Scientists Fear Impact of Asian Pollutants On US 455
During the Olympics we discussed the international monitoring effort as China shut down factories and curtailed automobile travel in an attempt to reduce pollution. Now reader Anti-Globalism sends in a story that reveals that monitoring effort to be ongoing, with a bigger mandate: assessing the impact of China's pollution on the US. In fact the problem is bigger still because, as one researcher put it, "It's one atmosphere." Scientists are finding that pollution from, for example, Europe can travel right around the globe in three weeks. "By some estimates more than 10 billion pounds of airborne pollutants from Asia — ranging from soot to mercury to carbon dioxide to ozone — reach the US annually. The problem is only expected to worsen: Some Chinese officials have warned that pollution in their country could quadruple in the next 15 years. While some scientists are less certain, others say the Asian pollution could destabilize weather patterns across the North Pacific, mask the effects of global warming, reduce rainfall in the American West and compromise efforts to meet air-pollution standards."
China (Score:5, Interesting)
Isn't the US still number one polluter or did China overtake recently? Either way the per capita pollution is still worse in the states by a hefty margin. Talk about being hypocritical.
And what about the USA? (Score:3, Interesting)
You've mentioned the effects of China and Europe on poor innocent America. Now, who's monitoring the effects of the USA's pollution? You know, that one developed country that still hasn't ratified the Kyoto Protocol.
Acknowledging and investigating the global effects of local pollution is a worthy endeavour, just as long as it's done in a balanced and open manner. We don't need yet another of the US's "Do as we say not as we do" hypocritical standpoints.
Re:not just their pollutants (Score:5, Interesting)
I recall a documentary (BBC?) on a Icelandic volcano named Laki some 200 years back which blighted Europe. The show focused on a cloud of volcanic gas and the resultant illness that occurred among rural peasants. The speculation was that this was probably the result of silica in the cloud being breathed by those who worked outside. Similarly the 1815 eruption of Tambora caused the "Year without Summer" with famine among the Swiss, and unique weather reported in Pennsylvania. Pollutants are not in this league, but, they can indeed have world ranging effect.
Re:This surpises anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:China (Score:5, Interesting)
GDP is meaningless... Tell me about industrial output and then we can talk.
Not that I doubt China's industrial environmental standards are very lenient, but considering that much of their industrial output is willfully imported by the US and Europe, it's hard to criticize them without getting quite hypocritical.
Don't single out China/Asia (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't single out China/Asia. Countries have a massive effect upon each other. I live in far north Texas, and have seen haze/smoke from fires in central Mexico. I've always felt a large part of Texas's pollution problem is pollutants coming North. I've heard engineers talk about offering sulfer scrubbers to Eastern european coal-power plants to reduce smog here in the US.
Part of the problem is different countries worry about different types of pollution. In the US, we are more concerned about visible/long-term pollutants than invisible/short-term ones. Some other countries are completely unconcerned about things like leaded gasoline, which is still used in many countries but has been out of the US for decades. America has a bad record, but has gotten some things right in the end. Europeans make a big deal about CO2, but many European
beaches have incredibly toxic water, or land which is unfarmable. Thanks to American pollution reforms, life is even returning to New York's harbor [nytimes.com].
Everything is a give/take. People are worrying about energy inefficient bulbs, replacing them with their more efficient fluorescent cousins, but are ignoring the problems those bulbs have with mercury. Or with LED bulbs, gallium aresenide. For example, the life returning to New York's harbor happens to be devouring all of the wooden structures built since they last died off.
We've been saying this all along (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:not just their pollutants (Score:3, Interesting)
Not just the Swiss. We studied this in the local history class we had to take in High School. There was a frost every day in New England that year.
Personally... (Score:4, Interesting)
...I'm less interested in pointing fingers. Besides, the US has a habit of shooting at fingers with hellfire missiles. Instead of "naming names", it would seem better to have a close to global tracking and monitoring of pollution in general, to show WHERE different types of pollution are a problem (regardless of source). You could then add in solar-powered UAVs to collect air samples at random points, where the isotope ratios are calculated and the pollutant sources (not necessarily the factories, just the sources) are derived. The factories can be inferred from plotting the pollution clouds, if anyone is genuinely concerned, but frankly I'd have thought that cleaning fuels and raw materials would have a bigger impact, as there are likely far fewer sources than factories, factories see cleaning as expensive, but higher grade fuels and materials are worth more to their producers. Ergo, cleaning at source will be seen as making money, cleaning at point of use will be seen as spending money, even though the end result (in terms of pollution, money-flow, profits, etc) should be absolutely identical.
Industrialists are, by and large, not very bright and highly prejudiced towards green-stuff feel-good factors. Which means that something that is good won't be accepted no matter how good it actually is, unless it is presented as something that'll feel good to their accountants. Being honest isn't worth a damn thing, but it isn't necessary to be honest to be accurate. This is why politics is a scam. Politicians don't sell you what you want, they sell you what they want dressed up to look like it's something you want. But you're quite capable of giving as good as you get.
