China's Toxic Air Pollution musings

I have decided to look at a recent environmental news story and I thought that since we have read White Noise recently, it would be worthwhile to look at an airborne toxic event in reality.

First it is worthwhile looking at the design, formatting and other effects used to make the article catch the readers eye. Starting straight away with the title "China's toxic air pollution resembles nuclear winter, say scientists", is catching and abrupt, the words toxic, pollution and nuclear winter are designed to shock the audience into reading further, especially combined with the two important words, "say scientists". To have this in the title gives the article a sense of credibility and a further sense of impending danger to wildlife and humankind. This combined with a large image of the Chinese population wearing masks over their faces to protect themselves increases the severity and weight of the article.
 
 A tarlo informed ecopoetic critic approach would be interesting in light of this article, to see the way this could be made into a word pool such as her previous works, as she says herself: "my hope is that this  dynamic of paying particular attention and taking responsibility serves as exemplar for engagement with larger issues and strengthens resistance to notions of outside agency" which would work well with this article. To use this approach to make the reader pay attention would be worthwhile, using words such as nuclear and toxic would help exemplify the article and the meanings it is trying to get across to the audience. This approach would also force the reader to think of the issues this raises and look further than the pollution in Beijing to wider issues.

 I believe the article is successful in getting across the message of the disaster happening around the city of Beijing but perhaps is not as successful in the scientific viewpoint it seems to heavily try to rely on. For instance the main part of scientific evidence is by growing a group of chilli and tomato seeds under an artificial lab light and then also growing the same amount of seeds in a suburban Beijing greenhouse to show the effect the smog has on photosynthesis. This is a small local experiment that can have many variables yet the article seems to reside on this as complete evidence that the smog is affecting the wildlife and plants of the city as well as humans. Also interestingly the lexis has now changed from the title saying it resembles a nuclear winter to the phrase "somewhat similar to a nuclear winter", this is very different from the title and the use of the word 'somewhat' is very telling. I do agree there is a clear problem here, the smog is indeed affecting wildlife and the cities inhabitants but the way this article is written is interesting, it varies from viewpoint to viewpoint and is ultimately trying to enhance the problem to get more media attention upon it.
I am not saying that the article will successfully manage to counter the problem, it is identifying something needs to be done and the effect this smog has on the city, that it does well, in my opinion more research and more coverage is necessary before definitive viewpoints are made.











This is the link to the article for those who are interested:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/25/china-toxic-air-pollution-nuclear-winter-scientists