Erratic rains and water mismanagement cause death and destruction.
Monsoon rains in Asia are behaving ever more strangely, often with catastrophic effects, an Indian official has told climate experts at the Earth System Science Partnership (ESSP) meeting in Beijing.
Read more here
On Saturday, we were warned of a power outage that might occur in our hotel
between 9pm and 3am. How annoying, I thought. And how do they know in
advance about a power outage? When it came, it lasted but a few moments –
and blacked out just in time for a CNN report on the shooting of several
protestors in the Chinese province of…. (I don’t know. The power went out).
Coincidence?
There are a number of reporters here from the Chinese media, and I was keen
to find out how free they feel to write what they like, when they like. They
seem confused when I ask about this, which I am not sure is a result of a
cultural or language barrier or legitimate confusion about the notion that
they might be restricted. Then again almost all of the Chinese press here
are very young, for some reason – perhaps not old enough yet to have
developed a hard-nosed sense of cynicism.
PS – I pushed an ominous-looking button on my hotel bedside table today that
simply says ‘do not’ (I have been wondering all week what this would do, but
have been too afraid to try till the last day…). Sadly the answer is
rather mundane – but quite clever. It turns on a little red ‘do not disturb’
light outside my front door. Ohhh…
That’s it from me. See you at the next meeting.
One of my main goals here was to meet Chinese researchers: a rare
opportunity. But there has been a significant language barrier to this task,
which I confess I wasn’t expecting. I naively thought that the younger
generation of scientists would be chirping away in English over their
posters, but this hasn’t quite proven to be the case. For most, their
command of English is admirable – and infinitely better than their foreign
colleagues’ command of Chinese. But it is obvious at this conference, which
is almost entirely about forging communication links between different
research fields and countries, that language is still a barrier to those
goals.
Things are looking good for a Chinese project to attempt to find the oldest
ice in the Antarctic, according to presentations here.
The team aims to drill deep into the ice of Dome Argus (Dome A), smack in
the centre of the continent. This inaccessible site stands some 4,000 metres
above sea level and more than 200 kilometres from shore, and holds the
record as the coldest part of the continent, with average temperatures of
-58C.