The story omits to say where in the world these unfortunate 1.5 billion people are living. So I asked Grok, as you do:

Do you have a list of the leading particulate emission countries, by amount emitted? And where do the people most exposed to particulate emissions live, also by country?

Leading Countries by Particulate Emissions (PM2.5)

Particulate emissions typically refer to the total amount of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) released into the atmosphere from sources like industrial activities, vehicle exhaust, coal burning, and agriculture. Data on total emissions (e.g., in tons per year) is tracked by sources like the UN's Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR), but recent public rankings often focus on population-weighted average concentrations as a proxy for emission intensity, since higher concentrations correlate strongly with elevated emissions in densely populated areas. Based on the latest available data from 2023 (from IQAir's World Air Quality Report and supporting sources), the leading countries by highest average PM2.5 concentrations are:
Rank Country Average PM2.5 Concentration (Âg/mÂ)
1 Bangladesh 79.9
2 Pakistan 73.7
3 India 54.4
4 Tajikistan 51.4
5 Burkina Faso 46.9

These rankings reflect national averages derived from ground-based monitoring stations, emphasizing areas with high emission volumes relative to population. For context, the World Health Organization (WHO) guideline for annual PM2.5 exposure is 5 Âg/mÂ; all listed countries exceed this by over 9 times. South and Central Asia dominate due to rapid industrialization, biomass burning, and transboundary pollution.
Countries Where People Are Most Exposed to Particulate Emissions (PM2.5)

Exposure is measured by population-weighted average PM2.5 concentrations, which account for both pollution levels and the number of people breathing that airâ"making it a direct indicator of how many individuals face elevated risks. This metric highlights countries where large populations live in highly polluted environments, leading to greater overall health burdens (e.g., respiratory diseases and premature deaths). Drawing from 2023 data (primarily IQAir and State of Global Air reports), the top countries by highest population-weighted PM2.5 exposure are:
Rank Country Population-Weighted PM2.5 (Âg/mÂ) Approximate Exposed Population (millions)
1 India 54.4 1,428
2 Bangladesh 79.9 173
3 Pakistan 73.7 241
4 China 33.3 1,412
5 Nigeria 40.2 218

Asia accounts for the majority of global exposure, with over 80% of the world's population breathing unsafe air. Sub-Saharan African countries like Nigeria and others (e.g., Niger at ~45 Âg/mÂ) are rising due to increasing urbanization and biomass fuel use. Globally, PM2.5 exposure is linked to ~7 million premature deaths annually, with South Asia bearing the heaviest burden. Only 7 countries met WHO standards in 2023: Australia, Estonia, Finland, Grenada, Iceland, Mauritius, and New Zealand.
2s

You can downvote all you want, label as trolling all you want. But the facts are that there is plenty of evidence that the UK Met Office is doing a terrible and unprofessional job of maintaining a network of up-to-standard weather stations. And, from the testimony of people living and staying in the UK this summer, this was not an especially hot summer.

You can't stop people knowing this, saying it. You can affect how its rated on /., and thus somewhat affect how many people read it here. But you can't affect the facts, and you can't stop general publication of them. All you can do is destroy the credibility of the institutions you are trying to defend by banning crticism of them. Not that there is a whole lot left to destroy!

I posted this below, and promptly had it downrated and graded as troll. I think this is completely irrational. What I said is correct, it really has been just a nice UK summer. I spent the warmest part of it in the UK and can tell you that is all there has been. Quite unlike the summer of a couple of years ago, when I was also in the UK, and that was genuinely very hot. This summer I have not felt any need to restrict outdoor activity at any time of day, and haven't heard of anyone who did. Unlike a couple of years ago. Nights warm enough to be uncomfortable are a usual feature of very warm UK summers - I have not heard anyone mentioning that. Though they have in the past about other summers.

People pour scorn on Homewood, who I cited, and on the Daily Sceptic, who have produced some rather amazing material critical of the Met Office station management and site quality. However, if you look at the material they put up, and their arguments (which I notice no-one has addressed) there really is good reason to be concerned about the professionalism and trustworthiness of the Met Office's historical records.

Why, for instance, are there still readings being supplied fot the town of Lowestoft in East Anglia, when the station has been closed for a decade or more? How can those readings be based on extrapolations from nearby stations when all the nearby ones have also been closed? What about the cases and material cited by Homewood and Daily Sceptic? Its not enough just to dismiss them with a few personal attacks. There really is a case to answer, and the Met Office has not improved their credibility by refusing to explain what stations are being used to extrapolate the readings of the closed ones.

