Environmental News

US embassies end pollution data popular in China and India

I suggest this problem is less serious than link above suggests. There has been widespread data availability throughout China for about 10 years.
China Air Quality Index (AQI) and Air Pollution information | IQAir
China Air Quality Index (AQI) : Real-Time Air Pollution

Are two repositories that include China as well as other countries. At least the first link has India data.

US Embassy Beijing started posting data in 2008, in time for Beijing Olympics, and to some extent was an 'in-your-face' thing. But now similar equipment is in most major cities (including Kunming which is a cut below major). I do not see this having potential for major cost saving. The equipment purchases (Anderson impacters and spectrophotometers) were made long ago. Operating costs involve daily reading and (possibly annual) cleaning, and I doubt they add up to much.

US Embassies (Dept of State) thus own some devices they shall not use, and might sell to recoup part of initial outlays. Which I would advise them to do soon, because ...

Next-gen air quality monitoring equipment is small, inexpensive, and quite accurate. Certainly accurate enough to identify different categories of air quality.

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TL;DR Air quality measurements have been globalized in the last decade or so, and data are widely available. No single organization including US Embassies now provide irreplaceable data.

 

Lesotho is a country (in Africa) no one has ever heard of (according to a recent speech made in Washington). It appears to have no air quality monitoring, and global data hubs work from satellite monitoring. There must be other countries like that. If they were to invest, it should probably be by new tech.

Global air quality monitoring is pretty much a done deal at this point. What remains are source reductions, as this has large negative medical consequences.

 

More important aspects of downsizing US investments in science etc:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00562-w

 

On the broadest scale, US, Europe, and China funding of Science are now each at similar levels. US is sure to trim a bit, maybe a lot, over the coming few years. Whether trimming is to reduce bloat or clean out wrong-thinking ideologies might boil down to opinions. The larger question is what good may come from such investments and where?

Could any great harm come from trimming such investments by one among these three leaders?

 

@bisco "I’m on 200mg per day, along with 80mg atorvastatin. I think it has helped with muscle pain. 17 cents a piece on amazon"

For both meds those are large doses. Which costs you 0.17 each?

Not that anyone is aching to know, statins are now generic and inexpensive in China. CoQ10 has gone to TV marketing channels promising wonderfulness, and remain more expensive.

 

We talked before about Clair Patterson at CalTech research on lead (Pb) toxicity and ubiquity. Here is an earler part of the story:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/how-alice-hamilton-waged-one-woman-campaign-get-lead-out-everything-180985960/

 

Gloom and doom are common themes in environmental research. Here are 2 new ones that have caught media eyes:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-024-02595-2
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adp4671

The first seems to me accurate as far as it goes. But it does not demonstrate that as yet, loss of pollinators has reduced production of fruits, etc. It seems possible that we have been over supplied with pollinators and we still have 'enough'. That is worth studying.

The second correctly shows that many butterfly species in US have dropped in numbers, and suggests reasons why. It also shows that other butterfly species in US are increasing. We have no idea why some species are - and others are +. But I looked at their Supplemental Information Table S9 and found those species increasing outweighed those species decreasing. Numbers of species times percentage changes. Working with percentage changes is 'slippery' because losses can only go to -100% while percentage increases have no upper bound. However I cannot conclude (as authors seemed to) that US butterflies are on their way out. Instead it may be that butterfly species + outweigh the - and we have no idea why, or what that may imply.

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We are in times of large changes in climate, land use, and research funding It is unclear in general how The Human Enterprise will be impacted, and how we might know and prepare in advance. It is a sad thing that PriusChat has few reporters on the case. Y'all deserve better.

 

@bisco for the save, 20 years ago, PriusChat had a focus on hybrid powered vehicles but also oddly embraced a lot of other topics. While other car-focused websites stayed narrow, PriusChat went wide. If it had not, readers would have been spared much from me, among others.

Until/unless PriusChat leaders narrow what can be posted here, I and many others will speak. And grumblers will grumble.