Mates on a mission
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
Australia’s 470 men’s crew, Nathan Wilmot and Malcolm Page, negotiate their way through green algae on the Beijing Olympic Games sailing course at Qingdao, during training on June 24.
Rising sea temperatures have been blamed for the growth of the algae, which has begun to blight the Oympic sailing course just 44 days out from the start of the games.
[ABC News ]
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 ]
A flotilla of plastic ducks is heading for Britain’s beaches, according to an American oceanographer.
For the past 15 years Curtis Ebbesmeyer has been tracking nearly 30,000 plastic bath toys that were released into the Pacific Ocean when a container was washed off a cargo ship.
In March 2003, when the world’s attention was focused on U.S. soldiers heading to Baghdad, twelve senior officials in the Bush administration gathered around a long oak conference table in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, part of the White House complex. They were meeting to put the final touches on a proposed legislative package that would address what was perhaps the most dangerous vulnerability the country faced after 9/11: unprotected chemical plants close to densely populated areas.
The Washington Monthly article continues:
Boston is going to be the first major city in the US to require large commercial buildings to be constructed in an environmentally friendly way.
It’s all part of the effort curb global warming.
Future additions to Boston’s skyline are going to be friendly to the environment. They’ll be green buildings.
Boston will be the first city to require private developers of larger buildings to meet a series of environmental standards.
Marc Breslow of the Climate Action Network thinks this is a great step in the fight against global warming
Soaring pollution levels in China may be even worse than thought because local governments bent on economic growth are lying about their progress in meeting environmental goals.
Data reported by China’s regional governments indicates a national goal to reduce China’s two main pollutants by two percent in 2006 has been reached, but calculations by the top environment watchdog show they actually grew two percent, Xinhua news agency said, quoting an environment official.
“The figures on pollution control reported by local governments dropped remarkably this year, while the real environmental situation continues to deteriorate,” said the unnamed official with the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA).
According to Rolling Stone, America’s top pork producer churns out a sea of waste that has destroyed rivers, killed millions of fish and generated one of the largest fines in EPA history.
Welcome to the dark side of the other white meat.
Smithfield Foods, the largest and most profitable pork processor in the world, killed 27 million hogs last year.
That’s a number worth considering.
A slaughter-weight hog is fifty percent heavier than a person.
The logistical challenge of processing that many pigs each year is roughly equivalent to butchering and boxing the entire human populations of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, San Jose, Detroit, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, San Francisco, Columbus, Austin, Memphis, Baltimore, Fort Worth, Charlotte, El Paso, Milwaukee, Seattle, Boston, Denver, Louisville, Washington, D.C., Nashville, Las Vegas, Portland, Oklahoma City and Tucson.
continued …
The BBC reports that pollution-laden clouds may be partly to blame for India’s dwindling rice harvests, according to research.
A US team found brown clouds, which cloak much of South Asia, have a negative impact on rice output by reducing sunlight and rainfall.
They discovered elevated levels of greenhouse gases also reduced yields.
The study, reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, came a day after researchers said new crops adapted to a warmer climate are needed.
Since the 1980s, India has faced ever-declining harvests of its staple food, raising concerns that shortages could occur.
To investigate the cause, researchers looked at the impact of the “brown clouds” or “Asian haze” which cover the region.
South Asia has one of the most widespread atmospheric brown clouds on the planet.