Up To a Quarter of California Smog Comes From China

wabrandsma writes "What goes around comes around – quite literally in the case of smog. The US has outsourced many of its production lines to China and, in return, global winds are exporting the Chinese factories' pollution right back to the U.S. From the article: '...the team combined their emissions data with atmospheric models that predict how winds shuttle particles around. These winds push Chinese smog over the Pacific and dump it on the western US, from Seattle to southern California. The modelling revealed that on any given day in 2006, goods made in China for the US market accounted for up to a quarter of the sulphate smog over the western U.S..'"

Comments

Eh? Smog is low level

[Viol8]

How can these particles remain in the very lowest part of the atmosphere while travelling all the way across the Pacific, apparently completely unaffacted by weather or mixing of air strata? It doesn't make sense. Low level particulates rain out of the atmosphere very quickly. If he's talking about high level pollutants in the stratosphere then fair enough - but thats not smog.

Re:Eh? Smog is low level

[some old guy]

I seem to remember an axiom from E-school: "Gravity always works."

Re:Eh? Smog is low level

[Sockatume]

Nope, definitely low-level; it's a tropospheric transport model. Apparently it's a standard model (GEOS-Chem) that's pretty reliable, and it seems to incorporate interactions between particulates and the surface, including e.g. exchange of particulates between the troposphere and ocean/land.

http://www.pnas.org/content/ea...

Re:Eh? Smog is low level

[Viol8]

If thats the case then it'll almost certainly be skewed by all the pollution from shipping along the way. The high sulphur fuel oil they burn produces hugh amounts of sulphates.

Re:Eh? Smog is low level

[Anonymous Coward]

> How can these particles remain in the very lowest part of the atmosphere

That's the Invisible Hand, son.

Re:Eh? Smog is low level

[drinkypoo]

If thats the case then it'll almost certainly be skewed by all the pollution from shipping along the way. The high sulphur fuel oil they burn produces hugh amounts of sulphates.

So what? That shipping is done to bring the goods from China... might as well fold it in.

Re:Eh? Smog is low level

[amiga3D]

Have you seen pictures of smog in China? It's fucking incredible. It's not that much of it that makes it here, only a small portion. It seems like a lot but compared to what started it's not that much. The health problems the Chinese are going to have from this stuff is unimaginable.

Re:Eh? Smog is low level

[RabidReindeer]

Forget particulates. Actual sand has been known to show up on my front doorstep (literally) transported across the Atlantic from the Sahara. And, from time to time, going the other direction from Kansas and Oklahoma.

If something that heavy can be transported that far, the only thing that would change with lighter particles is how much farther they disperse.

Re:Eh? Smog is low level

[haruchai]

"The health problems the Chinese are going to have from this stuff is unimaginable"

That ship may have sailed.

A report from 2007 estimated 600,000 deaths annually - http://news.nationalgeographic....
A recent one, that looks at 100 cities puts the tally at 350,000 - 500,000 annually but another that claims to take the entire population into account is claiming over 1 million.
http://www.scmp.com/news/china...

That may not mean much in a country over well over a billion people but it's unimaginable to me that so many die from just breathing bad air.

Re:Eh? Smog is low level

[e70838]

I live in north of France and I have already received sand from sahara. This does not happen often, but it happens.

Re:Eh? Smog is low level

[Ozymandias_KoK]

How do you know the sand on your doorstep is from the Sahara and not some closer sandy area?

Re:Eh? Smog is low level

[riverat1]

If nothing else you could chemically analyze the dust to find its origin but dust storm remnants crossing the Atlantic have been tracked by satellite so it's know to happen.

Re:Eh? Smog is low level

[RabidReindeer]

If nothing else you could chemically analyze the dust to find its origin but dust storm remnants crossing the Atlantic have been tracked by satellite so it's know to happen.

Also isotopically.

However, A) I'm quite familiar with all the local (within 500 miles) types of sand and B) that's where the Weather Service said it came from.

C) you can sometimes see it in the satellite pictures off the western coast of Africa. When hurricane season is at its peak, that's where the big storms come from, so I keep an eye on it.

Re:Eh? Smog is low level

[aztracker1]

It's entirely plausible... Hell, look at the haze at the Grand Canyon for an example of the smog rolling over from California... I know that is a much closer distance, but given the amount of pollution coming out of China right now, it doesn't surprise me at all.

Re:Eh? Smog is low level

[jafac]

Personally, it is my fond hope, that the children of the policymakers who helped create this situation, will also die of lung cancer, asthma, or all the other horrible diseases that they inflict on the rest of us.

We voted for, and enacted an EPA for a reason. These people don't care, they just want to make a buck. Let the karma bus roll.

Re:Eh? Smog is low level

[Anonymous Coward]

Sand from the Sahara fertilize the Amazon rain forests. Look it up.

Pollution from China

[Firethorn]

Now, I'm mostly libertarian, but in the whole 'your right to throw your fist stops at my nose' sense I'd be okay with imposing tariffs on products that aren't produced up to US pollution standards, or even trade restrictions against countries that aren't even trying, pollution wise.

Re:Pollution from China

[Njovich]

Great, so will the US then also meet EU polution standards? Or does this rule only apply when you like it?

Re:Pollution from China

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly it only applies when the US is on the receiving end of negative effects. Libertarians are very quick to point out that they hate regulation but... wait "not this type of regulation which affects me personally!"

Libertarianism is institutionalized selfishness and hypocrisy.

Re:Pollution from China

[Anonymous Coward]

If China had to produce on the same per capita pollution level as Americans, they would have to add a shitload of extra pollution for every product they make.

Re:Pollution from China

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Now, I'm mostly libertarian, but in the whole 'your right to throw your fist stops at my nose' sense I'd be okay with imposing tariffs on products that aren't produced up to US pollution standards, or even trade restrictions against countries that aren't even trying, pollution wise.

The tricky thing about libertarian analyses of pollution standards is that a 'pollution standard' is actually a rather odd thing (from a libertarian standpoint, from the 'just throwing things together according to no particular overarching theory as the needs of the day dictate' sense, they occur quite naturally): Depending on how unpleasant it is, pollution is anywhere from a cost imposed on others to lethal violence visited on others, and a 'pollution standard' is the state explicitly granting the right to inflict a certain amount of that on everybody else. It's like talking about 'theft standards' for regulating the activities of pickpockets to a certain amount per wallet...

Re:Pollution from China

[Firethorn]

Depending on how unpleasant it is, pollution is anywhere from a cost imposed on others to lethal violence visited on others, and a 'pollution standard' is the state explicitly granting the right to inflict a certain amount of that on everybody else. It's like talking about 'theft standards' for regulating the activities of pickpockets to a certain amount per wallet...

You are indeed correct about this. On the other hand, 'no pollution allowed' isn't very economical either, and it IS generally tough to seperate out just which factory/industry killed which person via pollution. Complicating this is that, generally speaking, ONE pollution source isn't enough to kill anybody; poison is in the dose, after all.

As my original post was a one-liner unless you have a really small screen, I didn't get into that stuff. Still, in my view pollution should be charged for. No giveaways. If you're going to cause $1M in economic and non-economic damages in order to create $100M worth of industrial production, but stopping that pollution would cost $5M*, I believe that it's reasonable for the government to charge $1.1-1.2M or so(gotta cover overhead) and put that money towards remediation/restitution.

If paying for the externalities makes the business unprofitable, it probably shouldn't be in business.

*All numbers made up.

Re:Pollution from China

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Oh, there's definitely a reason why even the assorted "Green Parties" (in countries that have them) propose pollution standards greater than zero, and why the 'just bodging our way toward something resembling compromise' school of legislation tends to end up at some equilibrium value.

My point was merely that libertarianism is among the most vexing theoretical frameworks from which to try to arrive at acceptable pollution levels that aren't either zero ("Pollution is violence, one of the state's few legitimate roles is preventing you from committing it unless you, as is probably impossible, negotiate the consent of all those affected") or infinite ("Pollution is a product of me exercising my property rights, state infringement on which is unacceptable"), with zero being the arguably stronger; but rather less well-befriended, outcome. It's not a useful outcome (preindustrial society kind of sucked, and somebody was still shitting upstream from your drinking water); but trying to come up with a theoretical justification for some pragmatically calculated value is quite an exercise (coming up with the pragmatically calculated value is bad enough; but that's at least mostly a technical problem).

Re:Pollution from China

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

There's a reason why the 'let's have an anti-regulatory pity party' school of libertarianism has better donors; but the 'pollution as violence' model is arguably about as unhelpful to polluters as anything on the table. This might explain why it tends to get left on the table and accidentally covered with loose documents and forgotten about...

Re:Pollution from China

[Kagetsuki]

Very well put. The only catch is politicians from China will freak out if the US tries to put in such restrictions, and politicians from the US will freak out once the EU tries to put in such restrictions. It's a shame governments tend to look out for national profit rather than global welfare.

Actually, what ever happened to the Kyoto Protocol? That seemed like something that could work and I remember hearing it did have a positive effect, but you don't seem to hear about it or anything like it lately.

Re:Pollution from China

[amiga3D]

"It's like talking about 'theft standards' for regulating the activities of pickpockets to a certain amount per wallet..."

Oh, you mean like taxes?

Re:Pollution from China

[JeffOwl]

Is there evidence that US pollution is affecting Europe in any significant way? If so, then the EU has every right to demand some remedy.

