Moreover, I always wonder how Americans accuse China of subsidizing its industries, while I never hear about any serious investment done by any big US company that is not conditioned by huge tax reductions.
All the kinds of fiscal facilities that the big US companies receive from the state or federal governments would be strictly forbidden in most places of Europe, as being a form of state help that distorts competition.
Where are you getting that idea?
Also consider: if California got rid of prop 65 warnings would that be bad? How would that fare on your scorecard?
Nonetheless, it is very likely that in many places they are not enforced, except perhaps when they might be used to punish someone who fell in disgrace for other reasons.
Meanwhile PRC annual renewable production wipes about 100m barrel of oil energy equivalent per day over their life time, i.e. comparable to global oil consumption - they are functionally preventing oil use from doubling. Every year, PRC solar is averting equivalent of 100m barrels of future oil consumption. Literally the greatest emission aversion machine in human history - PRC functionally preventing so much emissions its carbon foot print is negative if you use sensible attributions.
> Why not just go all in on that and zero out any country that doesnt extract carbon sources!
We should in fact, totally do that, aka on going GHG Protocol Scope3 Cat11 battleground. Precisely to address statistically context illiterate claims like muh Murican emissions went down and muh trade corrected co2 went down because legacy accounting standards specifically masks / offloads emissions extracted from US ground onto their customers. Shifting emissions to extractor responsiblity (scope 3), is in fact heavily politicized / lobbied against by US fossil industry to make US #s look better. But that's all it is, fake numbers for useful idiots to aktually about.
1) China's government does not care, in the slightest, about the environment. Their big worry is energy independence, well lack of energy independence, which due to climate change has some overlap, but enough pictures have leaked about Chinese mines to establish that basic measures to protect the environment are not being taken.
2) China lies. In the sense that any number coming out of PRC is government-approved at the very least. Government-made-up more likely. They lie and lie and lie and lie. E.g. the 2007 housing crash is still happening in China, badly enough to get people constantly complaining about it because it's still stealing their savings. But on the official figures? Everything's fine! There was the incident just last year with Indian workers taking pictures of Beijing's (best city) homeless. An endless street with homeless encampments on both sides, as far as the camera could see (at least 300m). Homelessness, just like gays, don't exist in China. I don't understand why people laugh out loud when an Iranian politician says there are no gays in Iran, but nobody cares if ... And of course it's a lie. According to CCP there is no porn in China. Okay, now go to Youtube red and search ...
This combines to: the odds are overwhelmingly in favor of China's economic activity being horrible beyond belief for the environment, and you're just believing propaganda.
Overwhelmingly.
Google shows said person already left Beijing embassy in 2007, and according to state dept [0] the sensor is a team effort led by Erica Keen Thomas.
> PRC Ministry of Environment had accurate sensors before US embassy stunt, they just used 24 hour average instead of live data.
Could you provide a source for China had been publishing pm2.5/pm10/o3/voc/etc data before 2008? Prior to 2016 the obsolete national air quality standard, GB 3095—1996, does not even include pm2.5, how can they report a nonexistent metric?
At the time the gov only publishes verdicts like good/mid/bad with no raw data. It is the US embassy effort that educated the population about objective standards mentioned above and it often contradicted the official verdict. The gov repeatedly asked the embassy to stop, and forced Chinese weather apps to remove the builtin embassy reading for ppl find it more trustworthy.
> They also built out national sensor network early 2010s
Yep thanks to the new standard GB 3095—2012 in effect only from 2016. 24hr avg probably would be the least nefarious trick the gov employed to fudge the numbers. They actually did,
- build sensors in scenic areas instead of city proper, the equivalent of instead of Manhattan, NYC reads its AQI from some national park only technically within border.
- put sensors in a box so gov can install filter on bad days, or they are conveniently broken or put offline when needed.
- spray water around the sensor, hence even nowadays you can see water sprinkler trucks roaming Chinese cities, despite its utter uselessness in reducing pm2.5 on city scale.
