Delhi Wants Artificial Rain To Tackle Worsening Air Pollution (msn.com) 41
India's capital territory of Delhi is keen to use artificial rain to fight air pollution this year, its Environment Minister Gopal Rai said on Tuesday, as deteriorating air quality in the region led to an increase in respiratory illnesses. From a report: Large swathes of north India battle pollution each winter as cold air traps dust, vehicle emissions and smoke from farm fires in the breadbasket states of Punjab and Haryana, shrouding the national capital and its suburbs in a toxic haze. Cloud-seeding - the method of triggering rain by seeding clouds with salts - was considered to curb pollution in 2023 too but the plan did not materialise due to unfavourable weather conditions.
"I appeal to the federal environment minister...now in Delhi and north India, the pollution has reached the border of 400," Rai told reporters, referring to the air quality index (AQI) score on Tuesday. "The next 10 days are quite crucial...help us get permission for artificial rain, call a meeting," he said. About a third of Delhi's 39 monitoring stations showed a severe AQI score of more than 400 on Tuesday, a level which affects healthy people but is more serious for those fighting disease. An air quality score of zero to 50 is considered good.
"I appeal to the federal environment minister...now in Delhi and north India, the pollution has reached the border of 400," Rai told reporters, referring to the air quality index (AQI) score on Tuesday. "The next 10 days are quite crucial...help us get permission for artificial rain, call a meeting," he said. About a third of Delhi's 39 monitoring stations showed a severe AQI score of more than 400 on Tuesday, a level which affects healthy people but is more serious for those fighting disease. An air quality score of zero to 50 is considered good.
What could possibly... (Score:2)
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well...... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: well...... (Score:2)
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Only the corpses.
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India just approved $9.5 BILLION to build new coal-fired power plants. Even this cloud seeding band-aid won't be enough. Idiots. Maybe the rest of the globe should impose climate related sanctions on the biggest polluters, like the US and China for instance.
Well now - air pollution, There are som interesting statistics - let's take the number of deaths caused by air pollution. The US - who you apparently believe is number on in pollution deaths is at 1.1 percent - so the rest of the worelds must be damn near air pollutin free.
Let's take a look to see how the world stacks up. China - 20.1 percent of deaths are air pollution. India - 18.5 percent. Here's the source. You aren't going to like it. https://ourworldindata.org/air... [ourworldindata.org]
I don't want to disabuse you
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I don't want to disabuse you of your hatred of the USA, so if you like, you can sanction us to assuage your booboo feelings. Another point you imagined. I don't hate the US; I'm 7th generation American. I al
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I'm with you, but not all the way. In the USA, reporting deaths is sort of a joke, remember covid? People die of stuff, and it's hardly ever related to any sort of environmental pollutants. Otherwise there'd be legit lawsuits, and uhh.... yeah. The lawyers always have the ability to trump scientists in the ole USA, and the beat goes on.
On the other hand, if you take a day-trip out shopping in India or China, and you were wearing a white shirt in the morning, you'll be wearing a brownish shirt in the eve
Mist cannons anybody (Score:2)
Get them Chemtrails going (Score:2)
Put more shit in the air to get shit out of the air. It couldn't be more obvious.
Got you covered (Score:2)
Seriously? (Score:3, Insightful)
Artificial rain isn't going to cut it. That place needs a hosing down with a giant pressure washer. Plus 99% of structures need to be torn down, modern (1950s designs will suffice) sewage system put in, buildings/housing rebuilt with wide roads, and street vendors forced to USE FUCKING UTENSILS (not gloves, as the gloves quickly get as dirty as hands) and comply with decent hygiene standards. Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
WARNING DO NOT CLICK ON THE REFERENCE LINKS IF YOU HAVE A WEAK HEART, ARE EATING, ATE RECENTLY, OR INTEND TO HAVE A MEAL SOMETIME IN THE NEXT 48 HOURS.
I only put multiple links to show it isn't a one-off. India should fucking learn from places like Singapore which has a much higher population density yet the place is pristine in most places outside of pockets of "Little India".
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Ah yes, the excitement and adventure of eating street food in countries with no food health standards....
I admit it was tasty and I didn't get sick but I couldn't identify what animal the meat came from. It was certainly nothing found in any Western diet.
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I only put multiple links to show it isn't a one-off. India should fucking learn from places like Singapore which has a much higher population density yet the place is pristine in most places outside of pockets of "Little India".
Well if you are going to do that - here's how they get rid of that food.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Yeah, another content warning. Kinda gross.
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Exactly. What they need is chocolate rain [youtube.com]. Or, better yet, chubby rain [imdb.com].
Not sure what gloves have to do with air quality. (Score:4, Interesting)
But I do admire you unbridled racism. Please, do tell us more.
As for the only thing that are relevant to the discussion... "buildings/housing rebuilt with wide roads" - yeah... about that.
41% of PM2.5 air pollution in Delhi is from cars, 21.5% from dust/fire and 18% from industries. [indiatimes.com]
I.e. That construction and roads you are calling for is where the air pollution is coming from.
They went from 2.5 million cars in 2000 to 10.5 million in 2018. Also, Delhi already has the highest road density in India (2103 km/100 km2).
But why stop there... Let's hear more about how your puny little racist skull is empty of facts and full of shit.
You want THE ENTIRE INDIA (not just Delhi we're talking about here) to be more like Singapore.
India should fucking learn from places like Singapore which has a much higher population density
You may not know this but... for one Singapore is an island state. Kinda like Hawaii, but closer to the shore.
It's population is about 6 million, with the density of about 7804/km2.