Re:Pollution from China

[jeffb (2.718)]

It's like talking about 'theft standards' for regulating the activities of pickpockets to a certain amount per wallet...

It seems a bit more like "assault standards", where brushing against someone as you pass in a narrow hallway isn't prosecutable, but knocking them unconscious is.

Re:Pollution from China

[RabidReindeer]

You are indeed correct about this. On the other hand, 'no pollution allowed' isn't very economical either,

Zero emissions is the only safe and fair way to proceed. It's not even impossible.

If paying for the externalities makes the business unprofitable, it probably shouldn't be in business.

Yes, you have it exactly. That's why we need a zero-emissions requirement. You must never emit toxics and you must balance all other externalities, e.g. fixing carbon. Anything else is uncivilized bullshit.

Extremism doesn't work.

Destroy all the factories. Put out all the fires. Put us all back to the Stone Age and beyond.

Pollution gone? Nope. The landscape is littered with natural pollutants. Asbestos. Mercury, Arsenic, radioactive Xenon gas seeping up through the limestone. Even Uranium. So much that for an extended period of time, Africa actually had a naturally-occuring atomic reactor. Natural fires. Toxic lakes. There are some places people simply cannot live and stay healthy.

Rewind to the Industrial Era. The main differences are that we dig up a lot of these toxins and concentrate them closer to densely-inhabited areas. Plus, not being satisfied with that, we blend chemicals to make new toxins which are rare or non-existent in Nature.

Either way, we're not going to get a pristine "zero-emissions" environment. And attempting to do so is a task whose cost increases exponentially, the more toxins you remove.

Which is why we attempt to determine what the "safe" level of toxicity is. Because there are strong indications that biological life forms (including humans) don't react linearly to many irritants, but have a threshold. And where there isn't a strong threshold, we have to make the hard choice about what level of reduction we can afford.

Of course, when you start exporting cheap knock-off Chinese smog to LA, which prefers the higher-quality domestic smog, it's quite rude. Free Trade Agreements or no.

Re:Pollution from China

[number17]

China seems pretty libertarian about this whole pollution thing.

Re:Pollution from China

[haruchai]

The Canadians have been complaining about transboundary air pollution from the Ohio Valley for a long time. Not sure what's the outcome of that.

Re:Pollution from China

[AmiMoJo]

Indeed, look at how much the US complained about RoHS. China just got on and dealt with it.

Re:Pollution from China

[morgauxo]

Nah, there is more than enough hot air in the EU to push US smog back west.

Re:Pollution from China

[Firethorn]

I fully understand, which is why I said 'mostly'.

My idea for pollution basically amounts to:
(Damage from pollution type in $)/(amount released by all industries in selected area)*(amount you released over the period)*1.2*(Hassle Modifier; IE it goes up the more granular you want the selected area/release type to be)

Re:Pollution from China

[AmiMoJo]

It seems odd because you look at the government as some kind of external force that acts by itself. In reality society decided that a certain level of pollution is tolerable in order to maintain our modern lifestyle and economy, at least until we can do better without harming our interests too much.

Of course this is highly obfuscated and prevented from functioning properly by the way modern democracy works, but it is the basic theory.

Re:Pollution from China

[RavenLrD20k]

How about "If you want to sell it here, it has to be built here"?

Re:Pollution from China

[Firethorn]

We don't actually owe them all that much, and there's historical precedent for going to war in order to be able to 'write off' debt.

Re:Pollution from China

[Virtucon]

LOL, sure when the EU outlaws two stroke engines. I was in Spain last month and couldn't count fast enough the number of sputtering two stroke bikes whizzing around the city al belching smoke. So as they say: "Physician heal thyself."

Re:Pollution from China

[Chris Mattern]

If you can show that US pollution is reaching Europe like Chinese pollution is reaching the US, then, yes, the EU should have a say. Can you show that a quarter of EU air pollution comes from the US?

Re:Pollution from China

[Kagetsuki]

Ah! RoHS completely skipped my mind. Why would the US have even complained about that?

It does remind me of something I heard once though. Apparently an American ordered colored plastic rulers from China. The rulers that arrived had lead in the plastic. Because of the lead content they couldn't be sold [to children], so the American freaked out at the Chinese suppler and asked "what if children were to stick these in their mouths and suck on them". The Chinese supplier, confused, asked "why would children smart enough to use rulers be stupid enough to stick them in their mouths and suck on them?".

Re:Pollution from China

[rts008]

There's a price for outsourcing production, and now we are seeing some of the price.

This is not China 'throwing their fist' at our nose, this is China burping after the buffet we gleefully threw at them.

Re:Pollution from China

[rioki]

How? Each and every "green" technology has some form of "problem". Solar? Forget it the energy to produce the cells is astronomical and the rare earth are non trivial to extract. Wind and water? Better, but you need to build the damned things from some metals. Smelting metals, even when recycling creates toxic smoke and other junk. Biomass? Works sort better, you are CO2 neutral, but the process of burning still creates SO2 and similar pollutants. You can combat air pollutants with filters, but then you end up with highly toxic filters you need to dispose of.

This also ignores the production of certain substances. Yes you can reduce use of plastic with a wood compound or wholly replacing some materials. The problem is that these materials where selected for their properties. You can replace many but the result is that you basically can ditch a large part of your high tech. You can build a car that has zero emissions (e.g. Hydrogen from solar-heat-plants in the Sahara), but building the car and infrastructure itself will never be zero emission.

We can do significantly better than now and I am totally for scientific research into this these areas. But zero pollution is fully and totally out of the question.

Re:Pollution from China

[Amtrak]

We do have that it's called a graduated income tax. Oh wait....

Re:Pollution from China

[Firethorn]

Tin Whiskers? Minimal return for the Gain? Expensive retooling while China was simply building new factories?

Re:Pollution from China

[drinkypoo]

How? Each and every "green" technology has some form of "problem". Solar? Forget it the energy to produce the cells is astronomical and the rare earth are non trivial to extract.

Modern thin-film PV solar pays back its energy investment in three years and uses less materials than ever. Much of the research in solar is directed at using more easily extracted materials.

Smelting metals, even when recycling creates toxic smoke and other junk.

Right, but those gases can be captured, and the use of metals can be reduced.

Biomass? Works sort better, you are CO2 neutral, but the process of burning still creates SO2 and similar pollutants.

The long term goal is that we shouldn't be burning anything but hydrogen (and precious little of that at this point due to the high energy cost of its production) and whatever "natural" gas naturally escapes, no fracking. In the shorter term, there's several biofuels (most notably butanol and green diesel) which can substantially reduce or even entirely eliminate emissions when used with modern trap and catalyst systems.

You can build a car that has zero emissions (e.g. Hydrogen from solar-heat-plants in the Sahara), but building the car and infrastructure itself will never be zero emission.

I reject that notion entirely. There's no reason to imagine that any emissions which can't be trapped can't be accounted for by fixing. That is, there's no point whatsoever to spending a lot of effort trapping CO2 when you can cheaply fix it, e.g. by growing algae or bamboo. The problem then is ensuring that the fixing is actually done. It's also interesting you bring up cars, since they're such a big part of the problem. I really enjoy driving, and cars, but I think cars can and should go away and be replaced by PRT. This would eliminate most of the issues with the road surface (which is replaced by longer-lived, lower-impact rail) and all of the issues with tire wear and dust.

We can do significantly better than now and I am totally for scientific research into this these areas. But zero pollution is fully and totally out of the question.

Your failure is one of imagination.

Re:Pollution from China

[AmiMoJo]

Not sure I'd count having less lead in the environment as a minimal return, but still. Quality lead free solder isn't expensive, it just isn't what those involved in the race to the bottom want. Saving a few pennies isn't worth the damage leaded solder (and other hazardous substances, it wasn't just solder) causes.

Re:Pollution from China

[Rich0]

Great, so will the US then also meet EU polution [sic] standards? Or does this rule only apply when you like it?

It only makes sense for the EU to tariff US products that don't have the same level of environmental and labor protection laws behind them. Only somebody with more nationalism than brains would claim otherwise.

In a global economy passing laws to make your workforce and population safer and not placing tariffs on products from countries that do not implement similar controls is just asking for massive unemployment. The level of tariff should of course be proportional to the level of deviation. While the EU would no doubt need to tax US goods as a result, it would be nothing compared to a lot of the products coming out of Asia. Plus, they need to get their free speech laws fixed if they want to avoid some US tariffs (and the US would do well to actually follow its own laws in this regard).

Re:Pollution from China

[Rich0]

Kyoto would do nothing for this. It did not apply to China or other "developing" nations. This is cited as one of the major reasons the US laughed itself right out of the talks.

While something like Kyoto does make sense, it really is insane to take a global problem and make any local area exempt by-name. By all means exempt countries until they hit some level of per-acre emissions or whatever, but you can't create a long-lasting treaty that hard-codes in the economic status of the countries at the time that it is signed. Corporations can move manufacture wherever they want to. If you made Kyoto apply everywhere except in a single 1 km^2 island in the middle of the pacific you'd quickly see a world record for the tallest factory ever built next to the largest seaport in the world there.

Re:Pollution from China

[fast turtle]

Nope - Walmart declares a trade war and hires mercenaries to take the president and congress hostage. Keep in mind that one quarter of all imports from China are by Walmart. That's a lot of chineese junk they're selling instead of the "Made in America" token effort they put out a few years back.

