When looking into the distance, there is a great abundance of flashing particles in the background, as sen in the screen shot. They appear only present on the terrain, and not in the air blocks.
Environment
Minecraft 1.8.1, MacBook Air Mid 2012, 1.8 GHz Dual Core i5 CPU, 4 GB RAM, Java 1.6.0_ 65 64 Bit (From Apple for Yosemite), Intel Graphics 4000 HD Open GL Engine 2.1, OSX Yosemite10.10.1, Minecraft Launcher 1.5.3.
You might play around with the Mipmapping settings in the video options to see if that changes anything.