AP US air quality is slipping after years of improvement
EPA Our Nation's Air
EPA Air Now Map
ALA Worst Cities
ALA Ozone and Particle Health Risk
I am sure happy my family and I live where most Americans do want to live. :-)
EPA Our Nation's Air
EPA Air Now Map
ALA Worst Cities
ALA Ozone and Particle Health Risk
I am sure happy my family and I live where most Americans do want to live. :-)
24 comments:
Your first cite tells me the problem is cold air. More proof of Global warming!
The second cite makes a complete lie of the first.
AND does not list CO2 as a pollutant!
The first one again, touts Obama's radical "clean power plan" which, as we all know, would reduce global temperatures by 1/10,000 of a degree per year.
The AP are well-known fabulists.
Cold air?
"In an email, the EPA told The Associated Press the increase in unhealthy air days in 2017 "is largely associated with wildfires" in the west and it is studying 2018 before officially announcing its annual air trend data.
Air pollution experts agree wildfires likely have had a role, along with random variation, a stronger economy which leads to more consumption of fuels, and a changing climate. Higher temperatures increase the chances for fires and smog.
Even with the recent stagnation, there are far fewer bad air days now than in the early 2000s, 1990s and 1980s. Perciasepe said what's happening now is a "tug of war" between the worsening effects of warming on air quality and cleaner air from less coal use and more efficient cars.
But if regulations on coal plants, cars and other emissions are relaxed, the air quality will deteriorate, said Carnegie Mellon University engineering professor Neil Donahue.
"There is zero reason to expect any other outcome," he said."
The EPA site has not been updated for the its latest numbers.
And this is an air quality post, not a climate change post...
Though they are a little bit related as noted above. :-)
Actually the AP tends to be pretty fact based.
fabulist: a person who composes or relates fables
So what is fable like about air quality improvements stagnating or reversing when:
- the economy is booming
- population is growing
- emission regulations are rolled back
- temperatures are warming
Seems pretty logical to me.
The question is how bad is too bad?
"The EPA quietly posted new air quality data online last month that shows a recent uptick in polluted days.
Five hundred and thirty-two American metro areas reported a total of 4,134 days in 2018 when the official air quality index passed 100, which means it is unhealthy for people with heart and lung disease, the elderly and the very young. That's about 15% more bad air days per city than the average for 2013 to 2016, America's clean air heyday.
The worst of the bad air days jumped even more. On average, in 2017 and 2018 there were nearly 140 times when a city's air pollution reached the worst two categories — "very unhealthy" and "hazardous" — with the air quality index greater than 200. That's more than two-and-a-half times the average of nearly 55 from 2013 to 2016. Last year, Riverside, California, topped the nation with 13 days in the worst two air quality categories and had the most bad air days of all types: 173."
I assume they were mining these Data Files
Air Pollution and Early Death
John, your second cite shows no decrease in air quality. The first one clearly says that their example is caused by cold air. There is no evidence that wildfires are the result of climate change, but may be the result of government mismanagement of the forests.
It appears the new Trump regulations do three things: eliminate the Obama requirement to reduce CO2 since it doesn't matter, keeps the restrictions on true pollunants-- sulfur, nitrous, particulates-- and promotes increased coal-burning efficiency, which will reduce costs AND, incidentally, CO2. If that Ohio State process scales up, we'll have a boon.
As clearly noted in link 1...
"The EPA quietly posted new air quality data online last month that shows a recent uptick in polluted days."
"In an email, the EPA told The Associated Press the increase in unhealthy air days in 2017 "is largely associated with wildfires" in the west and it is studying 2018 before officially announcing its annual air trend data.In an email, the EPA told The Associated Press the increase in unhealthy air days in 2017 "is largely associated with wildfires" in the west and it is studying 2018 before officially announcing its annual air trend data."
So we will see what the EPA reports in the coming month... :-)
Fire Causes
"Scientists who study fire agree and say both a changing climate as well as how people have managed forests has created a new environment for big fires to thrive.
The global average temperature is more than 1 degree Fahrenheit higher than it used to be before the Industrial Revolution. And in a dry climate more heat equals more drying. Meaning: The hot dry air literally sucks the moisture out of the ground and out of vegetation.
"And it doesn't take much," says Jennifer Balch, a fire ecologist at the University of Colorado. "With just a little bit of drying you get a substantial increase in the amount of burning."
In fact, the number of large fires across the Western U.S. has increased five-fold since the 1970s, says Balch."
Looks like they are going after more than just CO2...
More coverage
This is disturbing
On December 16, 2011, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized the first national standards to reduce mercury and other toxic air pollution from coal- and oil-fired power plants. More than 20 years after the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, some power plants still do not control emissions of toxic pollutants, even though pollution control technology is widely available.
Portion of U.S. air pollution that comes from power plantsThere are about 1,400 coal- and oil-fired electric generating units (EGUs) at 600 power plants covered by these standards. They emit harmful pollutants, including mercury, non-mercury metallic toxics, acid gases, and organic air toxics such as dioxin.
