During the off-periods, outside of sunrise, sunset and other general alerts, they can show:
"On this site, in 1989, nothing happened".
Smog-hit Beijing shows sunsets on a giant TV to remind people what the sun looks like
Citizens of smog-choked Beijing can watch a sunset on a massive LED display in Tiananmen Square, which will remind them of what the sun and sky look like. Sunset being televised in Beijing's Tiananmen Square due to heavy pollution Tiananmen Square's virtual sunset ... a reminder of better days "I couldn't see the tall …
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Saturday 18th January 2014 09:57 GMT Mephistro
Re: it'll cost
"they're going to discover the true macro economic cost in the next few years."
It probably won't be an economic cost. They just will ignore/let die the victims and replace them. As Comrade Mao said once to Nikita Jruschev, "I don't mind losing a few million Chinese citizens. There's lots more where they came from." Or words to that effect, as I'm quoting from memory.
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Sunday 19th January 2014 03:15 GMT Turtle
@Mephistro
That's why he was pushing for a nuclear war between the USSR and the USA: a nuclear apocalypse would bring the rest of the world down to China's economic level, but with China's massive population, more Chinese than anyone else would survive and enable China to surpass the rest of the world in a relatively short period of time.
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Friday 17th January 2014 21:59 GMT Gannettt
With the record-breaking drought we're experiencing in California at the moment, there has been speculation as to whether all this pollution being generated in China is to blame for the changes in weather patterns. I keep an open mind, but seeing that awful pall, makes me think of the awful pall when the hills surrounding our city are ablaze with wildfires.
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Monday 20th January 2014 09:39 GMT swamptoad
Hang Onto Your Hats
I seldom replay to comments, but yours deserves merit. Climate change is the polite way of exclaiming climate ruin. The California fires you are witnessing are a result of a huge high pressure system parked near the coast. It is 4 - 5 miles high and 2000 miles long. This high (a year now) acts as a barrier to storm fronts (lows) that would otherwise dump rains/snows. Your 100 year record breaking drought is also a result of this phenomenon. At this point the climatologists don't have a clue as to its cause. Yes, I am sure the billions of us inhabiting our delicately balanced planet are behind most of the ruin. The Chinese perhaps are more at fault than others. We in the Midwest are experiencing a very cold and snowy winter. This happens! It's just been a while. What will be interesting is what our spring and summer will be like if the stalled front persists. Observing the increasing intensity of wind storms (of every variety) over the last few years, I am pessimistic about what we have probably set asunder. Should the Chinese cut back significantly on emissions, the devastation of an out of whack global climate will continue -- for many years. A hundred or more? Likely.
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Monday 20th January 2014 10:57 GMT MR J
Re: Hang Onto Your Hats
I am not sure if you two are trying to be Ironic or what.
Blaming China for Americas ills, because China sends out more pollution...
Keep in mind that things like Start-Stop, Hybrid, Compact, and All EV vehicles have been shunned by the US, so the largest market has dictated what was out there. Clean Coal and Clean Gas can both also be considered one of those blocked technologies by the US that has happily been passed on to the rest of the world.
China air pollution is 27% higher than in the USA (per cap), The USA carbon output is 284% higher than China (per cap)..
Keep in mind how much "American" product is made in China and then try to decide who the blame should really sit on.
Yes, they should combat the issue.
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Friday 17th January 2014 22:23 GMT JasonLaw
Not great
In 1952, an estimated 4,000 people died in London as a direct result of a four-day smog event, with possibly another 10,000 made seriously ill. I'd hazard a guess that air pollution in many western European cities in the last century would make modern Chinese cities look like alpine meadows ...
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Sunday 19th January 2014 17:31 GMT Spoonsinger
Re: Not great
Not sure why you got down voted other than the 'alpine meadow' bit.
Yes European & US cities had smog confirmed deaths up to this point. The London one was just better documented, (most likely down to the newly formed NHS), and lead to the clean air act of 1956 - (way to go UK government in fixing a problem in prompt time, erm). Anyho, regardless of the tech they pump out on request, just think of the Chinese economy as being at a late 19th century stage - but with a bigger population, and less public verifiable documentation of causes of death.
