Here are some pics of Beijing taken at Noon. Blade Runner comes to mind..

The setting in Blade Runner is dark and brooding. The city, perhaps due to its perpetual rain, has a lingering fog and darkness that is penetrated only by the neon street signs and huge video advertisements.

Beijing's thick smog and a violent thunder storm combined to make the noontime sky over China's capital look like dusk on Tuesday. The Globe and Mail's Mark MacKinnon posted this picture from the airport at 12:41 p.m. local time.

www.cbc.ca...

Unreal, darker than Oklahoma last week. Plants won't be a growing there today, Snapshots of the worlds future if we don't get our stuff together.

Amazing. Scary. What an eye opener.

Great post!

From what I understand, it's particularly dark because of the severe thunder storm. Still, even without a storm the smog problem in China is insane.

Here's a bit on information on China's pollution problems, and a few statistics...

1- According to the Chinese Ministry of Health, industrial pollution has made cancer China’s leading cause of death.

2- Every year, ambient air pollution alone killed hundreds of thousands of citizens.

3- 500 million people in China are without safe and clean drinking water.

Wikipedia...

The list goes on, it's pretty bad. I feel sorry for the poor people living there.

This story is in the News as well today. A bit ironic to the op as Blade Runner was set in the city of L.A

Los Angeles air pollution drops after tailpipe laws

Los Angeles air pollution - and its infamous eye sting - have declined due to California's strict vehicle emission controls, scientists have said. Despite a three-fold rise in the number of vehicles on southern California roads since 1960, air pollution there has decreased, a study found. That includes peroxyacetyl nitrate, known to irritate the eyes, the US government study found. The study "confirms" vehicle regulations worked, its author said. "LA's air has lost a lot of its 'sting,'" said lead author Ilana Pollack of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association's research centre at the University of Colorado Boulder. She said the study "confirms that California's policies to control emissions have worked as intended".

www.bbc.co.uk...

Originally posted by canucks555
The setting in Blade Runner is dark and brooding. The city, perhaps due to its perpetual rain, has a lingering fog and darkness that is penetrated only by the neon street signs and huge video advertisements.

yup...

Southern California used to look like that - the government cleaned it up.

Yes, it is the storm season here so we get thunderstorms and darkness. The last couple of days have been smoggy too but generally it is sunny and you cannot see the pollution. If you live here, you just have to accept it. The government-measured particle size is reported in the news and I read that they asked the USA embassy to not publish their own list of particle sizes as it may have conflicted with the official measurements.

This is a developing country and like any developing country, there are fewer restrictions to industry than there are in developed countries such as the USA or Europe. This means that there will be more noxious chemicals emitted into the atmosphere. Every government in every country wants to portray a good face and keep the bad news away from the population, so what is different here? By living in this world we have to be understanding of the larger issues and why sections of society may want to keep things hidden. Nothing new there, just that some people 'wake-up' to it later than others.

It is all rather alarming I agree, but what can you do? Nothing overnight and any changes which clean up the environment are going to have an impact on industry and therefore the economy. No country wants their economy to plummet, so changes have to be brought in slowly.

Why concentracte on Beijing anyway? Surely most developing countries have this pollution problem dont they? Look at London in the time of Jack the Ripper - wasn't that pretty bad too? At least it is portrayed in the movies that way. :-)

reply to post by qmantoo


The smog in LA used to be horrid; as well as other major US cities; even places like Tampa.

I recall many a thunderstorm in a relatively smog-free city, turning daytime into night time. Real, dark cloud thunderstorms have a tendency to do that, and before the weather changed, I remember them nearly daily. The lights at the school would come on for us lowly students to get around.

I think people are forgetting what weather used to be like already. I know before I left FL, most people forgot about our regular showers ... and started to complain when it did rain, while also complaining about drought and water tables being low.

I don't excuse your smog, nor anyone's. I'm appalled by the greed and lack of respect for the future and our collective health and resources. If we weren't so divided as a world; we'd all be helping each section of the world to succeed, and do so in a sustainable, clean way.

It has nothing to do with global warming, but just clean air and water, good health practices. Not strip mining our planet. Keeping it beautiful and clean for as long as it is around (barring asteroids, supervolcanoes, disastrous earthquakes, and the myriad of other risks that could wipe us from existence). I don't throw trash in my house because I can move to a new place or the world might end tomorrow (or not in my lifetime); in turn, we shouldn't trash the planet we call home, just because we can or it is more convenient than the alternative.


The pictures were interesting, but I expected it to be darker :p and there was a thread a few months ago with a similar comparison ... though I believe those pictures were taken at night