Warming of Glaciers Threatens Millions in China
ANYEMAQUEN MOUNTAINS, China - More than 3 miles above sea level in these jagged, wind-scoured mountains, there’s little doubt that global warming is endangering China’s future.
The glaciers that ripple off the peaks of Anyemaqen, a mountain range in the western China province of Qinghai, are shrinking rapidly, endangering hundreds of millions of people who depend on the waters flowing eastward through the Yellow River. 
With the rest of the country punished by record heat waves, floods and droughts this summer, it’s no wonder that Beijing, which has long viewed global warming as a problem that rich nations should solve, is waking up to the fact that China may be especially at risk.
Qinghai, a poor, Texas-size stretch of the northern Tibetan plateau where yaks outnumber humans, became the unusual focus of attention when U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson visited there Monday at the start of a four-day trip to China.
Rather than climbing the peaks, he visited Qinghai Lake, a saltwater body about 200 miles away, to demonstrate U.S. concern for the effects of global warming.
“What’s happening in terms of climate change globally is impacting the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau, and what’s happening here also impacts the global environment,” Paulson said, according to news reports.
Deaths from floods, lightning and landslides across China in recent weeks have reached nearly 700, state media reported this week, and officials warned that global warming is likely to cause even more violent weather.
“The frequency and intensity of extreme weather events are increasing - records for worst-in-a-century rainstorms, droughts and heat waves are being broken more often,” said Dong Wenjie, director-general of the Beijing Climate Center. “This in fact is closely associated with global warming.”
At Anyemaqen, a hike into the remote area last week by a Chronicle reporter found that the 5-mile-long Halong Glacier has shrunk by several hundred yards since it was last photographed by a Greenpeace activist in 2005 - and by a mile since a similar photo in 1981.
Local nomads say their livelihood is at stake.
“When I was a child, it was very cold and the grass was long, up to here,” said Namgyal Tsering, a 22-year-old herder, motioning to his shin as he perched on a high ridge and watched his flock of sheep. “Now the grass is short, and many people have moved into towns.”
The Qinghai-Tibetan plateau is warming up faster than anywhere else in the world, Chinese scientists said last week. The region’s average annual temperature is rising at a speed of 0.7 degrees Fahrenheit every 10 years, threatening to melt glaciers, dry up the 3,395-mile Yellow River and cause more droughts, sandstorms and desertification.
The plateau once contained 36,000 glaciers covering an area of 18,000 square miles, but in recent decades, the area of these glaciers has shrunk by 30 percent, say scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The government has forcibly moved thousands of nomads into local towns, giving them free housing and 8,000 yuan (about $1,060) per year.
A scattering of interviews with the resettled nomads showed that while some liked their new life and some didn’t, all agreed that their life before had become untenable.
“Before, there was no grass, and the rats dug holes everywhere and the ground was black,” recalled Chith Tsering, holding her 1-year-old daughter as she multitasked around her family’s three-room house in Dawu.
Since she moved from her remote grassland ranch three years ago, “it’s better, but it’s sad,” she said.
Around Qinghai’s steep canyons and rolling grassland, there’s an obvious new prosperity among the rural Tibetan people. China’s surging economic boom has reached into even the most remote hamlets. Nearly every tent or house has a new motorcycle - or even a sport utility vehicle - parked outside, evidence that rising demand by city dwellers for meat had driven up prices for the region’s yaks and sheep.
From village to village, Tibetan Buddhist temples that were torn down during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and early 1970s are now being rebuilt - often with money from newly wealthy businessmen in major cities such as Beijing and Guangzhou. Spidery webs of prayer flags stretch up mountainsides at seemingly every bend in the road, a testament to the resurgence of ethnic Tibetans’ spirituality as the Chinese government loosens its harsh restrictions on religious life.
The nationwide economic boom has propelled China into overtaking the United States as the world’s No. 1 source of greenhouse gas emissions, according to new data released in May. China’s output of emissions is rising by an annual amount that far outstrips the cutbacks that wealthy nations are committed to make under the Kyoto Protocol.
“The Chinese government is gradually realizing that global warming is something that will deeply affect the Chinese people and their economic security,” said Yang Ailun, climate program coordinator for Greenpeace in China.
In international climate negotiations, China’s leaders have refused to consider binding limits on the country’s emissions, arguing that limits should be imposed only on wealthy nations. Instead, China has adopted a goal of reducing the amount of energy expended per unit of wealth - a weaker yardstick that many environmentalists have criticized as insufficient.
In recent months, however, officials have discussed these goals with increasing urgency, noting the recent extreme weather.
But the effects of climate change can be fickle, as Paulson found Monday. During drought years in the late 1990s through 2005, the salt lake’s area shrank by more than a fourth. But during a Chronicle reporter’s recent visit, the salt lake was brimming over its banks because of weeks of steady rains - the same weather pattern that, farther east, was causing severe flooding. The hills surrounding the lake were verdant, and yaks have abundant pasture, locals said. Downstream on the Yellow River, where farmers depend on the trickle to water their crops, floods and hail killed 17 people across four provinces last weekend alone. Beijing was inundated by torrential rains Monday night, and Shanghai hit an all-time record of 103 degrees Fahrenheit over the weekend.
