UN: Clouds of pollution threaten glaciers, health

By TINI TRAN and JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writers

BEIJING – A dirty brown haze sometimes more than a mile thick is darkening skies not only over vast areas of Asia, but also in the Middle East, southern Africa and the Amazon Basin, changing weather patterns around the world and threatening health and food supplies, the U.N. reported Thursday.

The huge smog-like plumes, caused mainly by the burning of fossil fuels and firewood, are known as "atmospheric brown clouds."

When mixed with emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for warming the earth's atmosphere like a greenhouse, they are the newest threat to the global environment, according to a report commissioned by the U.N. Environment Program.

"All of this points to an even greater and urgent need to look at emissions across the planet," said Achim Steiner, head of Kenya-based UNEP, which funded the report with backing from Italy, Sweden and the United States.

Brown clouds are caused by an unhealthy mix of particles, ozone and other chemicals that come from cars, coal-fired power plants, burning fields and wood-burning stoves. First identified by the report's lead researcher in 1990, the clouds were depicted Thursday as being more widespread and causing more environmental damage than previously known.

Perhaps most widely recognized as the haze this past summer over Beijing's Olympics, the clouds have been found to be more than a mile thick around glaciers in the Himalaya and Hindu Kush mountain ranges. They hide the sun and absorb radiation, leading to new worries not only about global climate change but also about extreme weather conditions.

"All these have led to negative effects on water resources and crop yields," the report says.

Health problems associated with particulate pollution, such as 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.

Soot levels in the air were reported to have risen alarmingly in 13 megacities: Bangkok, Beijing, Cairo, Dhaka, Karachi, Kolkata, Lagos, Mumbai, New Delhi, Seoul, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Tehran.

Brown clouds were also cited as dimming the light by as much as 25 percent in some places including Karachi, New Delhi, Shanghai and Beijing.

The phenomenon complicates the climate change scenario, because the brown clouds also help cool the earth's surface and mask the impact of global warming by an average of 40 percent, according to the report.

Though it has been studied closely in Asia, the latest findings, conducted by an international collaboration of scientists, reveal that the brown cloud phenomenon is not unique to Asia, with pollution hotspots seen in North America, Europe, South Africa and South America.

More specifically, researchers found, brown clouds are forming over eastern China; northeastern Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Myanmar; Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam; sub-Saharan Africa southward into Angola, Zambia and Zimbabwe; and the Amazon Basin in South America.

The enormous cloud masses can move across continents within three to four days. Although they also form over the eastern U.S. and Europe, winter snow and rain tend to lessen the impact in those areas.

An international response is needed to deal with "the twin threats of greenhouse gases and brown clouds and the unsustainable development that underpins both," said the lead researcher, Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a professor of climate and ocean sciences at the University of California in San Diego.

One of the most serious problems, Ramanathan said, is retreat of the glaciers in the Himalaya and Hindu Kush and in Tibet. The glaciers feed most Asian rivers and "have serious implications for the water and food security of Asia," he said.

Monsoon rains over India and southeast Asia decreased between 5 and 7 percent overall since the 1950s, the report says, naming brown clouds and global warming as a possible cause. Likewise, they may have contributed to the melting of China's glaciers, which have shrunk 5 percent since the 1950s. The volume of China's nearly 47,000 glaciers has fallen by 3,000 square kilometers (1,158.31 square miles) in the past 25 years, according to the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Soot winds up on the surface of the glaciers that feed the Ganges, Indus, Yangtze and Yellow rivers, which makes the glaciers absorb more sunlight and melt more quickly and also pollutes the rivers, the researchers say.

But the U.N., which began studying the problem six years ago, still finds "significant uncertainty" in understanding how brown clouds affect conditions regionally, Ramanathan cautioned.

JUST PASSING THE INFO ALONG TO YOU... AND HOPE YOU DO THE SAME.

Hong Kong smog

Air pollution is causing 10,000 premature deaths a year in Hong Kong, Macau and southern China's Pearl River Delta, according to a report published on Thursday.

Respiratory diseases caused by the worsening smog is estimated to be costing 440,000 hospital bed days and 11 million doctor visits and costing the region's economy 6.7 billion yuan ($964 million) a year.

The estimates are contained in a report on the effects of poor air quality by the Hong Kong-based think tank Civic Exchange published in newspapers Thursday.

The survey was conducted over nine months by health, science and public policy experts who based their findings on air pollution from 2003 to 2006.

Smog in Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta has worsened considerably in the past decade, largely because of vehicle emissions and pollution from neighbouring industrial southern China.

Previous reports have warned that the air pollution in Hong Kong is causing thousands of premature deaths and that foreign investors are avoiding the former British colony because of its smog.

~FROM BLOG: Living In Hong Kong - Life of a Filipino web developer in Hong Kong. With descriptions of typical Hong Kong living, food, economics, entertainment, politics and just about everything else.

It's the year 2008, why the hell is the most technologically advanced country still dependent on COAL?!!

KEEP AN EYE ON THE SKY

Google Chemtrails
Originally uploaded by zachbrock.

