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Northern China On Health Alert As Beijing Pollution "Off The Scale", Surpassing "Hazardous" Levels
Who would have thought that ultra-rapid industrialization, building entire empty cities to goalseek a supply-driven GDP number that has no reflection on demand reality, and ramming an entire country's industrial output into overdrive without any concern for the environmental impact would have a disastrous effect on smog levels. Certainly not China. Which is why earlier today people across much of northern China were warned to stay indoors as the entire region was put on health alert to avoid air pollution that, in the Beijing area, was among the worst for a decade and possibly ever, is literally off the charts and has in many areas reduced visibility to under 50 metres.
As SCMP reports, "in Beijing, pollution readings by the local environmental watchdog, as well as the US embassy, blew past the upper limit of "hazardous" early yesterday afternoon and stayed there for the rest of the day. US embassy pollution data published hourly on Twitter showed the level of health-threatening PM2.5 - or particles smaller than 2.5 microns - had reached 886 micrograms per cubic metre at 8pm. Its Air Quality Index, which includes PM2.5 and ozone, had surged past the maximum rating of 500 to 755, or "beyond index". With no wind forecast to bring more favourable conditions in the next three days, experts said the worst may be yet to come. "It's so awful that I find it really difficult to breathe," said Zhou Rong , a Greenpeace campaigner in Beijing. "It's the most polluted day I can remember."" Then again, who needs to breathe as long as the brand new Politburo can pretend the economy is growing at the needed 7%+ level, so critical to preserve stability. In fact, to paraphrase Stalin, if China has a few less people, it would also have a few less problems. So maybe the record smog levels are not all that unwelcome after all.
More from SCMP:
The Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau said its own figures showed PM2.5 levels had exceeded 700 micrograms per cubic metre since early afternoon. That pushed the Air Quality Index to its maximum of 500 for the first time since real-time air pollution updates began on New Year's Day.
Under the mainland's newly revised standards, a level above 200 is considered heavy pollution and unhealthy to those with lung or heart diseases. Readings above 300 are deemed "hazardous for the entire population".
State television and local media warned people to avoid going outdoors as much as possible, quoting forecasts that suggest winds will not arrive to clear the choking smog until Tuesday.
Beijing Children's Hospital said heavy pollution was largely to blame for the number of children being treated for respiratory ailments hitting a five-year high in the past week, with more than 7,000 patients a day.
Exacerbated by heavy fog, pollution in Chengdu , Jinan , Wuhan , Xian , Zhengzhou and many other cities has worsened significantly in recent days. Visibility fell to less than 50 metres in many areas, forcing the closure of dozens of highways and the cancellation of dozens of flights.
AFP chimes in:
Those who did venture out wore facemasks for protection, with visibility low, the skyline shrouded, and the sun hidden in the smog.
Air quality in Beijing showed airborne particles with a diameter small enough to deeply penetrate the lungs at a reading of 456 micrograms per cubic metre, the warning centre said.
The quality is considered good when the figure stands at less than 100.
Fog also covered vast swathes of east and central China also closed numerous highways and delayed flights in several provinces, it added.
China's air quality is among the worst in the world, international organisations say, citing massive coal consumption and car-choked city streets in the world's biggest auto market.
And some pictures:
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USA back in the '50s.
Chineze's tend to wear those face masks a lot... just sayin'....
Oh, and also they use "sun umbrellas" a lot too. Even here in rural Canada - the face masks and sun unbrellas.
Saw a report of at least 2 people dead of bird flu in Bejing recently. That'll get many more folks masked up real fast over there.
The CDC will say that 2,000 of 'em die every day of bird flu.
Take your shots
Printing money should fix that.
Or better yet, why can't they just print clean air?
Clean air is one of the green shoots.
