Beijing Blade Runner

yeah it's bad over there. 3rd day in a row of horrible smog 25x the pollution we deem unhealthy in the usa.

So glad it wasn't like this when I was over there about two months ago.
 
Ryan Patrick O'Hara said:
yeah it's bad over there. 3rd day in a row of horrible smog 25x the pollution we deem unhealthy in the usa.

So glad it wasn't like this when I was over there about two months ago.
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It reminds me of when I was in Bangkok in 1994. While I didn't see an 'areal view'... just from the street level the smog limited visibility to 'blocks'...
 
If I remember correctly, Ridley originally wanted to film Blade Runner in Shanghai, but obviously they ended up shooting in a studio (I think for monetary reasons).

Also a big reason why the air looks so clear in the pic from 2010, is that China made a massive effort to clean up Beijing for the 2008 Olympics. Part of that included moving factories out of the city, because obviously it would make China look bad if the whole world came there and saw pollution. It's unfortunate to see that after the world left, they went back to their old ways and thus the smog they have now.

*Interesting fact: another drastic step the Chinese government took in preparation for the Olympics, was rounding up all stray animals en masse and killing them.
 
http://www.businessinsider.com/us-national-parks-worst-smog-2012-5

Sequoia National Park in California, famed for its groves of giant sequoia trees (some of the biggest and oldest trees in the world) appears as an unspoilt span of canyons, lakes, forests and mountain peaks. But looks can be deceiving; the park also happens to have the worst air pollution of any of the 52 national parks in America, according to a new ranking from the Associated Press:

While forest fires create some pollution, most comes from the San Joaquin Valley, the expanse of farmland that is home to California's two busiest north-south trucking highways, diesel freight train corridors, food processing plants and tens of thousands of diesel tractors.
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A representative of the National Park Association told the AP that ozone levels in Sequoia National Park are as bad as Los Angeles.
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Actually, I've seen a quote to the effect that it's 50% of the pollution in LA coming from China. It's funny, that even if we manage to get the pollution level generated locally in LA down to zero, and ban all the cars trucks and all the fireplaces and barbecues and industrial output, just down to ZERO, you'd still have unhealthy air quality due to China. Even funnier, is that it will get worse and worse. Heck, one day we may experience today's Beijing air quality in LA while in Beijing it will be something to make birds fall dead from the sky... I read yesterday that the air is so bad in Beijing, that visibility is bad INDOORS - it's as if you had a crowd of people smoking in your bedroom - the haze of smoke just hangs in the air indoors too. Crazy.
 
I remember the one time I was in Los Angeles years ago, there was a point where the smog was literally making me cough and gag a bit. And I was in a car!
 
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