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Post by jeffolie on Jul 22, 2007 15:22:36 GMT -6
One tainted export from China can't be avoided in North America -- air. An outpouring of dust layered with man-made sulfates, smog, industrial fumes, carbon grit and nitrates is crossing the Pacific Ocean on prevailing winds from booming Asian economies in plumes so vast they alter the climate. These rivers of polluted air can be wider than the Amazon and deeper than the Grand Canyon. "There are times when it covers the entire Pacific Ocean basin like a ribbon bent back and forth," said atmospheric physicist V. Ramanathan at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif. The team detected a new high-altitude plume every three or four days. Each one was up to 300 miles wide and six miles deep, a vaporous layer cake of pollutants. The higher the plumes, the longer they lasted, the faster they traveled and the more pronounced their effect, the researchers said. online.wsj.com/public/article/SB118470650996069354-buQPf_FL_nKirvopk__GzCmNOq8_20070818.html?mod=tff_main_tff_top
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 22, 2007 22:51:46 GMT -6
More from the article:
"On some days, almost a third of the air over Los Angeles and San Francisco can be traced directly to Asia. With it comes up to three-quarters of the black carbon particulate pollution that reaches the West Coast, Dr. Ramanathan and his colleagues recently reported in the Journal of Geophysical Research.
This transcontinental pollution is part of a growing global traffic in dust and aerosol particles made worse by drought and deforestation, said Steven Cliff, who studies the problem at the University of California at Davis...."
It's time to put tariffs on everything that comes out of China, if not just completely end all trade with China.
They're putting Americans out of work, suppressing wages, exporting dangerous, toxic, and poorly-made products into the United States. And now they're polluting our air.
We can't continue to let our government be run by those who are representing exclusively the interests of Wal-Mart, American international investors, and American Corporate multinationals.
We're not helping Chinese workers or American workers. The only benefits from trade with China are to increase the profit margins and wealth of America's Corporate elite.
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