How bad pollution in China really is?

"El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First!" (lightningzone) 02/09/2015 at 17:05 • Filed to: None

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And some of our politicians want to deregulate the economy and especially fossil fuels again, because maybe pollution isn't that bad and global warming is a hoax, obviously.

For Sweden > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! 02/09/2015 at 17:08

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Almost as bad as the Soviets.

Textured Soy Protein > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! 02/09/2015 at 17:20

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I think I know how they feel .

El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! > Textured Soy Protein 02/09/2015 at 17:27

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I bet they feel that every day, all day.

Ouch.

Sejji > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! 02/09/2015 at 17:31

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Makes you kinda want to live in a high rise, right?

Milky > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! 02/09/2015 at 17:33

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The fuck …… how could you even …. isn't China fucking loaded now? Why can't they fix any of that shit. Those photos are actually disturbing.

Mongo > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! 02/09/2015 at 17:38

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Don't think we should worry about that invasion anytime soon.

BorkBorkBjork > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! 02/09/2015 at 17:58

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As an engineer who builds, retrofits, and maintains large Power-plants (read: coal), I feel obligated to say that there is a significant difference between a Coal-fired unit in the United States and one in China.

Most of the Coal units over there don't even have precipitators (large, electrostatic filtration devices that remove fly ash from the flue gas stream as very high level of efficiency), which is something that became standard in this country in the 1960s.

crowmolly > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! 02/09/2015 at 18:27

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I spent some time in Shanghai in the end of 2014.

The city looked like it had fog, but it wasn't fog.

AQI was in the 150s when I was there, so "middle of the road" but still unhealthy.

It did not look like that picture at all. I'm not saying it was clean- hell, the city had an "odor", but the pictures are a bit sensational.

There is no question that they need to clean their shit up.

Steve in Manhattan > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! 02/09/2015 at 18:49

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The GF was in Beijing on business a couple years before they 'cleaned up' the air for the Olympics. She'd been in Japan and Korea as well, and arrived home exhausted. She fell into bed, and I figured I'd take her clothes to the Chinese laundry downstairs. I noticed that the pollution had caused cuffs to turn gray as well as all the other parts of her blouses that weren't covered by a jacket. The guy behind the counter asked me what the stains were. I said: "you may not believe this, but ...."

El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! > BorkBorkBjork 02/09/2015 at 19:00

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Your bosses and their republican friends would love to cut the costs associated with those filters(that don't cut all the emissions, btw).

And don't even get me started on the lack of interest in renewables.

This graphic shows how much harvesting capacity of solar energy, each country had in 2011. Looks like the Axis powers are greener, lol. And non of them has a huge empty space that's sun bathed most the year, like you know, the Nevada desert?

And just as fun fact, Germany gets a lot more energy from the wind than it gets from the sun. More than 70% of their energy is renewable.

El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! > Steve in Manhattan 02/09/2015 at 19:04

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I would've come up with a story of how she forgot her clothes in a exhaust testing facility or something.

Steve in Manhattan > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! 02/09/2015 at 19:07

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The Chinese guy behind the counter was a bit surprised, but not that much.

El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! > Milky 02/09/2015 at 19:09

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They are busy lending America money and supporting their own 1%, whom together with Arab oil sheiks and Russian oligarchs , bought half of New York's most expensive properties.

El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! > Steve in Manhattan 02/09/2015 at 19:11

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I'm sure he remembers home very well, especially if he was born in China.

BorkBorkBjork > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! 02/09/2015 at 20:23

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Not sure where you got that 70% Renewable figure for Germany, I just checked and this was their energy production:

Oil 34.6%

Bituminous coal 11.1%

Lignite 11.4%

Natural gas 21.7%

Nuclear power 11.0%

Hydro- and wind power 1.5%

That's straight from the Wiki page, but it's pretty accurate for most of Europe (you get more Nuke in France and more Natural gas and Lignite coal in Eastern Europe).

Renewable energy is great, my company works on several Solar boiler projects, but it lacks consistency. Because of that, it needs to be supported by what are called "Base Load" power plants. These are usually plants that take a while to start up, have low operating costs, and can run all year at the exact same load day and night. That means Coal, Hydroelectric, Nuclear, and Natural Gas. Solar and Wind have obvious limitations here. Energy storage mediums (where you

Now, some of those are much cleaner than others, but Coal has come a very long way in recent years. The heat rate (basically, fuel efficiency) of a modern coal plant that we just finished 2 years ago is the best of any fossil fuel plant in the States, better even than the Supercritical Natural Gas unit I just retrofitted last year.

I know I'm gonna be the bad guy here, and that's fine, but these things are a lot more complicated than most people think.

El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! > BorkBorkBjork 02/09/2015 at 20:46

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Opps, my bad. I typed 7 instead of 2. I was thinking at France and its over 70% nuclear energy production.

Even so, the Germans still do better than us, especially in the solar energy harvesting.

If you manage to use clean energy to power electric cars or to produce hydrogen for FCV's, you get the ultimate zero emissions motoring.

BorkBorkBjork > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! 02/09/2015 at 21:03

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No problem on the mistake, they happen.

The real problem becomes cost. Our infrastructure is very old and VERY large. At this point, with technologies such as Fusion so close (and trust me, it is very close ), and our power plants already on track to get even cleaner, what's the point? Why spend trillions on new infrastructure that will take 10 years to build when Fusion will likely go commercial in 12-15 years?

gmporschenut also a fan of hondas > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! 02/09/2015 at 22:15

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Who needs the EPA?

Pittsburgh in the 40's

orcim > BorkBorkBjork 02/10/2015 at 02:09

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Got a pointer to the promise of fusion? It'd been talked about since I was a kid, and that's a long time. Hoping against hope that what you're saying is correct - it's a right answer type solution.

BorkBorkBjork > orcim 02/10/2015 at 08:46

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Lockheed is going to have a functional high-beta fusion reactor by the end of the year, with a 100MW unit being developed by 2017. They plan on commerical scale development by 2022.

My company, and it's primary competitor, have already developed fusion-specific heat exchangers. Believe it or not, even Fusion will still need to boil water and spin a Turbine.

And the National Ignition Facility finally achieved "profitable" fusion last year, where they had a succesful reaction that produced more energy than it consumed. That may not sound like a huge step, but remember that the Chicago Stack experiment, the world's first nuclear reactor, produced a whopping 200 watts in 1942. By 1945, three short years later, we had a bomb that could level cities. By 1948, we had a reactor that was generating electricity.

Fusion is close, it will happen soon and it will happen all at once.