China starts televising sunrise on giant TV screens because Beijing is so clouded in smog

[jsr]

Last edited Sat Jan 18, 2014, 11:38 AM - Edit history (1)

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11188605

China starts televising sunrise due to smog
10:36 AM Saturday Jan 18, 2014



The smog has become so thick in Beijing that the city's natural light-starved masses have begun flocking to huge digital commercial television screens across the city to observe virtual sunrises.

The futuristic screens installed in the Chinese capital usually advertize tourist destinations, but as the season's first wave of extremely dangerous smog hit - residents donned air masks and left their homes to watch the only place where the sun would hail over the horizon that morning.

Commuters across Beijing found themselves cloaked in a thick, gray haze on Thursday as air pollution monitors issued a severe air warning and ordered the elderly and school children to stay indoors until the quality improved.

The air took on an acrid odor, and many of the city's commuters wore industrial strength face masks as they hurried to work.

--------------------------------

After the sunrise, clean air:

[flying rabbit]

1. That is some surreal dystopian shit. Where are we headed?

[marmar]

2. Stole my thought. This is right out of one of those dystopian fiction books about the future.

[freshwest]

13. Libertarian, lassiez faire capitalist planet. No regulations, can't have those... Who's to say that

Los Angeles wouldn't look like that with no pollution standards on cars or industry?

Mexico City is supposed to be in a bad way itself in this hemisphere.

Don't know where the other hellholes are, I'm sure other cities are just as bad.

[Fumesucker]

18. China is a deeply conservative nation, not a libertarian one n/t

[madokie]

15. It was either the summer of '72 or '73

went out to Riverside California and that is what it looked like there then.

[freshwest]

24. Visited family in Riverside in 1980 and didn't realize a mountain was nearby. It was the era of

photochemical smog and stayed until the Santa Ana winds blew and pushed it to the Pacific. It was caused by the action of sunlight on hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides, etc.

Bill Maher used it as an example of how humans effect climate through stringent regulation. Thus it was caused by human action and relieved by human action.

I guess I lucked out and didn't see that, although I grew up in a city that only improved air quality from regulation, then it was changed. It's not the same kind of smog, but it's still not that good as far as air quality goes.

Where I live now, our worst problem is lack of winds when many are heating with wood. Too much particulates in the air. I wonder if they are using wood, oil or coal causing this very bad smog in China? Or if it's simply unreulated cars?

[madokie]

25. My thought is it is a combination of all those

Not sure they use wood for heat but I'd bet they use oil and coal. I really don't know though

When I was spending time in Riverside during '68 and early '69 I never seen any thing like this but when I went back a few years later it was like I was in a whole different country, it was so different. Air quality wise that is.

I really liked that part of Ca, Riverside, San Berdu and Big Bear. It was great. Lots of good people there.

[chrisa]

28. My thoughts exactly, flying rabbit. This is some great fodder for a dystopian story.

All that this console needs is an ironic "paid for by (polluting company)" message on it.

[Liberal_in_LA]

29. plus one. sad and scary

[Ecumenist]

3. OMG that is so unbelievably wrong on SO MANY LEVELS! Oh God!!

[Sienna86]

4. Surreal.

Looks like they need some anti-pollution laws.

[Kaleva]

6. Dystopian!

Somebody in a higher up Chinese government position must be a fan of "Blade Runner".

[freshwest]

14. That was my first thought, too! GMTA, haha. n/t

[JNelson6563]

5. But regulations are a drag on capitalism!1!

[freshwest]

26. All those pesky digits that represent living things be damned! MOAR MUNNY! n/t

[Brickbat]

7. Now that's capitalism!

Not even a state-run sunrise -- a privatized, commercial sunrise! Awesome.

[Art_from_Ark]

8. I know a gal who works for a Japanese airline company

She said that one time the visibility in Beijing was so bad, a plane bound for Beijing from Japan had to be sent back to Japan

[Shankapotomus]

9. If that doesn't show the depths our denial will go

I don't know what does.

