Delhi Plans To Unleash Cloud Seeding in Its Battle Against Deadly Smog (wired.com) 35
India's capital, New Delhi, is preparing a new weapon in the fight against deadly air pollution: cloud seeding. From a report: The experiment, which could take place as early as next week, would introduce chemicals like silver iodide into a cloudy sky to create rain and, it's hoped, wash away the fine particulate matter hovering over one of the world's largest cities. The need is desperate. Delhi has already tried traffic restriction measures, multimillion-dollar air filtration towers, and the use of fleets of water-spraying trucks to dissolve the particulate matter in the air -- but to no avail.
The use of cloud seeding, if it goes ahead, would be controversial. "It's not at all a good use of resources because it's not a solution, it's like a temporary relief," says Avikal Somvanshi, a researcher at the Center for Science and Environment in New Delhi. Environmentalists and scientists worry that most of the government's response is focused on mitigating the pollution rather than trying to cut off its source. "There is just no political intent to solve this, that is one of the biggest problems," says Bhavreen Kandhari, an activist and cofounder of Warrior Moms, a network of mothers demanding clean air.
[...] Now, Delhi officials are seeking permission from federal agencies in India to try cloud seeding. The technique involves flying an aircraft to spray clouds with salts like silver or potassium iodide or solid carbon dioxide, also known as dry ice, to induce precipitation. The chemical molecules attach to moisture already in the clouds to form bigger droplets that then fall as rain. China has used artificial rain to tackle air pollution in the past -- but for cloud seeding to work properly, you need significant cloud cover with reasonable moisture content, which Delhi generally lacks during the winter. If weather conditions are favorable, scientists leading the project at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur plan to carry out cloud seeding around November 20.
The use of cloud seeding, if it goes ahead, would be controversial. "It's not at all a good use of resources because it's not a solution, it's like a temporary relief," says Avikal Somvanshi, a researcher at the Center for Science and Environment in New Delhi. Environmentalists and scientists worry that most of the government's response is focused on mitigating the pollution rather than trying to cut off its source. "There is just no political intent to solve this, that is one of the biggest problems," says Bhavreen Kandhari, an activist and cofounder of Warrior Moms, a network of mothers demanding clean air.
[...] Now, Delhi officials are seeking permission from federal agencies in India to try cloud seeding. The technique involves flying an aircraft to spray clouds with salts like silver or potassium iodide or solid carbon dioxide, also known as dry ice, to induce precipitation. The chemical molecules attach to moisture already in the clouds to form bigger droplets that then fall as rain. China has used artificial rain to tackle air pollution in the past -- but for cloud seeding to work properly, you need significant cloud cover with reasonable moisture content, which Delhi generally lacks during the winter. If weather conditions are favorable, scientists leading the project at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur plan to carry out cloud seeding around November 20.
The simple solution is again ignored (Score:3)
If you have too much smog then obviously you have too much pollution. Reduce the number of vehicles (or change to electric), put filters on your power plants, stop large amounts of open burning (that includes bodies).
All simple things but, as usual, something complicated and expensive will be tried instead.
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All simple things but, as usual, something complicated and expensive will be tried instead.
Because electric cars, scrubbers, and cemetery space are all free right?
Re:The simple solution is again ignored (Score:4, Interesting)
If you've ever been outside Delhi, you don't have to go far before seeing any number of rather large furnaces where they're baking clay blocks for building material. Those have no scrubbers and probably put out so much soot that even if you electrified all of the bikes and had only nuclear power (which you'd need just to support all the extra grid use for electric vehicles) I suspect a lot of the pollution is actually created by the use of outdated manufacturing technology such as that. I don't know how feasible it is to try to move off of that either because there aren't a lot of bible replacements that can output at the necessary scale.
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In China, electric mopeds are cheaper than petrol ones. They are simpler machines and the batteries are mass produced. I think most of them are lead acid, although lithium is getting more and more common because China is producing vast quantities of those now.
One way that China cleaned up construction was to build planned cities. That way the materials could be built in modern factories, instead of ad-hoc on a small scale. Obviously it wasn't good news for small builders who made a living that way, but it a
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This is why global warming is not a problem. Because getting people to change their ways is "simple". I mean why don't we just tell people to not do activities that emit CO2. IT'S SIMPLE! SOOOO SIMPLE!
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"Simple" != "Easy" != "Cheap"
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Cremation is better for the environment as it doesnt block productive land. The ashes are collected and immersed in the rivers which fertilizes fiel
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At the level of pollution we're talking about here, exhaust from vehicles is peanuts.
What they need, mostly, is meaningful air-pollution regulations for industry, like the ones that exist in the first world, the kind that require facilities to clean up their smokestack output, use furnaces that burn the fuel more completely, monitor the pH of the output, and so on and so forth. The problem is, complying with those kinds of regulations costs money, and India is about a hund
Delhi's Cloud Storage Problem (Score:2)
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why bother reducing emissions when you can just spawn cheat codes for rain? It's like trying to fix a bug in your code by simply adding more comments.
i agree it's not a solution but it's still a worthy attempt at mitigation. i rather have those particulates washed into the sewer and eventually into the sea (which is bad) than floating in the air (which is arguably worse and also means they will eventually reach my breath). obviously the real solution is just stop polluting, but i don't think people seriously consider that option.
on the other side i have to agree wholly: few things ever exasperated me like seeing useless comments in code.
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on the other side i have to agree wholly: few things ever exasperated me like seeing useless comments in code.
