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NASA Data Shows Toxic Air Threat Choking Indian Subcontinent

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Re: NASA Data Shows Toxic Air Threat Choking Indian Subcontinent

#171

Post by soperj »

soundwave106 wrote: post #128
Noseshine wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhm... Canada, not China. I responded to the comment that said > You could probably do the same in Canada fwiw. I would not ask about China, I've seen enough documentaries about their deserts and high plateaus. Some of them about the silk road, which was not an easy one because of that geography.

From what I see, there's a pretty good correlation between the population density map ( https://www.britannica.com/place/Canada/images-videos/Popula... ) and the portion of Canada at least sporadically covered by permafrost. ( http://www.enr.gov.nt.ca/state-environment/13-permafrost ) In addition to the rather obvious climate this implies (eg, rather cold), from what I understand, building anything on permafrost is v…

"sporadically covered by permafrost" - I think you're confused as to the permanency of permafrost.

Re: NASA Data Shows Toxic Air Threat Choking Indian Subcontinent

#172

Post by tn13 »

stickfigure wrote: post #80
kamaal wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would anyone protest? India doesn't have enough electricity to waste on Malls and Movies theaters. Or big offices like tech parks in Bangalore! What you have mentioned applies to every tech park in Bangalore, so should people now protest against their very source of employment?

India doesn't have enough electricity There's something fundamentally broken about this statement, which suggests a deeper problem - why isn't the market for electricity working in India?

India currently has sufficient electricity but the distribution system remains broken.

> why isn't the market for electricity working in India?

Electricity in India is a government monopoly. Even using a generator is illegal if you produce electricity above certain level. In very few cities government has allowed private players like Tata and Reliance to produce electricity and yet given them a complete monopoly over certain parts of the city.

Land acquisition in India is a big mess. People dont have proper property rights, clear land titles etc. It is illegal for a private company to buy land for commercial purposes if the land is not under particular zone. For example let us say I want to build my own power-lines over 100miles. I cant erect a pole in a farmland because erecting a poll is a commercial activity and the land is meant for farming only.

So the companies have to ask government to acquire land. It is a huge corrupt mess.

Re: NASA Data Shows Toxic Air Threat Choking Indian Subcontinent

#173

Post by tn13 »

kamaal wrote: post #79
chdir wrote: post #60

A related story : There's a mega mall in Chandigarh, India that wasn't given approval for a power connection for quite some time (politics / corruption). Real estate is super expensive & the owners couldn't afford to sit idle and play games with the government so they decided to run the mall from morning till night on diesel generators. That's ~ $4500 of diesel each day, probably 6-8k litres. This is an example of a…

Why would anyone protest? India doesn't have enough electricity to waste on Malls and Movies theaters. Or big offices like tech parks in Bangalore! What you have mentioned applies to every tech park in Bangalore, so should people now protest against their very source of employment?

That is not true. India has sufficient electricity to meet its needs besides Malls and Movies indeed something that people want given their explosive growth.

Re: NASA Data Shows Toxic Air Threat Choking Indian Subcontinent

#174

Post by almostApatriot1 »

bthallplz wrote: post #158
jschwartzi wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank god for the US EPA.

They're useful trailblazers, but I'd love to see more free-market solutions tried and developed.

there's absolutely no incentive in the free market to care about pollution.

Re: NASA Data Shows Toxic Air Threat Choking Indian Subcontinent

#175

Post by refurb »

almostApatriot1 wrote: post #174
bthallplz wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're useful trailblazers, but I'd love to see more free-market solutions tried and developed.

there's absolutely no incentive in the free market to care about pollution.

Really? What about removing BPA from plastic water bottles? I know it's not pollution in the strict sense. Companies did that before the gov't ever stepped in and forced it. Why? Consumer demand.

The market cares about whatever customers care about.

Re: NASA Data Shows Toxic Air Threat Choking Indian Subcontinent

#176

Post by theoh »

dxbydt wrote: post #120
tossaway1 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically you could draw such a straight line in any country.

This is such an interesting idea! Lots of potential. Given n (city,population, area) tuples for country C, find 2 cities, the line thru which slices C into two land masses M and N. M would then have k tuples and N would have n-k, such that the ratio of aggregate population of k tuples to the aggregate population of n-k would be 90+delta:10-delta, for delta in interval [1,9], whilst simultaneously you have the ratio o…

"tuples with larger arity" is just computer scientist speak for "take more things into account".

Given the generality and popularity of sweepline algorithms in computational geometry, I'm wondering where the problem is here. Can't you just move a sweepline across a given territory in any direction and get a result? If you want maximum outrage (largest value of X in smallest area), I agree that's more complex and I'm not sure how you would prove an optimum result.

Re: NASA Data Shows Toxic Air Threat Choking Indian Subcontinent

#177

Post by nononosisisi »

chdir wrote: post #60

A related story : There's a mega mall in Chandigarh, India that wasn't given approval for a power connection for quite some time (politics / corruption). Real estate is super expensive & the owners couldn't afford to sit idle and play games with the government so they decided to run the mall from morning till night on diesel generators. That's ~ $4500 of diesel each day, probably 6-8k litres. This is an example of a…

Why would people boycot the mall? Why not instead the disfunctional gov? By boycotting the mall you would only make it easier for the gov to ask for a bigger bribe.

Re: NASA Data Shows Toxic Air Threat Choking Indian Subcontinent

#178

Post by NamTaf »

refurb wrote: post #175
almostApatriot1 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there's absolutely no incentive in the free market to care about pollution.

Really? What about removing BPA from plastic water bottles? I know it's not pollution in the strict sense. Companies did that before the gov't ever stepped in and forced it. Why? Consumer demand. The market cares about whatever customers care about.

That's not quite a valid analogy in my books, because either you have BPA in a water bottle or you don't. In contrast, "customers don't want pollution" isn't quite accurate - it's better described as "customers don't want pollution near them". To this end, you just dump the pollution elsewhere, where your customers aren't.

Pollution is a global problem though, so this isn't a solution that works yet it's absolutely what the free market would decide.

Re: NASA Data Shows Toxic Air Threat Choking Indian Subcontinent

#179

Post by vacri »

Retric wrote: post #169
vacri wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tibetless China is still a lot bigger than India and doesn't have that 94% property. The spirit of the GP's comment holds, I think.

China: ~94% of 1.357b = 1.28 billion population. ~40% of 3.7 mill = 1.5 million square miles. = ~0.85 billion people per million square miles. India 1.252 billion people on 1.269 million mi =~ 1 billion people per million square miles. So, India is around 15% denser. Of course you can avoid the strait line cut and push China's density much higher, but the point is they are not that far off where people actually live.

Where are you getting the 40% figure from? Are you saying that Tibet(-ish) is 60% of the land area of China?

Re: NASA Data Shows Toxic Air Threat Choking Indian Subcontinent

#180

Post by yardie »

refurb wrote: post #175
almostApatriot1 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there's absolutely no incentive in the free market to care about pollution.

Really? What about removing BPA from plastic water bottles? I know it's not pollution in the strict sense. Companies did that before the gov't ever stepped in and forced it. Why? Consumer demand. The market cares about whatever customers care about.

Was BPA removed from all plastic water bottles? I remember when BPA-free was trending. All the expensive designer water bottles slapped stickers all over saying they were BPA free. The cheaper bottles made no such assurances.

The Clean Water Act applies to everyone equally. The market cares only about customers with money.

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