Y2Kyoto: If We're The Ones Doing All The Polluting

Has anyone noticed that none of these air quality stations track CO2? Maybe because it's not a pollutant, unlike nitrous oxide or sulphur dioxide, or any of the other gasses these instruments are actually tracking.

By the way, the AB air quality map doesn't work for me at all - no data source.

I'm still trying to get my head around people talking about carbon dioxide like it's some kind of poison gas... it's so stupid.

Next Hallowe'en I'm going to set out a big tub of dry ice in front of my house and hand out carbonated drinks.

Hell, maybe I'll go hang up my Christmas lights and do that for "Earth Hour".

Again Kate, with her lack of anything beyond a high school education, fails to understand the dynamics of air quality vs. population density.

Again Garry, with his lack of anything beyond a kneejerk response, fails to bother with the dynamics of link content vs. political propaganda.

I had no problem with the map - perhaps it's your browser? At any rate, currently all the locations indicated are rate their air quality as "good".

A lot of the comments on carbon dioxide (such as Richter's recent pronouncement) display a lack of understanding of how climate and the atmosphere actually work.

There is room for a debate about where the excess carbon dioxide came from -- human activity, increased plant activity, or both? But it should be understood that carbon dioxide mixes relatively freely into the atmosphere, you don't get enormous concentrations of it near sources, and so local weather or even regional climate does not vary with human production of carbon dioxide in some obvious way. The entire system may or may not be influenced, and that's the basis of the reasoned debate, but there's no truth to the Richter-inspired concept that Alberta has somehow screwed up BC's weather.

Our phone service, yes, absolutely.

And Garry just seems to know about "density".

In modeling the health impacts for the contiguous 48 states, for California and for the Los Angeles area, he determined an increase in the death rate from air pollution for all three regions compared to what the rate would be if no local carbon dioxide were being emitted.

Again with the models.
Folks, models are just not the same as reality and they shouldn't be the basis on which real laws and regulations are legislated to affect the lives of real people.

Garry, I've been to California. It is hardly a pasture of fresh mountain air.

What are the "Smug" levels?
(deliberate "South Park" reference)

Yes Garry, SMUG level indeed!

Agreed, Oz. I don't give any particular weight to the death by C02 study, just find the entire exercise amusing at this point.

A bit O/T but I'm somewhat encouraged by not having seen a press release promoting earth hour from the City of Saskatoon yet this year. True, we're still two weeks out, but they were definitely more eager about it in the past.

Why do I suspect Garry owns a Che T-shirt???

Chris:
The site requires javascript be enabled in your browser. Maybe this is the problem.

Smog kills more than twice as many people than automobiles.

Smog also damages lungs and puts a heavy burden on health services and tax payers.

Sorry, cant find the link just now, but I did add it to a comment here a while back.

We need more carbon dioxide to help clear that damn killer smog.

On another note Neve Campbell -- another elite glorified welfare bum (read: Canadian actress) -- is helping an ecofascist group in Britain produce an anti-oilsands propaganda movie.

[ The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) found that there is so little atmospheric CO2 that a field of corn in full sunlight quickly consumes all of the CO2 within a meter of the ground. If wind currents do not constantly stir up the air, the corn will stop growing! Plants start to suffer when the CO2 level drops to 240 ppm and they die at 160 ppm! (Darryl Smika, plant physiologist, USDA)]

The key point is "... Los Angeles, where the population is dense ..."

I am so confused.I thought the beautiful people of LA didn't fart or emit CO2.Then again Rick Mercer is a journalist,and California isn't bankrupt either.

Garry

"""fails to understand the dynamics of air quality vs. population density."""

yah, beer farts in a popular bar give for $hitty air quality

Los Angeles has a lot of smog because it's in a basin surrounded by mountains. Denver has its infamous "brown cloud" due to a natural inversion of hot and cold layers of air. The cloud is brown due to road dust, but it's the invisible CO and other gasses which make the air dangerous. Denver is also in a plateau desert on the lee side of the Rockies; less rain to cleanse the air.

My point is that the measured air quality doesn't necessarily correlate well to excessive per capita emissions, or absolute or relative measures of population. The natural climate and geography exacerbates the emission problem.

Cap and Trade is efficient only in economic theory, not reality. It requires precise measurement of the marginal social cost of the externality to be efficient. And the initial endowment of pollution permits has distributional consequences. Cap and Trade is a camouflaged welfare scheme for "poor" countries and an attack on capitalism. It will have an enormous impact on GDP, equivalent to a Great Depression. Proponents of it should be hanged for treason.

POWinCA
Yeah...Mexico City smog is more to do with it's topography (a massive high altitude bowl) than emmissions.....smog has plagued Mexico City for centuries........prior to automobiles as it's population grew.

" .. but it's the invisible CO and other gasses which make the air dangerous."

Please, please - before some clueless journalist causes another panic, lets clarify that CO is carbon monoxide. Not to be (intentionally?) confused with that infamous CO2 "culprit".