Two hundred miles south in Dawu, however, Chith Tsering said she was glad her family had moved off the land.
“The weather is changing, and it’s so hard to make a living off your animals,” she said. “There are many people still on the land who are suffering.”
© 2007 Hearst Communications Inc. |
What me worry? That can’t happen here. Our corporate scientists say there is no such thing as Global Warming. Besides, the free market will take care of it. And if it does happen it will be God’s will for the Rapture. We can’t wait to ascend into heaven and sit next to Him and bask in His glory. Or get my 72 virgins.
I hesitate to ask, but are you male or female Ezeflyer? 72? That’s twelve a day for six days and God says to rest on the seventh. You’ll be dead by the seventh.
Leonardo DiCaprio’s “The 11th Hour” is a feature length documentary
concerning the environmental crises caused by human actions and their
impact on the planet. However, the most powerful element of “The 11th Hour” is not a portrait of a planet in crisis, but the offering of hope and solutions. “The 11th Hour” calls for a future now within our grasp that is both sustainable and healthier…
Ezeflyer, please go see this film!!!
Join in the action: www.11thhouraction.com
“11th Hour” is out in theaters beginning August 17th.
We tried for so many years to warn them that life on Earth is a delicate balance of weather cycles, but they refused to listen - so now, when the mountain glaciers have all melted and the rivers dry up and the fields are parched, the crops will fail and billions will starve.
What will be will be. The glaciers melted before with NO help from man.
You believe what the media feeds you and I’ll believe naturely happening events.
FEAR IS THE EASIEST WAY TO CONTROL THE SHEEPLE.
You’re right about fear oldtimer. But wrong about global warming. Watch “An Inconvenient Truth”.
About 40 years or more ago we were told the truth by people that had no other agenda than to warn humanity so it, and life on this planet, could survive. These selfless people were subsequently subjected to ridicule, character assassination and marginalization, which is now a part of the legacy we have to deal with, as overcoming the momentum of those black propaganda campaigns that were financed by the big corporatocracies of the oil and auto industry (among others) has to be dealt with and overcome. Separate the lies and liars from the truth and truth tellers. Campaigns to do exactly that, will turn the tide of attitude change much faster, and be money well spent.
If we truly want effective solutions then we should turn to the people who told us the truth in the first place. We should no longer be listening to those who do not have anything in mind except this single driving motive, that overcomes any possible human scruple they may have (and truly their human-ness is doubtful), the motive is: profit-at-any-cost.
Listen to these ‘people’ and we all go down the toilet. The entire human race and all life except perhaps those creatures that are most closely related to the corporatocracies: the cockroaches, and that’s not being nice to the cockroaches, to whom I apologize for the insult, but I need a good simile to make the point.
We should be listening to those who were labelled with the pejoratives: “Tree-huggers”, “Greenies”, “Bleeding heart liberals”, “Hippies”, “Whale-savers”, “Anti-corporates”, “Communists”, “Reds”, “Socialists” (even if they had no such political affiliation) and “Eco-terrorists” and a host of other terms designed and intended to move them to the fringes of our collective social consciousness, so we WOULD NOT listen. They told the truth. They were, and are, right as we are now discovering. These “Greenies” et al are not stupid, and they don’t have anything else in mind other than the welfare of all life on the planet. They do have solutions, and while the rest of us have been sitting around paralyzed and disbelieving what they had to say, they have been preparing and considering the very plight we are now in. What we should be doing now, right now, and from this moment forward is listening to those who told us the truth, and we should be pillorying, marginalizing and moving to the fringes of our collective social consciousness any who say not to listen to the truth you bring.
So, a good start is to (1) discount any “information” source that is known to have engaged in disinformation and the above sort of marginalization of those who told the world the truth about catastrophic climate change and global warming–these ‘people’ are liars, label them as such and do not pay heed to them any more (most especially not the mealy-mouthed entities that pretend to be publishing and broadcasting in service of truth, but which always use words such as “appears to be” “seems to be” “may be” as indicators that they do not allocate sufficient journalistic budget to the verification of truth); (2) Listen very carefully, fully and completely to anything and everything the Greens et al have to offer as solutions and finally, (3) DO WHAT THE GREENS ET AL SAY TO DO. That’s the most important part.
If we do the above then we may just get out of this mess that those loathsome servants of the bottom line sold their souls–their very humanity, to.
Am I a member of the Greens? No. But I do want to point out what part of the problem is, and how it can be undone. To all those who were marginalized, experienced character assassination and were pilloried for telling the truth when their only motive was to save humanity and life on earth from extinction, my personal apologies for any part I played in that sort of rubbishing of your message and character, not that I personally engaged in any such behavior, but I could have done more to ensure that your message was heard and not rendered unimportant when it was of supreme importance. I hope this message, which I have and will be repeating elsewhere, goes some way towards repairing the unjustified impugning of your character, and the service you have provided and continue to do humanity.
