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Subscribe to RSSChinese are growing more outspoken about the "fog," now accurately calling it "smog," covering cities like Beijing.
BEIJING—While China’s chief climate negotiator is getting rock star treatment at the Durban climate summit this week, his peers back in the capital are suffering a third straight day of foul air.
As a leading Canadian newspaper put it, China provided “the few glimmers of hope at the stalled negotiations” in Durban, where "photographers and television journalists swarmed around the chief Chinese negotiator, Xie Zhenhua, as he entered a news conference on Monday to announce his list of conditions for considering a legally binding treaty on carbon emissions after 2020."
It seems that despite being the world's biggest carbon emitter, China could be the key to a deal on a legally binding agreement to reduce emissions.
However, not many glimmers of hope could be spotted back home.
From the China Daily website
A grid image posted on the China Daily newspaper showing the dramatic changes in air quality in Beijing in the past four days.
A persistent 'fog'
The Chinese state-run print media all ran headline stories Tuesday morning on the persistent "fog" that has blanketed Beijing and parts of the country’s northeast since the weekend. (See video above of the "hazardous" level of smog on Monday).
Much of the coverage focused on the hundreds of flights cancelled at the Beijing Capital International airport—the world’s second busiest hub—or the rising and very vocal concerns about air pollution. Some local reports referred to sales of air filter masks and air filter machines spiking in the past week.
Still more reports tried to cast the air pollution issue as one of sovereignty. "The heavy fog or smog that has shrouded Beijing in the past couple of days has triggered a renewed round of debate over the different air pollution standards applied by China and the United States," said an opinion piece in the Global Times, a state-run newspaper with a strong nationalist overtone.
But at least these same newspapers are now calling it "smog" rather than "fog," as they were just a day ago. The China Daily, another state-run newspaper, ran a headline on page 3 crying, "Exposure to smog is severe hazard." Later in the day, the paper’s web site posted four stark images of the same location showing changes in air visibility. (See photo above). The images are pretty staggering.
Only 13 days of 'good' air this year so far
And as we write this, the ever-trusty and ever-reliable @BeijingAir Twitter feed has been down five hours, prompting followers to wonder whether the pollution has finally gotten to the air quality index monitor that lives on top of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.
Post by @TomVandeWeghe
An image of an iPhone app circulating on Twitter this afternoon, showing the @BeijingAir monitor out of commission.
A sobering analysis of the @BeijingAir feed can be found in this post by China Dialogue, which notes that the improvements in air quality claimed by officials at the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau "are due to irregularities in the monitoring and reporting of air quality – and not to less polluted air."
Moreover, based on the analysis using the @BeijingAir data, this year there have only been 13 days of "good" air quality.
Buried further amidst the quantitative data was one more alarming point: "…if Beijing’s fine particulate concentration even reached the polluted levels of Los Angeles, life expectancy may increase by over five years."
We at NBC News Beijing are trying to claw back a few months to our life span. We have just taken delivery of two air filter machines for the bureau.
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China has Smog? Must be caused by all those pesky regulations. They should take a page from our book and eliminate all those regulations. As we know, much like the banks, corporations and financial markets, left alone, polluters will police themselves. Then all will be well.
The family and I travelled to China back in 2007, just before the Olympics, and the air quality was horrible then, I can see now, it has gotten much worse. The Chinese, as we observed, on how they treat their young children, is that the young ones are absolutely the most precious living beings on this planet! How sad, China's future is being squandered, profits and no regulations, ahead of human life. Hey America, take a good hard look at the GOP.
Just like the rest of the large Industrialist. Denial. See only what they want to see as long as it doesnot effect the bottom line. Now what? go back to hog farming? Nope. Too late for that. Join the ranks of the rich and reckless.
My guess is that China will hold the environment hostage for quite some time to come in an attempt to fulfill its political goals. However, their short-sightedness may very well be the answer for their over-population problems. Mother Nature will right herself, she always does. Foolish human resistance against her only makes her more angry in her solutions to her problems. Of course, Mother Nature doesn't recognize any political borders and she'll clean house wherever she sees it needs it.
