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posted by janrinok on Monday March 03 2014, @03:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the if-you-could-see-me-now dept.

hankwang writes:

"For the past couple of days, China's capital has been suffering under severe smog, leaving the sun and skyscrapers barely visible. The highest concentration of small airborne particles (PM2.5) was 0.50 mg per cubic meter, a factor 20 above the Word Health Organization's safe limit. Scientists went as far as comparing this to a nuclear winter. The worst seems to be over for now: today, the monitors are reading 0.180 mg/m3, only a factor 7 above the WHO limit.

The Chinese smog seems to behave differently from the smog in Europe and the US. Existing scientific models developed in the West do not work well. To improve the models and understanding, plans are underway to build a 600 cubic-meter (that's 21,000 cubic ft or 160,000 US gallon) transparent dome as a smog chamber."

[NOTE TO EDITOR: I can't get slashcode to display the mu symbol, so I converted to milligrams] [Ed's Note: Thankyou - but what is it in firkins?]

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  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 03 2014, @03:23AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 03 2014, @03:23AM (#9886)

    Get a room, you too. This is a family website.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday March 03 2014, @03:32AM

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Monday March 03 2014, @03:32AM (#9888) Homepage

    That's why America should look to China as a positive example -- because China proves that you too can have big government without all those annoying environmental regulations.

    But seriously, China would have been a perfect public service announcement back in the '90s when Bill Clinton was trying to save the gay whales and propaganda cartoons with heavy-handed anti-pollution messages such as Widget, [wikipedia.org] Bucky O' Hare, [youtube.com] and Toxic Crusaders. [wikipedia.org]

    The toxic crusaders were based on the movie The Toxic Avenger, and the cartoon itself was one of the greatest trolls because the elementary-age kids watching it did not have the internet, so they couldn't look up the movie on which is was actually based and see sequences such as this [youtube.com] and this. [youtube.com] Both not suitable for work!

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by dbe on Monday March 03 2014, @03:34AM

    by dbe (1422) on Monday March 03 2014, @03:34AM (#9890)

    I applaud the effort of the editor to include all units, in the submission.
    What would be very cool (and thus much better than Slashdot) would be to let the user select his preferred unit system and then display only the relevant one in the story...
    I know you have much to do before, but maybe as a todo item?
    Cheers!
    -dbe

    • (Score: 2, Informative) by hankwang on Monday March 03 2014, @07:10AM

      by hankwang (100) on Monday March 03 2014, @07:10AM (#9932) Homepage

      I applaud the effort of the editor to include all units, in the submission.

      Article submitter here. That was me; I actually considered to include UK gallons as well. The editor did not change anything in the submission. I had hoped that they would insert the mu character but instead they left my entire "note to the editor" in.

      • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday March 03 2014, @09:25AM

        by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 03 2014, @09:25AM (#9958) Journal

        I was genuine in my thanks for your efforts. I left your note in so that I could add my poor attempt at humour (n.b. English spelling - I am a Brit), but primarily as a subtle hint to others that these sort of things certainly do make the editor's job easier and also help the reader.

        • (Score: 1) by ls671 on Monday March 03 2014, @10:05AM

          by ls671 (891) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 03 2014, @10:05AM (#9967) Homepage

          "so that I could add my poor attempt at humour"

          Well, not that bad, it made me search for "frickin" ;-)

          Note that my research concluded than a firkin equals 40.91 liters. Are you mixing up mass and volume units?

          Given that it is hard to determine the density of those pollution particles, it would be hard to know how much would fit in a beer barrel. Are we allowed to compress them to fit more into the barrel? Even then, we would need more information on the composition of the particles, which I assume may vary, to fully answer your question.

          Cheers,

          P.S. You must have been sad when "The Firkin Brewery" chain of pubs shut down in the United Kingdom.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firkin_Brewery [wikipedia.org]

          --
          Everything I write is lies, including this sentence.
  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by stormwyrm on Monday March 03 2014, @04:21AM

    by stormwyrm (717) on Monday March 03 2014, @04:21AM (#9901) Journal

    Apparently it's possible to make both SN and the old site display μ and some other non-ASCII characters by setting character encoding to ISO-8859-1 before you do post or preview. Just goes to show that Unicode support is still broken in every fork of Slashcode so far.

    --
    Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by ls671 on Monday March 03 2014, @10:21AM

      by ls671 (891) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 03 2014, @10:21AM (#9969) Homepage

      You guys complaining about that unicode support must be from the new generation.

