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Asian Brown Cloud

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“Their wishes, increasingly, will be our commands, Mr. Fishman says. Their production and consumption patterns are already changing the way Americans shop, the kinds of jobs, wages and pensions they can expect and even the air they breathe. The Asian Brown Cloud, a wind-borne industrial smog that originates on China's east coast, can be seen in California as it rides the jet stream. (China has 7 of the world's 10 most polluted cities.)”

"Even before this discovery, the cooking fires of the poor were known to be one of the world"s gravest environmental hazards. A cocktail of poisonous chemicals swirling in the smoke from dung or wood fires kills 2.2 million people a year—mainly women cooking on them and their children. The United Nations Environment Programme says they are responsible for 5 per cent of the world"s disease—more than HIV/Aids—and cost the world economy up to £400bn a year in lost production through sickness and death.

"Yet worldwide two billion people have to burn wood and dung because they cannot access or afford modern forms of energy. Soot from the fires is also one of the main causes of the so-called Asian Brown Cloud, a vast pall, two miles thick, that hovers over the south of the continent, reducing the amount of sunlight that reaches the ground by up to 15 per cent."

"India's decision to join the Atmospheric Brown Cloud (ABC) project was inevitable, given the mounting evidence that the ABC dramatically reduces monsoon rain in the subcontinent. The ABC originally referred to the enormous blanket of pollution spreading across Asia, distorting normal weather patterns in the region and threatening to devastate many countries' economies. It was called the 'Asian Brown Cloud' in 2002, when a UN report first warned of this layer of pollution comprising ash, acids and aerosols.

"At that time, the two-mile thick haze extended ominously across the most densely populated areas of the world: southern, south-eastern, and eastern Asia. Subsequently, however, similar patterns were detected elsewhere in the world and it was renamed 'Atmospheric Brown Cloud'. Asia is particularly vulnerable as the ABC causes changes in the winter monsoon season, sharply reducing rain over northwestern parts of the continent and increasing rain along the eastern coast. This could potentially cut winter rice harvests by as much as 10 per cent. Research suggests that the impact of the haze will intensify over the next 20 years as the continent's population touches the 5 billion mark."

"To put those numbers into perspective, the mainland has 11 working nuclear reactors and 1,000 or so wind turbines. And that does not allow for energy demand growing at close to 15 per cent a year. In short, the country's future energy demand is going to be met mainly by burning coal, and a lot of it; the Institute for Energy Economics in Japan says between now and 2030, the mainland's demand for coal will grow 50 per cent to almost 3.8 billion tonnes a year.

"This is bad news for the country's weather. Burning all that coal pumps millions of tonnes of chemicals and soot into the atmosphere, where they settle at the boundary between the troposphere and the stratosphere at an altitude of about 7,000 metres, forming what scientists call 'the Asian brown cloud'.

"Being dark in colour, the cloud collects the sun's heat and warms up. Unfortunately, 7,000 metres is roughly the altitude of the Himalayan glaciers, which are melting rapidly as a result."

"Human health is suffering from the pollution we dump into the environment. Since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on the reduction of greenhouse gases, a continent-sized island of plastic waste has been discovered in the Pacific Ocean.

"And the Asian 'brown cloud' of particulate pollution from heavy industry, households and automobiles, has been detected over the Indian Ocean."

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