Come to think of it - did Big Al ever make the point in one of his "lectures"?

CO is poisonous at very small concentrations.
CO2 is essential - and harmless, even at 20X today's levels.

At the conclusion of the recent Winter Olympiad, which prided itself on being the "greenest" ever, it was revealed that the secret to maintaining snow on Cypress Mountain in +6 degree rainstorms, was the burying of tons of "dry ice" underneath the snow that had been trucked hauled and flown in. This was announced with absolutely straight faces, and with no reference to what in the dickens dry ice really was.

I laughed 'til I cried. I need to ask my kids what dry ice is - I'm betting thanks to modern education they haven't a clue.

POWinCA at March 16, 2010 10:45 PM, said...

[Quote]
Denver has its infamous "brown cloud" due to a natural inversion of hot and cold layers of air. The cloud is brown due to road dust, but it's the invisible CO and other gasses which make the air dangerous.
[/Quote]

I agree with you mostly,
but are you sure about the brown cloud being due to road dust?

That same 'brown' cloud is evident in many cities when seen from above or afar.

Look down on a sunny day upon Vancouver from Grouse Mountain and there it is. The common brown cloud.

Vancouver is mostly paved so the brown is not derived from mud dust.

Brown is the common colour for big city smog. Must be an interesting mix.

Just how much of that nice smog is produced by smelting aluminum,making concrete,and building turbines for the wonderful windmills in California?

I remember once when the reporters called the fires of Kuwait, the "worst environmental disaster of all time" obviously oblivious to the K-T event and that California burns the same amount of oil everyday in a parcel of land along the coast about the same size, they just do it through their engines.

reporters seem to ignore the green house gas emmisions of the end user which always always always exceed that of the producer on a per barrel basis.

I'd hazard an estimate that far more petroleum has leaked off than has been produced at the oilsands. in the great scheme of plate techtonics and unconformities this production is sweet tweet.

maybe a new slogan for the oilsands.

Oilsands , cleaning up what mother nature spilt.

very disturbing that this fact sheet isnt the cornerstone of every paper and every story on the oilsands and part of the social studies curriculum.

http://www.oilsandsdevelopers.ca/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Oil-Sands-Environment-Fact-Sheet-October-2009.pdf

Worse than that, POW. Cap and trade requires precise measurement of emissions. I've had some plant operators tell me that any measurement of emissions of CO2 would have an error range of 10 per cent.

Justnotthinkin:

1) There are no aluminum smelters in California, and given the prevailing trade winds, it's doubtful that effluent from Alcan's Quebec plants made its way to LA.

2) Similarly, there are no concrete plants upwind from LA.

Do you think that maybe the smog comes from cars.. or don't you?

The sooner we have more stringent emission controls, cap and trade and a carbon tax we'll be off to a good start. When polluters, such as oil companies are hit hard in the pocket book, they will be forced to clean up their act. The auto industry realizes what is coming and are working to reduce emissions.

T, do you power your internet access with green hamsters from your teepee. Allow me to rephrase your idiocy:

"When T is hit in the pocket book and learns to eat berries and roots and sells his home to live in a field wrapped in leaves, then we'll be on the right track."

I already pay the premium rate on my electrical bill as I subscribe to the power company's green power plan. I would have no problem with a carbon tax.

T,

Are you really that stupid? I guess since you're paying you must be.

Do you believe the power company has the ability to send you clean power through the same grid they send the dirty power to the house next to yours? Really?

As per all statist wankers, you believe that tossing a dollar or two to someone else is "doing your part." You lot love to demand that the government "do something" primarily so you don't have to.

The vatican used to sell indulgences to fools like you centuries ago. Clearly, the unwashed masses haven't smartened up any in the intervening centuries...

As for oil companies cleaning up their act, it's the consumers that burn their products, not the oil companies. It's the consumer, not the oil companies who bear responsibility if any is due.

And also for your consideration, please note that the oil sands are using large-scale versions of much the same concept that Exxon used to clean up their spill. You see, dirty beaches can have the oil extracted from its sand in much the same way as the sand in fort mac. There's just a lot more sand to clean in fort mac. What the oil companies leave behind is a cleaner area than what they started with. They generally pant a lot more foliage than was there before they got there.

A prius still needs gas to run. Your house and all the electronics in it (like your computer) still need power. You are a consumer whether you are bright enough to know it or not. Exxon's sin is YOUR sin.

uhhh Garry, at least Kate got out of High School - just sayin'

KevinBS....I knew.Just asking how many thousands of acres you want wasted,and not growing food,so your bird killers can work.Or maybe you and T can pay 40 cents for power that only costs 5 per KHW to produce.Natural selection isn't working fast enough
OH...and LA is on the wrong side of the mountains to be upwind from all most anything,except Cali socialist BS

Posted by: Justthinkin at March 17, 2010 11:06 AM

Re: KevinBS - Why are people trying to use my name and initials as an insult? Geez.

