Smog blankets Beijing, northern China, causes road closures around the country | Hacker News Reader

Smog blankets Beijing, northern China, causes road closures around the country

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61 pointsbeihismark32 comments

If you living under this kind of sky long enough, you'll get use to it and may even forgot what normal air looks like.

On a online forum of my home town (At Southern China), people often post images they took at a day with 200+ PM 2.5 reading, and call it a good day just because it's sunny.

And yes, sometime we have reading way over 200+ at south too, like this photo I took back in 2015 (PM 2.5 ~500): https://goo.gl/9NADxM

Luckily though, at south, we may have better air during summer (PM 2.5 ~70). And when that happens, the sky look like this: https://goo.gl/nzopX3.

The government's work had it's effect, but currently they only able to reduce the amount of (heavily) polluted days, rather than kill the pollution all together.

Personally, I think, regardless what the government trying to do, until we switched to cleaner energy sources and industries, that smog over there ain't go anywhere.

That all sounds so much better than a year or two ago. No, really!

Granted, it's during the Party Congress, and not yet winter (when smog usually peaks)... but PM2.5 under 300 isn't that bad. Over 3-400 is notable (like it was during the Beijing Marathon in 2014). Breaking 999 is also amazing, but used to happen in Hebei regularly.

Sadly, we'll have to wait a few months to see if it's actually better this year.

https://qz.com/283665/beijing-broke-its-own-air-quality-rule...

http://mashable.com/2016/12/20/china-air-pollution-red-alert...

Are there any reliable estimates on mortality related to this pollution? It must be considerable.

> but PM2.5 under 300 isn't that bad.

That's 300μg/m3.

A 5 μg/m3 increase in estimated annual mean PM2.5 was associated with a 13% increased risk of coronary events...

http://www.bmj.com/content/348/bmj.f7412

The city where I live has PM10 over a 100 on bad days during the winter, and I try to avoid opening the windows if at all possible (I have an air filter, but it's annoyingly loud). Note that smaller particles are more dangerous - PM10 are relatively big. PM2.5 isn't even measured by most weather stations here.

You can easily smell PM10 concentrations over 60 or so.

They mean bad relative to a normal day in Beijing, not in absolute terms.

Yes, no one wants to live in smog... even 100 PM2.5 is bad. It's just normal in northern China, especially in the winter.

Bay area air quality has been bad recently too, but complaining about it would show less empathy than our neighbors deserve.

Different scales. When the Bay Area hits 100 PM2.5, that is considered really really bad, heck, just being above 30 is considered bad. 100 in Beijing during winter is a good day, you don't have to go outside with your mask on.

When you routinely see numbers in the 400s and sometimes over 500, a mere 300 is a welcome reprieve.

It’s hard to say if things are better yet. They did another crackdown on factories, but if history is a guide, it will just be symbolic and temporary.

Living in Beijing from 2007-2016, there have been many instances where the government said it got better when it didn’t really, at least from my point of view.

I survived the Santa Rosa fires (my complex was evacuated but the flames got "only" within four block). The air was bad but it actually never reached the visibility limits of this photograph (that could be because we had only smoke and no fog, the super-dry air was a factor feeding the flames).

Scarily enough, China has nothing on some of the cities in India. Delhi pollution is regularly literally off the charts with readings above 999.

Is this part of the price we pay for low cost products made in China? Would we have this pollution in the U.S. if we didn't export our manufacturing?

Not necessarily, as there are more regulations for manufacturing factory pollution in the US.

China has plenty of regulations to clean up their air. They have a rule of law problem, however, in enforcing any of them. What the wind up doing is blanket crackdowns that are unsustainable and so peter out after a week or two.

The factories causing trouble for Beijing are not that far from the city. If the weather was always favorable, or if there were a mountain range in the way, it wouldn't be as bad. But sometimes when the wind is right, the smog settles under the city's temperature inversion and you pretty much have to wait for a rainstorm to clear it out.

If we removed regulations and built the same dirty factories in the USA, it might not cause the same problems if we put them in better locations.

Sometimes? Like most of winter when the wind in Beijing disappears and an inversion sets in (when the wind comes, it gets really cold but the air is clean, no need for rain). Beijing is comparable to Salt Lake City, which has its own inversion problem but doesn’t have polluting factories surrounding it in Hebei.

I am a big fan of the green energy show 'Fully Charged':

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaC1qgXaRvE

According to recent episodes things are looking very good for China and the electric car. The clever thing is how the Western car companies are not really needed, the joint ventures that they imposed on foreign marques doesn't apply with electric cars, here the Chinese government wan the whole pie, all made in China.

I think that China will be able to get rid of ICE cars as quick as they first obtained them, in part because the build quality of a lot of them wasn't that good to start with and also because there are people that can remember a time before these filthy machines came along. It is not like the West where only one's great-grandmother can remember the horse and cart, everyone else has only known car pollution.

If only ICE transportation was the whole problem. It's something though. Moving in the right direction, just maybe not at a quick enough pace.

Car pollution isn’t the major pollutant for Beijing, it’s more industrial, power production, and heating (coal); a lot of drifts in from Hebei and gets trapped in Beijing because it is shaped like a bowl. Cars have fairly good emissions in the jing, while the gas is kept clean also. You can actually see the pollution spike higher at night when the cars are mostly off the road and blue trucks come in from hebei without emissions equipment using crappy gas.

http://www.wri.org/blog/2008/07/beijings-air-pollution-it-is...