[karadax]

10. Too bad were so dependent on China for the cheap labor and buying our treasuries (debt)

A little diplomatic muscle in the form of a trade embargo would ease China into taking better care of its workers / citizens.

I can't help but think the US encourages their economic growth over environment priority.

As long as it's not in our backyard tho, right ?

[Fumesucker]

17. The US government isn't all that interested in taking better care of US workers

Taking care of Chinese ones is a long way down the priority list.

[spanone]

11. if republicans had their way, this would be the landscape in our major cities

we don't need no stinking regulations.....

[Spider Jerusalem]

16. It was, once; the Clean Air Act and environmental regulations changed that

NYC, 1973:


Cleveland, 1973:

[Romulox]

21. Didn't you read the OP? This pollution was simply exported. Not eliminated. nt

[polly7]

12. I feel so bad for those people.

How much does that lack of sunshine and clean air contribute to depression, hopelessness,etc. ... not to mention all the physical problems. I don't know how they live with it, I know I couldn't.

[onethatcares]

19. isn't this vaguely

reminiscent of the last scenes in Soylent Green?

[jsr]

20. .

[Romulox]

22. More of the bitter fruit of "Free Trade". Are you "centrists" ashamed *yet*???? nt

[pampango]

33. Do you believe that this would not have happened if China had not joined the WTO?

China joined the WTO at the end of 2001. Russia (the last major country to join) joined in 2012.

From 2001 (the last year that trade with China was not governed by the WTO) we imported about $102 billion from China. In 2011 we imported about $399 billion. Our imports increased by a factor of 4.

In 2001 we imported about $6 from Russia. In 2011 (the last year before Russia joined the WTO) we imported about $34 billion. Our imports increased by a factor of almost 6.

Our imports from China are almost 12 times what they are from Russia (our exports to China are 12.5 times what our exports to Russia are) but China has 10 times the population that Russia has. In 2011 our trade with China was 78% imports and 22% exports, while our trade with Russia was 80% imports and 20% exports.

http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html

I am not sure you can make a case that not joining the WTO would have slowed down China's industrialization or trade growth or improved his environmental record. Not being in the WTO did slow down Russia's trade growth. I see not reason to believe that keeping China out of the WTO would have slowed it down any more than it did Russia.

What "non-centrist" policy would have prevented China's economic and trade growth and environmental damage? A Cuba-style trade embargo? That hardly sounds like a liberal policy proposal.

[geek tragedy]

23. Mordor. nt

[doc03]

27. One question: Wouldn't it be better if we burned our coal here where we have enviromental

laws then export it to China where they don't. Those pictures could be Pittsburgh back in the day but we had so many jobs
we couldn't fill them.

[sakabatou]

30. That is incredibly sad

[Matariki]

31. Wow. It seems more like protest art. It must feel like salt in a wound for Beijing residents.

[Newsjock]

32. No, Beijing residents are NOT watching fake sunrises on giant TVs because of pollution

http://www.techinasia.com/beijing-residents-watching-fake-sunrises-giant-tvs-pollution

Over the weekend, a story that originated on the smut-ridden UK-based Daily Mail went viral among major media outlets across the world. Time, CBS, and the Huffington Post were among the dozens of online news media who published stories about Beijing residents flocking to giant TV screens to see fake sunrises during heavy pollution last week. Most of these stories were accompanied by the same photo of a massive TV screen in Tiananmen Square with a sunrise appearing on it.

In truth, that sunrise was probably on the screen for less than 10 seconds at a time, as it was part of an ad for tourism in China’s Shandong province. The ad plays every day throughout the day all year round no matter how bad the pollution is. The photographer simply snapped the photo at the moment when the sunrise appeared. Look closely, and you can even see the Shandong tourism logo in the bottom right corner. The photo was credited to ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images, so a Daily Mail reporter did not take it.

... Yes, Beijing is polluted, as we at Tech in Asia have also been critical of, but this story is complete bullshit. International media should be embarrassed for not taking even a moment to second guess the Daily Mail, one of the least reputable news sources in the UK.