Slashdot Mirror
China Races To Clean Up Olympic Air
Hugh Pickens writes "With the Olympics due to start in less than three weeks, Beijing is cranking up antipollution measures by yanking cars off the roads, expanding mass transit and staggering work hours in a bid to meet its pledge of a 'green' Olympics. Beijing has gone on a spending spree, relocating factories, seeding clouds, retiring old vehicles, planting millions of trees and halting building construction amid concerns that athletes and visitors could suffer breathing problems. For the next two months, owners of 3.3 million private cars can drive only on alternate days in China's capital, based on whether the last digit of their license plates is even or odd. Environmental and sports performance experts have cast doubt on the effectiveness of the measures taken so far. 'Arguably these are all short-term measures, just designed to control air quality for the time when the Olympics are on,' says Dr Andy Jones. Dr Angus Hunter warned that athletes are at risk for low performance if the air quality cannot be brought down to acceptable levels. 'Average times could be lower and the chances of records being broken become less. It's a bit like trying to exercise in a room when the gym is full of smokers.'"
Just got an email from my PCB Fabrication house :
"For our Printed Circuit Board customers using Chinese vendors, please be aware of the following air quality policy announcement from Chinese authorities:
In preparation for the Olympics, China has announced a factory shutdown for 9 weeks to clear smog and improve air quality in a 200 kilometer radius of Beijing. The shutdown begins July 17th and will extend until September 20th. Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia and Shandong provinces are affected by the shutdown.
If air quality does not improve before the start of the Olympics, there may be an expansion of the shutdown. There are concerns there could also be a bottleneck at two main ports. "
Wonder how it will affect Chip prices
I apologize profusely for not posting this in a more relevant spot, and for not finding where I originally heard this suggested, but, one interesting theory is that the reason for this nearly doubling of oil prices in the past year is that China is stockpiling it to run diesel instead of coal plants, so as to clean up their air for the olympics.
Considering how inscrutable these recent price increases have been, this one seems really good at explaining things. Just a thought.
For now, check out item 3 from a while ago, which mentions China trying to clean up for the Olympic games, and how they're importing more diesel.
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
if you consider the pollution on a per person basis, the Chinese are polluting far less than most developed nations.
When you're talking about a finite resource like clean air, a per capita analysis is worthless, the total effect is what's important. China has 1 billion+ people.