Just like IBM has authorized the sell of their x86 server business to Lenova (Chineese again) as they did with the Thinkpad division a few years back and for less then was offered for Snapchat that makes no product, has no income and no chance in a Super Nova of making a profit.

Re:Pollution from China

[bill_mcgonigle]

Great, so will the US then also meet EU polution standards? Or does this rule only apply when you like it?

We don't even have a mechanism to deal with this within the US. I live in western New Hampshire, right by the big hydro power plant. Aside from a few automobiles, all of our air pollution comes from elsewhere (and we have lots of trees to absorb pollution so we're probably a net negative for pollution in this area). Yet, when the heat of the summer comes and the midwest cranks up their coal-fired power plants, the smog builds in, our visibility goes to crap, and I'm buying a new set of contact lenses every week (or just switching to glasses if it's bad enough :shudder:). The low visibility hurts our tourism, because there goes the 200-mile views from atop the hilltops, and I'm out-of-pocket for the contacts (and who knows what the long-term damage is).

But just imagine the laughter of the "judge" throwing out our small-claims court cases against each of those coal-burning plants if we try to recover our costs that we incur to ease their expense ratios.

To answer your question - the rules only apply in 'the system' when it privatizes the gains and socializes the costs. The government tells us this is "for the common good". To the GP's point - that's hardly a libertarian approach.

Re:Pollution from China

[interkin3tic]

Strawman argument alert. Additionally, tu quoque argument alert.

Firethrorn never said the US should be exempt from similar laws. Additionally, Firethorn is not an embodiment of the US, nor does he have much power over US trade agreements. You appear to be suggesting hypocrisy where there is none.

You could make an argument that such a move will have unintended consequences when other countries enact similar laws, however Firethorn might thing that was a good thing. I certainly would. Countries imposing sanctions on the US and China until our countries quit dumping CO2 and other pollutants might be the only way to get the oligarchs to finally quit screwing over the climate. I'm willing to take the risk that my standard of living decreases as a result.

Re:Pollution from China

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Still, this is a proof-by-model, i.e. not a proof. Proof is flying planes off the US coast and measuring pollution as 1/4 as dense as in California.

Re:Pollution from China

[Firethorn]

Elemental lead isn't that big of a concern, at least not against concerns about reduced lifespan. Though you're right with the race to the bottom. I've played around a bit trying to find a way that doesn't place more power with the government yet still increases rewards for making stuff that will actually last.

Re:Pollution from China

[Firethorn]

Even that wouldn't be proof as the pollution off the coast could(and probably would be) coming from the USA. You'd need a series of measurements, backed up by theoretical models showing pollution flow.

Ocean wise, things like debris from the Tsunamis that hit Japan washing up on the shores of Alaska/Washington.

Re:Pollution from China

[operagost]

Well, since the US isn't part of the EU, and the products are coming to the US, I'd say this is out of your jurisdiction by every imaginable law, international and otherwise.

Re:Pollution from China

[pscottdv]

...there's historical precedent for going to war in order to be able to 'write off' debt.

Oh, well that's OK then.

Re:Pollution from China

[operagost]

That's a red herring, because you only need to handle lead to absorb it into your body.

Re:Pollution from China

[operagost]

To be fair, most Americans don't live in company dormitories, from which they are not allowed to leave and have no creature comforts. When you have the freedom to move about, you tend to engage in activities that produce pollution.

Re:Pollution from China

[operagost]

Until you figure out how to run all industry and, verify, every living creature on antimatter/matter annihilation, indeed, ZERO EMISSIONS ARE IMPOSSIBLE.

Re:Pollution from China

[operagost]

Drinkypoo, do you get some kind of kick out of your childlike stubbornness? You're really like a four-year-old who ignores everyone and keeps repeating his nonsense. LIVING CREATURES USE CHEMICAL PROCESSES.

Re:Pollution from China

[roc97007]

But ... but.. then companies wouldn't make as much MONEY. The whole idea of outsourcing to China (or nearly anywhere, really) is that you can leverage slave wages and a total lack of pollution standards. Without those factors, the business model breaks down.

Re:Pollution from China

[roc97007]

There's this concept called "low hanging fruit". Google "china" and "ecological disaster".

Re:Pollution from China

[AK Marc]

The American maker didn't specify the regulations he wanted the item to meet, then complained that the supplier didn't read his mind. And that's always the "other guy's" fault.

Re:Pollution from China

[Immerman]

For the race to the bottom solution. Any promising ideas so far? Let me throw out one - promote cheap microfinancing over the warrantied life of the product (or some percentage). How often is the superior product actually cheaper on a cost-per-year basis, but passed over in favor of the lower sticker price? Or even just requiring cost-per-warranty-year to be prominently displayed on the sticker price for all non-consumables?

I'm thinking labeling requirements to help consumers make more informed choices is one of the best things a government can do, specifically putting power in the hands of the people, even if it does come at the expense of some corporate "freedoms". A democratic government is supposed to represent the populace, and as such it should have an adversarial role with business whenever business seeks to profit at the expense of the public. Keep 'em honest enough that we *all* profit.

As for lead though, you're dead wrong. Elemental lead is absorbed through the skin, lungs, and digestive track. While the impact of adult exposure is less clear, children who accumulate high levels of lead suffer permanently from reduced IQ, poor impulse control, and increased aggression. These are not controversial claims. Moderate lead exposure may not be likely to kill you, but it makes you more likely to kill me.

If we presume that such children grow up to be more prone to criminal activity then it's even easy to suspect that it's more than coincidence that the 20th-century crime bubble that followed 20 years after the leaded fuel usage bubble saturated high-traffic areas with lead is more than coincidence - the intensity and duration of the two correlate well even on a regional basis.

Re:Pollution from China

[poetmatt]

First:
All libertarian spells out is ignorance. Actual libertarianism is truly incompatible with any modern society. People don't seem to understand that an excess of liberty is just as bad as a lack of liberty, and that truth lands somewhere in the middle away from libertarians and republicans who call themselves libertarians, and away from the entire political spectrum. The truth lies in facts, not political viewpoints.

That said, not only is every country guilty of allowing too much pollution in different ways, but nobody wants to try to crack down on china due to their own problems being exposed. Even at a time where global warming is explicitly acknowledged as a manmade effect, countries are still not even cracking down on their own populace to reduce emissions - and it's not a single country that would fix the problem, either - including China and the US.

Hopefully this highlights that global pollution requires global action, not "China's polluting California!" but "why do both countries not have more significant actions being taken to reduce emissions"?

Re:Pollution from China

[drinkypoo]

You can't build solar panels without polluting.

That's the best you can do?

Oh, I see, you're done.

Now, it's naptime for you.

I'll get more out of a nap than from any comment you've ever posted.

Re:Pollution from China

[guises]

... What? It's true that two stroke engines are less efficient, but that inefficiency is nothing compared to what you get when you're hauling around a two-ton car.

Re:Pollution from China

[Virtucon]

Who has a two ton car? In Europe I see lots of larger cars and even smaller ones are over a ton and most are Diesels which pollute pretty badly as well. A MKV VW Golf weighs a ton and a half (2900 lbs). Besides the discussion is around pollution and a small car or scooter or motorcycle is not necessarily less polluting than a big car.

Re:Pollution from China

[Khashishi]

Zero emissions is impossible though, unless you plan to stop breathing. Every human activity pollutes. Some pollute much more than others.

Re:Pollution from China

[triffid_98]

Not sure I'd count having less lead in the environment as a minimal return, but still. Quality lead free solder isn't expensive, it just isn't what those involved in the race to the bottom want. Saving a few pennies isn't worth the damage leaded solder (and other hazardous substances, it wasn't just solder) causes.

It's not a question of whether lead free solder is expensive (it's not), it's about whether products using it will last as long (they won't) or whether they can be repaired easily (they can't) or whether it was causing a health problem to begin with (it wasn't).

When these new eco-friendly products don't last as long and can't be repaired, we need to buy new ones, and that....releases more hazardous substances into the atmosphere, catch-22.

It's great news for manufacturers (they get to sell more stuff), but I really don't see how it's particularly good for either environmentalists or consumers.

Re:Pollution from China

[haruchai]

Ohio has a huge manufacturing base built around transportation industries - that requires LOTS of electricity. They're not burning all that coal to support the pig farms.

Re:Pollution from China

[AK Marc]

To be fair, most Chinese don't live in company dormitories from which they are not allowed to leave and have no creature comforts. Why yes, I have been to company dormitories in China, have you?

Re:Pollution from China

[AK Marc]

"Pollution is a product of me exercising my property rights, state infringement on which is unacceptable

If you wanted clean air, you are free to scrub the air before you breath it. I don't need to give you air hand-outs. Go earn your own air.

Re:Pollution from China

[AK Marc]

Yes, you can. Like the GP said, yours is a failure of imagination.

Re:Pollution from China

[brianerst]

If Mises counts as a libertarian, he'd say that the problem is that the government has specifically foreclosed a solution to the problem - class action lawsuits on pollution. When written in 1983, the Libertarian Manifesto claimed that class action lawsuits over pollution were impossible to file. I think that's changed since - EPA rules and whatnot - but that's probably the libertarian basis for negotiated pollution rates.

Re:Pollution from China

[AK Marc]

yes, and specifying "copy Glidden" would have fixed the problem, but stating "I want the cheapest possible red paint" you get a robot that stabs you in the face and paints the wall with your blood. When it meets all your requirements, but doesn't work, you are the idiot, not the person you gave the stupid and incomplete requirements to.

