Tag Archives: china

Raising Stakes in Fight With China, Philippines Jails Fishermen

The dispute over the fishermen was one of two involving China over the last week, having been overshadowed by a clash between Chinese and Vietnamese ships. Read article here:  Raising Stakes in Fight With China, Philippines Jails Fishermen ; ;Related ArticlesWorld Briefing: China: Pollution Fines MultiplyBusiness Travel: The Greening of Business Travel Gains MomentumDot Earth Blog: Can a Pope Help Sustain Humanity and Ecology? ;

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Raising Stakes in Fight With China, Philippines Jails Fishermen

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In High Seas, China Moves Unilaterally

At least twice in recent years, Beijing has sought to explore the South China Sea but backed down after protests by Vietnam. That good will evaporated this week. This article is from –  In High Seas, China Moves Unilaterally ; ;Related ArticlesWorld Briefing: China: Pollution Fines MultiplyBeijing Steps Up Campaign Against PollutionBusiness Travel: The Greening of Business Travel Gains Momentum ;

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In High Seas, China Moves Unilaterally

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World Briefing: China: Pollution Fines Multiply

By the end of April, the Beijing government had collected 88 million renminbi, or $14 million, in fines levied during the first three months of this year against companies caught violating pollution standards, according to a news release from Beijing officials. Read More: World Briefing: China: Pollution Fines Multiply Related ArticlesBeijing Steps Up Campaign Against PollutionFor Florida Grapefruit, One Blow After AnotherAt Chernobyl, Hints of Nature’s Adaptation

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World Briefing: China: Pollution Fines Multiply

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6 Charts That Show How We Became China’s Grocery Store and Wine Cellar

Mother Jones

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Jaeah Lee

We hear a lot about the perils of consuming food from China—and very little about the food we send to China. Yet we export five times more chow to China than we import from it (see chart above).

No doubt, China has undergone a full-on food-production miracle over the past generation, but there’s zero chance that its farms will emerge as a global exporting powerhouse, as its vaunted electronics factories have done. As this 2013 UN report notes, China’s total farm output has tripled since 1978. But it has to feed nearly a fifth of the globe’s people on just 8 percent of its arable land. Meanwhile, nearly 20 percent of China’s farmland has been polluted by runoff from industrial waste and/or excessive agrichemicals, its government recently acknowledged. On top of that, the country’s water resources are extremely limited.

Nevertheless, China is a major supplier of some high-profile items in our grocery stores and restaurants. Which ones?

Alex Park

Overall, though, China is a relatively minor source of food for the US—we import much more from both Mexico and Canada. The much bigger story is rocketing exports. China overtook Mexico as the country that sucks in the most US food in 2012. We export more than $25 billion worth of food per to China, as the chart at the top shows—an amount nearly equal to total food expenditures in the state of Ohio.

Jaeah Lee, Julia Lurie, Katie Rose Quandt

The main driver: China’s rapid switch to a US-style meat-rich diet. China taps US farms to feed its fast-growing meat habit in two ways. First, it directly imports it. Pork exports to China have surged over over the past decade. China is also a large importer of beef on the global market (mainly from Australia), but it has banned US product since 2003, over a mad-cow disease scare. With its beef demand soaring, though, it recently signaled it might lift the beef as early as July. As for chicken, China imports a huge amount from the US; and it has also invited US agribusiness giants Tyson and Cargill to plunk down chicken farms on domestic soil. These factory-scale facilities need a steady supply of feed to keep humming—and that’s where we get to the second way China looks to the US for its meat supply: by importing lots and lots of livestock feed, namely, corn, soybeans, and alfalfa (fed as hay to cows). Chinese consumers are also demonstrating a surging appetite for another protein-rich US product: nuts, almost all of which are grown in California. And, perhaps to help wash down all of that meat, there’s a growing thirst another California-centric luxury product, wine.

Jaeah Lee and Alex Park

These final charts, drawn from recent USDA projections, suggest that China’s love affair with meat will continue. Meanwhile, its appetite for nuts shows no sign of abating. For the US, these trends no doubt mean a windfall for the agribusiness companies that dominate meat, grain, and nut production. They also mean yet more pressure on our two most important food-growing regions: California’s Central Valley and the Midwest’s corn belt. As I’ve pointed out before, the Central Valley, source not only of nuts but also of alfalfa, is already rapidly drawing down fossil water resources to irrigate its drought-parched farms; and the corn belt is quietly undergoing a potentially devastating loss of topsoil, under the strain of maximum production and chaotic weather.

