Wave Of Bad News - Pollution, Mine Deaths, Unsafe Food & Toys - Overwhelms Chinese Official Media

[hatrack]

EDIT

Unfortunately for Chinese censors, a more three-dimensional view of the news is increasingly just a click away. A few terms entered into one of China's Internet search engines quickly reveal reports on food inspection shortfalls, official complicity in mining accidents, questionable nuclear standards, even comments on the party's penchant for nearly identical happy-talk front pages. "Readers use these newspapers for toilet paper, anyway," online writer "Acepatrick" said on the Bullog.cn site after the People's Daily, the Guangming Daily and the Economic Daily published matching front pages Aug. 19. "They save work editing and printing, which helps the environment. How harmonious."

The onslaught of problems has overwhelmed Beijing's damage-control efforts, experts say. "The sheer tempo of scandals and scrutiny has picked up to the point that China's traditional media system is not up to the task," said David Wolf, president of Wolf Group Asia, a Beijing-based strategic public relations firm. "Before, they had an issue once every six months. They're also grappling with communication problems within the government, a huge organization, which is not used to being transparent or responsive."

EDIT

In practice, however, coordination remains a problem, experts say. Although China has a history of reacting well to natural disasters, it is less adept at coping with more complex modern emergencies, including product-quality issues, said Peng Zongchao, a professor at Beijing's Tsinghua University and visiting fellow at Harvard. "As a Chinese saying goes, eight departments can't even cooperate on raising a pig," said Gu Linsheng, researcher with Tsinghua's Emergency Management Research Center in Beijing. "There are too many agencies that don't coordinate."

Corruption, protectionism and an incentive system that judges local and many central government officials on how few problems occur in their area, rather than on how well they address root causes, have also undercut a rapid, effective response. Although China hardly has a monopoly on government infighting, miscommunication is compounded by the dominance the Communist Party structure maintains over the government bureaucracy and the slow pace of political reform.

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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-crisis14sep14,1,6757455.story

[AlecBGreen]

1. considering the govt clampdown on information

the Chinese people are pretty well informed. Nearly every literate adult reads newspapers, from the businessman to the baggage porters. People talk talk talk about the latest gossip and their BS detectors are finely honed. On the down side, people often refuse to confront major problems. "Rocking the boat" is a big no-no in China and people are quick to say "I dont know anything about that!" at the first sign of trouble. Like any society, China's people have own strengths & weaknesses.

[leebert]

2. Chinese soot responsible for 1/3rd of global warming!

Easily a third of all global warming could be attributed to Chinese soot.

Overturning the conventional wisdom that airborne soot emissions only cause regional cooling it has been found that brown clouds of airborne soot can contribute to 50 percent of atmospheric heating that had been previously blamed on CO2 emissions. Because of the worldwide scope of airborne soot - such as the vast Asian Brown Cloud that originates largely from China - atmospheric models that ascribe certain regional warming trends only to CO2 may need revisiting.

These vast shrouds of soot are predominantly from coal-fired industrial sources in Asia, creating the notorious Asian Brown Cloud. Most of the soot falling on the Arctic comes from China, 90 percent of the Arctic melt is due to dirty snow melting faster than it can be created. Climate models show that 25 percent of *ALL* global warming is from the Arctic & tundra ice loss.

About 30 percent of the warming on the American West coast is due to Chinese soot. 40 percent of the warming in the vast Pacific is due to Chinese soot - that’s 30 percent of the Earth’s surface area, causing up to 12 percent of all global warming - just from them alone. The American Sierra’s are melting sooner due to dirty snow, same goes for the glacial recessions in the Northern Rockies.

We’re off-shoring production to China, shifting jobs, etc. overseas. In countries committed to Kyoto’s carbon trading scheme, Kyoto’s serving to back-door emissions with the shifted production, which then accelerates globalization by encouraging the additional shifting of production (and jobs) to Asia along with the emissions.

see:
http://leebert.newsvine.com
http://www.scientificblogging.com/the_soot_files

The lead researcher in this study, Prof. V. Ramanathan of the Scripps Institute commented, "The conventional thinking is that brown clouds have masked as much as 50 percent of the global warming .. through ... global dimming ... This study reveals that ... soot particles ... are intensifying the atmospheric warming ... by as much as 50 percent."

