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."
red blob over east russia (Score:2, Interesting)
night map (Score:5, Interesting)
Russia? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Take note (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Take note (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Take note (Score:5, Interesting)
This doesn't actually impact NO2 levels, but it does explain some of the pollution reduction.
The primary reason that you don't see this type of pollution in the US is that the federal and local governments have taken a very agressive stance on NOx and SOx reduction from transportation (cars, trucks, and trains) and power plant (coal) sources. Some here have complained that the attack on these pollutants (along with particulate emission) has a lot to do with our lower fuel economy standards, as the rules make it pretty difficult, for instance, to introduce diesel powered cars, and they mandate the use of catalytic converters.
It isn't hard to understand why this has happened, either. NOx and SOx are the primary drivers of acid rain and smog, both of which directly and visibly impact quality of life in densely populated areas, like cities. Fixing them isn't something we have fought against, since the vast majority of Americans work and live in or near major cities, even in the "sparsely populated" parts of the country.
Western Europe on the other hand has chosen to go after consumption, and driven up fuel efficiency at the cost of reducing these types of pollutants. Given that Europeans tend to live in smaller, more distributed communities than Americans, smog, while a problem in Urban areas, directly impacts fewer people on a day to day basis than it does here.
You're kidding, right? (Score:3, Interesting)
The single biggest blot, other than the one over everybody's favorite red menace, is square over the northeastern US. The richest country pollutes more than anyone except the country that does all of the richest country's dirty work (and has more people than everyone else combined, to boot).
LATFI! (look at the _ucking image!)
Re:And not only that... (Score:3, Interesting)
Better yet: Build nukes, and let people juice their cars up on hydrogen that they generate in their home garages through electrolysis of water using all that nuclear generated electricity that has become so plentiful... While you're at it, change your house over to electric heat from oil. That would be much easier than shipping all that hydrogen around, and we already have infrastructure in place to get the electricity and water to peoples homes, so there would be less initial investment required.
validity of the study (Score:5, Interesting)
This looks like a relatively professional study: the maps on the website are a composite of 18 months worth of data. This is good methodology to ensure that anomalies are removed (unusual smog days, lightnings storms, etc).
This map is a measure of the vertical density of NO2 in a given column (represented by the area of each pixel on the original image, which is dependant on the camera).
One misleading thing: There is no mention of the climatological effects of the world's mountain ranges, and thus the prevailing winds. This is clearly illustrated along the Himilayas in India and the Andes mountains in South America. The topography is clearly causing bottlenecks in the distribution and dispersion of air. Thus, the map is not necessarily an indicator of where the actual pollution was produced. Naturally, in locations where airflow is reduced, the vertical profile of ANY gas concentration will be higher.
I'd predict you'll even see some similar patterns in global precipitation maps if you were to overlay the two.
(disclaimer: yes I am a prefessional geographer)
Re:Take note (Score:4, Interesting)
We've already done the exact same thing with Ozone depleting chemicals with the Montreal Protocol in 1987. The developed countries largely payed for the technology development for safer ozone depleting gasses and the developing countries get a bit more time to implement it. If developing countries don't, you're in a lot better position to start imposing sanctions, trade policies, etc to try to get them to do so. If you just sit on your hands and do nothing, that's probbably what you're going to get.
Re:And not only that... (Score:3, Interesting)
Additionally, due to the extreme energy density of uranium, it is feasable to 'mine' the oceans if the near-surface deposits on Earth were exhausted. It would require some energy to find the trivial amount of uranium dissolved in a ton of seawater, but it would ultimately come ahead in terms of energy produced. And unless noone has ever told you, the oceans have probably about 100x as much uranium dissolved in them as we can find in near-surface deposits.
Additionally, its theoretically possible that by the time we exhaust the near-surface uranium, we will be able to do deep mining (>5 km) and tap additional resources. Since the Earth becomes denser towards its center, the deeper that we mine, the more probable it is to find a uranium deposit.
Good book (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps, but not pollution . . . as global prosperity increases, so does global pollution. Efficiency of energy and resource usage increases, but overall consumption also increases such that overall there is a net increase in environental impact. One may argue that Kuznet's curve predicts that as people become more wealthy, they care more about the environment. this has been shown to be true in many locals; however, I'm not convinced that this has been demonstrated on a global scale. In other words Kuznet's curve might hold true except that "Not in My BackYard" pushes environmental damage to remote locations . . . e.g. Yucca mountain, developing countries, etc.
