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Asian Brown Cloud
Darcknyght
Member Posts: 127
And the people of the US want to blame hummers for global warmming. No sorry people its Asia that is screwing up the planet.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081113/ap_on_sc/as_china_brown_clouds
BEIJING – Thick brown clouds of soot, particles and chemicals stretching from the Persian Gulf to Asia threaten health and food supplies in the world, the U.N. reported Thursday, citing what it called the newest threat to the global environment.
The regional haze, known as atmospheric brown clouds, contributes to glacial melting, reduces sunlight, and helps create extreme weather conditions that impact agricultural production, according to the report commissioned by the U.N. Environment Program.
The huge plumes have darkened 13 megacities in Asia_ including Beijing, Shanghai, Bangkok, Cairo, Mumbai and New Delhi — sharply "dimming" the amount of light by as much as 25 percent in some places.
Caused by the burning of fossil fuels, wood and plants, the brown clouds also play a significant role in exacerbating the effects of greenhouse gases in warming up the earth's atmosphere, the report said.
"Imagine for a moment a three-kilometer-thick (1.8-mile-thick) band of soot, particles, a cocktail of chemicals that stretches from the Arabic Peninsula to Asia," said Achim Steiner, U.N. undersecretary general and executive director of the U.N. environment program.
"All of this points to an even greater and urgent need to look at emissions across the planet because this is where the stories are linked in terms of greenhouse emissions and particle emissions and the impact that they're having on our global climate," he said.
Some particles within the pollution cloud, such as soot, absorb sunlight and heat the air. That has led to a steady melting of the Himalayan glaciers, which are the source of most of the major rivers on the continent, the report said.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences estimates the glaciers have shrunk by 5 percent since the 1950s. At the current rate of retreat, glaciers could shrink by as much as 75 percent by the year 2050, posing a major risk to the region's water security.
The pollution clouds also have helped reduce the monsoon season in India. The weather extremes may have also played a part in reduced production of key crops such as rice, wheat and soybean, the report said.
At the same time, the brown clouds have also helped mask the full impact of global warming by helping to cool the earth's surface and tamp down rising temperatures by between 20 to 80 percent, the study said. That's because some of the particles that make up the clouds reflect sunlight and cool down the air.
The latest findings, conducted by an international collaboration of scientists over seven-plus years, are the most detailed to date on the brown cloud phenomenon, which is not unique to Asia. Other hotspots are seen in North America, Europe, South Africa and South America.
The enormous cloud masses can move across continents within three to four days, illustrating the fact that the phenomenon is not just a regional urban issue but a global one, said lead scientist, Veerabhadran Ramanathan, with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California in San Diego.
"The main message is that it's a global problem. This is not a problem where we point fingers at our neighbors. Everyone is in someone else's backyard," said Ramanathan.
The report also noted that health problems associated with particulate pollution, which include cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, are linked to nearly 350,000 premature deaths in China and India every year, said Henning Rohde, a University of Stockholm scientist who worked on the study.
The value of the study is that scientists looked at the effect of the brown clouds on multiple levels, said Ankur Desai, assistant professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
"Quantifying the impact on people, ice, agriculture, etc., is certainly going to be useful," he said. "The study also brings together scientists who don't traditionally work together into thinking together about the impact, mitigation and fundamental science on how this works."
Comments
Does this shock anyone? Now the question is, does the UN have the guts to go after China for it? Or is it who that matters more then what they do?
for last 6-8 months i had usually bought this up in almost every thread when someone tried to blame teh US for ALL the worlds environmental issues.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
A shame really, they have their hate america agenda and can't see anything but that.
How come we've all known that 3rd world nations are the big polluters but the US has had to suffer time and time again at the hands of the UN and their ilk as if we're always destroying everything we touch as a nation. I say kick the UN back to byzantine. :P
Ok, I'm being a little tongue in cheek on this, but try to follow my thinking. The article says that an estimated 340,000 people in Asia die from respiratory diseases possibly related to man made pollution. So if we keep polluting the world to the point where humans die at an ever increasing rate, wouldn't that eventually be a good thing for the earth? Maybe we would succeed in killing ourselves completely and the human race would become extinct. That would put an end to the polluting and then the earth could begin to restore itself. The planet would become green again, the waters would be crystal clear, the animals could frolick in the fields without fear of being killed by man. The earth would become a paradise. And then humans could once again live in a clean beautiful world. Oh, wait a minute...
LOL. We all want clean water eh? (and to think I used to laugh at the guy selling filtered water by the gallon back in the mid 80's)
My problem with this is.... and I know I'm being anal here... There are some that will jump up and say "SEE! we knew global warming is caused by man this proves it!" << completely unrelated to pollution problem. Oh well, I can always try and wish things into being.
I have found it best to just not care anymore. People say that humans are ruining the earth, are going to destroy the planet. That we are revving up for a catastrophe. Everything is a crisis. The fact is, we are not going to destroy the planet or what is hospitible on it for us or other creatures. Sure, some creatures will die out, we may too. But others will thrive. Plants love carbon dioxide. Some forms of bacteria love sulfur. I'm not worried about the planet. Hell I'm not even worried about myself, not because of the climate anyway.
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Hang on at one point in the article they said the particles were heating the air and at another point they said some of the particles were cooling the air??? Can someone explain this to me.
O_o o_O