Beijing Air Quality
Update On BeijingAirQuality.com
Saturday, August 2nd, 2008
If you frequent this website then you might be aware that I conducted an experiment to try and determine whether the daily "forecasts" on the BeijingAirQuality.cn website were accurate or if they were merely Communist propaganda intended to put the Beijing Political Olympic Games in the most favorable light, uh…air possible. Five days into the experiment, I had some serious doubts about the accuracy of the site’s data and decided to abandon this project.
For old-time’s sake, I decided to take another quick peek at their statistics today. As it turns out, a user name and password are now required to even access the site! What does that tell you? Mmm, hmm. I thought so. Me, too. (Cough! Cough!)
Forecasts From www.beijingairquality.cn Don’t Match Up With Reality
Monday, July 28th, 2008
As those of you who frequent this website know, I’ve been recreating the forecasts from the www.beijingairquality.cn website here on 400meteroval.com for the past 5 days. I reported that the website "is a collaboration between the National Remote Sensing Centre of China and the European Space Agency, so it’s probably not completely suspect." I also resolved to find out "what kind of readings we get in the days leading up to the Olympic Games (Cough! Cough!)," knowing that I would most likely be doing a follow-up report that wasn’t favorable.
Beijing Air Quality Forecast
Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008
I found a website that provides a forecast for the air quality in Beijing. It is a collaboration between the National Remote Sensing Centre of China and the European Space Agency, so it’s probably not completely suspect. One thing I did notice was that the color-scheme they use is a little misleading. Blue is for "good", which makes sense, but green is for "medium" which makes no sense. I decided to set up a Beijing Air Quality Forecast on 400meteroval.com based on the data from the Beijing Air Quality website, but with a twist. Since we’re dealing with smog here, I thought I’d color code it in good old fashioned gray scale. The worse the air quality, the darker the shade of gray will be. Let’s see what kind of readings we get in the days leading up to the Olympic Games (Cough! Cough!).
Speaking (Cough!) Of Beijing (Cough! Cough!)
Monday, July 7th, 2008With a month and a day left before the start of the Beijing Olympics, UK’s Sunday Times has published the results of a pollution test revealing that the Beijing air quality around the Olympic stadium is 5 times worse than what is considered safe by the World Health Organisation:
Chinese officials admit they can no longer guarantee that the air quality will match international standards as pollution tests by The Sunday Times revealed the full extent of the challenge facing British athletes. With just five weeks to go before the start of the Beijing Games, tests conducted outside the national stadium — known as the Bird’s Nest — and at Tiananmen Square, the starting point of the marathon, showed the air is thick with particulate pollution. Even the Chinese government’s official air pollution index — which monitors a range of pollutants, including carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide — is running at double the level recommended by the WHO.
"Even the Chinese government’s official air pollution index," indeed. What’s a poor, little totalitarian regime gonna do when even their own propaganda machine can’t deliver good news when called upon to do so?