Recently China announced a contract has been signed which will lead to Arizona-based First Solar Inc building the world’s largest solar power station in Inner Mongolia. Solar water heaters already supply one in ten of Chinese homes and they hope to have 50% of the nation’s households linked up by 2020. Wind power provision is eight years ahead of schedule. The Chinese government have looked into the future and understand what needs to be done. Some commentators are implying that somehow this remarkable effort is simply PR or a token gesture. If they understood the full implications of recent research they might believe otherwise.
The Chinese scientists now know that the regional and global environment may have to pay a terrible price if they contiue to burn vast amounts of coal in their power stations .As far as
carbon dioxide emissions are concerned Chinese emissions will simply make a problem created by the West.even worse.
Global warming predictions by the IPCC are already terrifying.
Unfortunately a second pollutant linked to coal burning, namely sulphur dioxide, is also likely to have an indirect and negative impact on our climate. According to Sheng Huaren , vice chairman of the standing committee of China’s National People’ Congress, acid rain now affects one third of China’s landmass. The Worldwatch Institute said “Chinese air is so saturated with sulphur dioxide that the country has experienced acid rains of a RARELY EQUALLED SEVERITY.”
In 2002 Martin Kennedy and colleagues reported that acid rain, which leaches essential elements from top soils ie magnesium, calcium and potassium) ,may present a greater danger to forest health than was previously realized.It has long been recognised that global warming will produce far greater temperature increases in the Northern Hemisphere than in areas closer to the equator and that these same increases will likely threaten the existence of Boreal forests. If acid rain has already weakened the trees, they are even more threatened and if dead forest ignite, vast amounts of carbon dioxide will be released into the atmosphere. This scenario was mentioned in an M.A. paper in 1987.
It is vital that developed nations provide whatever
financial support and expertise is needed to ensure that Chinese desulphurisation programmes can go ahead at the greatest possible speed. It is also vital that the scientific community examine whether a massive spraying programmes in China, North America and elsewhere, could restore the health of depleted topsoils without causing damage to aquatic environments and/or the trees they are designed to protect.etc.
"Our study not only challenges the dominant paradigm that rocks and soil mineral weathering provide a majority of some important plant nutrients like calcium and potassium," said Kennedy, "but it also proposes that our 'stable' old growth forests are the most at risk from acid rain, and that it is a bigger problem, potentially, than we ever imagined."-Kennedy
RJMA
P.S.
IT IS PROBABLY TIME FOR THE WORLD TO COMMIT TO THE CONSTRUCTION OF FIVE MILLION ARTIFICIAL TREES.OCEAN ACIDIFICATION AND CLIMATE CHANGE MUST BE TACKLED NOW.
Extract
It says that the most promising solution is offered by artificial trees, devices that collect CO2 through their “leaves” and convert it to a form that can easily be collected and stored.Tim Fox, head of environment and climate change at the institution, said that the devices were thousands of times more effective at removing carbon from the atmosphere than real trees
In the first report on such geo-engineering by practising engineers, the institution calculates that 100,000 artificial trees — which could fit into 600ha (1,500 acres) — would be enough to capture all emissions from Britain’s homes, transport and light industry. It says that five million would do the same for the whole world.
Dr Fox said that prototypes had been shown to work using a technology, developed by Klaus Lackner of Columbia University in New York, that isolated CO2 using low levels of energy. “The technology is no more complex than what is used in cars or air-conditioning units,” he said.
Professor Lackner estimates that in production the units would cost $20,000 (£12,000) each, while the emissions associated with building and running each unit would be less than 5 per cent of the CO2 it captures over its lifetime.
IF PLACED IN APPROPRIATE SITES THESE ARTIFICAL FOREST COULD PERHAPS HELP TO SLOW OR HALT THE ADVANCE OF CHINA'S DESERTS.
ANYONE WHO CAN LOOK AT THE THREAT THE WORLD FACES AND SAY THE TREES ARE TOO EXPENSIVE SHOULD HAVE THEIR HEAD EXAMINED IMHO.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6811264.eceREFERENCE MATERIAL
ACID RAIN THREATENS FORESTS MORE THAN PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT.(July 8, 2002)
RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- UC Riverside Earth Scientist Martin Kennedy and colleagues report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that acid rain, by leaching essential metal nutrients (such as potassium, calcium, and magnesium) from topsoil, may pose a far graver threat to forests than has been previously estimated. This result would especially interest ecologists, biologists, geologists, and policy makers.
"Our work shows that in unperturbed natural ecosystems a very small pool of these nutrients is available and this comes from the atmosphere, mostly as dilute amounts dissolved in rain that then get deposited in topsoil," said Kennedy. "The tight budget of these nutrients is a concern because if the budget is perturbed, the forests are at risk."
If deprived of a certain critical nutrient, such as calcium, a tree faces the risk of dying. In parts of Germany, for example, trees are already dying not from the direct effects of the acid, but from magnesium deficiency, this magnesium loss from the soil stemming from leaching by acid rain. Such leaching results in the loss of topsoil nutrients to groundwater and eventually to rivers.
Kennedy noted that plant roots cannot access all nutrient elements in the soil; some elements are bound in minerals and rocks. "In our study, we were attempting to determine what fraction of the total elements available in the soil the plants could access. We found it was a very small proportion."
It has long been thought that trees obtain their essential metal nutrients from weathered rock particles deep in the soil. But by demonstrating that the trees obtain these nutrients almost exclusively from atmospheric sources, Kennedy and colleagues suggest that the trees cycle a small pool of nutrients that are continually replaced by dilute atmospheric sources.