Breathe, breathe in the air
Don't be afraid to care
Leave but don't leave me
Look around and chose your own ground
For long you live and high you fly
And smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry
And all you touch and all you see
Is all your life will ever be
Run, run rabbit run
Dig that hole, forget the sun,
And when at last the work is done
Don't sit down it's time to dig another one
For long you live and high you fly
But only if you ride the tide
And balanced on the biggest wave
You race toward an early grave.
NWO, NOW, OWN...pollution.
Congratulations Yoda!
China is the future, they're gonna take over everything. Look how smart and efficient they are
redpill +1 for Pink Floyd.
There is a lot of prescient thought in their lyrics; we will quote them much in the coming months/years.
not really sure how this gets down votes.
Perhaps "We don't need no thought control"
I'm in Beijing right now. High pressure system has locked in air that should be being blown out to sea. It happens quite often here. Similar to an inverse of the LA basin, the mountains surrounding the city cause this from time to time.
It's pretty bad.
Yep, it's a high pressure system and it sucks balls. All this shit is basically some car fumes, but mainly from everyone in China burning coal for heat.
As bad as it is, it used to be worse, much much much worse.
nuclear power to the rescue!!
That because they grew up in a dying empire
fuckin ravens.....
No doubt brother, no doubt.
Will the Pats be saying the same next week?
indeed they will....
And digitize the dirty!
Fixed...next!
How long before China exports the pollution back at the U.S.?
Please don't give Wal-Mart any ideas.
Next be determined by People's Central Committee on Truth in Pollution and Red Squinty Eyes that it was Nefarious Underhanded Gaijin like Doings of Evil Japanese Imperial Forces in Attack for Purity of Doucheiutowat Islands.
Very mattering crustification.
Ananonymous had a mild attack of flatulence. That's all it is.
He was having another episode of the dog farts, triggered by too much wokking.
We are already downwind of Japan. It is coming.
Obama will give China the states of Alaska and California. Problem solved.
Silly you!
One doesn’t print clean air!
One printz the money and then buy the air from the primary dealers such as Al Gore and the other champions of freedom.
That's what carbon credits are appearently.
Except working people are poorer by the mechanism.
This looks just terrible. But the main ecological problem in China, Japan and Hollywood remains climate change. So first and foremost we need agenda 21 and carbon taxes. Bend over and pay up.
Incompletely burning gasoline in an 8:1 compression engine, or burning coal with no scrubber, would certainly be covered under a Greenhouse Gas Taxation or Credit scheme.
Remember, GHG includes all gases that insolate, preventing infrared waves from escaping into space. The tax or credit should apply to all manmade sources, not just Carbon Dioxide.
Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. As Moe would say "Wake up and go to sleep".
Agenda 21? Really?
You seem to have finally self-asphyxiated on your own bullshit...
I regret that I have but one green arrow to give you.
So you're saying democracy sucks when it doesn't go your way ;-)
Not at all - Kinda the same as saying +100 itn't it? I was expressing my fervent opposition to Agenda 21 - a concept which merits much profanity. And was surprised to see that another critique of same was being downvoted here.
Musta missed the /s at the beginning of the thread or was it the messenger, not the message about agenda 21 collecting the down-red?
OK then - I'll go ahead shoot a red one in my own head too :-)
We all know who's full of shit, Flaksheisser. It's you.
That is so true, greenhouse gases wreaking havoc on sunrays in outer space are far more dangerous than urban air pollution. Which is why all good Agenda 21 citizens must take action: a reduction in breathing frequency of 80% reduces cellular carbon emissions by over 95%.
I have been there, it truly is disgusting the level of pollution.
http://ericsprott.blogspot.ca/
The level of spam pollution is getting pretty bad on ZH, as well.
Ha ha .. looks like a west Texas dust storm ...
(I think a re-analysis is called for ... that COULD just be west CHINA dust ...)
I was over there in the mid-80's and they where all wearing masks. They always said it was for flu season, allergy season, whatever. It was never about pollution.
Sounds like they better up their game to full chem suits if it's as bad as they say.
