Eh?? Amsterdam is built on sand, just like the (sic) Tthames Estruary. If you know anything about proverbs, you will know that sand needs to be stabilised before you build on it. This has worked at Amsterdam for some 500 years (using wood), and so modern methodology will have no problem with Thames alluvial deposits.
No. I said quite clearly,
please correct me on the stilts issue, but me being wrong (and telling you I possibly would be) about that does not for one minute make you right on the airport issue.
An airport is a very different type of structure to a house, both in dispersal (large and flat v tall and slender) and in scale. Airports do, however, need to be able to take substantial point loads at touchdown.
We already know that Kansai was built on the very unstabilised ROCKS, not just the sand you are warning against.
We simply cannot know what the risks are with Fantasy Island, except for the fact that we don't know them. Any attempt to put a figure on them is just pulling numbers out of a hat.
The research, funded by US university MIT, suggests Heathrow aviation pollution causes about 50 early deaths a year and this number is rising.
Why are we getting worked up about data from a US university, albeit a respectable one? Note the word
suggests - ie the conclusion is meaningless.
How exactly have they collected data, and has there been any peer review? Doesn't look like it. We have enough of our own universities to conduct such a study, and do ground level research.
The irony that any researchers coming from Boston would have to come through Heathrow to do such research is noted, not to mention Boston's own small airport problem!
By 2030, without airport expansion, the number of early deaths from airport emissions across the UK is projected to more than double to 250.
Without airport expansion, emissions could still grow due to more intensive use of our airports, but they will also fall due to technology improvements, so to project a doubling by this date sounds just slightly alarmist.
Nic Ferriday, from campaign group AirportWatch, told the BBC: "The study does match up quite well with a study that was actually done for the Greater London Authority that showed 4,000 people per year dying from air pollution.
How do 50 deaths at Heathrow possibly "match up" with 4,000 across London - the former being just over 1% of the latter. Even if we were to include LCY in such stats (the other airports being outside scope of the GLA), the fact remains that more than 90% of air pollution deaths (if we believe the stats at all) will be attributable to ROAD traffic.
That is the conclusion made by other reports which have previously looked into the matter. Unless one has been done more recently, it is my understanding that no
peer reviewed scientific report has ever proven a link between airports themselves and significant levels of mortality, i.e. any levels over and above surrounding roads.
Noise on the other hand remains a nuisance, and a contributor to stress, although again, I think it would be a stretch to say it is actually a cause of fatalities.