[tinco]

Well even if you disregard ideologies, just the legislations that are in place influence what the center of a position could be.

For example in my country our right wing government had made good on a right wing promise to increase the maximum highway speed from 120kph to 130kph.

Some years later however it turned out that the presence of highways contributed to dangerous levels of nitric oxides (edited from nitrogen) in the air and a judge forced that same administration to reduce the maximum speed from 130kph to 100kph.

Now legislation (and reality) has changed a right wing position from being "disregard the environment, prioritise economy and increase the speed" to "disregard health, prioritise economy and increase the speed". The same position was basically transformed into a more extreme position due to the circumstances changing.

I imagine that same thing holds for many topics. It sure feels a lot more extreme to advocate gun regulation when doing so in opposition of school shooting victims. I generally support the idea of gun ownership, but the shootings definitely forced me to have a more nuanced opinion that shifted my position from the conservative side to the progressive side.

[fabian2k]

Air is mostly nitrogen, and that isn't dangerous.

[yourusername]

Dutch media is terrible and refuses to name the actual compounds involved (NOx and NH3) because that would require them to distinguish between the different sources of this pollution. So they've just been calling it "nitrogen" and so you get people repeating the assertion that there are dangerous levels of "nitrogen" in the air.

[tinco]

Yeah, I don't know what the proper English name for those compounds is. Is it nitric oxides and ammonia?