Jaeah Lee

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6 Charts That Show How We Became China’s Grocery Store and Wine Cellar

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China Is Still Just a Jumbo Version of Albania

Mother Jones

I don’t want to pretend to some kind of faux naivete here, but can someone tell me why there’s suddenly a big frenzy about whether China is now the biggest economy in the world? China has 1.3 billion people. Of course they’re eventually going to eventually be bigger than the US. If not this year, then next year or the year after. Everyone knows this. Everyone has always known this. It’s no surprise, and it’s no big deal. They’ve still got about the per capita GDP of Albania, and it will be decades before they become even a middle-income country.

So who cares if they’re fudging the official numbers or the PPP calculations are being done wrong or whatever? Why does anyone even remotely care about this supposed milestone?

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China Is Still Just a Jumbo Version of Albania

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WATCH: Hillary Clinton Blasts Edward Snowden for Fleeing to Russia and China

Mother Jones

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Hillary Clinton didn’t have to directly deal with Edward Snowden’s leaks when she was secretary of state. Clinton had already stepped down from her post by the time the Guardian published its first revelations on the expansive scope of spying by the National Security Agency. But at an event at the University of Connecticut on Wednesday night, Clinton made it clear that she’s no fan of the NSA leaker, insinuating that Snowden had cooperated with countries hostile to the United States and unintentionally aided terrorist organizations. “I don’t understand why he couldn’t have been part of the debate at home,” she said.

Clinton questioned Snowden’s intentions in fleeing the country before offerring his information to the public. “When he emerged and when he absconded with all that material, I was puzzled, because we have all these protections for whistleblowers,” Clinton said, when the moderator asked if there had been any positive effects for security policy following the NSA leaks. “If he were concerned and wanted to be part of the American debate, he could have been. But it struck me as—I just have to be honest with you—as sort of odd that he would flee to China, because Hong Kong is controlled by China, and that he would then go to Russia, two countries with which we have very difficult cyber-relationships, to put it mildly.”

Clinton also suggested that Snowden had inadvertently helped terrorists. “I think turning over a lot of that material—intentionally or unintentionally, because of the way it can be drained—gave all kinds of information, not only to big countries, but to networks and terrorist groups and the like,” she said.

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WATCH: Hillary Clinton Blasts Edward Snowden for Fleeing to Russia and China

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Darren Aronofsky on Floods, Fanaticism, the Big Bang, Warming and More

The director of “Noah” and other films about obsession explores his views of global warming, fanaticism and the uncomfortable intersection of religion and science. Continued – Darren Aronofsky on Floods, Fanaticism, the Big Bang, Warming and More Related ArticlesBeneath the Surface of China’s Great Urban RushA Deeper Look at a Study Finding High Leak Rates From Gas DrillingA Risk Analyst Explains Why Climate Change Risk Misperception Doesn’t Necessarily Matter

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Darren Aronofsky on Floods, Fanaticism, the Big Bang, Warming and More

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Beneath the Surface of China’s Great Urban Rush

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Inside of a Dog – Alexandra Horowitz

The bestselling book that asks what dogs know and how they think, now in paperback. The answers will surprise and delight you as Alexandra Horowitz, a cognitive scientist, explains how dogs perceive their daily worlds, each other, and that other quirky animal, the human. Horowitz introduces the reader to dogs’ perceptual and cognitive abilities and then draw

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White Dwarf Issue 12: 19 April 2014 – White Dwarf

It’s a hobby extravaganza this week as host of new hobby tools are released; in a special edition of Sprues And Glue we go in-depth on using them, while Paint Splatter takes an in-depth look at texture paints. You’ll also find Astra Militarum tactics, a Hobbit: The Unexpected Journey Battle Report and much more. About this Series: White Dwarf is Ga

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How to Raise the Perfect Dog – Cesar Millan & Melissa Jo Peltier

From the bestselling author and star of National Geographic Channel’s Dog Whisperer , the only resource you’ll need for raising a happy, healthy dog. For the millions of people every year who consider bringing a puppy into their lives–as well as those who have already brought a dog home–Cesar Millan, the preeminent dog behavior expert, says, “Yes,

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My Boyfriend Barfed in My Handbag . . . and Other Things You Can’t Ask Martha – Jolie Kerr

“Wise and funny. . . . The Lorrie Moore short story, or the Tina Fey memoir, of cleaning tutorials.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times “Thrillingly titled. . . . For a generation overwhelmed not just by dust bunnies, but by bong water on the carpet, pee stains on the ceiling and vomit seemingly everywhere, Jolie Kerr dispenses cleaning advice free of judgme

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Codex: Astra Militarum (Enhanced Edition) – Games Workshop