Re:Pollution from China

[brianerst]

That should be 1973 - before the EPA was the big deal it is today.

Re:Pollution from China

[guises]

Besides the discussion is around pollution and a small car or scooter or motorcycle is not necessarily less polluting than a big car.

Yes, the conversation is about polluting. And yes, a scooter or motorcycle is almost certainly less polluting than a big car. That was my point. The biggest, least fuel efficient 500cc scooters get about 50 mpg.

Calling out Europeans for riding scooters, compared to an average of 22 mpg for American cars and 18 mpg for SUVs, is foolish.

Re:Pollution from China

[Firethorn]

For the race to the bottom solution. Any promising ideas so far? Let me throw out one - promote cheap microfinancing over the warrantied life of the product (or some percentage). How often is the superior product actually cheaper on a cost-per-year basis, but passed over in favor of the lower sticker price? Or even just requiring cost-per-warranty-year to be prominently displayed on the sticker price for all non-consumables?

Cheap microfinancing? Do you mean something like a 0% loan over the course of the warranty? IE a $500 fridge with a 4 year warranty would be $125/year, vs a $600 year fridge with a 6 year warranty being $100? That would be an interesting option. Though you have the problem that in many cases everybody offers the same 1/2 year warranty, but your option might just convince those with better products to increase the warranties, then improve their products so they cost less even with the longer warranty.

As for labeling - we already require energy star guides; one of my ideas was to do with ALL products what we're requiring for LED lights - make manufacturers estimate product lifespans, and hold them to them. I know that even if it costs a little more electricity, a fridge that lasts 15 years is probably going to be cheaper and more energy efficient than having to go through 2 that only last 7. Lots of energy involved in creating and shipping one, after all. Not to mention having to shop for a new one. As such, I'd probably spend the extra money to get a longer lasting appliance, if I had any real way to telling how long I could expect one to last(and somebody making sure they actually DO normally last that long).

As for lead though, you're dead wrong. Elemental lead is absorbed through the skin, lungs, and digestive track.

Skin: incorrect.
Lungs & Digestive track: I'm not suggesting that you smoke or eat your electronics.

For that matter, unless you're coating your product in lead there shouldn't be any skin contact anyways.

Moderate lead exposure may not be likely to kill you, but it makes you more likely to kill me.

At this point I believe that Tetraethyllead(TEL) was the cause of the crime spike that ended in the '90s. But TEL isn't elemental lead. Neither is the lead found in paint - PbCrO4 or PbCO3. Kids are much more likely to eat paint than a DVD player.

I have no problems with banning leaded gas/paint. The amount of lead a child is likely to absorb from solder in electrical appliances is likely less than he'll get eating fish(at least for the next couple hundred years). Heck, if a factory wants to eliminate the lead in their soldering to keep exposure in the workers down, it's free to do so.

Re:Pollution from China

[mjwx]

Who has a two ton car? In Europe I see lots of larger cars and even smaller ones are over a ton and most are Diesels which pollute pretty badly as well. A MKV VW Golf weighs a ton and a half (2900 lbs). Besides the discussion is around pollution and a small car or scooter or motorcycle is not necessarily less polluting than a big car.

A VW Golf GTI VI at 1360 KG, so a fair bit off a ton and a half (that 1500 KG if you dont understand basic metric measurements).

And a Golf is not a small car by Australian standards, let alone European standards. A Toyota Corolla weighs in at 1290 KG, lets compare this to actual small cars like a Fiat Punto (1024 KG) or a Nissan Micra (942 KG) and then lets pick a smallish American car, the 6cyl Chrysler 300C, weighing in at a paltry 1820 KG.

A BMW 330d weights 1540 KG and a Nissan Skyline 370 GT weights 1600 KG, both 3 to 4 L V6's with more power than the Chrysler (not to mention better transmissions, suspension and use a lot less fuel).

A hundred KG's makes a bit of difference. A lightweight sports car like a Mazda MX-5 (Miata) weighs around 1100 KG. Something like an SUV gets over 2000 KG with almost no trouble, a BMW X5 = 2044KG and the X5 is a lightweight, even a small Holden/Opel/Vauxhall/Chevy Captiva 7 SUV weighs in at 1680 KG in it's lightest form (1850 KG if you want a V6 or turbo diesel) and the lightest Land Rover Discovery 4 is 2495 KG. Consider the popularity of big SUV's in the US, it's not hard to say there are quite a few a 2 ton cars on the road.

Re:Pollution from China

[Firethorn]

First:
All libertarian spells out is ignorance.

Have you never been taught that opening a debate by insulting the other party doesn't help? I mean, I say 'Even though I fit mostly within libertarian models of thought I'm NOT okay with what China is doing' and you still attack me? Yes, there's lots of idiot 'libertarians', just like there's lots of idiot republicans and democrats. There are lots of all parties that haven't thought things through. I HAVE. As a result if I'm trying to describe myself better I'll say things like 'moderate libertarian', and sometimes 'practical minarchist'.

The excess/lack of liberty thing - I KNOW. I mean, I identified a restriction of liberty in a ONE SENTENCE post, and yet you still attack that strawman. Where I disagree with the crowd is WHERE those restrictions should take place, and I ID with the libertarian party most because as I go through various issues I identify more areas where I'd relax governmental control than I'd increase it. Yes, there are areas where I'd increase it, pollution being one of them.

but nobody wants to try to crack down on china due to their own problems being exposed.

No, it's because they like the cheap goods from China and, for the most part, the pollution isn't affecting them more than what compliant local production would yet. Cracking down on China would be expensive.

If you go through my other posts here in the thread, you'll see that I'm in favor of charging companies for their pollution - none of this 'you're permitted to emit X amount of Y for free before we start fining you' stuff.

Re:Pollution from China

[Immerman]

>Do you mean something like a 0% loan over the course of the warranty?
Exactly. And for the labeling option I again chose the warranty period to keep manufacturers honest. If they want to lower their amortized price label by claiming an improbable lifespan so be it, provided they replace/repair anything that dies early.

The problem with circuit boards is not so much the direct impact - as you say kids are unlikely to chew on circuit boards, but with the recycling or landfilling, both of which tend to release lead into the environment in the short or long term respectively. Also, elemental lead can be quite dangerous if ingested - swallowing a fishing weight or lead shot from hunted game is known to be potentially quite dangerous. And if subjected to any abrasion you get lead dust which can be readily inhaled or ingested.

Re:Pollution from China

[Virtucon]

Humm, mine run in the 30+ range and one gets about 45, so if you're going to use a big paint roller to cast everybody in the US as a massive polluter you should look inward, we also have tougher standards on Diesel emissions than Europe. The 2014 standards in Europe will start matching what we're doing.. As a matter of fact, this article kind of puts a few holes in your argument there because EU standards don't go quite far enough. We passed emissions standards here essentially outlawing two-stroke transportation engines in this country quite awhile back while in Europe, people still can drive them because of the great mileage you can get with a small two-stroke engine. So while the government gets fatter on fuel taxes you all can pollute more saving money on gas, while over here our pollution issues have been getting better. They're not perfect by any means but not everybody here drives around in a 5 ton H1 Hummer as I suspect not everybody in Europe drives around on a 30 year old Vespa two-stroke.

Re:Pollution from China

[Virtucon]

A VW Golf GTI VI at 1360 KG, so a fair bit off a ton and a half (that 1500 KG if you dont understand basic metric measurements).

First, I was talking about a MKV, not a GTI VI and according to this, (Curb) Kerb Weight is 1,323 kg (2,917 lb) to 1,617 kg (3,565 lb) including Fuel etc.

Oh BTW, I have a 2013 Fiat Abarth that weighs in at 2,512 lbs Curb Weight or 1140 kg. So yes, I can convert lbs to kg etc.

Re:Pollution from China

[AmiMoJo]

It's not a question of whether lead free solder is expensive (it's not), it's about whether products using it will last as long (they won't) or whether they can be repaired easily (they can't) or whether it was causing a health problem to begin with (it wasn't).

Quality lead free solder lasts just as long, most products fail for other reasons before solder joints become an issue in any reasonably well made product. I don't know why you think repair is hard, it really isn't. You just need a little more heat, and of course components are designed to be soldered/reworked that way. The negative health effects of elevated lead levels in the environment are well documented.

Re:Pollution from China

[guises]

I said average. Not everyone drives around in a big 22 mpg car, that's true. For some people it's worse.

Your comment about pollution only applies if you ignore the largest pollutant, carbon dioxide, which is dependent on how much fuel you burn. Fuel efficiency is directly related to how polluting your vehicle is.

Your comment about fuel taxes is just... craziness. The United States could be charging fuel taxes and using the money to maintain roads and other car-related infrastructure. This would not only tie the tax to the activity that it supports, it would hold people accountable for the extra damage that they do when they use the roads more often. It would additionally hold people accountable for the inefficient vehicles that they choose to drive, and perhaps partially pay for the damage from the resulting pollution. Instead the money all comes from general funds. Clearly, that's much better. /sarcasm

Re:Pollution from China

[triffid_98]

Speaking as someone who has repaired a whole raft of older electronics, you're wrong. Bad solder joints and bad caps have doomed metric tons of otherwise well made electronics to the scrap heap...and this was before lead free solder.