Honest environmentalists go nowhere, although they usually get some recognition AFTER the disaster they predicted has swept through. Why? Because their phrasing makes it sound like people have to put in hard work and money for something that isn't 100% predictable anyway. Completely the wrong move. Think like Dogbert, not Dilbert, on this one. Dilbert always gets ignored, Dogbert always gets things done. The difference is not in what they're doing, but in the psychology. Dilbert assumes people are basically bright, compassionate and thoughtful. Dogbert assumes people are manipulative, deceitful, corrupt and 100% gullible. Environmentalists need to listen to Dogbert. Dilbert is correct, but will never go anywhere. In mythological terms, he represents the Wise Fool - he knows a lot but his attempts to explain make him sound like a complete fool.
Saving money has never worked, any better than saving the planet, but if the first part of the "food chain" decides cleanliness is next to richness, it gets imposed on everyone else regardless. They have no choice but to go green. They won't even be aware they've done so. Things'll cost more, but as gas prices have demonstrated, customers ignore that until the last possible moment, and then blame it on anyone they happen to dislike at the time. Use that self-inflicted blindness to make consumers green, and the world will be cleaner within a year without the consumers ever noticing what you're doing. If they say anything, it'll be to flame the environmentalists for doom-saying about pollution and greenhouse gasses, same as they did with Y2K after several trillion dollars were spent in fixing flaws across the world.
(And, yes, for those who care, Y2K did strike older electronic credit-card readers, older banking systems, and many home and office products - including many of Microsoft's. If they'd done nothing, the world might well have ended. Instead, the fixes were imposed on an unwilling and ignorant population in such a way that they remained unwilling and ignorant. And that is the SOLE reason you are still breathing today.)
What Y2K demonstrated was that the masses are dumb, but that really doesn't matter. You can fix what does matter without ever concerning yourself with the widespread ignorance in the world. In this case, you can fix mines, quarries, power stations, oil, coal, and all kinds of other resources, with the help of a handful of executives who can make a mint off the deal. Do that, and national follies will be of no importance whatsoever.
Environmentalism causes pollution (Score:4, Interesting)
Environmental over-regulation in the US drives up prices for manufacturers and other businesses. This leads them to move to China and other developing countries with very lax environmental standards. Pollution is increased a lot.
Just setting environmental standards at a rational level in the US might allow these companies to stay here. They could run a clean operation. It might not be perfect or "sustainable", but it would be clean and suitable by any rational standard.
Environmental over-regulation and utopianism actually results in greater pollution in these cases. Carbon cap-and-trade schemes will just increase this phenomenon. And it shifts pollution to poorer, less-empowered populations.
Re:That story certainly reveals American selfishne (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree with your statement entirely. However: who better to convince a kid to not try LSD than someone who has already tried it? The old dude who taught woodshop in high school and was missing a couple fingers was *way* more convincing when he talked about safety, than the safety movies.
I'm not defending being a hypocrite. I'm just saying that if people learn from their mistakes, they're good teachers with respect to those mistakes. To be a hypocrit is to *keep* doing something (like burning 1/4 the world's fossil fuels) while complaining about other people doing the same thing. Ex-hippie parents probably aren't being hypocrites about the LSD, while the USA being pissed about Chinese pollution, is indeed being a hypocrite.
Re:Environmentalism causes pollution (Score:5, Interesting)
Overregulation is mostly the doing of companies
1)Pollute
2)New regulation
3)Hire lawyer to fight new regulation
4)Lawyer find a loophole in the regulation so one can continue polluting while respecting the
letter of the regulation.
5)Regulators close the loophole, increasing the word count of the regulation.
6)Repeat 4 and 5 100 times
7) Regulations are now 10000 pages long.
8) Complain about the red tape you contributed creating by not obeying the spirit of the regulations in the first place.
Re:This surpises anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)
I just watched a Nova about cooling the sun that talked about this. Essentially, particulate pollution makes clouds (as in rain clouds) that take longer to produce rain, as the particulates are larger than dust particles, with greater surface area. Also, these clouds that condense around these larger particles are more reflective on top, which has a cooling effect.
The folks acknowledged that this may have helped off-set the heating caused by CO2 emissions, and feared that reduction of particulate pollution without reducing CO2 emissions could lead to a big increase in global temperature.
Re:This surpises anyone? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm quite confident this have been the case of say NY and London back in the days as well. Things will clear up, literary.
Irrelevant. Stop making excuses. Everyone here wants to point fingers at the U.S., but they seem to want to let China off the hook. Sorry, I'm not going to let you compare an early 20th century American city with a modern one, nor am I going to let you excuse China's excesses because we were like that once. No sir.
