Slashdot Mirror
US Embassy Categorizes Beijing Air Quality As 'Crazy Bad'
digitaldc writes "Pollution in Beijing was so bad Friday the US embassy, which has been independently monitoring air quality, ran out of conventional adjectives to describe it, at one point saying it was 'crazy bad.' The embassy later deleted the phrase, saying it was an 'incorrect' description and it would revise the language to use when the air quality index goes above 500, its highest point and a level considered hazardous for all people by US standards. The hazardous haze has forced schools to stop outdoor exercises, and health experts asked residents, especially those with respiratory problems, the elderly and children, to stay indoors."
Desperately seeking emphatic adjective...
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
When I was in Beijing a few years ago, after a while the days there started to feel kind of like the day before you're going to catch a cold.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Crazy bad, when "embarrassingly polluted" just doesn't do justice.
.. this would be an idea state: no EPA at all, and nothing to work against any company in order to make a profit.
I found it hard to believe or describe when I visited (in 2004). From one block north, the Forbidden City was obscured by smog on a cloudless day. It otherwise felt like you were smoking all the time.
www.cgstock.com
A spokes person at the embassy was also quoted as saying, "The dude who said the first statement is all retarded and is a total dick. He always causing drama. Our bad, we cool"
If you run away from smog every time it comes around the smog is going to start thinking we are weak. Then we are going to have to listen to the smog whenever it tell us to do something. We need to stand up to the smog and show it that we are not just a bunch of overly socialized western pansies. I demand that we give all our kids smog masks! The smog masks will supply a steady stream of high quality smog to school children, who will naturally become smog tolerant. The smog tolerant children will go on to create a new world free untethered from the requirements of clean air and pollution control devices. These new smog tolerant children will then be able to compete against the Chinese who are fed a steady diet of smog since birth.
-If you don't want to turn into a frog, you better eat some smog.
-Elliot Weise
When will the youth of China decide they've had enough of conformity and respect for authority? China has raised it standard of living in recent decades but they still suffer from a severe lack of basic freedoms, corruption, and choking pollution. The civil rights movement and Vietnam triggered the events of the 60's in the USA. When will the same happen in China?
I mean really, this is proof that a truly free market benefits everyone. I mean if people can't go outside, they can't commit crimes OR hurt the children!
The bad air quality is a prime example of an externalized cost.
Many people claim the reason for offshoring is wages, but that's only part of it...
Much of the savings comes from the ability to operate a factory in China under less stringent rules - less labor protections, less safety, less pollution controls, etc.
Eventually China will crack down on polluters (they already do on an ad hoc basis, such as briefly during the 2008 Olympics) improving air quality, but also increasing production costs, which will then push many companies to offshore to the next cheaper place where such costs can again be externalized.
Ron
p.s. why is the comment entry window so narrow? More breakage - Slashdot was more usable in 1998 than it is now, but hey I guess this is progress... bah!
No. The only time we hit "crazy bad" is when you are describing the pollen count in the spring, when every car in the city turns yellow.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
No, you have libertarians and conservatives confused with anarchists. That's typical talk from the socialist/communist faction: "When you guys talk about enforcing the Constitution that means you guys don't want any government at all!"
Revive the Constitution.
When I visited Beijing during the summer six years ago, the Imperial Vault and the Hall of Prayers at the Temple of Heaven weren't visible from each other. According to this site, they're only about 360 meters apart. Smog limited the visibility at ground level to less than a quarter of a mile, and it has gotten worse since then.
Last year the Air Quality Index in Atlanta reached the level of "Unhealthy For Sensitive Groups" (100-150) on 16 days, and never reached the next level, "Unhealthy" (150-200). Beijing's score - over 500 - sounds very bad indeed.
If only they'd learned from the negative examples provided by Europe and the USA's journeys through the Industrial Revolution.
Money talks and bullshit walks.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
I think you mean "pedants".
Percent of global emissions:
China: 17%
US 16%
You are wrong.
The US has been restricting emissions since then, while China has been building TWO COAL POWER PLANTS PER WEEK since then.
We "snubbed Kyoto" because we knew it wouldn't do any good if countries like China got a complete pass and Russia was baselined at its ultra-polluting communist era. All Kyoto was designed to do was siphon money from the US and EU to other countries.
