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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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Hell on earth?
Purgatory
You're thinkin' of Detroit
Couldn't have happened to a better country.
Workers paradise!
Don't worry, just MAKE MOAR STUFF!
3MIN News January 12, 2013: NEW ISLAND & Odd Royal Report
http://www.youtube.com/user/Suspicious0bservers
Its a good feeling to finally be eating meat and driving cars like our friends in america!
Then there is the ultimate achievement: eating meat WHILE driving your car!
Of course a Chinerse Greenpeace activist is going to complain about pollution. That is what these liberal complainers do, joining Greenpeace is simply a way for liberals to find a few like minded liberals to affirm their anti progress agenda. It is not news that a Chinese Greenpeace member is complaining about pollution.
China has been growing jobs, prosperity and the economy. The usual price for rapid industrial growth is a period of high pollution before the more prosperous economy that rapid growth brings can afford to bring in pollution control measures to reduce pollution. The USA went through the same cycle. When I was a kid, LA and San Diego used to have heavy pollution haze hanging over the cities, much of that is now gone. One reason much of it is gone is the tail pipe regulations that havee cut way back on auto engine pollution, and the fact that most, if not all, smokestack industries have long since been shipped to China. A USA without industry and processing of raw natural resources into useable metals and woods, is bound to have cleaner air. China is where most indutry now takes place, so they are bound to have heavy air and water pollution. In fact, I think water pollution is one of the biggest problems facing China. The arrival of a weather front and winds can blow away the cloud of air pollution and clear the skies again, but water damage is not so easily gotten rid of.
The bad part about the clearing of the air over China is that it will be blown across the Pacific and arrive onb the US west coast!
China should be happy they are not having the plus 100 degree temps that are happening daily over a record area of Australia. SOme places busted the 122 degrees F the other day. Now that is warm. WHat is unusual in OZ is the massive size of the heat wave, covering much of the entire continent. Inland areas having the hottest condition. Though the SYdny area had some 104-107 degree F days. I usual consider anything over 100 degrees to be damn hot. Over 110 F and it is dangerous to human health. Although I would not mind if the plus 100 degree days and scorching sun burnt up some of those damn snakes down there.
Always look on the bright side of things eh?
There's no commerce possible on a dead planet.
Warning, the above post contains some SARC. But I am not "Million Dollar Bonus."
oh srry ;-)
Please say "Hello" to the Wizard for me the next time you are in the Emerald City.
PS: I will never understand the ubiquitous Australian fetish with that movie. Judy Garland must be a real Aussie national hero.
I think it had something to do with the drunken midget tossing.
The heatwave is lingering for such a long time because the northern monsoon season hasn't started yet (it's late), and thus there was no cold air to break up the mass of hot air. The only good thing is that the beach has been really nice around 7pm each night.
As I write this though, I'm watching a large storm come in from the west towards the coast (I live about 3km from the ocean). It's going to be a doozy.
@ Jack Burton
Yes, the tap water quality in Beijing has been getting worse too:
http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?id=20130108000009&c...
Deskbound from the elite chairperson’s, this is nothing more than the Copenhagen treaty and WTO dispute. This news will fade in 3,2,1. Only to return under a new manufactured threat.
/LOL
what a wonderful job we're all doing
I <3 Central Planning!
We need more fires!!!! Progress
AND NOBODY ASKS THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION OF ALL!!!!!
WHY ARE THESE PEOPLE WALKING ON THE STREETS???!!??
DON'T THEY HAVE TO WORK?!?!?!?
NO WONDER THERE IS A WAITING TIME FOR THE NEW IPHONE!!!!
AND WHERE ARE THEIR SLAVE OWNERS?!?!?
this looks like anarchy people.... where's NATO now?
America schould step in to teach the freedom and get their act together!
SHOP SHOP BITCHEZ!!
You have been here a long time. Exposing the kill switch by knowledge goes a long way. Relax!
shhhhhh
"AND NOBODY ASKS THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION OF ALL!!!!!"
You're right, but I have the answer. Hit the caps lock key. That will fix it.
No wonder the US wants carbon tax credits for a world currency.