Furthermore, things just don't "clean up" by themselves. It generally takes some serious regulation (with teeth in it) to make the private sector do what need to be done, environmentally speaking. When China's government decides that, gee, maybe a few hundred thousand dead and compromised human beings each year is not an acceptable price to pay for industrialization, matters will improve. I don't see it happening because they don't give a fuck.
Re:US is exporting pollution (Score:2, Interesting)
True, but if China can take advantage of all the hard lessons England and the US learned in the 19th and 20th centuries, they get a massive boost to their international image (which, given their behavior leading up to and during the Olympics, seems paramount over environmental and economic concerns).
Re:They're not that bad (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, we in the US are victims of our own pollution. Its not that we don't realize it, its just that it costs a lot of money and political will to stop it and fix it. You can't blame all of us Americans for that. Some of us are trying really hard to turn that ship around, but it doesn't stop on a dime.
At least we recognize the problem and many of us are trying to do something about it. I'm not sure you can say the same about China - I don't know, I've never been there, but I'm sure there are plenty of Chinese citizens that don't like it one bit either. You also have to stipulate to the fact that when the US was in its major industrialization buildup, pollution wasn't recognized as a problem. The technology to be clean didn't exist, and we weren't fighting the world tooth and nail for our right to pollute - although we have our own problems with our government not having the balls to fix existing problems. China on the other hand seems to use developed nations as an excuse to pollute, even though it is globally irresponsible to do so, and the technology exists not to.
Finally, those scientists are not on a high horse, they ARE the high horse. It is more a fault of the executive leadership of the United States trying to bury the problem, being friendly to the oh-so-clean oil industry, than government scientists whose reports have been subject to review and even censorship by the President and his men. Its not our scientists fault that we pollute, and most of them (and especially the ones who research this particular field) really wish it wasn't a problem for you, for me, or the citizens of China. The purpose of the study was to show an effect, and if you want to do a study that shows the effects on your country by our pollutions you are free to do so.
Re:US is exporting pollution (Score:2, Interesting)
It's a bit of "pulling the ladder up after us" to insist that China take a harder path than we did during their industrial revolution.
They have an advantage of using the technology "the West" developed to reduce their pollution. Just like African countries can skip the copper stage of telecommunications and deploy cellular. China should be able to steal^H^H^H^H^Hutilize the technology available to limit their pollution. They just need an incentive or mandate to spend the extra money to install and maintain it.
Re:US is exporting pollution (Score:2, Interesting)
http://daughteroftheyellowriver.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]
I was at this seminar in Aug 2006 and heard (and agreed with) the Hon. D'Amato when he said that in order to reduce the global pollution driven by advanced nations, particularly the USA, we ought to GIVE China the latest anti-pollution technology or equipment. Current practice is for the patent-holding companies to license out this stuff at prices that would exorbitantly drive up the cost of goods to the nations ordering the products.
My take (my opinion before hearing D'Amato speak) on this is:
Since the USA's population (seeking cheap, plentiful goods) is a significant source of orders-based pollution, the US should encourage the transfer (cheap or free) of technology so China can nearly immediately but significantly reduce the amount of pollution China is spewing.
But, then there are those who think that the anti-pollution efforts in technology creation should be performed by China. That, to me, and to others, is a fallacy. Assuming China won't STEAL the technology or clone it in unauthorized output, it would be DECADES before China alone or in painstakingly long and expensive tech transfers manages to reduce the pollution footprint. In that time, millions (possibly hundreds of millions) of people will have either died or been directly impacted by the pollution that might have been averted if the US and some European countries just hand over the technology.
An alternative -- albeit a painful one -- is to take the moral high ground and simply forbid the companies from issuing orders for manufacture in China. That would be unrealistic, and it wouldn't surprise me if corporate CEOs would meet in a cone of silence and arrange a few coups or assassinations.
The US and any countries allowing domestic companies to issue build/make orders to China but not handing over the anti-pollution plans and maintenance steps to China are just be two-faced and will be held accountable when true history is written. China would not HAVE the job of manufacturing if "morally superior" nations didn't fail to nationalize and distribute globally the technology.
So, people here can browbeat and excoriate China and talk about global strategic positioning and other marketing and economic mumbo jumbo, but in the end that technology HAS TO BE transferred. Otherwise, we'll just have more of the same.
Get some perspective (Score:3, Interesting)
As a whole, has more renewable energy than anyone else.
Re:not just their pollutants (Score:4, Interesting)
You're an idiot then (see posts below).
If China had the same production levels of the US they would be polluting massively more.
What is your point? Production efficiency may be one thing, but pollution output is a different thing. Maybe they are less efficient... Maybe we are more efficient. That does not undo the REALITY of the actual amount of pollution that is being produced.
I don't think a person with dirt on their hands can point at another person with dirt on theirs and complain about it.