However, data-wise, China pollutes/emits less than the US. However, they make for a great scape-goat to detract from our own problems. And US pollution reaches other parts of the world, lest we forget...the reason why the smog is visible in China is because of the desert dust particles that come from the North-West: Gobi etc. Here in Japan (we're Americans) we get the China clouds once in a while: dust particles and pollution sometimes mixed with water particles: we get warnings and the kids wear masks and play indoors. Air pollution isn't necessary visible to the eye and detectable through our senses...so beware...
Maybe they can use some of the worthless TRILLION U.S. dollars to filter their coal emissions?
They'll steal our clean air technology and sell it back to us.
It is sad how we have allowed GREED to continue to decimate our world.
It takes good lungs and plenty of oxygen to feed them in order to be able to peddle a bicycle. I would imagine that the Chinese are rather glad that lot of them have graduated to driving vehicles vs. peddling bicycles.
To everything turn....turn....turn - there is a season
As we get to the place where we can no longer afford to drive vehicles because of the cost of fuel, we better hope we have good lungs and plenty of oxygen to feed them, as we move into the season, turn....turn...turn, attempting to peddle our eventual primary mode of transportation. lol
I live just a few hours south of Beijing. You might think that a lovely orange glow on a bright morning would be indicative of a beautiful sunrise. NOT. Especially at 11am. Dust and smog. Later in the day, after a light rain, it looks as though everyone's cars were slung with mud!
Far too many of us are generations removed from the generations that depended on the land, touched and understood it....and thus were responsible stewards.
They still exist....some on farms, others in jungles, forested regions and far flung corners of the earth. Hopefully....just hopefully....someday we really take the time to listen to them.
I don't believe it can happen. Fatalist?....maybe, but we have efforts underway to find new habitable planets out in a far flung universe. People like Steven Hawking talking about the need to leave our dying planet for a new one and gigantic multi-national corporations mining, drilling, burning, dumping, accumulating untold tons of nuclear waste with no clear idea of what to do with it, ect. on a scale that's never been heard of before. Governments and business running over people to achieve their own aims. That doesn't sound like a formula for a return to good stewardship.
Luckily for the photographer that stayed indoors to take the precise pictures. You can see the reflection in the window. Now that you can see a reflection, it has to pretty darn dirty outside. If you notice also, the smog was higher than the photographer too. Really bad gross stuff.
It is very sad state of affairs here in China. I have been here in Zhenjiang
for the last 11 months and the bottom line is this, Chinese do not care about
anything, anyone or anyone else. They are only interested in making money,
eating anything that moves and polluting the earth. often, it makes my wife
angry a local citizen but after 5000 year history, Chinese society still is
unable to manage daily trash, sanitary establishments, or their overall behavior
about cleanliness. They just do not care, case closed. I do give them credit
for wonderful historical sites, and exciting monuments but that is all.
Al Maldonado
Zhenjiang, China
I used to travel to China (Bejing and other cities) for business and loved the country, except in the winter. Exiting the airplane in Beijing, the smell of the air on the jetway and in the terminal was overpoweringly bad. The first time I went there was in December and the air was smokey and thick - you could almost cut it with a knife. The smell clung to your hair and clothing. I remembered seeing pictures in news magazines long ago of Chinese people wearing face masks. I didn't realize why this was initially. It was due to the coal they burned to fuel many things including heat. I live in southern California and experience fog often. NEVER has it ever smelled bad.
China, not America, is the world's worst polluter. At least for some elements of pollution.
China will sign treaties for propaganda purposes but will never actually live up to anything it agrees to do. Remember China promised to protect intellectual property rights in order to join the World Trade Organization. Property rights are violated in China everyday and Chinese officials receive bribes from Chinese companies to turn a blind eye. Never accept anything the Chinese say or documents they sign as truthful.
Ahh progress!
