livefrombeijing

introducing www.livefrombeijing.com

2009-07-31T20:05:00.006+08:00

Greetings,

After a year of blogging here on blogspot, I've decided it's time for a slight upgrade. Most importantly, I need to shift to a domain which will enable my blog to be viewable within mainland China. (Blogspot, along with a host of other sites, has been blocked since mid-May.) I also have some web ideas up my sleeve that I can't realize on blogspot alone.

Therefore, I'm very happy to introduce my new website and blog: www.livefrombeijing.com.

This is my last post at this blog address. All of my old posts have been migrated to the new site. Starting now, please visit / bookmark / link to www.livefrombeijing.com instead of this blog.

Also, for those of you who have subscribed to my feed, please note my new feed:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/livefrombeijing/feed

For now, the new site will be functionally similar to this one. In the coming weeks and months, I hope and expect to be adding some pages and features. For now, though, at least I should be up and posting again.

Comments and questions welcome; as always, you can reach me at livefrombeijing at gmail dot com. Thanks for reading, and see you over at the new site.

Vance

livefrombeijing is under construction

2009-07-07T11:17:00.006+08:00

Greetings,

I am doing some site maintenance (and have been really busy), so my posting will likely be light for the next little while.

For the record, this is not "maintenance" as related specifically to the massive information control currently occurring in China as a result of the protests / riots in Xinjiang. The maintenance I am doing is, however, related to the fact that blogspot (including this blog), has been blocked in China since mid-May. Especially given the events of the last two days, it seems unlikely that China will unblock blogspot for some time; therefore, I am in the process of setting up a new blog and migrating my posts.

With Twitter blocked again as of Sunday night, I was a little disappointed to see the BeijingAir feed tweet about "routine maintenance":

A more appropriate tweet would be "Site is currently under routine harmonization. Please refer to the last available reading."

Lastly, here is some recent news reading / placeholders for future commentary:

7/2 China Daily: Beijing air cleanest in 9 years
7/3 Time blog: Cleaner Skies in Beijing
7/4 Xinhua: Chinese Minister refutes doubts over air quality results during Olympics
7/6 CELB: Beijing Makes Straw Man of Paper Tiger

xinhua's international herald leader on the us embassy air quality monitor

2009-07-01T18:33:00.001+08:00

This post contains some translation and commentary on the recent story in Xinhua's International Herald Leader (国际先驱导报) on the US Embassy's independent air quality monitor. The story was reprinted in the Hong Kong-based Phoenix magazine (凤凰) here.

First, title: I think it's noteworthy that, although the stories in the two Chinese-language sources are the same, the title in the IHL is 美国驻华使馆自建空气监测站 ("US Embassy Independently Sets Up Air Quality Monitoring Station"), whereas that in the Hong Kong-based Phoenix is more provocative: 美驻华使馆发布自测北京空气指数与气象局数据分歧 ("US Embassy in China Issues Independently-Tested Beijing Air Quality Index - Different from the Meteorological Bureau's Data").

And now content: The IHT begins with similar content as the China Daily story: information about the Embassy's twitter feed and concerns about discrepancies with the officially-reported data, followed by assurance from an Embassy official that the numbers are not directly comparable. As in the China Daily, the IHT story then describes the health impact differences between PM2.5 and PM10.

Following this, though, the IHT diverges from the China Daily story. A section titled 建监测站应循通行规则 (Regulations Should Be Followed When Setting Up Monitoring Stations) questions whether the US Embassy's data is even valid:

中国气象科学院院长张人禾向《国际先驱导报》介绍道，设立空气监测的站点需要在整个区域具备代表性，且50米内不能有污染源，否则将严重影响监测结果。...

因此事实上，美国驻华使馆自建的空气监测站并不符合通行的国际规范。

According to Zhang Renhe, Director of the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, an air quality monitor must be installed in a location representative of of the entire city; moreover, there should be no pollution sources within 50m that could strongly impact the monitoring results...

In fact, the US embassy's independent air quality monitoring station is not in accordance with international criteria.

于去年8月建成的美国新使馆区坐落在北京CBD商业圈、背靠亮马河的黄金地段，它毗邻女人街等商业场所，平日里交通繁忙、人群熙攘，这些因素都很可能对监测站的数据收录产生影响。

记者28日在美国使馆的所在地更是发现，其对面原有的星吧路酒吧餐饮街已被大规模拆除，工地上一片狼藉，灰尘扑面。而它南面的其他使馆区仍在建设中...

Completed last August, the US Embassy is located in the CBD business area, near the prime locations around Liangmahe. It is near the Ladies' Market and other commercial areas with high weekday traffic and bustling crowds; these factors all possibly influence the data recorded by the monitor.

On the 28th, this reporter visited the location of the US Embassy and discovered the large scale demolition of Super Bar Street across the street; much dust blew out from the messy construction site. Additionally, on the south side was another embassy area under construction...

Although the article does not question the accuracy of the Embassy's data, it clearly indicates that the Embassy's data is disproportionately bad because of poor and non-standard monitor placement. This possibility was not raised in the China Daily piece.

(Side note for future investigation: I think perhaps the US Embassy monitor is at the old embassy near Ritan park, not on site at the new location.)

Moving on, the article briefly mentions Steven Andrews' criticisms of Beijing's air quality management, that Beijing's air quality monitors have been selectively placed in areas of low pollution to yield better overall averages and that officials artificially inflated the statistics on number of blue sky days. Although it is noteworthy that the article mentions Mr. Andrews at all (I haven't seen his analysis directly covered in the Chinese media before), the article immediately quotes experts supposedly refuting his claims:

“蓝天数量有目共睹，如何造假？”周凌唏评价到。在她眼中，为了北京奥运会顺利召开，在北京民众的努力下，的确明显提高了首都空气质量，“蓝天多，说明大气透明情况好，在一定程度上说明内含的污染物就少。”

而张人禾对“监测站多分布在低污染区”的质疑感到“不解”，“别忘了，空气也是流动的。”他说。

"Everyone can see the number of blue sky days, so how can they be faked?" [an analyst with the Chinese Academy of Meteorology] commented. In her eyes, to ensure a smooth Olympics in Beijing, through the effort of all of Beijing's citizens, there was indeed an obvious improvement to Beijing's air quality. "More blue sky days means a more transparent atmosphere, which means to some extent less pollutants."

In addition, Zhang Renhe felt he "couldn't understand" the suspicion that "some of the monitoring stations are located in low pollution areas." "Don't forget, air is also flowing," he said.

I can't quite understand what either of these experts meant, which may or may not be due to the language barrier. Despite that, though, it doesn't seem as if either expert addressed Mr. Andrews' concerns directly, so it doesn't make sense to me that the article would raise them at all.

Finally, the article quotes an anonymous Beijing EPB official saying that the Embassy is breaking no laws by independently monitoring air quality, before closing with this quote:

“不过，与此相关的我国《环境监测条例》已被纳入国务院今年的立法计划中，有望今年内通过。”他说。

"However, the relevant "Environmental Monitoring Regulations" have already been placed into the State Council's legislation plan for this year; there is hope they will be passed this year," [the Beijing EPB official] said.

In other words, although there is nothing wrong with Beijing's current monitoring system, the Beijing EPB still hopes that it will be improved this year with new, unspecified State Council legislation.

Although I was initially encouraged by yesterday's direct and somewhat challenging China Daily piece, this Chinese-language Xinhua piece is more of what I would expect from China's state media: convoluted logic and fact-twisting that attempts to shape reality to fit the government's agenda as opposed to strong investigative reporting attempting to uncover the truth.

china daily features online survey on beijing's air quality monitoring

2009-07-01T11:55:00.001+08:00

When I wrote yesterday about the China Daily article on the discrepancies between China's officially reported air quality data and the US Embassy's BeijingAir Twitter feed, I didn't realize that the China Daily story appeared on the site's home page along with an incredibly direct web survey:

Web surveys are, of course, not scientific or reliable at all, but nonetheless here's a screen capture of the results as of around 11am this morning:

It's difficult to imagine such a critical survey happening on a Chinese-language state media site, but I will keep an eye out for anything comparable.

Lastly, for the record, there are several mistakes in the China Daily story that I should point out. Three are in this sentence alone: "A blue-sky day is when the city's air pollution index, the level of five airborne pollutants, falls below 100, indicating that no health implications exist."

First, MEP makes no claim that blue-sky days have "no health implications," only that those days have the poorly-defined "excellent" or "good" air quality. Air quality on blue-sky days can certainly have negative health implications, especially for sensitive populations in the short term and for everyone in the long term. What MEP calls "good," the US EPA calls "moderate," saying, "Air quality is acceptable; however, for some pollutants there may be a moderate health concern for a very small number of people who are unusually sensitive to air pollution."

Second, the air pollution index only covers three pollutants, not five. I'm not sure how China Daily made this mistake, because later in the article they describe the number correctly ("the current evaluation system uses only three indices: Sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide and PM 10s"), although they get the pollutants wrong. (The three are sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and PM10.)

Third, this is minor, but a blue-sky day is a day in which the API is technically 100 or below, not below 100.

china daily questions official air quality statistics

2009-06-30T11:53:00.006+08:00

The story about the US Embassy's BeijingAir air quality twitter feed (whose subscribers now top 2,200) was picked up by the China Daily today. Perhaps surprisingly, the China Daily article uses the embassy data to question whether the Beijing EPB's official data present an accurate view of Beijing's air quality:

China Daily calculated that only five days were above "moderate" level in May on BeijingAir, but the local environment bureau said on its website on May 31 that the capital's air quality was the clearest during the same period since 2000, with 25 blue-sky days.

However, the article goes on to quote both an embassy official and a Chinese expert cautioning that the single station is not representative of Beijing's overall air quality:

"This is a single site," [US Embassy spokesperson Susan] Stevenson said. "It cannot be used to measure the air quality across the city. They can't be compared."
...
"The embassy is located in the central business district, which has heavy traffic, and its monitoring station cannot represent the overall picture," Zhu Tong, an environment professor with Peking University, said yesterday.

Signficantly, the China Daily article does not question whether or not the embassy data is valid for that area, only whether the single data point can be extrapolated out to the rest of the city. To me, this is an important distinction, because collective agreement that the embassy data is valid should ultimately help pressure the Beijing EPB to set up their own real-time PM2.5 monitors across the city (which is the direction we should be driving in).

The article closes with this comment, noteworthy for its open questioning of air quality data. Such questioning is rare in the Chinese state-run media:

Some residents expressed doubts about the official air quality data.

Wang Haiyan, a 36-year-old Beijinger living in Chaoyang district, said that even under a different measuring system, there is still no reason to get such different air quality results.

Within Chinese-language media, Xinhua's International Herald Leader (国际先驱导报) published a story two days ago (also printed with a different title in the Hong Kong-based Phoenix magazine (凤凰) here) on the US Embassy's air quality reporting; the story included this photo that is apparently of the monitor:

As one would expect, the tone of the Xinhua piece is much more defensive of the official data and critical of the embassy. Unfortunately, I don't have time now to write more on this; stay tuned tomorrow for some translation and commentary.

krugman's indictment of climate change deniers

2009-06-29T14:58:00.002+08:00

Paul Krugman's column today is highly recommended. It is a scathing indictment of climate change deniers in the US Congress:

But if you watched the debate on Friday, you didn't see people who've thought hard about a crucial issue, and are trying to do the right thing. What you saw, instead, were people who show no sign of being interested in the truth. They don't like the political and policy implications of climate change, so they've decided not to believe in it — and they'll grab any argument, no matter how disreputable, that feeds their denial.

Because the overwhelming - and still increasing - scientific evidence demonstrates that climate change presents a "clear and present danger to our way of life, perhaps even to civilization itself," he calls the denial of climate change "irresponsible and immoral."

In an aside (and as an economist), he further bolsters his case with this zinger:

Given this contempt for hard science, I’m almost reluctant to mention the deniers’ dishonesty on matters economic. But in addition to rejecting climate science, the opponents of the climate bill made a point of misrepresenting the results of studies of the bill’s economic impact, which all suggest that the cost will be relatively low.

(Further info on the economic misrepresentation he mentions here and here.)

In the US-China climate debate, although there is still a lot to be settled, at the very least it seems that the top leadership of both nations agree on the core science of what is causing climate change and where we need to be - in terms of global emission reductions - by what date.

On this point, earlier this month, I was encouraged by what Todd Stern, the US' top climate negotiator, had to say when speaking at the Center for American Progress:

Q: I wonder if you might comment, in talking to Chinese officials, do you feel you're speaking on the basis of the same science?

MR. STERN: ...I have not had a sense that [the Chinese] are in some completely different place with respect to what the underlying science is...in terms of the overall kind of dynamics – where we're going, where need to go – I don't think it's a dramatically different assessment.

(Transcript here). Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the US' own legislature.

beijing epb responds to us embassy air quality twitter feed

2009-06-26T10:00:00.003+08:00

A friend tipped me to an article in today's South China Morning Post (registration required) on the US Embassy's Beijing air quality twitter feed.

Although the majority of the content of the SCMP piece echoes that published last week in other sources, there is one important bit of new information:

Du Shaozhong, deputy director of Beijing's environment protection bureau, was unaware of the US embassy's move, but said: "Any attempts to question our figures with a single monitoring station are not authoritative enough."

This could get bad. Let's see if it gets picked up by other media and begins to escalate.

FYI, the twitter feed has around 1600 followers now (up from 300 just a week ago).

us embassy outed as source of beijingair twitter feed

2009-06-22T15:34:00.003+08:00

On Friday of last week, Time's Austin Ramzy outed the BeijingAir twitter feed as being set up and administered by the US Embassy:

The U.S. Embassy operates a single station in eastern Beijing that records levels of PM2.5, fine particles considered particularly dangerous to human health...

While the U.S. doesn't actively promote the information, it has slowly been getting more attention from Beijing residents concerned about the city's air quality. "The U.S. Embassy has an air quality monitor to measure PM 2.5 particulates on the Embassy compound as an indication of air quality," says Susan Stevenson, a State Department spokesperson. "This monitor is a resource for the health of the Embassy community." She cautions that citywide analyses cannot be done from a single machine, but because the embassy has the data available, it makes it available to others.

Before the story came out, there were around 300 followers of the feed; now there are more than 1,100 and rising fast.

Beijing experienced some bizarre and extremely rapid changes in air quality on Thursday and Friday of last week. On both days, BeijingAir reported maximum pollution levels (hazardous air, AQI = 500) for brief periods in the afternoon. However, hazardous air was never reported by either the Beijing EPB or MEP, presumably because the pollution spikes on both days were short-lived enough that the overall 24-hour averages evened out as just "light pollution." (More discussion here and here.)

Here's a graph showing BeijingAir and MEP-reported air quality over the period noon Tuesday to midnight Sunday last week. Because MEP has no system for real-time reporting, the extreme pollution spikes on the 18th and 19th were never truly reflected in MEP's air quality data:

The events of last week highlight the need for real-time reporting of air quality in Beijing. I wonder if the growing popularity of the embassy's twitter feed will ratchet up pressure on MEP / Beijing EPB to implement such a system here in Beijing.

Final note: the speed of the drop in pollution levels during the afternoon of 6/19 was stunning. With no technical background in air quality modeling or meteorology, I have no idea how this is even possible:

more info on beijing's 6/18 air quality

2009-06-19T15:20:00.006+08:00

Yesterday, beginning at around 10am, there was a sudden and dramatic spike of air pollution here in Beijing. I blogged about it here, and it was covered in the Guardian and Time's blog, with surely more to come. The pollution spike lasted until close to midnight yesterday. I presume yesterday evening's rain is what ended the event, although it should be noted that, as I write this, the pollution seems to be creeping up again.

Yesterday's pollution spike may be seen very clearly in the BeijingAir tweeted hourly data over the past couple of days. Shown here are PM2.5 concentration and AQI:

Note the missing data points in the afternoon of 6/18 and the maxing out of AQI at 500 during the same period.

Despite yesterday afternoon's stifling pollution, MEP's officially reported Air Pollution Index (API) for 6/18 was just 104 - indicating "slightly polluted" air quality. The reason, as noted yesterday, is that MEP's API does not report real-time air quality; it is an average air quality indicator covering noon to noon beginning from the previous day. Therefore, we wouldn't expect the afternoon pollution spike of 6/18 to show up until the 6/19 reported data point.

However, the API for 6/19, which was released a few minutes ago, is just 159 ("lightly polluted"), which is significantly lower than I would have expected.

--
Edit: An API of 159 - corresponding to a PM10 concentration of 266 ug/m^3 - still represents awful air quality, despite my use of the word "just." China's daily/yearly goals for PM10 are 150/100 ug/m^3, while the WHO's recommended targets are 50/20 ug/m^3.
--

The following graph shows MEP PM10 and API data, as well as BeijingAir PM2.5 and AQI data, for the last few days. Note that the absolute magnitudes of the BeijingAir and MEP data are not directly comparable due to slightly different measurements and scales. But the trending should be the same:

Although the MEP data increases beginning noon on 6/18, as one would expect, the increase just doesn't seem commensurate with the seemingly atrocious pollution yesterday afternoon and evening.

What's going on here? Well, there are a few options, but I'm not sure which one is correct:

First - it's theoretically possible that, because MEP averages over 24 hours over a number of different monitoring stations, the overnight reduction combined with lower pollution outside the city center brought the overall average down. Here is the daily individual monitor data from the Beijing EPB:

There are certainly some high readings, e.g. Dongsi, but there are also some that report only half as bad (Pinggu, Miyun).

Second - it is possible that the BeijingAir monitor is either not calibrated correctly or suffered some unusual activity (e.g. a car idling for an extended period outside the monitor). This seems unlikely.

Third - I'm not sure if this is correct or not, but it may be possible that the pollution event was largely PM2.5 - particles of diameter smaller than 2.5 microns - that do not register in the EPB's monitoring stations designed to measure PM10. Can anyone comment on this?

Fourth - I don't think I need to write this option explicitly.

More info as I learn it.

air in beijing hazardous

2009-06-18T15:30:00.008+08:00

BeijingAir is currently reporting hazardous air quality in Beijing (there was an error in the most recent hour, but you can see the PM2.5 concentration slowly creeping up over the course of the morning and early afternoon):

Note, though, that with the AQI maxed out at 500, the air quality is theoretically worse than "hazardous," whatever that might be.

On the other hand, MEP is reporting an API today of 104, "slightly polluted."

A few people have asked me about this blatant discrepancy, so here's a brief comment:

It's important to remember that MEP's reported API for 6/18/09 is actually an average API for the period noon to noon 6/17 to 6/18. Given that this current pollution spike seems to have rolled in over the course of the late morning and early afternoon, it is reasonable that the impact has not yet registered in the MEP reported data. From the perspective of MEP's official reporting, we will have to wait until around 2pm tomorrow to see the results of this episode.

Of course, this discrepancy highlights the necessity of working towards a system of real-time air quality reporting (like the AIRNow program in the US) in Chinese cities. (More on this in another post.)

Final note: during my time in Beijing (3.5 years), I've only experienced a handful of days in which MEP reported a 500 API. The most recent ones were 12/28/2007 and 12/12/2006, plus a few during the sandstorm season of the spring of 2006. I am curious to know if tomorrow will yield another.

symmetric characters

2009-06-17T16:57:00.005+08:00

This is an off-topic post continuing in an occasional series on Chinese character esoterica.

As an engineer, I am a bit obsessed with the structures and patterns of individual Chinese characters.

Recently (don't ask how), I stumbled upon the character 噩, and it got me thinking about symmetry within characters. Specifically, how many characters out there are symmetric across both the x and y-axes? Here are the ones I could think of:

一二十三川工口囗王丰井中日曰申田目回吕亘串車昌噩

I'm sure there's more out there; anyone think of any?

Lastly, this exercise reminds me of a Chinese character riddle a colleague once shared with me: starting from 日, by adding one stroke, you can make 9 different characters. Can you think of them all?

how clean were april and may?

2009-06-08T16:24:00.000+08:00

This past spring, the months of April and May in Beijing were reported as the cleanest April / May in a decade. (Sources for April: China Daily and Beijing EPB, see also my previous post; sources for May: Xinhua and Beijing EPB.)

Independent of the quantitative results, these reports seem to confirm what a lot of people have been mentioning to me, that this past spring has seemed surprisingly clean.

