To stop building heat islands, stop overbuilding parking lots

Re:To stop building heat islands, stop overbuilding parking ... by butlerm on Thursday January 13, 2022 @05:10AM (#29918996)

> Surely driving a car for 60 minutes ought to reduce your life expectancy by something like 59 minutes, at least

If that were true, a child born with a life expectancy of eighty years would be dead by age forty. Life expectancy is measured in terms of projected age at death, not years remaining to live. An ordinary benign activity should not change your life expectancy very much, almost by definition.

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Re:To stop building heat islands, stop overbuilding parking ... by chongli on Thursday January 13, 2022 @06:18AM (#29919451)

a child born with a life expectancy of eighty years would be dead by age forty

I would not expect a child who drives 24 hours a day, 7 days a week — from birth — to live much past the age of forty.

If, on the other hand, you commute one hour per day for five days a week for twenty years that works out to about 217 days or just under 2/3 of a year of lost life expectancy. Is it nothing? Absolutely not. But it’s not as absurd as it would seem.

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