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Beijing Issues 'Red Alert' Over Smog (independent.co.uk)
An anonymous reader writes: The Chinese capital of Beijing has issued a "red alert" for air quality within the city, the first time the city has reached the level of caution where it's deemed "unhealthy" for all residents. Starting Tuesday morning, schools will be shut down, the production of smoke will be limited, and cars will be under an odd/even alternate day ban while the local government waits for air quality to improve. It's expected to last until mid-day on Thursday when the weather looks likely to blow it away. "Air pollution monitors showed that areas of Beijing had more than 256 micrograms per cubic metre of the poisonous particles. The World Health Organisation (WHO) says that anything over 25 micrograms is considered unsafe. The poisonous smog in Beijing is caused by the burning of coal for industry and heating, as well as huge amounts of dust from the city's many construction sites. The problem is being made yet worse by high humidity and low wind." The city has been in bad shape for a while now, and Greenpeace called for this very measure a week ago.
"Red Alert"...commies...heh!
Let this be a reminder to those enamored with politicians who claim "we can compete with China by relaxing our regulations".
I believe we should tariff goods from countries who don't adhere to basic labor, pollution, and safety standards.
For those who claim that prevents such countries from "advancing", the country can instead encourage more local consumption. Asian countries have been slow to do this, largely because governments are afraid it will make their population pop-culture addicts, like those found in the USA. They don't like "work hard, play hard". They only want the first.
But if you want the benefits of pop culture (sales & profits), you have to take the downsides also. We make it too easy for them to have the good sides of globalization without the bad. We should put our foot down. Why do we always trade on THEIR terms?
Table-ized A.I.
smog is not climate. you are a moron
...or London in 1952?
http://history1900s.about.com/...
It is also influenced by geography, maybe they should just flatten all the mountains around Beijing to prevent this issue.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Um, so . . . where is it going to be blow away to . . . ? Maybe Shanghai . . . ?
California!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Was only on the way to HK, but the air quality was so bad even in the airport that my daughter (who has situational asthma) was coughing ceaselessly and we had to use her nebulizer while in the lounge - luckily we were only laying over for 3h.
I had no interest in leaving the airport to visit the city proper even if I could.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Pollution has been around since the dawn of time.. This is just a naturally occurring cycle in our planets history, plus the data doesn't go back far enough to come to a conclusion. This is just a story by the main stream media to further the agenda of "Big Science".
Probably caused by making all those solar panels for the western countries.
If you like "red alerts", get ready for the "the threat level is orange; the threat level has always been and will always be orange" 3.0: DHS just announced a new threat level alert system.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us...
Odd, how I first read that as "theatre level alert system"
Similar to the upcoming US election results
The highest PM2.5 in Los Angeles is estimated (it wasn't measured back then) to have been about 100 ppm (from the LA times last year: http://www.latimes.com/world/a...). In recent times, the max was 79, and the daily average is 18 or so. That puts Beijing at 2.5x the worst LA has ever seen and about 15x worse than LA on any given day.
They also call for making it worse.
It is the persistent anti-nuclear campaigning of Greenpeace and other "environmental" organizations which has left the world with a dwindling complement of 1950s era reactors, and prevented the development and adoption of better nuclear technologies. If they hadn't killed the first nuclear renaissance, the world would be off of coal by now. Places like France, Sweden, and Ontario have proven that nuclear can eliminate coal use while providing clean energy on a large scale, even with old technology. Even so, the limited amounts of conventional nuclear remaining are responsible for a large majority of the clean energy produced today.
Meanwhile, those most vigorously pursuing Greenpeace's dear wind and solar have only demonstrated how ineffective those technologies are at displacing coal or other fossil fuels. Excepting the large contribution of biomass to renewable energy production reveals an even more hopeless situation. As if it weren't bad enough, the "green" solution to the intermittency of those technologies is to burn biomass or biofuels, which are worse yet than coal. At the end of the day, the rise of coal consumption continues unabated. Thanks!
"It's expected to last until mid-day on Thursday when the weather looks likely to blow it away." Just a reminder...when it comes to air pollution, there is no "away". It all stays here on planet earth, in the air we breathe all over the world. Just saying.
Almost ALL of this is caused by coal burning, both in large electrical generation stations, and locally by individuals cooking and heating.
China is at least building at an accelerated rate the largest number of nuclear reactors, and some of the most advanced ones at that, in a direct response, however it does take time. They are doing something about the situation, only they are a bit hogtied in the here in now.
How many nuclear reactors are being built or are planning to be built in the US? How quickly is the US realistically trying to get away from coal plants? I say realistically as a premeditated strike against the eventual posts that wind and solar will solve everything. The US corporations seem to have gone with natural gas as an alternative, with fracking, which has its own issues, but smog and clean air isn't really among them...
There are cooling climate effects of aerosols(so pollution can have a cooling effect), but the main point worth making here is that there is an important distinction between pollution from coal and climate warming that people constantly overlook. China uses a lot of coal this produces a lot of carbon dioxide as well as a lot of pollution. They can fix the pollution (or alleviate it a lot) while still keeping using coal.
China has invested a huge amount in coal based power plants in the last 15 years, and they're going to keep using those new plants. By concentrating the use of coal into modern powerplants and eliminating it everywhere else they may well succeed in having much cleaner air. Coal powerplants can be made much cleaner, though at significant cost, with big installations that wash the pollution out of the air and into the river. The aim is to get the pollution in the air down to tolerable levels.
The challenge will be even higher for India as their economy grows because the quality of their coal is much much worse.