500,000 - 750,000 dying every year...!

[MOBIUS]

Originally posted by Patroklos
MOBIUS, there is a 33% difference between your high and low end figure, that hardly smacks of accuracy.

I want to believe you, and I do actually, but that number is still ridiculous. If you don't know the number (not you, the source), don't throw some baseless guess out there. Or if they have evidence of at leas 500,000 thats what they should have said.

Maybe they are fairly sure of the lower figure, and compelling evidence that it is far higher - hence the other figure...

Many estimates are done exactly like this, because short of counting every single victim - they are only estimates. Which is common sense, really.

[Patroklos]

Many estimates are done exactly like this

I know, it is part of the age of exaggeration, and it is stupid.

I am sure the 500,000 is fine, but if there is only evidence it might be more then say 500,000+.

7,500,000 is included to make an OMFG headline.

That said, I don't want the thread jack over a technicality, I will go with "a **** ton of people" and consider the rest of the article just a relevant.

[Tingkai]

I wouldn't be surprised that the numbers are true. Air pollution is a major problem in China. It was a problem 25 years ago before China became an economic powerhouse, it is a problem now.

But this doesn't mean China is the worst polluter. The high death rate reflects the large population.

In Canada, one study estimated that 16,000 Canadians die a year from air pollution out of a population of 30 million. Apply that figure to the Chinese population and the result would be 640,000 deaths.

Another study estimated about 6,000 pollution-caused deaths in Canada. Translated to China, that would be the equivalent of 240,000.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Ming


Discuss the topic and not the posters... This little cat fight is getting old.

Awwww, and I didn't even get a chance to play.

Of course, having the luxury of that little "this person is on your ignore list" line gives me so much less to play with, lol.

[Traianvs]

It's all the fault of that cursed capitalism!!=!!!!8

[Dis]

if we nuke china and send them back to the dark ages, we could save lives lost by pollution

[DaShi]

Originally posted by Tingkai
I wouldn't be surprised that the numbers are true. Air pollution is a major problem in China. It was a problem 25 years ago before China became an economic powerhouse, it is a problem now.

But this doesn't mean China is the worst polluter. The high death rate reflects the large population.

In Canada, one study estimated that 16,000 Canadians die a year from air pollution out of a population of 30 million. Apply that figure to the Chinese population and the result would be 640,000 deaths.

Another study estimated about 6,000 pollution-caused deaths in Canada. Translated to China, that would be the equivalent of 240,000.

Sources?

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Arrian
As I noted in my response to your PM, that actually was NOT directed at MOBIUS. It was a general comment, regarding the tone of (Western, for the most part, I'd imagine) environmental critiques of China.

Mobius is a Westerner, as are several other posters here. You insulted them all

[DaShi]

That's just Mobius' style. Yet, I'm the one who hates China?

[LordShiva]

Huh?

[Blake]

Numbers are tough.

500,000 per year would seem to suggest that approximately, in the long run, 3% of the population dies a death attributable to pollution. Right now I'll say you could get any number you damn well please for "dies prematurely due to pollution", how many years of life lost to qualify as prematurely? What about starvation due to lost crop potential? What about eating tainted food? What about people who were destined to die of pollution but something else got them first? How about deaths by natural disasters which can be attributed to climate change? The range for "reasonable" parameters is very wide. Of course I presume that the study is using some kind of standardized measure of deaths by pollution which is comparable with other countries.

In any case 3% is not particularly shocking. Tell me I have a 3% chance of dying a premature death due to pollution, even as someone who lives in Clean Green New Zealand, and I'd believe it, or possibly think the number incredulously low unless talking about dying very prematurely.

But moving on from my annoyance about statistics to annoyance about climate change.

I figure it's probably going to get SO bad that china will be just forced to act. It's one thing to be concerned about ramifications decades in the future, it's another when lots of people are dying and starving right NOW.

China implemented the one child policy, they're a police state. They can take draconian measures when they see the need.

1) Getting in a polluting contest with China will NOT help.
2) China should not be spared indignation, particularly from the neighbors that China is actively shatting on.
3) Adding taxes to the **** they export would certainly be a good start in encouraging responsibility.

[DaShi]

Just commenting on how some are treated differently. Here Mobius is directly attacking China's pollution problem with exaggeration. Yet, I simply say that China has a pollution problem and am accused of being the most anti-Chinese person in the world.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by DaShi
Yet, I ...am accused of being the most anti-Chinese person in the world.

Where?

[DaShi]

See Mobius's "China Crisis" thread a few down. On the last page, you get to see a traditional Tingkai explosion. It's celebrated each year in China as the end of the farming season.

[Lancer]

The west is in no position to compain about poluting. Are we pouring money into solar? Legislating mpg? Forcing the car companies to make electric cars? Taxing cars that drive down the road in order to get people to use trains? No. We can however point fingers. I say that unless we're going to walk the walk we ought to just leave China be.