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Scientists Fear Impact of Asian Pollutants On US
During the Olympics we discussed the international monitoring effort as China shut down factories and curtailed automobile travel in an attempt to reduce pollution. Now reader Anti-Globalism sends in a story that reveals that monitoring effort to be ongoing, with a bigger mandate: assessing the impact of China's pollution on the US. In fact the problem is bigger still because, as one researcher put it, "It's one atmosphere." Scientists are finding that pollution from, for example, Europe can travel right around the globe in three weeks. "By some estimates more than 10 billion pounds of airborne pollutants from Asia — ranging from soot to mercury to carbon dioxide to ozone — reach the US annually. The problem is only expected to worsen: Some Chinese officials have warned that pollution in their country could quadruple in the next 15 years. While some scientists are less certain, others say the Asian pollution could destabilize weather patterns across the North Pacific, mask the effects of global warming, reduce rainfall in the American West and compromise efforts to meet air-pollution standards."
Isn't the US still number one polluter or did China overtake recently? Either way the per capita pollution is still worse in the states by a hefty margin. Talk about being hypocritical.
I recall a documentary (BBC?) on a Icelandic volcano named Laki some 200 years back which blighted Europe. The show focused on a cloud of volcanic gas and the resultant illness that occurred among rural peasants. The speculation was that this was probably the result of silica in the cloud being breathed by those who worked outside. Similarly the 1815 eruption of Tambora caused the "Year without Summer" with famine among the Swiss, and unique weather reported in Pennsylvania. Pollutants are not in this league, but, they can indeed have world ranging effect.
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
Well, I don't know if you noticed, but you may not have seen the sun during the olympics. Reason: particulate pollution is so bad in most of China you cannot see the sun most of the time. While CO2 certainly is a greenhouse gas - particulate pollution acts as a cooling agent in the atmosphere. Here in the US we have at least some regulation on what industries can pump into the atmosphere, and have really made some great strides in reducing particulate pollution since the 70's.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
Don't single out China/Asia. Countries have a massive effect upon each other. I live in far north Texas, and have seen haze/smoke from fires in central Mexico. I've always felt a large part of Texas's pollution problem is pollutants coming North. I've heard engineers talk about offering sulfer scrubbers to Eastern european coal-power plants to reduce smog here in the US.
Part of the problem is different countries worry about different types of pollution. In the US, we are more concerned about visible/long-term pollutants than invisible/short-term ones. Some other countries are completely unconcerned about things like leaded gasoline, which is still used in many countries but has been out of the US for decades. America has a bad record, but has gotten some things right in the end. Europeans make a big deal about CO2, but many European
beaches have incredibly toxic water, or land which is unfarmable. Thanks to American pollution reforms, life is even returning to New York's harbor.
Everything is a give/take. People are worrying about energy inefficient bulbs, replacing them with their more efficient fluorescent cousins, but are ignoring the problems those bulbs have with mercury. Or with LED bulbs, gallium aresenide. For example, the life returning to New York's harbor happens to be devouring all of the wooden structures built since they last died off.
Here's to losing my Karma Bonus again....
Overregulation is mostly the doing of companies
1)Pollute
2)New regulation
3)Hire lawyer to fight new regulation
4)Lawyer find a loophole in the regulation so one can continue polluting while respecting the
letter of the regulation.
5)Regulators close the loophole, increasing the word count of the regulation.
6)Repeat 4 and 5 100 times
7) Regulations are now 10000 pages long.
8) Complain about the red tape you contributed creating by not obeying the spirit of the regulations in the first place.
The US is a victim of other people's pollution, just as you are also a victim of a) China's pollution b) United States pollution c) Your own country's pollution.
Yes, we in the US are victims of our own pollution. Its not that we don't realize it, its just that it costs a lot of money and political will to stop it and fix it. You can't blame all of us Americans for that. Some of us are trying really hard to turn that ship around, but it doesn't stop on a dime.
At least we recognize the problem and many of us are trying to do something about it. I'm not sure you can say the same about China - I don't know, I've never been there, but I'm sure there are plenty of Chinese citizens that don't like it one bit either. You also have to stipulate to the fact that when the US was in its major industrialization buildup, pollution wasn't recognized as a problem. The technology to be clean didn't exist, and we weren't fighting the world tooth and nail for our right to pollute - although we have our own problems with our government not having the balls to fix existing problems. China on the other hand seems to use developed nations as an excuse to pollute, even though it is globally irresponsible to do so, and the technology exists not to.
Finally, those scientists are not on a high horse, they ARE the high horse. It is more a fault of the executive leadership of the United States trying to bury the problem, being friendly to the oh-so-clean oil industry, than government scientists whose reports have been subject to review and even censorship by the President and his men. Its not our scientists fault that we pollute, and most of them (and especially the ones who research this particular field) really wish it wasn't a problem for you, for me, or the citizens of China. The purpose of the study was to show an effect, and if you want to do a study that shows the effects on your country by our pollutions you are free to do so.