Let's evaluate the truth in all of this. The following graph shows average API*, average PM10 concentration, and number of Blue Sky Days for the period April-May from 2005 through 2009:

From these numbers, the results are pretty clear: the period April-May 2009 in Beijing was indeed significantly better in terms of air quality than the same period in any of the previous four years. (I could have looked farther back, but I decided only to look at five years total for this analysis.)

Here are some comparisons of 2009 vs 2005-2008 averages:

I think it's probably fair to say that the air quality this April and May was 30-40% better than the average air quality during the same period over the previous four years.

As usual, we should celebrate the progress while being mindful of the significant improvements still required. My calculated average PM10 concentration for this period, 117 ug/m^3, is still well above China's annual target (100 ug/m^3) and well well above the WHO's ideal target for developed nations (20 ug/m^3). It is also well above my estimate for the average PM10 concentration during last year's two-month Olympic period (79 ug/m^3).

Related:
Summary of Beijing's 2009 first quarter air quality
Summary of Beijing's 2008 air quality
Update on fall air quality in Beijing

*I don't really like averaging API, because it can lead to some misleading results (further discussion in this post), but despite that I still think it has value as an indicator here.

frozen in time - beijingair twitter feed shows exact hour twitter was blocked in china

2009-06-05T16:14:00.009+08:00

The BeiingAir automatic Twitter feed is stuck at 6/2, 4:00pm, just before Twitter was blocked in China.

I'm working on some analysis for another post related to the BeijingAir Twitter feed, which automatically tweets hourly PM2.5 concentrations at a single station in Beijing.

In looking at the data just now, though, I realized that it hasn't updated since June 2nd at 4:00pm, shortly before Twitter was harmonized in China.

It may be just a robotic scientific instrument (a Met One Bam 1020), but don't you think it still had its feelings hurt? Let's all hope for a prompt release of Twitter so Bam can get back to doing what it does best.

--
Update 6/8/09: Twitter is back, and so is the feed:

Looks like Twitter was officially blocked for 5 days, 22 hours...
--

excellent summaries of status of us-china climate change negotiations

2009-06-05T15:00:00.006+08:00

Last week, describing US-China negotiations related to climate change, Rep. Edward Markey quipped, “This is going to be on one of the most complex diplomatic negotiations in the history of the world.”

The netisphere is grateful this week to the incredible series of posts from both Charlie McElwee of China Environmental Law and Julian Wong of the Green Leap Forward /Center for American Progress on this topic.

First up, Charlie's series on both China and the US' positions six months out from Copenhagen, including tremendous summaries of the diplomatic challenges as well as in-fighting going on within each country:

6/1: Copenhagen Countdown China's Climate Change Position
6/2: Copenhagen Countdown US' Climate Change Pposition
6/3: Copenhagen Countdown T-6 Months Wrap Up
6/4: No Climate Deal Without China

(Also recommended is his three-part series from February: US China Climate Change Engagement Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.)

Charlie's posts are so good, that having read them just before watching Todd Stern's talk Wednesday at CAP, I was left with the distinct feeling that I wish Mr. McElwee were the US' top climate negotiator instead of Mr. Stern...

Next, Julian's great work for CAP on exactly what China has been up to on the climate front:

6/3: Climate Progress in China: A Primer on Recent Developments
6/4: China Begins Its Transition to a Clean Energy Economy

Like Charlie's posts, these are comprehensive summaries that - along with the myriad links contained within them - are recommended reading both for people just getting up to speed on these issues and those buried deep in them.

Lastly, I haven't posted too much on the US-China climate change negotiations largely because I think others out there (like Charlie and Julian) are already doing a terrific job. However, I did want to show one figure that I think is at the core of why this is such a diplomatic challenge. I like to call this this figure if you only look at one graph this year related to US-China climate negotiations, make it this one:

Source: the Asia Society's Roadmap for US-China Cooperation on Energy and Climate Change

This is an excellent figure, because it encompasses in parallel perhaps the three most important numbers (both absolute and relative) that matter for each country going into the US-China climate dialogue. It is critical that all three of these graphs be acknowledged simultaneously, because the selective ignoring of any one can drastically change one's perspective on who bears responsibility for acting and on what scale.

news to be positive about: PM2.5 and ozone monitoring coming soon; Pollution Transparency Index

2009-06-05T13:11:00.004+08:00

Three recent air pollution-related news stories to be positive about:

1) China Daily: Tougher rules for air quality likely soon

China is mulling more stringent appraisal standards for air quality, and pilot projects are likely to start from coastal cities in the Yangtze River delta and Pearl River delta next year.

The environmental authorities are planning to include particles less than 2.5 microns (PM2.5) and ozone, into the Air Pollution Index (API), which currently measures the concentration of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and PM10, or particles smaller than 10 microns.

This is terrific news. With the pressure of the Olympics off, I was beginning to think that MEP had forgotten about the comments they made last year on this topic. No dates given in the article, but still a positive sign.

2) China Daily: Pollution index up and running

China's first Pollution Information Transparency Index (PITI) has been officially launched and has published its first annual assessment of the pollution information disclosure performance of 113 Chinese cities for 2008.

The PITI, set up by the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE) and the US-based Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), is part of efforts to strengthen public awareness and supervision of environmental issues and protection.

Here is the link to the index methodology and results (Chinese). Note that the index encompasses several types of pollution, not just air pollution. Although most cities scored rather poorly (Beijing overall scored 49.1 out of 100), it's still encouraging to see this index go public as a baseline for future comparison. It is also very encouraging to see this activity by NGOs reported in the Chinese media.

3) Xinhua: China's central environment authorities to open hotline for direct complaints

BEIJING, June 4 (Xinhua) -- People who have complaints about environmental pollution in China would have a direct way to inform the Ministry of Environmental Protection as the ministry opens a tip-off hotline on Friday, the International Environment Day.

The ministry said Thursday that the hotline, 010-12369, will take calls about emergency environment issues, cross-provincial pollution and other environmental issues that should be directly dealt with by the ministry.

A nice little green hop, I'd say (to borrow an expression from the Green Leap Forward).

unprecedented internet censorship within china

2009-06-03T18:15:00.001+08:00

Yesterday, the buzz among netizens was the blocking of foreign-language social networking and media sites, including Flickr and Twitter, in addition to existing blocks on Youtube and Blogspot. Hotmail and live.com are also down.

Today, the net nanny turned to domestic Chinese sites, harmonizing a host of participatory Web 2.0 - blogging / microblogging / content generation / sharing, etc. - sites like Fanfou and Bullog.

However, unlike traditional blocks, in which trying to access a censored website simply yields a "failed to connect" or "connection interrupted" error message, these blocks are taking a different and new form: individual "maintenance" notices placed on the home page of each site. Each site's maintenance period has a definitive end point, unsurprisingly either June 5th or June 6th. Here is an example from Fanfou:

It seems some netizens have created a public spreadsheet tracking sites "under maintenance" (Chinese only), including the maintenance period dates for each site. It has been fascinating, frustrating, and depressing to watch the list grow in real time over the last hour or so. It will be even more fascinating to track Chinese reactions over the next couple of days.

At least one blogger is calling June 2nd GFW day (h/t Global Voices); in symbolism of being blocked I've changed the background of this blog to black. I'll revert back to white when and if blogspot is released within China.

new report shows widespread air quality data manipulation

2009-06-03T16:31:00.003+08:00

Last fall, I wrote about Steven Andrews' report demonstrating data biasing in Beijing's air quality reporting.

The China Environment Forum has just published a second peer-reviewed report written by Mr. Andrews, this one detailing on a much larger scale the data manipulation present in air quality reporting across all of China. Mr. Andrews' overall conclusion is as follows:

Publicizing the API and where cities rank in terms of air quality keeps the public informed of air quality and potential health threats. However, misleading data presentation and revised laws have prevented the API system from accurately communicating air quality problems to the public.

Mr. Andrews' report focuses on several points, including:

1) SEPA's loosening of ambient air quality standards in 2000 artificially inflated the number of cities in compliance:

In 2006, the annual average NO2 concentration in Beijing was 66μg/m3 and in Guangzhou it was 67μg/m3 (BJEPB, 2007; GZEPB, 2007). Under the 1996 standards, Beijing and Guangzhou would have exceeded the annual average NO2 standard in 2006 by 65 percent and 67 percent, respectively. Under the revised standards, both were in compliance (SEPA, 2000).

(Note: link to old standards here; link to new standards here; discussion and comparison to international standards here.)

2) The assignment of 100 as the cut-off point for a "Blue Sky Day," coupled with rising pressure for cities to meet increasing numbers of annual Blue Sky Days, has encouraged the "bumping" of API data just above 100 to just below. Mr. Andrews writes:

Although the establishment of “Blue Sky” targets and well-publicized tallies of the number of days meeting the national standard has resulted in an easily understood metric for air quality, it strongly appears that pollution levels near this boundary are being manipulated in many major cities.

This was one of his core findings in his previous report on Beijing alone. In this report, Mr. Andrews expands the analysis to many more Chinese cities. The table below shows 30 cities which reported above 90% of all API values within the range 96-105 as 100 or below in a given year. (Statistically, one would expect around 50% of data points in this range to be on either side of 100.)3) The moving of monitoring stations within cities has artificially inflated air quality:

Although there has been a reported 10.8 percent decrease in Beijing’s annual average NO2 level between 1998 and 2006, the two stations in traffic areas have reported annual average NOx concentrations 100 percent higher than the non-traffic stations (BJEPB, 1998). This indicates that all the reported decrease in NO2 concentrations in Beijing from 1998-2006 may be due to the changing locations of monitoring stations.

4) Although not one of Mr. Andrews' key conclusions, one of his smaller but fascinating findings is that, apparently, there was a mistake in the English-language version of MEP's website regarding how to calculate API. This is something I never realized, but has apparently wreaked some havoc in international data analyses of air quality in China:

Although the calculation methodologies to go from API values to pollutant concentrations are straightforward, an error in the sample calculation on the MEP website has lead to misunderstandings of the true severity of pollution levels—inaccuracies that have been replicated in several leading reports on air pollution in China.

It seems that MEP has since removed the English explanation of API calculation, so I'm not sure what this error was; I'll keep digging and see if I can find out more.

Thoughts

Similar to Mr. Andrews' September 2008 report, this report is a scathing indictment and well-supported criticism of MEP's air quality data quality and transparency. It highlights a number of issues that MEP - as well as city and provincial-level EPBs - should ideally work quickly to resolve in order to regain international trust and credibility.

twitter and flickr blocked

2009-06-02T17:47:00.005+08:00

56minus1 reports that Twitter and Flickr are both blocked now in mainland China. Youtube and Blogspot (including this blog) remain blocked as well.

FYI, Herdict is a site that allows for user-reported web censorship across the globe; the China page is here.

--
Update 6/3/09: The New York Times is now reporting on the increased censorship:

BEIJING — China’s government censors have begun to block access to the Internet services Twitter, Hotmail and Microsoft's live.com, broadening an already extraordinary effort to shield its citizens from any hint of Thursday's 20th anniversary of the military crackdown that ended the 1989 T i a n a n m e n Square pro-democracy movement.

shanzhai euro V

2009-06-02T13:07:00.004+08:00

This is one of those "only in China" stories.

In my last post, I mentioned how surprised I was to see an "欧V" label on the back of a tour bus in Beijing:

欧V universally means Euro V tailpipe emission standard; the strong implication here is that this vehicle meets that very strict standard. Similarly, here is a label on a (different brand) bus showing that it meets Euro IV (欧IV, the current standard in Beijing) emission standard:

However, I just learned from my colleague that the "欧V" label on the white bus does not have anything to do with tailpipe emission standard. Rather, the bus model is simply called 欧V, with the V meaning the letter "V," not the roman numeral for 5. The website for the bus, made by Foton, is here. In English they call it model AUV:

Although it appears that the bus is available in some alternative energy configurations like hybrid - which is commendable for many reasons - even the hybrid apparently only meets the Euro IV tailpipe emission standard: 污染物排放再[sic]欧III基础上减少30%，达到欧IV同等水平 (pollutant emissions are 30% lower than the Euro III level, meeting Euro IV equivalent).

Hmm. A bus called 欧V than only meets the 欧IV emission standard? Sounds like shanzhai to me.

vehicle environmental labeling

2009-06-01T23:16:00.005+08:00

This post is about vehicle environmental labeling in China.

Mandatory Tailpipe Emissions Labeling

There is currently no national environmental labeling program based on tailpipe emissions (although MEP has proposed one that will hopefully be issued sometime this year).

However, many cities in China require their own vehicle environmental label, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Qingdao, Nanjing, and more.

In Beijing specifically, environmental labeling by tailpipe emission standard has been required since, I believe, 1999. The latest formal document about the label is this one from 2004: 北京市环境保护局关于启用新版机动车环保标志的通知 ("Beijing EPB notice on use of new version of vehicle environmental label").

This document specifies that green labels are given to gasoline vehicles meeting Euro I or higher and diesel vehicles meeting Euro III or higher tailpipe emission standard. It's unusual that the document uses the Euro (欧) nomenclature as opposed to the standard China (国) term used in other tailpipe emission standards; I'm not sure why.

Although I couldn't find a formal document specifying this, I also know that gasoline vehicles are further differentiated by stars, with one star for China I, two stars for China II and China III w/o OBD, three stars for China III w/OBD, and four stars for China IV. There is no star differentiation for diesel vehicles. Here's an example:

Beijing environmental label (green). The four stars indicate that this gasoline vehicle meets the China IV emission standard.

In the States, I know that California has a smog label, but I'm not sure of anywhere else that in the United States that requires environmental labeling for anything other than fuel economy.

Voluntary Tailpipe Emissions Labeling

In addition to the mandatory tailpipe emissions label, I am also surprised and fascinated by how many voluntary, manufacturer-suppled tailpipe emission standard labels I come across in China. I can't think of anything comparable in the States; a vehicle's tailpipe emission standard there just doesn't seem to be a selling point or something to boast about with a fancy label. Here are some examples I've seen in China:

Euro III (欧III) back window label on a small gasoline van.

China III (国III) + OBD (on-board diagnostics) back window label on a small gasoline van.

EuroIV (欧IV) label on the back of a diesel public bus.

Euro IV (欧IV) back window label on a small gasoline van.

Euro V (欧V) label on a diesel tour bus. This was very surprising to me.

Update 6/2/09: Apparently this bus model is simply called 欧V, with the V being a letter, not intended to be the roman number for 5. More info in a follow up post here.
--

The same "Euro V" bus gets zero stars on the city label because the diesel labels have no star differentiation.

Mandatory Fuel Economy Labeling

According to GB22757-2008, cars in China will be required to display fuel economy labels beginning 7/1/2009. I will try to post a lengthier post once it goes into force. In the meantime, here is what the label will look like:

For comparison, here is the current United States fuel economy label:

platinum LEED habitat houses in portland

2009-06-01T10:31:00.005+08:00

Although this post is off-topic for this blog, I wanted to feature a cool story about what are expected to be the first two platinum LEED certified Habitat for Humanity houses in Oregon.

From OregonLive.com:

Forty percent more efficient than houses built to code, the homes are on target to achieve platinum Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification from the U.S. Green Building Council -- the highest rating available. They will be the first LEED platinum Habitat homes in Oregon and two of only a handful nationally.

I feature the project here for a couple of reasons. First, it's an incredibly impressive story demonstrating how committed individuals, with the support of the community, can create something that is simultaneously sustainable, accessible, and elegant.

Second, and more importantly for me personally, the house was designed by one of my best friends, architect Scott Mooney.

The homes grew out of a design contest for young architects just out of university...The challenge: Design a LEED-certified duplex on a lot owned by Habitat for Humanity Portland/Metro East.

Scott Mooney and David Posada jumped at the opportunity.

The two friends had graduated from the University of Oregon's master's degree program in 2005 and are building careers -- Mooney at THA Architecture and Posada at GBD Architects -- with strong emphasis on sustainability and affordability.

"Basically, David and I are interested in accessible design, something anyone can do," Mooney said. "The danger of a competition is they're very creative but often not very realistic.

"We tried to keep it feasible."

The two won the contest. But more exciting to them, the nonprofit wanted to build their design.

Way to go, Smooney!

reports repository

2009-05-31T15:00:00.008+08:00

One of the nice things about having a blog is that it becomes a reference for yourself - a repository of information and links that previously were scattered about in a disorganized series of e-mails, files, folders, draft documents, etc.

To help with organization, I'm creating this post as a repository of reports that fall into one of the following categories: a) I often reference it; b) I often want to send the link to someone else; c) it's on my list / pile to be read. Whichever the category, I think maintaining an occasionally-updated post (in the spirit of my previous post, "List of Chinese Energy and Environmental Standards for Vehicles") will be useful to me, and I hope to you as well. Please feel free to suggest links to add here!

The reports will be divided loosely by category. Most, but not all, are related directly to China and/or transportation.

Climate Change
6/2009: March 2009 Copenhagen Climate Conference synthesis report (h/t RealClimate)

5/2009: Greenpeace - America's Share of the Climate Crisis

3/2009: Sweden - A Balancing Act: China’s Role in Climate Change

1/2009: MIT - Probabilistic Forecast for 21st Century Climate Based on Uncertainties in Emissions (without Policy) and Climate Parameters

1/2009: Asia Society - Common Challenge, Collaborative Response: A Roadmap for US-China Cooperation on Energy and Climate Change

1/2009: Brookings - Overcoming Obstacles to U.S.-China Cooperation on Climate Change

6/2008: McKinsey - The carbon productivity challenge: Curbing climate change and sustaining economic growth

12/2007: IPCC - Fourth Assessment Report

Fuel Economy
3/2009: Harvard ETIP: China's Fuel Economy Standards for Passenger Vehicles

2/2008: CATARC - Analysis of Implementation Results of the Standard "Limits of Fuel Consumption for Passenger Cars"

7/2007: The ICCT - Passenger Vehicle Greenhouse Gas and Fuel Economy Standards: A Global Update; also updated data here

Vehicle Population and Emissions Projections
12/2006: Wang et al - Projection of Chinese Motor Vehicle Growth, Oil Demand, and CO2 Emissions Through 2050 (full text not available online)

12/2005: Schipper and Ng - Growing in the Greenhouse Chapter 4 - China Motorization Trends: Policy Options in a World of Transport Challenges

8/2005: He et al - Oil consumption and CO2 emissions in China's road transport: current status, future trends, and policy implications (full text not available online)

Air Quality
5/2009: Steven Q. Andrews - Seeing Through the Smog: Understanding the Limits of Chinese Air Pollution Reporting

9/2008: Steven Q. Andrews - Inconsistencies in air quality metrics: 'Blue Sky' days and PM10 concentrations in Beijing

2007: Streets et al - Air quality during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games

Life Cycle Analysis and Electric Cars / Bikes
12/2008: McKinsey - China Charges Up: The Electric Vehicle Opportunity

11/2008: MDB - The Green Car Report: Investment Analysis of the Hybrid and Electric Vehicle Industry - Outlook for 2009-2012

7/2008: MIT - On the Road in 2035: Reducing Transportation's Petroleum Consumption and GHG Emissions

2007: California's Low Carbon Fuel Standards supporting reports.

General Transportation
5/2008: IFEU - Transport in China: Energy Consumption and Emissions of Different Transport Modes

state council announces new diesel fuel quality standards

2009-05-19T11:23:00.005+08:00

Yesterday, China's State Council announced the "Petrochemical Industry Restructuring and Revitalization Plan" (Chinese only) which mandates nationwide China III quality gasoline fuel by 2009 and nationwide China III diesel fuel by 2010 (2009年车用汽油全部达到国Ⅲ标准，2010年车用柴油全部达到国Ⅲ标准). The announcement also says that any fuels not meeting these standards may not be sold into the marketplace (严格执行油品质量标准，严禁达不到国家规定标准的油品进入市场) after the implementation dates.

As far as I can tell, for gasoline fuels, this announcement merely confirms existing standards and implementation dates. However, for diesel fuel, this is a big deal, due to implications on the timeline for improving diesel fuel quality.

The specific issue I'm referencing here is fuel sulfur content. Lowering fuel sulfur content is critical for reducing vehicle emissions and allowing implementation of advanced vehicle emission control technologies. (Sorry I don't have time to write more on this right now; some background in this post.)

The China III fuel quality targets for sulfur content are 150ppm for gasoline and 350ppm for diesel. Although the timeline for reducing gasoline sulfur content to 150ppm has been fixed for some time (by GB17930-2006), there was, until now, no confirmation of the timeline for reducing nationwide diesel sulfur content to 350ppm. As such, this represents a concrete and important step towards the desulfurization of China's motor fuel.

