CombustionSH

Breathing in Shanghai

[rjzimmerman]

China Cancels 103 Coal Plants, Mindful of Smog and Wasted Capacity

The dropped projects include dozens already under construction, even though existing plants can already generate far more power than the country needs.

Excerpt:

China is canceling plans to build more than 100 coal-fired power plants, seeking to rein in runaway, wasteful investment in the sector while moving the country away from one of the dirtiest forms of electricity generation, the government announced in a directive made public this week.

The announcement, made by China’s National Energy Administration, cancels 103 projects that were planned or under construction, eliminating 120 gigawatts of future coal-fired capacity. That includes dozens of projects in 13 provinces, mostly in China’s coal-rich north and west, on which construction had already begun. Those projects alone would have had a combined output of 54 gigawatts, more than the entire coal-fired capacity of Germany, according to figures compiled by Greenpeace.

The cancellations make it likelier that China will meet its goal of limiting its total coal-fired power generation capacity to 1,100 gigawatts by 2020. That huge figure, three times the total coal-fired capacity in the United States, is far more than China needs. Its coal plants now run at about half of capacity, and new sources of power, such as wind, solar and nuclear, are coming online at a fast clip.

Nevertheless, China’s capacity would have surged well past the 1,100-gigawatt mark by 2020 had it not begun canceling coal-fired plants that were in the works. The new announcements are in addition to a series of project cancellations detailed last year.

[combustionshanghai]

Gross. Shanghai winter 😷

[rjzimmerman]

Scientists Just Discovered Exactly What Air Pollution Does To Your Arteries

Air pollution at levels below regulatory standards also causes problems.

Excerpt:

A multi-year study has for the first time documented that air pollution thickens blood and hardens arteries, a condition that causes cardiovascular problems like heart attacks and strokes.

“What’s new here is the linkage between air pollution and actual evidence of progression of atherosclerosis, the underlying disease process that leads to most [heart] attacks and strokes,” Joel Kaufman, lead author and University of Washington professor, told ThinkProgress. “The study provides important new information on how pollution affects the main biological process that leads to heart disease.”

The decade-long study, published Tuesday in The Lancet, found that Americans living in areas with more polluted air suffer from accelerated rates of atherosclerosis — at times rates about 20 percent higher than those living in less polluted areas, Kaufman said. This harm to arteries may stem from air pollution triggering cell inflammation, he said, and affect the white blood cells that are involved in protecting the body against both infectious disease and foreign invaders.

Funded by the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Institutes of Health, the study was based on more than 6,000 people with no history of clinical cardiovascular disease in six states. To make sure that it was all encompassing, researchers recruited middle-aged and senior men and women from four ethnic groups: white, Hispanic, African American, and Chinese living in different corners of the country. They then conducted body scans to assess participants’ arteries as they calculated, via air monitors and other methods, each participant’s exposure to PM 2.5 — a pollutant that comes primarily from the burning of fuels — as well as exposure to nitrogen oxide, nitrogen dioxide, and black carbon.

By the end of the study, researchers were able to track more than 3,600 people and realized that those living in more polluted places like Los Angeles suffered from worse calcium plaque in their arteries. Calcified plaques in the coronary arteries have been consistently associated with cardiovascular disease.

Another major finding of the study is that air pollution at levels below regulatory standards also accelerates the progression of atherosclerosis. With that, the study raises questions about the quality of the air that people need to avoid environmental harms — particularly because it found that air quality has been in general improving in the United States.

[rjzimmerman]

8 Takeaways From Nestle's Secret Report Warning the World Is Running Out of Water

This is a frightening report from Nestle about water. A few of the takes from the report. Link into the story for the rest:

“Nestle thinks one-third of the world’s population will be affected by fresh water scarcity by 2025, with the situation only becoming more dire thereafter and potentially catastrophic by 2050.”

“Nestle starts by pointing out that a calorie of meat requires 10 times as much water to produce as a calorie of food crops. As the world’s growing middle classes eat more meat, the earth’s water resources will be dangerously squeezed.”

“The current U.S. diet provides about 3,600 calories per day with substantial meat consumption. If the whole world were to move to this standard, global fresh water resources would be exhausted at a population level of 6 billion, which the world reached in the year 2000.”

[combustionshanghai]

Glad to be getting out of SH for the weekend 😷

[the-future-now-deactivated20170]

Read more about London’s pollution-checking birds.

Follow @the-future-now

[combustionshanghai]

We need this in SH

[combustionshanghai]

Yuk 😷

[combustionshanghai]

Relief! Open those windows SH!

[the-future-now-deactivated20170]

Here’s what certain big cities could look like if sea levels keep rising

On Monday, climate scientists from around the world published a report with a fiery claim: Over the last century, the rise in sea level “was extremely likely faster than during any of the 27 previous centuries.” The interactive versions of these photos are even scarier.

Follow @the-future-now​

[combustionshanghai]

Breathe!

[combustionshanghai]

1 month...

[exotericenvironmentalism]

It was notable (being pretty unusual) that the front page of the BBC website today featured 2 separate articles on air pollution/quality (as viewed in Scotland). Namely:

The list of the most polluted (and law breaking for their impacts on health) streets in Scotland- compiled annually by Friends of the Earth Scotland.

The drastic (and desperate?…) measures being undertaken in the Indian city of Delhi to, since the 1st of January, ban cars with odd/even number plates on alternate days to tackle toxic air pollution that has plagued the city for months.

This compelled me to compile a bit of a list of resources and features on air quality/pollution that I have come across recently, conveying the challenges and impacts of a problem that pervades society and business across the world. Information, studies and stories that highlight the environmental, social and economic significance of, yet often ignored/neglected, issue that is air pollution.

A study finding that more than 2000 people died prematurely in Hong Kong from the effects of air pollution in 2015.

An article from the World Economic Forum highlighting that 2 million people worldwide die every year from the effects of air pollution- and furthermore that links to the excellent Plume Air Report tool that maps real-time information on air quality levels and forecasts for over 200 global cities.

The Guardian Sustainable Business website naming car-maker Volkswagen’s vehicle emissions cover up as one of 5 corporate scandals that defined 2015. 

A study from Policy Exchange and King’s College London finding that almost 25% of all school children in London, and 44% of the city’s workforce, are exposed to levels of air pollution that exceed legal and healthy limit.   

An article from the New York Times describing the story of the severe air quality and congestion problems that Beijing in China suffers from, linked to its rapid change from a city synonymous with bicycles to one that is dominated by cars. (Furthermore, towards the end of 2015, the city experienced several smog ‘red alert’ days, leading to measures that significantly affected society and industry in the city.)     

Images used:

Top: Annual deaths from fine particle air pollution in Scotland, the UK and the EU via Friends of the Earth Scotland’s twitter feed.

Congestion in Delhi on the first day of the scheme to regulate cars with odd/even registrations via the BBC.

Middle: Map of real-time air pollution levels in cities across the planet (for today- the 17th January 2016) from Plume Labs.

Bottom: Comparison of trends in modal share (the percentage of people travelling, or trips taken, on a particular type of transportation) in the last 30 years in Beijing and Copenhagen (a city that has taken significant steps to foster, and benefited from, cycling as a mode of transport) via Copenhagenize’s twitter feed.

Diagram indicating the relationship between emissions, concentrations, and health impacts from the Up in the Air report by Policy Exchange and King’s College London.

[combustionshanghai]

A brief moment to breathe...

[combustionshanghai]

Yuk

[combustionshanghai]

Winter

[environmentalillnessnetwork]

[combustionshanghai]

Merry Xmas