Why don't they go back to practicing meditation by sitting in blissful contentedness instead of working as slaves for the Americans--And give me my F'n job back.
coal.
dirty coal + inversion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog
they're gonna have the to start here with the Chicom red ant colony if they ever want to reach the target world population of 500,000 million/one billion. actually looks like they've got off to a fine start with those mobile abortion squads. this pollution soft kill will unfortunately be only slow and incremental. a HAARP attack on Three Gorges might get the action started. but more likely we'll see some massive race specific bioengineered pandemic like SARS. and thanks Chicom politburo for your support in the American gun grab. it's worked wonders in your workers paradise. haha.
:) for HAARP
Amazing how many people don't do their homework on topics such as this....
There recently was published congressional testimony (sorry, no I didn't keep a link and am not gonna bother looking anymore) on the topic of Radio Frequency Weaponry
LOL
Oh, how Tesla resonates with me....
We can have an industrial economy for a short period of time (and then all die from it's effects) or we can have viable habitat. Those who think the human economy is the constant, and that it must be worshipped and everything sacrificed on it's altar, will choose the former. Sane people will choose the latter, but will then have to fight the madness of the money cult, and the vast state apparatus that backs it up with guns.
globalists don't see pollution nor the destruction of American workers' livelihoods or the hopelessness of the lives of chinese workers ... they see profit margin and no smog will interfere with that vision of 90% profit margins
Sun spots. Venus also has smog.
And look at all that shit circling Saturn.
And all those Klingons around Uranus.
Enough with the Roker jokes.
lol.
Thought that was United's lost luggage purgatory
Cosmic rays be damned.
Coal, bitchez!
(It should be, "nuclear power, bitchez!")
Sacrilege!
They should be forced to wear grass skirts, live in cold concrete condos with state subsidized solar panels on the roof until the central committie flying back & forth to exotic locales can figure this out!
Hell on top of 900 feet buildings, you still can't see squat...
False Flag. There thread complete. Next topic
And the smog is nothing compared to the big ass sand storms they have (like the ones during the great depression) caused by insane farming...
And that's even nothing compared to all the crap they are doing to re-route all the water to Beijing... Chinese analysts say that it will dry up all the important rivers in western/northern China within 25 years...
China is a big house of cards waiting to collapse, thanks to corruption and short term economic gain.... much like the western world these days.
Just think where all the ash goes
London (UK) used to have 200+ death per year from coal burning (London fog). So, China is catching up.
Yep. The "great smog" of 1952 is thought to have killed at least 4000 people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog
Cap and Trade their ass Gore! You fucking moron.....
Psst... the Cap N' Trade was the 1990s Republican proposal, ahem, the fossil fuel interests proposal, to insure that we would be be able to burn whatever the fuck they would provide us with...
Gore came much later...
Enron and friends. I think Gore was colluding with the same people, though. If they had gotten Cap and Trade in place, Enron might have been able to mask it's loses and avoid bankruptcy.
Yeah, Enron, the thought of W pushing Ken Lay as Secretary of Energy still sends shudders down my spine...
I got out of airport in Beijing.. 2008.. it hits you like a rock that air. Airport is probably the worst of all for some reason. Coal.
To paraphrase Lovelock, there was a very good reason why Gaia tried to bury the stuff beyond our reach...
Couldn't coal be gassified and then burn just the Hydrogen and Caron Monoxide, like a normal wood gassifier? Then, all the mercury, uranium, sulfer, etc should be left in a chemically inert pile of ash at the bottom of the gassifier. Any reason this would not work?
The resulting thermal efficiency would be a disaster...
And it would do nothing for C02...
So, gassifying coal would be less efficient than gassifying wood? Could you help me understand why?
Burning the coal cleanly is step one. sequestering the carbon dioxide is the next step. You cannot expect society to make sudden, massive changes (at least not without catastrophic side effects). One step at a time.
I misunderstood what you initially meant by coal gassification. Yes, it is an improvement, but we can do better. If we can replace coal in the US by 2030 for 0.10 per Kwh why wouldn't we... To get a coal cost you still have include CCS...
http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/12/the-grid-of-2030-all-renewable-90-percent-of-the-time/
follow the links to the original research paper...
