China Chokes On Smog So Bad That Planes Can't Land (usatoday.com) 166
Major cities across northern China choked Monday under a blanket of smog so thick that industries were ordered shut down and air and ground traffic was disrupted. From a report: At least 23 cities issued red alerts for a swath of pollution that has hovered over much of the nation since Friday, China's Xinhua news agency reported. Alerts are expected to remain in effect through Wednesday. Hospitals set emergency procedures in motion to deal with an influx of breathing-related illnesses. Large hospitals in the port city of Tianjin, less than 100 miles southeast of Beijing, saw a surge in asthma and other respiratory issues, China's People's Daily reported. The pollution forced the city to close the highways and caused delays and cancellations for dozens of flights, Xinhua said.
This is what you get with low cost manufacturing! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is what you get with low cost manufacturing!
Trump is right china is gaming the system.
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Trump is hobbling the EPA so badly that by the time he's done our smog will be so bad that we can't land airplanes either.
This is what you get with Trump / Putin's anti-environment policies.
Choke on it, fascists.
Re:This is what you get with low cost manufacturin (Score:5, Funny)
Trump is hobbling the EPA so badly that by the time he's done our smog will be so bad that we can't land airplanes either.
We'll have the best smog. The yugest smog. We're going to bring 1,000,000 smog manufacturing jobs back to this country.. Our smog will be so great that even the Chinese will be envious.
And not only that I'll build a wall to stop our smog going to Mexico! If Mexican's want our smog they'll have to pay for it!
Re:This is what you get with low cost manufacturin (Score:4, Funny)
Re:This is what you get with low cost manufacturin (Score:5, Funny)
This is such a bigly idea, it's YUUUGE!!!!
Re:This is what you get with low cost manufacturin (Score:4, Funny)
And not only that I'll build a wall to stop our smog going to Mexico!
That is the first reasonable way I've heard to get Mexico to pay for the wall. You, sir, have my respect.
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Choke on it, fascists.
Don't worry, they will. But, then, so will everyone else.
Re: This is what you get with low cost manufacturi (Score:3)
... while the fascists blame them for the smog.
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Trump hasn't hobbled the EPA. He's president elect, not president. Nothing he has said or done so far changes the law or the actions of the EPA.
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Clinton wouldn't have done any better (Score:2)
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Trump is hobbling the EPA so badly that by the time he's done our smog will be so bad that we can't land airplanes either.
Not true - the smog will be so dense, you can land on top of it.
Re:This is what you get with low cost manufacturin (Score:5, Insightful)
Flint proves the need for a strong, empowered EPA.
But of course when a republican governor instructs a republican he appointed to poison Flint's water supply he's going to blame the EPA..
The EPA is of course basically the only organization which can compel republicans to stop poisoning their citizens, so they are de-legitimized and have the hands tied at every step of the way.
As long as the people who care about clean water don't bother voting, republicans will continue to poison our water supply.
Re:This is what you get with low cost manufacturin (Score:4, Insightful)
The Republican governor appointed a Democrat 'emergency manager'. They knew Flint was basically unfixable and that they would shortly be putting the blame on the last person in charge, hence the booby prize was given to a D (but he was forced to live in a budget).
IIRC that last lead water pipe was put in the Flint ground in the 1930s. What year did they go bankrupt again? What party ran the city for the last 70+ years?
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IIRC that last lead water pipe was put in the Flint ground in the 1930s. What year did they go bankrupt again? What party ran the city for the last 70+ years?
If you're thinking that political and economic decisions made in the 1960s and 1970s somehow managed to cause adverse chemical reactions in the water pipes, you're confused.
Bankruptcy wasn't the issue that caused the problem with the water mixing badly with the pipes, and the other pollution in Flint's water supply came from many private sources. It's a natural confluence of events, and the government there is the victim of it, the same as any declining industrial town in the Midwestern Rust Belt.
That said
Re:This is what you get with low cost manufacturin (Score:5, Informative)
Flint (D) got its water from Detroit (D). They were building a pipeline to the lake. When the pipeline was 1 year from being complete Detroit (D) told them 'sign this 20 year contract for water or fuckoff, tomorrow.' They had little choice but get their water elsewhere. The city emergency manager (D, but appointed by R) got the water from a local river, intending to use it for a year. At the same time, a water company employee (D) took it on himself to stop using a chemical to seal lead pipes and prevent them from leaching.