More analysis / commentary to come, and a link to the final standard when it is formally released (as opposed to just being announced by the State Council). For those of you who want to keep track at home, I've recently discovered that you can search planned and upcoming standards on SAC's home page, by clicking on the 国家标准计划查询 link. In this case, searching for 车用柴油 will show you standard plan 20075424-T-469, which is in the 报批阶段, or final draft for approval, stage.

Lastly, here's a table, as far as I understand the current situation, showing nationwide fuel sulfur content in China:

all blogger blogs blocked in china

2009-05-15T21:22:00.001+08:00

--
Update 5/18/09: After hearing two positive recommendations from individuals I trust, I've invested $40 for a year of Witopia private VPN. So I'm now able to read and post to my blog like normal, as well as access all sorts of other sensitive content (including news and video) during a time in which, apparently, China will consistently ratchet up its internet censorship.

Of course, me having access is nice for me, but does nothing to address the greater issue of working towards greater information and media transparency here within China (including the issue of how to make the content of this blog available to people without VPNs or proxies). But this is a topic for another time.
--

All blogger-based blogs (e.g. everything that ends in .blogspot.com) are currently blocked in China. This includes this blog. I'm posting this using the Tor proxy.

Also, Youtube has been blocked for perhaps a month or more.

My guess is - assuming they are lifted at all - that these blocks will not be lifted until after a certain sensitive date early next month.

Until then, I will post as I can and try to stay connected. I need to upgrade my circumvention methodology...I've been using Tor off and on for a couple of years but it seems to get slower and slower. Even now I have very limited functionality because the entire page isn't loading. In any case, if anyone has any advice on reliable and preferably free ways to get around the GFW, I'd appreciate it if you would contact me.

China can be a very frustrating place. To any of you out there who are reading this in a country that doesn't unpredictably and deliberately stifle the free flow of ideas because of a constitutionally-guaranteed (and court-supported) right to free speech, I invite you to pause for a moment to appreciate that.

april 2009 was beijing's cleanest april in 10 years

2009-05-14T09:05:00.004+08:00

I'm a couple of weeks late on this (still playing catch up), but I thought this recent story was worth noting.

On May 2nd, China Daily reported that "Beijing has 'cleanest month' in 9 years," writing, "the city experienced its best month of air quality since 2000 with 23 blue-sky days in April."

The excellent blog Daily Dose of Air Pollution highlighted that this claim is dubious, noting at least three other months (August and September, 2008, and August 2006) in which Beijing had higher numbers of Blue Sky Days and lower average APIs than April 2009.

I think I've identified the source of confusion. The official Beijing EPB announcement (Chinese), titled 4月本市空气质量创2000年以来同期最好水平, states specifically that April 2009 was the best April since 2000, not the best month overall. It seems the China Daily (or the Beijing EPB spokesperson during the press conference) misrepresented the real announcement.

Two follow up points:

1) While acknowledging progress, we should also simultaneously not get too excited over the "clean" air. The Beijing EPB claims that the average PM concentration during this month was 120 ug/m3 (主要污染物可吸入颗粒物月均浓度为每立方米0.12 毫克), which is still well above China's national air quality target (100 ug/m3) and six times higher than the WHO recommended guideline (20 ug/m3). (Comparison of international standards in this post.) Although it is critically important in China to note progress, we must not wrap ourselves so much in cheers of success that we become blinded to the significant challenges and work still ahead.

2) The China Daily article describes in more detail than I have ever seen how the economic slowdown may have contributed to improved air quality, writing:

Besides strict environmental protection measures, experts think the global economic slowdown might be playing a positive role in environmental protection.

Zhu Tong, an environment professor with Peking University, told China Daily on Friday that heavy industry has decreased production in many polluting factories, which benefits the air.

"Most companies in heavy industry are seeing fewer orders. The output of the Shougang Group this year so far equals the same period during the Olympics," said Wang Dawei, head of the air quality control division of the Beijing municipal environmental protection bureau.

In the first season this year, the added value for ferrous metal and chemistry manufacturing in the capital was 3.36 billion yuan ($490 million) and 1.85 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 18.1 percent and 17.9 percent respectively.

If the improved air quality is indeed due to the slowdown, then this means there is even less cause for celebration.

a few electric vehicle reports and links

2009-05-13T17:50:00.000+08:00

Electric vehicles are quickly taking the spotlight here in China, with the recently announced subsidies for new energy vehicles and government plans for electric vehicle industry development, followed by the Shanghai auto show, prompting a flurry of media articles from both within China and abroad.

I'll be posting more in the next days and weeks what I think of these developments, but to start with I want to link to some relevant analyses that may be of interest to other researchers out there.

First of all, here is the McKinsey report that is referenced by both recent NYTimes and Guardian pieces:

McKinsey - China Charges Up: The Electric Vehicle Opportunity

For non-China-specific life cycle impacts analysis of different vehicle energy technologies, nothing beats this MIT report:

MIT - On the Road in 2035: Reducing Transportation's Petroleum Consumption and GHG Emissions

California also has similar, relevant reports on their Low Carbon Fuel Standards page.

Lastly, I haven't read it all yet, but someone recently forwarded me this seemingly quite comprehensive Green Car market analysis report from consulting firm MDB:

MDB - The Green Car Report: Investment Analysis of the Hybrid and Electric Vehicle Industry - Outlook for 2009-2012

I will be making follow up posts with key conclusions and take-away messages from these reports, but for now I just wanted to get them out there.

Image: time.com

new recommended blog - china car times green

2009-05-13T16:02:00.004+08:00

Greetings! I'm finally back and settled in Beijing after traveling for much of the past month (hence the lack of posting). I was in the States for two weeks of conferences / meetings and then spent a week on vacation in Taiwan with my visiting parents.

I am slowly catching up on news and blogging. To start with, I want to pass along an excellent new blog from the folks at China Car Times:

The blog features frequent, excellent posts on China's alternative energy vehicle industry developments.

slides from my talk wednesday night

2009-04-10T18:11:00.004+08:00

The other night I had a great time presenting at the Beijing Energy Network's wonderfully titled BEER (Beijing Energy & Environment Roundtable) event. The title of my talk was "150 Million and Counting... Controlling the Energy and Environmental Impacts of China's Vehicles." I tried to have fun with it - I presented it at 9pm at a bar, after all - while touching on a range of topics and issues related to the transportation sector in China.

Although I fear the slides may seem a little too bare-bones without the context of my accompanying speech, I did get enough requests to distribute that I figured I might as well put them online:

I welcome any questions or comments either here or by e-mail at livefrombeijing at gmail dot com.

Lastly, apologies for the light posting recently; I have been slammed at work in preparation for a trip to the States this weekend. I'll be gone for two weeks and will post while there if time permits, but no promises...

china's push to be electric vehicle leader

2009-04-03T14:38:00.002+08:00

Interesting article yesterday at the top of the New York Times home page - China Vies to Be World's Leader in Electric Cars:

TIANJIN, China — Chinese leaders have adopted a plan aimed at turning the country into one of the leading producers of hybrid and all-electric vehicles within three years, and making it the world leader in electric cars and buses after that.

While it's nice to see China's electric vehicle push making headlines internationally, the article as a whole leaves me a little confused and disappointed. Although much of the article is solid reporting, at times it adopts a strangely negative and sometimes contradictory tone. For example, the author, Keith Bradsher, writes (emphasis mine):

China’s intention, in addition to creating a world-leading industry that will produce jobs and exports, is to reduce urban pollution and decrease its dependence on oil...But electric vehicles may do little to clear the country’s smog-darkened sky or curb its rapidly rising emissions of global warming gases. China gets three-fourths of its electricity from coal, which produces more soot and more greenhouse gases than other fuels.

However, this "may do little" claim is supported by the following paragraph, which directly contradicts it:

A report by McKinsey & Company last autumn estimated that replacing a gasoline-powered car with a similar-size electric car in China would reduce greenhouse emissions by only 19 percent. It would reduce urban pollution, however, by shifting the source of smog from car exhaust pipes to power plants, which are often located outside cities.

"Only" 19% is not a "little." Plus, this number will almost certainly grow as China's power sector improves efficiency and diversifies away from coal. As for pollution, the McKinsey study supports the exact goal of the Chinese government - reducing urban air pollution. Why then, does Mr. Bradsher nay say the environmental impacts of electrifying the vehicle fleet?

Moving on, Mr. Bradsher accurately describes some of the details of the program, and makes some key points about why electric vehicles may be viable in China whereas they have struggled in America:

Electric cars have several practical advantages in China. Intercity driving is rare. Commutes are fairly short and frequently at low speeds because of traffic jams. So the limitations of all-electric cars — the latest models in China have a top speed of 60 miles an hour and a range of 120 miles between charges — are less of a problem.

First-time car buyers also make up four-fifths of the Chinese market, and these buyers have not yet grown accustomed to the greater power and range of gasoline-powered cars.

(That final sentence is key, and something I'll make a note to blog on another time.)

In the final part of the article, Mr. Bradsher mentions that "rechargeable lithium-ion batteries also have a poor reputation in China," but then goes on to say, "these safety problems have been associated with lithium-ion cobalt batteries, however, not the more chemically stable lithium-ion phosphate batteries now being adapted to automotive use." Then why does he bring it up? Is there some evidence that Chinese consumers are reluctant to buy electric vehicles because of battery safety? If there is, he doesn't mention it.

In the end, I'm just not sure what to make of the article. The overall tone seems to be some combination of "lookout America, China is going to leap frog you in this promising clean tech area" and "but don't worry too much, even if they do succeed (which they might not), the impacts on GHG and air pollution reduction won't be that big."

From the perspectives of reducing oil consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and air pollution, I think almost everyone agrees that electrifying the vehicle fleet is a good thing. So good that many (including myself) see the electrification of the transportation sector as a core sustainability solution. I need to make time to prepare a longer post on this, but for now, see Joe Romm's post: Plug-in hybrids and electric cars — a core climate solution, nationally and globally.

Related news from yesterday:
- China Car Times reports that Shenzhen will become the first city to offer subsidies to private buyers, though I haven't yet found the original source material to support this.
- NEEDigest's excellent auto zone has a great comparison of companies racing to offer EV's to the Chinese market.

Related post from this blog: subsidies for energy saving and new energy vehicles

summary of beijing's 2009 first quarter air quality

2009-04-01T12:12:00.009+08:00

Yesterday, Xinhua reported that Beijing achieved above an 80% "blue sky" rate in the first half of this year:

BEIJING, March 31 (Xinhua) -- Beijing saw 73 "blue sky days", 81.1 percent of the total, in the first three months of 2009, Beijing authorities said here on Tuesday.

The city experienced six more blue sky days than in the first quarter of last year, and 24.3 days more than the average of the last decade, said an official of the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau.

Experts at the bureau said active cold airflows had helped particulate matter to disperse.

Efforts to reduce pollution from heating systems had paid off with January having the most blue sky days since 2000, said the official.

For those who prefer original sources, here is the notice from the Beijing EPB (in Chinese).

Let's take a closer look at the data and examine what this means in terms of air quality.

First of all, as a quick introduction for new readers, China defines "Blue Sky Days" as days for which the Air Pollution Index (API) is 100 or below. For a detailed description of exactly what the API is, see this post. Past Beijing API data may be queried from MEP's datacenter, but unfortunately only in Chinese.

For this post, I queried the data for 1/1/09 to 3/31/09, and ran some quick analyses to see what interesting things I could find.

Part 1: Checking Beijing's EPB's Numbers

The Beijing EPB claims "截至3月31日，今年累计73个达标天，占监测天数的81.1%。其中一级7天，二级66天，三级15天，四级1天，五级1天。" The second sentence says that in this time period there were 7 days of Grade 1 (API 0-50) air, 66 days of Grade 2 (API 51-100) air, 15 days of Grade 3 (API 101-200) air, and 1 day each at Grade 4 (API 201-300) and Grade 5 (API 301+).

However, by my count, there were 8 days of Grade 1 (one more than reported) 64 days of Grade 2 (two less than reported), then 15, 1, and 1 days of Grades 3, 4, and 5, respectively (identical to that reported). It seems pretty basic to me that you would want your publicly reported data summary to match your public database, so I can't imagine what's going on here. This is especially true because, in this case, the data indicates Beijing did better than they claimed.

The data for one day, 2/19/09, is missing from the database. If we assume that 2/19 was a Blue Sky Day, though, then at least we do indeed have 73 Blue Sky Days for the quarter.

Part 2: Converting to Pollutant Concentrations

Because API is a unitless index, in order to evaluate air quality we have to convert back to pollutant concentrations. This is a bit tricky, because the API is only reported according to whichever pollutant had the highest daily concentration, meaning that we do not have daily raw data for every pollutant. Still, we can make a rough approximation by assuming that PM10 is the limiting pollutant on all days. (Of the 89 data points, 72 (81%) were reported with PM10 highest, 9 were reported with SO2 highest, while 8 had no pollutant data because no pollutants are listed for Grade 1 air quality days.)

In any case, given the above assumption, this graph shows calculated daily PM10 concentrations for this quarter:

These data yield a quarterly average PM10 concentration of 124 ug/m^3. This is very similar to what I calculated as last year's annual average.

124 ug/m^3 is still well above China's annual target (100 ug/m^3) and well well above the WHO's ideal target for developed nations (20 ug/m^3).

Appendix

For those of you following along at home, here is an Excel formula for converting API to PM10 concentration (in this example, the API would be in cell E9):

=IF(E9<51,e9,if(e9<201,(e9-25)/0.5,if(e9<301,(e9+300)/1.429,if(e9<401,(e9+225)/1.25,e9+100))))

This is based on equations presented at the bottom of this post.

comparing international standards

2009-03-31T09:13:00.001+08:00

One of the most important first steps in an air pollution control strategy is to set air quality goals. Here, I will explore from a standards perspective how China's air quality targets match up to the rest of the world's. I'll be looking at three sets of standards - China's, the United States', and the World Health Organization's.

Let's start with sources:

China air quality standards: The target for ambient air in urban areas in China is the National Grade II Standard, which is specified by National Standard GB 3095-1996, first issued in 1996 and then updated in 2000 (surprisingly, the update actually created less stringent air quality targets for certain pollutants).

United States air quality standards: The US EPA specifies air quality targets in the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS).

WHO air quality standards: International WHO air quality guidelines were issued in 2005, replacing the European-focused standards published in 2000. The 2005 WHO guidelines include both ideal targets as well as interim targets for developing countries. For comparison, I have included here both the final targets and the Interim Targets 1.

Pulling numbers from each of the above sources, I created the following table:

Observations:

1) China lacks an 8-hour standard for Ozone as well as any standards for PM2.5, though monitoring and reporting of these is supposedly going to begin this year.

2) Although the US EPA's PM10 standards do not appear very stringent, this is because the US EPA has prioritized limiting PM2.5 concentrations (which cause greater health impact) instead.

3) China's air quality standards are not as stringent even as the WHO's suggested Interim Targets 1.

These targets are proposed [by the WHO] as incremental steps in a progressive reduction of air pollution and are intended for use in areas where pollution is high. These targets aim to promote a shift from high air pollutant concentrations, which have acute and serious health consequences, to lower air pollutant concentrations. If these targets were to be achieved, one could expect significant reductions in risks for acute and chronic health effects from air pollution. Progress towards the guideline values should, however, be the ultimate objective of air quality management and health risk reduction in all areas.

I have heard a rumor that China will revise its air quality standards this year; if and when they do, I am curious to know how aggressive the new targets will be.

3-21-09 api missing

2009-03-22T17:53:00.003+08:00

I'm not sure why, but Saturday's API was never reported.

In 2008, there were two days for which the API was not reported. There were no missing days in either 2007 or 2006.

--
Update 3/31/09: The API for 3/21 has been added to the database.
--

subsidies for energy-saving and new energy vehicles

2009-03-19T16:20:00.000+08:00

Earlier this year, China announced new subsidies for energy-saving and new energy vehicles, including hybrids, EVs, and fuel cell vehicles. The announcement was covered widely in the media / blogosphere, for example Xinhua, Reuters, and China Car Times. I didn't get a chance to post about this last month; although I'm late now, I still think it's worth providing some commentary and more information.

First of all, since I like to reference original sources whenever possible, I was able to find relevant info posted both on the MOF website as well as MOST's. The MOF notice is only a brief summary, but the MOST page seems to be the complete announcement.

The lead of the Reuters story is an accurate and concise summary of the program:

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China's central government will subsidize purchases of clean-energy vehicles for public fleets in 13 cities to help the automobile industry develop green technology, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

The trial scheme will promote the use of electric, hybrid and fuel-cell vehicles by public transport operators, taxi firms and postal and sanitary services in cities such as Beijing and Shanghai...

A key point here is that the subsidies are for public fleets only. As far as I can tell, Chinese consumers are not eligible to receive these subsidies, although both the Xinhua and China Car Times stories describe them as such. Unless I am misreading the MOST announcement or there is another subsidy program that I am not aware of?

In any case, some technical details of the program are as follows:

- For small passenger cars (乘用车) and light-duty commercial vehicles (轻型商务车), the subsidies start for new energy vehicles which have at least a 5% fuel economy improvement as compared with traditional vehicles.
- For buses (客车), the subsides start at 10% improvement.
- The actual amounts of the subsidies (per vehicle) are given in Appendix Tables 1 and 2, which I have translated here:

One huge question I still don't know the answer to: how much is the total program worth? (No total is given in the MOST document.) The Xinhua story includes this paragraph:

China is keen to encourage the use and manufacture of new energy vehicles as its fast growing vehicle population is putting high pressure on environment protection and energy-saving targets. The central government pledged to provide 10 billion yuan (1.46 billion U.S. dollars) in the next three years to auto makers to help upgrade their technology and develop alternative energy vehicles.

But this is confusing - is this 10 billion RMB for this program? Or another program (I'm thinking the 863 program)? More details as I learn them.

greenpeace china beijing api widget

2009-03-19T12:52:00.003+08:00

Greenpeace China has generated a cool new Beijing API website widget that supposedly updates automatically every day:

Looks good!

For a general introduction of API, see this post.

dust storm blowing into beijing?

2009-03-18T15:41:00.005+08:00

Stay inside today; Beijing's API currently stands at 268 (PM10 concentration 397 ug/m^3). This is considered Very Unhealthy. (More info here.)

I thought this was a dust storm blowing into Beijing, but now I can't find any media references to one outside of this article from Sunday. (FYI, Sunday's API peaked at 119).

This is the second day this year with an API above 200. The first was the day of the Mandarin Oriental fire.

--
Update 3/19/09: Check out this terrific NASA image from Sunday:

Again, this was Sunday, whose API was 119. Still no word on the cause of yesterday's 268.
--

looking for data biasing in 2008 blue sky data

2009-03-12T18:03:00.002+08:00

Last year, a report by consultant Steven Q. Andrews highlighted apparent data biasing in Beijing's API data, particularly in the years 2006-2007. My take on his report (from last October) is here.

One of Mr. Andrews' core findings is that there were statistical anomalies in the frequency of Beijing's reported pollutant concentrations around the "Blue Sky Day" cut-off point. Specifically, there were too many reported values just below the cut-off, and too few just above, suggesting data manipulation to meet targets for number of Blue Sky Days. For reference, here is the excellent Figure 2 from Mr. Andrews' report:

Mr. Andrews' graph shows frequency of reported values vs. PM10 concentration, for which the Blue Sky Day cut-off value is 150 ug/m3.

With 2008 behind us, I decided to take a look back to see if a similar phenomenon existed last year. After querying Beijing's API data from MEP's datacenter, I parsed the data for each year into frequency by units of 5. In other words, I counted the number of days with API from 0 to 5, 6 to 10, 11 to 15, etc., all the way to 500. Rather than use PM10 concentration, I looked directly at API, for which the Blue Sky Day cut-off is 100. The results for 2006, 2007, and 2008 are graphed here:

Notes and Conclusions:

1) As expected, the 2006-2007 data biasing identified by Mr. Andrews is clearly visible here. In 2006, there were 50 days with API from 96-100, but only 2 days with API from 101-105. In 2007, there were 56 days with API from 96-100, and only 5 days with API from 101-105.

2) As for 2008, to be honest, I'm not sure how to interpret the data. Although there is clearly no dramatic spike in frequency of reported API values just below 100 (a good sign), there are only 3 days with API from 101-105. I do not know enough about statistics to know whether or not this is significant. (For reference, there were 16 days in the range 96-100, 9 days in the range 106-110, and 12 days 111-115). Anyone have any insights?