Last year there were 88,000 babies born in Hong Kong (a very Chinese number, by the way). Of those collector's items, 44,000 of them (a very bad Chinese number, by the way) were born to Mainland women who sneaked across the border so as to blob in Hong Kong, SAR, thee of One China, Two Systems fame.
The "Right of Abode", according to Hong Kong law, grants HK citizenship to anyone born in Hong Kong, provided, of course, that they are ethnically Chinese. Thus, in order to give their blobbings the best chance at a better life, severely blobbating women take great personal risk to themselves and their blobbations to leave the paradise of the Middle Kingdom, make their way to a hospital in HK---sometimes, as reported in the SCMP recently---"dripping amniotic fluid down their legs" just so the blobbation will be able to carry a HK, SAR passport.
On a side note, the Basic Law is a tricky thing. It specifically states "of Chinese ethnicity". This presented a testy problem back in '97 at the time of reversion. Those long time residents of HK who lacked the special ethnicity had difficulty, and many times were not allowed, to replace the passport they held under British rule with a new HK, SAR passport. A good friend happened to be of Portuguese ancestry, and his family traced its roots back several hundred years to the territory. He spoke fluent Cantonese. He had married a woman born in Shanghai who had illegally crossed the border years ago and took up residence in HK. She was immediately granted a new HK, SAR passport when reversion occurred. She was, of course, ethnically Chinese. The husband, whose great grandparents had been born, like him, in HK, was refused a passport. He had to become a British citizen, because he was, well, white. The same thing happened to many others, including ethnic Indians. Even the founding family of the famous Hong Kong Ferry, who were Indian, at first were refused. Eventually it became too uncomfortable to deny them, so HK's new ethnically Chinese authorities relented.
Concurrent with this there was a famous Australian politician by the name of Pauline Hanson. She had taken exception to the massive influx of Asians trying to move to Australia and gain citizenship. She was called "racist", and there were marches and protests in a host of Asian cities protesting her. Among those cities where protests took place was Hong Kong.
There were no protests whatsoever in Hong Kong against the Basic Law and its "Chinese ethnicity" decree.
Pauline Hanson was pretty much on the money but her problem was two fold. The first is she was lampooned and targeted by the press who showed no mercy. The second problem was that she came across a little too simple and borderline bigoted.
No doubt she will be remembered when it is too llate.
The reality is that Australa's bleeding heart pproach makes her the laughing stock of those who take advantage of her laws.
You're joking right? Ever tried emigrating to Australia and living? If you don't qualify for the work visa or a work grant you do not work. If you do not work in Australia they do not let you in, or they deport you.
There were more Asians than Aussies in Sydney when I was there recently.
Wtf is "Chinese ethnicity". "Chinese" seems more like a fragmented race, sort of like being "white" or "black". Except it is of convenience to label generic features as one.
I hope I am correct in assuming that your question is directed at the PRC and HK officials who made sure "Chinese ethnicity" was written into the Basic Law, some of whom made statements critical of Pauline Hanson back then.
We don't need no stinkin' air. We've got gold (Bitchez)!
Li Reardon is about to pour some more steel.
Maybe they could dilute that polution by opening up those empty partments and letting it find another place to be in.
Seriously though, some type of pandemic of mammoth proprtions is bound to occur and man will realise that there is always something more scary than nuclear war.
Looks like Los Angeles when I lived there 25 years ago.
And how much would you pay not to breathe that air? 10 cents a day, a quarter?
Pay whom? To do what, to eliminate it?
Just pay Al
Yep.
Thanks Tyler. Without posts like this many people wouldn't have a clue what is going on in our world. Keep up the good work!
ZH is great but it seems to me that you don't look for news anywhere else? Are you sure that ZH is always accurate? It isn't.
If I see an attention seeking headline on ZH I am always wary. The Tylers can be biased. On the plus side, I would trust ZH before most other news sources but his/their spin on the news is often bizarre and and lean a lot towards extremist tea party type views. You will certainly never see a Democrat point of view, but then again, I'm British and I'm biased. I hate our politicians too.
Oh, and gold rules the world, no bias there at all.
Oh yeah, VIX is a reliable index for predicting the world financial markets.
Oh, the S&P is always just about to crash.