Only round eye barbarians don't wear face masks n sun umbrellas.
Haven't you heard of the negative health effects of sunlight? All the airborne diseases out there?
But really, I think post-SARS / Bird Flu had a big influence on wearing face masks.
Dont they wear weird pantyhose ski masks on the beach?
Even here in foggy San Francisco you see that among older Chinese.
USA in hte 50s? Maybe in the inversion prone areas of California, but it was not a general problem.
Pittsburgh. Ron Paul's home town.
A hot gay?
Really? Not where I lived.
You were lucky...
Were you ever in Gary Indiana in the late 1960'S?
Were you ever in Gary ever???
There is nothing like the Indiana Dunes: take a walk to the down shore, taking care not to step in the polluted stream (that runs through a State Park) to be greeted by US steel to your left and a nuclear power plant to your right...
To then proceed directly north into the South Side of Chicago, Cabrini Green, Robert Taylor homes, etc., etc., etc.
A Veritable Liberal Paradise adjoining Graven Capitalist Images
And all those projects are mostly gone now. The former residents have been dispersed in the 'burbs on section 8 vouchers.
Sniff sniff...cccan't we all just get alooong?
Actually no, motherfuckers. Not when there are nothing but smiles while Reginald Denny gets his head caved in by a brick.
Only TWO REAL MEN (Titus Murphy & Bobby Green) saw the injustice and helped...where the fuck was the rest?
Dood, Chill. It's hard to be a Good Samaratin when you're trying to get your brand new 27' Television home from "The Good Guystm". Back in those days, they were CRT's, not these fancy LED smart TV's.
We had to carry em home in the snow...uphill...both ways. Kids these days got it easy.
Man I swear, most don't see it (all colors) but for the few that do, we'll be just fine.
The rest are pretty much fucked and it can't come soon enough for me and we'll be showing the same mercy provided to the innocent that they did.
Count on it.
Are u in a bunker??? I was in OC/LA back in '92 and there's no national 'we'. No one gives a shit. Not even the next town let alone another state. Sure the media pipes it up but that doesn't get anyone off their couch
I'm above ground and I intend to stay that way. My point was (obviously) only TWO people gave a shit, locally. Now, I no longer give a shit enough to go help them or anyone, NATIONALLY.
Let it fucking burn.
You can thank the leeches of all varities when you see them, it won't hold together without me and YOU.
They are on their own...I'm done with compromising myself down to the lowest common denominator baby...its time to sink or swim.
I pulled all mine out of this fucked up, half assed shit train and am paying the monetary price. Did you?
I'm still sucking the corporate teet but tasted the freedoms of costa rica this year and that is where my eject button will land me
Me too (work wise) but not only did I cash out an IRA I quit contributing to the 401k...less for Merril to screw around with, let em print more to replace it.
I was lookin at Panama (better gun rights) but they're screwin around with those rights down there too now.
May have to just take one over...a little rebellion every now & then isn't necessarily a bad thing ;-)
http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/little-rebellionquotation
The dead fish stinking up the beaches extended up into even ritzy Lake Forest. Odd when the fruits of your misdeeds blossom under your own feet.
yep. The only city I have ever seen that had orange air, however that was back in the 70's or thereabouts. I'm sure most of the industry moved to somewhere else by now like china. They don't have to clean their manufacturing by-products there.
http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=1642
London 1952
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog
edit : (and London was like that quite a bit in earlier years another half century further back)
Who needs environmental laws, right?
Property Rights work better, it's a few thousand that would have to be bribed rather than just one EPA guy every 3 months.
Who pays for the necessary monitoring? It is easy to hide lots of toxic shit like lead...
Would you be content with the current and clear evolution of towards corporate interests owning all the "property", or at the least a sufficient amount to influence the enforcement of rule of law...