- Force B2C sites like Taobao to delist any air quality sensors.
- Since objective readings are hard to fudge, the gov chooses to play with the subjective index instead, so the standard of the aggregate index, Air Quality Index, is laxly defined and even more laxly enforced. They forced weather apps to adopt it so at first glance everything looks good just like the old days. Here is yet another hilarious fact, a popular mod that ppl install along with VPN on their iPhones is to mitm the weather app so that the AQI reading follows US standard instead of Chinese, also like the good ol' days.
[0]: https://diplomacy.state.gov/online-exhibits/diplomacy-is-our...
I didn't say official presented PM2.5 prior. I said they had accurate sensors... which they've had for 1996 standard. There's no qualitive difference between old standard telling people living under yellow skies the air quality is bad via good/mid/bad (and it was basically mostly bad) vs US presenting it via AQI#? Hence the stunt, a successful stunt, nvm patchy sensors over a few rooftops is manifestly not accurate way to extrapolate broader AQI. Regardless point is not how successful stunt was, but 2007 and before, PRC had accurate air sensors.
> FLG conspiracy rant diversion ... fudge... subjective index... aggregate index
I've seen all these exaggerated bullet points from FLG rag before, yeah a few local govs stuck cotton in filters (and got punished), recall of defective sensors when there's already 10s of millions of residential air purifies with AQI meters around. There's 100-1000s of sensors in broad urban/regional coverage for a reason. Instead US embassy/consulate readings that only provided patchy coverage, central gov gets to process 100s of data points (which btw mitigates local gov tomfoolery)... aka a statistically better method. Of course some iphone owning PRC baizuo shitlibs who always thinks US standards better with eat muh embassy AQI slop, but that has no baring on claim that US embassy AQI being more accurate because it technically couldn't due to lack of coverage. Even if PRC fudged their numbers - US embassy setup itself inherently cannot provide more accuracy outside a few kms, ever, hence stunt. Also c'mon popular weatherkit modding is so vanishingly niche on PRC scale it statistically doesn't exist.
Which is downstream reflection of your reading comprehension ability, and susceptibility to useful idiot LIOtard free press narratives.
1.
Nowhere did I claim PRC cares about environment. Well except they do, like when they shut down / relocate factories because people complaining. But that's response to populous sentiment.
What I assert, correctly, is that the downstream outcome of both energy / industrial policy on emissions. That US becoming fossil exporter has, in reality increased it's net emissions. That PRC becoming renewable juggernaut has in reality generated massive carbon sink and averted massive future emissions.
2.
And what gov approved numbers did I use. Like number of renewable installation is trivially checked, cross border renewable trade as well. This all outdoor infra one can monitor on geospatial. The issue isn't countries propagandaize, it's LIOtards are so brainwashed and innumerate that they think somehow they less retarded useful idiots because they have access to muh free press even though their worldview shaped by captured fabricated pres.
Like your entire point 2) is symptomatic of this retardation. Official econ news talk about housing drag from 3RL all the time. There's barely any, not no homeless in most PRC cities, and basically no chronic, i.e. homeless gets shoved somewhere. Gays are everywhere, just not promoted. Porn is banned but trivially accessible via vpn, or back in the good old days go through hutongs to find bootleg. Like basically all your points can simply be summarized by you acknowledging "I don't understand", which in some self awareness you have have acknowledged twice.
3.
lol no, PRC official propaganda trash, like their old uncles aren't brazen enough to outright claim downstream effect of PRC renewable push overwhelmingly makes PRC responsible for creating the largest manufactured carbon sink in anthropocentric history. That's what makes it most hilarious, PRC optimizing selfishly for domestic energy security made it global renewable savior as happenstance. They're doing more for the environment than the west granola eaters, and they don't, actually fucking care, it's just on net balance they are now the greatest emission aversion force on earth. PRC is the ideal emission aversion engine, you may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like.