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March 15th, 2010:

Exhausting work

Mar 15th, 2010
by AdminCTA.
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stick and carrot race

Last updated: March 12, 2010

Source: South China Morning Post

In a letter to the SCMP, Christine Loh Kung-wai,  chief executive of the think-tank Civic Exchange, had this to say:

If Hong Kong doesn’t get the “carrots and sticks” formula right, it will continue to be hard to replace the old and highly polluting commercial diesel bus and truck fleet. There is no doubt about the harm these vehicles cause. Government data shows they are the principal emitters of roadside pollution, accounting for 88 per cent of the highly health-damaging particulates and 76 per cent of nitrogen dioxide, another pollutant.

Overseas research shows that those living within 500 metres of busy and congested roads are the worst affected. Negative health impacts include asthma, allergies, impaired lung functions in children and cardiovascular problems for the elderly.
(more…)

Diesel Franchised buses in Hong Kong

Mar 15th, 2010
by AdminCTA.
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polluting school buses

By the end 2009, the breakdown on the number of franchised buses by engine type is as follows:

Engine Type

KMB

CTB

NWFB

LW

NLB

Pre-Euro

300

40

30

less than 5

0

Euro I

940

310

80

0

0

Euro II

1490

530

480

130

35

Euro III

1100

10

70

20

50

Euro IV

50

30

40

10

15

Total

3880

920

700

160

100

Totals:

Engine Type

KMB

CTB

NWFB

LW

NLB

Total

Pre-Euro

300

40

30

less than 5

0

373

Euro I

940

310

80

0

0

1330

Euro II

1490

530

480

130

35

2665

Euro III

1100

10

70

20

50

1250

Euro IV

50

30

40

10

15

145

Total

3880

920

700

160

100

5760

(more…)

Higher fees eyed to drive polluting trucks off road

Mar 15th, 2010
by AdminCTA.
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polluting truckLast updated: March 11 ,2010

Source: South China Morning Post

They dangled a carrot, but too few bit.

Now environment officials are considering wielding a stick to get heavily polluting old trucks off the city’s streets.

They have decided to resurrect as soon as possible a proposal to increase licence fees for trucks and vans 15 or more years old, to discourage people from keeping the vehicles.

Under the proposal, higher fees would apply to dirtier vehicles such as those made before the Euro 1 standard, which placed limits on emitted pollutants, took effect in 1995.

Those older vehicles could be as much as 20 times more polluting than those covered by the latest version of the standard, Euro 4, introduced in 2006.

(more…)

Editorial: Storm clouds over the climate change lobby

Mar 15th, 2010
by AdminCTA.
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storm cloudsLast updated: March 11, 2010

Source: South China Morning Post

We appear to have been battered to a submissive intellectual pulp by the climate change lobby, although it was only 35 years ago, when I interviewed the world’s principal climate experts for The Washington Post, that the consensus was the earth was cooling. Within a few decades, they have fundamentally changed their minds. How could this happen so quickly?

Has everyone already forgotten how the computer boffins told us that the world’s computers would crash at midnight at the start of the year 2000? Businesses, hospitals, universities, airlines and so forth spent a fortune to retool with new computers. On the dot of midnight of the new millennium … the old computers still worked perfectly well.

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Science casts doubt on existence of climate change and its causes

Mar 15th, 2010
by AdminCTA.
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climate change

Last updated: March 11, 2010

Source: South China Morning Post

In a letter to the editor of SCMP, James Watkins of Sai Kung writes:

I become quite despondent when I read letters on global warming such as those by Beatrice Yeung and by Jessie Kwok (“Poor nations will need help” and “Habitats are under threat”, March 9).

It is disappointing that your correspondents and many others like them accept the received wisdom without regard to the available evidence.

The view that polar bears and other species are under threat from the consequences of man-made climate change flies in the face of all recent evidence, which demonstrates that the polar bear population is increasing and that the species is flourishing.

(more…)