Okay, just kidding. These days, the world press seems intent on casting China in the role as either looming menace or teetering on the edge of collapse. Regular readers know what I think of all this ill-informed hogwash.
Nonetheless... sometimes one just has to jump on the bandwagon so here goes. Presenting RIIP's very own "China Menace" story:
As reported in today's WSJ, China is destroying the GLOBAL air supply:
An outpouring of dust layered with man-made sulfates, smog, industrial fumes, carbon grit and nitrates is crossing the Pacific Ocean on prevailing winds from booming Asian economies in plumes so vast they alter the climate. These rivers of polluted air can be wider than the Amazon and deeper than the Grand Canyon.
Holy smoke, Batman!
Once aloft, the plumes can circle the world in three weeks. "In a very real and immediate sense, you can look at a dust event you are breathing in China and look at this same dust as it tracks across the Pacific and reaches the United States," said climate analyst Jeff Stith at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado. "It is a remarkable mix of natural and man-made particles."
Think of it as a sort of new kind of foreign exchange program.
The team detected a new high-altitude plume every three or four days. Each one was up to 300 miles wide and six miles deep, a vaporous layer cake of pollutants. The higher the plumes, the longer they lasted, the faster they traveled and the more pronounced their effect, the researchers said.
All right, all right, I know, this is disturbing and serious. Someone better alert Al Gore. Speaking of vaporous outpourings of polluted air...
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