Global Air Pollution, From Above 545
neutron_p writes "Based on satellite observations, the high-resolution global atmospheric map of nitrogen dioxide pollution makes clear just how human activities impact air quality. I'm a bit surprised not to see that many red blobs above US and the strange one is on the east of Russia."
A quick mirror (Score:3, Informative)
I don't normally make mirrors so if someone has a better method (somehow using wget?) lemme know.
PS: this is off've my 1.5Mb/768Kb DSL line, so don't expect any miracles.
not so surprising (Score:2, Informative)
Re:A quick mirror - I'm an idiot (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Take note (Score:4, Informative)
but, not to take away from any of your statements at all, there is a gigantic underground coal fire in china that emits enough CO2 in one year to equal and surpass all exhaust from all cars in the US.
and that's just the coal fire burning coal, not counting all of the industrial development in china. it's no wonder things must be insane over there.
here's the first site i could find with info, there are better:
http://www.itc.nl/personal/coalfire/problem/china
i had to repost, my first post was to the wrong place.. woops.
Re:Take note (Score:5, Informative)
No CO2, sulpher dioxide, methane, ozone, light hydrocarbons or other pollutants.
So to say the US is blameless is premature, you need to see all the pollutnats and how they interact.
Coral cache of mirror (Score:5, Informative)
Not in this context (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Take note (Score:5, Informative)
National Geographic had an article recently about pollution in China and it was just down-right frightening.
Excerpts from the March 2004 issue are available here: http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0403/featu re4/index.html [nationalgeographic.com]
Re:And not only that... (Score:3, Informative)
Yes. And No.
There are two sides to the equation of power generation. One is large stationary power plants. Switching these to ever more modern nuclear designs would make a lot of sense, and would improve things dramatically.
Unfortunately, the other side of the equation is portable power generators like petroleum engines. (i.e. your car) These use power independent of the stationary plants and are much harder to find alternatives for. The best suggestion so far seems to be to switch to hydrogen for fuels, then create the hydrogen from the stationary power plants. That way we put all of our eggs back in one, easily controllable, basket.
GLOBAL AIR POLLUTION PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.elmhurst.edu/~chm/onlcourse/chm110/outl ines/topic9.html
Global Pollution and Climate Change http://www.jri.org.uk/brief/climatechange.htm
this is a great write up with good information
One step China has taken - (Score:5, Informative)
This story and an earlier one on /. .... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:all the pollution activist in the US are pointl (Score:4, Informative)
The US contains 5% of the world's population but consumes 25% of the world's resources.
Which is of course, not only completely wrong, even if it was correct, it would be comparing the wrong things.
It is true that the US consumes roughly 25% of the industrially supplied energy on the planet ... but that is a far cry from concluding that the US consumes 25% of ALL world resources. In this type of energy to population comparison, Western Europe also fairs poorly by consuming a far larger share of the world's industrial energy production than its population entitles it to consume.
Of course, more relevant comparisons would be to industrially produced energy consumed per unit of economic output, or some such similar metric. In this type of comparison, the industrialized world fairs much better, than most third world nations. The amount of energy required to produce a bushel of grain in the US or France compared to sub-saharan Africa is much, much lower, and a kilo of sheep's wool in Australia is less energy intensive to produce than a kilo from South America. The US just happens to produce vastly more grain than sub-saharan Africa, so overall, so overall its grain production efforts will consume much more energy.
I don't mean to excuse wasteful or inefficient consumption of energy in the industrialized world, because there certainly is a lot of that going on, just to point out that you are not considering a realistic metric for comparison.
Re:all the pollution activist in the US are pointl (Score:3, Informative)
I had to respond to this, with the fact the poster conveniently left out:
The U.S. produces 31% of the worlds output.
Thus, we use the energy more efficiently than the rest of the world.