The scientists experimented on trees in the unpolluted forests of southern Chile (see Fig. 1). "We went to the cleanest atmosphere on earth and looked for a stable ecosystem so that we could find the closest thing to a long-term sustainable forest," Kennedy said (see Fig. 2). "There, we sampled soils, stream water, rain and plants, and analyzed the strontium isotope composition."
Strontium isotopes indicate very accurately which fraction came from the rain and which fraction came from the rock. "We found that in the dominant tree species - the southern Beech - approximately 90% of the strontium, and thus other similar nutrient elements, were brought in by the rain and did not come from soils or rocks, as just about everyone had assumed," said Kennedy.
The researchers also applied a distinctive artificial chemical tracer to the soils in a small portion of the Chilean forest. The tracer mimics the natural nutrients in the soils and trees with the advantage that it can be measured and observed as it moves throughout the soil plant system. By sampling the trees and soil over time and by analyzing the samples for the tracer, the scientists found that within three years most of the tracer was quickly leached from the topsoil. The loss of this element within such a short amount of time surprised the researchers because it implies that a far smaller pool of nutrients is available to the trees from the upper soil than they had imagined.
"The small size of this upper soil nutrient pool has important implications for industrially influenced forests in the northeastern United States and in Europe," said Kennedy. "These forests may be more vulnerable to the effects of acid rain than we had previously thought."
Hydrogen ions from the acid in acid rain replace the nutrient elements in the soil. For every unit of acid added to the soil, an equivalent amount of nutrient elements is removed. As a result, more nutrients get leached from the soil than arrive from weathering of rocks or precipitation (see Fig. 3). Kennedy explained that the Chilean site was invaluable for the research because the cleanest forests indicate how the system should work if left alone. In forests in the northeast United States on the other hand, the system is already disturbed.
"Our study not only challenges the dominant paradigm that rocks and soil mineral weathering provide a majority of some important plant nutrients like calcium and potassium," said Kennedy, "but it also proposes that our 'stable' old growth forests are the most at risk from acid rain, and that it is a bigger problem, potentially,than we ever imagined.
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ACID RAIN IN CHINA
"Acid rain caused by worsening air pollution now affects one-third of China’s landmass, threatening soil quality and food safety, according to Sheng Huaren, vice chairman of the standing committee of China’s National People’s Congress. In 2005, acid rain hit more than half of the 696 cities and counties under air-quality monitoring, with some cities receiving all of their precipitation as acid rain, The Independent reported on August 27.
While air quality has improved in some areas of China as a result of adjustments in the nation’s energy structure and stricter vehicle emissions standards, 40 percent of urban air quality remains below even second-grade national standards, reflecting various levels of pollutants. Sulfur dioxide and inhalable particulate matter are the two major acid rain-causing substances, according to Xinhua News Agency.
More than 25 million tons of sulfur dioxide belched from China’s coal-fired power and coking plants last year, double the level deemed safe for the facilities’ environmental capacity. According to Sheng, the desulfurization facilities in these plants have a combined capacity of 53 million kilowatts, representing only 14 percent of total installed capacity. Shanxi Province in northeastern China, famous for its local coking industry, produced more than 80 million tons of coke (a solid carbon residue used in making steel) in 2005, emitting high levels of sulfurous compounds. Of the more than 680 coking enterprises province-wide, only 65 have applied for environmental protection examination and approval; of these, only 30—or about 5 percent of all coking enterprises—currently meet national sulfur emission standards, Xinhua News Agency reported.
According to Sheng, inhalable particulate matter (PM) is the primary pollutant affecting human health and urban air quality in China. In 2005, 35.8 percent of the nation’s cities suffered from PM pollution at levels below the second-grade national standards; the most polluted regions are northern Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, and southwestern Sichuan provinces. Inhalable PM is caused by emissions of soot (fine black particles composed chiefly of carbon, produced by incomplete combustion of coal, oil, wood, or other fuels) and industrial powders. Last year, Chinese soot emissions topped 11.8 million tons and industrial powder emissions totaled 9.11 million tons.
In early August, the International
Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank, announced a new venture to help clean up the noxious air pollution from China’s coal-powered homes and factories. Up to US$50 million will be invested in Inner Mongolia’s Xinao Group Corp. to aid the production of dimethyl ether (DME), a more environmentally friendly fuel that can replace diesel in transportation and power generation uses.
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/4496 ----------------------------------------------
SOLAR POWER IN CHINA
China has just announced that it is to build the world’s biggest solar power station. Ordos City in Inner Mongolia has signed an agreement with the Arizona-based First Solar Inc to construct a 2000 MW plant, which can generate enough electricity to power three million Chinese homes. And it is planned to be part of a giant 11,950 MW renewable energy park, supplying almost six times as much from solar and wind power.
The plans are just the most eye-catching example of a largely-unnoticed renewable energy revolution that is taking place in the world’s most populous country while attention is understandably focussed on its enormously polluting consumption of coal. China already has two thirds of the world’s solar hot water capacity, with solar heaters suppling one in ten of its homes; the government aims to double this by 2020 and, admittedly optimistic, predictions suggest that it may supply half the country’s households by 2020.
Meanwhile, in just two years from a virtually standing start China became the world’s largest produce of solar photovoltaic cells - which produce electricity - by 2007, and is expected soon to be producing a third of the global total. And its windpower is set to exceed its 30,000 MW target in 2012, eight years ahead of schedule.
Geoffrey Lean September 15 2009
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