Solving the air pollution problem?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3701540/Has-Beijing-solution-smog-World-s-largest-air-purifier-Chinese-capital-tackle-notorious-air-pollution.html

bull

You need a thousand of those towers in one city to have any impact.

It's kind of like this idea which was meant to fight the climate change - http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/painting-roofs-white-is-as-green-as-taking-cars-off-the-roads-for-50-years-says-study-7640770.html

Something that was debunked here - http://theweek.com/articles/480449/white-roofs-really-reduce-global-warming

In the end, to fight air/water pollution, you need to fight it at the source (factories/cars) - and not once it's already out in the atmosphere. 

Beijing was waaay kewl and the air was clean when most of the population was riding bikes everywhere they wanted to go.  Then they copied America et al. and got the stupid idea into their heads that everyone needs a car.  Now, car related accidents at are at historic levels, pollution is deadly, the population is getting fat and lazy, land which was once park-lined bike paths is now ten and twelve lane thoroughfares.  Vile, unhealthy and boring.

Places in the West like LA have zillions of cars and there isn't awful pollution. Factories and coal-burning power plants are the main culprits, in China and Korea.

Designers from the Netherlands have brought their smog free tower to North China's Tianjin city. The seven-meter-tall tower is essentially a large outdoor air purifier, sucking polluted air in through electrostatic adsorption technology and filtering out the smog particles before releasing clean air.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2017-04/02/content_28777182.htm

Designers from the Netherlands have brought their smog free tower to North China's Tianjin city. The seven-meter-tall tower is essentially a large outdoor air purifier, sucking polluted air in through electrostatic adsorption technology and filtering out the smog particles before releasing clean air.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2017-04/02/content_28777182.htm

The irony in burning coal to power the air filter....

The solution to smog and pollution will be a multi-pronged approach but is going to heavily depend on renewable energy coupled to high capacity energy storage that is both cheap, high percentage round trip and able to be turned on quickly.

A move away from coal is only half the solution.

Designers from the Netherlands have brought their smog free tower to North China's Tianjin city. The seven-meter-tall tower is essentially a large outdoor air purifier, sucking polluted air in through electrostatic adsorption technology and filtering out the smog particles before releasing clean air.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2017-04/02/content_28777182.htm

The irony in burning coal to power the air filter....

The solution to smog and pollution will be a multi-pronged approach but is going to heavily depend on renewable energy coupled to high capacity energy storage that is both cheap, high percentage round trip and able to be turned on quickly.

A move away from coal is only half the solution.

Renewables don't have enough efficiency in 2017 to fully power a grid.  (In the future they may and we can all hope so.)  Seeing these things are mostly about image and making people feel warm and fuzzy inside.  The reality is, most of the power demand to be met has to be met by conventional sources like coal, oil, nuclear, natural gas, etc.  Natural gas and nuclear have no or little emissions.  Clean coal is better than just coal.  I'm not sure what they are burning here.  Even Trump talks about using "clean coal" even if you don't like coal. 

This is a good article:

Newlyweds plant trees for fresh air

https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2017/04/371_226773.html

Participants hoped their efforts will allow their potential children to enjoy cleaner air. Korea has been ranked as one of the worst countries in terms of air pollution.

"I love to look up at the sky, but the heavy fine dust recently hinders doing so," said Lee Yoon-jeong, who joined the event with her husband Moon Joon-sik to celebrate their first wedding anniversary. "The air quality, which was OK when we were young, seems to continue to worsen. So we decided to plant trees for our future children."

Is there a yellow dust monitoring service that works? I used to use this but it doesn't seem to work now, and they link to a site that doesn't have any yellow dust monitoring.

http://www.kma.go.kr/eng/weather/asiandust/timeseries.jsp

Places in the West like LA have zillions of cars and there isn't awful pollution.

L.A. has TERRIBLE air quality.

