And yet the eco-nuts STILL want to blame the US for being the 'worst source of pollution in the world'.

WTF guys....wanna fight pollution, go to china.

Sounds like a fair and balanced view by the PRC Central Committee.

i'm sure if you dug around on google earth you could find even more shocking examples of blatant pollution from China. Far as I know, that country doesn't have anything even remotely resembling the EPA. they can (and often do) dump toxic waste right into the rivers and let that shiat just wash down stream and eventually into the ocean.

Afterwards, the Chinese government did this:

But who needs clean air?

I say we become more like China and abolish the EPA.

You know how all your stuff says "Made in China"? Yeah, well there's a downside to that. When everything said "Made in America" we had the same problem. Look up what Pittsburgh used to be like. Pitch black in the middle of the day.

they chinese, they play joke, they put co₂ in your smoke.

make me some tea: I say we become more like China and abolish the EPA.

That's a great idea! Get rid of the EPA, the DOL, and... and... a third thing.

Give me a minute...

iwanttoeatyourchildren: I was working outside of Shanghai last year and it was so bad that one day the lobby of my hotel had its own layer of smog inside. I never understood how bad it can get until I experienced it myself.

one of the main reasons our company moved our electronics manufacturing overseas was because of China's lax environmental regs. there are some downright nasty byproducts from electronics manufacturing....we had all kinds of regs here in the states about what to do with some of our more vile waste containers. but china doesn't seem to care much about that sort of thing. we can pretty much just dump that shiat right in the river behind the plant.

It's gotten a lot better from what I've seen. In 2008, when I landed in Beijing International, the smog was so thick that visibility is maybe about 30 feet and, unlike fog, it had this reddish haze to it. It also had this smell that smelled not unlike, say, india ink. It's essentially soot from coal plants.

But when I got to China earlier this year (October), the visibility was actually pretty good and there was no smog for the period that I was there (about 2 weeks). So, believe it or not, it's getting better.

AuralArgument: I live in china, and yeah the pollution is bad the last few weeks, had to put plastic up around the windows to keep it from getting in

Cool. Jinan, eh? Neat. My uncle lives there.

rka: RexTalionis: It's gotten a lot better from what I've seen. In 2008, when I landed in Beijing International, the smog was so thick that visibility is maybe about 30 feet and, unlike fog, it had this reddish haze to it. It also had this smell that smelled not unlike, say, india ink. It's essentially soot from coal plants.

But when I got to China earlier this year (October), the visibility was actually pretty good and there was no smog for the period that I was there (about 2 weeks). So, believe it or not, it's getting better.

The winter months see a rise in coal particulates. I was there in Dec 2010 and it was bad. Then again in Feb 2011 and it was insanely bad. Once more in July and when I landed it was only marginally bad, and then we got rain and I was actually able to see the sun for 3 days straight.

Okay, fair enough. When I was there in 2008, it was right around Christmas, so that's probably why the smog was so bad. This October was pretty clear - sunny or cloudy for the entire 2 weeks I was there. Maybe I just got lucky.

SoCalSurfer: Does that pollution eventually reach the shores of california? Will it be dilluted? Honestly this pisses me the fark off...A LOT

Yes.

But don't worry, because it has nothing to do with climate change or genetic mutations or long-term health impairment.

If only the USA had signed onto Kyoto...

Marine1: You know, I wonder... even if we got rid of a good number of our air quality regulations... would it even be possible for the US to put out as much pollution as China does?

Absolutely, yes. In fact most of our large cities were much like that up until environmental regulations started clamping down on it.

I can even remember in the '80s, driving from Vegas to Los Angeles, and we'd enter a brown cloud, thick as pea soup, as soon as we hit San Bernardino. It was awful. Those days are long gone.

That's what East Germany used to say when I was allowed to go to school in West Berlin because of Smog Alerts.

"The coal dust in the air...it reminds me of home. Mind you, I live in a chimney..."

WASN'T allowed.

Gah.

Vietnam is really getting farked by China by being downstream.

Also, as I recall, the Chinese have some coal mine fires that dwarf anything we have. Farking huge bastard fires. Huge. Huge.

Leskay: Chinese bird at work told me quite often it's sand storms, not industrial smog. She went on to say that the braniac Mao Zedong chopped down all the surrounding forests and this was the cause.

Smart girl who sat next to me.
Doesn't mean it's true.

Well, sandstorms are a major worry for northern cities in China. The sand would just blow right off of the Gobi desert. There's a reason why, in Feng Shui, Chinese buildings don't have northward facing doors.