Friday, August 8, 2008

Haze, smog, fog, a little steam?

As you already know, the skies have been unforgiving to Beijing for the past week. All those images of Olympic stadium shrouded in a thick, murky layer of...what? That's been the debate all week. Some officials said it's like the steam after a shower, and that we can't possibly rely on pictures when it comes to determining pollution. (Well, the air quality tests tell us it's more than just a little steam. http://olympics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/07/on-bad-air-day-in-beijing-ioc-president-sees-fog/)

This hard-to-follow quote from International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge on Thursday sums up this 'complex' situation. “The fog you see is based on the basis of humidity and heat,” Rogge said at a news conference. “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.

1 comment:

Shruti said...

Hm...well, smog is "smoke and fog" so fog is heat and humidity and smog is heat and humidity with smoke.

This last sentence was as convoluted as Rogge's statement...