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China's Yangtze River Turns Red
redletterdave writes "The Yangtze River, the third longest river in the world traditionally known as the 'golden watercourse,' mysteriously blushed for the first time on Sept. 6. Residents in the surrounding area near the city of Chongqing, where the Yangtze connects to the Jialin River, literally stopped in their tracks when they noticed their once golden river had turned a shocking shade of red. Residents have carefully crept down to the riverbanks for the past few days to save some of the red, tomato juice-like river water in bottles. Early predictions from scientists say the red water was likely a result of pollution, but investigators are still investigating the unknown cause."
Soon Moh She will lead the workers out of their factories and part the Yellow Sea.
Obvious propaganda from the chinese communist party.
Sig? Heil
They've unleashed gods wrath on us with their patent wars....
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Maybe my eyes need to be checked, but it looks brown to me.
Trying to figure out the scientific explanation behind this isn't nerdy enough?
I was looking at some of the photos linked in that article, and I noticed that some of them are pretty obviously photoshopped. I'm sure the river was red, but I'm not so sure it was such a dramatic shade of red. You can see where the editing was sloppy and bled over into the arm and thumb of the person holding the bottle, and the arm of the guy behind, as well as some sections that are probably the actual shade of red that the river turned.
Blood from sacrifices at Foxconn factory?
Here is a picture that I remember from way back - this is a red river in the city of Zaporizhia in Ukraine, this city has (or had) a number of factories, smelters, motor factories, I think most of them were just dumping the waste right into Dnepr (the main river in Ukraine) and then all that water flows into the Black sea.
You can't handle the truth.
I'm from Cleveland. Call me when the Yangste is on fire.
I am officially gone from
Aluminium plants produce a huge quantity of "red mud" which is red from iron oxide. A spill could well color the whole river red.
See e.g. here where the mud spilled through a broken dam in Hungary: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/gallery/2010/10/05/GA2010100502818.html
There are chemicals that can cause it but the other option is all the fertilizer resulted in a red tide, a type of algae. For wildlife it's as bad or worse than a chemical spill. The blooms can come on suddenly and should fade once the food source gets used up.
When Android was in China's land ... let my cell phones go! .. let my cell phones go!
Just trolled so hard they could not stand
Go down, Samsung, way down in China's land,
tell ol' Jintao to let my cell phones go!
(Nah, it just doesn't quite have the same ring to it)
I am officially gone from
Only Glorious Red Rivers for Glorious Red Chinese Communist Republic! Soon all waters and newborn babies everywhere will shine triumphantly with Glorious Red Hue!
"Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff."
- Deep Thought
I blame Obama. Who's with me?
Just let the Jews go. It only gets worse from here.
- Pharaoh
Some of the religious nuts will probably claim this is bibilical, but more likely, somebody dumped some industrial waste.
Something like that happened in San Jose, CA about twenty years ago. Someone dumped several big industrial plating baths into the sewers all at once. This killed most of the bacteria that digest waste in the sewerage treatment plant. So for about three days, raw sewerage was dumped into the San Francisco Bay. Big mess, especially since there isn't much water flow in the south end of San Francisco Bay to dilute that stuff. It could be both seen and smelled. EPA fined San Jose millions for that. San Jose found and fined the plating company.
And then they get "sync'd"?
Now imagine that with 14 million women and poor sanitation.
a bloom caused by excess nutrients, i.e. pollution, in the water ?
maybe a kind of algae ?
that would be my guess.
Absolute statements are never true
Based on a quick study of the poorly Photoshopped image (you can clearly see the mask lines, and the bits they forgot to alter) it looks like someone simply doubled the saturation on the water.
I've made an attempt to restore the image to something approaching reality.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I have mod points, where is the option +1 Fucking gross comment.
There most likely is no god
Why are you trying to turn this into a religious argument? There most certainly is a god, and I've got a Wikipedia article that proves it.
It wouldn't be the first time dye turned a chinese river red
They said it's not the normal red-tide algae because that algae grows in salt water, but this is a freshwater river.
China is notorious for its poor environmental practices and there are so many ways to get red, from organic pollutants to heavy metal salts to industrial dyes and coloring agents. The "Golden Watercourse" has run golden for many thousands of years, the chance of a sudden color shift not the result of human intervention (read dumping) though possible is vanishingly remote.
A similar event along the Yangtze happened in February of 2008 when the river ran red and authorities found large amounts of Ammonium Nitrate and Metal Permanganates.
A large number of folks talk about the advantages for business and society of not having to tow strict environmental laws and regulations. The advantages for business are clear, society as a whole, not so much. China is a good place to look at what happens when people do as they please. The results are sometime ugly and other times full on disasters.
Great, another dumb FSM heretic. You can run but you can't hide, She will punish you for your beliefs and you'll never see her coming!
Is there a reason Roman is getting trounced?
Probably his reputation. To some people mod points are a weapon to use on their "foes", I don't agree with roman_mir 99.9% of the time he opens his mouth about politics, but there is always a lot more to a person than their political opinions. Down modding his interesting and on-topic post above is just petty vindictiveness from someone he has offended in the past. Slashdot really isn't that much different to a village in the dark ages, some people get noticed more because of what they regularly talk about. If you're one of these people, (as roman is), and your opinions are unpopular with the wrong people, they will try and hound you out of "their" village. Meta-moderation is intended to smooth this out but it usually doesn't happen until after the post has gone cold.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
ya, except it isn't.
Theism is the belief in a god. The A, means no or not. I don't believe, I'm not making a statement for or against.
A philatelist is a stamp collector. I am an 'Aphilatelist'. Am I making any type of assertion of a negative?
Of course there is a difference, I can actually see stamps. Kinda helps with the credibility. That and no one is killing anyone else over invisible stamps.
... for the river.
It appears you don't even understand your position. As an a-theist, it isn't that you don't believe in god, you believe there is no god, otherwise you would be an agnostic. Atheism takes a position, one which cannot be based on knowledge*, which renders it belief.
That and no one is killing anyone else over invisible stamps.
You flatter yourself based on mistaken belief.
League of Militant Atheists
Documentary on Militant Atheism in the Soviet Union
Militant Atheism in the USSR
Tortured for Christ in Atheist Romania - Richard Wurmbrand
* ~ 10^11 galaxies in the universe . . . no God anywhere? Really? You know this?
You're another idiot in the long list of those who conflate two non-exclusive terms. Atheism vs antitheism.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
In reply...
1. The Han River is a tributary fork of the Yangtze, what you see on the Han, you see on the Yangtze shortly there after.
2. I beg your pardon, Permanganates can range anywhere from deep purple to red depending on the metal, and this didn't have to be an identical dumping, Iron oxides, certain lead compounds (already responsible for colorful pollution on smaller rivers), even cinnabar (mercury sulphate) could color water red. I mention in the first paragraph we could be looking at any one of a number of industrial effluents that could produce this result. Some of the organic dyes (especially the concentrated oil based dyes) might produce a suspension and even a small amount could color a tremendous amount of water. Geologist working on glaciers melting use such dye and their capacity to color water can exceed tens, even hundreds of millions to one. Just last year powerful dyes were illegally dumped in the Jian River through storm drainage.
3. Water pollutants fall into large groups, some of which are soluble, many not. That said, most of the non-soluble would for emulsions and not suspensions.
There are also a group of geologists who are suggesting a recent earthquake upstream may have released a significant amount of vermiculated (iron oxide rich) clay into the river, so I will concede the possibility that this is a natural event predicated on a sequence of events that together would occur very rarely.