A few things that come to mind regarding pollution, climate and China: I’ve received an email telling that Chinese smog is threatening economy and health in Hong Kong, which is a terrible thing. After living in clean, clean Sweden, I do notice the effects that smog can have. At the time of writing, it’s really smoggy in Shanghai, it’s depressing and gloomy outside. Factories, cars and air-cons threaten the world climate. Luckily, most of the motor-bikes are electric here, and soon the busses might be too, I’ve understood from my (electricity guzzling flatscreen) TV that there is a test fleet of 17 Shanghai busses that have been powered by ultracapacitors for the last three years, a test that will hopefully relieve the population from the Shanghai traffic grid CO2 output. The biggest advantage of ultracapacitors is that they can fully recharge in less than a minute, unlike lithium-ion batteries which can take several hours. It’s useful for busses because these capacitors can only hold little amount of energy, but busses have to stop frequently anyway. “Even if you use the dirtiest coal plant on the planet, it generates a third of the carbon dioxide of diesel when used to charge an ultracapacitor” said Dan Ye of Sinautec.

• Checkout a graphic representation of the pollution in China, by checking out the photo’s of Lu Guang (卢广), a former factory worker on this website
• Reading “Hot Flat and Crowded” by Tomas Friedman, and understanding that China builds the same amount of energy plants a month as the continent of Africa (south Africa excluded) builds a year, I realized the tremendous change that is happening in this country. China is heavily investing in green energy, as the following graph is projecting, China might even become a worldwide leader in this industry.

But pollution aside, and looking at the China climate, living in Shanghai has some obvious advantages too: hot summers and mild autumns! Without sounding (too) smug, I wanted to point out that I didn’t expect the nice weather to continue so long.

While temperatures are already dropping below freezing point in some places, here we can still enjoy being outdoor in a t-shirt, with about 25 degrees celcius (80 F) and a mild breeze, we figured it would be perfect weather to have a picknick outside. My collegues decided to head over to Carls Jr and enjoy the burgers outdoors. I’m starting to miss the hot summer, but it’s nice to spend more time outdoors these days! Last time I did this was in Amsterdam at the Meganova headquarters.