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Earth

Delhi Trudges Through Another Air Pollution Nightmare With No Answers (nytimes.com) 71

Posted by msmash from the can't-breathe dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: On Tuesday morning, the air quality in India's capital under a widely used index stood at 485. While that is almost five times the threshold for healthy breathing, it felt like a relief: The day before, the reading had shot up to 1,785. Infinitesimal air particles were still clogging lungs and arteries, but it was possible to see sunlight again, and to smell things.

[...] Every year this suffocating smog accompanies the drop in temperatures as the plains of north India shed their unbearable heat for wintertime cool. And like clockwork, political leaders roll out emergency measures intended to quit making the problem worse. Yet India seems powerless to reduce the effects of this public health catastrophe, as its politicians stay busy trading blame and trying to outmaneuver one another in legal battles.

The haze was so shocking this week that Delhi's chief minister, Atishi, who goes by one name, declared it a "medical emergency" endangering the lives of children and older people. The Supreme Court, whose members also live in the capital, chided the national government for responding too slowly and ordered special measures: halting construction work and blocking some vehicles from the roads. Schools were closed indefinitely to protect students.
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Delhi Trudges Through Another Air Pollution Nightmare With No Answers More

Delhi Trudges Through Another Air Pollution Nightmare With No Answers

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  • Climate change isn't just a temperature rise, it's filling the atmosphere with chemical garbage. Coal power, fossil fuel vehicles, crypto mining, wooden stoves, anything that burns turns into smog.

    • Re:Stop burning stuff then (Score:5, Informative)

      by XXongo ( 3986865 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2024 @01:56PM (#64960299) Homepage
      This particular problem is not climate change, it is old-fashoned pollution. https://www.bbc.com/news/artic... [bbc.com]

      A significant source is burning fields to clear stubble in Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, but other sources of airborne particulates [indiatimes.com] contribute, too.

      Your top line, however, is correct: ultimately: stop burning stuff, then.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by skam240 ( 789197 )

        So "old-fashion pollution" doesnt cause global warming? Burning crops only effects air quality?

        I don't think you understand the issue of global warming like you seem to think you do.

        • Re:Stop burning stuff then (Score:5, Insightful)

          by XXongo ( 3986865 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2024 @02:28PM (#64960363) Homepage

          So "old-fashion pollution" doesnt cause global warming?

          This is particulate pollution. Particulates can be either warming or cooling, depending on the scattering albedo, but low level particulate pollution like this doesn't really have a significant climate impact, no.

          Burning crops only effects air quality?

          The article we're discussing is about air quality.

          In addition to the particulates being discussed here, which causes the local pollution discussed here, burning fields releases carbon dioxide which of course does have greenhouse effect identical to any other carbon dioxide released. But that's not what is being discussed. It's also so tiny a portion of the carbon dioxide emitted worldwide (about 0.00001%) that you could not detect the greenhouse effect. If you want to complain about India's contribution to the greenhouse effect, complaing about their coal-fired power plants, the emissions from which dwarf the seasonal burning.

          I don't think you understand the issue of global warming like you seem to think you do.

          And I don't think you understand the issue of global warming at all.

          • India and their neighbor China get most of their electrical energy from coal. Could that be the culprit?

          • Perhaps we could fill the atmosphere with smart nanoparticles with programmable clumpiness/affinity to create cool-/hot-spots as needed.

        • But politicians claim that global warming is a hoax. All those billionaires can't all be wrong can they?

          • The real problem climate deniers are the folks who think we can fix the problem without inconveniencing them. They can add an electric car to the road and air condition their huge house with a heat pump and the problem will be solved. Oh, and buy carbon offsets when they fly off on vacation because that will magically eliminate the emissions from the plane. Of course a lot of the folks who deny climate change is happening at all are really just opposed to having to do anything about it. But they are less d

    • Stop burning stuff then

      This must be incorrect as TFS -title states there are NO answers.

  • The sky is literally blocked out with pollution, it is impossible to breathe normally, and they're still really only taking last minute knee-jerk action with very short term partial effects.

