(July 19, 2010) China’s massive Three Gorges dam is facing a major test of the flood control function that was one of the key justifications for its construction, as torrential rains swell the rivers that feed it, state media said Monday.
What We Talk About When We Talk About Climate Change
(July 19, 2010) The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is preparing its Fifth Assessment Report, with the input of 831 experts selected from among 3,000 nominations. As Andy Revkin reports on Dot Earth, these 831 experts have been sent a letter from IPCC chairman Rajendra K. Pachauri which, without mentioning ClimateGate by name, acknowledges the very charged atmosphere surrounding the media’s portrayal of climate science.
Exodus making way for water diversion project
(June 18, 2010) As many as 540,000 people will be resettled to make way for the middle and eastern routes, China’s largest resettlement project since the Three Gorges Project, which involved the resettlement of 1.4 million people.
Bad politics
(July 17, 2010) A few week ago the U.S. National Academy of Sciences published a paper that claimed to have found evidence that scientists who support official climate change theory are vastly more numerous and expert than scientists who do not. Those who do not, often called skeptics or deniers, were said to be in such a minority as to be insignificant in number, making up only 2% or 3% of climate scientists. That tiny fraction of climate scientists was found to have much weaker levels of scientific "credibility" and "expertise."
Water schemes tamper with nature’s design
(July 16, 2010) According to the latest issue of Century Weekly, there is a scramble to grab whatever is left of the Hanjiang River that flows through Shaanxi Province and northwest Hubei Province before it joins the Yangtze River in Wuhan, capital of Hubei.
Before the crisis: When Beijing was rich with water
(July 16, 2010) In “Daxing County’s Water Gone Forever,” the eleventh in a series of oral histories produced by a team of investigative environmental historians and water experts in Beijing and led by China’s prize-winning journalist Dai Qing and Probe International, Li Zhenwe, a former engineer at the water bureau in the Beijing’s southern Daxing County talks about his childhood in one of the county villages where annual floods and a surfeit of water were once an integral part of village life.
Disaster Politics
(July 15, 2010) It is tempting to suggest that a country’s ability to prepare for disasters is a matter of money. But although wealth certainly matters, politics are more important.
Evidence for surface loading as trigger mechanism of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake
(July 14, 2010) Abstract: Two and a half years prior to China’s M7.9 Wenchuan earthquake of May 2008, at least 300 million metric tons of water accumulated with additional seasonal water level changes in the Minjiang River Valley at the eastern margin of the Longmen Shan. This article shows that static surface loading in the valley induced Coulomb failure stresses on the nearby Beichuan thrust fault system at <17km depth.
Not what you bargained for: China’s massive water scheme delivering polluted goods
(July 12, 2010) While Chinese officials continue to forge ahead with an expensive scheme to move water from the Yangtze river in the south of the country to water-starved cities in the north, fears concerning its cleanliness are surfacing once again. According to a recent report, authorities are concerned over the poor water quality in the eastern leg of the South North Water Diversion project.
The IPCC’s First Test in “a New World of Openness”
(July 12, 2010) “Climate science is a matter of such global importance, that the highest standards of honesty, rigour and openness are needed in its conduct,” stated the Muir Russell report into the Climategate scandal after it found the Climatic Research Unit at the UK’s East Anglia University guilty of “a consistent pattern of failing to display the proper degree of openness.”
9,000 people evacuated from northwest China city near risky reservoir
(July 11, 2010) More than 9,000 people have been evacuated Sunday from Golmud City in northwest China’s Qinghai Province as water level continued to rise in a nearby risky reservoir, the municipal authorities said.
House of cards: China’s development rush may be behind slew of geological disasters, says scientist
(July 9, 2010) The potential environmental fallout from China’s super-heated development may be putting lives at risk, says a Chinese geologist in an exclusive report for Probe International.
Chinese dam played role in deadly landslide
(July 9, 2010) An exclusive report for Probe International from Fan Xiao, chief engineer of the Regional Geology Investigation Team of the Sichuan Geology and Mineral Bureau, detailing the potential role a nearby dam played in a deadly landslide in China’s southwest Guizhou Province.
‘Modern homes’ may not satisfy shifted farmers
(June 3, 2010) Moving water from the Yangtze River across half of China to its parched north is a massive technical and engineer undertaking – but authorities are finding a greater challenge in resettling the people whose homes are in the path of the project.
Power use peaks
Dai Tian Global Times Wednesday, July 7, 2010 According to the Beijing Electric Power Company, demand for electricity at 3:51 pm on Monday rocketed to 14.354 million kilowatts, setting a new record […]
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