      I don't even know how to enter those chars/symbols with my keyboard although my keyboard supports 2 languages. I do like in the old days and I just fully spell the damn thing for symbols.

      You can also insert a gif image of the symbol like we use to see on so many technical web pages ;-)

      That was the good old days ;-)

      --
      Everything I write is lies, including this sentence.
      • (Score: 2) by stormwyrm on Monday March 03 2014, @11:39AM

        by stormwyrm (717) on Monday March 03 2014, @11:39AM (#9985) Journal

        I wonder if HTML entities to produce other Unicode characters work. Let's see: 日本語の文字を使って見る。

        Seems to work, but I had to go to ridiculous lengths to make that happen.

        --
        Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
      • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 03 2014, @11:56AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 03 2014, @11:56AM (#9994)

        You use (compose), m, u. Assuming you use Linux, that is.

  • (Score: 4, Informative) by regift_of_the_gods on Monday March 03 2014, @04:21AM

    by regift_of_the_gods (138) on Monday March 03 2014, @04:21AM (#9902)

    Apparently suspending factories, construction and traffic around Beijing lifted the pollution [scmp.com].

    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by anubi on Monday March 03 2014, @06:00AM

      by anubi (2828) on Monday March 03 2014, @06:00AM (#9920) Journal

      I have had some interesting observations regarding high voltage negative DC ( air ionizers ) and particulates.

      I note once I have charged particulates suspended in air, they head for ground. Whatever is grounded. I have experimented with a device much like one of those Sharper Image Ionic Breezes, and note it is extremely effective in removing crap out of the air. Actually, mine was just charged tin cans configured like a "lifter" [jnaudin.free.fr] whose "thrust" was to move air like a ceiling fan. I thought it would be a great thing to have in the pet store down the street, as all the animals in there could give that end of the mall a distinctive odor. It did not remove odors all that well. However everything needed dusting very frequently when it was in use.

      I note China is building high-voltage DC transmission lines at the Three Gorges Dam [nationalgeographic.com]. Would it be feasible to tap some of that power and run it up to a tethered dirigible covered in some fine spiky material ( like stainless steel wool) with the intent to charge it up to make a very large area air ionizer? Before I get nailed for frankenstein-thinking, consider the very same thing happens during thunderstorms with so much voltage gradient being created from air rubbing against air that the electricity literally jumps out of the sky.

      The voltage levels look in the 500KV range. What I do not know is this may make too much ozone, as I know my little experimental box makes ozone if I crank it up too high. With mine, if I heard it hissing, it was making ozone.

      I am thinking if they can get enough surface area up there, with enough ionic emission, they may be able to charge that crap in the air to make it plate itself to anything grounded. And this is not a fix-all solution - it oughta get it out of the air, but I have a strong idea it will also make a dusty mess plating everything outdoors like a blanket of fine dust, which will have to be cleaned off, but at least it will be onto the ground instead of in everyone's lungs.

      I really feel for the Chinese in this dilemma. If I wasn't so damned old, I would love to go over there and experiment with this thing. To me, that is what Engineering is all about. I can only imagine the frustration the Chinese go through having a cloud of hardly breathable air. In this day and age of technology, no-one should have to put up with that.

      --
      "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
      • (Score: 4, Informative) by hankwang on Monday March 03 2014, @07:24AM

        by hankwang (100) on Monday March 03 2014, @07:24AM (#9935) Homepage

        What I do not know is this may make too much ozone, as I know my little experimental box makes ozone if I crank it up too high.

        A device that sprays electrons in order to charge particles is certainly going to make a lot of ozone. Ozone is actually part of the smog problem, even though the smog reports focus on the PM2.5 particle readings, so the device had better not create too much ozone indeed.

        Basically you are proposing an gigantic electrostatic air filter, similar to the ones you can buy for use at home. I'm not sure how this would scale up. The electrostatic force on a charged particle is proportional the electric field strength (volts per meter) and must be strong enough to overcome the mixing due to wind turbulence. In a small electrostatic dust filter, the air may be passing through electrode plates spaced 1 cm apart, at 1 m/s velocity, which gives a Reynolds number [wikipedia.org] of 70. That is going to be pretty much laminar flow without turbulence. However, wind outside with building-sized obstacles is very much turbulent.

        Apart from that, you'll have the problem of occasional sparks. Although being killed by lightning strikes is a pretty rare way of dying, that may very much change if you put a high-voltage system like you propose above a metropolian area...

