Slashdot Mirror
Air Quality Apps and Bottled Air Thrive On Beijing's Pollution
itwbennett writes "Here's a bright spot in Beijing's off-the-chart bad air pollution: The market for mobile apps that monitor air quality is thriving. 'When the pollution went beyond the air quality index, all the social networks in China and media began paying attention to the problem,' said Wang Jun, one of the developers of the China Air Pollution Index app. 'This caused the downloads to increase 30 times.'" Obviously a Spaceballs fan, a Chinese man is even selling fresh air in cans.
She got a nose job tho so you cant really tell.
Has anyone see The Lorax? It sounds like the entrepreneur pulled the idea of selling air from the movie..
there are roofers. Rest assured grasshopper, where there is misery, someone is still reaping a bounty.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
One way to measure quality - Sensordone, air quality and other sensors via bluetooth keyring thingy kickstarter project:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/453951341/sensordrone-the-6th-sense-of-your-smartphoneand-be
Related: Air cleaning plants (previously from slashdot)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_air-filtering_plants (testing: http://cur.lv/redirect.php?code=fwrm )
A blog I run for the wealth
Here in ermer'ka, we don't have to chew the air because of the EPA. All the deregulation folks trying to close down the EPA should have to spend a month in Beijing, learning what it's like living without one. Just sayin'.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Here's what you do, you bottle the polluted air, and store it, then get alien technology through to post office to solve the pollution problem, then sell it as vintage air.
Suck. Suck. Suck.. SUCK
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
Is this above Top Quality Apps?
The G
'This caused the downloads to increase 30 times.'" Umm... so the app was downloaded 30 times total? Talking about bad wording there ....
Obviously, selling bottled air is a 'good idea' if you can get people to buy it; but what possible sense does that make as a strategy for coping with pollution?
As a glance at the scuba gear aisle shows, the equipment needed to actually bottle useful amounts of air isn't trivial. You need a fairly sturdy(and thus heavy) tank to safely achieve pressures high enough to avoid ridiculous volume requirements, and then you need a regulator stage so the pressure doesn't blow your alveoli to hell.
Unless the pollutants are some truly alarming stuff, rather than just soot and miscellaneous VOCs, you'll get a lot more mileage out of lighter and less bulky filters.
Time to pay a visit to the once-ler...
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/01/chinas-toxic-sky/100449/
The shot featuring the blue sky on the screen is my favorite...
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
My new bookmarked website is http://www.aqicn.info/ which recently popped up. It's very pretty and they built a little widget that goes on my android phone home screen. I'm grateful people have taken time to build this type of information as I've been paranoid about the pollution whilst living here. Only 2 years ago, pollution was a topic not even discussed by the locals and the best one had to go on was a twitter feed from the US consulate giving the PM2.5 levels.
And the best thing is that people are building these sites and apps for free.
NASA satellite photos show a thick grey haze has rendered the densely populated plains of North China invisible from outer space.
Aha! So that was the plan all along.
Or do mosty of the images of Beijing, these days, look like they were lifted straight from Blade Runner?
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Before 'Green' became a marketing word, the original environmental action in the sixties was to clean up the air, the land and the water in the Western World. The pollution back then was obscene. Black smoke poured out of factories. Lake Erie was the synonym for 'really polluted.
Burning Coal emits Mercury, Thorium and Sulfur. Mercury gets concentrated in the Fish. Sulfur falls out as acid rain.
As to the Thorium, I spotted this in an web article, but could not find much out more about it and was not entirely satisfied that the information was 100 percent good. But here goes anyways. Coal contains Thorium and other radioactive materials that are released into the air when it is burnt. They do not purify coal before the burn it. Coal is a mixture of all sorts of stuff, most of flammable, but some of it other stuff. The scaremonger writing the piece claimed that coal plants spewed more radiactivity into the environment than a nuclear plant. Who knows for sure. I could not google enough up.
They quietly shutdown all the coal plants around here. Almost like Shhh, don't say 'Thorium' or 'Class Action'. Sorta like they got rid of Leaded Gasoline, which according to the talk around the campfire is the reason for the long, slow, steady reduction in crime.
As somewhat of a gearhead, there was always a lot of harangue about 'California' emission controls. I thought they were being overly anal. But looking at the air quality in Bejing is the universe telling me, Ahah! That what happens if you are not anal about everything that affects air quality.
I hear about the Chinese Economic Miracle. But when I see the youtube videos of the 'Fog' in Bejing, the price they paid was too high. You could be the richest man in Bejing, but your quality of life, as a living creature, is horrible. This is not some abstract human rights issue. This is breathing filth into your lungs with every breath.
And replace the coal plants with what? Nuclear? Oy. Brain Hurts.
But still, the Chinese must start down the road to clean air and clean water with a single step. They have the world's worst problem and must become world leaders at solving this problem.
The population is the largest in the world. The civilization is thousands of years old. They have cared for their environment all this time, and in turn, their environment has cared for them.
There are almost tears on my keyboard. It is all so sad. I pray for the people of Beijing. I did not know the problem was so bad, but now I do. I write. I talk. I send about links. That is about all I can do.
China, take those trillions of Worthless Fiat American Paper Dollars and buy your civilization clean air. The people of China are the most important asset of China. There is no election coming up. The planet is not going anywhere. There is no need for short term, quick buck expedient thinking.
Oh. It is just so sad. I pray for Beijing.
I almost sat through the 25 second commercial just to watch the the guy selling air cans. That is how interested I was. Was.
I just wonder where the data comes from, and how accurate it is. There are perverse incentives for officials to lie about such things. One of my favorite stories is how some clever chap at the US embassy in Beijing stuck and air quality device on the roof and tied it to a web page. Predictably, it was much higher than the official readings, and Chinese people loved it. The government was outraged (telling the truth can be a major crime in China). They tried to get it shut down, saying that it was illegal to report on the environment unless you are a qualified scientist. This very reasonable (by scientific standards) argument was laughed out of court by the Americans, who pointed out that the embassy was sovereign US soil and the mandarins could go suck it. The government obviously couldn't block the US embassy web page with the Great Firewall. Laughs all around.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
They just might hack ./ in retaliation.
If you could make a real, working (read: smell generating) fart app then you would have a perfect pair. One app to generate air pollution and one to detect it.
The London sewers where a "green" project (Great Stink 1858). The clear air act was a "green" project (1952). The introduction of the motor car was "green" (cars don't shit on the street like horses).
And these things happened because non-regulation made for a terrible mess. Life expectancy shot up after these projects were completed. Foggy London was really Smoggy London and while the air might now not be country side clean, you can see in Beijing just how bad it could have gotten. Hell, according to some sources, it was just as bad in London before legislation changed things.
And we need to keep those laws clearly because despite Beijing knowing perfectly well from examples that air quality is going to go tits up if you keep pumping pollution into the air and despite working examples of how to clean it up, they aren't.
A lot of libertarians should study these things, it goes to show that mankind needs lots of laws because without laws and enforcement of those laws, shit happens.
False Dichotomy is False
That is all. Reboot. Rethink. Retry.
Ironic how China is so heavily centralized and regulated and they are suffering from this problem. It seems like such high levels of regulation would provide them the opportunity to be one of the cleanest countries.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
Pretty soon with the EPA shut down a new opportunity for companies will emerge : Selling clean breathable air.
Think about it . So much money to be made is an occasion that can't be passed by !
The heck with the clean air act, let's make money !
Obviously a Spaceballs fan, a Chinese man is even selling fresh air in cans.
Perri-Air. LOL
Behold your new O'Hare corporation Lords (Remember the Lorax?)