Delhi, alone, is an inland, urban agglomeration of several cities, it's urban population alone being about 16.3 million (back in 2011) with population density of 11312/km2.
Metro area is about 28.5 million (2018) - second only to Tokyo.
India on the other hand is the seventh largest country by territory, on this planet, and BIGGEST by population with over 1.4 billion humans.
But wait, there is more... Besides Singapore being a tiny island - they have basically banned cars for everyone but the insanely rich and taxi companies.
For one, you are basically not allowed to own a car older than 10 years. They do that by limiting the total number of cars in Singapore.
You want a car - either get rid of the one you already have OR wait for someone else to do so and then OUTBID THEM for the "certificate of entitlement".
Which will allow you to register the car - at 100% to 240% of car's Open Market Value.
On top of that - cars there cost about FIVE TIMES [bloomberg.com] what they do in the US.
Now, while I am all for reducing the number of cars... I do not think such practices would work elsewhere, not just in India.
After all, in most other places government can't administer beating people as punishment or ban them from protesting - like they do in Singapore.
Hell, you need a police permit for a family lunch - any public gathering of five or more people is illegal in Singapore without a police permit. [archive.org]
Remember - that's the country where chewing gum is illegal. [holidify.com]
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Where was the racism in what I said? I criticized India/Indians for tolerating unhygienic behavior.
Is the behavior hygienic? .. the answer is yes: https://jhpn.biomedcentral.com... [biomedcentral.com] )
Are many Indians (who live in a democracy and can make rules) tolerating it?
Does India have a high rate of communicable disease? (Hint
No amount of lame excuses about population density suffice. If anything high population density requires extra attention to hygiene. You can't accept realities and facts, and resort to calling me
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Having worked in food preparation, I know this: It's why most kitchens avoid gloves. In other kitchens, the rules say "put-on gloves", not "remove gloves every time one leaves the food prep. station", not "avoid shaking hands or touching other people during food prep". So people do shit while wearing gloves then return to touching food. Contrast that with a hospital where the nurses change gloves every 5 minutes.
Artificial rain for thee none for mee. (Score:2)
Well, I know they will do it anyway so I'm not holding my breath - but then I'm not in Delhi.
AQI 400 is crazy dangerous high (Score:2)
Even if artificial rain wasn't a dumb idea and cleaned out the air, they are doing nothing about the root causes of where all that crap came from in the first place. It won't take more than a couple of weeks, at best, for it to get that bad again.
They need to fix the source of AQI 400, not slap a political bandaid on it.
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Even if artificial rain wasn't a dumb idea and cleaned out the air, they are doing nothing about the root causes of where all that crap came from in the first place. It won't take more than a couple of weeks, at best, for it to get that bad again.
They need to fix the source of AQI 400, not slap a political bandaid on it.
They cannot fix the source of the problem without having the entire country Go DARK or GO HUNGRY ... due to banning coal that feeds their stoves & electricity power plants.
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They don't have to do it all at once. But they need a serious plan to make it happen relatively quickly. They can't artificially induce rain all year long forever.
The less coal and other crap they burn the cleaner the air will get. It may never be pristine Eden but 400 will literally kill you of some nasty diseases and make your life suck. You may not die tomorrow but your odds of various cancers and lung problems etc are very high.
Air pollution + rain = water pollution (Score:2)
If the air is getting so bad that you need rain to sweep out particulate, you're going to get some really dirty water coming from the sky. Can't see that being entirely beneficial.
How human (Score:2)
Cause a problem, the solution is inconvenient... So do something to move the problem around a bit instead of fixing it. And hey, maybe even cause a new problem while doing so.
Real Crisis (Score:2)
Burning crop residue (Score:2)
Except in a few rare instances that require a permit, no one burns crop land in my agricultural area in Canada. And we'd be stupid to do it. Burning crop residue is literally burning nutrients. Sometimes flax residue is burned because it doesn't chop and takes a long time to break down in the soil. However now farmers are using different harvesting techniques with flax (stripping the seed boils off the plant rather than cutting the stems) and treating the residue with a mix of biologicals and UAN fertili
Re:Burning crop residue (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed, I think that's the root of their problems with air pollution. They rotate rice and wheat every season, so they need to burn the rice paddy down in order to plant wheat. Even with machinery and chemical fertilizers, rice can be rather troublesome to deal with. The ash left over does have nutrients in it, but some of it also floats away and is carried to a neighbor's field. I suspect the scope of the paddy burns is so great that most farmers kind of break even on the nutrients they lose to the burn versus the ash that falls from their neighbors.
India is often on a knife's edge of starvation, and they don't have the luxury of rotating through non-food crops or letting a field go fallow for a season. But the nation is also badly managed at the state and national level. With quick and cheap solutions that avoid disrupting farmers being preferred over difficult to quantify quality of life issues that residence in major cities face.
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Sky to water (Score:1)
Not knowing anything about Dalhi's water systems, I'm not sure that would be a great idea... especially for those down river.
Are their water cleaning facilities and plumbing systems up to snuff? That said it does look like they get a lot of rain in July, I'm just not sure how spread out that is.
Law enforcement problem (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Law enforcement problem (Score:2, Insightful)
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Costs money. I guess government officials will have to steal less money in order to help farmers buy tractors.
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"More than 10 million farmers live and work in Punjab. Burning the crop is the cheapest option, so that’s why it has continued."
-https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/stubble-burning-problem-solutions-9033982/
They won't do it, but farmers need to learn how to scythe again. Barring that, combine harvesters need modifying to not leave huge stubble. The introduction of combines not only added huge amounts of Diesel fuel to farmers expenses, but they are designed to remove only the tops of the