Lead free solder is harder to work (higher temperatures, doesn't flow as well), harder to inspect (spotting a 'cold' joint was trivial with leaded solder, you just had to look at the color of the joint, now bad joints look pretty much like good joints) and harder to repair (for a good repair you can't just re-flow the joint, you need to de-solder and re-solder the joint)

As for "elevated lead levels in the environment". These are circuit boards. The actual amount of lead you're talking about is miniscule...unless you happen to be into burning circuit boards in your yard or something.

Re:Pollution from China

[poetmatt]

To claim that our focus is liberty is like to claim our focus is freedom. It's to mislead from the first sentence by stating "I am supporting a strawman political view which is incompatible with society". I don't accept that.

Re: charging : carbon credits (a form of bullshit, really) has worked out so well for us before. I mean, it surely stopped pollution, right? All they became is a source of financial trading and didn't actually reduce emissions.

Financial penalties do not motivate companies to do anything other than avoid them. Financial incentives can change things, if they are the right ones. Here's what you give companies: a tax credit for measuring and proving that they have reduced emissions in a variety of fashions by a percentage. Higher tax credits for continuing the trend over say, 5 years. Difficulty: writing this in a way that isn't exploited by violating the spirit of the law. Is this easy? no, not at all. Is it going to be picked apart by interested parties? Absolutely.

Guess what? the US gov't already provides this in a few forms for reducing waste, and it works much better but simply can't be ramped up as much as is necessary.

Re:Pollution from China

[Firethorn]

Re: charging : carbon credits (a form of bullshit, really) has worked out so well for us before. I mean, it surely stopped pollution, right?

1. CO2 isn't a proper pollutant. Slowing/Stopping global warming is good, but CO2 isn't a direct danger
2. They implemented a crazy 'cap&trade' system. Not a 'simple' fee for the amount they emit.
3. Full of loopholes.
4. I'd simply charge X per ton of CO2, gradually raising the price until we reach the equilibrium we're willing to live with.

Financial penalties do not motivate companies to do anything other than avoid them.

'You will be charged $5k per ton of SO2 you emit' won't motivate the company to avoid said fee by reducing their SO2 emissions so long as said reductions are cheaper than $10k per ton over the lifespan on the control? (Simplified math here).

As for giving them credits to reduce emissions, well, you're simply giving former polluters advantages over those that never polluted at all. Me, I'm straight up charging them for their emissions: (Damage from pollutant/Total Amount of pollutant released each year)*amount they release*1.2(or so). Reduce/eliminate your emissions? Reduced fees in response. As science refines the estimates of damage done, tweak the charges. Is it not practical to reduce emissions? Pay the toll. Is it? Okay. Put some language in to pay companies who remove/clean up pollution. Done.

Doesn't make sense.

[therealkevinkretz]

If Chinese manufacturing accounts for 17 to 36 percent of China's pollution, and a fifth of *that* is attributable to the manufacturing destined for US export, how can a quarter of west US smog be attributable to the US export pollution? Does the other 80 percent of manufacturing smog know to go elsewhere?

Re:Doesn't make sense.

[Sockatume]

The New Scientist article has smudged a lot of things from the original text. Basically overall, they find that "EEE-related Chinese pollution contributed about 3–10% of the annual mean surface sulfate concentrations, 1–3% of BC, 2–3% of CO, and 0.5–1.5% of ozone over the western contiguous United States (west of 100W)." However the amount reaching the US was highly variable from day to day (is episodic) because the atmosphere is complicated. It can "save up" pollution and dump it en mass, and on those days, it could account for "12-24% of sulfate concentrations, 2–5% of ozone, 4–6% of CO, and up to 11% of BC over the western United States".

Re:Doesn't make sense.

[Sockatume]

No, he means that if US-attributable pollution is X% of China's pollution output, then it cannot possibly be more than X% of the pollution at the West coast of the US. Either it's X%, if the stuff originating in China is the only source; or it's less if mix it with other sources. Unless the pollution somehow fractionates according to attribution.

Re:Doesn't make sense.

[therealkevinkretz]

Right. But if 25 percent of US West coast smog is attributable to pollution from the 20% of Chinese manufacturing that's attributable to US exports ... then along with the other 80 percent of Chinese manufacturing pollution (that's attributable to other-than-US-export-products), Chinese pollution alone would make up more than 100% of west coast smog.

Re:Doesn't make sense.

[Sockatume]

You're right, it still doesn't make any damn sense as written. The denominator would have to be something completely un-obvious and incorrect for that number to fall out.

Re:Doesn't make sense.

[AK Marc]

I think that there was some "simplification" of the details to make it easier, and they screwed up some things. The slashdot article title is probably closer to the truth. 25% is from China, of that, one could presume 20% is US-products. There are other options, but they would be guesses without more details.

Clearly Impossible

[some old guy]

Have we not been repeatedly assured by the UN and the US government that our bestie friend China is a paragon of environmental awareness? Don't all the charts show China with a lower carbon footprint than Switzerland? Surely the pollution must be the US's own being recirculated. After being partially cleansed by the pristine skies of China, of course. /sarcasm

Re:Clearly Impossible

[Sockatume]

Are we still talking about the UN report that some conservative blog called "only communism can prevent forest fires", but literally read "China's populace are eager for air that they don't have to look at"?

Re:Clearly Impossible

[roc97007]

Have we not been repeatedly assured by the UN and the US government that our bestie friend China is a paragon of environmental awareness? Don't all the charts show China with a lower carbon footprint than Switzerland? Surely the pollution must be the US's own being recirculated. After being partially cleansed by the pristine skies of China, of course. /sarcasm

I'm pretty sure Al Gore said at one time that China was on the cutting edge of environmental awareness. With a little time, I could probably find the sound bite.

Re:Clearly Impossible

[Tailhook]

Had the same thought... we all know China is "leading the way" in "renewables", "years ahead" of the US. So, yeah, this smog is obviously of domestic origin and our racist government is once again trying to pin its troubles on the yellow man.

Whew. Narrative corrected.

Somehow fitting

[pablo_max]

I have often said to people that there is a reason why things are so cheap at these big box stores.

I do not say this as a critique of China or which ever country is producing low cost products, but rather as a critique of Western culture and "acquire more crap at all costs" mentality. China is just filling our demand.
Sadly, we tend not to think about the real price of what and where they buy thing. What the human costs of not supporting our local economy is.
We do not think about HOW theses items are so cheap compared to locally produced goods. We do not think twice about buying goods from a US company which closes his factories in America or Europe to sweat shops in China or India.

I do my best to source my goods locally, but it getting more and more difficult. The fact is, local producers of most items cannot compete because westerns are not willing or not able to pay what it actually "costs" to produce.

Now, the fruits of this are coming to bear. From a polluted planet to not getting a living wage. I wish it would turn around, but it won't.

Re:Somehow fitting

[BlackPignouf]

+1. Sad truth.
A lot of people don't understand that the less they give as customers, the less they'll receive as employees.
It's the same problem at a global level : Germany doesn't understand either that a 2 billion $ train produced in Germany is much cheaper than a 1 billion $ train produced in China.
Karma and macroeconomics are bitches.

Re:Somehow fitting

[Daniel Hoffmann]

You might hate globalization, but the main point of it is to make things more efficient. Those efficiency gains are sometimes translated in reduced pollution. For example, one big factory pollutes less than several smaller ones, it has more efficient distribution meaning less pollution from transportation. Instead of being anti-globabalization you should strive ask your country to embargo goods produced with less regulation than your own country requires, that would increase the price of the imported goods and improve the local industry.

Re:Somehow fitting

[Sockatume]

"More efficient" in the economic sense only means that it operates at lower cost. Always start from that axiom. While there are some pollution-reduction methods that are also economically efficient (e.g. reusing or selling your waste products rather than dumping them) that is unfortunately those are in the minority. That's why pollution tariffs exist; they add environmental impact to the efficiency problem. In China's case, where their economic efficiency largely comes from cheap power from coal, you've definitely got a conflict.

Re:Somehow fitting

[Sockatume]

Those local sources aren't really charging you "what it actually costs to produce", because once upon a time they would've had a much larger niche, could've run a larger - yet still modest - store, and therefore had much lower costs. I dare say people would be willing to pay those costs, and use that medium-sized source, but unfortunately that niche is gone.

Re:Somehow fitting

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

"When it gets down to it — talking trade balances here — once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here — once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel — once the Invisible Hand has taken away all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity — y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else:
music
movies
microcode
high-speed pizza delivery "

Re:Somehow fitting

[Daniel Hoffmann]

You make a good point, but I said "e efficiency gains are _sometimes_ translated in reduced pollution". If those industries were in the US instead of China maybe the US would need to have more Coal power plants.

But I digress, the point I was trying to make is that globalization is not the devil. But it drastically changes the socioeconomic status quo of the countries so the government needs to adapt to it. I don't like to play the "free market is wrong" card but in this case I believe it is.

Re:Somehow fitting

[dkf]

I do not say this as a critique of China or which ever country is producing low cost products, but rather as a critique of Western culture and "acquire more crap at all costs" mentality. China is just filling our demand.

So you're saying that a consequence of my wanting cheap electronics is that Californian hipsters have to put up with choking to death on smog imported across the Pacific?

Is this an argument for or against?

Re:Somehow fitting

[pablo_max]

That is utter crap.

I never said I hate globalization. In fact, it is a good thing. However, we have different ideas of what efficient means.
For you, it is more "efficient" for you to poor your left over chemicals down the kitchen sink or into the street gutters to be washed into the ocean. That saves you time AND money! What could be better!
I find it more "efficient" to think about my actions and protect the places my offspring inhabit by bringing my left over chemicals to a proper disposal place. In terms of time and money, I "spend" more up front. In the long run however, my drinking water is not poison.