There may be a valid answer to these issues, if so I would like to see it. Go through the links cited and do a critique, if you can. Meanwhile I can only say that personal experience and behavior of the local population, at least in the parts of the UK where I have been this summer, does not bear out the claim that anything much is happening, other than a pleasantly warm summer.

+++++++++++++++++ Original Post +++++++++++++++++

Its been quite a nice summer. Not particularly hot, but consistently dry and pleasantly warm. The beaches and parks have been full of people taking advantage of it.

Is it the hottest summer ever? Very doubtful. If so, only by the tiniest amount and on some very odd selection of parameters and weather stations. Unlike some other hot English summers the nights have been pleasantly cool. Its certainly not as hot as the summer a couple of years back where there were a few weeks of genuinely exceptional heat. It has been consistently warm, without the usual interruptions of cool rainy spells.

The Met Office? You have to look carefully at which stations are being cited for claims that they have recorded super high temps, and what their quality rating is.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdailysceptic.org%2F2025%2F... [dailysceptic.org]

and there is a whole lot more from the same source. Paul Homewood also has posted extensively on the subject.

https://notalotofpeopleknowtha... [wordpress.com]

The UK has very variable weather. Its the consequence of its position. On the west it has a great ocean, on the east a continental landmass. To the north you have the Arctic and to the south the great desert of the Sahara. Weather systems blow across from the west all the time, but their mobility is affected by changes in the jet stream. So on a thirty year time period you sometimes bet long hot summers, and sometimes cool damp and rainy ones and sometimes ones with continuous variability. It depends whether a blocking high forms to the southwest, or if the pattern of the jet stream this year just blows one low after another across. Every now and then you get a hot air mass from the Sahara being carried up. Sometimes this leads to sand and dust deposits.

The really striking thing about this summer, and indeed summers over the last few years, is that there is a combination of two things. One is the hysterical warnings from BBC and Met Office about dangerous heat and precautions to be taken. You might think the UK has turned into Dallas or Phoenix. You would be wrong. They are talking about temperatures which reach 80 or 85F for a few hours in the afternoons!

The other is, at the same time, the clips of the crowds at the beaches getting their clothes off as quickly as they can and having a good time.

Read Paul Homewood and the Daily Sceptic, look at the pictures of the crowds, consider the total lack of any stories of heat prostration, and figure out who you believe.

They can't both be right.

Its been quite a nice summer. Not particularly hot, but consistently dry and pleasantly warm. The beaches and parks have been full of people taking advantage of it.

Is it the hottest summer ever? Very doubtful. If so, only by the tiniest amount and on some very odd selection of parameters and weather stations. Unlike some other hot English summers the nights have been pleasantly cool. Its certainly not as hot as the summer a couple of years back where there were a few weeks of genuinely exceptional heat. It has been consistently warm, without the usual interruptions of cool rainy spells.

The Met Office? You have to look carefully at which stations are being cited for claims that they have recorded super high temps, and what their quality rating is.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdailysceptic.org%2F2025%2F...

and there is a whole lot more from the same source. Paul Homewood also has posted extensively on the subject.

https://notalotofpeopleknowtha...

The UK has very variable weather. Its the consequence of its position. On the west it has a great ocean, on the east a continental landmass. To the north you have the Arctic and to the south the great desert of the Sahara. Weather systems blow across from the west all the time, but their mobility is affected by changes in the jet stream. So on a thirty year time period you sometimes bet long hot summers, and sometimes cool damp and rainy ones and sometimes ones with continuous variability. It depends whether a blocking high forms to the southwest, or if the pattern of the jet stream this year just blows one low after another across. Every now and then you get a hot air mass from the Sahara being carried up. Sometimes this leads to sand and dust deposits.

The really striking thing about this summer, and indeed summers over the last few years, is that there is a combination of two things. One is the hysterical warnings from BBC and Met Office about dangerous heat and precautions to be taken. You might think the UK has turned into Dallas or Phoenix. You would be wrong. They are talking about temperatures which reach 80 or 85F for a few hours in the afternoons!

The other is, at the same time, the clips of the crowds at the beaches getting their clothes off as quickly as they can and having a good time.

Read Paul Homewood and the Daily Sceptic, look at the pictures of the crowds, consider the total lack of any stories of heat prostration, and figure out who you believe.

They can't both be right.

