NASA images show China pollution clear amid slowdown | Hacker News Reader

NASA images show China pollution clear amid slowdown

bbc.com

120 pointsrusty__68 comments

During the plague years, airborne lead levels in Europe fell to 0.

When the sickness came, it caused massive social upheaval in the populations it infected, shutting down entire human industries as ravaged communities went into damage control.

One of these affected industries, according to historian Alexander More from Harvard University, was lead mining and smelting by medieval workers – and thanks to his team's new study, we've got more than historical records to show that.

https://www.sciencealert.com/ancient-ice-dating-from-the-bla...

This was a little different. Lead levels were due to iron smelting -- the production of new iron from ore. As the population dropped, it became more economical to recycle already smelted iron that wasn't being used any more (because its owners were, y'know, dead). So there was no market for ore for a few decades.

The pollution levels in that case reflect a rapid change in a single industry due to what amounts to a buffer overflow, not economic activity per se.

China also has mini-mills that process steel scrap. They are cheaper to run than iron smelters.

> Lead levels were due to iron smelting

Not only iron, but silver as well

I have been saying for a while that the world is going to start getting shortages for many items we use as China is somewhere in the value chain for most of the world's production. China can't go back to full production anytime soon as it has just now got some control of the virus spread and it would need to stay in this mode for another 1-2 months if it wants to stop the spread.

I sold all my tech stocks last Monday and went all in on SPY puts. This will impact way more than 2008.

There are a lot of things that are only produced in China, but how many of those things can reasonably be produced somewhere else even if they're currently not? Production issues in China are bad for China, but from an economic perspective they may even stimulate the countries that production moves to.

Also, the efficient market hypothesis says that any public information should already be priced in.

That somewhere else is rapidly becoming a bigger problem than China right now.

If you consider that many countries will be affected by the virus, then the move will not happen in the near term. It might happen after the global recovery though.

It takes years to set up industries. This is not a video game other countries cant start producing in the next few months it will take time. And how willing would someone be in investing billions today that might be useful in 1-2 years but at the same time be aware that once china is full production they might not be able to compete for price/quality. Even the machines to manufacture stuff are mostly produced in china

Especially if the virus just started building up in the country you'd move the production to.

> It takes years to set up industries.

It takes years to set up industries from scratch in competition with incumbents. How long does it take when you're the same company, have access to the people who know how to do it and can spend more resources than normal because low supply has resulted in high prices?

> And how willing would someone be in investing billions today that might be useful in 1-2 years but at the same time be aware that once china is full production they might not be able to compete for price/quality. Even the machines to manufacture stuff are mostly produced in china

It's events like this that cause reevaluation of supply chain diversity. Companies don't want this to happen again, so they keep the new facilities online even when the old ones come back to hedge against it happening again.

The steel for the machines comes from China, but many of the actual industrial machines are made in Europe and America; especially Germany is famous for that.

Do you think people who are forced to stay home for long periods of time will use less Facebook or Google, or do less online shopping?

Online shopping needs money.

Which most people won't have much of if they can't work.

And even if they do have money, the uncertainty around makes people more cautious when spending, limiting unnecessary consumption.

Speak for the US. ;-)

Some countries have health care systems that continue payment when you’re ill or in quarantine. At least for a while.

As much as I want to believe in that I doubt any system could support even 20% of incapacitated workers at the same time. Most healthcare system in Europe are barely at equilibrium.

There were a number of stress tests, not necessarily for the health system but for the similarly funded unemployment and social systems. Overall it worked quite well in most of Europe.

I except to see an increase in Internet usage. could be interesting to see how the current capacity can handle the load if sourcing materials from china is a no-go.

I was not talking about tech but production in general. China manufactures a lot more than the tech we use. And also provides materials for production in other countries. For example a jacket or clothes manufacturer in another country might be getting its buttons, zippers etc from China so even their production will slow down or stop.

On Feb 04 it was announced that Hyandui, in South Korea, shut down some car production lines because of lack of parts from China.