        • (Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Monday March 03 2014, @08:27AM

          by anubi (2828) on Monday March 03 2014, @08:27AM (#9949) Journal

          Yes... I do not think I would get many sparks from a dirigible several hundred feet up; as its far higher up than power lines. Anything getting near it would charge up to the local gradient anyway just as crows do when they roost on overhead power distribution cables.

          However its the field gradient you illustrated may be insufficient to do the job.

          I do not know how well this would scale up either. That's why I throw this out here for others which may have a better feel for this to comment on.

          I was hoping the turbulence would mix the ionization with the city air sufficiently to charge a wide swath of atmosphere, causing its particulate load to be attracted to the ground. I was considering keeping the dirigible charged via an electron flow in its tether, which would be connected into the DC power grid. If this DC were negative with respect to earth, then it looks to me like this might work.

          I wonder if the dirigible were positive, it would then attract the airborne crap, but how long could it stay aloft as I consider the Chinese problem as having tons of airborne soots of various types.

          My stuff was powered by a television flyback transformer with rectification. I could get either polarity by reversing the diode and the drive to the transformer. Being I worked as a TV repairman in my earlier days, I was quite aware of how high positive voltages would attract all sorts of things out of the air. A TV repair for someone who smoked was not a fun job; the HV cage would be full of tarry dust.

          I guess what I am trying to do is inject electrons into the air only to have them charge any airborne particle they encounter... once charged, the particles are attracted to ground.

          --
          "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
          • (Score: 3, Informative) by hankwang on Monday March 03 2014, @10:39AM

            by hankwang (100) on Monday March 03 2014, @10:39AM (#9970) Homepage

            I was hoping the turbulence would mix the ionization with the city air sufficiently to charge a wide swath of atmosphere, causing its particulate load to be attracted to the ground.

            I see two issues here.

            1. Assuming that the home electrostatic filter needs about 1 kV over 1 cm (E=100 kV/m field strength) to catch small particles within the 50 ms travel time along the electrode plates, it appears that the drift velocity at that field strength is about 0.2 m/s. Atmospheric turbulence involves air velocities that are much higher than that.

            2. Moreover, if you scale up this concept to atmospheric dimensions, then having a 500 kV potential over 100 m distance is actually only 5 kV/m of field strength - i.e. only 0.01 m/s of particle drift velocity. So, this is not going to work. If you did increase the voltage, the risk of causing lightning bolts would go up considerably.

            • (Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday March 04 2014, @02:39AM

              by anubi (2828) on Tuesday March 04 2014, @02:39AM (#10406) Journal

              Thanks, Hank.

              I appreciate the feedback on the technical aspects. I am trying to structure this as an electrostatic precipitator with the earth itself as the positive plate and the dirigible as the negative ion emitter. I was hoping maybe it would not be so windy at ground level that the precipitate could drop out at ground level. If it were blowing over the ground, the particle drift velocity, like you say, would be so great that the kinetic energy of its motion would exceed the forces attracting it to the plate and the deposition would not happen.

              I sure hope they try to precipitate at the coal plants themselves as you indicated in another post. When I worked at the Chevron Oil Refinery in Pascagoula, Mississippi, I remember walking into huge "buildings" with electrical plates hung from the ceiling whose function was to charge emissions from the refining process and drop them out before they reached the atmosphere.

              I know you already know all about this, but I will link it for the casual readers of this thread what this is all about...its known as a "Cottrell precipitator". [google.com].

              --
              "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
              • (Score: 2) by hankwang on Tuesday March 04 2014, @08:53AM

                by hankwang (100) on Tuesday March 04 2014, @08:53AM (#10519) Homepage

                I found some lecture notes on electrostatic precipitators with harder numbers: http://ce.udel.edu/~dentel/434/Lecture6-ESP.pdf [udel.edu] . My hand-waving estimate based on what I think a home-ESP looks like (100 kV/m, 20 cm/s drift velocity) were a bit off; on page 7 it shows an example calculation: 300 kV/m and 3 cm/s drift velocity for typical 1 micron particles.

                • (Score: 1) by anubi on Wednesday March 05 2014, @01:56AM

                  by anubi (2828) on Wednesday March 05 2014, @01:56AM (#11115) Journal

                  Thanks. Hank!

                  I find these precipitators an interesting thing to study, being its so very much easier to clean up a mess before its made ;) .