You do realize that the sort of pollutants the article discusses have little or nothing to do with GHG emissions, right?
People are really stupid. CO2 may cause the planet to warm up, but it certainly won't kill millions by way of lung cancer and other respiratory aliments.
The US (and the west in general) has done an admirable job of eliminating or reducing air borne pollutants. The US is currently debating the merits of managing non-pollutant emissions, such as CO2, the byproduct of "clean coal", natural gas, and other complete oxidization products.
Downplaying the improvements in Western air quality is extremely dangerous, and one only has to tour some of the various polluted hell-holes in the East to truly understand how important clean air is.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
"Shared insanity is an excellent term for the brief turn away from Conservatism (NOT Republicans) that the country underwent, and is now correcting."
Correcting indeed. With the Republicans now controlling the House, they get to appoint a new chair to the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee. The front-runners for the position are:
Joe Barton - He's the guy who apologized to BP for their cruel treatment by the US Federal Government. He also received more campaign contributions from the oil industry than any other member of the House, which makes him an expert on energy policy.
John Shimkus - He quoted the book of Genesis in House testimony as evidence that God promised He would never let bad things happen to the Earth, and He should be entrusted to protect the environment.
Nope, no insanity there.
Here's details about it, from a respected news source:
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/366030/november-17-2010/chair-apparent
Take off every Sig. For great justice.
...alerts for nearly exactly the same thing went on for 2-3 weeks in Boston.
It's not nearly the same thing. You're probably thinking of the impact of Quebec forest fires in May, which drove the Air Quality Index (AQI) to the Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups range (which is 101-150) in parts of the Boston area. This is nowhere near 500+. (The ranges above 150 are Unhealthy (151-200), Very Unhealthy (201-300), and Hazardous (301-500+).
A year old, but I doubt things have changed: http://www.chinahush.com/2009/10/21/amazing-pictures-pollution-in-china/
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
"the failures coming when each and every one of the industries you mentioned had heavy regulation induced and large government players involved (like Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac)"
Whoa, whoa, whoa.... Fannie and Freddie didn't cause the subprime mess. They were actually pretty late in coming into it. I was involved with that industry for three years, and I don't remember ever seeing a subprime loan bond issued by those agencies. The bonds I do remember seeing are a who's who of the banks and investment houses that closed down (with the notable exception of Goldman).
In fact, a big part of the failing in that industry is to do to the agencies that are the market's attempt at self-regulation: the rating agencies. The pain would not have been so widespread, and the flow of capital would have been much more limited, had the rating agencies correctly modelled stresses on the portfolios of these bonds. The entire industry CDO industry would have been nipped in the bud.
But they were making a mint with CDO issuance (accounting for a small part of their business but a much larger part of their fees) where they were paid by the issuer of the bonds, instead of investors! Imagine how comfortable you would feel buying medication from a company that has three different regulators to pick from and has to pay the regulator for the analysis done on their drug, and the regulators make more money the more drugs get released by these companies.
Some of the problem was caused by regulation, like the need to mark to market, but these regulations exacerbated a problem that was created entirely by the industry itself: it was a classic case of no one bothered doing the due diligence on the loans, because everyone figures someone else had done. The loan issuers figures no one would be buying the loans if they didn't want them, the securitizers were expecting some basic standards in the underwritings of the loans, and the investors were expecting the rating agencies and the issuing companies to ensure the loans were as expected by the product they were buying (the whole incentive, of course, being that the company wouldn't shoot itself in the foot by issuing securities backed by bad loans, the rating agencies were putting their reputations on the line, etc). Of course, in the end, none of these systems of internal checks worked, and companies were actually willing to risk everything they were supposed to be protecting for the money they were making for the simple reason that companies are run by people. As long as people can be irrational, measure risk incorrectly by favoring the potentially more profitable route (ask casinos why they are still in business when everyone knows they skew the odds in their own favor), markets will never be the efficient panacea some libertarians seem to think it is.
The market's role is to match demand with supply, and is best left on it's own when doing that, but "the market" isn't ephemeral, it's people. People always need to be regulated because with the market we're trying to channel their self-interest into common good (by having them provide goods and services others need/want), but that same self-interest can cause the system to break down if not managed. The government's self-interest in getting elected and always being blamed when something happens makes it the natural player in being that regulator.