China, Pollution & the Apocalypse

Lucky said:

http://blogs.theage.com.au/entertainment/archives/2006/09/last_laugh_the_5.html

wouldn't worry too much about the pollution in china getting us, it ends in the next 24 hours according this bloke in Texas , nuclear holocaust or something along those lines and 4/5 of the worlds population will be gone in the next 13 months. Don't say I didn't warn you

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Apparently the only place that will escape is Texas, the author's home state.

..Hawkins says that, as long as your body is not deficient in sodium and potassium, you won't get radiation poisoning. So if you're not actually caught in one of today's nuclear blasts, make sure you get plenty of salt and honey into you (the foods recommended by Hawkins to make you invulnerable to radiation sickness)..

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waza1960 said:

I think this planet is a lot less fragile than you and other greenies believe. Maybe this planet is just constantly changing and our importance and influence over it is grossly overstated.

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Maybe you want to rethink that.

The pic by saroq reminds me of flying into Shanghai a few months back - first visit. There was a thick dirty brown layer of smog over the city and I couldn't see the buildings through a fair proportion of it. I have never seen anything so bad despite having visited large cities in a dozen different countries over the years.

The government calls it "mist" apparently.

johenmo said:

The pic by saroq reminds me of flying into Shanghai a few months back - first visit. There was a thick dirty brown layer of smog over the city and I couldn't see the buildings through a fair proportion of it. I have never seen anything so bad despite having visited large cities in a dozen different countries over the years.

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Possibly the Chinese Govt decided the 1 child policy wasn't working fast enough and they've decided to slowly poison the population.

I was in China in 2008 before the Olympics. Beijing first then Shanghai. Over the 10 days my eyes were always red and sore. By about day 3 I had an irritated throat.

I too remember the flight into Shanghai. Orange fog everywhere. Standing at the bund I think visibility was maybe 1 KM in either direction. Very scary.

It's quite sad they didn't apply some of the lessons we in the west have learned from making the same mistakes. Economic growth at the expense of the environment is a false economy. Without a healthy environment there really isn't an economy.

Just ask the Anasazi Indians what happens when you don't respect the environment.

sydboy007 said:

It's quite sad they didn't apply some of the lessons we in the west have learned from making the same mistakes. Economic growth at the expense of the environment is a false economy. Without a healthy environment there really isn't an economy.

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The only thing the west have done is export their smog to other countries.

China's pollution is a sad and unnecessary symptom of the wrong way to grow an economy...however, the risk to the earth from this pales in significance to the smouldering ruins of the Fukushima Nuclear Facility....If they can't manage to get that situation under control and decommission the site, the world risks a disaster on a scale never before witnessed....Its conceivable in a worst case scenario that the bulk of Northern Hemisphere inhabitants could be wiped out. Of course that's the Zero-hedge version, I hope reality is not so dire.

November is when they try and move the fuel...i think a trip to Tassie is on the cards...

We've been lucky in that through the heat wave here, the winds have persisted and the air has been clear.