There is a difference between patriotism and indigence. Open your eyes and be real with yourself, your country, the world, and reality.
Re:not just their pollutants (Score:4, Interesting)
The US remains the only major industrialized nation to not do things in that fashion.
Is that because in the US the US IS THE ONLY INDUSTRIALIZED NATION?
Or are you suggesting that industries polute more in europe? I seriously doubt that USA in general would behave better to the environment than Sweden do. Feel free to prove me wrong.
Of course they will get better paid later on, this will be a problem for any developing nation but they have accepted that some people will get rich first, but in the end hopefully they will all benefit from it. Thought in very capitalisic countries not every does I guess, Japan and the USA is the two countries with the biggest gaps between very rich and very poor people if I remember correctly.
European Cars (Score:3, Interesting)
And did you ever see a pick-up truck in europe as means of personal transport?
I drove from Denmark (Copenhagen) to Switzerland (Bern) recently. I was in Frankfurt am Main before I ran into the first American style 'big ass' SUV pickup. Europeans often drive smaller hatchbacks. The VW Fox/Polo/Golf, Opel Corsa and Peugeot 107/207 seem to be particularly popular in Germany and so are bigger saloon cars from makers like the BMW, Audi, Mazda, VW, Opel, Skoda, Citroen... the list goes on. You also get some CUVs. Subaru and Suzuki are popular in rural areas because they build even small hatchbacks and saloons with a 4x4 drive. Gigantic American style SUVs are pretty much a rarity. You probably wouldn't have an easy time navigating something like a Dodge Ram through many European cities, towns and villages (especially the model with the double rear wheels that requires two parking spaces). In many of these places the streets date back to medieval times and are very narrow. Another point is of course the fact that gas prices are high and people can generally think of better things to spend their money on than quenching an SUV's thirst for fuel. I drive a small 3 door diesel hatchback. On may way through Denmark the clerk at a Statiol station got the pumps mixed up and tried to bill me for the Diesel tanked by a small SUV. I was really shocked to see the size of the bill which was about 4 times what I had just tanked for (about 180 DKR and the tank on my car was 2/3 empty). I shudder to think what it wold cost to fill up the tank on a Dodge Ram.
Re:greatest producer of ... (Score:3, Interesting)
So talking about doing something is just as good as doing something? We have done more on accident then they have managed to do on purpose. And they have diven the costs of everything up enormously in the process. When I say enormously, I mean way more then the price increases the US has seen from high energy costs.
The US isn't refusing to talk about it. They are refusing to sign onto some platform that is more of a redistribution of wealth then any significant GHG reduction platform. They are hurting their economies at a time when they should be flourishing due to economic problems in the US. And they are doing it without any real reductions to make things even worse. Could you imagine how the US economy would be right now with the problem we already have and some international agreement forcing us to make it worse by either limiting the freedoms of the people in enterprise or by forcing more jobs off shore in order to meet "quotas".
Do you actually think that the government is the only thing allowing the people and companies to look for ways to reduce emissions? Do you think that Kyoto is the only way to get solar or wind power (which costs more then traditional energy) or hybrid cars or more efficient processes? I mean seriously, take a look around and tell me that we as a nation haven't been "talking" about it since it's inception. The fact that we as a nation have individual freedoms means that we don't have to wait for the government to do something in order to make things happen. We as a people of these great and free united states can implement changes outside of any government and we as a people of these untied states can usurp the federal government on many levels and make changes at state levels too.
If you think the US isn't talking about reducing emissions your smoking something. If you think the US isn't doing things to reduce emissions, your delusion yourself and worshiping some standard or step that doesn't need to be taken. Kyoto is an economic scam, it was born to serve the forgiveness of the third world debt that was a popular political drive of the extreme left that disappears (guess when) when Kyoto was born which is most likely the biggest reason it doesn't limit Carbon emissions, it redistributes wealth. If you don't believe me, I suggest you actually read the kyoto protocol and look at how many counties that signed on to it actually have a carbon cap or a reduction goal. All the others are potential money pits by either forcing industry into their lands or by purchasing carbon credits from them so your society can continue to pollute while theirs remain poor and repressed.
I'm sorry your brain washed. But before you decide to make some uninformed knee jerk reply, look into what I have said and at least argue from an informed point of view. If I am wrong, then point it out. But I'm not and no talking about doing something is in no way the same as doing something. If the world was truly interested in limiting emissions, we would put a couple of groups of scientists together from various countries that do nothing but find more efficient ways to produce and use energy as well as capture emissions and then offer that to any other country royalty free to be implemented in new industry and infrastructure and retrofitted into existing one. If we were really serious, we would do this and offer no interest and subsidized loans to poorer countries who might have issues getting them implemented. Then we would have a real effect instead of talking about something and pushing the emissions off to some other country.