Pollution hides Beijing skyline; statues get masks

I heard on the radio that the spring crops are starting to wither in the area because they haven't seen the Sun for a week.

but....but China is doing so much to curb their pollution. If only these f*cks could die in their own toxic dump. Unfortunately, they are poisoning us all, and until they get their shit in order nothing the rest of us do will amount to a hill of beans. It`s like having a smoking section full of chain smokers on a plane

This was deemed a level orange event, one down from the worst. How much worse does it have to be to go to red - people dropping like flies?

We bear responsibility here too. BC is very glad to ship its coal to China, and we even exempt it from our carbon tax, because that would harm exports. And all of us in Canada are happy to buy cheap and not so cheap crap from China because it beats paying the prices that would be required to pay Canadians a living wage to make the same stuff under more stringent conditions. If China were to suddenly adopt our standards, the whole global trade system would collapse, or, just move to countries where they're not so fussy.

Basically we're all like the junkies - our demand for cheap crap keeps the supplier producing it, as cheaply as possible.

Those masks won't do anything for PM2.5. Or PM10 for that matter.

As far as poisoning us, smog is mostly a local phenomenon.

Luckily, Forbes Magazine has told us that acid rain is a myth, so at least they don't have to worry about that.

This where Stephane Dion's plan would have paid off.. he wanted to develop Canada's green sector--particualrly with respect to air emissions--because he suspected that China would hit a wall and need air emissions technology fast.

Nope, I've read pollution from China reaches us. Certainly part of the pollution problem in Phoenix AZ was found to smog moving in from LA.

I wouldn't believe everything you read.

Not for PM, I don't think. Maybe for sulphates.

Well, look at the bright side--no enviro nazis in Beijing!

we used to get dust from northern China screw with our air quality in southern Taiwan and cause serious trouble in Taipei. Smog also drifted across the strait. The toxic shit they`re pumping into the rivers and oceans also impacts the entire planet.

we sent all the manufacturing therefor this very reason.
you cannot make all this crap without air looking like that.
we lost jobs but gained cleaner lungs..

now interesting note..
certain items , ones you see in dollar stores, are getting harder to buy from china.
You need to go to other countries to have them made. china does not want to manufacture all the crap anymore and is phasing stuff out..there are certain shortages being felt in stores.
China is focusing more on the higher end products, appliances and such, rather than dollar store flotsam.

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/enviro ... cloud.html

Then there's CO2. Apparently some people care about that. Wanna say that stays local? Wanna guess who took over as the number one producer?

I'm not going to look for it right now, but there's science that says the Chinese brown cloud may reach as far north as the Arctic, and the soot may be responsible for a significant part of the ice melt.

I recall that as well.

Wow, it sure has changed since I went in the fall of 2008 - almost everyday we were in Beijing was clear and sunny. Guess they should have kept up the measures they had in place prior to the Olympics...

Been there many times. During bad smog days the air smells awful, hurts your eyes and lungs and visibility is low, like in a thick fog... It's pretty common, and it poisons the whole region and certainly has a global impact this way or another. Butterfly effect. It's a small spherical planet.

China was never concerned about the environment trying to survive...

This is the plague of our civilization: overpopulation, over-consumption, capitalism, monetary-oriented economy...