Somehow this is someone else's fault. Cities run their own water companies, it was never Michigan's problem.
Birmingham is a shithole, so is Vacaville. All bankrupt due to their own incompetence.
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nah, he's fine. you - please stop posting here. you seem to think this is an academic journal, some sort of publication, or a professional email. those are rules you made up for yourself that you want others to follow. Please start your own site and do whatever you want there. This site is a place where we're not idiots, so we don't care about a way something is written as long as we understand it. you are spamming this site with unwanted comments. go away - no one wants to read your offtopic unfunny
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There are 4 errors in your post. Please go to school and learn English before you post again.
You're an embarrassment, even by slashdot standards. Christ, this place is worse than Birmingham.
Re: This is what you get with low cost manufacturi (Score:2)
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Right now the narrative is 'evil republicans' while the problem is 100% democrat made. Somebody obviously cares.
Fixing Flint's water system is Flint's problem. Perhaps they should raise taxes because nobody else is going to pay for it.
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No, I'm a dick. You are a pussy, but if you continue to be so full of shit, you will turn into an asshole.
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Lead pipes are safe if the water is hard and alkaline; they effectively become stone pipes held in place by a lead sheath.
Then some silly sod who doesn't know they're there puts soft acidic water in them...
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Rather, ask Silverton, CO and the Navajo Nation.
Re:This is what you get with low cost manufacturin (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that Flint is seen as a major disaster, worthy of much outrage, as opposed to the norm, shows just how good a job the EPA is doing.
In the US we take it for granted that we can go anywhere in the country and the drinking water will be safe and clean. It may taste like ass at times, but we don't have to boil it or worry about getting some kind of stomach virus. We don't have to tell people, "Don't drink the water" like if you go to Mexico or Latin America. We don't have to worry about heavy metals or radioactive materials in our drinking water.
In the US we take it for granted that we can walk outside without the need for surgical face masks or even full on gas-masks because there's a choking cloud of smog in the air. Before Nixon created the EPA, we had cities that looked a lot like China.
In the US we take it for granted that the sky looks BLUE and not ORANGE because only the longer red wavelengths of light can cut through the smog. Read some of the stories about how before the Beijing Olympics, when the government seeded the clouds to temporarily flush all the smog, people would wander outside and marvel at the blue sky.
All of these things are because of the EPA, and they don't even scratch the surface of what that agency does. So, once again, because cases like Flint are so far outside of the norm that they shock and anger us, just goes to show how good a job the EPA is actually doing.
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In the US we take it for granted that we can walk outside without the need for surgical face masks or even full on gas-masks because there's a choking cloud of smog in the air. Before Nixon created the EPA, we had cities that looked a lot like China.
Not in Salt Lake City, UT we don't. I was not impressed by those pictures of China, compared to 2-6 weeks every winter here.
http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/3587127-155/bagley-cartoon-making-bad-air-perfectly
Granted we do have the EPA (for now), which after years of telling UT to get its shit together, has finally upped the ante -- the local authorities have only 2 more years to come up with a plan to reduce air pollution.
I wonder if the EPA will still be around in 2 years. . .
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All of these things are because of the EPA, and they don't even scratch the surface of what that agency does.
To be fair, some of those things are because of the CARB, especially in California — the state which formerly had the worst smog problem; the state with the most vehicles, and the most vehicle-miles traveled; the state that gets the most pollution coming overseas from China.
People love to hate the CARB, and I have my own issues with them, but they really are instrumental in clean air in America — not just in California, but in other states which attempt to follow our example. Indeed, there are t
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"Nixon created the EPA"
Ironic, isn't it?
In todays GOP he be a RINO with ethical standards too high to ever amount to anything.
Re:This is what you get with low cost manufacturin (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not just their manufacturing. Their transport contributes massively as well.
That said, have you been there?
A billion people are moving from essentially subsistence living to a modern urban lifestyle in the course of 30 years. To achieve this there is mass construction going on everywhere. Construction of everything from roads to power stations to factories. But you are talking a society where lots and lots and lots of people have basically no disposable income, which means the cheapest possible vehicles are the only option. When you go to the absolute bottom of the transport section your efficiency is poor and your pollution is high.
The west already went through this. However they went through this when their population was a fraction of todays levels. It meant that the gross amount of pollution emitted was lower but the per capita level was much higher.
China is trying to control their pollution output, and one of the good things is that technology exists today to reduce it. However we aren't going to see a drop soon unfortunately.