The Astra Militarum are the mighty Hammer of the Emperor, an army so vast that it has never been fully recorded by the scribes of the Administratum. Drawn from a million worlds, its men and women are the thin line between Humanity and the void. On hundreds of thousands of warzones across the galaxy the armies of the Astra Militarum hold back the advance of a

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Codex: Militarum Tempestus (Interactive Edition) – Games Workshop

Codex: Militarum Tempestus The Scions of the Militarum Tempestus are the highly skilled elite of the Astra Militarum. Trained from youth in the combat schools of the Schola Progenium, each one has been psycho-conditioned to obey without question and kill without remorse. In battle, the toughest missions fall to the Tempestus Scions. Their specialist sq

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How to Paint Citadel Miniatures: Astra Militarum – Games Workshop

The Astra Militarum is an army of regimentation and proud tradition, with soldiers drawn from across the length and breadth of the Imperium. Their uniforms and iconography reflect this strict adherence to military organisation, and whether it is the Scions of the Militarum Tempestus, the Imperial Guardsmen of Cadia or the tanks of an armoured formation, each

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The Art of Raising a Puppy (Revised Edition) – Monks of New Skete

For more than thirty years the Monks of New Skete have been among America’s most trusted authorities on dog training, canine behavior, and the animal/human bond. In their two now-classic bestsellers, How to be Your Dog’s Best Friend and The Art of Raising a Puppy, the Monks draw on their experience as long-time breeders of German shepherds and as t

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Codex: Astra Militarum (eBook Edition) – Games Workshop

Codex: Astra Militarum The Astra Militarum are the mighty Hammer of the Emperor, an army so vast that it has never been fully recorded by the scribes of the Administratum. Drawn from a million worlds, its men and women are the thin line between Humanity and the void. On hundreds of thousands of warzones across the galaxy the armies of the Astra Militarum hol

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Marijuana Grower’s Handbook – Ed Rosenthal

The all new Marijuana Grower’s Handbook shows both beginners and advanced growers how to grow the biggest most resinous, potent buds! This book contains the latest knowledge, tools, and methods to grow great marijuana – both indoors and outdoors. Marijuana Grower’s Handbook will show you how to use the most efficient technology and save time, labor, and

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Beneath the Surface of China’s Great Urban Rush

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National Briefing | West: California: A Little More Water Will Flow

Water cutbacks for drought-stricken farmers and cities will be eased somewhat, due to recent rain and snow, officials announced Friday. Originally posted here: National Briefing | West: California: A Little More Water Will Flow Related ArticlesSwim to Sea? These Salmon Are Catching a Lift‘Active Cleanup’ of Oil Spill Is Ended on Louisiana CoastOne-Fifth of China’s Farmland Is Polluted, State Study Finds

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National Briefing | West: California: A Little More Water Will Flow

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U.N. climate report was censored

U.N. climate report was censored

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Keep walking past the earthly conflagration, folks. There’s nothing to see here.

When the latest installment of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report landed over the weekend, only a 33-page summary was published. The full report, which details the radical steps we need to take to reduce greenhouse gas pollution if we are to succeed in capping warming at 2 degrees Celsius, wasn’t published until this morning. So that summary was the basis for hundreds of media reports beamed and printed all around the world.

And it turns out the summary was watered down — diluted from an acid reflux–inducing stew of unpalatable science into a more appetizing consommé of half-truth. The Sydney Morning Herald has the details:

A major climate report presented to the world was censored by the very governments who requested it, frustrating and angering some of its lead authors. …

[E]ntire paragraphs, plus graphs showing where carbon emissions have been increasing the fastest, were deleted from the summary during a week’s debate prior to its release. Other sections had their meaning and purpose significantly diluted. They were victims of a bruising skirmish between governments in the developed and developing world over who should shoulder the blame for, and the responsibility for fixing, climate change.

One report author joked that he felt like a “pawn” who had been sacrificed in a game. Several others told Fairfax [Media Limited] the rancour was much greater than in previous IPCC meetings.

The encounter was a prelude to what promises to be a bitter battle in Paris next year, where countries are intended to sign a new binding treaty on radical action against global warming. Countries including — but not limited to — the United States, Brazil, China and Saudi Arabia fought to ensure the summary could not be used as a weapon against them in pre-Paris negotiations.

This sad story has precedence. The previous installment of the report, which dealt with climate adaptation, stated that poor countries need $100 billion a year to help them cope with climatic changes – but that dollar figure was yanked from the report’s summary by rich governments at the last moment.


Source
IPCC report summary censored by governments around the world, The Sydney Morning Herald

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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U.N. climate report was censored

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