NEWS: Flooding in Nepal, Bangladesh, Prague, South Dakota

There was an AP article in the local paper a couple of days ago that said that the flooding in Nepal and north eastern India are likely the result of air pollution caused by burning bio-mass (dung etc.) fuels and burning of vegetation to clear fields. The headline of the article was "Pollution may be killing 500,000 annually in India".
 
Originally posted by Terr
There was an AP article in the local paper a couple of days ago that said that the flooding in Nepal and north eastern India are likely the result of air pollution caused by burning bio-mass (dung etc.) fuels and burning of vegetation to clear fields. The headline of the article was "Pollution may be killing 500,000 annually in India".
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Air pollution is certainly a problem all over the world (the US particularly actually..) so I don't want to underrate its effect, but the earth's temperature does just fluctuate quite a bit 'naturally' too. As Eik probably knows too, for instance in roughly 800-1200 (?) northern Europe (and the rest of the world too I believe) was quite a bit warmer than it is now, Scandinavians found and settled in Greenland and found the remains of native Greenlander villages, as the native G-landers had moved north as the temperatures warmed, but later on Europe became colder again, and-amongst other reasons-the Greenlanders moved back south and wiped out the Scandinavian settlements..

--B.
 
More on the massive Asian pollution that is causing Nepalese floods and Afghan drought. Here are the Himalayas, poking above the cloud of brown haze:
_38186887_haze300.jpg
 
That brown cloud of pollution over Asia has been there for several years now, causing changes in the weather and climate in Asia.

This year is El Niño, so that is why we have it in Europe, South America and North America too, plus the extras in Asia.

Changes in climate is indeed interesting Beoram. Especially when you look back several million years and try to see how it has affected life on this planet.

El Niño is coming stronger, and possibly more oftenly, than it is supposed to because of the manmade contribution to the greenhouse effect.

It is bad karma on us when driving our cars in our part of the world is actually killing people elsewhere, isn't it Uncle Bill? (Since we are now conscious about it.)
 
I noted the pollution level index in the Kathmandu Valley was around 1200, about 10 times worse than Los Angeles on a bad day. Yesterday I saw some pix of Hong Kong in the smog and couldn't believe it. Really bad. Worse than I've ever seen it.

You are right about the cars. When I ask those who bitch about smokers contaminating the air if they drive a car they just don't get it -- or choose NOT to get it.

Last year I drove only 2500 miles. I don't take many pleasure drives anymore. But a rough calculation tells me that's 12 or 13 hundred pounds of gas I burned to get that 2500 miles. I burned maybe 12 pounds of tobacco and filtered most of it with my own lungs. So, who's the culprit here?
 
Strange thing is, we are having the worse drought since the Dust Bowl days in the '30s. ... in fact, it's dryer now than back then!

Alan
 
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