Re:This is what you get with low cost manufacturin (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not just their manufacturing. Their transport contributes massively as well.
While manufacturing and transport do contribute to air pollution in China, the biggest contributor by far is the use of coal for heating during winter. This is very obvious in northern China, where regulations specify the dates on which heating for buildings start and end. There'll be blue skies and clean air right up to the date when winter heating starts and then heavy smog and air pollution immediately after. This is also why the smog problem is a lot less severe in southern China, even though most of China's manufacturing and economic development over the past two decades were concentrated in the southern regions around Shanghai and Shenzhen.
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Yeah that heating thing is weird. I was there in easter and it was hot but all the hotels were being heated. It was down right unpleasant.
I think coal probably produces the most raw polution, but I would be surprised if it wasn't their cars that cause the most in-city smog. When you have that many cars and trucks moving slowly through your cities it would have to have an effect.
When I was there I had a day that was smog so bad your visibility was down to 200m and then the next day clear skies to the hori
I think Grandparent is underestimating the effect (Score:2)
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Chemical (primarily manufacturing)
https://earth.nullschool.net/#... [nullschool.net]
Particulate (coal)
https://earth.nullschool.net/#... [nullschool.net]
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Re:This is what you get with low cost manufacturin (Score:5, Insightful)
You are correct on many points but I think you missed another very important point. China is doing now what Europe and America did in the late 1700s and early 1800s. They are going through an industrial revolution. When this happened in the UK they had air quality issues too, possibly much worse than this even.
This is a classic example of those not learning from history are doomed to repeat it. China is a society built by the vision of a small group of people which has been imposed on the rest of the population by force and fear. It's also quite possible these elite few do know their history, know that their policy puts the public under such misery and threatens their health but they don't care. They would much rather take a path that creates greater wealth and power for themselves even if that means the rest suffer.
China though could be a lesson for the rest of the world. I keep hearing on how we need more government to control global warming and pollution. Well, China has a society that has a near total control of every aspect of the lives of the people in their nation and they have the worst air quality in the world. A question I have for these big government types, once the government has the ability to tell the people what kind of toilets they can buy, the kind of light bulbs, cars, soft drinks, clothing, the size of their house, the number of children, and on and on then what motivation would they have to care if the people don't like the air quality that their policies produced? If it takes smart people in government to tell us what to do to make our lives better then what is there to make sure that it is smart people that remain in government? Free elections perhaps? Freedom to speak?
The people in China are constantly lied to by the government, no doubt "for their own good" in the eyes of the government. The Chinese government claims this smog is the result of a natural event. They also know better because they have shutdown factories in response.
China is a polluted hell hole because they are going through an industrial revolution. It will remain a polluted hell hole until the people are free to choose who is in government and are free to speak out against their government. We've seen this before. History doesn't repeat but it does rhyme.
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More like 1950ies. [wikipedia.org]
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I find your segue into the anti-government rant a bit weirdly placed. Air quality is a textbook example of a "problem of the commons" situation - probably the biggest of them all because the atmosphere is literally one giant planet-spanning commons that everyone draws from.
And personally I cannot see a solution to the problem of the commons other than through goverment. Because even if people do realise they are also hurting themselves by polluting, it doesn't change the fact that a benefit from polluting l
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And personally I cannot see a solution to the problem of the commons other than through goverment. Because even if people do realise they are also hurting themselves by polluting, it doesn't change the fact that a benefit from polluting less will be shared by everybody, while the costs of doing so are only applied to them.
Someone that wants clean water to drink won't be shitting in the community well, right? It's not too hard to imagine people wanting to minimize pollution if you realize that these people that are doing the polluting are living in the same world as the rest of us.
It also doesn't take the "big hammer of government" to enforce policies against pollution. For example, think of a person that knows that lead in gasoline has the potential to do permanent damage to the brain development of their children. Is thi
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People aren't going to shit into the town well, but even there I am willing to question how far that is because they are aware of the consequences of their action, and not simply because they knew they'd get a beating from all the other townspeople. There'd certainly be people that would readily do so as long as there was another well somewhere else that they could drink out of.
But even that common sense you describe seems to go away really quickly as soon as the damage isn't completely obvious. In many pla
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China has learned from history. It saw how the west sacrificed millions of people's health for industrial progress, and decided that it was worth them doing the same thing. In fact a lot of people in the west make exactly the same argument - that it was worth polluting the world and burning all that fossil fuel to get the benefits we saw.
