Globalization of smog
Summary: Air pollution: what goes around, comes around.
I recently blogged about the EPA trying to tighten regulation of ozone, or ground level smog. Many counties in the U.S. will soon be in violation of the Clean Air Act. Now comes research that indicates local governments may have limited control over total smog levels. Some of it's coming our way from east Asia. And research indicates there is more ozone coming into America is increasing. It's much like water pollution flowing downstream, or toxics seeping into the groundwater.
Earlier research found that as much as one-eighth of all air pollution in the western U.S. is "imported." However, there are those in India saying the path of the pollutants has not been established. Meanwhile in some parts of Asia homegrown air pollution is becoming a public issue.
DE-FANGING THE EPA?
After the Democrats lost their hold on a filibuster-proof majority in the U.S. Senate it seems unlikely there'll be any Congressional action on air pollution and greenhouse gases this year. And there will be a political showdown on the EPA's intention to regulate greenhouse gases. The two Senators leading the move against the EPA's power to regulate carbon emissions are from those gresat oil states: Alaska and Louisiana.
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Talkback
Blame China and US
Globalization of Harry's hysteria.
Go count birds.
Not just
How is this a surprise?
Sorry Harry, stick a fork in AGW.
Needs to read, "there will be a political showdown on the EPA's classification of CO2 as a "greenhouse gas"". Just reading this week how more physicists have studied and proven the magical non linear decrease in the permeability of CO2 (of which EVERY AGW model is critically dependent on) is not even "junk science" but pure fantasy.
I do enjoy how you keep trying to keep AGW alive while talking about what is a real problem, namely, global smog. Not sure what we can do about India or China producing all that ozone though.
TripleII
Absolutely
We should instead be investing in localized, point of use power solutions -- rooftop solar, mini-nuclear plants; and the power storage and conversion methods that they require. A decentralized, passive power grid would provide the resiliency and power capacity we need to drive down energy costs and strengthen the worlds economy while cutting polution.
But the centralized wind and wave farms have the backing of the major energy companies, because they wont upset the status quo, and the initial R&D and investment costs justify increasing rather than decreasing end-user costs.
The fact that most AGW believers back Wind and Wave farms as though they really made any sense is one reason I fail to trust them.
Stop recycling paper. Put it into a landfill. Instant Carbon Sink. Grow more trees and make new paper out of them!!
Thank you!
I'm glad to see I'm not the only one thinking about the long-term environmental and ecological consequences of diverting energy from natural processes into human consumption.
Carl Rapson
Let me get this right...
Carbon Sink. Grow more trees and make new paper out
of them!!"
You have a ton of carbon, nicely sequestered in a tree.
You burn some fossil fuel (lots of fossil fuel) to harvest,
move, process, move again, use, and move a final time
to put ... a ton of carbon into the ground to sequester
it.
I think I'll go listen to some actual experts on the topic.
The math is really simple.
If the amount of energy used to complete the tasks above emit less than one ton of carbon, it's a net reduction in carbon. I.e., you now have two tons of carbon locked up in wood and its derivatives. Even if you emit a thousand pounds of carbon to do everything you want with that original ton of wood, you still wind up with an extra thousand pounds locked up in wood.
Here's some more math...
a lot of
non-renewable fossil fuels to bring the trees to harvest
(trees are now grown on plantations for the most part,
so think of them as giant farms with all of the
equipment needed to plant, thin, protect, thin again
and then harvest.) Burn more non-renewable fossil
fuels to manufacture the paper (even in hydro-rich
places it takes a lot burning of fossil fuels to make
paper), burn more non-renewable fossil to move the
paper to market. Then, you dig up a lot of increasing
expensive land to make holes to put a renewable
resource into the ground, so you can go back to square
one.
Wouldn't it just be easier to keep recycling the carbon
as paper, and still plant the trees? Those new trees
then become the carbon sink, and you don't have to
tear up the environment to both harvest the trees and
then dig big pits to bury them.
I never said recycling was bad.
The problem that you have is that it simply does not fit with your preconceived notion of how to be "green."
I'm going to go out on a limb guess that you don't like people who burn wood for heat. Do some thinking on the subject, and you'll eventually understand why burning wood for heat is a good thing.
BTW - When you say "Here's some more math," you should actually use some. Simply quoting "1 ton" is not math.
Can you give me a link?
This is the first link.
http://www.climategate.com/german-physicists-trash-global-warming-theory
Here's the critical part.
[B]The German physicists prove that even if CO2 concentrations double (a prospect even global warming advocates admit is decades away), the thermal conductivity of air would not change more than 0.03%.
...
This thorough debunking of the theory of man made warming disproves that there exists a mechanism whereby carbon dioxide in the cooler upper atmosphere exerts any thermal ?forcing? effect on the warmer surface below. To do so would violate both the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics.[/B]
Basically, the "Studies" assume that heat is trapped in a non linear way. For every increase in CO2, the trapping ability of said CO2 becomes stronger exponentially.
TripleII
another thing to remember. . .
The reason behind the vast surface temperature differences between the three planets (and later the gas giants) was over-simplified to be related to the chemical make-up of those atmospheres with no allowance for the overall atmospheric density, proximity to the sun, differences in mass, or differences in levels of planetary vulcanology. (venus atmosphere is mostly CO2, Venus Surface is very hot, thus CO2 makes planets hot.)
Nevermind the fact that Venus has no plate tectonics, thus causing the mantle to build heat with no cooling. Nevermind that Venus' atmosphere is 92 times more dense than Earth's. Nevermind that Venus lacks a magnetic field to block incomming high energy radiation. Nevermind ANY of the other major differences (no regular subduction, no carbon feedback system, no water, proximity to the sun, slow rotation (extremely long days)) between Venus and Earth that contribute to or exacerbate the surface temperature (atmospheric compression alone would cause considerable temperature differences).
Air is about 4 hundredth of one per cent CO2 by volume,
RE: Globalization of smog
The good doctor has not "proved" anything she has shown that there may be probable cause!
"Tracey Holloway, Ph.D., Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment at University of Wisconsin, Madison, told Ivanhoe.
Dr. Holloway?s mathematical models incorporate atmospheric science as well as chemistry and engineering to calculate ozone emissions and how they travel. She says pollution from Europe and Asia has the biggest U.S. impact in the spring and fall, and that could be important information for policymakers trying to clear the air."