24 Chinese cities on pollution red alert

[TomCADem]

Source: China Daily

BEIJING - A total of 24 Chinese cities are on red alert due to serious air pollution, which will affect many people's new year holiday plans.

Cities including Shijiazhuang, Baoding and Langfang in northern Hebei province, Zhengzhou in central China's Henan province and Jinan in eastern China's Shandong province, have issued red alerts for severe air pollution, according to China's top environmental watchdog.

Moreover, 21 metropolises and cities including Beijing and Tianjin, have issued orange alerts for air pollution, while 16 cities including Xi'an in northwestern Shaanxi province are on yellow alert.

The new round of air pollution is forecast to last until Jan 5 in most cities, said the Ministry of Environmental Protection.


Read more: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016-12/31/content_27832757.htm

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Given that Trump is planning to target the EPA, this is what we can look forward to at home.

[pangaia]

1. Coming soon to the URSA.

[TomCADem]

3. Trump and Company Would Argue That This Is a Hoax, Not News...

...designed to cripple American business.

[Feeling the Bern]

20. My cell phone data in China proves otherwise. Shijiazhuang was at 836 on day last month

[Cryptoad]

2. I am old enough to remember

us having those kinda smog days,,,,Pre-EPA
Ah.... we don't need no stinking clean air!
"real Americans" fly to their beach complex to avoid the bad air

[pangaia]

4. I remember smog alerts also but NOTHING this bad..

I have been to China quite a few times...and all over the country-- from Qingdao to Lijiang.... I never saw smog like this until...oh, after about 2010-11. Even Qingdao, a beautiful seaside "small' city, which has been about the #1 vacation spot for Chinese, was unbearable when I was last there.. just a couple years ago.. And according to friends is even worse now...

[Cryptoad]

7. maybe not as bad but close,,,,,

Pittsburg

[kimbutgar]

5. Not pollution but also a scary China

MY hairdresser who is Chinese and who has family in China, told me that her Mother couldn't get her usual fish recently to dry out for Chinese New Year as the areas have been overfished and there is a scarcity of fish now in the area they live.

So now the oceans and rivers in areas of China have a depletion of fish problem. From a environmental and scientific point of view this is kind of apocalyptic sounding.

[Sunlei]

8. tell her in the USA, people are stuffing shipping containers full of invasive carp, flash freeze &

ship to china. what isn't made into cheap processed 'fish sticks' to sell will be on her moms plate by new years.

[TomCADem]

9. Of Course, in the U.S., We Fish For Them Our Way...

[Sunlei]

10. these days cross bows fly off the walmart shelves. past couple years found 2 arrows in my yard.

none of my animals have been hit by drive by cowboys, except my jack russell had a very sore hind quarters from a bullet just under his skin.

I don't think china allows weapon ownership of any type. Anyways flash frozen shipping containers are stuffed with (live) netted Asian carp and spent laying hens and any other 'used up' factory farmed animals.

[Sunlei]

6. imagine how it must be to work in chinas refinaries, Kerosene fueled plants & coal burner industries

wonder how many of chinas prison slaves die every year from working conditions.

back when usa 'leased' prisoners to work in mines & foundries for Corporations, about half died, were worked to death. was easy for prisons to be filled again, they'd just 'arrest' more people and throw them in prisons.

[ffr]

11. What China's deregulation looks like should be the title.

2017 begins the year that the GOP takes us in that deregulated direction. Congratulations GOP, you won THIS.

[former9thward]

12. No this is not coming to the U.S.

More war on science hysteria. China has its problems because of massive factories (some with almost a million people working in them), no or little technology for pollution abatement, and a decision by the government to keep factories running for a non market based growth rate.

The U.S. does not and will not have any of these issues.

[Yurovsky]

13. That's the beauty of separation of powers...

it would take more than 4-8 years for Trump to take us that far backwards, plus individual states like CA and NY aren't going to allow that type of environmental destruction to go unchecked.

[TomCADem]

14. Rolling Stone - Will Senate Republicans Block Trump's Disastrous EPA Pick?

It is interesting that you have so much faith in Trump's nominees staying true to the mission of the federal agencies they were picked to head. Under Bush, even though oil production was relatively stagnant, oil consumption in the U.S. went up. Under President Obama, even though oil production in the U.S. increased, oil consumption went down due in large part to increases in energy efficiency and a shift away from gas guzzling cars.

As for China, smog increases during the winter due to an increase in the use of coal, and Trump has repeatedly promised the coal industry that he will be far more supportive of them then President Obama. How do you do this without promoting coal use?

