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To: lurqer who wrote (22348)	1/30/2003 10:57:54 PM
From: Mannie	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 104181

Huge dust cloud threatens Asia By Geoffrey Lean in Washington 26 January 2003 Gigantic dust clouds swirling over China are threatening the world's most populous country with the first-ever "ecological meltdown", experts here warn. The clouds – which stretch for thousands of miles over Asia and have even reached across the Pacific to North America – are rising from a rapidly growing dust bowl in northern China that far outstrips the notorious one in the United States in the 1930s. It threatens to drive up the price of food and greatly increase starvation worldwide, and could lead to tens of millions of desperate Chinese environmental refugees. "No country has ever faced a potential ecological catastrophe on the scale of the dust bowl now developing in China," says Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, based in Washington. "Merely grasping its dimensions and consequences poses a serious analytical challenge." Dust storms have been recorded in China for at least 2,700 years, but they are now increasing alarmingly both in size and in number. The Chinese Meteorological Agency says there were just five major storms in the country in the whole of the 1950s. This rose to 23 in the 1990s. But the first two years of this decade have almost equalled this figure already, with 20. The storms – which peak in late winter and early spring – can blot out daylight in Beijing and other cities, make it hard for millions of people to breathe and destroy hundreds of thousands of acres of crops. They have closed schools and airports in South Korea and Japan, and caused a Korean car factory to shrink-wrap its vehicles as soon as they come off the production line to stop them being spoiled. They have even occasionally crossed the Pacific: one in April 2001 covered the west of North America from Canada to Arizona with dust. The clouds sweep up millions of tons of precious topsoil from Chinese fields and pastures. Gone in a single day, the soil will take centuries to replace. But this is just the most dramatic symptom of the accelerating spread of deserts across the country, which is home to nearly one in every four people on the planet. Between 1994 and 1999, the country's Environmental Protection Agency reports, the Gobi Desert expanded by 20,240 square miles, to within just 150 miles of Beijing, New, smaller, areas of desert are erupting all over the country. In all, this "desertification" is affecting 40 per cent of the country's land. Partly as a result, harvests – which more than quadrupled between 1950 and 1998 – have fallen sharply, even as China's population and appetite grow. In Ganzu province alone, some 4,000 villages are facing being submerged by drifting sands, and the Earth Policy Institute believes that throughout the country tens of millions of people may be forced off their land, dwarfing the migrations of the "Okies" from the American dust bowl. The institute blames "over-cultivation, overgrazing, over-cutting and over-pumping" for the escalating catastrophe. Marginal land is being increasingly pressed into cultivation, but quickly turns to dust under the strain. The country's 290 million sheep and goats strip the vegetation off grazing lands. Cutting down forests removes the trees that bind soil to the ground. And excessive pumping of water from underground acquifers dramatically lowers water tables, drying out the earth. China is belatedly trying to get to grips with the crisis. It is planting 26 million acres – a tenth of its grain-growing area – with trees. But many die because the soil is already too thin; and, say critics, too many are being planted around Beijing so as to try to "green" the city – and clean the air – before the 2008 Olympics. As the crisis continues, Mr Brown predicts, the world will soon feel the pinch. So far China has compensated for its falling harvests by eating stocks, but soon it will have to buy massive amounts of grain on world markets. He warns: "Grain prices could double – impoverishing more people in a shorter period of time than any event in history. It would create a world food economy dominated by scarcity rather than by surpluses, as has been the case over most of the last half a century."

To: lurqer who wrote (22348)	1/30/2003 11:53:29 PM
From: elpolvo	Respond to of 104181

they are now. ;-) -smartiepantz

To: lurqer who wrote (22348)	2/1/2003 4:36:11 PM
From: elpolvo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 104181

lurq- is these on yer "done ready seen it" list? GREAT TRUTHS ABOUT LIFE THAT LITTLE CHILDREN HAVE LEARNED: 1) No matter how hard you try, you can't baptize cats. 2) When your Mom is mad at your Dad, don't let her brush your hair. 3) If your sister hits you, don't hit her back. They always catch the second person. 4) Never ask your 3-year old brother to hold a tomato. 5) You can't trust dogs to watch your food. 6) Don't sneeze when someone is cutting your hair. 7) Never hold a Dust-Buster and a cat at the same time. 8) You can't hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk. 9) Don't wear polka-dot underwear under white shorts. 10) The best place to be when you're sad is Grandpa's lap. GREAT TRUTHS ABOUT LIFE, THAT ADULTS HAVE LEARNED: 1) Raising teenagers is like nailing Jell-O to a tree. 2) Wrinkles don't hurt. 3) Families are like fudge . . mostly sweet, with a few nuts. 4) Today's mighty oak is just yesterday's nut that held its ground. 5) Laughing is good exercise. It's like jogging on the inside. 6) Middle age is when you choose your cereal for the fiber, not the joy. GREAT TRUTHS ABOUT GROWING OLD 1) Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional. 2) Forget the health food. I need all the preservatives I can get. 3) When you fall down, you wonder what else you can do while you're down there. 4) You're getting old when you get the same sensation from a rocking chair that you once got from a roller coaster. 5) It's frustrating when you know all the answers, but nobody bothers to ask you the questions. 6) Time may be a great healer, but it's a lousy beautician. 7) Wisdom comes with age, but sometimes age comes alone. THE FOUR STAGES OF LIFE: 1) You believe in Santa Claus. 2) You don't believe in Santa Claus. 3) You are Santa Claus. 4) You look like Santa Claus. SUCCESS: At age 4 success is . . . not peeing in your pants. At age 12 success is . . . having friends. At age 16 success is . . . having a drivers license. At age 20 success is . . . having sex. At age 35 success is . . . having money. At age 50 success is . . . having money. At age 60 success is . . . having sex. At age 70 success is . . . having a drivers license. At age 75 success is . . . having friends. At age 80 success is . . . not peeing in your pants.