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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..'"
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.
I don't read AC A human right
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
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
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.
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...
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
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.
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.
I don't read AC A human right
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.
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).
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".
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Made in China.
Designed in California.
May the Maths Be with you!
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.
"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.
> How can these particles remain in the very lowest part of the atmosphere
That's the Invisible Hand, son.
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
"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.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
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.