Re:This is what you get with low cost manufacturin (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, no problem. The air is clean here. We outsource our pollution to China and India.
Corporate CEOs love that stuff. It's what they get measured by.
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You should see what NAFTA did to Juarez. Very much the same thing though not as large or dense. And pollution does not respect political boundaries the people of New Mexico and West Texas get to enjoy it too.
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If you want to see what the USA would (will) look like without an EPA, go visit China.
Now there are literally days when there's more pollution from China in Los Angeles than there is from Los Angeles.
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What's that odd-looking brown haze hanging over the city?
Must be some sort of defense shield.
Re:This is what you get with low cost manufacturin (Score:4, Insightful)
This is what you get with low cost manufacturing!
Trump is right china is gaming the system.
Don't forget the thousands of coal mine deaths to fuel the factories that produce the inexpensive shit that the oligarchs want made there in order to sell cheaply in America.
And don't forget the Chinese multi-millionaires coming to the USA in throngs to invest their dirty profits buying up real-estate, which should be illegal.
If you think China is anything close to fair or treats people fair, watch this [youtu.be].
Hypocrisy Now (Score:1)
Ahh, I love the smell of dereg in the mor....*cough* *cough* *cough*
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Actually, china has lots of regs.. more than the US.. so why is it still a shithole?
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Perhaps they have defunded the regulatory that should be enforcing the regs? Whoops, confused China and Trumps America
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China shows what happens when the interest of the regulators corresponds to those of the companies they regulate. Although I doubt your claim that they have more regulations, even if that's true the number of regulations doesn't matter. It's the quality of the regulations that matters, and how those regulations are enforced.
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Perhaps because most of their regs (and resources) focus on preventing and quieting dissidents rather than improving health.
Re: Hypocrisy Now (Score:1)
Bribery and corruption.
How will Team Trump get around then? (Score:2)
If you want special effects with your news... (Score:2)
brown haze (Score:1)
You can actually see this on satellite pics. It's a brown haze
BS that's just heavy fog. (Score:1)
China has no pollution.
Coming soon to a US city near you... (Score:3)
Don't worry, folks. By the time Trump has finished dismantling the EPA, US cities will be as bad or worse.
Re:Coming soon to a US city near you... (Score:4, Interesting)
Depends on your geography.
Some cities get inversions [wikipedia.org], which bottles up all of the cities pollution for weeks.
In my hometown, I've seen it so bad visibility was 10 ft/3 meters and you could taste the air.
Even in a deep red state, people can care a lot about clean air.
Especially when it prevents you from driving.
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True about the inversion, mostly. That's why LA was so bad in the 60's. But even if citizens in red states care about clean air, their bought-and-paid-for legislators don't. Look at the water situation in Flint. People should be in jail over that, but dick all is happening, thanks to Republicans in control of the state.
And Trump thinks America is losing the trade war? (Score:5, Insightful)
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It is losing a trade law by agreeing to free trade. If you have free trade you're effectively outsourcing your own regulations at the cost of jobs.
Winning would be re-imposing trade barriers, bringing jobs and manufacturing back home, and ... you're not going to like this ... paying american prices for american goods.
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... and blocking all the Chinese who are rich off the dirty slave-labor money from buying our real estate - and arresting the corrupt local governments that are facilitating their taking over our land.
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The funny thing is that the millenials all *want* the crappy Ikea furniture. If they have an older relative trying to hand the solid stuff down - no thanks, they don't want it.
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Well, in their defense, the old solid stuff is very heavy and they don't want to move it from apartment to apartment as they constantly move.
Environmentalists are never happy (Score:5, Funny)
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Reality just may catch up with your sarcasm. [wikipedia.org]
BS. Point the nose down, it will land (Score:2)
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OP never said it would be a GOOD landing.....
To hell with the environment. (Score:2)
All it does is keep us alive.
They should build copied Chevy Bolts (Score:1)
Just saying.
smog affects landings how? (Score:1)
Next war(s) (Score:2)
Bad title (Score:4, Informative)
This is a bad title. Like other noted, planes can land without visibility, and TFA does not tell about landing problem.
What TFA says is that planes are grounded in an attempt to curb pollution.
All Pollution Should be so Inconvenient (Score:2)
All Pollution Should be so Inconvenient, obvious, and visible. Then maybe we'd have less of it.
