Pollution From Asia Affects US Climate 209
sciencehabit writes "China and India are some of the world's top polluters, with countless cars, factories, and households belching more than 2 million metric tons of carbon soot and other dark pollutants into the air every year. The pall hanging over the region has come to be known as 'the Asian brown cloud.' These pollutants aren't just bad news for the countries themselves. A new study reveals that they can affect climate thousands of kilometers away, warming the United States by up to 0.4C by 2024, while cooling other regions (abstract)."
What blows around comes around (Score:5, Insightful)
What a bunch of bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Rather pollution from US consumption affect the global climate.
Whatever it's pollution or animal slaughter it is the consumer who make the demand and got the power to choose.
The people in the US (and hence you could say the US) is the biggest polluters by far. And it make no sense to compare countries with differences in population size (I'm from Sweden so we never have to worry about pollution because we're such a small nation anyway?) but rather per capita.
If the Chinese and Indian people would live as the average person in the US I assume we would more than doubled the pollution? But they don't. And why should they who are far behind restrict themselves then people in the US doesn't?
I hate these kind of posts. The US consumers are the filthiest and they are the one who order all (well, not all..) that crap from China for instance. Stop complaining on people in China and India damnit.
You don't want global warming, pollution, ecological disasters and what not? Consume less. (Or rather just what nature provides on a local scale and take care about how you do it.)
The Fish Bowl Effect... (Score:3, Insightful)
Pollution in Asia... (Score:5, Insightful)
There's always a misconception from people in the U.S. that China and India are the polluters of the world. Please understand that they are the ONLY countries left that can manufacture all the stuff we need at bargain basement price. They are the reason why we can have a RC car for $24.99 or $5 for a 4GB USB flash drive. The majority of the factories and cars in these countries are used to make stuff and deliver for us. The average citizen of these countries use about 1/10 of the energy and resources of any developed countries. If only that the rest of the world stops consumerism and start paying more, please don't bitch about the pollution. We made it happen.
Gee that wasn't forseeable (Score:5, Insightful)
Just like it wasn't forseeable that trading with China (read: getting cheap labor in exchange for IP and quasi-building up their infrastructure closer to 1st world standards) would mean we're just making our own competent competitors for resources and business in the next generation.
Next up: Captain Obvious Reports that Invading Iraq has not been a cost effective means to reducing terrorism.
Go on (Score:4, Insightful)
Someone post a chart showing the world's oil consumption by country.
Misinformation, Lies and Statistics (Score:5, Insightful)
If, by any criteria, US does not top such charts, it's only because of outsourcing of manufacturing. Meaning - most of second-hand "smoke" is because of US consumption too.
Also, see this. Just for example, additional llustration:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/44781282/World_s_Most_Polluted_Countries [cnbc.com]
Re:Its a blessing (Score:3, Insightful)
"Our emissions are actually quite clean"
Dude, US is the mother of polluters. I'll just consider you tried to enact Steven Colbert and made a joke.
Re:What blows around comes around (Score:0, Insightful)
> Duh...Kyoto Treaty...which the US would have signed if China and India had been subject to the same pollution constraints.
> Duh... China and India didn't go along with it.
> So what was your point again?
You must have had a wonderful schooltime. Like, nobody is studying, why would I do it?
People that don't do their duties and claim others don't are scum. So, in a way, you really are part of the problem...
Re:What a bunch of bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
You cannot blame the supply. You cannot blame the demand. Those two things operate as they do and as they should. Almost no one acts out of conscience but rather out of self-interest.
The only way to fix such problems is "across the board," unilaterally, all at once. Regulation.
You can't blame people for being stupid. It is what we are. It is why government and regulation are simply necessary. Think about it. No one would voluntarily stop at an intersection without a stop sign or a stop light would they?
Re:I laught at the western countries when I look (Score:2, Insightful)
Pollution and trash are NOT the same. Your streets can be sparkly clean and yet your air dirty as hell. That said, this article just reaffirms what we long known. Pollution is a global problem that affects everyone much like how cigarettes affects those next to you. That said, America is no saint either...
Re:Passing the blame (Score:2, Insightful)
CO2 isn't smog. Smog is composed of CO, NO2, O3 and various particulate matter, all of which are substantially more dangerous than CO2 is.
Re:Pollution in Asia... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Pollution in Asia... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually.... no.
That RC car, if produces in America, would still be 25 bucks.
Yeah, you heard that right.
When has anything ever decreased in price by moving production to China? Don't be silly. Moving production to China doesn't lower prices, it increases profits.
Re:I laught at the western countries when I look (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the hope is that pollution standards will (continue to?) rise along with living standards in Asia, and at that point the West will already have developed certain practices and technologies that the newly developed countries can adopt. E.g. the price of PV panels has dropped significantly in the past years (along with the energy required to build them), fueled by an increase in demand in the Western countries. If it drops a bit more, it'll be cost effective enough to at least be a part of the strategy dealing with the rapidly increasing energy needs of the Asian countries. That's just the general argument and you don't need to "believe" in PV power generation to buy the argument itself.
Of course that's just one part of it, there's also the fact that despite much better environmental regulations, our per-capita emissions are still much worse (even you don't consider "exported" emissions via product manufacturing) and of course the fact that we've been emitting for a much longer time than the newly developed countries[0]. Those are moral arguments, the first one is more utilitarian -- e.g. even if you don't think per-capita emissions should be the important figure, the argument holds water.
[0] We have been emitting since the industrial revolution, that is. I wonder, though, considering the growth of both population and world economy -- 28% of the human hours lived [economist.com] were lived in the 20th century and, incredibly, "over 23% of all the goods and services made since 1AD were produced from 2001 to 2010" --, if the (CO2) emissions of the past 10 or 20 years don't exceed all emissions made prior to that.
Re:The Fish Bowl Effect... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd love to see a link to that "strong evidence".
The only thing I've seen suggesting this are CSIRO "reports" whose basis is essentially "laws were put in place in the west to reduce aerosol pollution in the 1990s, and the drought in the Sahel ended at the same time".
By that level of intellectual rigor, a decrease in world ninja populations directly caused WW2.
The idea that pollution in one area of the globe effects others isn't novel or even particularly new; the 'tragedy of the commons' has been a long-term issue for anyone concerned about the environment. However to look at the coincidental end of a drought event (roughly 1970-1985) and the passage of legislation at the same time is specious at best, or politically-motivated mendacity at worst.
Two very simple questions that the study chose not to answer:
- Passage of the laws was neither geographically nor chronologically homogeneous as the studies' authors would like to imply; to suppose that a 15-year drought 'suddenly' stopped because of their passage would require postulating a 'tipping point'. Tipping points are generally a sign of poorly-understood systems. Sure, TPs exist in nature, but more frequently they're just a sign of sophomoric science and failed interpretation; they are the scientific equivalent of hand-waving.
- If Western industrial pollution was the cause of the Sahel droughts, why did they START in 1970 when by every measure western industrialization was DECREASING? Remember, you've already posited a nearly-instant connection between turning off the pollution and the end of the drought.
It's absolutely logical to expect that an input (pollution) into a complex system has an impact somewhere else, but to believe this specific assertion would require some basis of faith in the first place - faith that the West is evil, white-guilt, whatever you want to call it.
Re:I laught at the western countries when I look (Score:4, Insightful)
I think both of you might not be parsing his comment correctly. He says he's been living in Asia long term and looks around himself to see belching smoke and dumping factories. You've seen the "I'm European" part and connected it to looking around Europe to see smoke and factories. I spent a couple of years in China and saw nonstop belching smoke and dumping factories.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)