Is there a yellow dust monitoring service that works? I used to use this but it doesn't seem to work now, and they link to a site that doesn't have any yellow dust monitoring.

http://www.kma.go.kr/eng/weather/asiandust/timeseries.jsp

I use these:

http://aqicn.org/city/seoul/

https://airvisual.com/

One of the most critical, and potentially fatal, contributors to South Korea’s worsening air pollution is fine particulate matter, which tends to hit the country hardest in spring and has been particularly bad this year.

Lim Young-wook, a professor at Yonsei University’s Institute for Environmental Research, said that breathing in fine particulate matter can be a major health hazard.

Tiny pollution particles in the air, especially those smaller than 0.3 microns in diameter, can lead to a variety of diseases. “These tiny particles enter the body very quickly,” he said. “[Breathing them] is linked to cardiovascular problems, diabetes, high blood pressure and other disorders. Macrophages in the blood, which are meant to eliminate foreign substances, become overwhelmed by the quantity of particles and swell up, increasing blood density.”

Many Koreans regard China as the primary source of their environmental woes, but the reality is that much of the fine particulate matter, or “fine dust” as it’s colloquially known, is generated at home, including by coal plants.

“There’s no accurate way of telling how much of the fine dust in Korea comes from China,” said Lim. “A figure between 30 and 50 percent keeps being repeated, but that’s just an estimate. The figures vary according to season, region, wind direction and other factors. On some days, it’s all from South Korea.”

https://koreaexpose.com/coal-dust-air-south-korea-dirty-energy/

Is there a yellow dust monitoring service that works? I used to use this but it doesn't seem to work now, and they link to a site that doesn't have any yellow dust monitoring.

http://www.kma.go.kr/eng/weather/asiandust/timeseries.jsp

I use these:

http://aqicn.org/city/seoul/

https://airvisual.com/

I said yellow dust, not general pollution data. I used aqicn all the time but it has nothing about yellow dust levels.

Places in the West like LA have zillions of cars and there isn't awful pollution.

L.A. has TERRIBLE air quality.

50 years ago sure. Today there is noticeable smog but it's a kind of brownish hazy smear at the horizon, not the all-consuming white skies of Korea. You can actually see clouds and nearby hills in LA.

Places in the West like LA have zillions of cars and there isn't awful pollution.

L.A. has TERRIBLE air quality.

no, not anymore. check the AQI values of LA compared to Seoul on an average day.

LA is usually 2-3 times better than Seoul. If you think LA has terrible air quality then by your definition Seoul is HORRENDOUS.

Is there a yellow dust monitoring service that works? I used to use this but it doesn't seem to work now, and they link to a site that doesn't have any yellow dust monitoring.

http://www.kma.go.kr/eng/weather/asiandust/timeseries.jsp

I use these:

http://aqicn.org/city/seoul/

https://airvisual.com/

I said yellow dust, not general pollution data. I used aqicn all the time but it has nothing about yellow dust levels.

I know that but the "pollution" from the yellow dust should still track.

Anyway, here's a forecasting tracker:
https://web.kma.go.kr/eng/weather/asiandust/forecastchart.jsp

Check this out starting at 1:49:00:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4utkb6vSyQ&t=5620s

A car that emits air cleaner than in takes in?

Check this out starting at 1:49:00:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4utkb6vSyQ&t=5620s

A car that emits air cleaner than in takes in?

Theoretically, if the catalytic converter was advanced enough, it would take the CO and the ozone from ground level and turn it into............... .......... me.

Is there a yellow dust monitoring service that works? I used to use this but it doesn't seem to work now, and they link to a site that doesn't have any yellow dust monitoring.

http://www.kma.go.kr/eng/weather/asiandust/timeseries.jsp

I use these:

http://aqicn.org/city/seoul/

https://airvisual.com/

I said yellow dust, not general pollution data. I used aqicn all the time but it has nothing about yellow dust levels.

Both PM 10 and PM 2.5 include "yellow dust".

I don't think that determining how much of a sample is silica sand and how much is industrial pollution is something that is done on a real-time monitoring basis.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4024940/

This article is informative: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_Dust

It appears that a lot of it does come from China, at least according to the article.

A better article can be found here:

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2008/04/22/reference/yellow-dust-storms-getting-worse/#.WOa5IGczW70