Why do people think gambling is a good way to get rich all of the sudden?

because too many people read r/wsb and think they've got an edge now

Changed your mind? I made a good amount of money on those SPY puts. It offset my losses in my 401k entirely, which was my goal.

Yeah I think I’m going to sell all of mine too. Based on how market reacted on Thursday, it’s a frenzy. What is SPY puts?

I think the worst is still to come. Especially since it’s hit the US and we’re hearing of many new cases all around the world.

I think we may have a mini recession if we don’t have it under control.

the world consumption of lots of those products is also expected to drop when other countries start to deal the virus themselves.

This reminds me of when all the planes in the USA (and several other countries) were grounded after 9/11 and there was some evidence that it affected our temperature variation because there weren't any contrails in the sky.

http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/08/07/contrails.climate...

It's crazy to think, if human civilization were to shut down the earth would fairly rapidly become much better off. Other species would flourish again, plants would slowly take over our cities. There'd be less bickering. Hm.

"a new market for virus infection has emerged"

-- financial analyst

“Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.”

― Douglas Adams

Also Douglas Adams:

“In the beginning the Universe was created. This had made many people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.“

I had that quote on the tip of my tongue, but couldn't fully remember it.

I have the books, and original radio broadcasts, and I love the movie with Martin Freeman and Mos Def, but my all time fav is the TV series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_th...

Until the sun turned into a red giant, and all life on earth, potentially in the universe, was extinguished forever. Which is kinda sad for all those species and the universe overall.

But yeah, less bickering.

> Until the sun turned into a red giant

That's still far away

Indeed. Before that happens there is also the supervolcano in Oregon and probably dozens of huge rocks on the scale similar to what happened 65m years ago. But let’s not be pessimistic! Think of the children.

The current push of environmentalism is sticking because it is clear that the current level of comfort is unsustainable on our current path. Our habitat is facing an existential crisis. I don’t think its noble to ignore the well-being of other lifeforms, but I think it is inaccurate to say that we are pushing environmentalism for their benefit.

True but the point is to make earth a better place for us. But plants and animals with fight tooth and nails for sunlight and food ;)

So much for the argument that cutting pollution would never be possible.

You do realize the economy came to a halt with everybody isolated in quarentines? I think we have to sacrifice air quality for the sake of progress for now.

Hmmm, survival of the planet vs progress of the economy.

That’s a false dichotomy.

But that's what Damorian was suggesting

Killing progress of economy would make the planet much much worse off long term.

Notice how the richest countries have the cleanest environments - that's not by happenstance, it's because with basic needs met, people are willing to spend effort on the environment.

It might also be able to be argued that those countries refuse to allow production that includes all those chemicals, so we offload that production to other countries that aren’t so strict, suggesting that we ourselves and our wants are a major source of their production and that all these advanced countries are doing a great job contributing to pollution, just through a middle man.

Or that companies that could do the job with lower pollution at greater cost domestically are outcompetes by companies that do not have to worry about pollution. For example, China’s cheaper but polluting processing of rare earths drove everyone else outside of China out of business.

Trade agreements will eventually have to capture externalities like pollution to ensure fairness. Otherwise, capitalism will simply not work when different companies get to play by different rules based on their location.

Well, capitalism will continue to work great at what it does. The problem is that pollution isn't really something capitalism tends to select for.

What is this basic bullshit? Who makes China so polluted? Are the Chinese themselves consuming all the shit they make that makes their cities polluted? Or is it the rest of the world and China grew by being a massive net exporter?

This is like how the British lamented about the abject poverty in India after raping the country for hundreds of years. "willing to spend effort on the environment" my ass. Move the production chains back into those countries. We'll see how long the air remains clear despite temperate latitudes having the benefit of better weather systems.

As China gets wealth they will reduce their environmental impact. They will have the money to do so. It's not blaming them to state that poorer countries don't have the resources to clean up their production. Progress is required to develop clean energy, that will require economic activity.

