China Environment - Popular

www.guardian.co.uk — Poor weather conditions this year are partly responsible. But putting the blame on them overlooks the role played by the colossal Three Gorges reservoir, 500km upstream. The cause and effect is still not officially recognised, even if the government did admit last May that the planet's biggest dam had given rise to "problems that need to be solved very urgently".

www.guardian.co.uk — Tweets from the US embassy's air quality monitoring station raise questions over truth of official pollution statistics.

news.xinhuanet.com — More than 95 percent of new buildings that go up every year are "energy-guzzling," a senior government planner has said, urging the country to promote energy-efficient construction projects.

seeingredinchina.com — When talking with Chinese friends and co-workers about the pollution levels in Nanjing (awful compared to developed countries, but decent for Chinese cities), they are quick to point out that foreign companies in China are the ones that should be blamed for the filthy air.

www.myweathertech.com — China says the radioactive contamination in the Pacific Ocean from the Fukushima nuclear power plant is far wider than the areas released by the Japanese government.
China has discovered 100,000 square miles of Pacific Ocean waters, at distances up to 800 kilometers from Fukushima, with Cesium radiation levels up to 300 times normal and Strontium radiation levels up to 100 times normal.

www.china-underground.com — Qingdao beach after an invasion of sea lettuce. Many species of sea lettuce are a food source for humans in many countries, However, rotting leaves produce large quantities of hydrogen sulphide, a toxic gas.

www.scientificamerican.com — The critically endangered wild Bactrian camel is so rare and lives in such remote areas that it was only recognized as its own species in 2008.
With hunting, mineral mining and other threats on the rise, the camel's numbers have dropped 50 percent in the past 25 years to just 1,000 animals in two distinct populations.

www.guardian.co.uk — Chinese riot police were reportedly dragging off protesting herders while I was blithely listening to karaoke on the Inner Mongolian grasslands this week.

seeingredinchina.com — On Friday morning I was taking a group of foreign guests to visit sites around Nanjing when a heavy smog blanketed the city in a yellow stench. It seemed as if every family in the city of over 7 million had lit a pile of tires ablaze. Within 20 minutes of being outside I started feeling asthma like symptoms, meaning that it actually hurt to breathe.

www.guardian.co.uk — China is running out of cloud-seeding shells after pounding the skies with a massive barrage to ease the worst drought that parts of the Yangtze delta have experienced for more than 100 years.

One of the country's biggest manufacturers of the weather-modifying ordnance said its warehouses were empty despite raising production by 30%, operating on weekends and adding two hours to shift times.