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Scientists Fear Impact of Asian Pollutants On US
During the Olympics we discussed the international monitoring effort as China shut down factories and curtailed automobile travel in an attempt to reduce pollution. Now reader Anti-Globalism sends in a story that reveals that monitoring effort to be ongoing, with a bigger mandate: assessing the impact of China's pollution on the US. In fact the problem is bigger still because, as one researcher put it, "It's one atmosphere." Scientists are finding that pollution from, for example, Europe can travel right around the globe in three weeks. "By some estimates more than 10 billion pounds of airborne pollutants from Asia — ranging from soot to mercury to carbon dioxide to ozone — reach the US annually. The problem is only expected to worsen: Some Chinese officials have warned that pollution in their country could quadruple in the next 15 years. While some scientists are less certain, others say the Asian pollution could destabilize weather patterns across the North Pacific, mask the effects of global warming, reduce rainfall in the American West and compromise efforts to meet air-pollution standards."
Isn't the US still number one polluter or did China overtake recently? Either way the per capita pollution is still worse in the states by a hefty margin. Talk about being hypocritical.
You've mentioned the effects of China and Europe on poor innocent America. Now, who's monitoring the effects of the USA's pollution? You know, that one developed country that still hasn't ratified the Kyoto Protocol.
Acknowledging and investigating the global effects of local pollution is a worthy endeavour, just as long as it's done in a balanced and open manner. We don't need yet another of the US's "Do as we say not as we do" hypocritical standpoints.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
I recall a documentary (BBC?) on a Icelandic volcano named Laki some 200 years back which blighted Europe. The show focused on a cloud of volcanic gas and the resultant illness that occurred among rural peasants. The speculation was that this was probably the result of silica in the cloud being breathed by those who worked outside. Similarly the 1815 eruption of Tambora caused the "Year without Summer" with famine among the Swiss, and unique weather reported in Pennsylvania. Pollutants are not in this league, but, they can indeed have world ranging effect.
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
Well, I don't know if you noticed, but you may not have seen the sun during the olympics. Reason: particulate pollution is so bad in most of China you cannot see the sun most of the time. While CO2 certainly is a greenhouse gas - particulate pollution acts as a cooling agent in the atmosphere. Here in the US we have at least some regulation on what industries can pump into the atmosphere, and have really made some great strides in reducing particulate pollution since the 70's.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
Don't single out China/Asia. Countries have a massive effect upon each other. I live in far north Texas, and have seen haze/smoke from fires in central Mexico. I've always felt a large part of Texas's pollution problem is pollutants coming North. I've heard engineers talk about offering sulfer scrubbers to Eastern european coal-power plants to reduce smog here in the US.
Part of the problem is different countries worry about different types of pollution. In the US, we are more concerned about visible/long-term pollutants than invisible/short-term ones. Some other countries are completely unconcerned about things like leaded gasoline, which is still used in many countries but has been out of the US for decades. America has a bad record, but has gotten some things right in the end. Europeans make a big deal about CO2, but many European
beaches have incredibly toxic water, or land which is unfarmable. Thanks to American pollution reforms, life is even returning to New York's harbor.
Everything is a give/take. People are worrying about energy inefficient bulbs, replacing them with their more efficient fluorescent cousins, but are ignoring the problems those bulbs have with mercury. Or with LED bulbs, gallium aresenide. For example, the life returning to New York's harbor happens to be devouring all of the wooden structures built since they last died off.
Here's to losing my Karma Bonus again....
The US delegation at all those Global Warming summits was constantly saying over and over that the rest of thew world can cap emissions and lower pollution but if China and the like don't join in then it will be pointless. In response for this common sense information the US delegation was boo'd and jeered until they finally gave in an allowed a consensus to come forth that didn't demand anything of China and third world countries.
...I'm less interested in pointing fingers. Besides, the US has a habit of shooting at fingers with hellfire missiles. Instead of "naming names", it would seem better to have a close to global tracking and monitoring of pollution in general, to show WHERE different types of pollution are a problem (regardless of source). You could then add in solar-powered UAVs to collect air samples at random points, where the isotope ratios are calculated and the pollutant sources (not necessarily the factories, just the sources) are derived. The factories can be inferred from plotting the pollution clouds, if anyone is genuinely concerned, but frankly I'd have thought that cleaning fuels and raw materials would have a bigger impact, as there are likely far fewer sources than factories, factories see cleaning as expensive, but higher grade fuels and materials are worth more to their producers. Ergo, cleaning at source will be seen as making money, cleaning at point of use will be seen as spending money, even though the end result (in terms of pollution, money-flow, profits, etc) should be absolutely identical.
Industrialists are, by and large, not very bright and highly prejudiced towards green-stuff feel-good factors. Which means that something that is good won't be accepted no matter how good it actually is, unless it is presented as something that'll feel good to their accountants. Being honest isn't worth a damn thing, but it isn't necessary to be honest to be accurate. This is why politics is a scam. Politicians don't sell you what you want, they sell you what they want dressed up to look like it's something you want. But you're quite capable of giving as good as you get.
