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Did the USA plant this?. When USA wanted to rid of Suharto in Indonesia, all
started by woods fires which lasted for 3 years.
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By TINI TRAN, Associated Press Writer Tini Tran, Associated
Press Writer
–
9 mins ago
AFP/File – Cars drive through thick smog on a street in Beijing in
September 2008. Enormous brown clouds of pollution
UN sees new peril in Asia's huge brown cloud cover
Buzz Up
By TINI TRAN, Associated Press Writer Tini Tran, Associated
Press Writer
–
9 mins ago
BEIJING – Thick brown clouds of soot, particles and chemicals stretching from
the Persian Gulf
to Asia threatens health and food supplies in the world, the U.N.
reported Thursday, citing what it called the newest threat to the
global environment.
The regional haze, known as atmospheric brown clouds,
contributes to glacial melting, reduces sunlight, and helps create extreme
weather conditions that impact agricultural production, according to the report
commissioned by the U.N. Environment Program.
The huge plumes have darkened 13 megacities in Asia_
including Beijing, Shanghai, Bangkok, Cairo, Mumbai and New Delhi — sharply
"dimming" the amount of light by as much as 25 percent in some places.
Caused by the burning of fossil fuels, wood and plants,
the brown clouds also play a significant role in exacerbating the effects of
greenhouse gases in warming up the earth's atmosphere, the report said.
"Imagine
for a moment a three-kilometer-thick (1.8-mile-thick) band of soot,
particles, a cocktail of chemicals that stretches from the Arabic
Peninsula to Asia," said Achim Steiner, U.N. undersecretary general and
executive director of the U.N. environment program.
"All
of this points to an even greater and urgent need to look at emissions
across the planet because this is where the stories are linked in terms
of greenhouse emissions and particle emissions and the impact that they're
having on our global climate," he said.
Some
particles within the pollution cloud, such as soot, absorb sunlight and
heat the air. That has led to a steady melting of the Himalayan
glaciers, which are the source of most of the major rivers on the
continent, the report said.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences
estimates the glaciers have shrunk by 5 percent since the 1950s. At the
current rate of retreat, glaciers could shrink by as much as 75 percent
by the year 2050, posing a major risk to the region's water security.
The pollution clouds also have helped reduce the
monsoon season in India.
The weather extremes may have also played a part in reduced production
of key crops such as rice, wheat and soybean, the report said.
At the same time, the brown clouds have also helped
mask the full impact of global warming
by helping to cool the earth's surface and tamp down rising
temperatures by between 20 to 80 percent, the study said. That's
because some of the particles that make up the clouds reflect sunlight
and cool down the air.
The latest
findings, conducted by an international collaboration of scientists
over seven-plus years, are the most detailed to date on the brown cloud
phenomenon, which is not unique to Asia. Other hotspots are seen in
North America, Europe, South Africa and South America.
The
enormous cloud masses can move across continents within three to four
days, illustrating the fact that the phenomenon is not just a regional
urban issue but a global one, said lead scientist, Veerabhadran
Ramanathan, with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of
California in San Diego.
"The
main message is that it's a global problem. This is not a problem where
we point fingers at our neighbors. Everyone is in someone else's
backyard," said Ramanathan.
The report also noted that health problems associated
with particulate pollution, which include cardiovascular and respiratory
diseases, are linked to nearly 350,000 premature deaths in China and India
every year, said Henning Rohde, a University of Stockholm scientist who worked
on the study.
The
value of the study is that scientists looked at the effect of the brown
clouds on multiple levels, said Ankur Desai, assistant professor of
atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
"Quantifying
the impact on people, ice, agriculture, etc., is certainly going to be
useful," he said. "The study also brings together scientists who don't
traditionally work together into thinking together about the impact,
mitigation and fundamental science on how this works."
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