Beijing Disappears behind Smog

[Anonymous]

Wow! The smog that fogs China is shocking! I'm gonna share these images with my students. Thanks for sharing!
Before/After Images: http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-before-and-after-beijing-smog-slider-20151202-htmlstory.html

[Anonymous]

Thank you for sharing! This is such a powerful image!

[Anonymous]

This picture is horrifying. Can you imagine how hard it must be to breathe? According to Greenpeace, air samples showed that Beijing's air contained heavy metals, including arsenic levels concentrated three times higher than national standards. Just as scary - the WHO recommends a maximum limit of 25 micrograms of pollution per cubic meter. Beijing is getting as high as 634 micrograms per cubic meter. Yikes.

[Anonymous]

As a person who used to suffer with asthma, I can't imagine how difficult life would be trying to see, let alone breathe, through such thick, acrid smog. This brings me to my question, but first a story.

One janitor who is about twice my age at my school told me that back in the 70s and 80s, smog pollution was so bad that it was difficult to see more than a mile in any direction. As a reference, I teach at Monrovia High School, and the school sits at the base of the Sierra Madre Mountains. He told me on a good day, he was lucky enough to see the silhouette of the mountains! Thankfully, due to emissions reforms, I can take in the beautiful mountains today with crystal clarity. But the question remains: Was this true?

To anyone who lived through those smoggier days, was it true that the haze was so bad you couldn't even see relatively close objects? If so, I have another question to pose: Do you think the Chinese government will likewise begin to reform and enforce the emission quality of their vehicles, factories, plants, refineries, and so on? I really hope this is a transitory phase of modernization for them, because even a generation breathing that toxic cloud can spell trouble for generations to come...

[Anonymous]

Anyone else see these reports a few weeks ago about the sale of bottled "Canadian mountain air" in China? While I'm sure there's an ounce of truth to it given the reports I've read on pollution in China, I can't help but feel like the coverage of this is an attempt to make the Chinese look foolish...

http://www.npr.org/2015/12/25/461005649/bottled-canadian-air-sells-well-in-china

[Anonymous]

Wow thanks for sharing these resources! The climate change conference could not have come at a better (or worse if your China) time. It is incredible how much smog is in China, as seen in the before and after images posted by Jose Sanchez. These are really great for students because they can interact with them. It would also be a fun science project to have students to this exact same picture project in the Los Angeles Basin. There can definitely be some smoggy days in California but this is by far the worse smog I have ever seen. I did also hear that were was a company selling bottled air, this seems ridiculous and it is of coarse taking advantage of the Chinese people but I wonder if you can actually smell the fresh mountain air when you open up a bottle
The LA times article was informative on what it is like to live in a city with so much smog, thanks for sharing.
With China's government so locked down away from the world I wonder how they feel about having such terrible climate at a time that the world is taking about climate change. I have seen many specials about scientists in China working on "green technology" and ways in improve water in the rivers and what not. It seems that the environmental issues in the world's most populated country seem to be getting more gloomy. (pun intended)

[Anonymous]

Wow, thank you for sharing these. As an Anatomy and Physiology teacher, I can definitely use these as my hook for the respiratory system! My school is located around an industrial area, and I think showing students these images can help them think about the impacts of pollution on their own bodies!

[Anonymous]

This is terrible. I hope with the new world guidelines that took place in Paris China will start doing something about their air quality. It is just unacceptable to do live under smog.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for sharing this informative and visual article! Although very disturbing to see, it is unfortunately the current reality that China finds itself in if environmental conditions do not improve in the near future. This article is a great visual tool for EL and students with disabilities, in that it makes the current event more accessible to these subgroups of students through images. It would be great to have students research some of the ways China could help reduce the smog emissions, and maybe what the health related risks are if something is not done about this issue. The students could then present these findings to their peers, and they could have a lively discussion on how this connects back to Los Angeles, and what we can do hear locally to influence our smog emissions here. When I was in Beijing this past summer, I definitely experienced one of the smog alerts they had, and saw the masks that people wore to try and protect themselves.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for sharing this article! I am currently teaching my students about the problems of political party polarization in America. I am planning to show my students a TED talk, and it uses various contentious issues in America as a way to teach students about how political parties tend to have different perspectives on key issues, and this causes issues to not be solved. The first issue that is discussed is global warming/ climate change. I think this article is great because it is so visually powerful for showing students the actual causes of climate change.

[Rob_Hugo@PortNW]

An area of China larger than California disappeared in smog for with an off-the-chart Air Quality Index of 587 (scale is usually from 0-500).
President Xi Jinping is in Paris for the Climate Change Conference. The LATimes article has some interesting (or disturbing) pictures.
[font=Georgia, serif]http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-beijing-smog-off-charts-20151202-story.html[/font]

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