ENVIRONMENTAL LEGAL BLOGS

THE PEOPLE'S PARADISE

     From Radio Free Asia:

     Residents of Chenxi county in the southern Chinese province of Hunan say thousands of people are seeking medical attention after a local factory polluted the local water supply, although local officials said only 26 people were taken seriously ill.

“We are not on the main water supply here, so 80 to 90 percent of villagers rely on the same water supply,” a resident of Banqiao village surnamed Chen told RFA’s Cantonese service. “One by one, they are all going to the doctor because they are getting headaches, swelling and weakness in their limbs.”

Chen said that once at the hospital, local people were told by medical staff that they had a suspected case of poisoning through pollution of the water supply. He estimated that around 90 percent of villagers in the area relied on the same water supply.

***

Chemical spills with serious health consequences are common in China.

In 2005, a massive chemical plant spill into northeastern China’s Songhua River resulted in drinking supply cuts affecting millions of residents of Heilongjiang province.

Believe it or not- from The New York Times

     From (if you can believe it) a column in today's New York Times:

...there’s bound to be some weird weather somewhere, and we will react like the sailors in the Book of Jonah. When a storm hit their ship, they didn’t ascribe it to a seasonal weather pattern. They quickly identified the cause (Jonah’s sinfulness) and agreed to an appropriate policy response (throw Jonah overboard).

Today’s interpreters of the weather are what social scientists call availability entrepreneurs: the activists, journalists and publicity-savvy scientists who selectively monitor the globe looking for newsworthy evidence of a new form of sinfulness, burning fossil fuels.

***

When the Arctic sea ice last year hit the lowest level ever recorded by satellites, it was big news and heralded as a sign that the whole planet was warming. When the Antarctic sea ice last year reached the highest level ever recorded by satellites, it was pretty much ignored. A large part of Antarctica has been cooling recently, but most coverage of that continent has focused on one small part that has warmed.

***

Roger A. Pielke Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, recently noted the very different reception received last year by two conflicting papers on the link between hurricanes and global warming. He counted 79 news articles about a paper in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, and only 3 news articles about one in a far more prestigious journal, Nature.

Guess which paper jibed with the theory — and image of Katrina — presented by Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth”?

RECORD SNOW-MUST BE GLOBAL WARMING (?)

Today's snowstorm made this month the snowiest December in New Hampshire in more than a century.

     Associated Press, 12/31/08.

     How can this be?  I thought global warming was drying us out.  Oh, wait-- this unusual phenomenon shows that global warming is producing weather not seen before.  But, wait again-- this weather was seen before, a century ago, before (relatively speaking) much industrialization had occurred.

     If it's hot, it's caused by global warming.  if it's cold, it's caused by global warming.  If it's too dry, it's caused by global warming.  If it's too wet, it's caused by global warming.  If there is a drought, it's caused by global warming.  if there's a flood, it's caused by global warming. 

     It's good to be a global warming true believer.  You can never lose a debate.