Related posts:
summary of beijing's 2008 air quality
beijing meets 2008 blue sky day target
problems with the "blue sky day" metric

grass mud horse in new york times

2009-03-12T09:55:00.008+08:00

Screen capture this morning - Grass Mud Horse story is just below the lead photo

Wow. The grass mud horse made the front page of the New York Times. Although off-topic for this blog, I mention it here because a) it's hilarious, and b) the Times' story talks about the grass mud horse in the context of censorship, which I have written about occasionally. According to the Times, the recent explosion of the grass mud horse phenomenon has, "raised real questions about China’s ability to stanch the flow of information over the Internet."

More info:
Global Voices - More on Grass Mud Horse

Danwei:
Find harmony by owning your own grass-mud horse
Hoax dictionary entries about legendary obscene beasts

MEP org chart

2009-03-11T14:17:00.001+08:00

The English-language org chart on MEP's website is outdated, so I made a new one:

Update: pdf version now hosted by CELB. (Thanks, Charlie!)

Sources: http://www.mep.gov.cn/dept/jgzn/gszn/;
MEP Organizational Rules, translated by CELB / Squire, Sanders & Dempskey L.L.P.

Note: I translated a few items differently from the CELB/SSD document. Notably:

政策法规司, CELB/SSB translated as "Legislation Department," but I used "Department of Policies, Laws, and Regulations";
科技标准司, CELB/SSB translated as "Scientific and Technological Standard Department," but I used "Department of Science, Technology, and Standards."
环境监察局, CELB/SSB translated as "Environmental Monitoring Bureau," but I used "Bureau of Environmental Supervision / Monitoring."

Comments on this?

For reference, the old, outdated org chart is here.

some 2008 chinese vehicle statistics released

2009-02-28T19:37:00.008+08:00

I've been too busy to blog much recently, but this news deserves a quick post. China's National Bureau of Statistics this week released the "Statistical Communiqué of the People's Republic of China on the 2008 National Economic and Social Development" (English and Chinese). The report includes updates to total vehicle population in China:

The total number of motor vehicles for civilian use reached 64.67 million (including 14.92 million tri-wheel motor vehicles and low-speed trucks) by the end of 2008, up 13.5 percent, of which private-owned vehicles numbered 41.73 million, up 18.1 percent. The total number of cars for civilian use stood at 24.38 million, up by 24.5 percent, of which private-owned cars numbered 19.47 million, up by 28.0 percent.

Also note production statistics: 9.35 million total motor vehicles produced in 2008, of which 5 million were cars.

It appears that that the detailed data is not yet available in the online statistical yearbooks.

I'll have a lot more to say about these numbers over the next few days. But if anyone wants to start crunching your own numbers, here's some good tables to start with:

NBS data on possession of civil vehicles through 2006
NBS data on possession of private vehicles through 2006

list of chinese energy and environmental standards for vehicles

2009-02-19T11:36:00.026+08:00

This post features codes and links to original Chinese energy and environmental standards for vehicles. I will update and add to this periodically.

It may not be the most exciting post in the world, but for those of us who occasionally need to reference these, I hope it will be a useful repository. Please feel free to make suggestions for additions.

For more general Chinese energy and environmental laws (in English!), check the list on the right side of CELB's home page: http://www.chinaenvironmentallaw.com/

China National Vehicle Pollutant Emission Standards
Light-duty gasoline and diesel vehicles
China 1: GB18352.1-2001
China 2: GB18352.2-2001
China 3/4: GB18352.3-2005
Idling emissions: GB18285-2005
Exhaust smoke: GB3847-2005 (diesel only)

Heavy-duty gasoline vehicles
China 1/2: GB14762-2002
China 3/4: GB14762-2008
Crankcase emissions: GB11340-2005
Evaporative emissions: GB14763-2005
Idling emissions: GB18285-2005
Emissions control durability: GB20890-2007 (includes diesel)

Heavy-duty diesel vehicles
China 1/2: GB17691-2001
China 3/4/5: GB17691-2005
Exhaust smoke: GB3847-2005

Motorcycles and Mopeds
China 1/2 (MC): GB14622-2002
China 3 (MC): GB14622-2007
China 1/2 (mopeds): GB18176-2002
China 3 (mopeds): GB18176-2007
Evaporative emissions (both): GB20998-2007
Idling emissions (both): GB14621-2002
Exhaust smoke (both): GB19758-2005

Three-wheeled and low-speed vehicles
China 1/2: GB19756-2005
Smoke: GB18322-2002

China National Vehicle Fuel Consumption Standards
Passenger Cars
GB19578-2004

Passenger Car Labeling
GB22757-2008

Light-duty commercial vehicles
GB20977-2007

Three-wheeled and low-speed vehicles
GB21377-2008
GB21378-2008

Vehicle Classification
GB/T15089-2001
PSB Classification

China National Ambient Air Quality Standards
GB3095-1996, later revised in 2000

China National Fuel Standards
Gasoline
GB17930-1999
GB17930-2004
GB17930-2006

Diesel
GB252-2000
GB/T19147-2003

China Vehicle Taxes
Manufacturing excise tax
Purchasing tax

Beijing-Specific Standards
Advance implementation of national tailpipe emission standards
China 3
China 4

Gasoline fuel quality
DB11/238-2004
DB11/238-2007

Diesel fuel quality
DB11/239-2004
DB11/239-2007

Shanghai-Specific Standards
Advance implementation of national tailpipe emission standards
China 4

Sources:
1) MEP standards may be looked up in the standards search portion of their datacenter.

2) All national standards, including non-MEP standards, may may be found through search feature of the Standardization Administration of China. Planned standards or standards in development may be searched here.

3) Beijing-specific standards are listed on the BJ EPB website; vehicle-specific announcements are archived in the vehicle management section.

4) Shanghai-specific standards are listed on the SH EPB website; vehicle-specific announcements are archived in the vehicle emission control section.

evidence of pollution spike from mandarin oriental fire

2009-02-11T22:42:00.003+08:00

I posted yesterday that the API of 307 would be classified by the US EPA as hazardous, and I wondered if it was related to the Mandarin Oriental fire. Today, both Xinhua and China Daily mentioned yesterday's highest grade pollution amid stories about the fire. China Daily even hinted that human health impacts from the pollution spike should be counted in the total cost of the fire (though to be fair I'm not exactly sure what they mean by "sphere"):

The total cost of the disaster has not been calculated, the fire department said, but the environmental bureau in the capital recorded a maximum grade for air pollution due to Monday's fireworks sphere.

Also today, we have a new data point implicating the fire as the key cause of yesterday's asphyxiating pollution. Take a look at MEP's graph of the last 30 days of API data:

We've seen some dramatically rapid air quality changes in the past here in Beijing, but I can't remember ever seeing a spike like this that could be directly tied to a single event.

Lastly, I think it is interesting to note in the above graph that there is a slight rise, but no dramatic spike, in pollution just after Chinese New Year's Eve (the impact of which would have shown up in the January 26th data point), despite the fact that the sky that night looked like this:

Image in graph: https://docs.google.com/View?docid=dggh5mp6_0cmqqrrdb
Fireworks image: Boston.com's The Big Picture

--
Update 3/11/09
I know this happened a month ago, but I feel I should note that a commenter below pointed out that the Beijing EPB issued an explanation for the 307 API pollution spike. The explanation did not reference the fire, only the fireworks:

燃放爆竹带来今年首个重度污染天
2009-02-10

受不利气象条件和元宵节燃放烟花爆竹的双重影响，今天北京出现了今年以来最严重的污染天气，空气质量五级，污染程度达到了重度污染。

据市环保监测中心的监测数据显示，由于风速小、大气层稳定，大气污染物扩散条件变差，9号白天我市已经出现了轻微污染；晚上19点开始，由于元宵节燃放烟花爆竹，污染物浓度迅速上升，并且长时间维持在较高水平。19点到凌晨4点一直在每立方米400微克以上，其中21点时浓度最高，达到每立方米810微克，早晨5点为399微克每立方米，开始降到每立方米400微克以下。但由于受到静风等不利气象条件的影响，污染物浓度下降速度缓慢。

通过多年不间断的控制大气污染措施，本市出现5级重度污染的天数已经屈指可数，上一次重度污染天气出现在去年的5月29号。

Rough translation:
Setting Off Fireworks Brings This Year's First Heavy Pollution Day
2009-02-10

The dual impact of unfavorable meteorological conditions and the setting off of fireworks for the Lantern Festival led to Beijing's first severe pollution day this year. The air quality grade was 5, heavily polluted.

According to data from the environmental monitoring center, due to low wind and stable atmosphere, the atmosphere dispersion conditions changed to unfavorable. During the day of the 9th, the air quality was lightly polluted, but starting from 7pm, due to the Lantern Festival fireworks, pollution increased quickly and remained high. From 7pm to 4am, the PM10 concentration was above 400 ug/m3; it was highest at 9pm, reaching 810 ug/m3. By 5am, the concentration was 399 ug/m3, and began to drop after that. But because of calm winds and unfavorable meteorological conditions, the drop in pollution concentration was slow.

Through the continuous implementation of air pollution control policies, this city has experienced fewer and fewer grade 5 pollution days. The last grade 5 pollution day was last year on 5/29.
--

warning: beijing air today is hazardous

2009-02-10T15:44:00.008+08:00

Beijing's API today is at 307, corresponding to a PM10 concentration of 426 ug/m3. The US EPA calls this "Hazardous - Health warnings of emergency conditions. The entire population is more likely to be affected." China, on the other hand, merely calls it 重污染, heavy pollution.

I wonder if this is related to the Mandarin Oriental fire?

Image: The Beijinger
Another recommended link about the fire:
https://docs.google.com/View?docid=dggh5mp6_0cmqqrrdb

Much more info about China and US API designations in this related post:
12/9/08: stay inside today - beijing api at 246

australia's prime minister speaks fluent mandarin

2009-02-06T19:01:00.002+08:00

Just in case you haven't heard, Australia's Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, speaks fluent Chinese.

This is awesome:

Approximate translation: "Greetings. On behalf of the Australian government, I extend to the Chinese people blessings for the Spring Festival. I hope that, in the Year of the Ox, the friendship between Australia and China can become one step closer. Although the world's economy is currently experiencing difficulty, I believe that, with cooperative effort, each country can certainly be victorious over this challenge. With the New Year, I wish the Chinese people health and success. Thanks, and all the best."

Via Evan Osnos via Shanghaiist.

climate change drama on boingboing and thoughts on skeptics

2009-02-05T22:42:00.002+08:00

Over the course of the past day, an interesting drama related to climate change unfolded on boingboing, the internet's most popular blog. I've never seen anything quite like it.

I'll describe what happened, then write a few words about my opinion and position on "climate change skepticism."

First, boingboing guest blogger and science fiction author Charles Platt posted four consecutive "Climate Heresy" posts advocating climate change skepticism. (Links here, here, here, and here.) The posts contain lengthy reviews of books written by climate skeptics, selective presentations of evidence that supposedly refutes global warming, and a conspiracy theory info-graphic showing how everyone who believes in the threat of climate change is tied together in a tangled knot of fear.

The fact that Mr. Platt posted these to boingboing is mind-blowingly infuriating and irresponsible, and I'll explain why in a moment. But first, the reason I referred to this as a "drama" is that, less than half an hour after Mr. Platt's last post, boingbong's Cory Doctorow responded with his own series of four consecutive posts defending the science and reality of climate change (links: here, here, here, and here). Shortly thereafter, bb's Xeni Jardin weighed in with her own posts on the truth about climate change (here, here). Even bb's Mark Frauenfelder got in on the climate change action, with his live-blogging of Al Gore's TED2009 presentation.

Regular readers of boingboing will know that it is very, very unusual to see consecutive posts on the same topic, and almost never do multiple authors post on the same thing. And yet here we have 11 posts from 4 authors (one guest) in a single 24-hour period on one divisive subject. Mr. Doctorow and Mr. Platt even debate each other briefly in the comments of one post. Drama.

The politics of boingboing aside, let me try to explain why this is such a big deal to me.

First of all, I want to be clear that this post isn't about the specifics of what Mr. Platt said. I do not, and will not, debate skeptics on a point-by-point basis. It is very difficult to win such debates. Dr. Joe Romm at Climate Progress has written a lot about this (examples here and here). The reason is because most climate skeptics are unwilling to concede defeat when scientific evidence contradicts their claims, even though skeptics are happy to use outdated science, refuted theories, and/or selective evidence when they seemingly support their cause. Even when you are successfully able to scientifically defeat climate skeptic theories or selective evidence, skeptics will almost never acquiesce; rather they will simply come back with a brand new argument, and the process must repeat. Whack-a-mole could not be a more accurate analogy.

(Side note: for reference and curiosity, I recommend these links for evidence refuting specific climate denier points:

Grist's post on how to talk to a skeptic
RealClimate reponses to common contrarian arguments
Skeptical Science list of most popular skeptic arguments)

Moving on, if we ignore then the specific content of Mr. Platt's posts, then the core issue becomes whether it is appropriate to doubt the world's best and leading and consensus scientific position on climate change (that it is real and caused by humans) on the world's most popular blog.

At certain points, Mr. Platt seems to frame his posts as just healthy debate / devil's advocacy. He introduces his first climate post as follows:

At the risk of stimulating outrage, I’m going to ask some questions about climate. No one disputes that planetary warming occurred during the second half of the twentieth century; the question is whether it was primarily anthropogenic (i.e. caused by human beings). The Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims that the debate on this issue is over. I’m not so sure anymore.

Later, in one of his comments replying to Mr. Doctorow, he says, "Instead you are appealing to authority, basically saying 'My experts trump your experts.' I don't think this is a strong argument, if indeed it is an argument at all."

But the problem here is that it is disingenuous and incorrect to describe the debate on the causes of climate change as having strong scientific arguments and experts on both sides. This is not a case of "some people believe this, some people believe that," with both sides having merit.

Don't get me wrong - I don't advocate a blind acceptance of anything, even science. By all means, if you don't want to unquestioningly swallow the pill of anthropogenic climate change, then don't. Let's say you are a skeptic by nature who wants to read the evidence on your own and come to your own conclusion (as Mr. Platt seems to portray himself). But if you are serious about this - about reviewing the science, about understanding the evidence for anthropogenic climate change - and you perform a true and complete review of the real science of the issue, then there is only one conclusion you can come to, and that is the conclusion reached by serious, real scientists: that climate change is being caused by humans.

Given the urgency of climate change and the impending disasters that will result from continued inaction, propagating any other conclusion is dangerous and widely irresponsible.

--
Update 2/7/09: Charles Platt voluntarily decided to stop guestblogging at boingboing at couple of days early, writing (in the comments):

Of course I was not asked to leave! I certainly never meant to create that impression...

...To be fair, I did ask in advance, very carefully, if there were any rules for guest bloggers, and I also offered all my posts for preapproval.

I was dismayed by the anger response from two of the people involved, which made me wonder what else I might say that would trigger a similar reaction. Since I couldn't predict it, and I didn't want to provoke it, and I didn't want to start censoring myself, it was easiest to stop.

new york times blocked again

2009-02-03T12:58:00.005+08:00

I'm currently unable to access the New York Times online from my office here in Beijing.

My guess is that the block is due to this story: China Rights Advocate Who Tried to Aid Quake Victims' Parents Faces Trial.

Consistent with past blockages, I can access http://nytimes.com, but not http://www.nytimes.com. According to a commenter quoted by James Fallows, this could be because nytimes.com and www.nytimes.com technically have different IP addresses, and China is only blocking one.

I'll update as I hear / discover more. Can anyone confirm this?

Last time China blocked the New York Times, it was for a few days, from around December 19th to 22nd. I wonder how long the block will last this time.

--
Update 2/3/09 6:00pm
After being blocked for me for the entire afternoon, the New York Times is now back up again, including the article I mentioned above.

For anyone who thinks this was just some technical glitch or problem with my computer or my network, I refer you to this passage in James Fallows' Atlantic piece on the Great Firewall:

Taken together, the components of the control system share several traits. They’re constantly evolving and changing in their emphasis, as new surveillance techniques become practical and as words go on and off the sensitive list. They leave the Chinese Internet public unsure about where the off-limits line will be drawn on any given day. Andrew Lih points out that other countries that also censor Internet content—Singapore, for instance, or the United Arab Emirates—provide explanations whenever they do so. Someone who clicks on a pornographic or “anti-Islamic” site in the U.A.E. gets the following message, in Arabic and English: “We apologize the site you are attempting to visit has been blocked due to its content being inconsistent with the religious, cultural, political, and moral values of the United Arab Emirates.” In China, the connection just times out. Is it your computer’s problem? The firewall? Or maybe your local Internet provider, which has decided to do some filtering on its own? You don’t know. “The unpredictability of the firewall actually makes it more effective,” another Chinese software engineer told me. “It becomes much harder to know what the system is looking for, and you always have to be on guard.”

I wonder if perhaps the New York Times piece, which features dozens of sensitive terms, may have automatically triggered a block requiring review before being lifted.

Or perhaps the government read my blog and was embarrassed at being called out, and so lifted the block...
--

how many pinyin combinations are there?

2009-01-30T15:01:00.008+08:00

Prelude: Yes, I'm back-to-back posting about arcane Chinese language trivia. But with the week off for Chinese New Year, I've been spending a lot of time studying and thinking about these issues.

Shortly after posting earlier today on unique pinyin combinations, I discovered a terrific and related post about the pinyin chart on a site called Laowai Chinese. The comments section is recommended reading in addition to the post.

Albert from Laowai Chinese reckons there are 409 possible pinyin sound combinations. However, the actual number of syllables is somewhat debatable, because different pinyin charts and dictionaries list different possible combinations. Here is a chart that I created that includes 412 combinations:

The three extra combinations that I included that Albert didn't are tei 忒, kei 剋, and rua 挼.

On the other hand, here's a list that includes 416 possible sounds. Although that list omits dia, rua, and tei, it includes these that I don't: diang, shong, yai, nia, sei, lün, and lüan. But I'm not so sure these are valid, since I can't find any characters for these combinations.

Ok, last comment on this today. Here's a pretty cool online pinyin chart that includes audio pronunciation. This chart includes certain obscure combinations like tei, kei, den, eng, dia, rua, and chua, but still omits others like lo, yo, and ei.

unique pinyin combinations

2009-01-30T13:41:00.008+08:00

Prelude: This is an off-topic post featuring arcane and obscure information about the Chinese language.

As an engineer / statistician / nerd, I am always classifying, analyzing, and quantifying the world around me. I am fascinated by the underlying structure and logic of all things, even things that are theoretically outside the realm of engineers. I also love tables and graphs.

Therefore, you can imagine my excitement when, on my first day learning Chinese, I discovered the chart of pinyin syllables:

How incredible that all of the possible sounds in an entire language may be represented so simply and logically, and on just one page! Not counting the tones, there are just over 400 possible sounds in Chinese. I've forgotten now how many sounds are possible in English, but it's on the order of tens of thousands.

Very early on in my Chinese study, I became fascinated with the frequency distribution of characters (including tones) within the pinyin chart. Occasionally, the uneven distribution would seem to make linguistic / cultural sense. For example, there is only one common character for the pinyin combination si3, 死, meaning death. Although I'm out of my league in postulating here, one could certainly imagine that as the society developed, the language would be clarified to ensure there wasn't any confusion about death, hence leaving the word isolated phonetically.

Anyway, over the years, I've tracked a lot of unique / unexpected / fascinating things I have discovered about the pinyin chart. And so I thought I'd share some of them here for your curiosity, trivial entertainment, and perhaps aid in your own language pursuit.

First off, here's a list of pinyin combinations for which there is only one commonly used character. (My unscientific definition of "commonly used" here is that the character is included in my cell phone's Chinese input system.)

I'll start easy:

neng 能
gei 给
zhei 这
shei 谁
dei 得
sen 森
nin 您
ri 日
me 么

I really can't say why this is so interesting to me, but it is. I mean, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of characters for the pinyin "yi." How come "neng" only gets one?