It is a fact that the biggest polluters in China are foreign owned firms, or Chinese firms producing good at the lowest possible price for a multinational. Same idea like with you and your chemicals, except here we are talking about an industrial scale.
Or, do you think because it is done on an industrial scale that it is more "efficient"?

Re:Somehow fitting

[drinkypoo]

There's only four things we do better than anyone else:
music
movies
microcode
high-speed pizza delivery "

Sadly, our music and movies are both going downhill and nobody trusts our microcode any more... Better fire up those pizza ovens.

Re:Somehow fitting

[TheDarkMaster]

...we tend not to think about the real price of what and where they buy thing...

In my country products could have a similar price to the international price. But I am obliged to pay taxes on almost everything, and in several cases these taxes are 50% or more of the total price. And if that was not bad enough, here traders only are content with profit margins that are at least 50%

Re:Somehow fitting

[Daniel Hoffmann]

I said:
"You _might_ hate globalization"

"Those efficiency gains are _sometimes_ translated in reduced pollution"

"your country to embargo goods produced with _less regulation_ than your own country requires"

My overall point is that the more globalized the world is, the better. As long as the industries follow the regulations and the regulations themselves are correctly written.

Re:Somehow fitting

[Threni]

>I do not say this as a critique of China or which ever country is producing low cost
>products, but rather as a critique of Western culture and "acquire more crap at all
>costs" mentality. China is just filling our demand.

Unintentionally it IS a critique of China; that level of pollution wouldn't be allowed in the US/elsewhere. And for some reason (hint: follow the money), it's legal to import stuff into those regions from countries without sensible environmental laws. The solution is obvious; just don't allow the import of products from "dirty" countries. I mean, that's part of the reason the stuff is cheap in the first place. As well as the almost slave-labour conditions, lack of worker protection etc. If a minimum wage/green protection tax was added to the cost of these products then home-grown ones would look more attractive, even if you just looked the shelf-price. In the not so distant future, when your children are asking why everything (jobs, food, the cost of stuff) is so terrible, you'll be able to say "ha! yeah, you say that now, but for about 20 years back when I was younger you could buy absolute rubbish, from cheap plastic toys which lasted 20 minutes, to expensive laptops/tablets/tvs which lasted about 2 years before falling apart of becoming obsolete, for a few dollars less than they'd have costed had they been built properly".

Re:Somehow fitting

[DeathToBill]

A lot of people don't understand that the less they give as customers, the less they'll receive as employees.

Which is, of course, why we're all much worse off now than when the industrial revolution started. Back then it was the machines making goods cheaper than the people could. Of course people would buy the cheaper goods made by machine, not realising they were sowing the seeds of their own economic destruction. The less they gave as customers, the less they received as employees!

Honestly, can we drop this tosh now? Another way of saying the same thing is, "The more expensive everything is, the more you'll be able to buy!" It is obvious nonsense.

Re:Somehow fitting

[Sockatume]

Globalisation is not inherently the devil. In this instance, it is the direct source of the problem.

Re:Somehow fitting

[AmiMoJo]

It's funny you should mention Germany as it is generally seen as a model of how not to participate in the race to the bottom. German products cost a little more but are of significantly better quality and have a much lower environmental impact, and it seems people are willing to pay that bit more. Japanese products are similar, more expensive but worth it.

Re:Somehow fitting

[inode_buddha]

Thank you *so* much for that, I printed it out.
-- an american manufacturing worker.

Re:Somehow fitting

[mrchaotica]

"More efficient" in the economic sense only means that it operates at lower cost. Always start from that axiom

Right, and pollution counts as a cost. It's just usually externalized, so it often gets omitted from the balance sheet.

That's why pollution tariffs exist; they add environmental impact to the efficiency problem.

No. Pollution tariffs do not create costs; they merely stop them from being externalized. In other words, they shift the costs back onto the producer's balance sheet.

Re:Somehow fitting

[doesnothingwell]

A lot of people don't understand that the less they give as customers, the less they'll receive as employees.

Because the CxO or shareholders always trickle down those profits to the little peoples, instead of buying another $50 million yacht.

Re:Somehow fitting

[jafac]

IOW: The high cost of low prices.

Re:Somehow fitting

[hey!]

You make a good point, but I said "e efficiency gains are _sometimes_ translated in reduced pollution". If those industries were in the US instead of China maybe the US would need to have more Coal power plants.

Which doesn't make your point at all. Moving the production to China doesn't mean those plants don't get built, it means they get built over there where pollution controls are weaker.

The challenge of globalization is that it allows producers to shift production costs to others in the form of pollution. If a manufacturer can save a million dollars in pollution controls, that only *looks* like savings if it causes ten million dollars in pollution related costs to third parties. It is actually economically *inefficient* because market forces don't drive him to minimize those costs.

Re:Somehow fitting

[dryeo]

You don't pay taxes on foreign merchandise?

Re:Somehow fitting

[dryeo]

It wasn't that long ago that we polluted much like China is now, at least per widget produced, and it took a lot of effort to cleanup and businesses complained, people denied that the pollution even existed and the successful businesses packed up and went somewhere where they didn't have to worry about polluting and could be more profitable.
Your right about having a minimum wage/environmental protection duty or tax but it won't happen, businesses won't let it and they have the ear of the lawmakers who run things for their benefit. Heard on the radio the other day about minimum wages in 3rd world countries and how much diplomatic pressure is brought to keep them down even though raising them would barely raise the cost of doing business. One example was Haiti where they were going to put in a minimum wage of $5 a day. The Americans diplomatically threatened them and now the minimum wage is $3 a day. All for the benefit of Haynes.

Re:Somehow fitting

[TheDarkMaster]

I pay. 60% on everthing foreign

Basic Math

[NoKaOi]

Maybe it's just a horrible article, but the numbers don't make sense:

The team found that between 17 and 36 per cent of smog produced in China in 2006 came from factories making goods for export. One-fifth of those goods are destined for the US.

Okay, so let's take the average of 17 and 36, we get (17+36)/2 = 26.5. One fifth of that is 5.3. So, 5.3% of smog produced in China came from producing goods for export to the US.

The modelling revealed that on any given day in 2006, goods made in China for the US market accounted for up to a quarter of the sulphate smog over the western US.

Ok, so here's what doesn't make sense. If they're saying 25% of the smog came from china, then only 1.3% of the total smog is from goods produced for export to the US. On the other hand, if they're really saying that what they're saying, and 25% of total smog is from US goods, that means 470% of the smog in total is form China.

This leads to the conclusion that one of the following must be true:
1. The study is full of shit, and the authors need to go back to elementary school. Or,
2. The article is full of shit, and the journalist needs to go back to elementary school. Maybe what the study really says is 25% of the US west coast's smog comes from China, of which 5.3% of that is from production of goods for the US. Or,
3. The paper was written in Chinese, and the translator needs to learn English. Ever put together something complicated made in China? As in, wtf do you mean insert 4 bolts there? There are only screws, and there are only two holes, and they don't line up! Or,
4. Somehow, perhaps by magic, only the sulphate molecules that came out of factories producing goods for the US get blown to the US, while the sulphate molecules made in other production don't. If these molecules somehow know the destination of the goods whose manufacture resulted in their creation, that could make for some really interesting follow up studies! Or,
5. I'm really tired and I missed something. But I don't think I'm that tired.

Re:Basic Math

[Lumpy]

first, they are "journalists" It seems that they just make crap up and do not do any actual research on their articles anymore. I have discovered that 99% of technology journalists are complete idiots that dont even know 1/80th of what they are talking about and do ZERO research before they write something down.

Environmental Science is harder than tech, so I will bet these are the same caliber "journalists". We dont have an real ones out there anymore, most of them are just half hearted bloggers that happen to be paid to do a half assed job.

Re:Basic Math

[Sockatume]

One's the average, one's the maximum day-to-day. It fluctuates. It's not the study that's "full of shit", it's that the New Scientist article is written unclearly. You can find the original PNAS at the bottom of the NS piece, can't tell if it's open-access because I've got a golden ticket:

http://www.pnas.org/content/ea...

Re:Basic Math

[Stolpskott]

Ok, so here's what doesn't make sense. If they're saying 25% of the smog came from china, then only 1.3% of the total smog is from goods produced for export to the US. On the other hand, if they're really saying that what they're saying, and 25% of total smog is from US goods, that means 470% of the smog in total is form China.

5. I'm really tired and I missed something. But I don't think I'm that tired.

The article is a bit whiffy when it comes to the figures, but the bit you are missing is that it is not just the smog from goods produced for export to the US that is making its way over to the US. If it was, that would be an interesting irony... I do not think it helps that the article seems to be at the same time trying to discuss the amount of pollution generated by Chinese manufacturing of goods for export to the US, while also discussing the amount of smog "exported" from China to the US. Those things are very easily confused.
So some of the smog generated by China that makes its way over to the US was generated by manufacturing processes for goods not destined for export to the US. :)

Re:Basic Math

[kennytosh]

You're using all percentages, which are simply relative numbers. What if the real emissions in China was so large that 1.3%of it actually corresponded to 25% of the USA's real emissions?

US paying Europe for emissions...

