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I couldn’t help but think of the book “The Water Knife”. In the book it is the the Chinese that build massive liveable spaces that recycle the water and purify the air. Just a small step in that direction.
I don't see Humanity becoming less destructive on the environment, so this represents our future. It would be nice if an outside source could verify its effectiveness
It'll be much better when/if the third world poor countries enact similar pollution policies as the Western developed world has. Have faith.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_co...
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That's really interesting. Maybe the pm2.5 is less visible than the PM10, but maybe I'm just way way off. As for the volume of air, I'm most curious where the 15% measurement was taken and how consistent it was. How far from the tower? How many different places were measured? How many days are in the sample? What's the P-Value? But still, thanks. Makes this interesting to think about.
I think PM10 rates are in similar orders of magnitude, in the "micrograms per cubic meter" range, so i don't think it would be that different. Maybe an order of magnitude larger, but not much more. I agree, this is very surprising. Before I saw LeifCarrotson's calculation, I would have thought "tons" was the right unit as well. There's so much polluted air, you'd think that it would add up to some significant amount…
So it's still a lot of pollution, just much less actual mass than I would have guessed.
Side node: is China doing ok in terms of innovation? If yes, how come in such a regime? I would expect everything to be stuck in bureaucracy.
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> many many tons of particulate matter every day Let's do the math. Guidelines state that the limit on PM2.5 particulates is approximately 10 micrograms per cubic meter for an annual average. Xian, where the tower was installed, is currently ( http://aqicn.org/city/xian/ ) under 231 ug/m^3 of pollution. The tower is supposed to process 10 million cubic meters of air per day. 10^7 m^3 x 231 x 10^-6 g/m^3 x 10^-3 g/kg…
0.35 kg of particulate contamination removed per day; you rounded incorrectly, but the rest of your math is right. There's the issue that it's probably removing nearly all of the particulates from the air it actually processes, say over 90%, which works out to 2.1 kg. It doesn't reduce the PM2.5 level in the area by 90%, but only by 15%, because it's only able to process some 16% of the air in its area during whateve…
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Follow up, can you define much here? I am just interested in this, I read this paper as a primer to my own question, and it seems that with proper city and road planning combined with the effect trees have locally on the air quality it seems we could have noticeable improvement, especially during the leafy seasons. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S135223101...
Trees can help with carbon, but we are talking about small particles here. I guess they could trap them or something, but not on the scale of a typical polluted day in say Beijing. Anyways, in northern china, this wouldn’t be very workable as the pollution season corresponds to leafless tree season (and the trees turn a dreary brownish grey due to dust).
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Our local lakes are still pretty clean, Trump hasn’t dismantled the EPA (yet). Western bureaucracy differs from Chinese bureaucracy in that it is more deterministic, the rules are more obvious and more fairly enforced. In China, there is a huge difference based on your guanxi level. I wouldn’t trade our system for theirs.
According to Trump, Hillary escaped jail time because "Guanxi", or whatever equivalent things to guanxi.
Side node: is China doing ok in terms of innovation? If yes, how come in such a regime? I would expect everything to be stuck in bureaucracy.
The government is communist but in terms of business, it's more capitalistic than many western countries. People are also hard-working and very ambitious, and there is wild innovation in places like Shenzen (hardware) or Beijing (AI). Although innovation sometimes simply means copying/stealing. There are ingenuous innovation though.
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If anything, it goes to show representative democracy plus unrestrained capitalism is not the only way to run a modern, advanced civilization.
China a "modern, advanced civilization?" You've clearly never lived in China. China is all about the façade. And a MODERN, advanced civilization wouldn't be polluting their entire country like it was a tannery in 1758. Taihu lake, near Suzhou, is practically radioactive. Fish in pretty much any freshwater within the entire country is toxic. I lived in China for 3 years or so and as soon as my son was born, we got the…
And a short time ago Americans were electro-shocking homosexuals to try and make them straight.
> Remember, this "modern, advanced" civilization still has Traditional Chinese Medicine as a "thing." It's a complete fraud with zero scientific basis: https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/retconning-traditional-chin....
America has chiropractors covered under insurance, people who believe in homeopathy, and a growing culture of vaccine denial.
No culture is perfect. Not too long ago we had horribly polluted waters, and in a lot of places we still do. Have you seen the impact of pollution from pig farms[0][1]?
I'm not trying to play what-about-ism here, I am just saying that "modern, advanced civilizations" do all the things you listed.
The Chinese government is capable of undertaking massive infrastructure projects, and they do an incredible job of picking industries for government protectionism, allowing for growth of local talent. Multiple areas of technology and advanced automation are both areas where China has invested heavily in education and building a huge local talent pool. Pulling off multi-decade economic growth plans is impressive, they plotted a path from basic industry all the way to an advanced technology sector, and then executed on that plan.
That more than qualifies them as an advanced modern society.
[0]http://observer.com/2017/05/pig-waste-factory-farming-north-... [1]http://www.businessinsider.com/mishka-henners-photos-of-amer...