Climate Talks In Paris: The Story That's Not Being Covered

So, sure, there are climate change talks going on between 150 nations and it's widely agreed we all need to come to conclusions and goals but.....   in the meantime, there is a rather huge story going on that is extremely pertinent but that isn't being reported much, if at all, by American media. It is this:

Northern China is suffering under a cloud of heavy pollution that is bigger than Spain

As the Paris climate change summit kicks off, China, the world’s leading carbon-emitting country, is choked in pollution. The Ministry of Environmental Protection said Sunday (Nov. 29) (link in Chinese) that heavy smog had covered China’s north, including Beijing, for three days in a row. The haze had reached 530,000 square kilometers ( 204,634 square miles) by Nov. 28.

That is even bigger than the total area of Spain, or California.

The air quality index (AQI) for the fine particulate matter known as PM 2.5 had reached “very unhealthy” or “hazardous” levels in 23 cities in the combined Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei area and surrounding regions on Nov. 28, the ministry said. At one time on Nov. 29, PM 2.5 in Beijing reached 429 micrograms per cubic meter, 17 times the recommended limit by the World Health Organization. The reading of Beijing’s AQI was still “hazardous” at 2pm Hong Kong time on Nov. 30, according toair quality monitors...

It goes on:

Pollution hit northern China earlier this month after coal-powered central heating kicked in. Beijing has issued an “orange” alert—the highest smog alert so far this year—and urged residents to stay indoor. Factories have to reduce production and construction sites and heavy vehicles are banned under the orange alert.

And then, if that isn't enough, if 23 cities across China having horrific pollution isn't enough to scare that nation into action and the rest of us as well, there's this from their next door neighbor:

Early morning fog delayed many trains in New Delhi.

Smog capitals: Alert in Beijing, business as usual in Delhi

NEW DELHI: As world leaders met in Paris on Monday to commit to a united fight against climate change, the capitals of India and China remained blanketed in heavy smog triggered by pollution. The difference was that Beijing sounded an alert for its citizens while in Delhi it was business as usual...

Authorities in Beijing have issued an 'orange' pollution alert, the second highest of four levels, wherein outdoor activities in schools and construction work is suspended and residents warned to stay indoors, agencies reported.

Delhi, meanwhile, witnessed one of its worst smog of the season, with visibility remaining less than 800 metres through Monday. PM 2.5 levels were in the 'severe' category in many parts of the city, with the most polluted spot, Anand Vihar, showing levels up to 530 mcg/cubic m between 2.30pm and 8pm.

Despite being labelled by WHO as the world's most polluted city, there's no protocol in Delhi for warning residents when pollution levels spike in the city. PM 2.5 levels at individual air monitoring stations have in the past few days crossed the 600 mark.

So while it's bad in China and across much of that nation, it's as bad or worse in India, in Delhi. And unlike China, the Indian government doesn't even do anything about it. There are, as the article states, no warnings to the citizens of just how bad the pollution is or what it could mean for the people's health.

With this, it seems a few conclusions absolutely have to be arrived at.

The first is that, yes, we absolutely have to do things about global warming but that we rather have to "go back" to the 60's or 70's American problem, so to speak, about the pollution in these 2 countries. The governments and people of those 2 nations have got to work on these currently life-threatening problems. With India being so desperately poor and trying to industrialize, this will be extremely difficult, without doubt.

The second thing that needs to be pointed out is that we, here in the US, need to lose, once and for all, the silly, irresponsible idea that we don't need the Environmental Protection Agency or that it should be weak.

These 2 countries situations, let alone our own history, should prove that we certainly, absolutely, unquestionably need to commit to clean air, water and soil and that any person or group of people---like the Republicans or Right Wing---who say otherwise are being absurdly, irresponsibly short-sighted and foolish.

Finally, we need, as a nation, as a world, to commit to and accept the idea that we must work, all of us, together, to keep that same air, water and soil clean and that we must accept global warming as described and defined and accepted by the scientists as fact for us all. Then we must work, all of us, the world over, to decrease the ways in which we add to these problems and this issue.

It will not be easy.

Links: China and India Cities Have Worst Air Pollution in the World

Cities in India Among the Most Polluted, W.H.O. Says

Top 20 most polluted cities in the world

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Beijing Leaders Talk Climate in Paris While Residents Sit in Record Smog

Mind your carbon footprints, give us space to grow: PM Modi to rich nations 

The Latest: Obama says India can cut emissions and poverty

For the man-made climate change deniers

Three important pieces of information.

First, this, from China:

'It's Too Hot': Shanghai Wilts In Record-Setting Heat Wave

Temperatures Wednesday in Shanghai hit an all-time high: 105.4 degrees, according to officials here. It was the hottest day in 140 years, since the government began keeping records.

The Chinese megacity is in the midst of its hottest summer ever.

