China Using Drones To Spot Polluters

An anonymous reader writes "China is reportedly now using 4 drones to spy on polluting industries, according to The Guardian. The unmanned aircraft can cover 70 sqkm during a two hour flight. According to the state-run China Daily newspaper the drones have helped the ministry 'resolve' over 200 environment-linked cases. The Ministry of Environmental Protection claims that it can tell the type of smokestacks to crack down upon from the color of the smoke."

Comments

Unless

[jasper160]

The appropriate bribes and connections are in place.

Re:Unless

[Anonymous Coward]

Utterly unlike the US then.

Re:Unless

[Threni]

Thank god the West doesn't have any problem with the wealthy and well connected being treated any differently to anyone else. Just think what sort of societal problems would be occurring on a daily basis were that the case.

Re:Unless

[Anonymous Coward]

Bribes and connections are alive and well in most countries, including USA.

Re: Unless

[arielCo]

Normally you'd wait for the inspector to come, then make your proposition. If you can't even see him, you'd have to find out who he is and pay him a visit, o bribe his boss, which costs more.

Re:Unless

[interkin3tic]

Oh, hey, a tu quoque argument! Neat!

Jasper is not the US, Jasper presumably does not control the US's corruption, the US doing something does not justify China doing something, and your post was off topic, not insightful.

Re:Unless

[jandersen]

*Sigh*

The comments on this list really show America in a very unflattering light, sometimes. Fortunately I and many others are less superficial, so I know that most Americans are not complete idiots.

How about reading the article with a more open mind? It is after all about something that is a good idea: using some quite simple, cheaply available technology to do something that is potentially good for the environment. And while judging how poisonous smoke is by looking at it is not accurate, it still gives a reasonable indication in most cases: black smoke is probably full of particulates, white smoke is perhaps mostly steam and so on. It's not as stupid as you make out.

Can it be used for spying? Well, obviously - but it can also be used for billion good things. And as you say in America: "Guns don't kill people ...". It makes little sense being opposed to a technology for what it might be used for by bad people.

Re:Unless

[ub3r n3u7r4l1st]

Yes, like the USA for example.

Re: Unless

[interkin3tic]

Yes, I agree, the main point is a tu quoque argument. You're absolutely right.

So It's not going to be black helicopters.

[rmdingler]

I can see this sort of specialized mission being misused here in the West.

Border security, drug interdiction, search & rescue... certainly a seemingly endless list of plausibly benevolent drone activities.

Now that the cat is out of the bag regarding governmental spying on its own citizens with no serious negative repercussions, I'd bet they're gearing up.

Re: how "green" is the use of them?

[arielCo]

Arguably less than the reduction in the factories it'd catch during its service life? Even if it were a pick-up truck the tradeoff is just silly.

But the thing here is that it's easier to check on a big industrial park or mining operation from the air, and a lot cheaper if the aircraft doesn't have to carry a pilot and an observer.

I've been saying for a while...

[Electricity Likes Me]

The idea that China is opposed to environmental protection espoused by so many people is pretty badly informed. China's policy is and always has been that it won't needlessly set itself back - but it'll glad do what it can, because it's not like their air pollution is just CO2 and harmless to their environment.

So chances are, the whole "China is building X many coal plants per week!" is a very short-lived trend, and when they can go nuclear + renewables, they're going to do it in a big way very quickly, since the benefits aren't represented in a model, they'll be represented in breathable air. Money doesn't much help you avoid 2.5um particulates no matter where you live. Not on any sensible scale.

Re:I've been saying for a while...

[drinkypoo]

So chances are, the whole "China is building X many coal plants per week!" is a very short-lived trend

That's a gross misrepresentation. It's "China is building X many coal plants per week without emissions controls!" If China actually gave a shit about emissions, then new construction and new products (like cars) would have strong emissions controls. They don't. So they don't.

Re:I've been saying for a while...

[Anonymous Coward]

Money does help you to avoid PM2.5 (2.5um particulates). Sulfuric acid mist = blue plume. Sulfuric acid mist (from coal plant) can be controled using carbon ($) or caustic scrubbers ($$). Sulfur dioxide is a precursor to PM2.5 as well as acid rain - it can be controlled by scrubbers. Nitrogen oxides also are precursors to PM2.5 and ground-level ozone (smog) and can be controled by selective catalytic reduction ($$$). So saying money doesn't help - it does and so do the regulations put in place to enfoce control.

Re:I've been saying for a while...

[Electricity Likes Me]

The point was more along the lines of the fact that virtually no attainable level of individual wealth can really sufficiently protect you, in a pleasant fashion, from local environmental and atmospheric pollution.

So China Uses Drones To Spot Polluters

[fredrated]

While in America we pass laws making that illegal. So I did wake up in an alternate world after all.

why bother?

[slashmydots]

It's a lot cheaper to just look in the phone book. Look in the business section and...it's all of them.

Thanks for share

[Hung Nguyen Thanh]

dang tin rao vat, rao ban nha dat, rao bán nhà t, moi gioi nha dat, co dat, cò t, cho thue, dat ban, nha ban, t bán, nhà bán, mua ban, mua bán, ng tin bán nhà, chung cu, can ho

Re:Thanks for share

[dcw3]

Damn, my ROT-13 translator isn't working again.

Re:How hard is it?

[OakDragon]

Particulates jam the drone's intake... Drone stalls and dies... Pollution found!

China Ministry of Environmental Protection

[zeroryoko1974]

Isn't that the ultimate oxymoron? Right up there with military intelligence

Re: I've been saying for a while..

[drinkypoo]

Only Beijing has strong emissions standards, sort of like California in the USA before the federal government prevented us from increasing ours as we voted to do. Now our standards are not much different from other states. I won't be surprised if that happens for China as well. Also, I can find literally zero studies on this subject which are not from the Chinese government. Now, it's not like I trust my own government, but I double-extra don't trust China's. Their answer when you ask them if they're going to do something bad again is "we killed the last guy who did it", but then it happens again. Melamine nomnomnom!

But guess what? Beijing is just the tip of the iceberg. Even if they could fix Beijing, which they could only do by caring about how much pollution comes out of their coal plants, it wouldn't really fix China.