Re:Take note (Score:4, Informative)
It's sad to say, but politicians go after the obvious, not the bad. If you can't smell it, they seem to be doing their job, even if the crap you can't smell or see is killing you and little is being done to stop the use/spread/contamination.
It's easy, really... (Score:5, Informative)
The ozone layer is in the stratosphere.
Ozone in the troposphere is not all that great, since it causes a lot of problems in respiration. Ozone in the stratosphere is good since it cannot be inhaled (too far away from us) and keeps that UV radiation from hurting us.
With ozone, it's all about where it is.
-Jellisky
Re:red blob over east russia (Score:2, Informative)
And the image only shows nitrogen dioxide, which is a _man made_ pollution, unlike CO2, which could be produced by forest fires!
Re:Take note (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Take note (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Take note - Blame Clinton for Kyoto (Score:2, Informative)
All Bush did was react to the reality of the situation... if the treaty can not pass Senate muster - it will never be ratified, so he removed the US from the Kyoto protocol because it was a treaty that would never be ratified.
Not puzzle me this - is it the president who faces the reality that is to blame, or the president who went for photo-op foreign policy and never did the hard work to get the treaty ratified that is to blame ?
Oh, and buy the way... It was Senators Kerry and Edwards that could have gotten the treaty ratified with their position as 2% of the US senate. Maybe they could have spent some political capital if they are such good environmentalists... Did they ? Who knows, either way it wasn't effective - they wouldn't even get a vote scheduled so that their records can be determined.
Re:Take note (Score:3, Informative)
There was an interesting article in the NY Times a few months ago (since archived) talking about complete lack of enviornmental regulation in China. Seems to me they have taken the worst of communism (complete political and social control) and combined it with the worst of capitalism (completely un-regulated private sector). Though I do believe in less government regulation, I simply can't sign onto the Libertarian ticket because of the enviornment. I firmly believe that left to it's own will the private sector would obliterate the enviornment.
Better Pictures at ESA (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Take note (Score:5, Informative)
Now go sit in the corner and get educated
In your car's engine, Nitrogen in the air combines with Oxygen in air to create oxides of nitrogen, commonly called NOx for brevity.
How does it combine? The heat of combustion of the fuel in the engine is sufficient to do it. Lean-running engines that run hotter (well, have a longer burning flame front), while more fuel efficient, also have the unfortunate problem of creating more oxides of nitrogen.
It doesn't matter what you burn in there, any combustion temperatures over a thousand degrees C or so has sufficient energy to drive the NOx chemical reaction. Petrol, Diesel, Hydrogen... all of those fuels indirectly produce NOx.
The goal in modern cars is to lower the combustion chamber temperatures, which is why most cars have some form of exhaust gas recirculation to deliberately "posion" the incoming air/fuel mix to make it burn cooler. Fuel economy suffers as a result of reducing NOx emissons.
Re:Take note (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.temis.nl.nyud.net:8090/airpollution/ [nyud.net] (nyud.net cached copy)
Nitrogen Dioxide:
http://www.temis.nl.nyud.net:8090/airpollution/no
The US sulfur dioxide emissions seemed pretty low, even in the acid-rain-prone Northeast. Some of the ocean blooms of SO2 seemed odd, tho.
PSA (Score:2, Informative)
You can make a difference if you live in the Northeast. Call your utility and ask to be added to their wind power program. The energy is about 20% more expensive, but you will be making a real difference. If you can afford it, do it. They will even let you pre-set the amount of wind energy you are willing to buy.
In Pennsylvania, for instance PECO has a wind initiative. Go here: PECO Wind Energy Program [pecowind.com] or call 1-866-WIND-321. The price is an extra $0.025 per kWh. Their competitors have similar programs, so energy deregulation is not all bad :)
Re:Take note (Score:2, Informative)
But if the air gets hot (like in any thermal engine), some nitrogen reacts with some oxygen and you get some NOx. And hydrogen is pretty much the same or somewhat worse than gasoline with respect to this property depending on how you look at it.
