But I'm sure everything will be fine.....
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China's journey to the dark ages
Biggest cities becoming murky as smog clouds block up to 25 per cent of sun, UN study finds
From Friday's Globe and Mail
BEIJING — In the skies over China and South Asia, the sun itself is disappearing. The biggest cities are becoming darker as they fall beneath a vast brown cloud of soot, and even North America is vulnerable to the drifting toxic cloud. That's the conclusion of a new United Nations study: that warns that the smog clouds have become so enormous they could kill 340,000 people annually in China and India.
The study says the toxic clouds - more than three kilometres thick - are contributing to a huge range of dangerous effects: extreme weather; damage to crops; melting of glaciers; the dimming of big cities; shifts in rainfall; massive economic losses; higher food prices; and a growing number of human deaths from respiratory and cardiovascular diseases.
Up to 25 per cent of the sunlight has disappeared in Chinese cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, India's New Delhi and Karachi, Pakistan, the study concluded. In India, the dimming of cities has more than doubled since 1980, it said. The smog clouds are also found in North America and Europe, but those are less dangerous because they tend to be removed or reduced by winter precipitation. The clouds from Asia, however, have drifted as far east as California.
The clouds, known as "atmospheric brown clouds," are filled with ozone, black carbon, and soot particles. They are caused by a "soot stream" of fossil-fuel and biomass burning, deforestation and other man-made factors. Coal-fired power plants and rising auto traffic are among the chief causes.
A team of scientists, commissioned by the UN Environment Programme, has been studying the toxic brown clouds since 2002. Their first reports met with considerable cynicism and criticism, but their latest report is much more detailed, prompting the scientists to issue a stronger warning of the importance of the issue. Achim Steiner, the UNEP executive director, said he expects the phenomenon of toxic brown clouds to be "firmly on the international community's radar" as a result of the latest study, which was released yesterday. The clouds need "urgent and detailed research," he said. "In China alone, the clouds have cost an estimated $82-billion in losses to the national economy."
One of the most disturbing problems is the impact of the smog clouds on global warming. This happens in two ways. By absorbing sunlight and heating the air, the clouds are aggravating the effect of greenhouse gases. But at the same time, the clouds can be "masking" the global-warming trend, since they contain sulphates and other particles that can reflect sunlight and cool the Earth's surface. So any action to eliminate the brown clouds would trigger a dramatic rise in global warming, the study warns.
The clouds could be dampening the rise of global temperatures by 20 to 80 per cent, the study said. "Simply tackling the pollution linked with brown-cloud formations, without simultaneously delivering big cuts in greenhouse gases, could have a potentially disastrous effect," the UNEP said in a statement yesterday.
It also warned that the clouds are reducing rainfall in India and South Asia, which could "further aggravate the recent dramatic escalation of food prices and the consequent challenge for survival among the world's most vulnerable populations." In parts of India, for example, the brown clouds - combined with global warming - have slashed the rice harvest by 6.2 million tonnes annually, which is enough to feed 72 million people, the study found.
Another dramatic result is the melting of glaciers, partly due to the toxic clouds. The latest study found "substantial soot concentrations" in the Himalayan mountains, even up to an altitude of five kilometres. And this soot, along with greenhouse gases, is a major cause of the melting and shrinking of glaciers. "If the current rate of retreat continues unabated, these glaciers and snow packs are expected to shrink by as much as 75 per cent before the year 2050, posing grave danger to the region's water security," the study concluded.
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....at least for most of us...
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Tiny island nation seeks dry land
Newly elected President of Maldives plans to set aside funds for new homeland in case rising sea levels submerge low-lying islands
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
Wanted: a large piece of property, preferably tropical and empty, with room for 300,000 inhabitants.
Mohamed Nasheed, who took office this week as the newly elected President of the Maldives, announced that he will establish an investment fund with some of the country's tourism revenues to buy a new home for his citizens should global warming raise sea levels and submerge their picturesque but low-lying homeland. "We can do nothing to stop climate change on our own and so we have to buy land elsewhere," he told a British newspaper this week. "It's an insurance policy for the worst possible outcome."
The Indian Ocean country of 1,200 sandy islands about 800 kilometres from the tip of India rises just 2.4 metres above sea level at its highest point. Mr. Nasheed said that even a minor rise in sea level will flood parts of the country and turn residents of the 250 inhabited islands into environmental refugees. He plans to set aside some of the country's $1-billion annual tourist revenues to acquire what could be described as an contingency country.
A former human-rights activist elected last month, Mr. Nasheed has already approached several countries - including Sri Lanka, India and Australia - about buying land, and said they have been receptive to the idea. "We do not want to leave the Maldives, but we also do not want to be climate refugees living in tents for decades," he said.
Hadi Dowlatabadi, a climate-change expert who holds a Canada Research Chair at the University of British Columbia, agreed that it is likely that the Maldives will one day disappear. "It depends on how Greenland melts, but easily within a century," he said. "If all of Greenland melts, sea level will rise seven metres, forcing the relocation of millions of people from islands and coastal regions." But the threat to the Maldives exists even if climate change is not as drastic as feared. Even if climate-changing emissions were stopped today, Dr. Dowlatabadi said, sea levels will rise by 1½ metres in the next 300 years. "The Maldives have no other option but to find themselves another piece of land somewhere," he said. "This decision comes from the President's understanding that the political will to save them doesn't exist."
In Papua New Guinea, residents of the Carteret Islands have already had to relocate because of rising sea levels attributed to climate change. Residents of Tuvalu and Kiribati are also at risk of becoming climate refugees. In February, the Alliance of Small Island States held a press conference at the United Nations, urging international support for projects that would aid their survival in the face of climate change.
Members of the 44-member alliance described the new reality of hurricanes, tsunamis and other weather phenomena that are already affecting their citizens, and urged the global community to adopt a "no island left behind" mentality. But experts agree that relocation is the likeliest outcome, although the impact of moving an entire country would be devastating.
Dr. Dowlatabadi said people are often moved when dams are built, and said the original inhabitants of the Bikini Islands were moved to another Pacific atoll when their home became an atomic testing site. "The problem is that people never, ever recover from that relocation. It's just far too traumatic," he said. "You lose your identity, you lose your homeland and a consequence is that people tend to have very high suicide rates."
Although Mr. Nasheed has expressed his desire to protect his citizens from becoming refugees, simply buying uninhabited property in Australia or another region does not mean that it can be declared a sovereign state. "It becomes essentially a compound," Dr. Dowlatabadi said. "It's not a country."
There may be no better word to describe John McCain's vice presidential pick than "ridiculous."
Shhhh!
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