I am actually here in Beijing. I am living in this right now. I can tell you that the above pictures do not, I REPEAT, DO NOT, do justice to what the air quality actually looks like in most areas of Beijing. I have a picture from my cell phone while I was on the bus yesterday and we could not see more than 20 meters ahead of us because the white smog was so dense. It was so bad that my tongue went numb yesterday. Before you ask why I was out, I had to.
My roommate from England asked, I wonder why there aren't many people out today? I said well there are 2 reasons. One, the Chinese New Year is coming and people are going back home and 2 the air quality is like breathing air while launching space shuttles from inside your home.
Smog alarmists.
Anthropogenic Smog Alarmists
lol.
I am sure that AnAnonymous will soon pop in to tell us how all this foul Chinese smog is purely due to 'american' overconsumptionalization, or 'american' resource blobbing-up, or some such projected nonsense.
How about it AnAnonymous? Ready to finally accept some blame on behalf of your glorious Middle Kingdom of fabled present and past?
I can hear the rationalizations now...a billion plus vs a meager 300 million...the ends justify the means of the centrally planned chinese communist citizenism economy!
Or he will blame it on faux scientists hungry for grant money. Or Al Gore. Yeah, Al Gore. He is just trying to profit from Chinese smog.
only unclear citizienism sees this as a crushing blow. you go ahead and think the solution is for everyone to become like you. when the Chinese become clear headed and find they are adjusting, who will be strolling on Mars? Not unclear citizienism, that's for sure.
Yo, he vented the Internet, homie.
I will start worrying about global warming when I see or hear about Al Gore living in a cardboard box. As long as he's riding around in a limo, or flying all around in his private jet to one of his many mansions, I am not going to worry.
He sold his hockey stick and what ever passed for his integrity for a mere 500 million...to the emir of oil rich Qatar no less.
God I love having lived long enough to see that!...lol.
Its not like we didn't try to tell them he was a charlatan...kinda like John Edwards getting the "Husband of the Year Award"...all cotton and no candy ;-)
Can you believe that dude dated HEATHER LOCKLEAR? Gold digger......girl after my own heart.
lol...always been partial to Christie Brinkley myself (bears a resemblance to Mrs.N) although Mrs.N is much more intelligent, truly caring and mentally balanced than Christie will ever be ;-)
Picture please. Only for research purposes.
Thats exactly why I can't ;-)
Bought a mansion on the waterfront. Pussbag!
Gore never sold his integrity, you can't sell what you never had (unless you are in the future's market) ... but he sure is laughing now at everyone who bought his snake oil. He never made sense with so many manufacturing facilities leaving this country in droves.
That guy, I really don't think he is Chinese, haa got you, and `Shit obsessed`, and the others, Pavlovaized, everytine he rings the bell the whole gang does their dance on cue, this is fun for us to watch but does it bring any relief to you? How do you rationalize this behavior? Please share your thoughts with us!
I respond to the retarded and bigoted troll in the only language that he appears to understand: monotonously repetitive nonsense. But AnAn IS Chinese, as his repeated parrotings of official Chinese anti-Tibetan propaganda justifying their invasion and annexation of that unfortunate nation clearly demonstrates, as well as his garbled Engrish syntax that only a native Chinese speaker could ever produce.
It's a honey pot strategy. When AnAnonymous is in the mood to post, best to kept him/her focused on a single subthread, otherwise the sometimes clear, sometimes murky posts appear in all the threads.
It is a ~Game~ you folks play together for mutual benefit, Why not? you Love each other in a reverse/perverse kind of way that is beyond my powers to describe. We can't always have fun and talk Potty the way we were never allowed to, enjoy, as for garbled english; Have you erver seen any of the "Charlie Chan" movies? Someone is pulling your leg!!!
Juvenile and shameful perhaps, but sometimes beating that dead horse is the best part of my day.
At times seems we need a whole corral of 'em to just stay sane in a mad world.