Usually bustling streets are near empty at noon and thousands have gone to hospitals for relief.

Second, there's this from Russia, burning, once again this year:

Russia Experiences Great Burning

I don’t know what’s more troubling — the vast size and extent of smoke and wildfires blanketing Siberia and Russia, or the almost complete silence from Russia and the mainstream media on what appears to be a massive, ongoing climate disaster (Note: NASA did provide an excellent press release via the Earth Observatory link here and below).

In 2010, Russia experienced a deadly heatwave that set off terrible wildfires that belched smoke over many of its more populous cities. These fires spread over a region closer to Europe and so they had great impacts on both property and lives. In 2012, Russia experienced a second spate of massive fires, but these raged over more remote sections of Siberia. At first, Russia was slow to respond. Then, it mobilized an army of firefighters — thousands and thousands — to fight scores of blazes raging across its large, remote Arctic regions. The smoke cloud from these fires was so large it eventually covered a section of the Northern Hemisphere from Siberia to the west coast of North America. Valleys in British Columbia filled with the stench of burning from fires thousands of miles away spurring phone calls from concerned Canadian locals to fire departments there.

Then comes 2013. From spring to summer, central Siberia sweltered under a near constant drought and intermittent heatwaves as a very high amplitude ridge in the Jet Stream enabled a powerful heat dome to form during June and then re-form during late July and early August. The late July heat surge appeared to be the final insult setting off an enormous rash of fires throughout central Siberia and Russia. By early August the number of fires raging out of control swelled to 170. Today, the number is probably closer to three hundred. Human-caused climate change is, yet again, scarring Russia with a terrible set of burn marks.

(That link on this article, above, has a few different, great photos on it, showing the vast areas of smoke over Russia.  I mean the planet.)

Then there's this from our own Western mountain states:

Climate Change Could Spell Final 'Chuckle' For Alpine Frog

The most important part of that article is this:

Across the Western U.S., yearly areas of snowpack are decreasing, and researchers are trying to figure out what that means for everything that relies on the snowmelt...

The Pacific Northwest has lost about 50 percent of its snowpack over the last 50 years.

When you put these three on top of the fact that the glaciers and ice caps are melting and that, last Summer, the US burned from the Southern, Mexican border all the way to the Northern, Canadian one, in all those states--and all the other indicators--I can't imagine how anyone could still deny this.

Well, unless you're an oil or coal company or some such.

Or they watch Fox "News."

China: This is why we spend so much on defense?

China is famous--notorious, infamous, really--for polluting their air, water and soil across most of the entire country. Then, they suppress their people's speech and movements and who knows what all. Poverty is still rampant across the huge nation, etc. Now? What's in the news? There's this article: Top of Chinese wealthy's wish list? To leave China BEIJING (AP) — Chinese millionaire Su builds skyscrapers in Beijing and is one of the people powering China's economy on its path to becoming the world's biggest. He sits at the top of a country — economy booming, influence spreading, military swelling — widely expected to dominate the 21st century. Yet the property developer shares something surprising with many newly rich in China: he's looking forward to the day he can leave. Su's reasons: He wants to protect his assets, he has to watch what he says in China and wants a second child, something against the law for many Chinese. Despite more economic freedom, the communist government has kept its tight grip on many other aspects of daily life. China's leaders punish, sometimes harshly, public dissent and any perceived challenges to their power, and censor what can be read online and in print. Authoritarian rule, meanwhile, has proved ineffective in addressing long standing problems of pollution, contaminated food and a creaking health care system. "In China, nothing belongs to you. Like buying a house. You buy it but it will belong to the country 70 years later," said Su, lamenting the government's land leasing system. "But abroad, if you buy a house, it belongs to you forever," he said. "Both businessmen and government officials are like this. They worry about the security of their assets." So why do I bring this up? This is the country we're supposed to be afraid of so we keep spending 700 billion dollars per year on "defense"--read: the "military-industrial complex"--but we don't otherwise have enough to pay our bills, educate our citizens and give them good health care and roads and sewer systems and other important infrastructure. It's insane. We have to stop spending so much on defense. It's unnecessary and it's ignorant. There's a lot more in the article, too, you may want to see, spelling out their many problems. Find it here: http://news.yahoo.com/top-chinese-wealthys-wish-list-leave-china-065826880.html

US to borrow from China for World Expo?

Further proof of the US' reduced place in the world now:

We may have to borrow money from the Chinese so we can have a presence at the 2010 World Expo.

And get this--for real irony, it's in Shanghai, China.

Yow. That's good.

So naturally the Chinese want us there.

But at what cost?

It's a little over a year away and we're barely pushing ground for our building.

How embarrassing for the world's superpower, eh?

Wait.

Superpower?


Link to original story:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102432591&ft=1&f=1001

*original entry changed after note from writer, below