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Monday 20th January 2014 11:48 GMT JDX
Re: Not great
A few thousand dying immediately due to smog is not the same as hundreds of thousands, or millions having their health substantially damaged longer term. Work unprotected in an asbestos factory and you'd not immediately die either. It might be the case that everyone living in Beijing is losing decades from their lifespan.
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Sunday 19th January 2014 18:17 GMT Alan Brown
"Before leaping to the assumption that coal fire fueled power stations are at fault, perhaps that might first be established?"
They're not. Most have smokestack scrubbers (but there are better reasons for phasing them out) and use high quality imported Australian coal.
Modern chinese cars have clean exhausts too (Modulo shitty old diesels).
The real issue (as with London up to 1956) is domestic fires - most of which are coal fired, unmonitored, uncleaned and hellaciously filthy due to the low-quality local coal used.. If you live in Northern China you have a coal ration, for heating purposes - and taking that away without an acceptable replacement is going to cause ructions. (Domestic for this purpose includes coal-heated apartment blocks.)
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Friday 17th January 2014 22:33 GMT Mark 85
Scary indeed
Could it be that the Chinese government has found the ultimate population control method? I'm being somewhat tongue in cheek but that's tempered with their one-child laws and various other things they've done to control their numbers.
That air looks worse than what I've seen here on the west coast of the US (I'm actually north of California) during fire season. And the those numbers are horrifying.
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Saturday 18th January 2014 01:29 GMT Anonymous Coward
Sure, but think how glorious it must be to have avoided all those job-killing regulations! I'm sure that any right-thinking American (ahem) would trade long-term health and niggling little socialist details like being able to take your children outdoors or ever seeing the sun again in exchange for the two or three percent GDP boost you enjoy for a few years until the healthcare costs cancel it out!
Everyone repeat after me (until you believe it): "THE MARKETS WILL SOLVE THE PROBLEM! THE MARKETS WILL SOLVE THE PROBLEM! THE MARKETS WI--gack%&¥¢÷¶∆®COUGH hack ahem"
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Monday 20th January 2014 15:35 GMT Trevor_Pott
Environmental protections are for hippies. If you're rich enough you can afford a great excursion suit for those rare times you have to leave your hermetically sealed vehicle, office or house. The markets do solve the problem: you just don't like the solution.
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Saturday 18th January 2014 03:59 GMT Xiaofu
Hebei
The trafffic is only a small part of the pollution. Whilst it's true that the petrol is a lower/dirtier grade, the majority of Beijing's pollution wafts in from Hebei province where there's a lot of industry. I'm told that area is horribly polluted. But no sooner was the pollution index up to 600 than the winds have come and it's down to 112. That's passable for here. You can actually tell when the pollution sources are different from the PM2.5 and PM10 levels - you can usually smell it when the PM10 is high, but the PM2.5 is more insidious and is not always accompanied by visible smog.
Saying "the air is often crap in Shanghai" is not really true though, at least up until last year. Traffic pollution can get a bit stinky in Puxi (the West side of the river) but I never really experienced really bad pollution until late last year, and that smelt odd and made me feel physically ill (and I have Beijing lungs!). Shanghai certainly has a lot of grey skies, but that's usually fog rather than smog.
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Sunday 19th January 2014 12:13 GMT Peter2
Re: Hebei
Coal is going to be the biggest polluter, it always has been in Britain. Despite what some people smugly pronounce, we've had problems every bit as bad as China and the solutions look to be about the same.
I am wondering about cars though, since the UK had environmental regulations on cars before they have had a chance to cause really major pollution. In China when you say that the petrol is a lower grade, do you mean that it's lower octane fuel boosted to more usual levels with large amounts of lead, or high sulfur content?
I'm also wondering if you have any idea if western vehicles in huge concentrations just emit to high an amount of pollution, or if indigenous vehicles to China are built to less demanding standards (no catalytic converter's etc)
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Sunday 19th January 2014 18:08 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: Hebei
"I'm also wondering if you have any idea if western vehicles in huge concentrations just emit to high an amount of pollution, or if indigenous vehicles to China are built to less demanding standards (no catalytic converter's etc)"
I would be very much inclined to believe that all car manufactures build to the destination market standards so a Ford built for Californias strict emission laws is a very different beast to one built for China and likewise for everything else in between. Why would Ford or anyone else put expensive cat converts on a car being sold where that is not mandated and the fuel quality is likely to cause it to fail very soon anyway? They'd simply lose market share to companies prepared to cut costs.