/sarc/truth
It's not a "Tea Party" view, it's a Capitalist view. Think Mises and Rothbard.
BULLISH.
In 2003, I was in Beijing in a big pollution, and needed a month to recover after I came back to the US.
Bullish for big Pharma.
So....kinda like the Chemtrails being laid out in the USA ,Canada and Europe then ya mean,only not as bad cause at least the chinese know it,what about the rest of the sheep.
..............."Wake up everyone,you is being Chemtrailed "
Breathin' all the clean air, sittin' in the sun,
When I get my train fare, I'll get up and run.
I'm ready for the citi, air pollution here I come!
The greed of human kind has been a part of history as has been the total disregard for the environment while one is getting rich. We only have to go back to the USA and the great lakes to see this behavior. The rich industrialists getting evermore wealthy while the environment suffered.
The Chinese believe being rich is glorious, its no wonder then that their environment has suffered
Wait until their annual Spring dust storms start. I sympathize with them having lived in an industrial city long ago myself. It sucks!
So the U.S.S.A. offshored the jobs AND pollution to China?
So...perhaps if "carbon credits" and other such notions take hold we can charge them to China to reduce the national debt?
yes the masks are Michael Jaclson era style
The Greeks in Syntagma Square have proper gas masks, a Greek export opportunity to China?
http://www.toledoblade.com/image/2011/06/29/800x_b1_cCM_z_cC/Greece-riot...
Apologies to anybody who is offended by the average sized Greek rioter's penis hanging out of his pants.
Dear World,
There is no problem. Our air is clean and everything is green. We are a happy people.
Signed, the communists.
We have been exporting our inflation to other nations.
We have also been "exporting" our pollution. This is a prime example. The Chinese aren't going to be conquering anyone if their country becomes a toxic dump. Maybe they can unload some of the solid waste in Africa. I know other countries have been accused of doing this.
A real eye-opener: pollution from REM including neodymium, as in neodymium wind turbine magnets.
Oh the irony!!
Greetings to all good hearts here.:
If you have never listened to this radio show with the survivor of the USS Liberty and his ship mates on, you have to hear his own story of the Tragedy of the Liberty as he speaks his truth.
Here is the link to the show that is on right now. Will come back later with a link to the archive.:
http://republicbroadcasting.org/index.php?cmd=listenlive
Blessings and grace.
Another CDC swine flu kill epidemic to punt the H1N1 pandemic Rev 4.
U.S. companies pay double carbon taxes - problem solved
I thought it we over regulated factories here in the united states. Cleaner newer factories would rise in their place.
Obviously, the solution to solve this problem is to give the government more of tax dollars. :/
Kinda sad that all these, literally, tens and hundreds of millions of people just go along with it. Not surprising though, I'm afraid.
China-bashing is such a fine sport.
There is a lot of fog in Beijing today.
Fog, mind you. Fog.
Anyone who has lived in Beijing should know something
about the fog. Hasnt changed much in 20 years the fog.
And the dust. There is a huge desert west of Beijing and dust blows in.
But I would get my news from Greenpeace, a highly credible source.
Right, so the driving restrictions only have o do with traffic congestion, and have absolutely nothing to do with safety, pollution, nor the general state of well-being of Beijing residents. So that's how it is, I see now.
haze 1 |h?z|
noun
1 a slight obscuration of the lower atmosphere, typically caused by fine suspended particles.
Do you think it is "dust" your breathing, or did i miss some heavy sarcasm tagging?
We have shelf life taxpayer vaccines about to expire.. Ramp up the media drama bitchez… Get the muppets into your local pharmacy pronto!!!
And some wonder why we can't compete.
The world is exporting inflation and pollution to China and all they get are a few million factory line jobs? Who is the chump?
Bullish for air filter plants
Bullish for Murine...or whatever eyewash they have there.
Hey, let's send all that dirty oil from Canada to China and let them refine it!
Save the environment! No USA pipeline for dirty oil. We wouldn't want the country with the most strict environmental rules to crack that oil.
They need the Bixby coal gasification system which produces gas from coal with no air pollution.
Now you know why so many Chinese smoke....cigs are cleaner than the air.
Everyone relax. The Kyoto Accords are protecting the planet.
Misleading photos are stupidly linked to the post..