There is a pretty strong correlation between wealth and environmental impact. Wealthier countries are in general not great for the environment.

Entirely missing the point. It isn't "poor country has unclean air", it is "mass producer has unclean air". There are no technologies that rich countries are hoarding and using to clean their air that is too costly for poorer nations. If you moved all of this production back to developed countries, their air won't be clean either.

Just because China took the hit of having unclean air in order to manufacture stuff for the world's needs so it could raise its population from poverty, doesn't mean that they don't have enough money to get any rich country tech that can clean the air. No technology can work effective enough at the rate that China manufactures shit that all developed countries use without realising where it's sourced from.

In the long run, economical and industrial progress is still better for the environment. The key is new technologies. There is no pollution that cannot be cleaned up, the question is only in the cost, and that depends directly on the tech.

Ultimately, any piece of trash or a dangerous chemical can be separated into atoms (e.g. with a plasma burner) that can be separated into pure chemical elements that then can be used to create products or chemically neutralized. The problem is only in the cost of energy, and that's, again, a question of tech. With fusion reactors, we'll have a way to solve world's pollution problems easily. So yes, developed countries ARE moving towards a clean environment. The solution is to move faster, not try to slow down the progress in economy, industry and technology with greenie measures that achieve only temporary pollution slow-down while postponing the real future solutions.

British still lament about that, don’t be mistaken. Not all of them, but many still do.

>Notice how the richest countries have the cleanest environments

Per capita rich countries produce much higher CO2 though.

That’s not because the richer countries are being “clean” as in consuming less resources and polluting less. They are just doing it less in their boarders. They are exporting the dirty manufacturing and in many cases literally trash to poorer countries. If every country became like the US in terms of wealth and consumption tomorrow we are all screwed.

The planet will survive

> progress of the economy.

I take it this means headlong consumerism? If so, I think this is could be a net positive for Humanity, and perhaps a pause in the order of things to re-evaluate one's value system.

I'd prefer to be healthy and of sound mind, which requires the planet no descend into an uninhabitable wasteland, than to continue and have every trinket factory come from China come back online.

I warmly recommend the book Factfulness by Hans Rosling. Stunning revelations that should be obvious but somehow aren't on every page. One of the most striking ones are his points on climate & development - especially that many people aspire to live a decent live and sadly the quickest way to get there is often polluting. This doesn't mean they are bad people, it's just normal humans that want to offer their kids a better future and themselves have a tiny bit of comfort.

The ones wasteful is still mostly us, the rich Western countries (not to mention the Emirates & similar oil countries). Yes we should give up some of our consumerism. You don't need that 2nd TV or new car. But can you tell the Chinese migrant worker that he can't buy a washing machine for his mom? Or the Bangladeshi call centre agent that she can't have a new apartment with warm water and electric sockets?

To a certain extent I find the parent post somewhat valid. If you think of "economy" as all the crap in my house that I want to get rid of, then sure. But ultimately we got to where we are (7B humans) by being a social species and developing the machinery to feed, clothe, shelter our population en masse. And machinery to make the machinery, and so on.

And much of that machinery may be subsidized by economy of scale that's driven largely by people's fascination with buying unnecessary shiny objects, the same way ads make free search and TV possible. Without that subsidy, the machinery to support life would be more expensive.

Our population may not be sustainable if there's a sudden dramatic and long-lived shutdown of this machinery. Maybe in the short term, sure. But over the long term even a minor shutdown could have big repercussions. Or maybe not. Interesting thing is, this whole covid episode, if it lasts a while, will help shed light on those questions.

progress != buy lots of stuff

I have read that lung diseases are common in China and that in big cities the smog shortens the average lifespan by 5years. Could better air quality for one year significantly improve people’s health, or is one year too short?

This is entirely speculation, but I think the poor air quality could also explain/contribute to the differences in COVID-19 mortality. I read somewhere that smokers were more susceptible to the disease. It seems like populations with poorer air quality could also be more susceptible.

Not much changes without a forcing function.

second order consequences

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