At the more luxury end of the market where cost is less of an issue, "green" features, like any other non-mandated feature are what differentiates the product but price is the primary factor for everyone else.
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Monday 20th January 2014 12:48 GMT Xiaofu
Re: Hebei
It's got high sulphur content. The current standards in Beijing dictate <50ppm (assuming the petrol companies are really supplying petrol that meets these standards), with the future standards calling for <10ppm. Passenger vehicle emission standards have only just caught up to European standards, but I have no idea if the cars here emit more than the same international model. I imagine trying to apply the same standards to the fleets of crap-belching trucks throughout China wouldn't get very far.
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Sunday 19th January 2014 02:06 GMT Skymonrie
You know it's bad when even the Chinese Government admit there is a problem...It's also a bit hard to hide the problem, wait...it's easy to hide.
This is quite literally dissolving the old values of China and replacing them with the new, shiny, "what do i do with this suitcase full of money?!?!?" set. Having lived in China/Hong Kong for a few years I can only say the problem is...Louis vuitton. Without LV people wouldn't need to fire up the helicopter in order to go grab that must have bag.
In all sincerity though (and not taking in to account the ratio of money effectively spent), the Chinese government are starting to make some big changes to the way things are run in the name of environmental preservation in the places it counts most, education and infrastructure. You won't see so much solar power almost anywhere else...not that that matters with all the damn smog!!!
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Monday 20th January 2014 14:28 GMT Bumpy Cat
Re: Citations.
There were diplomatic feathers ruffled over that last year - the Chinese govt was doing the usual "problem? What problem?" thing (regardless of what they were actually doing to fix it). The US consulate was live-tweeting the measurements, and the Chinese govt was muttering about activities not falling under diplomatic cover. Looks like they've bowed to the inevitable.
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Sunday 19th January 2014 14:44 GMT JeffyPoooh
Actually, cars could be part of the solution
The problem with Chinese market cars is that they've failed to copy and paste the Clean Air Act into their local automobile emission regulations. Big mistake.
Cars with modern emission systems would actually (literally, really, seriously) clean that air. They can help (in total ever so slightly) to clean the air pollution that's probably mostly caused by power plants burning dirty old brown coal.
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Monday 20th January 2014 10:41 GMT Pascal Monett
Re: probably mostly caused by power plants burning dirty old brown coal
Unfortunately it would seem that the pollution problem is caused in greater share by individual furnaces using dirty coal for heating purposes.
The industry most likely has a share of responsibility, but it would therefor seem that it is much more the amount of population, its concentration and its heating source that is the issue.
Therefor, you could likely replace all cars with eletric versions, and convert all power plants to nuclear and you will not see the pollution issue disappear.
Not until people in Bejing can heat their homes with electrical-based solutions instead of coal-based.
And that will take a lot more time.
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Monday 20th January 2014 16:11 GMT Willybee
Re: probably mostly caused by power plants burning dirty old brown coal
Vast majority of domestic cooking of food is also done with coal too. I have many pictures of wheelbarrows on every street, delivering cakes of pressed coal dust; they look like two hockey pucks stacked, with holes drilled for drafting combustion O2 within.....
Pictures in storage, unfortunately, 3200 miles away.
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Monday 20th January 2014 15:27 GMT Willybee
Worse than Taipei in 2002 already....
When I went for a month in like 1985, when there were only a total of one million vehicles in the entire country, with very old diesel buses spewing smoke, I thought, wow.....if rapid growth continues, air quality in Beijing will be worse than Taipei soon. When I went again in 2002, it was already.
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Monday 20th January 2014 16:44 GMT Sheep!
Given this story has been revealed to be a hoax....
I can't help wondering where El Reg is lifting it's stories from second-hand....?
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/advisor/no-beijing-residents-not-watching-060031282.html
"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. "
This topic is closed for new posts.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