                  --
                  "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
          • (Score: 4, Informative) by hankwang on Monday March 03 2014, @10:49AM

            by hankwang (100) on Monday March 03 2014, @10:49AM (#9972) Homepage

            P.S. FYI Electrostatic precitipator [wikipedia.org]. Apparently, they are commonly used at the exhaust of coal plants. Given that coal plants are suspected to be a large contributor to China's smog problem, it would be better to install them there rather than floating above the city...

          • (Score: 1) by ls671 on Monday March 03 2014, @10:56AM

            by ls671 (891) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 03 2014, @10:56AM (#9974) Homepage

            "I guess what I am trying to do is inject electrons into the air only to have them charge any airborne particle they encounter... once charged, the particles are attracted to ground."

            That's what I understood the first time ;-)

            Lets pretend your idea could work perfectly: You would have to carefully estimate the impact of those concentrated pollutants, now in a solid form, around big cities where there are more grounded structures to catch the pollutants. For example, think of the rain diluting those now solid pollutants and distributing them deep in the ground.

            Right now, since the particles do not fall to the ground as fast as they would, they tend to distribute on a wider area, some going around the planet. The cities would end up with a higher concentration share than what they have right now.

             

            --
            Everything I write is lies, including this sentence.
            • (Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday March 04 2014, @02:25AM

              by anubi (2828) on Tuesday March 04 2014, @02:25AM (#10397) Journal

              Thanks. Exactly why I posted here. I am of the belief I do not have a solution to the problem; rather I can mutate one mess into another. The question is: Do I gain anything by trading mess#1 for mess#2?

              And that's assuming this method will work, which I am dubious of.

              HankWang has been posting some very insightful and informative replies to the technical aspects of this.

              I feel for the Chinese and wish them the best with dealing with the mess. They are caught up in a socioeconomic situation where they are being led into trading off their environment for economic matters - matters that seem to make a few individuals filthy rich while leaving the rest simply filthy.

              --
              "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 04 2014, @03:12AM

                by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 04 2014, @03:12AM (#10419)

                It's a matter of doing things in order. What I suggested you to look at comes before any prototyping or any physical implementation thus, technical details about said implementation.

                What I suggested you to look at could be fairly simulated with software. IMHO, this is where you should start.

                Intuitively, if this is ever going to work, I feel like the positively charged ones would make it much easier to pick up and control the mess but that's just intuition.

                Peace.

                • (Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday March 04 2014, @06:11AM

                  by anubi (2828) on Tuesday March 04 2014, @06:11AM (#10470) Journal

                  Often intuition and past experience is most of what I have to go on.

                  I love to simulate, but all too often my models, hence anything I get from simulation, is not up to snuff.
                   
                  God knows how many Spice simulations of mine have given me misleading results due to bad models.

                  So I often try empirical approaches to see how well reality matches my models.

                  --
                  "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
                • (Score: 2) by hankwang on Tuesday March 04 2014, @09:38AM

                  by hankwang (100) on Tuesday March 04 2014, @09:38AM (#10532) Homepage

                  What I suggested you to look at could be fairly simulated with software. IMHO, this is where you should start.

                  The question is: which software? And then: which settings? Typically, computational fluid dynamics software has many model parameters that need to be set in order to capture the relevant physical effects for the problem at hand, without wasting processing time on effects that do not make a difference. Doing so correctly requires that you have a good grasp of the underlying physics, otherwise it will be garbage in, garbage out. Moreover, once you have this good grasp, it is likely that you can do back-of-the-envelope estimates to see whether what you want to achieve is at all plausible, or likely to be orders of magnitude off.

                  Part of my job is doing, outsourcing, and reviewing simulations (gas flow, diffusion, thermal, deformation, particle-gas transport, and others) for engineering purposes (not electrostatic gas filtering, though), and have seen many times that simulations produced nonsense results because the elephant in the room was missed, i.e., some dominant physical effect that was not accounted for.

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Angry Jesus on Monday March 03 2014, @04:28AM

    by Angry Jesus (182) on Monday March 03 2014, @04:28AM (#9903)

    The theories and mathematical models developed by scientists in the last few decades to explain smog in Europe and the United States turned out to be inadequate when applied to China's cities.

    I have to wonder if that's really true or just Beijing trying to save face. The west has been harping on the smog problem for years and it just keeps getting worse.