Something does seem to be happening, though its hard to tell from the linked piece what it is, just because sexual activity declining must be an indicator of something. But what?

A start is where the decline is happening - and the answer from the article seems to be everywhere in the US - married, single, all ages.

The logical next step would be to find whether its happening across all countries, all religions. Is it happening to gays as well as heteroxexuals? Is it different in gay men and gay women? Is it related to declines in other kinds of social interaction? Is it related to a decline in marriage? Is it related to differences in more general attitudes of men and women to each other?

Sex in our species is a basic aspect of marriage and the family, and not simply because its required for procreation. So a decline of the proportions shown in the charts is interesting and important and deserves proper investigation.

Never visited either of the organizations that are bringing this suit.

But the deeper issue is what is happening to the regulation of speech in the UK. It is that recent legislation has enabled the selective enforcement of bans on politically incorrect speech in a way that was never possible before. It has enabled the repression of public dissent.

There have been a large number of piecemeal pieces of legislation on speech which interact in perhaps unexpected ways with an environment of heightened sensitivity to speech. Taken as a whole they empower the authorities to intervene on speech deemed to be offensive.

But the issue is, they empower and enable, they don't mandate action. Because the definitions of offense are so wide and vague the legislation enables intervention on speech which would previously have been considered normal if a bit extreme. Enables, however, it does not require it. This means that the UK is now set up with all the apparatus required for selective banning of speech which is deemed to be inconvenient or politically incorrect. And its being used.

To appreciate the ramifications you need to look at some specific cases. Go to the Free Speech Union site.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffreespeechunion.org%2F

And consider how police recording of non-criminal hate crime incidents is working. Look up the case of Alison Pearson

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffreespeechunion.org%2Faw...

And as another example, remember the wonderful case of Harry Miller

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fuk-...

Miller had posted in the tradition of Monty Python about gender issues, culminating in the deeply offensive remark that he might have been born a mammal but identified as a fish, so do not mis-species him!

He was called on by the police who explained that this would be recorded and filed against him as a non-criminal hate incident. The BBC story explains how in this case the courts ruled in his favor. That was before recent legislation however. Don't know what the outcome would be today.

You have in the UK a perfect storm. There is the Online Safety Act, the Public Order Act, the Racial and Religious Hatred Act and a few other pieces of legislation or amendments. There is no 1st Amendment. And there is corporate and police practice.

Let me give one final example which will make the implications clear. In Parliament an MP called Katie Lam gave a speech on the grooming gang scandal. X imposed age restrictions on viewing quotations from it, in accordance with their view of the requirements of the Online Safety Act. So we end up with a situation in which legislation written vaguely and widely to prevent minors from accessing harmful content can in practice be obliging someone to prove they are over 18 in order to see remarks made by an elected MP in a session of their own Parliament. Now ask yourself how the Online Safety Act could interact with the various other Acts on the subject of speech, and you will see where the real problem lies.

Incidentally, consider also the implications of having to prove you are over 18 to access something. You give your proof. To an unknown third party. And what do they do with the information they now hold on you? How do you know what they do with it? 4Chan or whoever is not the issue, there are far more serious issues with the UK speech regulation situation. You don't have to be a free speech fanatic to find this disturbing. The end destination of this is a Great Wall of Britain, and a ban on VPNs. Which are now attracting great interest in the UK.

To get this in proportion, from Grok: "Los Angeles consumes approximately 71,233 MWh of electricity per day, on average. This figure is derived from data indicating that the city uses over 26 million MWh annually. Dividing this by 365 days yields the daily average."

How much battery storage was that, again?

That would be my question. What you have on youtube is a whole world of material that the intellectually and culturally curious kid cannot find anywhere else, or not easily and not at an affordable price. Instructional videos on everything from correct form in deadlifts to how to make mayonnaise or wire an electrical plug or take your laptop to bits and replace the hard drive. Audiobooks. Old movies, performances of (for example) Racine by the Comedie Francaise. Music of all periods performed in all styles. Some obscure work by Machaut? It will be there.

All this, a sort of modern equivalent to a huge multimedia lending library, they want to bar children from, and because? I have never come across anything remotely harmful on youtube. Not that I have looked, but just to say if its there its not at all obvious, and youtube has never suggested anything I would not want a 16 year old to see.

