Posted on 07/28/2008 8:33:23 AM PDT by traumer
With only 11 days to go until the start of the Beijing Olympics, this was the smoggy scene in the Chinese capital yesterday.
Visibility was down to half a mile in some parts, including the National Stadium, while the Athletes' Village complex could not be seen from the nearby Olympic Green.
The city's notoriously polluted air has cast a cloud over the Games, with organisers threatening to postpone events if it is bad.
City officials confidently - and possibly unwisely - predict that air quality will be good for the Games. Their efforts to curb pollution include taking half of Beijing's 3.3million vehicles off the roads and closing factories.
The grayish haze was one of the worst seen in Beijing in the past month despite tough traffic restrictions imposed a week ago to help reduce pollution.
The city's notoriously polluted air remains one of the biggest question marks hanging over the games, which begin on August 8.
'The air quality in August will be good,' Du Shaozhong, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau, told reporters on Sunday. He did not explain the reasons for his optimism.
Du blamed the thick haze on a combination of fog and light wind unable to blow away the pollution, but he said pollution levels now are 20 per cent lower than one year ago in similar weather conditions. He did not provide any details.
'Our job is to decrease the pollution as much as possible, but sometimes it is very common to have fog in Beijing at this time,' Du said.
Pollution: Tough traffic restrictions have been in force since July 1 to improve the air quality in the Chinese capital, but athletes will be at the mercy of the winds
Olympic athletes have been trickling into Beijing, but are expected to begin arriving in larger numbers this week.
Some, though, were headed to training sites in South Korea, Japan and other places to avoid the Beijing air until the last possible minute.
'No, it doesn't really look so good. Yesterday was better but the day I arrived, Tuesday, was awful,' said Gunilla Lindberg, an International Olympic Committee vice president from Sweden who is staying in the Athletes' Village.
Jacques Rogge, president of the IOC, has warned that outdoor endurance events will be postponed if the air quality is poor.
Drastic efforts to curb pollution include pulling half of Beijing's 3.3 million vehicles off the roads, closing factories in the city and in a half dozen surrounding provinces, and halting most construction in the capital.
Some 300,000 heavily polluting vehicles, such as aging industrial trucks, have been banned since July 1.
Experts have said that while the measures are sure to reduce pollution, they are not a guarantee for blue skies during the games.
Wind can blow pollution to Beijing from thousands of miles (kilometers) away, while a lack of wind can cause chemicals and particulate matter to build up in the city.
'There's only so much you can do with local emission reduction,' said Veerabhadran Ramanathan, an atmospheric scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego.
He is leading a team that is studying the impact of Beijing's pollution reduction measures.
'You're basically at the mercy of the winds,' he said.
Why all these complaints about the smog? The industrial pollutants are like getting your super-sized vitamins and minerals right from the air you breath!
And what direction would you propose they blow it?
That smog's going somewhere, question is: where?
Yup. Send this photo to AlBore - altho he’d probably just say it was our smog blown over there.
Except for the wee fact that human lungs aren't designed to absorb vitamins and minerals from the air.
I wonder how many athlete's careers will be permanently damaged by attending these games due to respiratory damage.
Maybe if the smog continues for a few generations survival of the fittest will fix that.
Maybe that's their plan! The Chinese are going to evolve to suit smog air, then they'll blanket the planet in smog and kill off all non smog adapted Chinese, thereby taking control of the planet and claiming victory for Communism.
Victory through smog! The smog war machine!
the tibetan monks must have used the secret prayer weapon -- no doubt the market for transplant organs will soon be flooded with used tibetan monk body parts...
Bush had a hole in his schedule the second week in August and needed somewhere to hang out.
These incidents are weather inspired, as an inversion layer sets in, the surface air gets trapped and has no where to go except by being displaced horizontally; if no appreciable wind occurs then the condition can persist until the next air mass comes through.
I'm just an idea person. I leave the implementation to others.:)
Paging AlGore, clean up on aisle Chen.
I thought they were planning a massive cloud seeding operation immediately prior to the start of the games.
You can’t really believe that a secret tibetan prayer can achieve a polution/green algae/locust/earthquake effects....
Wouldn’t this be the ideal time for the networks broadcasting the games to put on a “green” broadcast, as they did with NFL games for a week last year?
Have they got the guts? Are their principles solid? Can they stand up to China?
Oh.
Never mind.
Brilliant, insightful comment. /sarc
‘You’re basically at the mercy of the winds,’ he said.
Everybody SING!
The ants are your friends, they’re blowing in the wind.
The ants sir, are blowing in the wind.
Bring on the popcorn, this should be interesting.
This should be so embaressing to the ChiComs bigtime.
That flag pin should be the least of the little ChiComs worries.
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