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

[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

[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.

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.

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..

[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.