Emergency in China as temperatures hit lowest levels ever

Of course I realize that few people here have ever been to China so they have zero experience of the remarkable progress that has been made in air quality. I’d say the worst excess of lying about Chinese air is the BBC which uses a technique similar to the “steam from a power plant with the setting sun behind it” level of perfidy. What they do is wait for mid-October what the crop stubble is (illegally) burned in Hebei then use a telephoto lens looking down a Beijing street and then tell horror stories about burning coal.

The sunless skies you may have seen in photos is caused by fly ash for the most part. That was years ago. The reason so many coal power plants are being built is to replace the oldest ones that are inefficient and don’t have modern flue gas treatment.

While there, I went to Hohhot on a train gliding along at 350 kph, smoother than a plane. I went to a dairy farm with 10,000 cows that makes methane from manure. That feeds a 2000 HP V-16 Deutz engine to generate electricity. When they set their mind to something they get on with it and that happened years ago with air quality.

The countries at present with terrible air problems are Bulgaria, Poland, especially in the south, and other Eastern European states. They don’t have the gumption and dedication to replace their antiquated domestic and industrial heating hardware.

I don’t care about downvotes. “Refute that which is false and vain.”

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I have no clear idea about how much methane goes into the local gas network and how much to power. It was not running when I was there.

Biogas is a big deal in China and there are many advanced systems for producing it. Other countries on the cutting edge are Poland and Switzerland. They made conference presentations. CAU in Beijing has at least 50 masters students studying biogas in the college of engineering. These days they do quite complicated things to maximize hydrogen or methane at different stages and temperatures.

BTW there is one dairy farm in China with 100,000 cows producing 4000 tons of manure a day. That is digested to methane and sent into the local grid. Of course a lot of fertilizer is produced as well. Waste not, want not.