    You might think that sounds over the top and jingoistic, but look at what Beijing has already said about the matter:

    Smog is China's top defence against US laser weapons, says PLA Navy admiral [scmp.com]

    Smog can hinder enemy missile guidance systems [scmp.com]

    It is illegal for the US embassy in Beijing to publish their pollution level readings [nbcnews.com]

    Smog promotes equality and improves chinese minds [telegraph.co.uk]

    I've heard it suggested that the last one was intended as satire. I can't really tell since I can't read chinese. But satire or not, thousands of weibo users took it as straight-up propaganda.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by regift_of_the_gods on Monday March 03 2014, @04:39AM

      by regift_of_the_gods (138) on Monday March 03 2014, @04:39AM (#9905)

      The first two from SCMP seemed to be rather critical reporting of nationalist excuses for smog. Apparently pollution is the one issue for which people are allowed to criticize the government and the party - it would be ridiculous for them to claim that the problem is overstated.

    • (Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 03 2014, @05:44AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 03 2014, @05:44AM (#9914)

      TFA is about smog in Beijing and your attempt to turn this into an anti-China rant won't get you any additional brownie point.

      The first two links were from SCMP. SCMP stands for South China Morning Post, which is based in Hong Kong, and owned and operated by some fella who was from a South East Asian country which is very rabidly anti-Chinese.

      A glance on SCMP and you would see the slant towards anti-CCP.

      Your third link is from UK - a country which, for the past 5 decades has been actively persuading India to go to war against China.

      As for your fourth link - it was dated 2012.

      What is your point ?

      You want to talk about SMOG, talk about SMOG. Why do you want to mix in your anti-China rant on that ?

      Are you trying to turn this site into that other side where politics bring in 400+ argumentative comments ?

      • (Score: 1) by iNaya on Monday March 03 2014, @06:02AM

        by iNaya (176) on Monday March 03 2014, @06:02AM (#9922)

        There is a difference between being anti-Chinese, and being anti-leadership, or even anti on a particular topic. Please do not confuse the this. I'm sure the people who actually live in Beijing have much worse things to say about their local government than any of those linked articles do. After all, nobody likes to live in heavy pollution.

        The Chinese government, is very adept at many things. Despite some setbacks, they have built one of the best transport systems in the world. In recent years, they've done an amazing job of preventing their economy of boiling over, and people for the most part are well fed. More than certain Western countries can say. However, pollution control is not one of their strengths. Why would you want to defend this?

        Your government is not an object of worship! Is is a group of individual, normal people. Some power hungry, some meek, some wanting to make a difference, and some wanting to make a buck.

        The fact that Chinese people often get very offended when they feel criticized when something goes wrong in China means they (the particular people who get defensive) have a high level of insecurity. There is no need to be ashamed when foreigners see your problems! We all have problems of some kind.

      • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Angry Jesus on Monday March 03 2014, @06:12AM

        by Angry Jesus (182) on Monday March 03 2014, @06:12AM (#9924)

        > You want to talk about SMOG, talk about SMOG.

        Ok, let's talk about SMOG. What is the basis for the unsupported claim in TFA that western smog models are not applicable to chinese smog?

      • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 03 2014, @10:15AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 03 2014, @10:15AM (#9968)

        TFA is about smog in Beijing and your attempt to turn this into an anti-China rant won't get you any additional brownie point.

        No, the grandparent is on topic, unlike you who seem like an apologist or a shill.

        As for your fourth link - it was dated 2012.

        What was your point here? Is two years a long time in the history of China? If you don't have a reasonable argument, don't bring it up. It only serves to weaken your position.

        Are you trying to turn this site into that other side where politics bring in 400+ argumentative comments ?

        If you want to see smog as a purely technical problem, that's fine be as naive as you wish. But allow others to express their thoughts then as well.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Roo_Boy on Monday March 03 2014, @06:01AM

    by Roo_Boy (1762) on Monday March 03 2014, @06:01AM (#9921)

    After generating some chicken scratchings on a scrap of paper I get: (factors thanks to wikipedia)
    1 fir = 40.8233133 kg
    4.409*10^-9 fir = 0.18 mg

    1 fur = 201.168 m
    1 fur^3 = 8140980 m^3

    roll it all together and it gives 0.035896 fir/fur^3

    --
    --- The S.I. prototype "Average Punter" is kept in a tube of inert gas in Geneva.
  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Iskender on Monday March 03 2014, @06:04AM

    by Iskender (470) on Monday March 03 2014, @06:04AM (#9923)

    [NOTE TO EDITOR: I can't get slashcode to display the mu symbol, so I converted to milligrams]

    Uhh, that symbol stands for MICRO, not milli. So you're multiplying the amount by 1000 there. If you can't get the symbol to work, the recommended approach is to just write it out: microgram.