[Dead_Parrot]

3. That's nice

I don't suppose "per capita" means anything to you, does it?

Incidentally. linking off to sites that blame global warming on irradiance is roughly akin to blaming that nasty smell on the dog: It might work on your aunt, but it won't work on us.

[leebert]

4. Per capita soot vs. per capita CO2

Yes, I understand that point, glad you brought it up.

First perhaps it hasn't occurred to you that although China's per capita CO2 emissions are a third of the USA's, their per capita soot emissions exceed ours & just about everyones'. Their per unit emissions levels (CO2, etc) also exceed the USA's. They're are simply less efficient & are far dirtier... witness the vast Asian Brown Cloud that is changing the entire climate balance throughout S. Asia RIGHT NOW.

And with soot being a FAR MORE aggressive GREEN HOUSE agent that DISSIPATES from the atmosphere readily, we can actually buy more time by implementing SIMPLE soot-scrubbing technologies.

So long as China refuses to clean up their mess, there is NOTHING we can do to offset their soot output - with their soot predominantly responsible for melting the Arctic & partially warming the Pacific, it'll only get worse if their trend continues unabated. NOTHING we do will matter if China's building a new coal plant every two weeks that emits the equivalent - OR WORSE - of the entire city of San Diego.

As for solar irradiance, that's only in reference to Kilimanjaro, and yes, even the IPCC concedes that solar irradiance increased during the 20th Century, but that it also DECREASED in the 1980's. Climate change is often dynamically linked to regional variables, so global warming may also be seen as manifold contemporaneous local warming events. Kilimanjaro's glacial recession has been ongoing for at least several decades, so solar irradiance may have well played a role, along with deforestation, loss of microclimate precipitation and lowered albedo.

Read the links ... see if you see any right-wing malarkey behind them, I usually have pretty good bull**** detectors for those kind of shenanigans.

[Dead_Parrot]

5. I have a problem with this...

"And with soot being a FAR MORE aggressive GREEN HOUSE agent that DISSIPATES from the atmosphere readily, we can actually buy more time by implementing SIMPLE soot-scrubbing technologies."

...Because it sounds like horseshit.

Do you have a decent link to a peer-reviewed study that claims particulate emission reduction will reduce global warming?

PS, Solar radiance goes in cycles. It does not explain global warming, but if you want discuss solar radiance, please find an astrophysicist.

PPS, I have a degree in astrophysics.

[razzleberry]

6. since an erupting volcano causes a cooling effect ...

and,
since I remeber when shysters were hawking the 'global cooling
from aerosols' theory,

I have trouble believing this 'soot' thing
..............

times change, so do the stories that are told
kinda cyclical

[leebert]

7. Soot vs. CO2

Right... mind you, none of this is to discount CO2's role & I appreciate your being circumspect:

Salient points:

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/03/16/chinasoot_pla.html
"...Over the Pacific it appears that soot allows higher air to absorb 2 to 2.5 watts more sunshine per square meter, the team reported. Down at the ocean surface, the dimming effect reduces solar heating by almost 1.5 watts per square meter. That means the soot creates a net heat gain to the atmosphere of about 0.5 to 1 watt per square meter."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3333493.stm
"...They believe soot is twice as potent as carbon dioxide, a main greenhouse gas, in raising surface air temperatures."

http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20070701162100data_trunc_sys.shtml
"...The conventional thinking is that brown clouds have masked as much as 50 percent of the global warming by greenhouse gases through the so-called global dimming," said Ramanathan. "This study reveals that over southern and eastern Asia, the soot particles in the brown clouds are intensifying the atmospheric warming trend caused by greenhouse gases by as much as 50 percent."

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2003/0509pollution.html
"..The researchers found the amount of sunlight absorbed by soot was two-to-four times larger than previously assumed ... also to previous underestimates of the amount of soot in the atmosphere. The net result is soot contributes about twice as much to warming the world as had been estimated by the IPCC."

