for a year or so has zero energy costs. Yes if land has to be dedicated for tree-growing it takes space, but it is nevertheless still "green", it's converting sun and CO2 absorbed by the trees into wood, which is then burned and returns the CO2 to the atmosphere. Nobody's suggesting this makes sense for millions of houses, but the number of isolated rural homes we were talking about is tiny, probably much less than 1% of the UK housing stock, and burning wood is fine for them. If you have a group of houses close together then there is always localised pollution, this applies in villages and towns as well as cities. Remember the days of coal fires? You could drive towards and through any town or village, and smell the coal smoke as soon as you got into where the houses were -- I noticed this every time I drove home. The measurements show the same applies to PM2.5 particles, especially when there's little or no wind.

200 deaths in 2015 (lowest point), 300 in 2022 (recent peak). When were the numbers of road traffic police cut?