  • India refuses to learn the lesson of other countries and continues to burn fossil fuels. At this point, wind and solar are cheaper than coal. Roll out those solutions rather than stubbornly insist on old solutions such as coal which are worse for everyone, including yourselves.

    • Re:Refuse to learn (Score:5, Informative)

      by caseih ( 160668 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2024 @02:10PM (#64960329)

      The problem is not just fossil fuels. Most of the pollution is coming from burning fields to clear crop residue. This practice is already against the law but apparently authorities are turning a blind eye. Perhaps they would be smarter to assist farmers in getting the tools they need to deal with residue without burning. Here in North America, burning crop residue generally requires permitting and is not usually done anymore on a large scale. Residue is dealt with in other ways, such as baling it for animal bedding or chopping it more finely and incorporating it into the soil. Burning crop residue is literally burning nutrients that will have to be purchased later in the form of fertilizers. There are options but no doubt Indian farmers don't have the resources, equipment, and knowledge to do it. Indian government has to step up and help them make this change. Food production is in everyone's interest in every country.

      • You are absolutely right, the government needs to step it up.
        https://indianexpress.com/arti... [indianexpress.com]

        "[Hay baler] machines have been around for a decade, and currently around 2,000 of them operate in Punjab. Of these 1,268 are highly subsidised (50-80%) under the Centre’s Crop Residue Management (CRM) scheme."

        This is where government regulation, subsidies and enforcement are necessary. It's not like nobody knows the answers, they're just not implementing them until it becomes too big of a problem to ignore.

      • Burning fields is just obviously stupid. But alternatives require having more money, even if that money is for education (plow the old stuff under and rotate the crops). India is still fundamentally a third world developing country, with vast amounts of the country stuck where Europe was in the industrial revolution.

        What worked when the population was smaller becomes a massive unworkable solution when the population has grown exponentially. Even greenhouse gases would not be a big problem if we only had

      • I think field burning is often done not just to get rid of stubble but to kill the weeds and weed seeds. So the solution is not just tilling but herbicides. Those cost money. The wealthy people complaining about pollution are in the cities and the poor folks burning fields are in the country. So it may be that field burning really is the major source of the problem or it may be that the farmer's are convenient scapegoats.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by caseih ( 160668 )

          Good points. Crop residue burning is a major part of their current problems. If they could stop the practice, air quality would be a lot better (but still not awesome with all the coal burning and cars and trucks). As a farmer myself I hope it didn't appear that I was pointing fingers at the farmers. I'm completely in favor of countries assisting their farmers for the benefit of everyone.

          Herbicide use comes with its own set of problems as you say. Cost is obvious a major one, but the herbicide resistance

          • It's almost as though people in general have forgotten where food comes from.

            It comes from McDonald's, but not Old McDonald's Farm. You may be surprised how little people know about farming.

    • I'm not sure that is the case if you have no standards for mining, no standards for smokestack emissions and no standards for ash disposal.

      You can make coal quite cheap if you push all the costs onto someone else.

      • That still looks like a whole group of lessons that other countries learned for how to deal with these problems that India refuses to learn.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dstwins ( 167742 )
      Its not so much refuses to learn as there needs to be enough infrastructure in place to support alternatives.. And while there is, its not accessible/affordable to the masses yet.. which means most fall back on old polluting methods with the mindset of the future being some "far off" location that doesn't matter when you are hungry/cold NOW!.

      Until now, most countries (despite what many want to claim), have left it up to "the market".. and that works when there are cost effective alternatives.. but when your

  • Which India claimed they are doing.

    How much worse will it get if more and more factories were built to made the cheap stuff for Americans? And the coal power plants that will need to built to power those factories? And add the trucks that will be transporting the coal?

  • And the first and most important ones are the assholes they elected to be their leaders.

  • India's problems are caused by the same thing as most countries now - disparity of wealth. Those with enough wealth can isolate themselves from social problems. These are the people who have money that could solve those problems but they aren't seriously effected by them so they don;t. We won't deal with global warming for the same reason.

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