[Firethorn]

Well, I did a quick google search on emissions, a fair bit about cars, not industry. My general conclusion is that the differences are basically a wash. Which is why I mentioned 'aren't even trying, pollution wise'. China for the most part isn't even trying. The USA at least tries.

A country that is trying to protect itself will generally protect it's neighbors as well.

Re:US paying Europe for emissions...

[Njovich]

Well, it may seem like a wash because it's complicated. The EU only sets broad rules, which the individual countries then must implement.

Also, you can't always directly compare rules.

However, For instance for some directly possible comparison:

SO2 Annual mean is 20 microgram per m^3 in the EU, 79 in US.
NOx: 40 vs 100 ug/m^3
PM10: 40 vs 50 ug/m^3
Ozone: 120 vs 160 ug/m^3 (way of measurement differs slightly)
CO: same for both 10000 ug/m^3

These are *huge* differences. It may seem like a wash, but on the scales we are talking about, these are enormous differences.

Of course, some regulations may be stricter in the US than EU, I didn't do a full on study on this.

(these numbers may be a couple of years out of date, but I doubt there were many changes)

Having said that, my previous comment wasn't entirely meant to be serious. In fact, I'm all in favor of applying more pressure on countries to do things about pollution. Also, the EU regulation might be a bit over the top.

Re:US paying Europe for emissions...

[MightyYar]

Good exercise... now throw the Chinese numbers up and see what it looks like.

Re:US paying Europe for emissions...

[Njovich]

There is a huge difference between making a law and applying a law, obviously. This is just standards, not what you will actually find when you measure.

But here you go:

China:
SO2: 20ug/m^3 (60 in urban areas)
NOx: 50ug/m^3
PM10: 40ug/m^3 (70 in urban areas)
Ozone: 160 ug/m^3
CO: 10000 ug/m^3

Re:US paying Europe for emissions...

[MightyYar]

Well, that is pretty hilarious, isn't it :)

Re:US paying Europe for emissions...

[Rich0]

There is a huge difference between making a law and applying a law, obviously. This is just standards, not what you will actually find when you measure.

But here you go:

Tell me about it - next to your air quality limits, here are the actual figures for High-tech zone, Shijiazhuang at http://aqicn.org/.
China:
SO2: 20ug/m^3 (60 in urban areas) - actual 60
NOx: 50ug/m^3 - actual 73
PM10: 40ug/m^3 (70 in urban areas) - actual 546!!!!!!!
Ozone: 160 ug/m^3 - actual 3
CO: 10000 ug/m^3 - actual 0

Note that this is a point-in-time value. So, the laws are actually somewhat better than the US, but apparently nobody follows the law.

Re:US paying Europe for emissions...

[epine]

China for the most part isn't even trying. The USA at least tries.

It won't be long now--maybe a generation--before China is working overtime to outsource their dirtiest industries to lower-wage economics in sub-Saharan Africa, at which point their index of "at least they are trying" will bend abruptly upwards like the knee in a tree-ring extrapolated global warming infographic.

Funny how often the people regarded as trying the hardest are usually handy to a lumpy carpet covering a trap door which opens onto a long shaft.

Re:US paying Europe for emissions...

[Firethorn]

I agree that sooner or later the Chinese are going to start caring, but the problem with exporting work to places like sub-Saharan Africa is that at least China's stable(important for this), and has the population and education.

Roughly speaking, once China and India are moving into post-industrialization we'll have to find a new paradigm because no longer will most people on the world be poor in developing countries. It'll spark a change as drastic as when the population shifted from most living on farms to most living in cities. Why? Because there just won't be ENOUGH labor in developing countries that care little about pollution to satisfy the demands of China in addition to the US, Europe, and rest of the world.

Re:US paying Europe for emissions...

[dj245]

There is a huge difference between making a law and applying a law, obviously. This is just standards, not what you will actually find when you measure.

But here you go:

Tell me about it - next to your air quality limits, here are the actual figures for High-tech zone, Shijiazhuang at http://aqicn.org/. China: SO2: 20ug/m^3 (60 in urban areas) - actual 60 NOx: 50ug/m^3 - actual 73 PM10: 40ug/m^3 (70 in urban areas) - actual 546!!!!!!! Ozone: 160 ug/m^3 - actual 3 CO: 10000 ug/m^3 - actual 0

Note that this is a point-in-time value. So, the laws are actually somewhat better than the US, but apparently nobody follows the law.

Not sure I believe this. I can't imagine how you get PM that high without a lot of CO too. The only way I can think of would be using a leafblower (an electric one) on a pile of dust.

Re:US paying Europe for emissions...

[MACC]

If you keep in mind that the US doesn't really produce much
basic stuff ( which tends to be pollution intensive )
and China is riding the tiger of industrial growth they
are actually trying very hard.

Successfull at that.

Re:US paying Europe for emissions...

[Firethorn]

The USA doesn't produce much in the way of consumer stuff today; but while it's been fairly flat for a couple decades we actually still have just as much industry as we did in the past. It's just so much more automated that it's like the difference between modern and ancient farming - more production from less than 1% of the workers.

What we don't produce in consumer goods we tend to produce in industrial stuff. We make a lot of the machines that China uses to make our goods.

They could be doing a heck of a lot more to control pollution.

Re:How about the pollution originating in USA?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

If I am right USA is not interesting in "Kyoto protocol stuff".

Kyoto protocol covers greenhouse gasses, this study is about smog. I'm sure that there's some overlap, most chemicals do more than one thing; but "Pollution" isn't some sort of uniform, fungible, phenomenon. Different sources, different flavors, different regulatory mechanisms.

Re: The Price We Pay

[buck-yar]

We can't regulate China, but we can regulate the US companies that do business over there. My company does 80% of its sourcing from China. The companies that we do business with have zero regard for the environment. How come a company here can't pollute when making widget X, but they can buy that widget X from a company that pollutes up a storm (and that storm blows to California).

Karma

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Made in China.

Designed in California.

Re:Karma

[nightsky30]

Apparently designed for California as well...

Re:Karma

[nightsky30]

bold fail!

Re:Karma

[Dan East]

Made in China. Inhaled in California.

Re:Karma

[drainbramage]

Well, look at the bright side: Free Smog!
--
It seems the U.S. has truly lost, it has even outsourced its smog production.

Canadian Acid Rain from US Coal

[Anonymous Coward]

For quite a long time, acid rain was causing severe deforestation in Canada, killing fish in lakes and so on, as a result of burning coal in the US.

Coal has a lot of sulfur in it. When you burn sulfur, then makes the resulting oxide gases with water, you get sulfuric and sulfurous acid.

Canada protested vigorously, but the US totally blew it off and kept sending the acid rain to the great white north.

Back in 1983 or so, I watched a documentary movie about this, that had been produced in Canada. The United States authorities labeled the film as "Foreign Propaganda".

Now, I'd rather than China not send us her smog, but I don't see how the United States has standing to gripe about it.

Re:Canadian Acid Rain from US Coal

[number17]

I don't get it. Are you just saying that America is a dick?

Re:Canadian Acid Rain from US Coal

[orion205]

So how do you feel about BC ports being used to ship US coal to China to be burned?
http://www.vancouversun.com/health/Opinion+Coal+exports+from+sent+shorten+lives+China/9027426/story.html

And there is an effort underway to build a new terminal here in Washington state to send a lot more coal to China. I see a couple of coal trains a day go by my office window on the way to BC, but if they build the local terminal they want to send a dozen coal trains a day to be shipped to China.
To be burned. So the pollution can come right back to us.

No thank you.

Smog from China from outsourcing

[Trogre]

Smells like poetic justice...

Seven or so years too

[dbIII]

It's also a bit of a red flag (excuse the pun) that it's from 2006. A LOT has changed since then, especially in 2008. It makes me think that maybe the year was cherry picked.
Apparently pollution controls were ramped up for the Olympics and necessity has resulted in a lot of other pollution controls since in some of the very badly effected areas. A building boom resulted in plenty of old and badly run industrial plants etc being replaced.

Re:Seven or so years too

[Sockatume]

They actually discuss a full decade of emissions data from 2000-2009, and state that they picked 2006 as an interesting turning point in China's consumption versus production emissions. I'm guessing that 2000-2009 was the most up to date info when somebody started their PhD in 2009, and now they're writing up.

Weird summary

[SETY]

"These winds push Chinese smog over the Pacific and dump it on the western US, from Seattle to southern California."
The smog probably actually covers western North America. I highly doubt Chinese smog hates the US so much that it only goes from Seattle to San Diego.

Re:Given the winds are from the west...

[Sockatume]

It's not about wondering where the pollution comes from, it's about putting a number on it, smartass.

It seems

[nightsky30]

It seems we think it's ok for us to allow the pollution of remote lands because we think it doesn't affect us, and they went along with the deal anyway, right? I see this every day. I don't have to go to China or anywhere else to find this mindset or the outcome. I only need to look off to the side of every road. People throw their garbage everywhere, and they don't care because, "Fsck it, it's not my home...It doesn't affect me."

Well, we live on this Earth together, and pollution doesn't just go away. It moves. It stays on this rocky planet. I don't think this is news, but another late realization we are fscking ourselves, and some of us are fscking greedy assholes.

Re:Oblig Terry Pratchett quote...

[Sique]

Or to put it in Lord Vetinari's own words: "If there absolutely must be crime, at least it should be organized."

Re:How about the pollution originating in USA?

[drinkypoo]

If I am right USA is not interesting in "Kyoto protocol stuff".

