4 ms·

I find it hard to believe that if you truly sat down and thought about it from first principles for an hour, that you would actually believe that

B1FF_PSUVM 9y ago
Or looking at historical pictures of a city with street lights on at mid-day because of industrial smog ... https://www.buzzfeed.com/kevintang/stunning-photos-of-pittsburghs-air-pollution-in-the-1940s https://www.buzzfeed.com/kevintang/stunning-photos-of-pittsb...
- sengork 9y ago
  I wonder how those pictures would compare if they were taken by the same camera technology.
  - nneonneo 9y ago
    Try this on for size: https://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/science/lastwinterthiswinter.jpg https://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/science/lastwin... from this following article: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/01/aghast-over-beijings-air-pollution-this-was-pittsburgh-not-that-long-ago/267237/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/01/aghas... The left image is, amazingly, a daytime shot - the sun is visible in the top-left corner. The smog was so bad on that day ("Black Tuesday", November 1939) that a camera essentially could not capture any detail _in broad daylight_.
- nneonneo 9y ago
  I live in Pittsburgh. The air is clean now and the water is clear - but there's constant reminders that it wasn't always this way. Although most of the historic buildings were cleaned of soot, a few chose to keep some parts sooty and black as a reminder of what once was - a great example is the Mellon Institute just a few blocks from my work (https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/mellon-institute-columns https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/mellon-institute-columns). It did take Pittsburgh a long time to start fixing its environmental issues, and it took the total collapse of the steel industry to fully clear the air. Even back when I came here (~2011) people had an impression of Pittsburgh as a polluted, industrial hell-hole - I'm so glad that it wasn't the case when I came.
  - tinus_hn 9y ago
    Good thing you elected Trump to rebuild that industry!
exergy 9y ago
Ah the famous HN "first principles" strikes again, pouncing on hapless and unsuspecting victims at the most inconvenient of moments.
hristov 9y ago
Well, tell me why I wouldn't believe it. I don't have an hour to spare. I lived in a communist dictatorship when I was young and pollution was definitely worse than the democratic country I migrated to. And while the general voting populace in america is much less environmental than I would hope them to be, it seems to me that once pollution becomes overwhelming and its health effects obvious and impossible to ignore, the general public usually does something about it. In America it was the extreme smog and the acid rain that caused a backlash. But China got much much worse than America before there was an attempt to stop pollution, and the environmentalism was brought on mostly after the Beijing Olympics. I.e., it was the result of the reaction of foreigners to the mass pollution not Chinese citizens. I still think China would be less polluted had it been a democratic country.
- mazerackham 9y ago
  So from a sample size of one, you thoroughly concluded that this was because of democracy vs dictatorship. Just to offset that for you, India is a democracy with pollution even worse than China (although conveniently not often discussed in western media). The conclusion you came to that China is trying to curb pollution "mostly" because of foreigners visiting during the Beijing Olympics, again do you honestly believe that? You don't think the CCP, even being one of those "communist dictatorships", cares at all about lowered life expectancy across its population? Why did the CCP lift most of its people out of severe poverty over the last 20 years? What evil agenda was it trying to achieve then?

B1FF_PSUVM 9y ago

Or looking at historical pictures of a city with street lights on at mid-day because of industrial smog ... https://www.buzzfeed.com/kevintang/stunning-photos-of-pittsburghs-air-pollution-in-the-1940s https://www.buzzfeed.com/kevintang/stunning-photos-of-pittsb...

sengork 9y ago
I wonder how those pictures would compare if they were taken by the same camera technology.
- nneonneo 9y ago
  Try this on for size: https://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/science/lastwinterthiswinter.jpg https://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/science/lastwin... from this following article: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/01/aghast-over-beijings-air-pollution-this-was-pittsburgh-not-that-long-ago/267237/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/01/aghas... The left image is, amazingly, a daytime shot - the sun is visible in the top-left corner. The smog was so bad on that day ("Black Tuesday", November 1939) that a camera essentially could not capture any detail _in broad daylight_.
nneonneo 9y ago
I live in Pittsburgh. The air is clean now and the water is clear - but there's constant reminders that it wasn't always this way. Although most of the historic buildings were cleaned of soot, a few chose to keep some parts sooty and black as a reminder of what once was - a great example is the Mellon Institute just a few blocks from my work (https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/mellon-institute-columns https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/mellon-institute-columns). It did take Pittsburgh a long time to start fixing its environmental issues, and it took the total collapse of the steel industry to fully clear the air. Even back when I came here (~2011) people had an impression of Pittsburgh as a polluted, industrial hell-hole - I'm so glad that it wasn't the case when I came.
- tinus_hn 9y ago
  Good thing you elected Trump to rebuild that industry!

exergy 9y ago

Ah the famous HN "first principles" strikes again, pouncing on hapless and unsuspecting victims at the most inconvenient of moments.

hristov 9y ago

Well, tell me why I wouldn't believe it. I don't have an hour to spare. I lived in a communist dictatorship when I was young and pollution was definitely worse than the democratic country I migrated to. And while the general voting populace in america is much less environmental than I would hope them to be, it seems to me that once pollution becomes overwhelming and its health effects obvious and impossible to ignore, the general public usually does something about it. In America it was the extreme smog and the acid rain that caused a backlash. But China got much much worse than America before there was an attempt to stop pollution, and the environmentalism was brought on mostly after the Beijing Olympics. I.e., it was the result of the reaction of foreigners to the mass pollution not Chinese citizens. I still think China would be less polluted had it been a democratic country.

mazerackham 9y ago
So from a sample size of one, you thoroughly concluded that this was because of democracy vs dictatorship. Just to offset that for you, India is a democracy with pollution even worse than China (although conveniently not often discussed in western media). The conclusion you came to that China is trying to curb pollution "mostly" because of foreigners visiting during the Beijing Olympics, again do you honestly believe that? You don't think the CCP, even being one of those "communist dictatorships", cares at all about lowered life expectancy across its population? Why did the CCP lift most of its people out of severe poverty over the last 20 years? What evil agenda was it trying to achieve then?