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2003/dec/HQ_03420_black_soot.html
"...New research from NASA scientists suggests emissions of black soot alter the way sunlight reflects off snow. According to a computer simulation, black soot may be responsible for 25 percent of observed global warming over the past century."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3333493.stm
"...soot is twice as effective as carbon dioxide in raising global surface air temperatures ... high soot emissions may have contributed substantially to global warming over the past century, notably to the growing trend in recent decades for ice, snow and permafrost to melt earlier in the spring .... soot may cause glaciers, sea ice and ice sheets to melt at lower temperatures than they would otherwise."

http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20070506202633data_trunc_sys.shtml
"... The effect is more conspicuous in Arctic areas, where ... more than 90 percent of the warming could be attributed to dirty snow."

Running a couple of numbers on the back of a sooty virtual napkin:
22 percent AGW: 25 percent AGW from Artic, 90% of which is due to soot, mostly from Asia.
12 percent of AGW: 40 percent Pacific warming from soot, 30% of planet's surface, from the Asian Brown Cloud, mostly from China.

That could be 1/3rd (one third) of all the anomalous temp. increases observed, and I'm not even including seasonal slash&burn agriculture in the tropics & subtropics (I'm afraid their role is largely unknown at this time, but I can tell you that the smoke from the season burns in Yucatan reach all the way to Austin & beyond...).

The Asian Brown Cloud *IS* disrupting India's monsoons & is having a double-whammy effect on glacial packs in the Himalayas b/c the glaciers lay at the same altitude as the soot-heated air & are also suffering dirty snow caused by sootfall.

The problem is discerning what can be mitigated readily and what can't and which are point-source. Cook fires & diesel might account for 20-30 percent of airborne soot throughout Asia (I thought it had been 10%....), but the rest might well be easily identified point-source emissions from industrial sources that can readily implement soot abatement tech.

I want to also point out that the Russians have huge, soot-emitting, oil drilling sites above the Arctic circle, so perhaps not all of of the Arctic & tundra thaw is from China & S.E. Asia. Most researchers, however, are chasing after Asian emissions...

IAC, none of this is to discount CO2's ultimately more-insidious effect, since it persists in the atmosphere on the order of decades as opposed to aerosols that only persist for months at most. But it also suggests a minor upset in climatology, with this new understanding of soot's role in compounding warming that heretofore had been soley ascribed to CO2 & other GHG's. That's actually a good thing, b/c it may help us out of various conundrums ... for skeptics it may help explain some of their concerns with lambda & feedback loops vs. CO2's logarithmic effect asymptote.

===

Solar radiance & Kilimanjaro:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070611153942.htm
"...particularly on Kilimanjaro -- processes are at work that are far different from those that have diminished glacial ice in temperate regions.. They attribute the ice decline primarily to ... the vertical shape of the ice's edge ... decreased snowfall ... solar radiation. Since air near the mountain's ice almost always is well below freezing, there typically is no melting. Instead ice loss is mainly through a process called sublimation, which requires more than eight times as much energy as melting."

Deforestation, loss of microclimate precipitation at Kilimanjaro
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/09/0923_030923_kilimanjaroglaciers.htm

And increased solar radiance over the past 100 years:
http://www.physorg.com/news6892.html
http://lasp.colorado.edu/science/solar_influence/index.htm

===

I'm not a scientist, but I've followed the debate very carefully, sat the fence, steered away from those with an obvious political axe to grind -- the oft-cited skeptics that vituperate too readily. But that cuts both ways, so I don't credulously cite every breathless AP report on IPCC findings, either. FWIW I was a very firm CO2/GHG believer back in the early 1980's before most people had a clue. We may have yet to dodge this bullet, but abating soot might help more than anyone realized, esp. considering the myriad side benefits of soot abatement -- reductions in respiratory problems, Hg, As. Apparently there are also clean coal techs available as well that mitigate CO2 & sulfates.

Hope that helps,
/lee

[leebert]

8. soot vs. CO2, cont.

http://www.scientificblogging.com/news/transported_black_carbon_a_significant_player_in_pacific_ocean_climate

"...On a regional level, that amount of heating, or positive radiative forcing, the black carbon causes in the skies over the Pacific is about 40 percent of the forcing that has been attributed to the carbon dioxide increase of the last century, said Ramanathan. It likely has measurable effects on a variety of other physical and biological conditions in the areas of the Pacific over which the particulate pollution passes."