Air Quality Monitoring in Beijing

Having lived in Pasadena, California for four years, I know something about polluted air.  During a visit to Beijing with a group of students. it was clear (pun intended) that Beijing's was at a whole other level. The best description I heard from someone who lived there was "apocalyptic." The Asia Pacific edition of the NY Times has an article on the Chinese government wanting embassies to stop monitoring and tweeting on the air quality in Beijing. The picture with the article is of the Beijing I saw while there in March.  I was told by an American living in Beijing that the readings on the meters are often at the maximum--the readings are off the chart.  China's policy appears to be concentrate on economic growth and then clean up. Come to think about it, that is what most of the industrial countries today did.

On the Duralbility of False Statistics

Occasionally a statistic gets into the public domain through the news media that turns out to be untrue. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal illustrates this. We often hear thta the typical American will go through about seven careers in a lifetime. I have heard that claim at college graduations and from politicians. Carl Bialik explores the truth to this claim and finds that there is no support for it. Often, the source is listed as the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, but the data are not tracked by the BLS.

A number of years ago I read an article in which the author searched for the source of a claim he had seen in print numerous times. The claim was that one in four coeds would be raped at a particular university in the four years they attended the school. The author said he found it hard to believe. If it were true, parents would have to be crazy to let the daughters attend the school. He tracked it down to a speech by someon who came up with the number by taking the reported number of rapes and increasing the number by some factor to account for unreported rapes.

Bjorn Lomborg, in his book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, offers another example. The press often would quote a statistic that 40,000 species are lost every year. Where did the estimate come from? Lomborg found the source in a book by Norman Myers, The Sinking Ark. Myers took a number of 100 species a year, which was a "hazarded guess," at a 1974 conference. Myers then stated that the number seemed low. He then supposes that the final 25 years of the 20th century would witness the elimination of 1 million species. This works out to 40,000 a year. But the number was not based on evidenc; it was pulled out of the air.

Too many of us assume that a number that appears in a newspaper must be true. But reporters are often not statistically trained, and apparently seldom try to find the source of a claim. Some skepticism is needed by all of us.

Power Hungry

I just finished an excellent book on energy--POWER HUNGRY by Robert Bryce. The subtitle of the book is "The Myths of 'Green' Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future. His basic argument is that the popular "green" energies--wind and solar--can never replace hydrocarbons as the major source of power in the world. He notes that it is not energy that we want, but power. As he notes, "Energy is the ability to do work; power is the rate at which work gets done." (p. 13). It's power we want and we want it 24/7. He continues, "Renewable energy has little value unless it becomes renewable power, meaning power that can be dispatched at specific times of our choosing." (p. 39).

Bryce focuses on what he calls the Four Imperatives. These are: power density, energy density, cost, and scale. The renewables fail on these imperatives.

He also has some good one-liners:

"If you are anti-carbon dioxide and anti-nuclear, your are pro-blackout."

"All-electric cars are The Next Big Thing. And they always will be."

As Bruce says repeatedly, it is a matter of math and physics. He sees the solution to more use of natural gas and nuclear power.

The book can help clear the air of hype and sensationalism, which are often invoked by environemental activists.