June 8, 2012

How dare you measure our air pollution!

For some time, the US Embassy in Beijing has been sending out measurements of local air pollution on Twitter.  These have not always been entirely in agreement with the official readings.  Subsequently, the  Guangzhou and Shanghai consulates have done the same thing.

The government of the People’s Republic of China has formally objected.  They claim that readings from just a few locations are too unreliable to report (a problem that doesn’t seem to affect other nations), and “not only doesn’t abide by the spirits of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, but also violates relevant provisions of environmental protection.” 

(via)

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Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »

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