Electric cars will help for sure, but it isn’t going to solve the problem on its own. Shifting away from coal (especially for heating, especially in the Hebei country side), and getting factories in Hebei to obey the law is much more important.

My health improved considerably after I started using air-purifier to beat Delhi pollution woes. I take frequent breaks from the city and lock myself in when I feel pollution is bad. I live in one of the particularly worse parts of Delhi (pollution wise).

Is there a cheap way to measure air quality inside the house? Is it a job for a mini drone?

I really care about city-based air pollution, but don't know much about it.

> "Air pollution suspected for sharp rise in China lung cancer rate"

Well yeah, no shit.

I went to Beijing once, a couple years ago, for a 2-day business trip. The air looked like the photos in this article. I came home with a cough that lasted 2 weeks. The (rich, expat) people I met on that trip sent their kids to schools whose building were ensconced in pressurized tents, and virtually all said (when I asked) that they were taking steps to get out of China, specifically and solely because of the air (I don't think they had the option to move to another part of China with cleaner air, like Shenzhen).

I don't have any specific solution ideas pertaining to the problem, but it was pretty crazy to witness.

Lived in China for a few years in Shenzhen, until a few months ago. Then back in Silicon Valley.

There was a thread yesterday about China's awakening AI: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15568213. In it, a few posters mentioned a few things:

1.) This will give China the edge in almost every level and attract top researchers back. The US is losing its edge.

2.) The US will continue to cut funding for research and higher education in general. China has more than 4 times the population of the US, so the difference in potential numbers of AI-capable natives could be around 20 times

I had to laugh when I read some of those comments. These people have obviously never lived in China; From what I can tell online, some of these posters are Foreign-born, or currently foreign residing native Chinese, and some just plain hates US and wants to see anyone else succeed.

1.) Top researchers (especially those with family) won't move back to a country that will reduce the lifespan of themselves and those they love. The Chinese government always pay lip service year after year about reducing pollution. And it's always around the time of some sort of convention or foreign heads of state visits. Afterwards, the pollution comes back. In addition, great wall of censorship ensures that you will have a hard to finding information outside China's intranet, especially with VPN not working these days. Even if your college/company has a VPN setup, you will still run into trouble doing research. And no foreigner in China thinks Baidu is anywhere near the quality of Google. Finally, there are still issues of food and water. Look at this https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/77sxn9/chinese_food_... and see if you aren't disgusted by the food treatment in China. Who in the holy hell that is sane and smart is going to stay in China?

2.) China has a huge rural population, something like 700 million or half the population, that is under-educated and very poor. Just a quick search turns this up: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/09/one-three-chinese-chi.... 1 in 3 rural children have IQ below 90. We can probably count most of the rural population out of contributing to any sort of AI boom. Then you've got the middle class, maybe about 600 million, which makes about $1000/month. Obviously the smart and qualified ones are going to move abroad to get a good qualify of life, and better pay. Compare that to US, where US can tap the resources of the ENTIRE PLANET.

Silicon Valley is HEAVEN compared to any city in China.

"Obviously the smart and qualified ones are going to move abroad to get a good qualify of life"

Chinese emigration into the US is about 75 thousand a year https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_St... . It is not clear how many of that are skill based. So in your view how many of the 600 million worthy ones are "smart and qualified"? Not to say China doesn't have a brain drain problem, but quantity at a certain level is a quality in itself.

US is only one destination. More striking their net migration is -1.8 million per year. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_mig...

Still, 75,000 per year is quite a bit, China has 17 million births per year so ~1/2 a percent moves to the Us each year. Assuming it's concentrated among the top 5% that's 10% of their elite just gone to the US let alone EU etc.

The column heading says the 1.8 million number is for over a 5 year period. The same table on net migration shows China has -1.3 net migration per 1000 (over 5 years), not particularly high compared to other countries. Considering there are over 50 million Chinese living overseas https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_Chinese , the total is not that high either. Or is your contention that all smart Chinese already left China? I also don't know how you figured out that 10% of Chinese elite move to US. Have you heard of family based immigration?

Anyway here is some evidence that the trend is opposite to your supposition: Chinese chemistry Ph.D. grads are forgoing U.S. postdocs https://cen.acs.org/articles/95/i41/Chinese-chemistry-PhD-gr...

Net migration means people moving back are offset. Yes, the rate is not insane and it's not simply based on IQ or anything, but it's also not a random process. Presumably, the people with the best US prospects are more likely to stay.

As to 10% figure, I am simply making the point that each year adds up. 75k per year might not seem huge, but you hit 1.5 million in 20 years. And again that's just the US, the brain drain is cumulative across all countries people are migrating to.

China knows this, which is why Chinese companies set up research centers in Silicon Valley to attract talent. e.g. Andrew Ng when he worked at Baidu.

They need to ban coal really, or find some way to capture the pollutants.

Has anyone here visited China?

I want to visit once in my life particularly to Beijing, Xi'an, and Shanghai. Hong Kong and Taiwan would be side trips as part of the same trip.

Just go. It’s great. Go to Yunnan. TripAdvisor is pretty good if you want tips for a short trip and you’re just going for a short visit. But don’t go in winter unless you’re going to the south.

Do western China. Part of Tibet is in China.

There is also a sketchy panda reserve that will let you hold a baby panda

Go to Jiuzhaigou

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