To all who have told the world since the time it came to your attention that we human beings were being irresponsible caretakers of our home, I thank you, as we should all thank you, and laud you for standing up, exercising your right to freely articulate the truths you had discovered so that we may benefit from your observations and their communication.
We all owe you a tremendous debt, and should display our gratitude and do the best thing possible to acknowledge your undying commitment to life by listening and then doing what you recommend. You told the truth. Thank you.
ezeflyer—You expect me to believe lieing AL GORE???
The Al Gore that WASTES more energy then several average Joe’s use? The Al Gore that flies all over the world in those dirty poluting jets that leave vapor trails in the sky so he can preach “Global Warming”
Please, I know a little too much about him for that.
This url list could go on for several hundred feet but here’s a couple to get you started
http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/house.asp
http://www.tennesseepolicy.org/main/article.php?article_id=367
China may want to divert some of the money they spend on U.S. debt to buy some alternative energy.
The dollar would become a much less important currency in a big hurry.
Hi oldtimer:___ I’m an oldtimer too. It is not Al Gore who is the expert, he is just the messenger of the experts. He can use tons of electrical power, fly a polluting jet and smoke hand rolled cigars, and fart bean shit, that don’t mean he isn’t telling the truth.
I listen to Al Gore and believe what he says on the issue of global warming, because Gore is proclaiming the message of thousands of qualified scientists and those who have seen it with their own eyes.
The thousands of ice core samples taken at the poles, tell it like it was__ and how it is now__ and how fast it has sprung upon us. They prove the global warming is due to man’s use of burning carbon fuel. No one has to believe it, but if I had property anywhere, that was less than sixty feet above sea level, I’d be selling. And I’m neither a scientist, nor an over-educated idiot,___ but I’m not stupid.
What are you doing anyway?
What your “Corpirate’ handlers want?
Endless War!
Pollution
Destruction of the Environment
Drive a
Gas guzzling SUV
In highway parking lot
The Shrub says it’s uniquely American.
To work three jobs and have
No health care or savings.
The Aristocratic Resident gets a $600,000 pension
To play the fool
So imitate him.
If you expect Halliburton Dick to save you,
Look at Katrina
911
Iraq
The Mime Police
Lead by Speedy Gonzalez
Make believe they protect you.
While these Corpirate tools pillage
Your:
Country
Savings
Treasury
Torture
Spy
Lie and
Steal.
TRILLIONS of Dollars
Millions of Millions.
Same Old fools!
Dick the Heartless
Shrub
Rumdumb
Ashcrop
Kissasser
Old War Criminals and Corpirate Shills.
They are the best
The Corpirate Stupid State has to offer.
While you,
Guzzle beer and get brainwashed
By the mindless
Faux News
Sit in your cage and wonder
How your sorry ass got into this
Horrible mess.
The Rats are bailing ship
Their work is almost done.
Someone else will be blamed
For their awful mess.
And they’ll be
Laughing
All the way to the Bank
Four Trillion Dollars and counting
The Bushites have stolen.
In six short years
Unprecedented Greed.
Mission Accomplished!
Robert Collier,
Apparently, neither the Chinese capitalists or the Chnese government intend to retro-fit their coal-fired power plants with pollution-control equipment - too expensive.
So, who’s kidding who? They and their Western partners have doomed themselves and all life on Earth to environmental catastrophe.
KEM PATRICK—
Say what you like but as far as I’m concerned Al G don’t know s)-( ! t from apple butter and every time he opens his mouth he proves it, especially with all the HOT AIR he expells!!!!!!
The glaciers melted before and there is nothing to keep them from doing it again.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1863272/posts
I suppose the allmighty “Seer”, Al Gore has a way to blame all the solar activity on humans too……
http://www.exploratorium.edu/sunspots/
“11th Hour” is out in theaters beginning August 17th.
The thing is, most of us have the essential concept down. We know the problem, what causes it, how it might be fixed …and that it probably won’t be. Will another film do anything? Will ten more? As always in human history, we’re at the mercy of a handful of men in charge. We can preassure them, but look at how that’s going with the Iraq War. Thank the gods that bad men go away over time. That’s where our real hope sits.
Latest studies—–
http://www.canadafreepress.com/2007/global-warming073107m.htm
I see, then all of those ice core samples taken and the spectroananysis datta derived from them are false. Boy, and I thought those guys knew what they were talking about. Silly me.
Guess I’d better read some newspaper editorials and not worry about selling my property. It’s not warming up after all and if it does really fast,__ it’s normal. At least it’s normal now, first time in a few million years it was.
Well Oldtimer, I agree, we can believe anything we wish. I sure don’t wish to believe your opinions on this issue, but I respect your right to express them.
oldtimer:
Aren’t you a bit curious about “An Inconvenient Truth”? Maybe you should watch it if only to “know thine enemy”. You know what they say: “none so blind as those who will not see”.