How do those people breathe ? Fog ? Even an idiot knows it is smog. Ask anyone that was alive in Los Angeles in 1960
In December of 2000, I was in Jinan, Shandong Province. The smog there was really bad. I have a photograph I took that looks a lot like picture 20111204 shown in this article. That was 11 years ago.
It's not only China, if you've ever been to Mexico City by plane, the first thing you notice as you leave the airport is that it suddenly stinks, gets difficult to breathe, and your eyes sting, at least that's how it was 5 years ago. I heard stories about Los Angles in the 50's and 60's being the same way.
Fog, smog, blog, hog... what's the difference. These won't kill any Chinese anyway. All they need to do is to raise the standard of PM counts. If PM2.5 count for clean air is raised from 2 to say 2000, Beijing air is pristine. China should not use foreign standards anyway.
NO WONDER THE WORLD IS IN TROUBLE!!!!!! All the experts in business, economics, science, math, government, geology and so on are here on this website making comments!!!!!!
This article shows several things: most of you ignore the truth so as to propagate your "theories" on subjects on which even the experts are perplexed. For instance: NASA, one of the world's leading climate change experts, recently released a study that shows the earth releases greenhouse gasses at a much greater rate than previously thought, diminishing the results of ozone depletion.
Face it: the science is just not there on man-made climate change! NASA, Columbia University, National Geographic and on and on have released well-documented contrasting studies that show both sides of the issue. For instance: rising ocean levels. Look at NASA satellite images of the coast of North Carolina and you will see an ancient coast line about 30 miles inland (it can be seen in person near Elizabeth City-Edenton). Did the campfires of Indians create the climate change that led to the rise of the oceans????
Watch Nat-Geo's "Sahara" and see that they earth goes through a 20,000 cycle where the Sahara changes from desert to lush tropical rain forest every 20,000 years with a rapid decades long change over.
Others have now documented a 2500-year "mini-cycle" with similar effects world-wide.
Regardless, you will ignore this "science" so that you can propagate your arm-chair war on America's businesses while turning a blind eye to a world sick of our arrogance for telling it how to live. Continue to push for legislation that forces America to comply with ecological "witchcraft" while the rest of the world gets a free pass. Even socialist Canada has realized the hypocrisy of the Kyoto Accord and is pulling out...but you all know better...
if you actually knew anything about the subject, you would realize that warming will reduce ozone depletion.(the chemistry depends on very cold temperatures) IE the warming is real. ozone depletion was caused by excess CFCs, not CO2. the long-term CFCs have been banned and the levels are slowly dropping, so Ozone depletion is slowly going away, but it will be about 50-100 years before it returns completely to normal.
FURTHERMORE:
I would bet that not 1-in-100 of you has every started, owned or operated a business or even attempted to navigate the maze of government red-tape to do even the most simple of things.
Recently, I looked to move a new business into an existing, structurally sound building that had been vacant for 4 years. With only 1 other application before the town council, it still took over 4 months, a complicated engineering report and thousands of dollars to get approval.
Another time, while preparing a building site for a home to be be built on, we filled in a ditch that had been dug on the property. A county official came by and notified us that we were in violation of federal coastal protection law, threatening us with fines that could reach over $250,000.00 and even possible jail time and cancellation of someone's "dream home!" ...FOR FILLING IN A DITCH!!!!!
Another job site: OSHA officials came by and fined us $75,000 for having (3) extension cords across a driveway and no handrails on the front porch...which was being finished as they drove up!!!!!
That is the "Regulation Nation" which small business must negotiate everyday just to make a living. But what do you care? You get to mouth off about your made up "arm-chair facts," ignoring the truth of real-life just to further your AGENDA that attacks America's greatness, Christian heritage and world changing democracy.
sounds like you have believed too many e-mails.
come on skeeter, admit that you are doing nothing but parroting some stupid e-mail you got.
some stupid e-mail that had nothing to do with reality.
Conservatives that want to eliminate the EPA should be required to live in Beijing.