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/will-senate-republicans-block-trumps-disastrous-epa-pick-w456411

In a couple of weeks, 2016 will officially be declared the warmest year on record. In September, atmospheric carbon levels pushed past 400 parts per million, the so-called climate "tipping point," and the irreversible effects of global warming – mass extinctions, rising sea levels, ocean acidification, coral bleaching, deforestation – are already underway. But you wouldn't know it if you talked to the men nominated for Donald Trump's cabinet, many of whom deny in the face of overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is occurring and is caused by human activity.

For secretary of state, Trump has settled on the CEO of ExxonMobil, the oil and gas conglomerate whose in-house scientists recognized the threat of global warming more than 40 years ago and which subsequently spent millions of dollars spreading disinformation about the phenomenon. His proposed heads of the Departments of Energy, the Interior, Housing and Urban Development, and Health and Human Services have all at different points expressed skepticism about the existence and causes of climate change.

Former Republican congressman Bob Inglis, now executive director of the conservative environmentalist group RepublicEN.org, says he's fine with most of those nominees. Tillerson, he notes optimistically, is in favor of a carbon tax.

There's only one nominee "of great concern" to his organization, he says: Scott Pruitt, Trump's pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency.

[former9thward]

17. Instead of personal attacks and straw men

why don't you scientifically show how U.S. cities are going to become as smog polluted as China? Where is it going to come from? Magic? Coal? We don't heat cities with straight coal as they do in China. Our northern cities used to look like Chinese cities 70/80 years ago because people used coal to fire their furnaces in their homes. No one does that anymore. You really think that is coming back Wow...

[TomCADem]

18. I Am Glad That You Have Such Faith In Forward Progress...

...as though current environmental regulations represent some sort of iron clad baseline below which the U.S. will not regress. Is there anything scientifically, as you would put it, that guarantees that such regulations will both remain in effect or be enforced?

If the current regulatory baseline remains intact, then we should not be as polluted as cities in China. However, in the event of regulatory rollbacks, plus urban population growth, air pollution would increase.

You fail to articulate the assumptions behind your apparent insistence that air pollution will not worsen even in the event of Trump-inspired regulatory rollback? Is your assumption that Trump simply will not follow through on his deregulatory promises or his promises to re-ignite the coal industry? Is your assumption that population growth in U.S. urban areas will stagnate? Or, that States will step into the regulatory gap and ignore competitive pressures to race to the bottom when it comes to regulations?

To spell out the point of my post is that the right wing often speaks glowingly of the weak regulatory environment in growing economies, i.e., they have business-friendly regulations. Of course, the consequence of such environment is weak urban planning and poor enforcement of environmental regulations. Could a President Trump who has made many promises to the coal industry support either a subsidy for U.S. coal along with rollbacks of regulations regarding the use of coal as a means of catering to this constituency? Likewise, could Trump roll back incentives that support clean energy? Again, like your optimism, but there is the danger that Trump and Republicans actually do follow through on their anti-environmental rhetoric.

[Stuart G]

15. The Great London Smog...1952...Killed 4000. At the link pictures

It happened before in London, and could happen again..In the mid 50s, all of Illinois (which produced more soft coal than anywhere) had to change over to oil or natural gas heat....because of this event....It took the authorities a while to figure out that the mass of death was due to the smog.....64 years ago..,,,,,,,,,,,,Period: December 5, 1952 – December 9, 1952...4 days........


https://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2012/dec/05/60-years-great-smog-london-in-pictures

[smirkymonkey]

22. I remember reading about that recently. It's hard to believe that less

than a century ago people in a thriving, modern city would be taken ill and even killed from the pollution.

[LittleBlue]

16. People read the GDP figures and don't understand how troubled China has become

They have unbelievable debt levels and pollution so bad that their wealthy are emigrating to Canada and the US.

If the economy slows further, and it's already slowing, the communist party officials will be in big trouble. Singapore is the best Asian economic model, not China.

[Feeling the Bern]

21. Yep. The bubble is popping. They mortgaged everything for 10% each year

But since cooking books has been the norm for the CCP since the Great Chinese Famine, don't trust any number from Beijing.

This place is about to burst and it won't be pretty. They are in debt to their eyes.

And Singapore is the model to follow, but it's so small, it's easy to control.

[Marengo]

23. Xi is making a significant effort to divert the money that flows around provincial Party circles...

To central government. To a degree apparently unprecedented.

[Feeling the Bern]

19. I used to live in Shijiazhuang. It was normally gross as shit. Fun place to live though.

I prefer Jiangsu though.