The Kyoto protocol was a shitty joke because it did not put caps on developing nations, meaning it would have done nothing at all. That's no excuse for replacing it with nothing at all, but signing it is a fat fucking waste of time — which we don't actually have.

The real benefit of globalization...

[Anonymous Coward]

... is that it keeps us all from murdering each other.

If we weren't trading with China, perhaps it would have attacked Taiwan by now.

China is at present far from being a democracy, however it is making great strides in that free speech, while officially suppressed, is still quite widespread.

While Russia and the US have disarmed to a modest extent, we still have thousands of nuclear weapons aimed at each other. However we are now major trading partners; during the Cold War there was very little trade. For example what at one time was an antiquated glass factory in Russia, received a great deal of investment from United States auto manufacturers, and now is quite prosperously making high-quality glass for automobiles.

What is now the American Southwest was seized from Mexico in an invasion that had not the slightest pretense of justification. The US also took the Virgin Islands and the Philippines from Spain.

Japan was at one time a brutal aggressor, now it is a top trade partner with the entire world.

Cuba came within an RCH of nuking the east coast of the US. While the US still embargoes Cuba, travel to Cuba is actually encouraged now by the US, under certain rather strict rules. It is quite likely that Cuba will be free to trade with the US in ten or twenty years.

A few years ago, Intel invested a billion dollars to build a Fab in Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City.

While North and South Korea remain bitter enemies and strictly speaking are still at war, there is a large industrial park in North Korea that is jointly operated by the two countries.

The big Physics lab at CERN in Geneva wasn't built to discover anything. It was built to prevent World War III, by giving those who were once enemies, something peaceful to do together.

Re:The real benefit of globalization...

[Anonymous Coward]

The same argument about trade preventing war (why would a country go to war with trade partners?) was made before World War I, and it didn't hold.

Its time for democracy to pay a visit to china.

[Anonymous Coward]

9/11 yada yada terrorists in china yada yada

uh oh...

[Connie_Lingus]

don't anyone tell Walmart about this...

they will want to charge Californians an "extra-low price " for it all...

CLean air and water. Fight Global Warming.

[Anonymous Coward]

The side effect of regulating pollution is the reduction of Green House gases.

That's what gets me, reducing emissions isn't just about Global Warming and all the ridiculous arguments and fights about it: it is also about clean air and water.

It's terribly sad that we here in the US have been so brainwashed into thinking short term economic productivity supersedes environmental well being.

We don't shit in our drinking water so why should we "shit" in our breathing air?!

Re: The Price We Pay

[number17]

We can't regulate China, but we can regulate the US companies that do business over there. My company does 80% of its sourcing from China.

If they have gone as far as setting up production in China then they will find ways around it. Once one company figures out the strategy they wall will. Maybe they can setup Company B in another country that owns your manufacturing business in China. Now they are two separate companies and can sell to each other at cost.

Re:Article and summary is wildly wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Reading comprehension a bit too much for you?

But wait what about the other 95% of china smog? We need to multiply that US smog by 20 to get it's contribution.

therefore 20*25% = 500% of W. US sulphate comes from china!!! those sneaky rascals are exporting 5 times as much sulphate tot eh US as they produce in total!

Wait, what? let's read that again

The modelling revealed that on any given day in 2006, goods made in China for the US market accounted for up to a quarter of the sulphate smog over the western US.

So, by your calculation, China is producing 5 times more smog than there's on the US West coast. Most of it (about 19/20, in fact) doesn't get to the US, quite surprising, eh?

Playing with numbers is nice, but next time try to understand what it is you're computing.

Cloud seeding?

[Moof123]

I'm curious if all those particulants are partially contributing to current drought conditions by seeding clouds to dump their load into the Pacific before getting to the West coast.

Re: The Price We Pay

[Rich0]

Simple solution - tariffs. They shouldn't be punitive - they should just recognize the cost of externalities. So, if it costs $1T/yr to build air filtration units that can clean the air to acceptable levels, then impose that much in tariffs against everything that comes in. They can pollute all they want and it won't hurt planet at all since the US will be removing all that pollution. More likely they'll fix their laws to get rid of the tariffs before companies move their business to a country that does.

While we're at it go ahead and add up the cost of blowing up Iraqi civilians and trying to clean up the carnage and add it as a tax on oil. Suddenly we'll see a lot fewer people cheering as the bombs fall, and a lot more diversification in our energy supply.

You don't need to punish people that do stupid things - you just need to make them pay the price of their stupidity and you'll be amazed at how quickly they learn.

Re:Article and summary is wildly wrong

[fast turtle]

The modelling revealed that on any given Day in 2006, goods made in China for the U.S. market accounted for up to a quarter of the Sulphate smog over the Western U.S.

Emphasis added to is Mine so people can understand they're not talking about the entire year. Just one fucking day in that year.

Complimentary study

[Dan East]

And a study complimentary to this one has found the remainder of the particulate matter inhaled in California came from Mexico.

The Coal Irony

[Dark Fire]

The California climate changers have been working to drive coal power out of the United States which is driving up the cost of electricity which in turn drives up manufacturing costs both in the short term and long term. This has created low coal prices in the short term and in the long term causing China to double down on coal power to keep its energy costs low and to make its manufacturing base even more competitive in the international market. This means more manufacturing will be done in China which ironically will actually make the air quality in California much worse (better air quality for the eastern US though). I also think that it would be ironic if this ultimately kills US manufacturing to the point where the US becomes a third world country where all the wealthier nations of the world come to plunder the natural resources that many conservationists have fought hard to protect. But in protecting our natural resources, it has been taken to such extremes that it ultimately weakens our economy and in so doing our government and world influence. People forget that it takes strength to defend what you cherish (ideas, people, etc.) and that there are no given rules that all uphold. People cling too tightly and take for granted that things will remain as they are now. We must find a balance to remain strong.

Re:Maybe: downward spiral

[SleazyRidr]

It's also because you want to buy too much shit. You could afford good tools, but not when you're also paying off your new car, paying the rent for the house that's 3x as big as you need, and paying for the big screen plasmas in each room.

Oregon too

[riverat1]

This pollution hits the whole west coast of North America. Something like half of the mercury in our local environment (Oregon) comes from coal burning in SE Asia.

Uhh, consider scale.

[nobuddy]

Shipping is likely a factor, but the time a ship is in that sweet zone+amount of emission is not even a factor when added to the output of China pollution.

LOL; And yet, CA will not stop it

[WindBourne]

This is trivial for CA, in fact the west, to stop. Simply put a consumption tax on all goods based on where they and their sub-parts come from.

Make the tax based on Emissions / $ of GDP, and make it honest emissions, not estimates. So, that would mean OCO2 measures the Carbon that moves in and out of a nation.

Instead, The west will let China and other nations continue to grow their pollution, rather than making a simple change that would cause ALL nations to change their ways.

or maybe

[nobuddy]

you suck at math.

It accounts for 1/4 of the sulphate smog over the US, by the report.

Why are you then multiplying other factors from china against the 20% of US smog vs the remainder?

If I have 3 apples and 1 orange, 1/4 of my fruit are oranges. By your reasoning, since I have 3 apples left over, we add that to the 25% that are oranges and conclude that I have 500% of my fruit in oranges!

Dafuq?

And those libertarian businesses

[nobuddy]

would just route it via a holding company in a country that has a trade treaty that avoids tariffs. Then charge you the markup anyway, apologizing that the evil regulation is why you are suffering.

Re:And those libertarian businesses

[Firethorn]

No regulation is perfect, which is why I think we need to avoid trying for perfection with regulations, but this is still fairly easy to keep track of. Base the tariffs on country of production, not the exporting country.

Sea is flat, land is not

[nobuddy]

the Sangre de Christo and other mountain ranges in eastern California would like a word with your reasoning....

it's

[antdude]

FYI, it's = it is/has. You're welcome. :P

Re:How about the pollution originating in USA?

[AK Marc]

Since you think it's a joke to allow a country to go through an industrial revolution unfettered by pollution controls, like England and the US did, then clamp down after the economy has transitioned to a "modern" one, what would you propose as "fair" to all the countries trying to follow the example of the USA?

Re:How about the pollution originating in USA?

[drinkypoo]

what would you propose as "fair" to all the countries trying to follow the example of the USA?

It's not fair for them to follow our example any more than it's fair for us to behave this way. Fair would be for developed nations to help developing nations avoid polluting on the way up.

Re:How about the pollution originating in USA?

[AK Marc]

I don't disagree, but the actions but US politics are generally either all or nothing, and neither is a good solution. How do we get US politicians willing to compromise (and other politicians to take "compromise" as something other than a sign of weakness)?

Re:Article and summary is wildly wrong

[arvindsg]

Points made in GP are correct, let me explain it this way: 1.)Suppose smog in china is cause of x% smog in u.s., we can be sure x =100 2.)How smog in china spreads to u.s. is assumed to be independent of what was the cause of smog in china itself 3.) 17%-36% smog in china is from manufactured goods 4.) Only 1/5 th of this smog (Lets call it Y) is actually produced from products bound for u.s. 5.) Article states that Y is responsible for 25% of smog over u.s. i.e. 6.) Rest of the smog in china should also cause smog over the u.s, This rest of the chinese fogs which is 4 times Y, should cause atleast 4 times as much smog over u.s. as well. 7) Hence we get chinese smog to be contributor of about 125% smog over western u.s.. I hope you now see the problem, or would otherwise care to explain whats wrong