Well said. It falls somewhere between fun and therapy - lol. Anon is one trick troll though. I expect more from ZH trolls. Got to keep standards up around here.
Up tick for honesty!
AnAnonymous is probably coughing so much he can't type out one of his disjointed missives.
Dammit akak, I logged in just to talk about Chinese citizenism.
What a shock! Joe Biden probably still wishes we were more like Communist China.
Cough-cough.
Fuck Joe Biden in the ass sideways. You do it. I wouldn't want to be in the same room with the little weasel.
You sir have besmirched all hard working and upstanding weasels of the word by placing Joey B in the same goup.
Form a committee!!!...better yet a task force...good Lord someone do something!!!
I have a cold.
OH MY GOD!!!!
ME TO!!!!
IT'S A PANDEMIC!!!!
EVERYBODY!!!! TO THE BUNKER!!!
Can't! Mine's full of weasels!
"progress" has it's price. next thing you know
they will be exporting their manufacturing and
become a service based and financial economy.
oh right, africa.com......
The entire country is "pretty gritty" especially the urban areas. From Army NBC training, local inversion conditions cause agents in the atmosphere to become stagnant and concentrated. And inversion is a fairly common phenomenon.
Not to worry. A few days and it will blow across the pacific to Seattle following the same route as the near extinct radioactive bluefin tuna slaughtered by the other growth obsessed asian nation China is gearing up to go to war with over some rocks. Whew! For a minute i thought this shit was serious.
You mean we will not be eating shark fin soup with frickin laser beams breathing radioactive sulphur acid within our lifetime? Shocking.
Chinese citizinism duty to cleanse air using own lungs.
What a price to pay to make cheap shit for WallyMart and App-L. Clean air- isn't there an App for that ?
Duty of blobbing-up smogs into Chinese citizenism citizens' lungs is indeed the mattering thing accordingto infallible Chinese Communist Sharty --- very crusty, very much something.
Alas, alas, one point three billion times alas, addings of aborted fetuses, post-wokked dogs and human nightsoil onto roadsides is also parts of their citizenism duty additionally -- just have to bear with it.
Honey, would you wok the dog?
Just a second, dear --- I have to finish offuscationalizing my monolizing of the speeching means first.
Come see our great shitties and breathe deep the shitty air!
Make me laugh!
Free high speed derailtickets!
My white dog now has purple spots.
You owe me a dog wash and a glass of wine.
"Not tonight, Dear..........we're having Fetus Soup."
Sounds like the Chinese need the equivalent of the EPA.... Whodathunkit....
They're still trying to refine "central planning"...after all these years, one would have thought they would have it all figgered out by now ;-)
But, they got the 19th century handbook.
The little red one by Mao?...lol.
A selected quote...
"Without the efforts of the Chinese Communist Party, without the Chinese Communists as the mainstay of the Chinese people, China can never achieve independence and liberation, or industrialization and the modernization of her agriculture."
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red-book/ch01.htm
Apparatchiks unite wearing particle masks!
Mao thought he could skip a step in the playbook and rely on the peasantry, the stupid fuck. He missed the part where you need the new classes--the proles and the bourgeosie by creating an industrial revolution first. The Great Leap was a flop. As ever students of history, his successors realized their mistake and started the back to the future ball rolling, retrograde tech, dirty energy, pollution and so on. Reinventing a very nasty wheel. After all if you only had the collected works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao to read (in abbreviated form) for forty years.....
What the small "C" commies never see (or admit) is that they elevate those people above themselves.
Maybe I'm turning anarchist ;-)
There is a little anarchist in all of us.
That doesn't sound quite right... beautiful smoggy day this morning (cough, cough) a gift from the small 'c' celestial kingdom.
Mine is growing exponentially.
I was fine for many years, recognizing it was there, holding it at bay, for the good of all I felt. Believing that it was live and let live by the law and that everyone respected this law.
This is not the case now.