Power plants are currently the dominant emitters of mercury (50 percent), acid gases (over 75 percent) and many toxic metals (20-60 percent) in the United States (see graphic at right).
While newer, and a significant percentage of older power plants already control their emissions of mercury, heavy metals, and acid gases, approximately 40 percent of the current EGUs still do not have advanced pollution control equipment.
The other big sources of mercury have already reduced their emissions.
In 1990, three industry sectors made up approximately two-thirds of total U.S. mercury emissions: medical waste incinerators, municipal waste combustors, and power plants. The first two of these sectors have been subject to emissions standards for years and as a result have reduced their mercury emissions by more than 95 percent. In addition, mercury standards for industries such as cement production, steel manufacturing and many others have reduced mercury emissions from these sources."
May coal die a quick death...
There is no excuse that plant are still spewing our mercury and other heavy metals.
Thank God I live SE of Becker… At least my windows are closed in the Winter... :-)
And yet the EPA says these emissions continue to go down, one assumes as more technology becomes available and economical. And the question of course is, how far down is far enough? The rule of thumb is that each successive 90% reduction costs ten times the previous. Are regulations based on any real science, or just the idea that "zero" is the proper level for anything we call a pollutant?
As for fires, you can make up your own chart from these official statistics.
fires
And if you DO find an increase statistically significant, I will argue that forest management will correlate much better than measured (or especially, predicted) global temperature. Especially since droughts and floods and rainfall seem to show no such correlation, either.
Now, you may find a nice correlation with air quality, in any given year. Who do we blame for the wildfires?
As noted several times, EPA posted new data. New report and web summary is pending..
How much mercury sent into the atmosphere is accaeptable when scrubber technology can stop it?
I’ll save your climate change denial for those posts.
To answer your question, tell me, is the mercury scrubbing technology free? If not, then a cost-benefit analysis would certainly be in order, where somebody pays X$ for new equipment to reduce mercury by Y amount--percentage, tons/year, something-- and then we calculate the human and environmental benefits in some sort of dollar proposition. We're both speculating, with you saying zero is the right number, and I'm saying that some non-zero value is acceptable, considering the cost/benefit tradeoff. I notice your second cite, at least, does not track mercury.
If I am downwind of the plant, low is good.
May I’ll do more research.
Somewhere I saw that we already have a 93% reduction. That sounds pretty good. I notice lead is way down since unleaded gas.
Let us repeat.
"There are about 1,400 coal- and oil-fired electric generating units (EGUs) at 600 power plants covered by these standards. They emit harmful pollutants, including mercury, non-mercury metallic toxics, acid gases, and organic air toxics such as dioxin.
Power plants are currently the dominant emitters of mercury (50 percent), acid gases (over 75 percent) and many toxic metals (20-60 percent) in the United States (see graphic at right).
While newer, and a significant percentage of older power plants already control their emissions of mercury, heavy metals, and acid gases, approximately 40 percent of the current EGUs still do not have advanced pollution control equipment.
The other big sources of mercury have already reduced their emissions."
And for more info regarding mercury
Hopefully we wean ourselves off releasing these poisons into the air fast than we did with lead
"Hopefully we wean ourselves off releasing these poisons into the air fast than we did with lead."
Our drop in crime, and the drop in crime in every nation that has done the same, is highly correlated with the phasing out of leaded gasoline. It is likely that environmental lead was a major causal factor in the higher crime rates of the mid and late 20th century.
What have we learned today, class?
1) believe the scientists
2) government regulation can make a huge positive change in the lives of citizens
3) anthropogenic emissions can have a major impact on the environment
Moose
Personally I thank birth control and abortions for reducing the crime rate...
But lead poisoning does have some nasty consequences too
Lead & Crime
Moose
From one of the commenters on the article above:
"Unfortunately, the atmosphere we’re now in prohibits objective scientists from coming forward. And why should they, when they would be crucified by the press, the E.P.A. and the environmentalists? . . . Our stance has been that lead from gasoline does not and has not caused health problems, and I have not seen any data that convinces me differently."
-Donald R. Lynam, director of air conservation at the Ethyl Corporation. NYT, 08/05/1984
"In contrast to popularized reports, there is no persuasive evidence that low-level lead exposure is responsible for any intelligence defects."
-Dr. Jerome F. Cole, director of environmental health for the Lead Industries Association. NYT, 04/18/1982
"[M]uch of the scientific data obtained by researchers to date is inconclusive….misplaced reliance on mere suspicions rather than proven data, or precipitous and emotional reaction to such incomplete information…could lead to major economic consequences."
-Jerome Heckman, general counsel of the Society of the Plastics Industry, 06/26/1974
Quotes can be found here:
http://crywolfproject.org
That all sounds really familiar.
Moose
Businesses do work real hard to keep the money flowing. :-(
Post a Comment