// $name_of_variable contains the values of name_of_variable to be used by name_of_function to discover name_of_value * $name_of_multiplier.
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Ah, Sim City, good times, good times.
In order to fight the pollution induced by roads, I replaced them all with railways. Citizens kept complaining about the lack of roads, but pollution was minimal.
They're catching up. (Score:2)
Looks like they're almost at "1948 in Pennsylvania" smog levels. Welcome to industrial progress. Hard to just skip over that part.
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The real solution to US pollution was exporting the polluting activity to third world destinations.
Oh, and getting rid of the coal boilers that provided hot water for radiative heating.
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Actually, thanks to technological progress, you kinda sorta can. And it's already happening. It's a funny experience, visiting an African village and seeing people charge their phones, run their appliances off a... PV panel, placed amidst clay huts, because that's way cheaper than running an landline through jungle to nearest power plant.
That's fine for a cell phone but won't work for electric appliances like ovens, refrigerators, and so much else those with a line from a power plant have in their homes. If the cell phone battery runs low then that could mean no phones calls or video games until the sun comes out again. For a hospital or factory losing power because of a cloudy day means valuable items go to waste, or even people die. Maybe a home can do well enough with unreliable power with a mix of fossil fuel stoves, batteries charge
The real problem (Score:2)
Politicians white-wash the problem instead of changing technology, manufacturing, laws and culture.
This is why climate change is unavoidable: Technically, it's because the technology and manufacturing required to reverse it, is more than we can build. Practically, the problem will worsen because no-one wants to change.
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Politicians white-wash the problem instead of changing technology, manufacturing, laws and culture.
Those who get elected to political office is a reflection on our culture, if they are white washing the problem then it is because we elected them to do that. The politicians we elect are writing the laws, so the laws are also a reflection of our culture. Our culture drives our technology, and our technology drives our culture. As a culture we developed the automobile and an interstate highway system, and from that flows a culture that produces an entire genre of storytelling around road trips. With thi
Stop messing with my weather. (Score:2)
Definitely don't consider (Score:2)
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Politics. New Delhi is in a different province than the farmers burning their fields. Governed by different political parties who either are allied with or hate the party in charge at the federal level (the BJP).
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Re:Definitely don't consider (Score:5, Insightful)
Might just need small changes (Score:5, Insightful)
Much of the farming in India is still done by beasts of burden. They didn't have the "green revolution" like we did in the USA in the 1950s and 1960s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
If all you have are oxen to pull a plow then that makes it difficult to plow under the chaff from the previous harvest. Burning the chaff means not having to pick it all up and haul it away, and means keeping the valuable nutrients in that plant matter in the field. Not burning it means a lot more work to plow, and time is money. If India would have their own "green revolution" then they'd likely see much improved air quality. Big plows digging up acres upon acres of fields will sometimes kick up some dust, and we've seen air quality alerts from this every few years. That's not ash and smoke though like in India, with all kinds of complex chemistry to it to irritate the lungs, it is dust that is irritating in its own way and only seems to happen when a dry period overlaps when the farmers are out in the field, not something that happens every year.
Then comes the tailpipe emissions from people mixing cooking kerosene with gasoline for their vehicles. This is illegal as the cooking fuel is subsidized while the gasoline is taxed to pay for roads and such. It's nearly impossible to enforce the rules on paying the fuel tax so it is very common, and because it is so common that makes it difficult to enforce. Maybe India should reconsider their fuel taxes so people aren't incentivized to burn kerosene in their gasoline engines, with the kerosene producing plumes of soot and smoke because the engines aren't made to burn kerosene.
Oh, and plenty of people use kerosene for cooking because power outages are common. To cook by an electric stove requires a reliable supply of electricity, and if the power goes out in the middle of preparing a meal then that could mean a lot of wasted food and/or people getting sick. To mitigate against the power going out people cook with kerosene, and cooking with kerosene instead of natural gas or electricity will produce its own air quality problems.
The people battling with the air quality in India must know that what they are doing every day is creating this smog, but without some alternatives to basic needs like food and transportation they keep doing the same things in spite of it. They need some very fundamental changes to infrastructure and such to fix this, and that is going to take a lot of time and money. The USA got a kick start on their shift to industrial farming from World War 2. The rapid construction of factories during the war to make battle tanks and trucks meant that after the war there was an installed base of factories and labor to make tractors and such. The loss of a lot of farm boys to the war meant that there was a need to make up for manual labor with machines.
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Everything you said was true .... in the 1980s.
Um, okay, you got my attention.
India did have a green revolution and the farm fires are coming from Punjab- the area where mostly combines are used for harvesting.
But harvesting is just half of the process, there's planting that needs to happen. Maybe a third of the process because there's matters of fertilizing and such that happens between the planting and harvesting. If the stubble and chaff impede those processes then the ability of the harvester to manage without burning can still leave people burning their fields.
Manual harvesting like in Haryana does not leave stubble so no need to burn. Its only in areas where tractors and combines are used that burning is happening.
That's not what I have been reading. Burning the fields predates the use of tractors and combine harvesters so it wo
Bacterial colony reaching its limit... (Score:2)
And starting to die at the center due to waste-product buildup. If they do not very fast do something effective about the root-causes (and it looks like they cannot or are unwilling), any measure they take now will just shift the inevitable by a small margin.
Delhi is doing its part (Score:2)
Problem with too much dust in the air? (Score:2)
Add additional chemical dust.