Ok, now let's get a little more obscure. Here are a few less common pinyin combinations for which, again, there is only one common character:

fo 佛
dia 嗲
ei 诶
zei 贼
nou 耨
seng 僧
lia 俩
zhuai 拽
lo 咯

Ok, moving on. Here's a list of unusual pinyin combinations that, although they do have more than one character, you might have rarely encountered before:

jiong 窘, 囧
miu 谬
pou 剖
cen 岑
beng 泵
pie 撇
weng 翁
zuan 钻
chuai 揣
chuo 戳

Ok, final list for this post. Here's a few pinyin combinations that technically exist, but are so obscure that my cell phone and even many dictionaries include no characters. Many pinyin tables don't even include these as possible sound combinations!

tei 忒
rua 挼
chua 欻
den 扽
eng 鞥
kei 剋
nun 黁

Ok, enough for today. Anyone out there know of other obscure pinyin combinations? Lastly, I'll conclude with some links to more Chinese character esoterica:

This blog:
How many pinyin combinations are there?

Danwei:
Acceptance comes for obscure characters
Problems with crazy characters
Living with an obscure name

56minus1's excellent Chinese net-speak series:
Chinese net-speak Part 1
Chinese net-speak Part 2
Chinese net-speak Part 3

Laowai Chinese's post on the pinyin chart.

CNN on climate change - the good and the bad

2009-01-29T19:36:00.001+08:00

This morning, I was impressed to discover CNN.com leading with a story about Al Gore's testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Gore spoke about the imperative for the United States to negotiate and agree this year to an international treaty to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.

I was also encouraged by the tone in these two paragraphs in the article:

During the hearing, Republican staffers handed out a statement contending that there are "significant objections" to claims about climate change. The document, which did not name Gore, said there is "a continued international outpouring of skeptical scientists" along with research "to refute warming fears."

The idea that the world's climate is being changed by human activities is supported by studies accepted by the vast majority of scientists with expertise in the field. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union and the American Association for the Advancement of Science are among groups that have issued reports backing that position.

I am encouraged here for a couple of reasons. First, the article does not hedge on whether or not climate change is being caused by humans. The second paragraph here is simply strong, direct, factual journalism, which is desperately needed to bring US public opinion on climate change more closely in line with reality.

Second, although the article does describe the actions of the climate skeptics, the claims of those skeptics are presented as claims alone (with quotation marks), not as truths. To me, this is journalistically a step in the right direction. By following the Republicans' "claim" of an "outpouring of skeptical scientists" with a real list of real scientific organizations, the article essentially discredits the claim. (To be fair, a perfect article would have discredited the claim directly, but nonetheless progress is still progress.)

That having been said, though, CNN doesn't deserve all praise today. It is a daily habit of mine to read the CNN International home page followed by the CNN US page. I do this for a variety of reasons, but primarily I am curious about the differing emphasis and priority assigned to different news stories for the two markets.

And sure enough, my elation over a cover story on climate change was immediately quashed when I discovered that the US edition of CNN did not even feature the story at all on the home page:

What's going on here? Gore testifying in front of the Senate on climate change is important enough to make the cover of the international page, but on the US page is usurped by such hard-hitting headlines as "Vegetable ad deemed too hot for TV"?

And so the long struggle to change US public opinion on climate change goes on...

censoring obama's inaugural address

2009-01-22T13:33:00.012+08:00

Several media and blog sources are reporting the Chinese government's censorship of Obama's inaugural address. From the AP:

At one point, Obama said earlier generations "faced down communism and fascism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions." He later addressed "those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent — know that you are on the wrong side of history."

Translations of the speech on China's most popular online portals, Sina and Sohu, were missing the word "communism" in the first sentence. The paragraph with the sentence on dissent had been removed.

Although I trust the AP's reporting, I still wanted to verify this for myself. Sina.com has a special inauguration page here:

(Interesting side note: the header refers to him as "Jr.," which I've never seen in the Western media, and is not used on his official White House page.)

From Sina's inauguration page, clicking 发表演说 takes you to a page featuring both a video of the speech and the supposed complete text (全文). Let's take a closer look at both sensitive instances.

He says "communism" at 10:14 in the video. The video is not edited (as it was during the CCTV live broadcast), but the subtitle omits the word:

Original English: "Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks"

Subtitle: "他们不仅仅是靠导弹和坦克击败法西斯主义" ("They didn't merely rely on missiles and tanks to defeat fascism")

The text on the site is slightly different from the subtitle ("回想先辈们在抵抗法西斯主义之时，他们不仅依靠手中的导弹或坦克"), but still omits "communism."

Now let's take a look at the second part, about dissent. This portion starts around 12:50 on the video.

Again, the video itself is not edited, although the subtitles appear to use the word "suppress" instead of "silence."

Original English: "To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent"

Subtitles: "对于那些通过腐败、欺骗和镇压异见者来攫取权力的领导人" ("To those leaders who grab power by corruption, deception, and suppression of dissenters")

In any case, although the censorship of the subtitles doesn't appear to be too heavy, that of the text version of the speech is. As indicated in the AP article, an entire paragraph is omitted. From what I can tell, these are lines of the speech that are omitted from the Chinese text version on Sina.com:

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict or blame their society's ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist. To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders, nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

I think the title of Austin's post at the Time China blog captures very concisely the depressing irony here: "the silencing of 'silencing of dissent'".

bu zheteng

2009-01-22T10:04:00.004+08:00

There is an interesting linguistic debate happening here in China in regards to something Hu Jintao said during his recent speech commemorating the 30th anniversary of China's reform and opening. While pushing forward with development goals, China should 不动摇，不懈怠，不折腾, which the China Daily translated as "don't sway back and forth, relax our efforts or get sidetracked." Everyone seems content with the translation of the first two terms, but there is a lot of debate about the third - 不折腾 (bu4 zhe1 teng) - both what Mr. Hu meant and how to translate it.

A couple of weeks ago, Danwei posted a great summary of the issue, and I recommend readers start there for background. Yesterday, Austin at the Time China blog posted his (humorous) interpretation and suggestion, and linked to the recently published state-run Xinhua's suggestions:

- bu zheteng
- no trouble-making
- avoid self-inflicted setbacks
- don't flip flop
- don't get sidetracked
- don't sway back and forth
- no dithering
- no major changes
- avoid futile actions
- stop making trouble and wasting time、no self-consuming political movements

What fascinates me is the first suggestion - "bu zheteng" - which is just the Chinese rendered in the standard romanization system, pinyin. The implication being that if it can't be translated adequately, why try?

Last night, my colleagues, all of whom are Chinese, and I had a discussion about how to translate bu zheteng. They all seem to agree that the best solution is simply for us English-speakers to adopt bu zheteng into our language. What do you think?

Bearing in mind that I'm an engineer, not a linguist, off the top of my head I can think of two categories of Chinese words that have been adopted into the English language:

The first is Chinese words that have been fully integrated and are included in standard English language dictionaries. Examples: tofu, from the Chinese dou4 fu 豆腐, and kung fu, from the Chinese gong1 fu 功夫.

The second is Chinese words that expats living in China routinely use colloquially when speaking to each other, either because no equivalent English word exists, or because it describes perfectly a phenomenon unique to China. Examples:

- chai 拆, meaning to demolish, e.g. "I used to love that restaurant; too bad it got chai'ed last week."
- mafan 麻烦, meaning troublesome / annoying, e.g. "Traveling during Chinese New Year's is too much mafan, I think I'll just stay in Beijing next week."

My prediction is that bu zheteng will be integrated by expats into the unique brand of Chinglish that we use when speaking to other China expats, but that there is little to no chance that bu zheteng will become the next tofu.

--
Update 2/17/09:

Great photo today in The Beijinger:

--

1-20-09

2009-01-20T17:12:00.000+08:00

Today is a great day for America, and for the world. Let us rejoice in the triumph over struggle that Mr. Obama's election represents, and in the desperately needed hope and vision that he so passionately and eloquently brings.

Mr. Obama: we are ready.

fuel economy improvement and where to get bang for your buck

2009-01-19T22:28:00.001+08:00

The NYT has a good op-ed today called "Energy Inefficient." Towards the end, there's this interesting paragraph:

The Union of Concerned Scientists points out that switching from an S.U.V. that gets 14 miles per gallon to one that gets 16 would save the same amount of fuel as swapping a 35-mile-a-gallon car for a 51-m.p.g. new generation gas-sipper. This is not an argument for more S.U.V.’s. It simply shows that we can wring savings from modest efficiency gains in products we already use.

Since this is somewhat counter-intuitive, I thought a brief explanation might be useful.

The confusion stems directly from the units used to express fuel economy in America. "Miles per gallon," while perhaps clearer for consumers, is a difficult framework in which to think about resource consumption (since the resource - gallon of gas - is, by definition, fixed).

On the other hand, consider the alternative -- flip the term and talk about gallons of fuel used per mile traveled. In the example above, an SUV that gets 14 mpg burns 0.0714 gallons of fuel per mile traveled, or, to make things easier, 7.14 gallons of fuel per 100 miles traveled. The car that gets 35 mpg burns 2.86 gallons of fuel per 100 miles traveled.

First of all, from the perspective of limiting absolute energy consumption, the car is clearly a better choice, and that fact should not be lost in this discussion.

But consider the impact stemming from relative improvements to the two vehicles. If I improve the SUV's fuel economy from 14 to 16 mpg, my fuel consumption per 100 miles traveled drops by almost a gallon - from 7.14 to 6.25. In other words, I have saved one gallon of fuel as compared with my baseline scenario. To get the same improvement from the car's baseline, I have to decrease my fuel consumption from 2.86 gallons per 100 miles traveled to 1.96, corresponding to a fuel economy improvement to 51 mpg:

The optimal scenario would of course be to upgrade all your vehicles to 51 mpg (or more). However, given that such an ideal is often not practical or reasonable, comparative analysis as described here can be very beneficial from political, business, and personal perspectives.
--
Update 1/20/09:
The Energy Analysis blog has a similar post about this issue, and includes the following relevant graph showing the non-linear relationship between fuel consumption and mpg:

--

olympic pollution reductions confirmed by NASA satellite

2009-01-16T17:29:00.000+08:00

A new study from NASA analyzed satellite measurements of air pollution over Beijing to conclude:

The [Olympic] emission restrictions had an unmistakable impact. During the two months when restrictions were in place, the levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) -- a noxious gas resulting from fossil fuel combustion (primarily in cars, trucks, and power plants) -- plunged nearly 50 percent. Likewise, levels of carbon monoxide (CO) fell about 20 percent.

The following images show comparative NO2 levels around China during August, 2005-2007 (left) and August, 2008 (right). Note the disappearance of the color red over Beijing in the image on the right.

Much of the air quality discussion on this blog and elsewhere has been about particulate pollution, not NO2 or CO, so it's nice to see the expanded analysis.

Monitoring of air pollution by satellite is just awesome. Last November, I heard a fascinating presentation by Argonne National Lab's Dr. David Streets on recent developments in satellite monitoring. It is getting so exact, he said, that, "we are exploring the potential of monitoring the change of power plant emissions in China from space." He then showed an example of pinpointing the opening of new power plants in Inner Mongolia through satellite observation:

Note pixel size of ~12km. Incredible.

Related post: final day of temporary air quality measures

two good summaries of the near-future green vehicles market

2009-01-16T09:05:00.001+08:00

If you want to get quickly up to speed on how the US alternative fuel vehicle market is shaping up over the next few years, I recommend the following two posts:

"Everything you could want to know about the plug-in hybrid and electric vehicle announcements at the Detroit auto show" (from Climate Progress via Calcars.org; note the excellent "ways to stay informed" links at the bottom);

"Green Cars of 2008: Mega-Ginormous Summary of the Year" (from Treehugger).

Image: Treehugger

other databases of chinese air quality data

2009-01-15T18:31:00.002+08:00

Sorry about the deluge of posts today. I've recently returned to China after some time away in the States and am playing catch up on everything I missed.

Here I'm posting two additional databases of Chinese APIs outside of MEP's datacenter. Neither database has new data outside of the government-issued API data, however.

First, the Clean Air Initiative for Asian Cities has excellent China air quality data sets available for downloading. For example, Beijing APIs from 2000 to mid-2008 (along with tons of analysis) available on this page. Note that data for other cities may be downloaded at the bottom of the page. Note also the excellent API to pollutant concentration converter on the right.

Second, in late December, Imagethief posted "all the data you ever wanted on Beijing and Shanghai air pollution." In the post, he links to a 5MB Excel file containing daily API data for Beijing and Shanghai from 2000 through mid-2007. The spreadsheet also contains a lot of analysis.

Some day I'll post my own spreadsheets, but that will require me to clean them up (a lot) and also figure out a way to share files easily. I'm sure there's a way, I just haven't looked into it yet.

In any case, as you cut through the data from the above sources on your own, let me know what you discover!

why you can't average APIs

2009-01-15T16:51:00.001+08:00

The Asia Society's Room with a View website I mentioned in my last post is excellent. However, they have one indicator of air quality that is a little problematic, and here I'd like to explain why. The indicator I'm referring to is average API (which they call "average pollution").

Mathematically, it doesn't make sense to average APIs. This is because the conversion from pollutant concentration to API is non-linear, as shown in this graph:

Why this complicates averaging is best explained through an example:

Consider three different days with APIs 25, 100, and 250. The average API is 125, which corresponds to a PM10 concentration of 200 ug/m^3. Unfortunately, though, the actual average PM10 concentration for those three days is not 200.

Our three days with APIs 25, 100, and 250 correspond to PM10 concentrations of 25, 150, and 385 ug/m^3, respectively. The average PM10 is 187 ug/m^3, which corresponds to a real "average" API of 118, several points lower than that estimated using the other method.

Because of the non-linear conversion, to get an accurate "average API," we have to convert to PM10, average those, then convert back to API.

The difference isn't huge, and I do think that average APIs may occasionally be useful for snapshot, comparative indicators of the air quality of a given time period (as used by the Asia Society). However, it should be understood that this method usually gives a higher (worse) estimate of air quality than reality, and the average should never be used to convert back to pollutant concentration.

Detailed equations for converting back and forth from API to PM10 may be found at the bottom of this post.

daily photos of beijing's air quality

2009-01-15T12:52:00.003+08:00

The Asia Society has an excellent website that features daily photos of Beijing's air, along with API info and a great video on the challenge of parallel economic development and environmental protection.

summary of beijing's 2008 air quality

2009-01-14T21:28:00.003+08:00

Happy New Year! I thought I would start off the year with a brief look back at Beijing's air quality during 2008.

On December 31st, Xinhua reported that Beijing had achieved 274 "Blue Sky Days" in 2008. This was well in excess of the 2008 goal of 256, and even well above the 2009 goal of 259. But what does it mean in terms of air quality and human health? Let's take a closer look at the data to find out.

First of all, according to my tally, Beijing actually only achieved 272 Blue Sky Days in 2008, with one data point (9/6) missing. Even if we assume the 9/6 sky was blue though, that only amounts to 273, not the reported 274. What's going on here? FYI, I performed my tally by first downloading Beijing's 2008 API data (available by querying MEP's datacenter) then counting the number of days with API 100 or below. Am I doing something wrong here?

--
Update 1/15/09: In reviewing the data, I realized that MEP's 2008 API database is missing two data points - 9/6 and 6/4. Assuming both of these days were Blue Sky Days yields 274. I missed this the first time around because I forgot that I should be looking for 366 total data points (leap year!) not 365.
--

In any case, as I have written about before, the "Blue Sky Day" metric is problematic for several reasons. Perhaps what bothers me most about it is that it tells us nothing about actual air quality; increasing annual numbers of Blue Sky Days does not necessarily mean better air quality(1). To evaluate air quality, we need numbers for daily / annual concentrations of air pollutants. Although the Beijing EPB publishes annual pollutant concentrations in the Beijing Environmental Annual Reports, the 2008 report won't be available until this summer. So we need to improvise:

Starting from the database of 2008 API values, I converted back to daily PM10 concentrations using the formulas at the bottom of this post. I assume that the primary pollutant on all days is PM10(2). Averaging over the year I get:

2008 Average PM10 concentration for Beijing: 123 ug/m^3.

The good news? This is a 17% improvement over last year. The bad news? The PM10 concentration is still over six times higher than the WHO annual target of 20 ug/m^3:

During the Olympics, Beijing saw a 50% reduction in air pollution as the city enjoyed its cleanest air in ten years. Clearly, the success of the anti-pollution campaigns was a driving force behind 2008's relative improvement over years past. At the same time, though, we have a long way to go, and the considerable pollution of the city even in a "successful" year like 2008 should not be underestimated.

(1)Here, I'm not referring to data biasing. Rather, I'm simply considering the fact that Blue Sky Days are binary, as opposed to being a concentration value or gradual scale. Consider this extreme situation: if every day in one year had an API of 100, though the number of Blue Sky Days would be 365, the average annual PM10 concentration (indicating air quality) would actually be worse than it was in 2007 or 2008 in Beijing.

(2) This assumption is slightly problematic because for APIs below 50 the primary pollutant is not listed, although for APIs above 50 the primary pollutant is almost always PM10. To estimate the accuracy of this method, I used it on the 2006 and 2007 daily API databases and calculated an annual average PM10 concentration result for each year that deviated from the Beijing EPB's reported values by well under 1%. Therefore, I think the assumption is pretty reasonable.

new york times blocked in china?

2008-12-19T11:54:00.004+08:00

I have been unable to access the New York Times all day today, either from home or from work. A friend in the US tells me that the home page currently features the story "After 30 Years, Economic Perils on China’s Path." (Link is to the IHT version, which is not blocked here).

The apparent blocking of the NYTimes comes on the heels of the explicit acknowledgment by the Chinese government of their "right" to censor the internet:

China says within rights to block some websites (Reuters)

Is anyone in other parts of China (or elsewhere in Beijing) able to access the New York Times today?

--
Update 12/20/08: The Atlantic's James Fallows conducted an informal survey of readers across China, and concludes "NYTimes.com is being blocked throughout China," noting that the pattern of inaccessibility is consistent with how China's censorship works. Earlier this year, Mr. Fallows wrote the most comprehensive article I've read about China's Great Firewall.

Also, an anonymous commenter below mentioned problems accessing cbsnews.com, but I'm currently having no problems loading that site.
--

--
Update 1/15/09: I left China on 12/20 to go home to the States for almost three weeks. Since returning to China last weekend, I've had no trouble accessing the Times. Apparently, the three-day ban was lifted on 12/22.
--

beijing meets 2008 blue sky day target

2008-12-16T17:15:00.001+08:00

Earlier this month, the Beijing EPB announced that Beijing reached the 2008 target for total number of "blue sky days" one month early. A "blue sky day" is defined as one for which the API is below 100, indicating "excellent" (优) or "good" (良) air quality.

The stated goal of this blog is to "explore miscommunication between China and the West on issues of the environment and beyond." As such, I want to highlight a major difference between how this story was reported within China and internationally.

Specifically, let's look at the Xinhua English language report and the China Daily report (domestic) vs. the widely distributed Associated Press report (international). As expected, the domestic sources are purely positive. Xinhua's lead is simple and dither-free:

Beijing fulfils "blue sky" day goal one month in advance
Beijing has met its 2008 target of 256 blue sky days as Sunday marked another day of good air quality.

China Daily's lead is even more decisive:

Clear days' target met before time
Determined efforts, special measures and good weather helped Beijing achieve its annual target of 256 blue-sky days yesterday, a full month before the end of the year.

Compare these to the AP's lead:

Beijing claims early victory over air pollution
BEIJING (AP) — Beijing said Monday it has already reached its target number of 256 "blue-sky days" this year, with the help of ambitious environmental measures the city imposed to cut emissions for the Olympic Games.

Two words - "claims" and "said" - in the AP lead jump out at me as setting a very different tone from the Xinhua and China Daily stories. The implication being that the truth may be different from what the Beijing EPB proclaims. And, indeed, this suspicion over data integrity is substantiated in the last three paragraphs of the AP story, three paragraphs that are conspicuously absent from the domestic China reporting:

Steven Andrews, an independent environmental consultant based in Washington, said Beijing's claims of improved air quality are not reliable because the city has moved monitoring stations to less-polluted areas and has varied the way it has measured pollutants since 1998.

"They've measured different things during that time period and it has a huge impact on the number of days that meet the national standard," Andrews said in a telephone interview.

Such inconsistencies mean that the increase in the number of blue-sky days may be due to the change of monitoring locations, rather than a reduction in overall pollution levels, he said.

For me, the discrepancy between the international and domestic reporting is deeply frustrating on several levels.