Where we end up on this path is, to give a recent example from the UK, making a speech in Parliament by an MP impossible to view without signing in having proved you are over 18. And then of course, getting your interest in that speech recorded. Think about the implications. Making it impossible to listen to a speech by an elected representative without first proving you are over 18 and then logging in and getting it recorded that you wanted to hear it. Because child protection? Really?

Its technically and culturally illiterate. But its not just that, the way its being done is actually sinister.

The idea that producing some tens of GW in Wyoming can affect the weather in Florida? Whether you produce it from coal, gas or some mixture?

This is really climate hysteria. There is no mechanism by which any such effect could be brought about.

If you want to find something which could affect the weather in Florida, because it does affect the global climate and thus arguably the global weather?

China, with its 14 billion tons a year of emissions, and mining and burning more coal than the rest of the world put together.

If the theory is correct, that could have an effect, its big enough. Nothing that happens at this data center can.

The two are different, and doing one is not doing the other.

The endangerment finding did not enable the regulation of climate. It could not do that. Regulating climate is way beyond the ability of the US or any US regulatory agency to do. The US is too small an economy and does too small a fraction of global emissions (12% and falling) for it to be able to regulate climate or affect it by local action.

Its example has no effects on the largest fastest growing emitters. They don't believe in the alleged climate crisis and all they do about emissions is grow their economies as fast as possible, and let emissions go wherever they go. The endangerment finding and policies based on it have no traction outside the US. And maybe the UK, with its tiny emissions.

The endangerment finding does enable US energy regulation. That is a different thing altogether, but US energy policy has no effects on the global climate.

People need to stop confusing these two things. Argue for energy regulation on its merits. But don't try and argue for it on climate grounds, there are none.

Why does it matter whether people believe in the alleged climate crisis?

This may seem an odd question, but bear with it for a few lines. Whether or not people in the US believe in it, and endorse doing something about it, its surely obvious now that nations accounting for at least 75% of global emissions do not. And its even more obvious that they have no intention of reducing their emissions. You want evidence? How many have updated their targets with real plans and commitments? Hardly any. As for the US, well, Trump got elected, and nothing he has done on energy policy should surprise anyone who listened to his campaign rhetoric. People in the US don't believe in it either, outside a small circle of the political establishment and media. And do they really believe? Or do they just find it politic to claim they do?.

We have to consider the curious fact that everything the climate advocates argue for doing in the US is either impossible or ineffective. An example of the impossible is NY State's intention of moving to net zero in power generation by installing lots of currently non-existent Dispatchable Emission-Free Resources (DEFRs). An example of the ineffective is California's drive to electrify transport by mandating EVs. The first will not happen because its impossible. The second may be possible but will have no effect on national, let alone global, emissions.

An interesting conclusion on this matter has been reached by a visiting group of anthropologists from Alpha Centauri who have been documenting and analyzing human culture. I have been fortunate enough to obtain a copy of the sections of their draft report covering the climate movement. It points out that the US has a strong Calvinist streak from its original founders. One of the main tenets of Calvinism is justification by faith.

It proposes to reconcile the apparent mass of contradictions in the movement by the hypothesis that the demands for belief and for ineffective or impossible actions do not in fact have any motive to produce any actions which the movement's beliefs would seem to imply are necessary. It proposes that in fact people publicly express their beliefs in the crisis and the proposed irrational remedies as testimonies of faith, marks of Grace, as Jonathan Edwards would have put it. By witnessing in this way, you can persuade your fellows that you are among the probably elect, worthy of respect, and these sentiments will be most useful in your business and social life.

You are not justified by lowering emissions. You are justified by your faith in the crisis and by your faith that DEFRs and EVs are important and valid solutions. Whether they are or not, who cares? Its faith that justifies.

Will the windmills actually produce any usable electricity? Will the EVs lower emissions? Does China show any signs of reducing its emissions? Only denialists will ask such questions, and we manifest our marks of Grace by denouncing any who ask them.

So to answer the question this post began with, yes it does matter if people believe, but not for the reasons you might assume. It matters to them and their associates because its the basis for inclusion or exclusion. It does not matter to the planet one way or the other, because these beliefs they claim to have don't connect to any transmission mechanism for effective action. In fact, if you claim to be a believer, the more extreme and impossible your demands are, the better. It reduces the chance that people will actually implement them, and that you will have to justify the results. And it shows that you are a fully committed member of the elect and so most worthy of social esteem.

