China pollution anger spills into state media

Terra Daily via AFP: Public anger in China at dangerous levels of air pollution, which blanketed Beijing in acrid smog, spread Monday as state media queried official transparency and the nation's breakneck development. The media joined Internet users in calling for a re-evaluation of China's modernisation process, which has seen rapid urbanisation and dramatic economic development at the expense of the environment.

Dense smog shrouded large swathes of northern China at the weekend, cutting visibility to 100 metres (yards) in some areas and forcing flight cancellations. Reports said dozens of building sites and a car factory in the capital halted work as an anti-pollution measure.

Doctors at two of the city's major hospitals said the number of patients with respiratory problems had increased sharply in the past few days, state media reported.

"Now it has been dark with pollution for three days, at least people are starting to realise how important the environment is," said one posting on China's Twitter-like Sina Weibo.

At the height of the smog Beijing authorities said readings for PM2.5 -- particles small enough deeply to penetrate the lungs -- hit 993 micrograms per cubic metre, almost 40 times the World Health Organisation's safe limit....

Smog in Beijing in 2006, shot by Berserkerus, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Extreme weather more persuasive on climate change than scientists

Suzanne Golderberg in the Guardian (UK): As one of the Marx brothers famously said: who do you believe, me or your own eyes? Climate sceptics, it turns out, are much more likely to believe direct evidence of a changing climate in the form of extreme weather events than they do scientists, when it comes to global warming.

A poll released on Friday by the Associated Press-GfK found rising concern about climate change among Americans in general, with 80% citing it as a serious problem for the US, up from 73% in 2009. Belief and worry about climate change were rising faster still among people who do tend not to trust scientists on the environment.

Some of the doubters said in follow-up interviews that they were persuaded by personal experience: such as record temperatures, flooding of New York City subway tunnels, and news of sea ice melt in the Arctic and extreme drought in the mid-west. About 78% of respondents overall believed in climate change, a slight rise from AP's last poll in 2009. The result was in line with other recent polls.

Among climate doubters, however, 61% now say temperatures have been rising over the past century, a substantial rise from 2009 when only 47% believed in climate change.

The change was not among the hard core of climate deniers, but in the next tier of climate doubters, AP reported. About 1 in 3 of the people surveyed fell into that category. "Events are helping these people see what scientists thought they had been seeing all along," Jon Krosnick, a Stanford University psychologist who studies attitudes to climate change and consulted on the poll, told the news agency....

US Air Force picture of Hurricane Sandy effects on the New Jersey coast

Climate change? Most Nepalis are unaware of it!

Ramesh Prasad Bhushal in Republica: Thousands of people gather every year at UN climate negotiation forums and discuss how to tackle climate change – one of the most pressing issues of the 21st century, according to scientists and leaders. It’s not a new story, as people have been debating on the issue for the last two decades globally but failed to reach a consensus on how to move forward to tackle the problem by reducing the emission of carbon dioxide gas—a major culprit for global warming.

...But those who are at the forefronts of climate change and would be affected most are unaware of what’s happening at global and national level and the science of climate change. More than 100 people whom I interviewed while traveling in many parts of the country said they haven’t heard the word in their entire life.

...The Ministry of Environment, Science and Technology is the focal ministry to deal on climate change, especially at international forums and national policy level. There is the Climate Change Council headed by the Prime Minister, a separate division at the Environment Ministry to look over the issues and dozens of million-dollar projects already completed and more in the pipeline. There is no donor agency which may not have worked on climate change and hundreds of NGOs working on it. But with that influx of money on advocacy and awareness in the last one decade, the information has not reached to those who are really in the need.

Nepal has been categorized as the 4th most vulnerable country in the world due to climate change, glacier melt in unusually rapid in recent years, and rainfall pattern is said to be changing. However, most people in the country were found totally uninformed about what’s happening at the global and national level on climate change talks despite the large amounts of money spent by national and international agencies, including Nepal Government....

The Anapurna range from above Pokhara, Nepal.  Shot by Jean-Marie Hullot, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license