T,

Your salvation then is to install solar panels and 3 wind turbines on your garage roof.

Then buy a Nissan Leaf, [electric car] and save $400 a month in Exxon sin you don't have to buy.

Jason likes to call you names because he reviles his own pathetic umbilical cord to Exxon.

Best we find fault with others lest we be forced to deal with our own demons...eh?

Here is the ideal garage wind equipment.

http://windenergy7.com/

The sloping roof concentrates air flow into the rotors.

Prices seem a little rich.

TG,

Yes, I'm waiting with baited breath for my cheque from Exxon to arrive...

...still waiting.

On the other hand, I'm perfectly happy reducing my consumption on wasteful excess for it's own sake as well as to save me money. I just don't go around with a chip on my shoulder because I increased the power company's profit like T does. My reductions have been tangible rather than symbolic.

TG, your solution doesn't work. A typical Chevy Volt has a 120 kW engine. It only uses 120 kW on acceleration from a standing stop, so most of the time it's only using a fraction of that, typically about a quarter of that. So, if you drive the car two hours per day, you need to find 120 x 2 x .25 = 60 kWh.

Solar insolation in Canada averages about 150 kW at ground level, given the curvature of the planet and our latitude. However, the theoretical limit of conversion efficiency of sunlight to electricity is 29 per cent, given the varying energy of photons. In practice, given losses from ohmic heating and reflection and diffraction losses, the practical conversion limit is about 12 per cent.

That means a 1 sq m of solar photo cells produces about 18 watt/hours every hour or 180 watt/hours per day, because we have, averaging summer and winter only about 10 hours of high sunlight each day (winter minimum is 5 and summer maximum is 15).

Therefore you need about 334 square metres of solar panels to provide you with the needed 60 kWh of electricity over the allowed 10 hours of daylight.

However this is an optimal figure assuming no cloud cover. Any cloud reduces insolation by a further 75-80 per cent. So, the actual area of solar panels you need to power your car for two hours per day is somewhere between 3 and 4 times the 334 square metres of solar panels noted above.

Life sucks if you took the plunge into the ' long green and short fossil' camp a few years back.

Correction to my post above:
Normal insolation at ground level is 150 watts/sq. m, not 150 kW.

Well, being down heya in Mt. Olive, Louisi-Yana Canada's allegedly AGW pollution can not possibly affect me, ;-)

tony guitar . your calculations are as usual, way out. if you are paying 400 a month to Exxon you must be be driving a semi.

3 times 334 sq meters is about a 1000 sq-m

About 10,000 sq-ft

About a quarter of a friggin acre !

Larger than a typical city lot.

For two hours of driving, with no heater and what about headlights?

Too many Popular Science magazines.

Ron, my calculations were approximations of the best theoretical case. As I noted with comments about clouds and things, the actual will be much worse.

You can see the pathetic nature of the solar pro arguments here. Who cares if you improve the efficiency of solar by 50%? It's still excessive in terms of the area it covers by at least two orders of magnitude. You need to improve the efficiency of solar by a factor of 10 to 100, and that's impossible given the nature of the photons emitted by the sun and the filtering effects of our atmosphere and the fact that our planet is a sphere.

I thought the point of the green movement was to shrink our total footprint. As soon as you work with the numbers you discover that solar idiocies simply magnify it. Maybe its because TG and the rest are utterly and completely innumerate.

Quite right about the 10,000 sq ft. because it's really only orders of magnitude that matter here. Most of us don't have rooftops the size of a quarter acre. So we might put it out in a back yard (all right, a really honkin' big back yard). In which case, because the panel absorbs all the sunlight, everything under it DIES.

And the Greens call this an environmentally clean choice.

cgh

Ron is correct.

The ice engine delivers 22% efficiency to the road. Subtract the pumping extraction, refining, transportation, re-pumping from hydro consuming gas station and in spite of that, you are comfortable on that teat with no alternate?

Give me a break. EV tech delivers efficiency in the 96% level.

So much for your IPPC math.

Ron agrees with cgh, not with TG.

So why does TG try to make it appear the other way around?

It's a sneaky debate tactic I admit. Too many paying close attention.

Don't miss the point though.

WE are all living in the most stupid dream world. Refineries cost eight Billion$ to build.

There is nothing new coming as Exxon and Chevron see TDI and EV coming on the horizon.

Some alternat... Any alternate makes sense before we need it, don't you think?

Brazil runs 85% ON SUGAR GAS. Our corn enriched gas is still total dependency.

Why must WE be so stupid?

It's a sneaky debate tactic I admit. Too many paying close attention.

Don't miss the point though.

WE are all living in the most stupid dream world. Refineries cost eight Billion$ to build.

There is nothing new coming as Exxon and Chevron see TDI and EV coming on the horizon.

Some alternat... Any alternate makes sense before we need it, don't you think?

Brazil runs 85% ON SUGAR GAS. Our corn enriched gas is still total dependency.

Why must WE be so stupid?