During the past two weeks, I was pleased when the amount of chemtrails above Los Angeles dwindled BUT today was full-fledge government exotic weapon warfare on our immune systems!! There were TONS of chemtrail lines and circles in the sky and PEOPLE ARE STILL CLUELESS. (if you're not aware of CHEMTRAILS yet, please google "chemtrails" or read this)

SCIE CHIMICHE A MATERA - ChemTrails in Matera (Basilicata) - Italy
Originally uploaded by WhiteIron.

Chemtrails over Sussex - Summer, 2006 - 0117
Originally uploaded by libertyville.

If you've been living in a naive bubble than you probably haven't noticed the U.S. government is trying to DELIBERITLY poison you by releasing a cocktail of fungus, aluminium, barium, titanium and magnesium into the sky from large jets. These plumes of chemicals are usually dismissed as "contrails" but if you have an ounce of common sense and average eye sight, you will see UNLIKE CONTRAILS, CHEMATRAILS DO NOT DISSAPATE - THEY SPREAD, often covering miles of sky with wispy-looking plumes that slowly spread to resemble clouds, but they are not clouds!! Look carefully and you will see a pinkish prism or rainbow of chemicals in the plumes. Real clouds are not reflective, nor do they form multiple straight lines or cross-hatching patterns - as chemtrails do when they are being spread.

The sad part is the government is blantently poisoning us in BROAD DAYLIGHT and we are still naive and allow it to happen.

Chemtrails
Originally uploaded by art_es_anna.

11-16-07 bad spray day 037
Originally uploaded by unawareinla.

11-16-07 bad spray day 049
Originally uploaded by unawareinla.

This isn't a conspiracy theory. IT IS HAPPENING ALL OVER THE GLOBE:
Germany has already admitted to using chemtrails in order to "manipulate weather" and "disrupt radar signals."

The U.K. government admitted to "conducting a series of secret germ warfare tests on the public," including spraying public with harmful toxins.

Chemtrails making news in the United States who claims it is using the chemicals for "weather modification."

Think you're safe?! Let's take a look at what the toxic ingredients can do to your health:
*Fungus eats nutrients that are used to rebuild our immume system.
*Aluminium crosses the blood brain barrier, causes Alzheimer's disease and short term memory loss.
*Barium, in addition to being a known carcinogenic, knocks potassium out of the body.
*Titanium and magnesium combined together causes blood clots.

IF YOU ARE TRYING TO LIVE A HEALTHY LIFE, DIRECT YOUR ATTENTION TO THE SKY AND BE CONCERNED ABOUT THE QUAILITY OF THE AIR YOU BREATHE.

Check out this WEBSITE containing scary ongoing evidence of chemtrails from 2003-2007 and here's the US NAVY CHEMTRAIL PATENT from 1974!!

WHAT CAN YOU DO???
*Educate others and spread the word about chemtrails.
*Keep an eye on the sky, take photos and collect evidence of chemtrails above your town/city
*File a Class Action lawsuit for public endangerment... here's how. TIP: Do not use the word “chemtrails.” Instead, focus on air safety, and the health, serenity and safety of those on the ground.
*Contact ALL local and national media.
*Contact environmental agencies or form your own group or organization.

WHEN FACED WITH ADVERCITY:
*When told by authorities that these plumes are “harmless” contrails, remind them that the supposedly “safe” artificial clouds caused by normal condensation trails can be seen as dangerous air pollution that robs the blue skies essential to good health and life, while altering weather and climate by drastically changing a region’s atmospheric heat balance. Then point to your temperature/humidity records to prove that the plumes you’re citing cannot be contrails because the upper air is too warm and too dry for any such artificial clouds to form – unless massive amounts of particulates are added to the air for moisture to coalesce around. The smaller the particles, the more clouds are formed. And the greater the human health hazard that results.


If you'd like to really research the topic, exclude the term "chemtrail" and search for "exotic weapons." There are bills that were passed by congress to allow the US government the right to test "exotic weapons" on civilians. "Chemtrails" are included as "exotic weapons."

Here is an excerpt of the bill. You could also research it yourself:
H. R. 2977

To preserve the cooperative, peaceful uses of space for the benefit of all humankind by permanently prohibiting the basing of weapons in space by the United States, and to require the President to take action to adopt and implement a world treaty banning space-based weapons.

SEC. 7. DEFINITIONS.

(B) Such terms include exotic weapons systems such as--

(i) electronic, psychotronic, or information weapons;

(ii) chemtrails;

(iii) high altitude ultra low frequency weapons systems;

(iv) plasma, electromagnetic, sonic, or ultrasonic weapons;

(v) laser weapons systems;

(vi) strategic, theater, tactical, or extraterrestrial weapons; and

(vii) chemical, biological, environmental, climate, or tectonic weapons.

(C) The term `exotic weapons systems' includes weapons designed to damage space or natural ecosystems (such as the ionosphere and upper atmosphere) or climate, weather, and tectonic systems with the purpose of inducing damage or destruction upon a target population or region on earth or in space.