Perhaps most importantly, I am frustrated that Beijing's air quality data is (justifiably) not considered trustworthy by the international community, and that the Chinese media is forbidden (or just blind) to questioning it. As I have posted before, Steven Andrews' excellent analysis of Beijing's historical air quality data strongly suggests past data manipulation, in addition to his reasonable claim that one cannot directly compare the number of Blue Sky Days from different years due to monitoring station location changes. Until the Beijing government takes concrete steps to improve data transparency and independent confirmation, questions of data trustworthiness should and will remain.

On the other hand, though, I am frustrated because, due largely to the two-month shut down surrounding the Olympics, this is a year in which Beijing's air quality genuinely has been better. In other words, this is a year in which Beijing did not need to, and may not have, engaged in data manipulation to meet targets. Any yet, at a time when Beijing arguably deserves credit for achieving its Olympic air quality goals (and for taking steps to maintain air quality in the post-Olympic period), there still seems to be a strong sense in the international community that any success Beijing achieved is either fake or was achieved by cheating. Virtually every conversation I have with a non-Chinese about Beijing's air quality begins with, "well isn't it true that Beijing's air quality data is bogus anyway?"

In relation to the AP article, consider this statement:

Such inconsistencies mean that the increase in the number of blue-sky days may be due to the change of monitoring locations, rather than a reduction in overall pollution levels, he said.

While it may be true that the change in monitoring stations affected the number of days considered Blue Sky Days, this does not necessarily mean that there was not a reduction in overall pollution levels from 2007 to 2008.

My final point of frustration is really a technical issue with the number Blue Sky Days metric. Simply put, the number of Blue Sky Days metric is meaningless from a human health perspective, since what matters is average concentration of pollutants, not number of days below an arbitrary cut-off point. The value of the number of Blue Sky Days metric is not scientific, it's social; it's a way of packaging air quality information into a format thought to be easily comprehended by the public. I mention this only to say that what I am really curious about regarding 2008 is not number of Blue Sky Days, but rather average annual particulate concentration. It is only with that data (combined with whatever additional independent confirmations are available) that we will be able to make any real judgments about changing air quality.

Image: China Daily

stay inside today - beijing api at 246

2008-12-09T15:09:00.008+08:00

Beijing's API broke the 200 mark today for the first time since May 29th.

Today's API reading of 246 - corresponding to a PM10 concentration of 382 ug/m^3 - would be characterized by the US EPA as "very unhealthy":

Here in China, this air quality is simply referred to as:

北京2008-12-09的API指数为 246 ，空气质量级别 Ⅳ1 级 , 今天北京空气中的首要污染物为可吸入颗粒物，空气质量状况中度污染。

Translation: "Beijing API on 12/9/2008 is 246, air quality level IV1. Today's primary pollutant is inhalable particles. The air quality status is moderate-heavy polluted."

Sources and a brief discussion of US AQI vs. Chinese API follow:

Sources:

Beijing API: http://datacenter.mep.gov.cn/TestRunQian/air/airCityMain.jsp?city=%B1%B1%BE%A9
Conversion of Chinese API to PM10 concentration: http://www.mep.gov.cn/quality/background.php
US AQI pollutant concentration breakpoints: http://www.epa.gov/ttn/oarpg/t1/fr_notices/airqual.pdf. For PM10, the breakpoints are almost identical to China's:

(Above image, US breakpoints. Below image, China's breakpoints)

More info on PM10:
http://airnow.gov/index.cfm?action=static.aqguidepart
http://airnow.gov/index.cfm?action=particle.airborne

update on fall air quality in beijing

2008-11-28T18:36:00.006+08:00

Yesterday a friend commented that it seems like the air quality in Beijing this fall has been much better than last fall. Turns out he's right:

(For background, see this post on Air Pollution Index (API)).

Although the air quality since 9/21 hasn't been as good as it was during the Olympic period, the average particulate matter concentration in the air this fall has been over 20% lower than the same time period last year and almost 40% lower than the same time period two years ago. Perhaps the one-day-a-week car ban is working?

FYI, the average PM10 concentration this fall of around 100 ug/m^3 is actually right at China's annual air quality target, though still five times higher than the WHO recommended annual level of 20 ug/m^3.

Lastly, I want to show again a long time-scale graph of daily API vs. time in Beijing:

There are two main take-away messages from this graph:

1) The improved air quality of the Olympic period (7/20 - 9/20, 2008) is quite apparent.
2) We have yet to see a major pollution spike (say, API above 200) since the Olympics ended...

highlights from BAQ2008 - ICCT and diesel emissions

2008-11-28T18:10:00.006+08:00

This is the third in a series of posts noting some random highlights from the BAQ2008 conference. Here I'd like to feature a few great slides I saw presented by Dr. Anup Bandivadekar of the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT). (Side note: Dr. Bandivadekar is the lead author of MIT's "On the Road in 2035: Reducing Transportation's Petroleum Consumption and GHG Emissions.")

The presentation I heard by him was called "Diesel Passenger Cars: Safeguarding Air Quality and the Global Climate in a Shifting Market."

The presentation begins with an introduction to the "diesel dilemma," which I will briefly summarize as follows: diesels are more efficient than gasoline vehicles (therefore are better for energy security / CO2 emissions reductions), but pollute more, especially NOx and PM (therefore are worse for air quality). Certain areas of the world (most notably Europe and countries which have followed Europe's precedent) have promoted diesels for the former reason by subsidizing the cost of diesel fuel and setting higher emission limits for diesel vehicles as compared with gasoline vehicles.

As diesel engine technology and emissions control systems improve, though, there is a growing call to eliminate any special policy treatment afforded to diesels, and instead adopt "technology neutral" environmental standards. (Note: the US and Japan's technology neutral standards are one reason diesel passenger vehicles have not had large penetration in those markets.)

Indeed, Dr. Bandivadekar's conclusion states:

Diesels don't have to be the problem...

The trade-off between air pollution and GHG reduction is artificial -- solution lies in strict, technology-neutral emission standards

But there are two additional key points that Dr. Bandivadekar makes that I want to feature.

The first is that low sulfur diesel fuel is required if advanced diesel emission control systems are to be installed on vehicles. His presentation features an excellent slide showing graphically the PM reduction potential vs. diesel fuel sulfur content:

As standards become more and more stringent, it is critical that fuels and vehicles be treated as a system, especially with regard to sulfur content. Unfortunately, however, many Asian nations still have extremely high sulfur content in their fuels:

This high sulfur content in many areas, including China outside of Beijing (this point to be expanded on in another post), is a major limiting factor to the introduction of cleanest technology diesel vehicles.

Another fascinating point that Dr. Bandivadekar raised is that greenhouse gas emissions from diesel vehicles are more than just CO2. Incomplete diesel combustion also results in the emission of "black carbon," another powerful contributor to global warming. When considering total greenhouse gas emissions, diesels only have an advantage over gasoline when black carbon emissions are controlled:

(In the above slide, "DPF" refers to "diesel particulate filter," an emissions control device that requires low sulfur fuel to operate properly.)

Therefore, the need for immediate implementation of low sulfur diesel fuel and advanced diesel emission control technology is supported from both air pollution and greenhouse gas reduction perspectives.

Lastly, I'm posting up one of Dr. Bandivadekar's first slides, the ICCT's excellent Bellagio Principles:

highlights from BAQ2008 - Chris Cherry and e-bikes

2008-11-28T12:27:00.010+08:00

Electric bikes (e-bikes) may not be on the tip of the sustainable transportation community's tongue yet, but I think they should be, and in this post I'll explain why.

Dr. Chris Cherry of UT Knoxville is a (the?) leading international expert on e-bike development in China. His BAQ2008 presentation, "Environmental Impacts of E-bikes in China (and Beyond)," did an excellent job framing the e-bike discussion and current status.

First, take a look at this graph of recent e-bike production in China:

2007 e-bike production in China was over 20 million units, two and a half times more than motor vehicles. Anyone who has traveled regularly to China recently can attest to the reality that e-bikes are proliferating like crazy in Chinese cities. The sheer magnitude of these numbers (and the rapid rate of increase) demands that we investigate the energy, environmental, and social impacts of e-bikes.

Regarding the energy and environmental impacts, here is an incredible table Dr. Cherry developed on per passenger-km emission factors of various different transportation modes in China:

The values in the table are colored by impact. As expected, of the modes compared here, bicycling is the only one that receives "greens" across the board, while cars and motorcycles are generally "red" for highest impact. E-bikes, on the other hand, are competitive with buses for environmental impact for most pollutants except lead. (The extremely high lead emissions result from the e-bike batteries, which are comparable to car batteries; this makes it absolutely critical that lead pollution from increased e-bike production and use be controlled with lead acid battery production management and recycling programs.)

Conclusions:

In my opinion, e-bikes should be given high priority as an urban sustainable transportation solution. E-bikes provide much greater urban mobility than buses, with comparable environmental impact, but result in significantly less air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions than cars or motorcycles.

However, e-bike development (and modal shift) should be carefully managed and understood. Direct modal shift from bikes to e-bikes clearly results in a net negative environmental impact, while the net environmental impact of modal shift from buses to e-bikes is unclear. Exploring this question, another slide of Dr. Cherry's presentation shows the results of mode choice surveying in Kunming:

The fact that most respondents chose an e-bike over a bus or standard bicycle may indicate that the e-bike proliferation has had a net negative environmental impact in Kunming.

That having been said, though, the primary, future environmental challenge in the transportation sector in China is controlling the impacts of a rapidly motorizing population. Therefore, the proliferation of e-bikes should be considered both in the context of current modal shift (e.g. what transportation mode would you choose today if not an e-bike) as well as the context of future behavior and mode choice. For example:

- How has the use of an e-bike transformed a customer's perceptions of the future need and use of a motorized vehicle?
- Has the owning of an e-bike delayed the inevitable purchase of a private car?
- Even if a car is purchased, what trips are the e-bikes still used for?

Most of all, whether you are for or against e-bikes, due to the massive growth in their production, at least two things are clear:

1) There is much more research to be done (modal share, lead pollution, safety, impact on regular bikes);
2) It is time for the sustainable transportation community to expand greatly the discussion of e-bikes and their impacts. (I told Dr. Cherry after his talk that at BAQ2010 there should be a whole panel on e-bikes, not just one presentation!)

highlights from BAQ2008 - IEA

2008-11-27T09:51:00.001+08:00

As mentioned in my last post, I'd like to feature some highlights from the BAQ2008 conference earlier this month in Bangkok. I haven't had a chance to go through even nearly all of the presentations, but there are some key slides / conclusions that I either remember from attending or found while browsing the files online that I'd like to post up here. Some of these will be a little out of context, but in all cases I will post the link to the original presentation for further info.

First, I'd like to post highlights from presentations I heard from Lew Fulton and Pierpaulo Cazzola of the IEA, based on energy demand projection research that went into the World Energy Outlook and Energy Technology Perspectives. (Side note: the just-released WEO 2008 Executive Summary is a must read.)

To start with, here are a couple of great slides from Mr. Fulton's presentation, "Transport, Energy, and CO2 in Asia: Where are We Going and How Do We Change It?":

The above slide shows IEA projections of global car stock by region (y-axis is in millions). Note the exploding dominance of China, especially after 2015-2020. This graph highlights both the incredible challenge we face to limit the energy and environmental impacts of vehicles worldwide, as well as the critical importance of guiding the inevitable growth of vehicles in the developing world in as sustainable a direction as possible.

On energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, Mr. Fulton proposed that it is both economically and technologically reasonable to target a 50% reduction in global light duty vehicle energy intensity by 2030. This loosely means reducing average car energy consumption from approximately 8 to 4 l/100-km. Note that some vehicles, such as the Prius, already achieve a fuel economy in this range.

However, current policies are not even close to guiding the vehicle fleet to this target. The following slide shows baseline vehicle fuel economy projections to 2050, taking into account all current legislation:

There is clearly a gap between what legislators (and the vehicle industry) are targeting, and what is currently possible (and required to meet necessary global GHG reductions).

Looking out to 2050, the IEA proposes that the majority of CO2 emissions savings from the transportation sector will come from improvements to conventional gasoline and diesel engines and traditional hybridization. This was surprising to me, as I expected electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids to play a bigger role. Additional savings are projected to come from some combination of electric vehicles and fuel cell vehicles, but the extent of those savings will depend on future technology improvements:

Fortunately, in the case of conventional engine improvements and traditional hybridization, pricing (in theory) shouldn't be the issue, as the fuel savings are on par with the additional technology cost for these vehicles:

Lastly, I'm posting up the conclusion slide from a talk with some overlapping content given by Mr. Cazzola called, "Fuel Economy as a Means to Avoid Future Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Transport":

The conclusion about monitoring increases in weight and power is critical, and something I will address in another post.

BAQ2008

2008-11-18T16:55:00.009+08:00

It's been a busy November for me so far, mostly due to tons of meetings and conferences. Most recently, I spent the past week down in Bangkok for the Better Air Quality 2008 (BAQ2008) conference.

All in all, the conference (actually my whole trip to Thailand in general) was just incredible - one of the best conferences I've ever attended. I had hoped to blog about the conference while down there, but internet access was sporadic for me, plus I was pretty engaged with meetings / discussions / panels for the entire time.

Over the next week, I will try to post up highlights from some of the presentations. In the meantime, I want to publicize the program, from which you can download most of the presentations. If you want to become an overnight expert on air quality in Asian mega-cities (plus a myriad of related issues like transport demand management, urban planning, health effects, links to fuel economy and GHG emissions, role of technology) these presentations are a fantastic place to start.

Before expanding on individual panels and presentations, though, I want to sing the praises for a moment of the Clean Air Initiative for Asian Cities (CAI-Asia). I was somewhat familiar with the group before, especially their excellent work summarizing Beijing Olympic air quality data, but it wasn't until this conference that I gained such tremendous respect for their dedication, organization, impact, and spirit. In just a few years, CAI-Asia has become the leading voice promoting partnerships and the sharing of air quality improvement experience throughout developing Asia. The incredible breadth and depth of this conference are testaments to the way they have catalyzed governments, NGOs, academics, and the private sector to work together towards the common goal of improving air quality in all cities.

Plus, I have to give them credit just for being so much fun...and recognizing that conferences are so much better when they are punctuated with singing, jokes, props, inspirational music, and the occasional strobe light...

Before signing off, I also wanted to mention that, earlier this month, I attended the very good 4th Regional Air Quality Management Conference from 11/6-7. Fulbright scholar Scott Moore has a good summary of the first day up on his great new blog, China Greenspace. As time permits, I will try to post up some comments on the second day, especially the transportation panel.

more on the datacenter

2008-10-27T18:35:00.002+08:00

The Ministry of Environmental Protection's old air quality site hasn't been updated since 10/19, leading me to believe that the new online datacenter is here to stay. I finally had a chance to look through it in some depth today, and discovered some cool features. Unfortunately, the site is only in Chinese right now, but I'll keep checking and report back if an English version comes online. Also, it only works in Internet Explorer (not Firefox) on my computer, and even then still gives some weird scripting error messages.

In any case, here is a screen capture of the main interface:

The home page shows the Air Pollution Index (API) for 86 major cities in China, along with a pie chart displaying fractions of cities meeting various air quality grades. (In the screen shot above, 25 cities have "excellent" (优) air quality while 59 have "good" (良).) The bar graph below shows the 10 best API ratings across China each day. Congrats to Beijing for being 6th yesterday! The air quality data for the cities auto-scrolls on the home page; the complete list is presented here.

Besides additional air quality info (which I will discuss in detail below), the site features:

- Weekly water quality monitoring info for major river basins in China (全国主要流域重点断面水质自动监测周报), including some pretty detailed water quality analysis. (I'm no water expert, but from glancing through the data it seems both extensive and depressing.);
- A list of nature reserves in China (全国自然保护区名录);
- A list of companies in China that have received certification for environmental labeling (环境标志产品认证), though to be honest I'm not sure what this is used for;
- A search engine for environment-related scientific standards (科技标准查询), including links to the original documents;
- Some detailed info on solid waste management in China (限制类固体废物进口 and 自动类固体废物进口.)

My mouse goes directly to the air quality data, though, so let's explore that further...

First of all, as I mentioned in my last post, clicking on each city brings up a city-specific page, such as this one for Beijing:

At the top of this page, you can query past API data for any city you choose. In the results of the daily query, there is at least one new feature that was not previously available, and that is the presenting of the forecasted high and low API's for each day in parallel with the actual API. (Those in Beijing will remember last Friday's crazy winds; that day's actual API of 14 was a welcome, far cry from the predictions of 51-71!) There is also a graph of the last 30 days of API's.

Besides the city-specific sites, the following pages are available:

- A database of past air quality forecasts for each city (重点城市空气质量预报);
- An air quality analysis page (重点城市空气质量分析). There is some really cool stuff on this page - including the ability to rank and compare different cities in China against each other - and as such I think it deserves its own post. Therefore, rather than write more about it now, I'm going to save further explanation for another, more in-depth post about that page specifically. Also:

a) I can't imagine there are all that many people who got this far in this post anyway;
b) For those who did get this far, I want to make sure you have an excuse to come back to this blog; and,
c) It's time for me to leave the office...

datacenter.mep.gov.cn

2008-10-20T18:27:00.005+08:00

I just noticed today a new feature on the website of the Ministry of Environmental Protection: datacenter.mep.gov.cn.

My browser is giving me some errors loading the pages, so it seems they are still doing some debugging, but so far it seems interesting. The pie chart above displays fraction of Chinese cities meeting different air quality levels today.

There are also links to city specific sites (e.g. Beijing) that automatically display a graph of the last 30 days of API data for each city:

(Note the 10/18 pollution spike I mentioned in my last post).

Historical API data is also now hosted on the new site, here: http://datacenter.mep.gov.cn/TestRunQian/air_dairy.jsp. (The use of the term "test run" in the URL leads me to believe this is temporary, but we'll see; in any case the old API site has not yet been updated today so this is the only source of current data for now.)

pollution increases after the olympics

2008-10-20T18:15:00.001+08:00

We are now one month past the end of the temporary air pollution reduction policies put in place for the Olympics and Paralympics. As expected, pollution levels have gone up. But how much? Using PM10 concentrations as an indicator, I estimate that the air quality in Beijing for the past month has been around 24% worse than it was during the two-month Olympic period. The pollution has actually been worse this past month than it was during the same period in 2007, though still significantly better than the same period in 2006:

It should be noted, though, that the averages over this past month are slightly skewed by the extreme pollution of this past Saturday (October 18th), when the API shot up to 174 (PM10 concentration 298 ug/m^3). This was the first day with an API above 150 since June.

Saturday's brutal - but short-lived - high pollution event raised a question in my mind that I'm not sure the answer to. From a health perspective, should we worry more about these short-lived extreme pollution spikes or long-term elevated baseline levels? For PM10 specifically, the WHO gives both daily and annual targets (50 and 20 ug/m^3, respectively). Granted, Beijing's air quality regularly exceeds both, but which is likely to cause more damage?

Lastly, it should be noted about the above table that I have done a direct conversion from API to PM10 concentration using the formulas at the bottom of this post, although this is an imperfect system because China does not list the primary pollutant for APIs below 50. Given the fact that PM10 is almost always the primary pollutant when the API is above 50, I think it's a reasonable approximation.

new vehicle restriction policy in beijing

2008-10-14T18:30:00.000+08:00

I know, I'm a little late to the party on writing about this, so apologies for that.

As of yesterday, a new policy is in effect in Beijing to keep 800,000 cars off the roads every day. Though not nearly as far-reaching as the odd/even car ban implemented during the Olympics, the basic concept is the same: forbid certain cars from driving inside Beijing's fifth ring road depending on the last digit of their license plates. According to this policy, vehicles whose license plate numbers end in 1 and 6 may not drive on Mondays, 2 and 7 on Tuesdays, 3 and 8 on Wednesdays, 4 and 9 on Thursdays, and 5 and 0 on Fridays (though supposedly the prohibited driving days will change each month). There are no restrictions on the weekends. Additionally, the government has supposedly eliminated 30% of government cars, though the details on how are a bit hazy.

I'm curious to see what the results of this policy will be, both from a pollution perspective and a congestion perspective. My initial reaction on the former is that it won't have a huge effect, largely because cars are not the largest source of pollution in Beijing anyway. I wonder, then, if the ban is somewhat symbolic, a response to the loud public calls for the government to do something to signify a clear commitment not to let the pollution return to pre-Olympic levels.

Or maybe we are just seeing one step in a broad, coordinated series of policies designed to ween car-addicted Beijingers back to transit, bikes, and walking...