Additionally, poor people in developing couuntries don't throw away broken VCRs and DVD players and buy new ones . . . they fix them because it is economically viable to do so. In the US, we even throw away cars just because they are ugly or old. I would agree that our technology makes our use of energy and resources more efficient in manufacturing, but we also also tend to produce enormous amounts of trash due to product packaging and the fact that it is cheaper to buy a new item than fix an old one.
Many have postulated that the environment would be stressed to the breaking point if everyone in the world lived like the most privledged people (western developed world). PBS's NOVA did a fantastic two part series on this and other issues. The website is here. [pbs.org]
Some photographs from China... (Score:3, Interesting)
#1 [yahoo.com], #2 [yahoo.com], and #3 [yahoo.com].
Map of China's coal fires (Score:2, Interesting)
Coal fires produce about 2-3% of the total world carbon dioxide production due to fossil fuels.
Some of Chinese coal fires have been dated to the Pleistocene Era!
Air Improves Despite Bush (Score:4, Interesting)
1) Air quality has improved because of the inertia from previous policies put in place by both major parties. Automotive polution controls and smokestack scrubbers, et al, have continued to work, and as old cars and factories go off line, the net effect is improvement. The current administration is taking credit for the effect of policies they'd like to scale back.
2) Bad fire seasons come in cycles, beyond the control of people. How bad is under their control, based on the nature of their forest management. The Forest and Park Services have been practicing 'controlled' burns for twenty years, doing what we used to let nature do at random. Unfortunately, random burns caused by weather and assholes have stayed ahead of the forest management budget. So...
The Bush Administration looked to have the private sector help out by clearing out dead and dying crap that really gets a fire going. At issue was that these policies were written by lobbists from the lumber industry. Sure, they'd be subject experts, but also motivated to take their best shot at harvesting the good with the bad.
The assumption among policy opponents is that the forest industry was just using this as a chance to cut without much oversight, since just about all western forests are stressed and a fire hazard due to prolonged drought, water diversions, and urban encroachment.
Re:Take note - Blame Clinton for Kyoto (Score:3, Interesting)
However, President Bush, and a number of White House and Senate Republicans have cited a large number of other 'flaws' that were ALL deal breakers to them. Many of these look like conditions we could have lived with, fair trade offs, or minor points we should have stayed at the table and negotiated over. Various Washington insider writers and gossippers may be deservedly unpopular in general, but in their opinions they have mentioned two big problems worth looking at.
1. Some of the people negotiating for us were very unprofessional - in particular, they didn't seem to grasp which pollution problems were the most major and which were relatively trivial, which issues could potentially cost the U.S. Billions and which 'mere' Millions, and which nations wanting exemptions were major polluters in that area and which ones so trivial it didn't really matter.
2. Some of the U.S. people appeared to be determined to set conditions that were obviously going to leave us with a treaty the U. S. Senate wouldn't ratify, or that all of the other signees would back out on. The core of this arguement is a claim that those people joined the negotiating team with ulterior motives, and weren't really there to get a treaty that would actually help with real environmental problems.
Some (not necessarily all, or even more than the general political mix) of these 'problem' people on our negotiating team were alledgedly financially connected to energy companies supporting the Republican party, or were sponsored by Republican congress-persons. The arguement goes that Bush did more than react to a badly flawed treaty, he had strong connections to the people who made sure that treaty was so badly flawed, and also treated minor flaws as additional reasons sufficient in themselves to justify his decision, so now nobody else wants to open a new round of negotiations. I would not be surprised if the same situation exists with regard some Democrat sponsored negotiators and corporate connections.
How much should Bush be held responsible? That depends on what else he does about the environment, whether Kyoto was really screwed up by a particular group of neo-conservatives or by more general veniality and incompetence that crosses party lines, and lots of other such factors. I'm perfectly fine myself with blameing a good part of it on President Clinton, and part on lots of other people who aren't Republicans, but I also think blame here couples to such related issues as how this administration has handled scientific disagreements over environmental methodology.
Of course some of the people blameing Bush think we should have taken Kyoto even in that final form. Why THEY blame Bush is a good question, as I think they are already mistaken in including that factor in their reasoning. Plenty of people who are strongly committed to one party or the other have picked out only those details of the Kyoto mess that fit their worldview, which I gather was one of your points.
Re:New Zealand is Pollution-free (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:some basic engineering for you (Score:3, Interesting)
And Exhaust [asashop.org] gas [visionengineer.com] Recirculation [xse.com] *IS* used primarily for NOx reduction.
You are probably thinking of the system where an air pump pumps air into the exhaust system to burn off the residual fuel products. This page [autoshop-online.com] gives a pretty good overview of emission control systems on cars.