Puritanism is having a long second life. The Cheka becomes the KGB, the SD becomes the Stasi. Well, that's how it looks to the anthropologists from Alpha Centauri. From what I understand, they seem to be submitting their paper to peer review here on Earth. Despite having been cautioned that if they are right, it will be a long time in review, and is unlikely to be approved. If the forces they allege are really present, they will make publication of such theories almost impossible. There will be a lot of social currency to be won from denouncing them.

There are two inconvenient questions which matter to this subject, and which Slashdot will not cover, either editorially in the selection of stories or in the comments from the regulars.

Question One: what will the output from wind and solar be in Germany or the UK in December, at about 5pm on a weekday, during one of the usual stalled high pressure episodes that last a week or ten days every winter? And what percent of faceplate is this number?

Question Two: what sources of generation are you then going to use to meet demand?

Go look up the numbers - for the UK they are readily available on Gridwatch. So its easy to answer the first question. The second...? No-one knows, or if they do, they are keeping it secret. Like Slashdot and most commenters they are just calling everyone who asks 'deniers' and hoping something turns up.

This is intermittency, the insoluble problem for the net zero generation project. And no, you cannot run a country off batteries for a week or ten days in winter. Just do the numbers. You can neither afford them, buy them, nor commission and run them.

It may be that this is the hottest JUNE. But consider what this means. We take an arbitrary 30 days, average the temps, and come up with a number for this 30 day period as compared to other previous 30 day periods.

Is there anything special about this particular 30 day period as opposed to any other? No. Is there anything special about 30 as opposed to 45 or 60 days? No.

I could equally well say (though it would not be true) that this year is the warmest for the period: last two weeks of May + first two weeks of June. That would be just as valid (or invalid) indicator.

As an indicator of whether European summers are getting hot, or whether this summer is hotter than previous ones, this is meaningless. The climate does not care about our arbitrary divisions of the days into calendar months.

If you want to make a real comparison, the thing to do is compare this summer with the summer of 1976, which was a real scorcher. Fortunately someone has done that for us:

https://notalotofpeopleknowtha...

There's not a lot going on. Its summer. In any summer you can take some arbitrary number of days, and compare that period with previous periods of the same days, and if you go through enough iterations you can probably often find periods which are, this year, warmer than the corresponding periods in earlier years. So what?

This is just the usual media hysteria about an ordinary summer, which we have now got used to expecting every year. Meanwhile in Europe the crowds are enjoying a warm dry summer, flocking to the beaches and parks in defiance of the hysterical health heat warnings. Realizing that they are having a series of great summers, but that it will not last, so make the most of them, and that next year the UK Met Office will be forecasting a heat wave and a 'barbecue summer', only for nature to deliver a cold wet one, and the next year too. Its chaotic, and sometimes you do get a string of reds or blacks. But that is all that is going on.

This is ridiculous and hysterical. Read the IPCC reports, the latest ones. Read some of the observational studies on the most likely warming scenarios. There is no justification for these doom laden fantasies.

You are correct about one thing: there is no likelihood that global CO2 emissions are going to fall. In fact, they will certainly rise. The world outside the West, which is doing 75% of global emissions, does not believe there is any climate crisis, and their approach to emissions is maximize economic growth and let emissions rise as they may. Their approach to COPs is to attend with the sole purpose of preventing them from reaching any mandatory targets. So we will see global emissions rise well north of 45 billon tons a year by 2040 or so. China probably north of 15 billion.

But this is not plausibly going to result in a 4C rise in average global temps by 2085. Though if it were, the appropriate policy response would not be to try to get to net zero in the US, UK, Canada, Australia by installing wind and solars. That will neither get to net zero nor have any effect at all on the global climate even if it does.

The right policy response is to make a rational assessment of local risk, and use the money currently being wasted in subsidizing wind and solar to protect whichever of our local populations are most at risk.

Try reading the paper. You'll find that there is no rational cause for alarm in it. Its just another of these pieces which tries to promote alarm without supplying any rigorous argument for it.

It may be that the fungi are properly modelled in their procedure. But what they do not show, don't even try, is to show that in particular environments any probable increase in local temperatures will lead to major expansion of them.

Modelling the fungi is probably a useful thing to do, an advance in scientific knowledge, of some value in itself, assuming they have done it right. Someone may use it someday for a useful purpose.

But the armwaving in the direction of global warming is without any sort of rigor, its just the more or less compulsory current nod to a prevailing meme.

There is no reason from this paper to think that any reasonably probable increase in global temperatures this century will lead to any alarming spreads of the fungi in any particular locations.