More info:
http://www.thebeijinger.com/blog/2008/10/13/New-Traffic-Measures-Fines-Extended-Subway-Hours-and-More-Buses
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/10/beijing-to-ban-cars.php

problems with the "blue sky day" metric

2008-10-14T11:25:00.021+08:00

Late last month, consultant Steven Q. Andrews published an excellent report with detailed analysis of the publicly reported daily API data for Beijing. His key findings, which were first published as an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (and subsequently covered by the New York Times, Time, and others), are as follows (quoted from the report's abstract):

Here I show that reported improvements in air quality [in Bejiing] for 2006–2007 over 2002 levels can be attributed to (a) a shift in reported daily PM10 concentrations from just above to just below the national standard, and (b) a shift of monitoring stations in 2006 to less polluted areas.

Many people, including Mr. Andrews, have been asking me my opinion on the findings of the report. Here, I will try to summarize what I consider to be the most impressive and surprising results, while also commenting on what the report's results do - and don't - show.

Summary: Statistical analysis of reported API frequency shows clear data biasing to reach Blue Sky Day targets, and, as such, I think effectively invalidates the use of annual number of Blue Sky Days as an air quality measure. This is an extremely impressive finding that I hope the Chinese government will respond to appropriately, both by reconsidering the use of the Blue Sky Day metric altogether and investigating how such bias was introduced and eliminating it in the future.

However, I caution against using this finding alone to make broader, sweeping assumptions about Beijing's air quality changes over the last five or ten years. Specifically, Mr. Andrews' report should not be used as proof that any and all recent improvements in air quality in Beijing have been simply the result of "gaming the numbers" as opposed to actual improvements. While Mr. Andrews' results regarding numbers of Blue Sky Days are dramatic, his analysis of pollutant concentrations in recent years focuses on only one pollutant, PM10, and shows concerning, but not dramatic, discrepancies to the officially reported data. Additionally, when discussing PM10, it should be noted that controlling concentrations of particulate is well known to be one of the biggest air quality challenges faced by Beijing, and that trends of PM10 concentration should not necessarily be equated with trends of other pollutants or even trends of overall air quality.

Finally, while I think Mr. Andrews' analysis normalizing air quality data across multiple years by accounting for the moving of monitoring stations is excellent, correct, and appropriate, I do not think it proves deliberate deceit about air quality (as the Blue Sky Day biasing does).

Discussion:

Blue Sky Day Data Biasing

First of all, to me, the most impressive graph in the report is this one, showing the dramatically higher frequency of reported PM10 concentration just below the Blue Sky Day cut-off than just above (Figure 2 from Mr. Andrews' report):

Equally impressive is this statement from the report:

While 52% of the days with a city API between 96 and 105 (PM10 = 142–160 μg m−3) were reported as ‘Blue Sky’ days in 2001, 98% of the days in this range were ‘Blue Sky’ days in 2006, and 93% of days in the range were ‘Blue Sky’ days in 2007.

This seems to show, unequivocally, that there is bias in the reported data around the Blue Sky Day cut-off point. From this data, it appears that the use of the number of Blue Sky Days metric is not reliable as an indicator of Beijing's air quality improvement. Therefore, I will stop using it as such and will edit a previous post on this blog that references it. I would hope that, in time, Beijing will recognize this clear bias and take steps towards identifying how it is introduced and preventing it in the future. At the same time, detailed investigations into potential biasing of other pollutant data should also be conducted (though it seems less likely that such biasing would have occurred, given the fact that the biasing appears to be related to meeting Blue Sky Day targets, for which PM10 is usually the limiting factor).

Moving of Monitoring Stations

The second issue Mr. Andrews raises is the moving of monitoring stations. While I find his analysis here to be fascinating and correct, I'm not convinced that his results prove that the moving of the monitoring stations was driven by the desire to lower artificially air pollution levels by measuring in less polluted areas. He mentions that the new monitoring regulations put into effect in 2006 included "new specifications...regarding the minimum distance from roadways that air pollution should be monitored." I don't know enough about international monitoring to know if perhaps these new standards were designed simply to bring China's monitoring better in line with international standards? Whatever the case, Mr. Andrews' point that different measuring systems were used is valid:

It has been widely reported that the number of ‘Blue Sky’ days in Beijing increased from 100 in 1998 to 246 in 2007, but these reported trends encompass a period during which air quality was evaluated in three different ways: (1) 1998– 1999, based on the 1996 Chinese national ambient air quality standards (2) 2000–2005, based on the 2000 revisions of the Chinese national ambient air quality standards and using the 1984–2005 monitoring station locations (3) 2006–2007, based on the 2000 revisions of the Chinese national ambient air quality standard and using the 2006–2007 monitoring station locations.

Ideally, officially reported data in the future should note the change in monitoring methodology on graphs showing data from both periods.

Impacts on Pollutant Concentration

As Mr. Andrews points out in the report, the Blue Sky Day metric is a "policy-relevant metric," and, "an effective communication tool...to facilitate greater public understanding." In other words, it is not a scientific metric, insofar as the cut-off point of API = 100 is rather arbitrary. Evaluating the effect of the aforementioned bias and monitoring station location change on reported vs. actual air quality requires analyzing pollutant concentrations.

Using a methodology to eliminate the reporting bias and normalize across similar reporting stations, Mr. Andrews' ran a new concentration analysis for PM10 and generated the following results:

In 2006, an annual average PM10 concentration of 161 μg m−3 was reported, however, if the monitoring station used from 1984 to 2005 continued to be used in 2006, the concentration would be ∼167 μg m−3—an average concentration ∼6 μg m−3 higher than reported. In 2007, an annual average PM10 concentration of 149 μg m−3 was reported, however, if the original monitoring stations continued to be used in 2007, the concentration would be ∼161 μg m−3—an average concentration of ∼12 μg m−3 higher than reported.

Stated differently, he concludes that Beijing's 2006 and 2007 reported values for PM10 were about 3.6% and 7.5% lower, respectively, than they would have been without data biasing or moving of monitoring stations. While this is concerning, the results are not nearly as dramatic as the difference in Blue Sky Days, as shown in Mr. Andrews' report (Figure 3 from the report):

In the above graph, note that the difference in Blue Sky Days (shown as columns) is much greater than the difference in PM10 concentration (shown as red lines). Note also that while the trending on Blue Sky Days changes dramatically based on the new analysis (increasing 2001-2005, decreasing 2005-2007), the trending on PM10 does not show a large change under the new analysis.

Conclusions

As I mentioned earlier, Mr. Andrews' result regarding the biasing of annual numbers of Blue Sky Days is powerful and dramatic. However, I'm not sure the result regarding 2006-2007 concentrations of PM10 is as dramatic, especially given the fact that PM10 has notoriously been one of the most difficult pollutants for Beijing to control. The Beijing EPB's own data show a 2007 PM10 concentration of 149 um/m3, higher than 2003 and 2005. While adjusting the concentration data according to Mr. Andrews' analysis may be important, doing so does not qualitatively change the 2001-2007 PM10 trends in Beijing.

Mr. Andrews concludes his report:

Although nine continuous years of air quality improvement has been reported in Beijing between 1998 and 2007, my analysis finds that these improvements, as indicated by the annual number of ‘Blue Sky’ days, are due to irregularities in the monitoring and reporting of air quality and not to less polluted air. Reported variations in air quality that occur as a result of changes in monitoring station locations or air quality standards, should be considered as inconsistencies in the metrics and not as actual changes in air quality.

While I agree with his analysis showing data biasing in the numbers of annual Blue Sky Days over the past few years, I think it is critical to clarify that such biasing does not mean that there was no improvement whatsoever in Beijing air quality over the last decade.

no pollution spike yet - API of 17!

2008-09-26T14:50:00.005+08:00

Sunset snapshot from a friend's window

The buzz among Beijingers (at least among my friends) today is how clean the air felt last night and today. And it turns out they're right. The API from noon yesterday to noon today was a lung-clearing 17. This is tied for the lowest on record (going back to June, 2000).

There have been only four days in the last eight years with an API of 17. They were 10/12/2003, 10/1/2004, and 8/15/2008, which I blogged about.

--
Update 10/20/08: In reviewing data today on MEP's new air pollution database website, I unexpectedly discovered the unbelievably low API of 12 listed for 9/23/08. That day currently ranks as the lowest API going back to June, 2000.
--

The pollution spike I feared occurring after 9/20 hasn't happened yet anyway...

thoughts on runaway climate change

2008-09-26T09:16:00.008+08:00

This morning on the subway, I was so deep in thought about climate change that I missed my stop. Specifically, I can't stop thinking about a Letterman video I watched a couple of days ago and a graph I saw this morning.

First, the Letterman video. The basic message, presented with classic Letterman deadpanning, is, "We're Doomed."

While I appreciate the attention given to global climate change, and I do enjoy the humor, I generally prefer a more optimistic approach to problem solving...

...But then I saw this graph, from the Global Carbon Project, showing the updated trend of global carbon emissions from fossil fuels:

(As reported on Climate Progress and Climate Feedback.)

--
Update: the data in this graph just made the front page of CNN: Carbon Dioxide Output Jumps to Record Level.
--

The data in this graph is terrifying, and it's not just because the trend is going the wrong way (increasing as opposed to decreasing). It's terrifying because actual emissions are outpacing assumed emissions even under the IPCC's "worst case scenario" (actual growth has been 3.5% per year since 2000 as opposed to projected 2.7%). Even without these "extra" emissions, though, the effects of climate change are already being seen much earlier than anticipated by climate models (example: the faster than expected melting of Arctic sea ice). This is principally because the climate models underestimate the effects of certain feedback mechanisms that accelerate warming. A classic example is the fact that as Arctic sea ice melts, it reveals more dark ocean, which absorbs solar radiation more than reflective white ice; this absorption causes the earth to warm faster, which melts more ice, revealing more dark ocean, further perpetuating the cycle.

So then back to Letterman's "It's too late" argument. Though the optimist in me rejects the conclusion, there are days (like today) in which the cynical side of me looks at the data, recognizes how little progress we have made in the fight against global climate change, considers the challenges ahead towards even just slowing the growth in greenhouse gas emissions (not to mention reducing them!), and thinks, How are ever going to do this?

Lastly, the following animation, "Wake Up, Freak Out - then Get a Grip," does a good job describing the "tipping point" of the earth's climate system, beyond which catastrophic changes are inevitable:

(Note: I think the second half of the video is a little too apocalyptic, which I think undermines his conclusion that it's not too late, but nonetheless the first half is quite good.)

final day of temporary air quality measures

2008-09-20T18:35:00.002+08:00

Prior to the Games, a major question asked on this blog and elsewhere was, "Will Beijing's efforts to control the air quality work?" (Some analysts even boldly predicted that they wouldn't.) And now, here we are, on September 20th, 2008 - the final day of the temporary environmental policies implemented by the Beijing government to control air quality during the Olympic and Paralympic period - with a resounding "yes" answer to that question.

Through the banning of over half the cars on the roads, the temporary closing of factories, the shutting down of construction in the city, and a little luck from the weather (on second thought, not luck), Beijing managed over the past two months to reduce air pollution by around 50% (analysis at the bottom of this post) and yield the cleanest air the city has seen in ten years.

Let's look one last time at the graph of daily Air Pollution Index during the Olympic period:

And some averages:

Average API, Two-month Olympic period, 7/20/08 - 9/20/08: 62
Average API, Olympics, 8/8/08 - 8/24/08: 49
Average API, Paralympics, 9/6/08 - 9/17/08: 59

According to my analysis, these numbers are comparable to the air quality during the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics (in that previous post, I estimated that the air quality during the Los Angeles Olympics would have rated as a Chinese API of 59).

To get a better sense of just how much better Beijing's air actually was from 7/20 - 9/20 of this year, it makes sense to convert the numbers from API back into particulate matter concentration (explanation at bottom of this post), and compare those numbers against some past data.

The following table shows average API and PM10 concentrations for some selected time periods over the past three years (2006 and 2007 PM10 data from Beijing EPB environmental annual reports):

--
Update 10/20/08: Found a minor mistake in the first version of the PM10 data I showed below; fixed now.
---

From this data, we can calculate that, according to PM10 concentrations, Beijing's air during the two-month Olympic period was:

-- 44% less polluted than the first half of 2008;
-- 40% less polluted than the same period in 2007;
-- 47% less polluted than all of 2007;
-- 51% less polluted than all of 2006.

These numbers are comparable to the Beijing EPB's statement that concentrations of major pollutants were cut by 45% during the month of August.

Lastly, for a different perspective on the impact of the temporary air quality control policies, I wanted to show API data over a much longer time period. The following graph shows daily API readings from the beginning of 2006 to today:

I find this graph fascinating (granted, I'm an engineer). Two key observations jump out at me: first, the average API during the Olympic period is clearly lower than any previous periods of comparable length. Second, perhaps more interestingly, the extreme variability has been reduced tremendously; specifically, Beijing succeeded in prevented any severe spikes in air pollution that were so common in previous periods.

Which, of course, leaves me wondering: how long before we see another one of those dreaded spikes?

paralympics air quality update - 9/6 API missing

2008-09-09T18:07:00.005+08:00

The last time I presented daily API data was on August 24th, the final day of the Olympics. With the Paralympics now underway, I figure it's time to take another detailed look at the air quality status.

Since 7/20, the day the odd/even car ban and other temporary air quality control policies went into effect, the graph of daily API values is as follows:

A couple of things worth noting:

1) Though the API was below the target cut-off of 100 for the entire Olympic period, between the Olympics and Paralympics we saw one day, 8/29, in which the API shot up to 110.

2) The API data for 9/6 is conspicuously missing. (As always, my source for API data is the query at the bottom of MEP's air quality page.) Does anyone out there have this data point, perhaps from the Beijing EPB? I seem to remember that day - the day of the Paralympic opening ceremony - being particularly hazy, but I didn't check the data then. Missing data is always concerning, of course, but especially here.

Still, though, the results for overall air quality since 7/20 are remarkable. The average API from 7/20-9/9 of this year is 63; during the same period last year the average was 89.

Lastly, the weather has seemed quite strange recently here in Beijing; over the last few days I've seen two of the heaviest thunderstorms I can remember in China. Anyone agree?

paralympics underway!

2008-09-08T09:23:00.005+08:00

Last Saturday night, the Paralympics began here in Beijing with a gorgeous and moving opening ceremony. Apparently you can watch it online here, though I can't seem to get the site to work from within China.

One of the most powerful moments of the ceremony was the lighting of the torch (which, by the way, it's nice to see blazing again!). Three-time high jump gold medalist Hou Bin hoisted himself, his wheelchair, and the torch by pulley from the floor of the stadium all the way up to the base of the cauldron.

It took him over three minutes to reach the top, and you could clearly see the strain on his face as he struggled to continue, even pausing occasionally to rest. It was an incredibly powerful symbol both of the struggle faced by so many people with disabilities as well as the ability to succeed and overcome those struggles through perseverance.

Here's the video on YouTube:

Photo credits: 1) Reuters/David Gray via NYT; 2) Xinhua.

disclaimers

2008-09-05T09:24:00.004+08:00

A couple of quick disclaimers regarding information on this blog:

1) The opinions I share on this blog are mine alone, and do not represent those of my past or current employer (who I have not named here).

2) The analysis I present on this blog has not been peer-reviewed (unless otherwise noted), and should generally be considered back-of-the-envelope data explorations intended to promote discussion, not rigorous scientific analysis. I will, however, cite original data sources and explain assumptions and reasoning as much as possible, in case others want to verify my analysis and/or take it further.

Please feel free to link to or cite information on this blog, but if you do I ask that you stay mindful of the above two points.

If you have any questions, please contact me at livefrombeijing at gmail dot com.

what will happen on september 21st?

2008-09-04T15:35:00.001+08:00

In my last post, I described how international media and conversation about Beijing's air largely went silent starting around the second week of the Olympics. However, local conversation here in Beijing has been anything but quiet. If anything, just as foreigners began to lose interest in the seeming non-story of Beijing's lack of air pollution, the local buzz about the improved air quality was just starting to gain momentum.

First, a little background: in August, 2008, Beijing had the cleanest air in 10 years, with the "density of major pollutants cut by 45%" during the month. The data is in and the results (and the air) are clear - the temporary measures to reduce air pollution in Beijing worked.

I remember when the temporary measures were announced back in June, I had mixed reactions. While on the one hand I was personally excited for two months of breathing clean air and riding my bike on gridlock-free streets, as an environmental professional I was disappointed that such temporary policies were needed in the first place. Clearly, the preferred solution would have been the implementation of stringent, permanent air pollution control policies that would have ensured sustainable, Olympics-approved air quality without the need for stop-gap measures. As I contemplated the potential results of the temporary policies, I asked many of my friends and colleagues what they thought would happen on September 21st (the first day after the temporary bans end). At that time (late June), virtually everyone's unanimous response was that Beijing would simply revert back to the same old smog that we had all become used to. In other words, most people I asked thought there would be no long term impacts of the temporary policies.

But I think those of us who have lived in non-polluted cities (please allow me to use the phrase "seen the light," meaning lived in a place where you can't look directly at the sun without burning your eyes, as you often can in Beijing) always held out one great hope: that Beijing's residents and politicians would be inspired; that they would experience life with crystal clear blue skies every day and wouldn't want to go back.

And over the past week or two in Beijing, the most amazing thing has happened: it seems that hope is being fulfilled. Media articles, blog posts, and chat forum polls are filled with discussion on how to keep the air quality this good, with much specific debate on whether or not the odd/even car ban should be made permanent. I'm happy - ecstatic - that these discussions are happening, and that the citizens of Beijing are taking direct interest in and action on air quality. I am even more ecstatic that, so far, the government is open to the opinions and suggestions of the people.

Regarding the permanence of the odd/even car ban, I think it is natural and expected that this should be the focus of the discussion, as this is the single temporary policy that has affected individual citizens the most. However, while I hate to inject any negativity into what I consider to be a wonderful development of citizen environmental activism in China, I feel I must point out that a permanent odd/even car ban may not be the best long term strategy to maintain the air quality we saw over the month of August. For one thing, it is unclear right now how much the air quality improvement can be attributed to the vehicle reduction (as opposed to the factory closures and construction halting). For another thing, as was pointed out on Time's China blog, such a policy could end up having the opposite desired effect, depending on the resulting purchase and use of second cars.

To summarize: hurray for the people in Beijing for demanding that this air quality continue, for the Chinese media for publishing their demands, and for the Chinese government for listening. But let's make sure this energy and drive are directed in the right directions. And what are those right directions? Well, Alex Pasternack has a great start up on Treehugger: 10 Ways Beijing (and Other Cities) Can Keep Its Skies Blue and Road Gridlock-Free.

olympics round-up: impressions of air quality

2008-09-04T13:55:00.007+08:00

Photo by Lila Buckley

In the weeks leading up to the Olympics, Beijing's air quality was constantly in the news; questions about whether Beijing would meet its air quality targets, whether events would need to be postponed, and whether the pollution would affect athletes' performances seemed to be the constant refrain of Western conversations about the upcoming Games. In early July, the New York Times cited air quality as one of two primary remaining uncertainties about the preparations.

As the Games approached, these concerns seemed to be entirely validated. Two weeks prior to the Games, Beijing's air pollution exceeded the Olympic standard for four straight days; even the last few days before the opening ceremony were dangerously close to the limit.

Over the first few days of the Games, though, as the API bounced up and down, we began to see mixed reviews about the quality and the impacts. At that time, I predicted a stalemate, imagining that the end result would be the Chinese claiming success with regard to air quality and foreigners grudging that it still wasn't good enough. (Interesting side note here: as I have indicated, the average API during the Olympics was 49; before the Games started, beijingairblog specifically quoted an expert stating that an API of 50 was still "very unhealthy," claiming that only an average API of 25 would be "acceptable for Olympic competition.")

But then, by the second week of the Olympics, a funny - and unexpected - thing happened. The stalemate I predicted never really happened, because Beijing's air quality critics backed down. By August 13th, the New York Times called it "the great air pollution scare," dubbing it "the Y2K computer scare — a nonevent." On the 18th, danwei titled a blog post "Pollution wussies go quiet." Later, DH commented on my blog:

Yo Vance, Gotta tell you that after the start of the games I heard almost NOTHING about air quality from any of the major news sources. Seems like maybe they just decided it wasn't a story anymore. Plus none of the athletes wore those Batman-style gasmasks so there may have been no real "story" to cover...

