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chaz47
Joined: 22 Apr 2005
Posts: 157
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 Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2015 9:40 am Post subject: Horrid air quality in east Asia lately... thanks China? |
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I've lived in Busan, South Korea for nearly 10 years now and I've always thought the air quality has been decent here. It seems like the ocean keeps the worst of it out of the city. But lately, it's been worse here than in Seoul. It's pretty pretty bad. I'm considering moving to Bangkok and now that I check the map, the air quality there is actually better... very shocking.
I can only surmise this is due to China. It's never been this bad here. And if you look at the map in the link, due west are *hazardous* conditions. Heading east you can see similarly crappy air quality in Japan.
http://aqicn.org/map/#@g/22.9637/130.4144/4z |
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EFL Educator
Joined: 17 Jul 2013
Posts: 988
Location: Cape Town
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| Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2015 1:04 pm Post subject: |
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Air pollution is also crappy in Bangkok....plenty of lead filled carbon monoxide exhaust fumes and dust on the roads and traffic jams everywhere...but yes the air pollution level here is definitely better than in China!  |
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water rat
Joined: 30 Aug 2014
Posts: 1098
Location: North Antarctica
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| Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2015 1:20 pm Post subject: |
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Western nations including America, Canada, Britain, France, Italy, Russia and Germany have been burning coal and oil since the 1840s. Now the Western media sees fit to blame China for global warming and cooling and air pollution. Everywhere has had cars, trucks and airplanes as long as it was possible for the sheer prestige and convenience of it. Now the Chinese, and your Korean friends are the man up, having heavy industry smokin' along, driving around in cars like nobody's business. It's regrettable from an environmental standpoint, but that's human nature. They're making hay while the sun shines. Are they to stop this because you don't like it? Why don't you declare war against them? Chaz47 vs China, East Asia and the Western World. Let's see who wins. I'm on your side, buddy. Break a leg.  |
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plumpy nut
Joined: 12 Mar 2011
Posts: 1652
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| Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2015 7:12 pm Post subject: |
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| Does the People's Paradise have another crappy export in addition to the cheap items it inundates Asia with, half of which don't work. |
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happyinshangqiu
Joined: 20 Jan 2015
Posts: 279
Location: Has specialist qualifications AND local contacts.
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| Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2015 1:52 am Post subject: |
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| plumpy nut wrote: |
| Does the People's Paradise have another crappy export in addition to the cheap items it inundates Asia with, half of which don't work. |
The reason they are able to profit from their cheap but crappy products is because people refuse to pay for crappy but expensive products manufactured in their home countries. Take for example - the demise of the British car industry.
Slag China off all you want, your eyes light up when you see that microwave oven being sold for under 20 bucks - just like the rest of humanity.  |
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chaz47
Joined: 22 Apr 2005
Posts: 157
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| Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2015 12:58 pm Post subject: |
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| Well said CB. |
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water rat
Joined: 30 Aug 2014
Posts: 1098
Location: North Antarctica
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| Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2015 2:58 pm Post subject: |
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| cb400 wrote: |
Generally Asian cities are just big toilets. China is unbelievably dirty and polluted people still openly defecate in the streets.
Vietnamese cities are crowded and full of garbage plus full of unregulated scooters.
Thailand has huge traffic problems and the pollution associated with that.
Laos and Cambodia are doing there best to kill all their forest and wildlife.. Cambodia is even running out of spiders to eat!! http://thediplomat.com/2015/02/the-cambodian-tarantula-hunters/
The commie excuse of 'well the west use to be polluted, use coal bla bla bla' is just nonsense for the unintelligent to follow, that is why the Chinese and some posters sprout it.
The developing nations or 3rd world toilets do not have to follow the worse examples set by civilized nations, they should be looking at places like Singapore and Japan and copying that model, not looking at 1800's Britain and saying "yes " that it. Might as well replace all those black luxury cars with horses and buggies they had those in the 1800's also. |
Do you imagine the West is less guilty of trashing the environment? Their cities may be nicer to look at, but it's not like they don't produce garbage, pollution or consume natural resources.
As for your examples of Singapore and Japan...
Singapore once boasted the richest biodiversity on the planet. Now if you see any wildlife it will be a cockroach so overwhelmed with toxins it can't even scramble away from the light. (Also, the hugest rats I have ever seen were in Singapore)
Japan is famed for the sardonically named 'Dream Island' - a landfill extension of Tokyo into its bay made of nothing but compresses consumer goods.
You remind me of an American I knew in Arabia who felt all superior when he read about the lake of filth and excrement outside of Jeddah. I pointed out that America's Gulf of Mexico region was now a gargantuan dead zone a thousand times bigger than that lake of gunk which isn't even connected to the environment beyond it.
You are wrong, the west did not use to be polluted. It still is. It's just better concealed. Do you know that lumber companies in the American west leave a few hundred yards of trees along the highways that conceal hundreds of square miles of felled forest to maintain the illusion that all is well?
