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Half A Million Square Kilometers Of Heavy Smog Force Beijing To Issue "Orange Alert", Close Factories
On Sunday, Beijing issued its highest smog alert of the year, upgrading it from the yellow of the past two days to orange, second only to red. According to local CCTV, heavy smog covered an area of half a million square kilometers around Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, as heavy air pollution hits 31 cities.
Xinhua reports that the municipal weather center said humidity and a lack of wind would mean the smog will linger for another two days, before a cold front arrives on Wednesday.
On Sunday, the reading for PM2.5, airborne particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter, hit 274 micrograms per cubic meter in most parts of the capital. Indicatively, the World Health Organization (WHO) considers only 25 micrograms to be a safe level.
Beijing has recommended that residents minimize outdoor activities and urged people with respiratory diseases as well as the elderly to stay at home.
It wasn't just Beijing: moments ago Shanghai joined China's capital in issuing an orange fog alert. The local government asked for heightened management of airports, highways and ferry terminals as heavy fog covered western and southern parts of the city, according to a website run by the Shanghai Meteorological Service said. Visibility is limiting visibility to 200 meters in Minhang, Songjiang, Qingpu, Baoshan, Jiading and Chongming areas, the website said. Orange is the 2nd-highest of 4-alert levels
In March, four types of pollution alerts - blue, yellow, orange and red - were introduced by Beijing's Environmental Protection Bureau. All factories are to be shut down during orange alerts. Heavy vehicles, such as construction trucks, are also completely banned during orange and red alerts. Furthermore, construction sites should stop the transportation of materials and waste while heavy-duty trucks are banned from the roads.
In other words, the local economy shuts down.
This is good and bad news: the bad news is that upcoming Chinese data will continue to be weak, which however will be blamed on the industrial shut down due to the surge in smog, and permabullish pundits will "excuse" the upcoming bout of weak data as being weather related, something the US meteoreconomists have become all too adept at. The good news, is that as every Pavlovian dog-cum-central bank experts knows by now, more economic weakness means more bets for central bank intervention, means higher stock prices.
The municipal environment watchdogs have reinforced checks of discharge from coal-fired plants, outdoor barbecues and burning.
And this is what China's capital looked like this morning.
#Smog covers area of 530,000 sqkm around Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, as heavy air pollution hits 31 cities pic.twitter.com/ckRUVdtU2N
— CCTVNEWS (@cctvnews) November 29, 2015
Beijing residents told to stay inside as smog levels soar https://t.co/T8on9sj4mk pic.twitter.com/xetuITah1w
— Climate Change (@ClimateChangRR) November 28, 2015
Hazardous smog levels engulf Beijing and northern China: locals warned to stay indoors https://t.co/9x1ZiGKSvG pic.twitter.com/GbALmdkx3p
— George Chen (@george_chen) November 29, 2015
RT george_chen: View from my hotel room: #Smog occupies Beijing.
- Can you still see the CCTV headquarter buildi… pic.twitter.com/88z6Gp6bPz
— Stormtrooper (@TheNutellaMan) November 28, 2015
#Beijing issues orange alert for heavy #smog
Read More : https://t.co/z1g8WOUF5N pic.twitter.com/CRbg5Fb9d7
— New Straits Times (@NST_Online) November 29, 2015
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Invest in 3M stock is all I got out of this.
https://www.google.com/finance?q=3M&ei=HKBbVon6DoK6e6nAqPgC
Does that make me an evil capitalist?
No. That makes you a real capitalist.
“America’s elites know that capitalism is totally unworkable. We try to impose it in the 3rd world so we can destroy them” — Noam Chomsky
cold weather heating...
my best friend works at a bank there, transits from the 3rd circle to inner circle daily. pretty much describes it as nearly this bad every day since national day golden week about two months back when a billion cars spew shit in the air for a week
closer to shanghai or anything south or west of sh is pretty decent tho... it's really sort of beijing and then either coal kinda directly west in shanxi or industrials sort of north-east in jilin
Good God almighty... here's what the carbon monoxide levels look like around Beijing.
There's plenty of spots where it's above 3.5 ppm. It's not anywhere near lethal at those levels, but damn...
We need to export our EPA to China. Then they can have cleaner air and I can again use the other half of my property which has been deemed protected "wetlands" after it rains.
I was in Beijing around this time last year and it was pretty bad. But it seemed to be result of a combination of farmers burning straw in the fields and inversion weather conditions. While waiting for visibility to improve at the airport the phrase "frozen dirt soup fog" came to mind.
I'm told the farmers burn the straw in the fields due to lack of cost effective logistics to make use of it elsewhere.
They use the straw for cooking and heating. If you go into any of the small villages in northern or northeast China where wheat is the big crop, you will see haystacks everywhere. Each house has one.