There are those that live among us who assert what is mine, is theirs. Those who live among us who believe they can subject me and my loved ones to indiscriminate pat downs and road blocks under the guise of "public safety". Those that think breaking the law as a media prop (David Gregory) justifies it and is condoned or not punished for breaking it. Still others who equivocate that because a Wall Street bank steals more than welfare brood mare, somehow, that justifies the theft from the whole.
No...I'm done, with mans law and all its trappings.
Back to nature, eh? See you at Camp, bro.
"A man buys hell here with so much pain, that he might have heaven with less than one-half. Occupy your minds with good thoughts, or the enemy will fill them with bad ones. Unoccupied, they cannot be."
Thomas Moore
(But you knew that)
Actually, that whole decentralization push by mao resulted in some great stuff that's still paying off. It wasn't just steel, it had impacts on fertilizer, cement, agriculture, etc. etc. etc. Not the most efficient way to do things on paper, but it pays off in the end. Now you have a whole lotta rather big companies instead of a handful that control everything. Politically it also sparked the notion of "you can do anything", and as such you see a shitload of entrepreneurs who come in and fill local needs.. which effectively shuts out the megacorps that swoop in from overseas. It's not a bad thing.
They have an EPA.
Next question.
(My favourite story is when a local official painted a denuded mountain green to reduce stress amongst the villagers..you know to manage perceptions)
Unfortunately their EPA is like our SEC..
They have one of those too.
What a fucking disgusting shithole.
It could reduce CO2 emmissions
It would make Ron Paul feel right at home. Just like Pittsburgh in the 50s. Who needs the EPA?
Ah the good old days when you couldn't throw a lit cigarette into the Cuyahoga for fear of an explosion...
All these young Libtards here have no fucking idea what it was once like here before "the dirty fuckin hippies" said enough was enough.. Lake Erie was all but pronounced DOA..
Cleaning up Erie was a real job killer. Seen any job openings lately for Indians crying in their canoe? It was great work when you could get it.
Yeah, that was a killer ad...
And if people think parts of NJ are a shithole now, they would be aghast at what it once was...
It was better when the "shithole" parts of New Jersey were the result of pollution instead of the people.
I would trade these days for those days in a New York Minute.
I always had a weak spot for Princeton...
Maybe because so few people from NJ lived there...
So you think that's the free market at work, Flakmeister, not the corruption thereof?
And the EPA's got a real chokehold on the world's biggest polluter:
http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/2-us-department-of-d...
Which isn't counting the thousands of dead on "our" side of the ball or the millions of dead on "their" side.
Crony capitalism rules, Flakmeister, and every government bureaucracy is in on the scam.
You and the state can kiss my ass.
So no doubt you are aware the US military is largest user of oil on the planet (organizationally speaking)...
So just what is your fucking point? Or do you even pretend to have one? To keep it simple, lets limit ourselves to rational and coherent ones, do you want to try again?
Yes, and it adds up pretty quickly at $400 a gallon to continue the imperial insanity:
http://green.autoblog.com/2011/12/06/pentagon-report-says-us-pays-400-ga...
To say nothing about how the military and related subsidization of oil prevent the market from investing sufficiently in alternatives:
http://www.iags.org/costofoil.html
You're a state-worshipping whore, Flakmeister, who wouldn't know freedom from a french fry or espouse it if you did.
You clearly have no fucking idea of what my views are if you think I have ever defended fossil fuel interests or the MIC....
Waterways = Community property. Community property leads to tragedy of the commons.
Government gave businesses the very permits that were used to dump pollution in those public waterways.
Ah yes, I do remember those days. I also remember watching the Edmund Fitzgerald loading up on ore by while I was fishing for yellow perch.. you know the type with mercury in them... they were great for eating or finding out the temperature
Don't you wish Pittsburg was like it was in the Fifties?
arnt they busy on thorium?
I suggest you read the fine print on Thorium unless you meant Throrazine, then yes, I concur...
Th