If you look at the autoignition temperatures (the lowest temperature a fuel will burn) hydrogen's is 530 C. And the autoignition temperature of gasoline is about 260 C. So you can make gasoline produce much less NOx than hydrogen with some effort.
Hydrogen's flame temperature is 2045 C in air. Gasoline's is 2197 C, almost the same. This is the worst case temperature for the two. Sloppy engines will probably put out about the same NOx.
(Info from http://www.fuelcellstore.com/information/hydrogen
http://www.hut.fi/Units/AES/projects/renew/fuelce
Re:Take note (Score:3, Informative)
"The primary sources for NO2 are internal combustion engines, both gasoline and
diesel powered, as well as point sources, especially power plants. U.S. emissions of NOx
in 1996-1997 were approximately 23,000 short tons per year, with roughly 11,000 tons
contributed by fuel combustion from non-transportation sources (Office of Air and
Radiation, 1998). In 1991, 8.9 million people resided in counties that exceeded the NAAQS
for NO2, with the highest annual concentrations occurring in Southern California (Bascom et
al., 1996). National mean concentrations of NO2 decreased 14% from 1988 to 1997, to
about 20 ppb, although NOx emissions decreased little during that time period, and
increased 1% in 1996-1997 (Office of Air and Radiation, 1998). Since 1970, total NOx
emissions have increased 11% and emissions from coal-fired power plants have increased
44%. During the past 5 years, all U.S. counties have been in compliance with the Federal
NO2 standard.
"Compliance with the Federal NAAQS for NO2 does not preclude substantial shortterm
peak concentrations, and the California standard of 0.25 ppm for 1 hour continues to
be exceeded, although with less frequency. In 1999, maximum one-hour values for NO2
were highest in the counties of Riverside (0.307 ppm) and Imperial (0.286), with annual
mean concentrations of 0.022 and 0.035, respectively (Office of Air and Radiation, 1998).
"Because NO2 concentrations are related to traffic density, commuters in heavy traffic
may be exposed to higher concentrations of NO2 than those indicated by regional monitors.
In one study of personal exposures by Los Angeles commuters (Baker et al., 1990), invehicle
NO2 concentrations, averaged over 1 week of travel, ranged from 0.028 to 0.170
ppm, with a mean of 0.078 ppm. This was 50% higher than ambient concentrations
measured at local monitoring sites.
"Indoor NO2 levels, in the presence of an unvented combustion source, may exceed
those found outdoors. Natural gas or propane cooking stoves release NO2, as do kerosene
heaters. Peak levels exceeding 2.0 ppm have been measured in homes with gas stoves
(Leaderer et al., 1984), and exposures during cooking have been measured as high as 0.6
ppm for up to 45 minutes (Goldstein et al., 1988). It is important to recognize that outdoor
NO2 levels provide a "background" for the higher peaks that may occur indoors; thus higher
outdoor levels may drive higher peaks indoors, with outdoor levels contributing
approximately 50% to indoor levels (Marbury et al., 1988).
"Distance of residences from roadways appears to influence indoor NO2 levels. In
Tokyo, Japan, NO2 exposure among adult women, age 40-60 years, was determined at
varying distances from the roadside, using personal monitoring and monitoring inside and
outside the home (Nakai et al., 1995). The highest mean personal exposure levels were
found in women living closest to the roadway at 63.4 ppb, compared with 55.3 ppb farthest
from the roadway. Personal monitoring in homes with unvented combustion sources were
less clearly correlated to distance from the roadway than homes without combustion
sources. In another study in the Netherlands (Roorda-Knape et al., 1999), NO2 levels
in school classrooms were found to be significantly
"Steel Belt"??? (Score:3, Informative)
The Ohio River Valley is a chemical belt and my best guess would be these plants that run from Louisville/Huntington/Parkersburg/Wheeling.
Re:PSA (Score:3, Informative)
Not bad at all.