The smoke from millions of rural households cooking dinner makes its way to the big cities eventually. I can smell the distinctive smell here Qingdao, in a city of 9 million. In the next 15 to 20 years China will move 200 million rural residents to the cities. Living in mid and high rises with community heating plants is much more efficient and good for the air. It all takes time.
I'll just repeat what my Chinese tourguide said without edit...
"There are way to many cars on the road, these people want a car as a status symbol, and they don't even need a car...and there is no place to park, now it takes us an hour to get somewhere when it used to take 20 minutes, so the cars just sit in traffic running and polluting the city...everyone just wants to look like they are rich"
I'm in Qingdao. It's a lot better here. The only pollutant is PM2.5. We are on a peninsula and have no heavy industry. The heating plants do change everything when they fire up for the season. I see that the coal fired plant a half mile from me is idle this year. The usual mountain of pea coal is missing. The natural gas plant they expanded all summer is doing the job now. These things take time, and the government is making huge efforts. We had Montana pure air all summer.
Krugman says we can learn from the ChiComs.
By the same token, I hear that some libertarians think that China's lack of environmental regulation is the bomb. Seems two wongs don't make a wight.
Libertarians don't shit in their water supply (for obvious reasons) but they have a real problem with statists telling them how much water they can use while watching them (the statists) erect marbled monuments (surrounded by flowing fountains by the way) to their statist, propaganda-obsessed, brilliance at fooling a majority of the people a majority of the time.
Is that clear enough for you?
////
Three statists and counting ;-)
Not to mention the fact that if these damned statists didn't use the metric system the area theyd have to report in square miles would be less.
Krugman's an asshole
(sorry, but I can't resist)
Krugman is a Jew apologist for Jews, Israel, and Zionism, plus apartheid. He can't apologise for Economics anymore because Economics has ceased to exist on a fundamental level. He is a Neoliberal Jew that annoys folks the world over. To add insult to injury he is a New York shitty Jew too.
Smoke 'em if you got 'em.
Oh.
Wait.
Just hold a lit match close to your lips, and breathe.
Glorious Peoples Party thanks you for your noble sacrifice to feed Murican Walmart stores.
Is this a fucked up backwards topsy turvy world or what ?
The Commies killing off their entire country to feed the ravenous Capitalist American Running Dog society with plastic shit for the EBT and SNAP card crowd over here.
That - is just too hilarious for words.
Before you get too self-righteous, the residents of China's big cities like Beijing, Shanghai,Shenzhen, and Hong Kong all live longer than Americans.
Is that data "revised" or "adjusted" like U.S. economic data?
Should have held the Climate Change Party there.
Exactly, China and India may sign some agreement, but following it will be an entirely different matter.
Obama will be happy to further handicap the U.S. and enrich his bankster masters, however.
The upcoming COP21 Agreement will have a binding mechanism to lock nations into their carbon reductions Perhaps they will even reach an historic agreement to create a UN Climate Tribunal so that nation's affected by climate change can seek compensation from developed countries
“I'm reasonably optimistic and convinced that world leaders will adopt a very ambitious universal climate change agreement at this COP21,” Mr. Ban told the UN News Centre in an interview on Sunday at the Parisian headquarters of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=52682#.VlugRV5MDUI
Frawnce is much better!...lol.
/////
It was my pronunciation of France wasn't it?
Glad to oblige ;-)
Fucking disgusting.
It's never wise to shit in your own nest. It's better if you can get another to shit in its nest for you. Then again, shitting in one area of the swimming pool eventually has inevitable repercussions.
Miffed;-)
i think the only swimming pool left is frozen, then there was global warming, ha...
what a cesspool of a country
If people can be convinced that inhaling smoke isn't bad for them, surely the same can be done for smog.
Given the reductions in electrical usage, balic dry index, metals usage, etc one would think there would be a drop in pollution. Or was it worse a few years ago? It must completely suck to live there. The humanitarian thing to do would be to offer these folks sanctuary in America. /s
Compared to some here now, they may be model citizens.
Women between the age of 18-30 allowed only.
Women between the age of 18-30 allowed only.
I think that's a significant part of the plan after WW3 for China/Russia once they win? Salvage whatever (lands/people/...) are left usable in Eurasia and replenish the loss with whatever are left usable in North America-; split the difference--Russia get Canada and China get the Lower 48, or maybe the reverse if things don't turn out too bad on both side of the ocean so the two of them get something that's not similar to what they originally had. Canada is cold like Russia so the Russians should feel right at home--with all of that oilsands for the heating of course, while America is similar in size to China and around the same latitude band so the Northerner get the colder Midwest and the Union States while the Southerner get the more humid tropical-like South, and nobody live in the western deserts under more direct influence from the radiating Pacific.