Re:Was this all that "green" energy? (Score:4, Informative)
Slashdot can't go more than a few days without the usual article about how backwards the U.S. is and how far advanced China's "green" energy is.
Does this mean that green energy is the cause of all this air pollution?
The two main culprits are Coal burning and auto and truck exhaust.
But you knew that...
I get it though, you were trying to be "cute" with a ridiculous and inflammatory statement about "green" energy.
If Coal burning is "green", then it is the cause of all this air pollution.
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Thanks to existing treaties, China has no economic need to roll out its green energy sector at the moment. When the effects of Climate Change get so obvious and scary that trading blocks like the EU ban imports from countries that are still pumping out massive quantities of greenhouse gases, they'll be ready to make a quick, easy transition to renewable-based generation. And they'll eat America's lunch.
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You're joking, right? Because if it were quick and easy, they and everyone else would already have done it.
The "existing treaties" you speak of are an example of (from the US standpoint) the "bad deals" that Trump has complained of. Those treaties were only signed by China because China was exempted from any burden; other nations signed the treaties because they made their politicians look good to their shallow-minded voters.
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But, but "China took the leadership on climate change many years ago [nhk.or.jp]" !
And I think its precisely because of twits like the woman from the UN in the video why Trump is saying fuck the Paris agreement because fuck all these twits.
More than that... (Score:2)
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RTFA. It's manure causing the methane. Which can be turned into fuel.
Re:More than that... (Score:5, Informative)
A Canadian invented a way to almost completely eliminate cow farts [www.cbc.ca]
Scientist discovers particular seaweed reduces methane to nearly zero in cow burps, farts
A P.E.I. farmer has helped lead to a researcher's discovery of an unlikely weapon in the battle against global warming: a seaweed that nearly eliminates the destructive methane content of cow burps and farts.
Joe Dorgan began feeding his cattle seaweed from nearby beaches more than a decade ago as a way to cut costs on his farm in Seacow Pond. He was so impressed with the improvements he saw in his herd, he decided to turn the seaweed into a product.
"There's a mixture of Irish moss, rockweed and kelp, and just going to waste," he said. "And I knew it was good because years ago, our ancestors, that's what they done their business with."
Then researcher Rob Kinley caught wind of it.
The agricultural scientist, then at Dalhousie University, helped test Dorgan's seaweed mix, and discovered it reduced the methane in the cows' burps and farts by about 20 per cent.
Kinley knew he was on to something, so he did further testing with 30 to 40 other seaweeds. That led him to a red seaweed Asparagopsis taxiformis he says reduces methane in cows burps and farts to almost nothing.
"I was testing one day a series of samples when all of a sudden it looked like my instruments were having problems, and I wasn't able to see emissions from one particular sample," he said. "So I did it over and over again and lo and behold the methane emissions were eliminated.
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An Irishman came up with a simpler solution - a really yuuuge cork.
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It's the other way round - Cork has a lot of yuuuuge Irishmen.
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Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Funny)
That's just it, there's so much smog generating so much lift that the planes physically can't land. Even if they stop the engines it just sits there hovering.
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You can't land on a runway you can't see.
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Wrong!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Isn't Wikipedia marvelous? Zero-visibility landing capability exists, but it costs a buttload to equip the airplane and airport. The prevailing standard for ILS approaches in most airplanes at most airports is "200 & 1/4" -- when the airplane is at 200 feet altitude and 1/4 mile from the touchdown point, the pilot has to see the runway or break off the approach.
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Foggy air is less dense than dry air. Adding some particulates to it won't change the result much. In any case, a couple thousand feet of altitude difference will affect the air density far more than fog/smog can do.
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It's a dictatorship. No one sticks their neck out because it won't matter.
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It's a dictatorship. No one sticks their neck out because it won't matter.
And we are?
Don't even pretend we're a democracy.
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Democracies elect the majority vote holder. Or in the event of a multiparty system, the largest vote holder in ranked order.
The US isn't a democracy. Trump lost by (last count) 2,900,000 votes.
Seriously, does nobody take Civics anymore?
Facts are Facts.
If you wish to pretend a Republican system is a Democracy, go ahead, but it isn't.
Certain states have democratic elements. For example, Governors elected by the popular vote of all but prisoners. Real democracies let prisoners vote (see Canada). For example, I
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What was the margin of legal votes?
The same. Zero point zero zero zero percent. In point of fact, for all the hubbub about illegal votes, the number nationwide is still below single digits (that's the total, not per state).