Honest environmentalists go nowhere, although they usually get some recognition AFTER the disaster they predicted has swept through. Why? Because their phrasing makes it sound like people have to put in hard work and money for something that isn't 100% predictable anyway. Completely the wrong move. Think like Dogbert, not Dilbert, on this one. Dilbert always gets ignored, Dogbert always gets things done. The difference is not in what they're doing, but in the psychology. Dilbert assumes people are basically bright, compassionate and thoughtful. Dogbert assumes people are manipulative, deceitful, corrupt and 100% gullible. Environmentalists need to listen to Dogbert. Dilbert is correct, but will never go anywhere. In mythological terms, he represents the Wise Fool - he knows a lot but his attempts to explain make him sound like a complete fool.
Saving money has never worked, any better than saving the planet, but if the first part of the "food chain" decides cleanliness is next to richness, it gets imposed on everyone else regardless. They have no choice but to go green. They won't even be aware they've done so. Things'll cost more, but as gas prices have demonstrated, customers ignore that until the last possible moment, and then blame it on anyone they happen to dislike at the time. Use that self-inflicted blindness to make consumers green, and the world will be cleaner within a year without the consumers ever noticing what you're doing. If they say anything, it'll be to flame the environmentalists for doom-saying about pollution and greenhouse gasses, same as they did with Y2K after several trillion dollars were spent in fixing flaws across the world.
(And, yes, for those who care, Y2K did strike older electronic credit-card readers, older banking systems, and many home and office products - including many of Microsoft's. If they'd done nothing, the world might well have ended. Instead, the fixes were imposed on an unwilling and ignorant population in such a way that they remained unwilling and ignorant. And that is the SOLE reason you are still breathing today.)
What Y2K demonstrated was that the masses are dumb, but that really doesn't matter. You can fix what does matter without ever concerning yourself with the widespread ignorance in the world. In this case, you can fix mines, quarries, power stations, oil, coal, and all kinds of other resources, with the help of a handful of executives who can make a mint off the deal. Do that, and national follies will be of no importance whatsoever.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Environmental over-regulation in the US drives up prices for manufacturers and other businesses. This leads them to move to China and other developing countries with very lax environmental standards. Pollution is increased a lot.
Just setting environmental standards at a rational level in the US might allow these companies to stay here. They could run a clean operation. It might not be perfect or "sustainable", but it would be clean and suitable by any rational standard.
Environmental over-regulation and utopianism actually results in greater pollution in these cases. Carbon cap-and-trade schemes will just increase this phenomenon. And it shifts pollution to poorer, less-empowered populations.
The US is a victim of other people's pollution, just as you are also a victim of a) China's pollution b) United States pollution c) Your own country's pollution.
Yes, we in the US are victims of our own pollution. Its not that we don't realize it, its just that it costs a lot of money and political will to stop it and fix it. You can't blame all of us Americans for that. Some of us are trying really hard to turn that ship around, but it doesn't stop on a dime.
At least we recognize the problem and many of us are trying to do something about it. I'm not sure you can say the same about China - I don't know, I've never been there, but I'm sure there are plenty of Chinese citizens that don't like it one bit either. You also have to stipulate to the fact that when the US was in its major industrialization buildup, pollution wasn't recognized as a problem. The technology to be clean didn't exist, and we weren't fighting the world tooth and nail for our right to pollute - although we have our own problems with our government not having the balls to fix existing problems. China on the other hand seems to use developed nations as an excuse to pollute, even though it is globally irresponsible to do so, and the technology exists not to.
Finally, those scientists are not on a high horse, they ARE the high horse. It is more a fault of the executive leadership of the United States trying to bury the problem, being friendly to the oh-so-clean oil industry, than government scientists whose reports have been subject to review and even censorship by the President and his men. Its not our scientists fault that we pollute, and most of them (and especially the ones who research this particular field) really wish it wasn't a problem for you, for me, or the citizens of China. The purpose of the study was to show an effect, and if you want to do a study that shows the effects on your country by our pollutions you are free to do so.
You're an idiot then (see posts below).
If China had the same production levels of the US they would be polluting massively more.
What is your point? Production efficiency may be one thing, but pollution output is a different thing. Maybe they are less efficient... Maybe we are more efficient. That does not undo the REALITY of the actual amount of pollution that is being produced.
I don't think a person with dirt on their hands can point at another person with dirt on theirs and complain about it.
There is a difference between patriotism and indigence. Open your eyes and be real with yourself, your country, the world, and reality.
The US remains the only major industrialized nation to not do things in that fashion.
Is that because in the US the US IS THE ONLY INDUSTRIALIZED NATION?
Or are you suggesting that industries polute more in europe? I seriously doubt that USA in general would behave better to the environment than Sweden do. Feel free to prove me wrong.
Of course they will get better paid later on, this will be a problem for any developing nation but they have accepted that some people will get rich first, but in the end hopefully they will all benefit from it. Thought in very capitalisic countries not every does I guess, Japan and the USA is the two countries with the biggest gaps between very rich and very poor people if I remember correctly.