The Chinese's own air pollution index is at 95, a somewhat high value, especially for recent days. (I don't think anyone thinks the Chinese are accurately reporting their air quality anyway.) On the Chinese scale, this is a "Blue Sky day." (The U.S. would rank it "unhealthy for everyone.")
Chinese authorities prefer to call this "fog."
International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge was a master of obfuscation today:
“The fog you see is based on the basis of humidity and heat. It does not mean to say that this fog is the same as pollution. It can be pollution, but the fog doesn’t mean necessarily that it is pollution. Of course, we prefer clean skies, but the most important thing is the health of the athletes being protected.”Baghad Bob could not have done better.
2 comments:
Personally I can't wait to watch these Olympics, just to marvel at the effects this pollution will have on the competitors. I'm expecting pole-vaulters to become stuck, half-way up their arc, in air as thick as a cashmere sweater; swimmers diving into crystal-clear blue water at the starting gun and emerging minutes later from water stained coffee-brown by settling "Chinese Death Fog"; mightily-hurled discuses slicing through air the color of an elephant's dusty nutsac before becoming lodged in airborne filth the consistency of chilled Jello pudding; rowers churning up an angry sea of toxic sludge that quickly congeals in the DNA of a standard toad and mutates it into Godzilla, who then promptly expires from pollution poisoning.
It's going to be a BLAST, people!
Yeah, but their air goes up to 500!
What would that be in US air?
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