China has a real problem on its hands. On a bad day in Beijing, visibility can be measured in tens of yards.
China declared a “war on pollution” this week, and is now fortifying its arsenal with a new weapon: smog-clearing drones.
The drones work by shooting chemicals into the air, freezing pollutants and making them fall to the ground, according to state media. The unmanned vehicles currently carry about 176 pounds of haze-scrubbing chemicals, while future versions will hold more than 1,500 pounds.
I’m all for cleaning the air, but this approach seems naive to me. Even if it works, when the pollutants hit the ground, won’t they be scattered, by shuffling feet, bicycles and cars, back into the air again, this time in a layer lower to the ground and denser with hazardous materials?
That said, they’ve got to do something, and maybe this will lead to better long term solutions.
Actually, it would be measured in tens of meters, because China doesn’t use antique measurements.
I don’t see this ending well. Bathing the air with chemicals so that the particulates in the air clump up and fall to the ground may clear the air but you’re just going to end up with a sooty mess coating everything on the ground.
I think, if you look at pictures of Beijing, you’ll see that most of the pollutants are going to end up on rooftops. Lots of places where people walk and cars drive, too. And waterways.
Who knows, though? Maybe getting it on the ground is putting it somewhere that nature can more easily help mitigate it.
Or they could adopt stronger emissions controls, which has worked for Los Angeles and London. I remember the old joke when the olympics were going to be held in Los Angeles that athletes were training by running while breathing through a muffler (credit to the comedian who said that, whom I don’t remember at this time, but I tend to think it was Gallagher or George Carlin).
Classic case of treating the symptoms (and not very well at that) not the cause. It could also be more insidious in that one could surmise that that Chinese government is only “fixing” the obvious, visible problem of smog while essentially leaving air pollution still a dangerous health issue. “Out of sight, out of mind” may very well be the operative phrase here.