Slashdot Mirror
China To Begin Submitting Air Pollution Reports
smitty777 writes "China will start to publish air pollution reports, possibly in response to reports from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing which has been publishing its own data. This report is significant in that it's based on the PM2.5 standard, which measures the more harmful particles that are less than 2.5 microns. This comes on the heels of a separate report that lists China as the worst polluter worldwide. According to this report, China now produces 6,832 m tons of CO2, a 754% increase since 1971. While the U.S. is in second at 5,195 m, this represents an increase of only 21%. This article notes 'the rapid growth in emissions for China, India, and Africa. This will continue as their middle classes buy houses and vehicles. The growth in Middle East emissions is staggering, a reflection of their growing oil fortunes.' While we're on the subject of India, their pollution levels are thought to be responsible for a dense cloud of fog that is so thick it created a cold front, and is repsonsible for a number of deaths."
Half the US population will pretend that scientific consensus does not exist as they drive automobiles created with the fruits of science, the Chinese will fudge their numbers, and nothing will change.
Our CO2 output has only grown 21% since 1970. We simply MUST do better.
With just a little more effort on each persons part, we can once again be in first place.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
But 1971 is such a good year to pick, after a decade of China not only stopping any real industrialization, but instead falling apart in its manufacturing and technological base, while at the same time it was the start of the EPA and the Clean Air Act in the US. It helps skew the numbers the right direction for a politically motivated article.
/sarcasm
China in 1971 might as well have been the Democratic Republic of Congo technology and manufacturing wise, actually I think the Congo today outperforms what all of China did then!
I guess it shouldn't be surprising anymore that the concept of "per capita" is once again completely omitted to make a headline rather than a point?
7000 MTon vs 5000 MTon... hmm doesn't sound impressive enough, let's try 754% vs 21%!! Oh my god!
How about 5.4 Ton/person (China) vs. 16.7 Ton/person (U.S.)?
Or better yet, how about 90+% of U.S. consumer needs being shifted to China?
Not only is China already more efficient in what it does for the CO2 it's producing compared to the U.S., it's supplying the rest of the world too. What's the complaint here?
This is a funny numbers game. CO2 is far from the worst greenhouse gas, so all these people posting their reactions about Americans and their big suv's, cars whatever, need to look more closely at which gases cause the most greenhouse effects, and where these gases come from.
You can fit me into the "greenhouse deniers" if you like, but I'm suspicious of pretty much all the data that is surrounding this issue -- there is too much money to be made on "popular" science like this for there to be any real hope of getting sound scientific data right now...
I've also yet to hear anyone make a reasonable sounding proposal to make any positive changes, its always up in the air stuff like "We all need to hold hands and plant trees and drive less" -- that's absurd. Lowering pollution is a good idea whatever the effects on temperature so I'm all for this goal, but to actually get to the point of seriously damaging the economy and lives we've all come to like living isn't going to happen and shouldn't. These are scientific issues and probably have scientific solutions.
People seem to want impossible things on this issue. Hippies are an illogical group of people who work solely in knee-jerk reactions and boogey-man scare tactics, they just complain without making much sense. Coal power bad, but nuclear is bad too! Damn, these goes our safest and best way to generate power. It all has to be hippie-power, hydro and solar. Yeah, well, if that worked then why wouldn't they use it, they can fleece us on power bills with solar or hydro just as easily as coal or nuke.
I don't see a lot of logic and reason with this entire issue.
"Computers will never truly be free until the last windows user is strangled with the entrails of the last mac user."
Per person you say?
Qatar is number one at 53.5 tons per person, followed by Trinidad and Tobago at 37.3 tons oddly enough.
Going down the list you find Australia to be the number one developed polluter per person at 18.9 tons, giving it 11th place. Immediately afterwords at 12th place is the US at 17.5 tons per person. We Canadians are 15th with 16.4 tons per person, and going down you find Russia at 12.1 tons per person or 23rd.
Germany is 37th with 9.6 tons per person, Greece is 41st with 8.8 tons, The UK is 43 with 8.5 tons. And France who can forget them at 6.1 tons, they are 65th.
For the drum roll, China is number 78th at a mere 5.3 tons per person.
All per the US Department of Energy's Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This graph is more interesting - it shows Co2 emissions per capita against population (so area of rectange = absolute emissions). Being able to compare the area visually gives a better indication as to the degree of the problem in each nation. This graph shows another interesting thing - responsibility for cumulative/historical co2 emissions. Since co2 stays in the air for 50 to 100 years, the vast majority of co2 that is in the air right now was actually put there by the nations that were industrialised throughout the last century - ie. the US and Western Europe.
btw. The author of that book also addresses the issue of China:
What about China, that naughty “out of control” country? Yes, the area of China’s rectangle is about the same as the USA’s, but the fact is that their per-capita emissions are below the world average. India’s per-capita emissions are less than half the world average. Moreover, it’s worth bearing in mind that much of the industrial emissions of China and India are associated with the manufacture of stuff for rich countries.
So, assuming that “something needs to be done” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, who has a special responsibility to do something? As I said, that’s an ethical question. But I find it hard to imagine any system of ethics that denies that the responsibility falls especially on the countries to the left hand side of this diagram – the countries whose emissions are two, three, or four times the world average. Countries that are most able to pay. Countries like Britain and the USA, for example.
Whether "it is fair to share CO2 emission rights equally across the world's population" is an ethical question, as is the question of who should pay to clean up a problem like this, but it is hard to construct a moral argument that a Westerner should be entitled to emit more co2 than a person born in another nation. Why should we have this entitlement?
And if that isn't consensus, I don't know what is.
I too wish people would stop getting this wrong, as it's blocking the conversation about what to do about climate change.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Comment removed based on user account deletion