Environmental News

It seems that @hill was at Shanghai Disney construction 2011 to 2016, and we'd hope that poster would say more.

I was led to

https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/13/11/1839

It does not address Shanghai, but gives a Zenodo database that does. Air quality in some of China has been bad; in many areas it has improved. All I can say is from being i.n Beijing in recent years, haze/stratospheric opacity was sensibly bad, but not as painful as was Los Angeles air in mid 1970s.

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Air quality in some parts of China remain bad. If that is a cudgel you would wish to strike with, you go. Air quality in many parts of India remain very bad. Largest gains towards human health are there, I think.

 

State of the Global Climate 2024:


State of the Global Climate 2024

Rather brief as these things go. I will comment on Figure 6 in particular, average pH of the global ocean. This measure fell from 8.11 to 8.045 from 1985 to 2023. Most will recall that pH higher than 7 is alkaline. Fewer may remember that pH is the base10 logarithm of hydrogen ion concentration in moles per liter, expressed as a negative. I mention that because few physical properties are expressed as logarithms.

This is important if one were to mix together equal volumes of water with pH 6 and pH 8. The resulting would have pH equal to ??? The answer is not 7, and I have met graduate students unable to answer this correctly. I cooked and ate them

But back at Figure 6, one might certainly have the impression this decrease in pH ain't much. However, in terms of hydrogen ion concentration (that is what organisms respond to), this is a 116% increase.

If your diet includes more shellfish than graduate students, at some future ocean pH, expect changes. That is as far as one can go without entering details.

 

@Merkey offers same result perhaps better stated. newest value is 116% of oldest value. Newest value is 16% larger than oldest value. In some ways percentages can be murky. Punning on your screen name,

 

US Dept of Education will certainly soon be reduced in function. I suppose Legislative Branch would need to participate in its deletion.

Among that Dept's functions are assessments presented here:

The Nation’s Report Card

All the previous results are too important to disappear and I am sure they are being archived in other ways. However, national future assessments may not be made.

International assessments are done by UNESCO and presumably will continue unimpeded.

 

UNESCO does most countries including USA, but not deep analyses.

 

Great Blue Hole in Belize was sediment cored to show 5700 years of hurricane history

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1077983

Excerpt from publication


Shows long-term variations that authors relate to global patterns other than temperature change. Only the most recent 50-yr bar stands above previous ones. That is based in part on future climate projections, so it must be viewed with caution.

Other studies I have presented here showed that N Atlantic hurricane intensity but not frequency has increased over decades. This is among few exploring frequency.

 

Your link to Global Energy Review 2025

Global Energy Review 2025 – Analysis - IEA

 

Imagine being a tree, taller than others in forest nearby. Lightning comes and guess who gets zapped?

It seems that some tree species survive 'extending a middle finger' upward rather well:

Getting hit by lightning is good for some tropical trees

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Forests everywhere* have some species doing this middle-finger thing. Besides acting as lightning rods, they get hit by stronger winds than in the main canopy (huddling together for mutual protection). When a drought comes, their water conduits are longer and possibly limiting water transport 'up there' where light is most abundant. That's the benefit, and those are the risks.

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A saying/aphorism/old chestnut goes "a nail that sticks out will get hammered down". But in forests, that hammer often misses. The why of it is not understood.

*Forests everywhere here excludes commercial forest plantations that typically have only one tree species. Those are forests in many senses of the word, but they do not extend middle fingers skyward.

 

Earthquake yesterday, Mag 7.7 in middle of Myanmar. This is going to be a bad one. Myanmar does not have many modern roads and airports, so this will not be an easy matter for international aid

It moved tall buildings in Bangkok and one under construction fell with >100 people inside.

Sleepy Kunming is actually closer than Bangkok to epicenter, but I did not feel it here. Ground motion does not propagate in all directions equally. People probably know that.

 

You know how Himalayan Mtns. formed, yes? India arrived from the southwest and kept coming. Keeps coming

 

The best prompt source of earthquake bad news is



It is automatically generated from population density maps and other 'overlays' including building construction types and landforms.

There will probably be a lot of bad news from Mandalay which is very near epicenter and >1 million people.

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edit 'pager page' was not visible

 

The bldg collapse in Bangkok was being built with lots of steel rebar (unfortunately now visible). That's what one wants to see. But there are details about how the rebars are joined to each other; details about how well foundation is made and how the uppers are tied to foundation. In other words rebar ain't enough.

A building during construction might not yet have achieved its final design strength.

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I previously shared an office with a Civil Engineer in Dept of Civil and Environmental Engineering (at a well known Univ) and learned a lot from him.

 

I would expect all new (tall) construction in Bangkok to conform to modern standards at least on paper. It is a rich place by regional standards. Myanmar is not a rich place and (sigh) spends much of what it has on internal military activities.

 

"At 6:30 am on Saturday, a rescue and medical team of 37 members departed from the Changshui International Airport in Kunming, Yunnan province, for the earthquake-stricken area in Myanmar.

They carried a large amount of emergency search and rescue equipment and relief supplies such as full-function life detectors, earthquake early warning systems, portable satellites and drones, Xinhua News Agency reported."

This is the only emergency response from China that I have seen so far. More would be expected later from a bordering nation. But not much later.

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I do not know what "portable satellites" are. Probably a lost-in-translation thing.