By the end of the Games, air pollution was a non-issue, eclipsed by so many other stories of the Olympics. Air quality, which seemed so dominant a concern before the Games happened, was barely even mentioned in many of the summary write-ups of the Games that appeared shortly after the closing ceremony. (For example here, here, here, and here.)

However, while Beijing's air quality may no longer be making many headlines abroad, the exact opposite is true here in China. But this is a topic for a separate post...

end of the games

2008-08-24T16:36:00.004+08:00

First of all, apologies for the lack of posting this week; I've been busy watching as many events as I can while simultaneously struggling through a wicked cold. With the end of the Games finally upon us, though, I thought I'd fire off some quick numbers on how Beijing did:

First of all, Beijing met its goal of keeping the API below 100 during the Games. Here is the data for the 17 days 8/8/08-8/24/08:

Second, it seems the temporary policies (+ regular rains throughout the Games) worked; let's take a look at some average numbers for comparison:

Average Beijing API during the Olympics, 8/8/08-8/24/08: 49
Average Beijing API since the car ban went into effect, 7/20/08-8/24/08: 64
2007 Yearly Average Beijing API: 101
Average Beijing API during Olympic period 2007, 8/8/07-8/24/07: 86
Average Beijing API during Olympic period 2006, 8/8/06-8/24/06: 76

The average API in Beijing during the 2008 Olympics was 43% lower than the average API in Beijing during the same period in 2007. I'd say that's a pretty dramatic improvement.

More analysis to come.

beautiful in beijing

2008-08-16T10:00:00.007+08:00

Yesterday was one of the most beautiful days I've ever seen in Beijing. And the data supports it: the API of 17 yesterday is tied for the lowest on record (going back to June, 2000). Here's the data since the car ban started on 7/20:

As of 8/13, the New York Times was already quoting athletes calling Beijing's pollution concerns "massive hype," and proposing, "it may seem that the great air pollution scare is becoming the equivalent of the Y2K computer scare — a nonevent."

While I appreciate the optimism, I'm not quite willing to go that far at this point; I am still tracking the data carefully and will reserve any sweeping "success" judgments until the end of the Games.

Still, though, I suppose if Beijing can survive the opening ceremony with an API of 94 and the two long distance cycling events at 78 and 82, then the odds are pretty good that we aren't going to see any other dramatically different impressions of the air quality than what we have seen already.

the rift on air quality during the Games

2008-08-13T17:32:00.006+08:00

Regarding everyone's favorite Olympic environmental topic, air pollution, it seems like we've reached the stalemate I wondered about at the end of my very first post on this blog. Depending on who you ask, China should either be congratulated for meeting its air quality goals or chastised for allowing athletes to compete in such horrible pollution.

On the one hand, the constant refrain from both the IOC and the Chinese media is that the air poses no risk to the athletes. From Reuters:

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) had warned it might reschedule events if the air quality posed a threat, but on Sunday it said there were no problems.

"The readings that we were looking at indicated that we have no cause for concern at this stage," said IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davis.

On the other hand, we are still seeing many reports with detailed descriptions of how bad it is here. From The Oregonian:

Last weekend, when days were hot, humid and still, the smoggy haze hung thick as a wool blanket. In her blog, [distance runner Kara] Goucher wrote:

"I have to say that the pollution and smog in Beijing is much, much worse than I imagined. It's a bit eerie how the sun never comes out all day. If you are walking around the village and you look ahead, you can't see all of the buildings. The pollution creates a fog that clouds over everything. It is unimaginable. I am shocked by how bad it is."

CNN summarizes, "Despite official assurances that the air is safe for competition, athletes and fans have expressed concern over the thick smog covering the entire city."

However, not everyone is convinced that the air is all that bad. From the New York Times blog:

A handful of track and field athletes worked out on a rainy Sunday morning at the United States Olympic compound at Beijing Normal University, and most said they had not been bothered by the air quality in Beijing. They were adjusting to the humidity, but the pollution, they said, had not been an issue.

This rift - between those who find Beijing's air quality acceptable and those who find it intolerable - that has opened up over the past few weeks is fascinating to me. Perhaps most interesting is that fact that the debate seems to be playing out on so many levels: technical, medical, psychological, political, and more. (I hope to blog in more detail on this topic later.)

In any case, no matter which side you take, at least we finally have some idea of what the air quality is going to be like during the Games. Since 8/8, the API has been up and down. And yet, with the API not "down" enough to make all the foreigners happy and not "up" enough to exceed the Chinese cut-off of 100, the result? Stalemate.

8-8-08

2008-08-08T10:07:00.004+08:00

Today is a day to forget about graphs and data and simply to enjoy the spirit, the hope, the optimism, the unity of the Olympics.

I just changed my cell phone ring tone to the Olympic theme music. Needless to say, I am really excited. It is a great day to be here in Beijing!

One World, One Dream!
同一个世界，同一个梦想！

last day before the Games - API at 95

2008-08-07T15:04:00.006+08:00

Today's API of 95 is not an encouraging last data point before the Games start tomorrow. I was just up at the Olympic Green and the air there is what my friend describes as "mashed potato air." Beijing API data since the car ban went into effect shown here:

No word yet on whether or not MEP will implement emergency pollution reduction measures. On the contrary, in some respects China doesn't seem all that worried, as evidenced by this article from Xinhua: "IOC: Beijing delivers on environmental promises."

los angeles 1984 olympic air quality

2008-08-06T11:39:00.009+08:00

This is the second in a series of posts comparing Beijing's air quality to that of other Olympic host cities. Here, I explore the air quality of Los Angeles during the 1984 Games.

Summary: Lack of available data makes directly comparing the air quality during the Los Angeles Olympics to that of Beijing challenging. The only air quality data I could find for Los Angeles in 1984 are concentrations of ozone and Total Suspended Particles (TSP). Unfortunately, PM10 measurements did not begin in Los Angeles until 1988, and no ozone concentration data is available for Beijing.

Still, some rough comparisons may be made by examining LA's TSP data as well as PM10 data from 1988 on. Here, I conclude the following:

1) Beijing's 2007 annual average PM10 concentration (148 ug/m^3) was approximately twice as high as that in LA in 2007 (76 ug/m^3), and about 1.4 times higher than that in LA in 1988 (104 ug/m^3)
2) Since the car ban went into effect in Beijing on 7/20, the average PM10 concentration has been 111 ug/m^3, 7% higher than LA's 1988 average.
3) Using a rough estimate that PM10 in LA is about 55% of TSP, I estimate the average PM10 concentration in LA during the 1984 Olympics to be around 68 ug/m^3 (corresponding to a Chinese API of 59), more than double the concentration during the Atlanta Games.

Analysis: Again, let's start by examining data sources. The best data source I found was Air Quality Data Statistics from the California Air Resources Board. For an overview, I chose Air Quality Trend Summaries and queried PM10 for the South Coast Air Basin. Unfortunately, the earliest data available in this query is from 1988. Prior to 1988, it seems that the EPA only required the measurement of Total Suspended Particles (TSP), not PM10. The difference between TSP and PM10 is that TSP includes all particles of all sizes, whereas PM10 only includes particles smaller than 10 microns in size. The smaller particles are more damaging to human health because they penetrate deeper into the lungs.

Below is a graph of the available annual PM10 average data for the South Coast Air Basin and Beijing:

It is clear from this graph that Beijing's annual PM10 concentration is still significantly higher than that in Los Angeles, even looking all the way back to 1988.

But, as mentioned in my post on Atlanta, during the Olympics we care less about yearly averages and more about daily averages. And, indeed, the air quality in Beijing recently has been considerably better than the 2007 average. Specifically, the average PM10 concentration in Beijing since 7/20 has been 111 ug/m^3, just 7% higher than LA's 1988 average (104 ug/m^3).

Though PM10 data is not available for LA during the Olympics, it may be worth taking a look at the TSP data to see what we can learn. Summary data for the area is not available prior to 1988, but we can query individual monitoring stations going back to 1983. I chose to query a 10-week period in 1984 starting with July 1. Though there are 12 monitoring sites in Los Angeles, daily data only exists for two stations: Los Angeles - North Main St. and Azusa. This data is shown in the graph below:

During the Olympic period (7/28/84 - 8/12/84), the average TSP concentration at LA - North Main St. was 113 ug/m^3, while the average at Azusa was 136 ug/m^3. I will take an average of these two readings, 124 ug/m^3, as a rough estimate of the TSP concentration in LA during the 1984 Olympics.

Of course, the most obvious question then is: what percentage of the TSP is PM10? I'm not sure the best way to answer this, but I suppose it's reasonable to make a rough approximation by comparing TSP and PM10 data for a time period in which both are available. Towards this goal, I queried TSP and PM10 for the first available year - 1988 - for the Los Angeles - North Main St. station, and compared the TSP to PM10 results for all common data points throughout the year. The result is that on average, the PM10 concentration was 55% of the TSP concentration.

Applying this 55% factor to the Olympic TSP data described above yields an estimated PM10 concentration during the Los Angeles Olympics of around 68 ug/m^3, corresponding to a Chinese API of 59. This result is significantly lower than even the 1988 average, but is consistent with descriptions of considerably improved air quality in LA during the 1984 Games.

Conclusion: Though it is impossible to compare directly the air in Beijing with the air in Los Angeles during the 1984 Olympics, it is clear that, from the perspective of PM10, Beijing's average air is considerably more polluted than that in Los Angeles even in the late 1980's. During the 2008 Olympics, for Beijing's air to be considered equal quality to Los Angeles during the 1984 Olympics, Beijing's API during the Games should average 59 or below.

the mood with just three days left

2008-08-05T15:48:00.000+08:00

After seven years of construction and hype, it's hard to believe that the Games will finally be here in just three days. As we go down the home stretch, it's interesting to compare the mood internationally with that here within China.

Internationally, the overarching tone is one of question-filled tension, as if there are all these coiled springs here in Beijing, and everyone is just waiting to see which one is released first. Many Western media articles, as well as my friends and family, simply seem to be wondering out loud, musing on any of a number of topics:

- Will China's temporary environmental measures work?
- What will China's reaction to protests on its own soil be?
- Will the Games be safe and secure, given Beijing's unprecedented focus and expenditure on security? (Side question: is the extreme security justified by the threat, or simply an excuse for the Chinese government to increase surveillance and controls on its own people?)
- What will foreigner visitors think of the "sanitized" Beijing, one in which the taxi drivers speak English, dog is not served on menus, everyone queues properly, and no one spits?

On the whole, with regard to many of these questions, George Vecsey summarizes, "China sought these Games as a major step in its coming-out party, and now China will be tested in front of the world." So now the big question is, will China pass?

Of course, pervading so much of the asking of these questions internationally is an overall pessimistic tone, and sense that China may not pass the test. Over the weekend, one of CNN's home page leading headlines was, "Pollution, Internet, doping dominate Olympics lead-up." Everyone has the coiled springs under a microscope, watching for signs of movement.

In Western conversations, it seems to me that the myriad questions being asked, the anticipation, the anxiety, the sense that any stability is tenuous and any successes short-lived - all of it boils down to the fact that so many see these Olympics as a chance to have a referendum on China as a whole. I think this quote in a recent New York Times letter by Tom Scocca is a good summary:

...the underlying, animating question (or problem): is China fit to host the Summer Olympics? For some segments of the West, it can be answered by a simple syllogism: the Olympics are good. China is bad. China should not host the Olympics.

Like an expandable roller bag, that conclusion can be unzipped to hold whatever ideology you’d like to carry along in it: anti-Communism, democracy, Tibetan independence, press freedom, environmentalism, workers’ rights, Internet openness, Darfur.

Take your pick of the above issues. Each one is all over the news and conversations in the West, and so often accompanied by the simple concluding question, "How will the Olympics affect _____?"

Whereas the mood internationally is dominated by questions of politics and the environment, here in China, as one would expect, the mood is quite different. In my experience, there has been a slow and gradual shifting in mood over the last six or eight months.

At the beginning of this year, there seemed to be a combination of blind optimism and unspecific hope for the Olympics; when I asked my colleague in January what his biggest concern for the Olympics was, he thought for a long time but couldn't think of a single response. Similarly, in this video shot in February and posted on Time's China blog, many Chinese responded to the question of, "What's your biggest hope for 2008" simply with, "That China host the Olympics well," though with few specifics of what defines "well."

From March to May, though, there was a marked shift in China's mood. A series of negative events in China (Tibetan uprising, torch protests internationally, Sichuan earthquake, and others) left many Chinese feeling like victims, and I think suddenly there was a very real sense that perhaps something could go wrong in August as well. Surging nationalism encouraged China to stay strong in the face of such disasters; in May I was invited by a Chinese friend to join a Facebook group called "2008 China Hold On!" whose description reads, in part:

we have been expecting the great Olympics for years, but now when it is coming to us in 3 months, my country and our government are facing unexpected natural disasters and worldwide politcial challenges...

as a local Beijing person, I worried for such situation, while at the same time, i have condifence in our government. i am sure they can overcome all these difficulties and show the world how great and strong China is.

(I declined to join the group.)

Without the ability to predict or control natural disasters, China's fear of failure became more and more specifically focused on the fear of terrorism or vindictive sabotage. The response: increased security.

The impacts of the added security went much further than just inconvenience (three personal impacts: now having to send all bags through an x-ray before boarding the subway, having to show ID every time I enter my work complex, and being frisked three times recently before being allowed to enter a bar). The increased security was accompanied by an increased paranoia on the part of the Chinese that a terrorist attack might occur. In June, I asked all of my colleagues their biggest hope for the upcoming Olympics. In contrast to the responses from similar questions earlier in the year, this time about half of them said their only hope was for a peaceful, safe, and secure Olympics. (The other half hoped that they wouldn't have to work during the Games.) The fear of a terrorist attack or other deliberate disruption seemed acute and widespread. A few colleagues even mentioned leaving Beijing out of fear that it wouldn't be safe to stay here.

But over the last few weeks, it seems to me, the mood here within China has shifted again, this time away from one of paranoia about security and back to one of optimism, pride, and hope. Aided by the Olympic banners and Chinese flags that have gone up all over the city as well as the ever-optimistic state media, I think the mood here is positive, confident, and celebratory that China overcame so many obstacles and is ready, finally, to welcome the world.

I'll conclude with a telling example. Last weekend, at the exact same time that CNN featured the home page headline claiming pollution, censorship, and doping were dominating the Olympics lead-up, China Daily's home page led with the hard-hitting, "Rogge: Beijing Olympic Village is best ever." In light of this, I think a more accurate headline for CNN probably would have been, "Pollution, Internet, doping dominate Western media coverage about Olympics lead-up; China confident and patting themselves on the back."

Photo credits - 1: China Daily; 2: Boston.com, via The Beijinger.

atlanta 1996 olympic air quality

2008-08-04T18:01:00.010+08:00

This is the first of what I hope will be several posts over the course of this week exploring historical air quality data from other Olympic cities. I'm starting with Atlanta because that's where I grew up. :)

Summary: Since the car ban went into effect in Beijing on 7/20, the average concentration of PM10 in Beijing's air has been 3.4 times higher than that in Atlanta during the 1996 Olympic Games. During the 1996 Olympics, the overall average concentration of PM10 in Atlanta was 31 ug/m^3. The highest daily average concentration was 51 ug/m^3. These values correspond to a Chinese API of 31 and 51, respectively. Since the car ban went into effect in Beijing on 7/20, Beijing's overall average concentration of PM10 has been 104 ug/m^3, with a daily average high of 186 ug/m^3. These values correspond to a Chinese API of 75 and 118, respectively.

Analysis: To start with, let's examine data sources. The most complete data source I found for historical air quality data in Atlanta was Georgia's Ambient Monitoring Program Database Query for Pollutant Data.

Historical data available for the Atlanta metro area during the Olympic period (7/19/96-8/4/96) includes ozone, SO2, CO, and PM10. (Info on available data is here; for this analysis I looked at the Georgia Tech monitoring station).

Ideally, we would compare all four pollutants to Beijing's current levels. However, since we have no ozone data for Beijing, and PM10 is almost always the highest reported pollutant in Beijing, I focused my analysis for now only on PM10. Depending on time and interest, I may ultimately try to run numbers for CO and SO2, but we'll see.

I queried the Georgia database for PM10 data for various time frames and averaged the results to generate the following table:

(Maxes and mins are from daily averages, not hourly data points.)
(For a description of how to convert PM concentration to Chinese API, see the bottom of this post.)

From this table we can observe the following:

1) During the 1996 Olympics, the overall average concentration of PM10 in Atlanta was 31 ug/m^3. The highest daily concentration was 51 ug/m^3. These values correspond to a Chinese API of 31 and 51, respectively.
2) Atlanta's PM10 concentrations one month before the Olympics were significantly higher than they were during the Games.
3) Atlanta's PM10 concentrations exactly one year after the Olympics were not significantly different than they were during the Games.

The following graph shows the daily average PM10 concentrations for Atlanta during the 17 days of the Olympics:

Now let's compare to Beijing.

First of all, Beijing's 2007 average PM10 concentration was 148 ug/m^3, nearly 5 times Atlanta's average during the 1996 Olympics. (Source: Beijing 2007 Environmental Yearbook, in Chinese).

Since the car ban went into effect on 7/20, I calculate an average PM10 concentration for Beijing of 104 ug/m^3. This is significantly lower than the 2007 average, and is within Beijing's own air quality goal of a PM10 concentration below 150 ug/m^3 (corresponding to an API of 100), but is still about 3.4 times higher than the average concentration in Atlanta during the 1996 Games.

But during the Olympics, we care less about averages, and more about the precise daily results during a specific 17-day period. Since 7/20, Beijing has had a number of days which exceed China's air quality standard, the highest being 7/26, with an average daily PM10 concentration of 186 ug/m^3 (corresponding to an API of 118).

(Source for all Beijing API data is the query function at the bottom of MEP's API page (in Chinese).)

Conclusion: It seems clear that, at least from the perspective of PM10 concentration, Beijing's average air at present is still significantly more polluted than the air was in Atlanta during the 1996 Olympic Games. If Beijing hopes to equal Atlanta's air quality with respect to PM10, Beijing's API during the Games should average 31 or below.

how quickly things can change - API back up to 83

2008-08-04T16:30:00.006+08:00

After a beautiful blue sky weekend, the white haze has returned again to Beijing. I spent the entire day outside in the dense, stuffy, heavy air, wondering to myself how anyone could imagine competing in such conditions.

MEP is reporting an API of 83 (though it is days like today that make me long for an independent confirmation of the official data). Here's the updated data since the car ban went into effect on 7/20:

The upturn takes us dangerously close to the limit of 100, and would, it seems to me, make MEP strongly consider moving forward with Plan B. We'll see what happens.

I had wondered if, after the rains of 7/28-7/30 cleared out any residual pollution, we had reached some sort of stable state where the 7/20 bans were finally doing the trick. Apparently I was wrong.

what is the API and how is it calculated?

2008-08-02T13:00:00.006+08:00

This post is intended to be a brief explanation of the Chinese air pollution index, API. This post will not include comparisons to other international systems; I will write about that sometime in the next couple of days.

The API is a single number indicating the air quality on a given day. The API goes from 0 to 500. The higher the number, the worse the air quality is on that day. China assigns an overall air quality to different ranges of APIs, as shown in this image:

(Note: the English translations here may be under revision.)

A "Blue Sky Day" is defined as a day for which the API is 100 or below; in other words, a day in which the air quality is either "excellent" or "good" according to Chinese designations.

The API is determined from only three pollutants: SO2, NO2, and PM10. The concentration of each pollutant is measured at various stations throughout the city over a 24-hour period (noon to noon). The average daily concentration of each pollutant is then converted to a normalized index using the following table:

Linear interpolation is performed between each set of points to determine an API for each pollutant from that pollutant's concentration.

Once normalized, there are technically three APIs, one for each pollutant. (Note: Individual pollutant APIs for each measuring station are reported daily by the Beijing EPB on the Olympic air quality website.) Beijing's single API reported daily by MEP is the simply the highest of the three averages. In Beijing, the highest of the three is almost always PM10.

Source: http://www.mep.gov.cn/quality/background.php

To convert from API to PM10 concentration (assuming PM10 is the highest on that day), use the following formulas:

For API 0-51: PM10 concentration = API/1000
For API 51-200: PM10 concentration = (API - 25)/500
For API 201-300: PM10 concentration = (API + 300)/1429
For API 301-400: PM10 concentration = (API + 225)/1250
For API 401-500: PM10 concentration = (API + 100)/1000

Again, for these formulas to be applicable the reported API must be the API for PM10.