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by hankwang on Monday March 03 2014, @07:27AM

      by hankwang (100) on Monday March 03 2014, @07:27AM (#9937) Homepage

      That symbol stands for MICRO, not milli. So you're multiplying the amount by 1000 there. If you can't get the symbol to work,

      Why is this marked "informative"? If you had bothered to RTFAs, you would have noticed that they were talking about 500 micrograms/m3, which is nicely converted to 0.50 milligrams/m3 in the summary.

      • (Score: 1) by Iskender on Monday March 03 2014, @02:53PM

        by Iskender (470) on Monday March 03 2014, @02:53PM (#10057)

        Okay, my bad.

        Also, what's this "article" you're talking about? :)

  • (Score: 4, Informative) by hankwang on Monday March 03 2014, @07:06AM

    by hankwang (100) on Monday March 03 2014, @07:06AM (#9931) Homepage

    When I submitted the story a few days ago, the smog was at 180 ug/m3. But now it's back at 372 ug/m3 according to the smog monitor site. [aqicn.org]

  • (Score: 1) by zafiro17 on Monday March 03 2014, @11:26AM

    by zafiro17 (234) on Monday March 03 2014, @11:26AM (#9979) Homepage

    That's pretty nasty stuff they're breathing too, including - if I recall correctly - some heavy metals from neighboring industries. Hello cancer, genetic mutations, and unexplained health anomolies.

    I propose we quickly take every Republican politican who railed against the EPA as a "job killing institution" and pack them straight off to China so they can breathe deeply and absorb as much of that contamination as possible. They're a bunch of wankers anyway and their health insurance protects them in ways they tried hard to make sure the Affordable Care package would deny working class Americans, so I hope they all choke on it and die.

    Let's compare "killing jobs" to just "killing people forced to live like this" you shortsighted peckerwoods.

    --
    Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 03 2014, @03:32PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 03 2014, @03:32PM (#10074)

      we quickly take every Republican politician "killing people forced to live like this

      So your proposed solution is to kill more people but do not like the idea of others saying maybe the EPA went too far? Nice. But at least they dont think like you and only your friends and family are supper cool and not like that at all so deserve to live.

      You are approaching people wrong if you want them to think like you. If you want them to think like you you need to not be 'my way or stfu'. You need them to think it is *their* idea.

      They're a bunch of wankers anyway and their health insurance protects them in ways they tried hard to make sure the Affordable Care package
      My insurance has gone from 3k to nearly 12k in 2 years. With no major medical bills in that time. Affordable my ass...

      The country has spoken on what they think of ACA. About 4 million signed up for it. Of that 4 million 3.8 were up for medicaid/medicare renewal and got the same coverage. We have had a net add of about 200k people. We have upsidedowned our entire healthcare system for what will be about a half of 1 percent of our population. Instead of real solutions like real free healthcare. We have people with 3x the bill they had. We on average pay 10x what the rest of the world does and have comparable health care. Why do you think that is? I will give you a hint. Its called supply and demand.

      shortsighted peckerwoods
      Look in the mirror young man. You have not seen anything yet with respect to healthcare in the united states. My father went from selling affordable insurance in the 90s to little old ladies to selling nothing in the 2000s. As they could no longer afford it (20-35 a month for 70 year olds with cancer to 400 a month). That is what Hillarycare wrought upon our healthcare landscape. We just doubled down on it.

      ACA is nothing more than an insurance mandate. It does not give you free health coverage. You will pay for it. Look up what medicaid is. It is a loan program. Not a free healthcare program. It is the insurer of last resort. That worked out well for the home mortgage bubble didnt it?

    • (Score: 1) by CoolHand on Monday March 03 2014, @04:24PM

      by CoolHand (438) on Monday March 03 2014, @04:24PM (#10100) Journal

      That's pretty nasty stuff they're breathing too, including - if I recall correctly - some heavy metals from neighboring industries. Hello cancer, genetic mutations, and unexplained health anomolies.

      So, extrapolating on that, perhaps this is all some big Chinese experiment on their own people to see if they can produce X-Men type mutants... ? I wouldn't be shocked... :)

      --
      Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
  • (Score: 3, Funny) by Open4D on Monday March 03 2014, @01:40PM

    by Open4D (371) on Monday March 03 2014, @01:40PM (#10027) Journal

    I can't help myself ...

    This smog is causing utter desolation in the normally busy Beijing. The Desolation of Smog

                                                                                `
    (Amusingly the apparently record-breaking opening of that film in China [thewrap.com] does seem to have only just preceeded this particular outbreak.)