I don't think Putin (and the Chinese) are crazy enough to completely spend their nukes all over North America (sparing just a few for Europe of course)--just a few strategic locations maybe after an EMP or something, though I'm convinced those neocons in Washington are just crazy enough to do that (nukes all over China and Russia, and possibly on America too just to deny those Russian and Chinese of anywhere worth colonizing afterward).
Are these cities in a valley?
Not sure, but I'm wondering why all these cities are blanketed in smog when they're all empty.
I'm sure glad I got that $2.99 toaster on black Friday.
The price was great and we are going to be all smiles this holiday.
It's totally fine. It can keep growing at "7%" year after year, this is no problem.
No worries, I heard rumors of Obamas off to the UN with a check for $3 billion to fund global climate change and is bypassing congress. True, don't know. I've looked into enough bullshit today.
You can bet only us fucks in the US will get to enjoy the stupidity of the laws, while China and the rest do whatever the fuck they want.
Wow, two people are actually wearing 3M HEPA masks...I'm impressed.
The other two are wearirng surgical masks that don't remove any of the hazardous particles.
What's this going to do to their Population growth, if the people don't have enough lung capacity to have sex..
oh wait they got rid of all their Wife material long ago.. carry on...
Some MF's lack common sense. And they usually work for the goobermint.
We Americans love the smell of free market, no big government regulation, damn the EPA smog in the morning! If only we had "freedom" like that here.
It's a Volkswagen utopia!
Not to worry, Trudeau will shut down the tar sands and decimate Canada's economy. That'll fix the pollution coming out of China.
The Chinese breathes in pollutants that destroy their bodies while in the US the population breathes in propaganda which destroy their souls. So 6's?
That's what overpopulation does to you. You need masses amounts of industrial activity to keep the population fed and from roaming the streets. If they hadn't had the one-child-policy there'd be about 200 million more Chinese with even more factories.
Why not hold the Climate Change conference here?
Wood be funny to see Al Gore choke on smog.
If the MIC is the worlds worst polluter, then this has got to be first runner-up.
Those Red Communist bastards are the scourge of the Earth.
If you needed any proof that the environmentalists were watermelons there you are. silence.
I was recently offered a job there in Mechanical Engineering Aerospace. I declined the offer because the thought of living in China was inconceivable. I'm not surprised to get offers from China, but I have no concept of that kind of society whatsoever, and the thought of moving there is beyond comprehension from an 'all my stuff' category. Do they really think I would ship all my worldly possessions over to China and actually live there for average salary? China is weird IMHO, but I think they have more ethics than USA administrations, and the police state, frankly.
Do you speak a Chinese dialect or know pin yin?
No, I can't speak any other language other than English.
China has been spewing shit in the air so long and it DOES travel around the globe--wonder how our EPA can really get a good read on our true pollution numbers unless they test right on top of a smoke stack.
Everywhere else in the world I've seen a correlation between education and population and environment. Usually only a well educated people can naturally reduce population and pollution; like norther Europe as opposed to Africa.
China is the exception. High education yet what a mess they have. Significantly they have a strong tendency to obey their government. I don't understand their mindset, but I hope for their sake they learn better.
I really hope Chian figures this shit out. The Chinese people are still people. They don't deserve this kind of bullshit.
Bullish for 3M
A cigarette filter would prolly keep a good bit of that from entering your lungs. Bwahahahah!
I remember Los Angeles back in the day, but we never had coal burning out here and even with bad old diesels the particulates were never a huge problem. Fifty years later Los Angeles generally has pretty good air, except a day or so here and there, in a few inland areas. Took a lot of work. Good luck, Beijing.
We've got to give our government all our money in taxes to stop the rape of the world and climate change!
People are stupid they can't be trusted to just do what they want that's freedom and that doesn't work so we need to stomp that out wherever we find it.
Or something like that :) /sarc
Looks like the perfect place for an Israel First marathon.
Dear citizens,
Whoever is breathing is a criminal and a terrorist threat to our great nation. You are taking valuable oxygen into your filthy lungs and therefore sabotaging our great industrial complex, that needs the valuable gas to burn. From now on, there will be a tax for breathing. The tax rate will depend on your lung capacity. Your local tax office will have lung meters. Generous tax alleviations will exist for citizens with bank rolls over 100 Million Dollar, because they already make a great sacrifice in favor of their communist brethrens. If you are caught breathing in the street and have not paid this new environmental green tax, you will be blundered to death. We cannot afford to further pollute the environment with a pistol shot. Sorry for that."
Sincerely yours,
Central Committee of the Communist Party of China
(Automatic signature, as we have to send this from our safe house in the Bahamas. We hope you will understand!)
Breathe, breathe in the air
Don't be afraid to care
Leave but don't leave me
Look around and choose 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, 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.