Blog 10: China has becom a Graveyard.

You've seen China's pollution. While it might look like something out of Science Fiction or a video game, the horrible air quality is very real. And according to a new report, it's deadly. In 2010, 1.23 million Chinese died due to air pollution in 2010, nearly 40 percent of the global total. That accounts for roughly 15 percent of the deaths for that year. People inhale microscopic, toxic particulate matter (PM), which can pass from the lungs into the bloodstream. This particulate matter is able to impact the body's immune system, and it can cause diseases and cancer. It can also lead to an early death.

What the researchers called “ambient particulate matter pollution” was the fourth-leading risk factor for deaths in China in 2010, behind dietary risks, high blood pressure and smoking. Air pollution ranked seventh on the worldwide list of risk factors, contributing to 3.2 million deaths in 2010. There have been other estimates of premature deaths because of air pollution. In 2011, the World Health Organization estimated that there were 1.3 million premature deaths in cities worldwide because of outdoor air pollution. A quarter of China is now covered in a haze containing toxic pollutants

You know what's the saddest part of all this? China is building nuclear reactors to get rid of all this pollution while here in Europe were outlawing nuclear reactors and have to compensate with coal and oil. We have the exact same problem here in the States, in regards of people avoiding clean energy solutions. The sad thing is, although I'm sure China is to blame for the bulk of their pollution woes, they certainly didn't do all of it. The pollution one country makes doesn't magically hover above it in the air, it moves with the weather. So it could be coming from anywhere.

 Ryan Lindquist

April 19, 2013

2:09 p.m.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/02/world/asia/air-pollution-linked-to-1-2-million-deaths-in-china.html

Blog 8: If You Think China's Air Is Bad, You Should See The Water

China's extraordinary economic growth, industrialization, and urbanization, coupled with inadequate investment in basic water supply and treatment infrastructure, have resulted in widespread water pollution. In China today approximately 700 million people--over half the population--consume drinking water contaminated with levels of animal and human excreta that exceed maximum permissible levels. It's a new problem, but the causes – waterway pollution and failures to manage rivers across administrative boundaries and government departments – are old complaints

Behind the thousands of dead pigs floating down the Huangpu River, there lies a murky tale of waterway pollution and river management failure. The pigs are believed to have floated downstream from Shaoxing, in the neighboring province of Zhejiang.

There is an old saying in Chinese culture that the appearance of a fat pig at the front door augurs abundance and good fortune. The sight of a bloated one floating dead down the nearest river portends something else entirely. In the past two weeks, more than 16,000 dead pigs have been fished out of the Huangpu River, near Shanghai, and its tributaries. Outraged Chinese citizens have decried government negligence of the environment, flooding online forums with photos of riverbanks dotted with puce-colored carcasses. And there have been a recent report of 1,000 ducks found dead in this same river.

Seeing as ducks are the primary host and pigs are the intermediary host for H1N1 and SARS, and that China is clearly the foci for these variants emergence, kind of worrisome they have not come out with a regional health warning, especially as we are directly in the line of migratory birds that will be returning from that route this summer. I wonder when the Chinese government is going to admit they have an outbreak.

If it’s not one problem, it’s another with this country. At the rate that they are going, they will wipe themselves out in the next century.

http://article.wn.com/view/2013/03/25/Chinas_deadly_water_problem/#/related_news

Ryan Lindquist

April 5, 2013

1:25 PM

Blog #7: China's First Step to Recovery

China will step up efforts to cut its emissions and improve energy efficiency this year after record air pollution in Beijing, where the national legislature opened its annual meeting today. The government will reduce carbon emissions and energy use per unit of gross domestic product by at least 3.7 percent in 2013 and carry out carbon-trading trials, the National Development and Reform Commission said in a report today. China’s top economic planning agency said carbon intensity fell 5 percent, and energy use per unit of GDP slid 3.6 percent last year, beating targets of 3.5 percent.

The government will introduce reforms to the pricing mechanisms for oil products and natural gas, the report showed. The NDRC started trial gas-price programs in Guangdong and Guangxi provinces in southern China in December 2011 and said they would be extended nationwide after an evaluation. The problem is political will. Flush with $3.3 trillion of currency reserves, China has the money to succeed. Yet almost any route it takes to go green requires slower growth. China’s leaders for the next 10 years, President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang, are under pressure to boost today’s 7.9 percent growth rate and placate a populace seething over income inequality.

Recent environmental concerns, a “tight” gas market with strong demand growth and the country becoming more dependent on pipeline and liquefied natural gas imports point to an acceleration of reforms this year and prices will increase. China is reaching its physical limits, and the unchecked pursuit of economic growth now offers rewards that are compromised by environmental degradation. China is already home to some of the world’s most polluted rivers and water supplies and public fury is rising at a time when China’s censors are fighting a losing battle against the Internet. China is facing another crisis and here we are doing nothing to help.

Ryan Lindquist

March 22, 2013

3:55 PM

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2013/03/china-boosts-energy-emissions-goals-after-record-pollution

Blog 6: Volcano Earth warming

A study led by researchers at the University of Colorado has determined that the pace of planet warming in the first decade of this century was slowed by volcanic activity, and not by industrial activity in Asia, as was previously believed. Previous research in 2009 had suggested that an increase in stratospheric aerosols tied to a 60 percent increase in sulfur dioxide emissions over China and India had negated about 25 percent of the global warming that scientists attribute to greenhouse gas emissions. That cooling effect occurs when sulfur dioxide emissions rise 12 to 20 miles to the stratospheric aerosol layer of the atmosphere. There, chemical reactions create sulfuric acid and water particles that reflect sunlight back into space.

Now, research led by study author Ryan Neely, conducted as part of his doctoral thesis at CU, has shown that global warming from 2000 to 2010 was tamped down by sulfur dioxide from volcanic eruptions, not industrial emissions in China and India, where such activity has greatly increased in recent years. The 10-year window addressed by the study did not see massive activity on the scale of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, which erupted in 1991 in the second-largest volcanic event of the 20th century. Still, there was sufficient volcanic activity in the 2000s from the tropics to Alaska that made an impact in the stratosphere

The new research piggybacks on a 2011 study led by Susan Solomon, a former scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who is now at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which showed that stratospheric aerosols -- without isolating their source -- offset about one-quarter of the greenhouse-effect warming of Earth in the past 10 years. The fact that the emissions from industrial activity on the other side of the planet is not affecting temperature fluctuations tied to particulates in the stratosphere, Neely said, does not mean that all those human-caused emissions are good for the environment.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130301123048.htm Ryan Lindquist 4:04 PM 03/08/13

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