Comments on: Pollution Worsens Following Traffic Restrictions (a lot)

By: Josh

Josh — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 23:18:16 +0000

Yeah, nice weather. Just like it was the week before the regulations went into effect. It’s more luck than control. You can’t have terrible policies for 20 years and good ones for 15 days and expect it to work.

And this morning proves that. Welcome back soup.

By: big jas

big jas — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 10:42:54 +0000

hi josh and friends - any comments on the weather at the moment. The papers / media outside of china are full of reports about how clean it is there now with conflicting information on whether or not it’s because of the anti pollution measures or because it rained.

By: chriswaugh_bj

chriswaugh_bj — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 04:19:06 +0000

Nanhe, no I have never read any such article, but then again, banking doesn’t really interest me. Care to provide us with any examples, or should we assume that this is just another of your baseless allegations? In fact, I’ve never heard any Chinese person say anything of the sort and have never met a Chinese anti-Semite (I assume that is your allegation). Just for the record: The only person I have ever heard talk about the Jewish control of the global banking system is a white American, from Ohio, ex-Navy SEAL, Gulf War vet.

By: nanheyangrouchuan

nanheyangrouchuan — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 17:03:03 +0000

@ Chris
“but very often a northerly or norwester does actually clean the air out a lot,”

If it is the prevailing wind, the same current clears out Shanghai during the fall and spring equinox for a couple of weeks. But if the prevailing current is countered by other currents and isn’t strong enough to overcome the others, you’d have fairly stable air.

The Nazi Olympics are being repeated, I’m sure you’ve read a few Chinese articles about Jewish control of the global banking system.
Bad China.

By: chriswaugh_bj

chriswaugh_bj — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 00:00:47 +0000

Josh: My point was simply that with such uncooperative weather it really was unreasonable to expect instant results. We’ll see how things go now that yesterday’s wind and rain have cleared things up a bit.

Nanheyangrouchuan: You have one good point, and I have seen southerly or soueasterly winds bring in more airborne shit from Tianjin, Langfang and Baoding (and doubtless places further afield- I imagine the Shengli Oilfield makes a fairly good sized contribution), but very often a northerly or norwester does actually clean the air out a lot, as counter-intuitive as that may seem considering such a wind sweeps over Baotou, Hohhot, Datong and Zhangjiakou before hitting Beijing. And it’s a pretty funny ocean breeze that brings pollution in from Heilongjiang. And the Nazi Games happened in 1936. No connection to Beijing.

By: Nick

Nick — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 05:02:36 +0000

Ofcourse its highly likely that emissions from outside Beijing are undermining their efforts, no matter how nobel they are. China is still China where I live.

By: nanheyangrouchuan

nanheyangrouchuan — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 04:53:07 +0000

No one is really discussing the effect that pollution from western and eastern provinces has on Beijing’s air. Fronts moving from the west (along with the sand storms) will pick up any and all pollution from northwestern E. Turkestan all the way to the 6th ring road and any winds coming off of the ocean can push pollution in from Heilongjiang province. Any coal mines/seam fires, traffic conjestion, power generation (which Beijing is ramping up in its satellite cities and other provinces to make sure there are no brown outs during the Nazi Games, so there is a big source of pollution) and heavy industry that is even a few hundred miles away can accumulate as it travels over other sources.

By: Josh

Josh — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 03:47:36 +0000

@Chris,

Of course the restrictions don’t make it WORSE, but they really screwed up when they decided it would make it better anytime soon.

By: Yokie Kuma

Yokie Kuma — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 03:33:58 +0000

Big fans. Huge, monstrous, big fans. Blow out the bad air and suck in the good air from the clean neighboring towns. Such as ….. oh yeah. That won’t work.

By: chriswaugh_bj

chriswaugh_bj — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 03:20:33 +0000

Come on Josh, let’s be fair and look at the effect the weather has had on air quality. Now, I’m not denying the shitty air quality of the last week at all, but it seems to me that the amount of pollution emitted from internal combustion engines could not possibly have increased with the restrictions unless pissed off drivers are leaving their engines running on days they’re not allowed to drive, and I have seen no evidence of that. One other thing that happened on July 20 was a mass of still, humid air settling over the city. This happens often in the summer- it is the wet season, remember. It also seems to trap the pollution. So although less pollution was being emitted, there was no wind or rain to clear it out, it was trapped in the city where it built up, resulting in yesterday’s thick soup of nastiness.

Funny how the air is so much clearer this morning than it was yesterday now that we finally have a decent breeze, light rain and a looming thunder storm…. I’ll be very curious to see what today’s API is.

So the traffic restrictions are good and can only reduce emissions, but whether that translates into better air depends on several factors, one of which is the weather gods’ cooperation, and not even the CCP has much influence over them.