Various countries, including the United States, have been choking under China’s air pollution which is circling the globe. While China has steadily diminished the health of its own people with a disastrous priority on production at any cost, it is now affecting not just the pollution levels of other countries but, according to a new report, weather in the United States. New data released on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that Chinese pollution is altering weather patterns in North America and causing the recently intense weather patterns from cyclones, heavy rains, and other erratic weather events.
The computer models tracked the interaction of clouds and fine airborne particles known as aerosols. Much of this pollution came from Chinese vehicles and coal-fired power plants. While the authoritarian government is just now moving to make the environment “a priority,” it has stood by and watched its people die from soaring environmental related illness for decades.
While the government insists that it is now going green, I have my doubts. Over a decade ago, I participated in a conference on those environmental hazards in Beijing. While Chinese academics were well aware and alarmed by the statistics, I found the government officials to be dismissive and adamant that they only cared about production and economic growth. With China showing the lowest growth in years, the Chinese politburo is facing unrest over both jobs and pollution. I have always viewed China as an economic house of cards. People are forced to retire around 50 in the country. This means a huge population of pensioners sustained by the government. When production falls, the costs can skyrocket. With the increased pollution, medical costs skyrocket. The result could be very destabilizing for the regime — as well as the increasingly jarring appearance of the class of super-rich within the self-described Communist nation.
In the meantime, little has changed. China continues to arrest environmental activists and dissidents. This week, a court threw out a lawsuit from residents in Lanzhou who sought to recover for damages caused by the release of the carcinogenic chemical benzene were detected into the water supply. In my paper published in China ten years ago, I argued that such private lawsuits would be essential for China in deterring environmental abuses. [“Siren Zong Jianchaguan Zai Huanjing Fa Zhixing Guocheng Zhong de Zuoyong” (The Role of the Private Attorney General in the Enforcement of Environmental Law) Chinese publication 2009.]
The effect of Chinese pollution on the United States foreshadows potential international conflicts as the regime’s ruinous policies begin to impact other nations — causing killer storm and both economic and infrastructure damage. This is a new externality being shifted to other nations as China cashes in on high production industries. Moreover, for cities (particularly in California) to meet ambient air quality standards, they may have to tighten controls on U.S. companies even further to address Chinese pollution. Ironically, that could lead to a downward spiral as companies move to avoid the tighter abatement costs to countries like China that then increase the pollution moving over to the United States — leading to tighter controls and so on and so forth.
Source: Guardian
Could airborne dust particulate from China’s Taklamakan and Gobi Deserts be responsible for the phenomena modelled by Dr. Wang?
Similiar meteorological phenomena to that modelled by Dr Wang are observed occuring off the western coast of Africa when dust particulate from the Sahara Desert becomes airborne. The airborne Saharan dust paticulate mixing in the atmosphere effects formation and strengthing of Atlantic hurricanes.
http://www.rsmas.miami.edu/news-events/press-releases/2013/african-dust-storms-in-our-air
Oh my goodness…..it is unimaginable that a US General, that I assume to be educated, would believe Jesus is returning to earth carrying an AR-15. I wonder how many mags he’ll be packing and what is backup piece will be?
How does one get this delusional?
Nick Spinelli
Gee, I wonder is climate has changed previously. Bryce Canyon shows rock strata when Utah was ocean, jungle, forest, desert and semi arid. Maybe that’s just southern Utah??
===============
Gee, wonder no more (A Savvy Ecocosmological Earth Calendar – 2, On the Origin of the Genes of Viruses – 8).
Ever since librul scientists changed the flat Earth into a globe the climate has had four seasons instead of an easy to figgur flat line climut.
Wayne
… Senator Inhofe Tea Party-OK … believes only Divine Powers can have an affect on Climate Change … Inhofe described as “a Jesus thing.” A Jesus thing being the government sponsored murder of gays …
===================
Speaking of a Jesus thingy (Jesus Is Returning From Heaven With An AR-15 – Conservative General).
Paul Schulte
Dredd – we already know …
==================
That is called bias.
You are being studied by the discipline known as Agnotology.
It does not deal with the psychology of denial, it deals with locating the source of ignorance within a culture.
Dredd – so, this agnotology thingie is a self-study?
paul@11:58am
alfalfa is nitrogen fixing
And yet repeated attempts at managing greenhouse gases and other pollution give China almost free rein as a “developing” nation, as if a pound of CO2 from a developing nation is less damaging than the same amount from the US or other western countries. That’s because the Kyoto protocol and other similar agreements, which at their best would litigate a fraction of a percent of CO2 and methane emissions, would really result in massive wealth transfers from rich western nations to the rest of the world. They have less to do with the environment and more to do with punishing western nations for economic success. There are real things that we can and should do, on an individual, national and global basis, not because of any treaty or because of claptrap like “environmental justice”, but because we can. These would include using less heat and more sweaters, less air conditioning and more open windows, using power strips to manage power adapters, and a lot of other things that Ed Begeley Jr calls the “low hanging fruit”. Of course we should use wind and solar, but they will never replace what we use now, because they simply cannot provide enough energy. If solar cells were 100% efficient all of the time, it would not be enough, because the solar flux is not sufficient for them to act as a replacement. But they can help in some places, and that’s where we should use them, and do other things in other areas as apprpropriate.
The problem with Climategate is that the scientists became activists. And they tried to silence everyone who was not it consensus. Much as happens here, on occasion.