If you read this article, you will see that much of the problem is consumerism and technology, which are hardly confined to the "uncivilized" world.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2014/oct/01/george-monbiot-war-on-the-living-world-wildlife |
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cb400
Joined: 27 Sep 2010
Posts: 274
Location: Vientiane, Laos
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water rat
Joined: 30 Aug 2014
Posts: 1098
Location: North Antarctica
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| Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2015 4:09 pm Post subject: |
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All right I will, but now I can tell you are a bad teacher. You have been quite unnecessarily hostile and rude, and incidentally shown your small-mindedness in believing yourself superior to others. What kind of a person thinks only his own nation civilized?
I am trying to show the extent of the greater problem - the big picture, while you merely resent your ignorance being shown up.
Result (for both me and your students I have no doubt) - I really don't care to listen to anything you have to say anymore.
Good day to you. |
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happyinshangqiu
Joined: 20 Jan 2015
Posts: 279
Location: Has specialist qualifications AND local contacts.
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| Posted: Tue Feb 17, 2015 7:30 am Post subject: |
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| cb400 wrote: |
The question is about China's pollution effecting the rest of Asia.
The Answer is yes.
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They all pollute themselves!
No planes, trains, cars, plastic crap everywhere in Korea? No big skyscrapers everywhere being constructed as we speak? No tons of subway lines in one of the biggest cities in Asia? You make it sound that big bad China is deliberately polluting a pristine, organic cabbage patch across the water. |
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chaz47
Joined: 22 Apr 2005
Posts: 157
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| Posted: Wed Feb 18, 2015 8:40 am Post subject: |
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Some of the people on this thread are being aggressively apologetic to point of tantrum-esque whining. I suggest you revisit my original post. The air quality here has gotten drastically worse this year, I've lived in the same coastal city for 10 years. Until this year, the air quality here on the coast was pretty good. Now it's bad, worse than the capital somedays. The island to the south, Jeju, also has bad air now and no large industry to speak of.
It's the right of the China to advance its economy. No one is arguing that. Although, they should be more conscientious of the effect they're having outside their borders. If you're of the mind to deny that perhaps you should put the kool-aid down and go outside. |
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happyinshangqiu
Joined: 20 Jan 2015
Posts: 279
Location: Has specialist qualifications AND local contacts.
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| Posted: Wed Feb 18, 2015 11:25 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| quote="chaz47"]Some of the people on this thread are being aggressively apologetic to point of tantrum-esque whining. I suggest you revisit my original post. The air quality here has gotten drastically worse this year, |
I was in Korea in 2007 for the first time and it was as polluted as hell then. I remember on the first day there there was all kids of black shite up my nose.
| Quote: |
| I've lived in the same coastal city for 10 years. Until this year, the air quality here on the coast was pretty good. Now it's bad, worse than the capital somedays. The island to the south, Jeju, also has bad air now and no large industry to speak of. |
Korea is an industrial nation, as is Japan - it is easy to blame China for everything but the facts are, the Koreans and the Japanese are more the capable of conjouring up their own pollution.
| Quote: |
| It's the right of the China to advance its economy. No one is arguing that. Although, they should be more conscientious of the effect they're having outside their borders. If you're of the mind to deny that perhaps you should put the kool-aid down and go outside. |
You are drinking kool-aid thinking that Korea and Japan do not contribute to their own pollution.
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chaz47
Joined: 22 Apr 2005
Posts: 157
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| Posted: Wed Feb 18, 2015 1:07 pm Post subject: |
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| happyinshangqiu wrote: |
[
| Quote: |
| quote="chaz47"]Some of the people on this thread are being aggressively apologetic to point of tantrum-esque whining. I suggest you revisit my original post. The air quality here has gotten drastically worse this year, |
I was in Korea in 2007 for the first time and it was as polluted as hell then. I remember on the first day there there was all kids of black shite up my nose.
| Quote: |
| I've lived in the same coastal city for 10 years. Until this year, the air quality here on the coast was pretty good. Now it's bad, worse than the capital somedays. The island to the south, Jeju, also has bad air now and no large industry to speak of. |
Korea is an industrial nation, as is Japan - it is easy to blame China for everything but the facts are, the Koreans and the Japanese are more the capable of conjouring up their own pollution.
| Quote: |
| It's the right of the China to advance its economy. No one is arguing that. Although, they should be more conscientious of the effect they're having outside their borders. If you're of the mind to deny that perhaps you should put the kool-aid down and go outside. |
You are drinking kool-aid thinking that Korea and Japan do not contribute to their own pollution.
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What city were you in? Seoul is terrible generally all the time. Busan used to be tolerable and Jeju was pristine. |
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happyinshangqiu
Joined: 20 Jan 2015
Posts: 279
Location: Has specialist qualifications AND local contacts.
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| Posted: Wed Feb 18, 2015 1:44 pm Post subject: |
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| chaz47 wrote: |
What city were you in? Seoul is terrible generally all the time. Busan used to be tolerable and Jeju was pristine. |
I was in two cities over the course of two years, Changwon and Seoul. |
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cb400
Joined: 27 Sep 2010
Posts: 274
Location: Vientiane, Laos
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