Opening ceremonies tomorrow, August 8. This is the view as of 10am, August 7 in the Guomao area of Beijing.

Says James Fallows:

I suspect that a lot of this actually is “mist,” very high humidity, etc.

That is, it can’t be that much more polluted than it was 36 hours ago, when things looked much better, as shown below.

Mainly completing the chronicle, for the record.

[From The Atlantic]

8 am, July 27, 2008, looking south, twelve days until the opening ceremonies, one week into the big shutdown of factories in nearby provinces and traffic in Beijing.

[From
James Fallows

Beijing-based Atlantic writer James Fallows took this view from his office window at 10am today [June 19] which is just 50 days before the start of the 2008 Olympic Games.

[From
The Atlantic ]

It’s a bit too late for this one. Now a floormat worth $US7995.00 at Bear Skin World. Surprisingly, Canada, home to two-thirds of the total polar bear population of up to 25,000, has not listed the species as threatened.

The US Government has listed polar bears as a threatened species, warning that melting of Arctic sea ice is risking their habitat.

“Today I am listing the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act,” said Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, after satellite imagery found ice coverage had fallen to its lowest level yet recorded.

The Government was acting on advice from scientists and the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Mr Kempthorne detailed greater steps to monitor polar bear populations in Alaska and outlying islands in the Beaufort Sea, and more co-operation with foreign governments to protect the species.

[From US lists polar bears as threatened species | The Australian]

[From BBC NEWS | Science/Nature]

Time to do your bit.

A glacier used as a benchmark to measure global warming’s impact on the Antarctic Peninsula melted more than usual in the past year, according to an Argentine glacier researcher.

For more than 20 years, Pedro Skvarca has studied the Devil’s Bay glacier on Vega Island off the Antarctic Peninsula, a part of Antarctica that is warming five times faster than the average in the rest of the world.

The whole of Antarctica holds enough ice and snow to raise world sea levels by 187 feet if it all melted over thousands of years, according to UN data.

Skvarca said the Devil’s Bay glacier has thinned by 3.3 feet (1 metre) per year on average since his research began. But its deterioration has been unusually marked in the past year.

Temperatures rose by between 1.0 and 2.0 degrees in most parts of the country, with the national average hitting 29.2°C (84°F) for the summer month, said the bureau’s head of climate analysis, David Jones.

‘It’s a remarkable number certainly. Averaging, as we did across the whole country 1.3 degrees above average is the highest temperature we’ve seen in our history of records for Australia in January,’ he said.

Paul Sorensen photographed the five-metre long whale shark as it swam close to his group

A young whale shark has been found off the Queensland coast, as far as 1,000 kilometres off course of its annual migration.

The discovery has puzzled scientists, who have not ruled out a link to climate change.

The lonesome whale shark comes from the world’s biggest fish species, characterised by a wide flat mouth and covered in white stripes and spotted skin.

It is a highly migratory species, but to be seen off Stradbroke Island in Queensland’s south is extraordinary.”

It was a real last-minute deal. There might now be some hope for our children’s future …

‘We will go forward and join consensus,’ Paula Dobriansky, heading the US delegation, told the 190-nation meeting to cheers from many in the audience, minutes after triggering boos by saying Washington was opposed.

The proposed compromise, breaking a deadlock between rich and poor nations, had been supported by all other previous speakers, including the European Union.

The talks have agreed to a roadmap for two-year negotiations leading to a new worldwide pact to roll back the peril of global warming.

The planned treaty would take effect at the end of 2012 after current commitments expire under the UN Kyoto Protocol.

The ‘Bali Roadmap’ was approved by consensus among the 190 members of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) after gruelling negotiations that ran for 13 days, one more than scheduled.”