Posts tagged cause
CU Boulder — LA air pollution has a surprise problem
Mar 2nd
Gasoline worse than diesel when it
comes to some types of air pollution
comes to some types of air pollution
The exhaust fumes from gasoline vehicles contribute more to the production of a specific type of air pollution — secondary organic aerosols — than those from diesel vehicles, according to a new study by scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, or CIRES, NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory and other colleagues.
“The surprising result we found was that it wasn’t diesel engines that were contributing the most to the organic aerosols in L.A.,” said CIRES research scientist Roya Bahreini who led the study and also works at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s ESRL. “This was contrary to what the scientific community expected.”
SOAs are tiny particles that are formed in air and make up typically 40-60 percent of the aerosol mass in urban environments. This is important because fine-particle pollution can cause human health effects, such as heart or respiratory problems.
Due to the harmful nature of these particles and the fact that they can also impact the climate and can reduce visibility, scientists want to understand how they form, Bahreini said. Researchers had already established that SOAs could be formed from gases released by gasoline engines, diesel engines and natural sources — biogenic agents from plants and trees — but they had not determined which of these sources were the most important, she said.
“We needed to do the study in a location where we could separate the contribution from vehicles from that of natural emissions from vegetation,” Bahreini said.
Los Angeles proved to be an ideal location. Flanked by an ocean on one side and by mountains to the north and the east, it is, in terms of air circulation, relatively isolated, Bahreini said. At this location, the scientists made three weekday and three weekend flights with the NOAA P3 research aircraft, which hosted an arsenal of instruments designed to measure different aspects of air pollution.
“Each instrument tells a story about one piece of the puzzle,” Bahreini said. “Where do the particles come from? How are they different from weekday to weekend, and are the sources of vehicle emissions different from weekday to weekend?”
From their measurements, the scientists were able to confirm, as expected, that diesel trucks were used less during weekends, while the use of gasoline vehicles remained nearly constant throughout the week. The team then expected that the weekend levels of SOAs would take a dive from their weekday levels, Bahreini said.
But that was not what they found.
Instead, the levels of SOA particles remained relatively unchanged from their weekday levels. Because the scientists knew that the only two sources for SOA production in this location were gasoline and diesel fumes, the study’s result pointed directly to gasoline as the key source.
“The contribution of diesel to SOA is almost negligible,” Bahreini said. “Even being conservative, we could deduce from our results that the maximum upper limit of contribution to SOA would be 20 percent.”
That leaves gasoline contributing the other 80 percent or more of the SOA, Bahreini said. The finding was published online March 1 in Geophysical Research Letters. “While diesel engines emit other pollutants such as soot and nitrogen oxides, for organic aerosol pollution they are not the primary culprit,” Bahreini said.
If the scientists were to apply their findings from the L.A. study to the rest of the world, a decrease in the emission of organic species from gasoline engines may significantly reduce SOA concentrations on a global scale as well. This suggests future research aimed at understanding ways to reduce gasoline emissions would be valuable.
The study was funded by NOAA’s Climate Change and Air Quality Programs, the California Air Resources Board and the National Science Foundation.
CIRES coauthors on the team include Joost de Gouw, Carsten Warneke, Harald Stark, William Dube, Jessica Gilman, Katherine Hall, John Holloway, Anne Perring, Joshua Schwarz, Ryan Spackman and Nicholas Wagner.
Your Future, Your Choice! The Naked Curmudgeon by Dan Culberson.
Feb 1st
Here’s what gets me.
I believe a lot of time, effort, money and brainpower can be saved if you reevaluate your political-party affiliation and voting record in terms of your line of work, your personal philosophy and your de facto class in American society.
“What?” you say? “Class?” you say?
“Yes,” I say. Contrary to what many Americans believe or would like to believe, there are three distinct classes in the United States and, perhaps, in every society for purposes of discussion: upper class, middle class and lower class. Now, the difference between the class society in the U.S. and the established class societies in, say, India and medie
vval societies is that Americans don’t have to be fore
American politics have pretty much become a two-party system, and for the most part people agree that Democrats are the liberal party that supports the common, everyday working-class people and Republicans are the conservative party that supports Big Business and the uncommon, country-club set of wealthy people. Which group describes you?er restricted to the class into which they were born. All they need do is acquire a substantial amount of money, buy some new clothes and a flashy new car, move into a nicer community and perhaps get experience in the ways of the next higher class in order to become a bona fide new member of that class.
Common sense says that the majority of people are going to be in either the middle class or the lower class. Using the old “bell curve” of distribution, let us say that 25% of the people are upper class, 50% are middle class and 25% are lower class. Where are you?
Now, people tend to align themselves first with the political party that their parents support, the same as they do their parents’ religion. That is why I voted for the Democratic candidate in my first presidential election back in the Sixties, even though I didn’t much care for the man Lyndon B. Johnson or for his policies in Vietnam: both my career-soldier father and my salesclerk mother were Democrats. As I grew older, wiser and more experienced, I decided that I supported the liberal, pro-arts, anti-Big Business views of the Democrats more than I supported the conservative, anti-Big Government, pro-Big Business views of the Republicans, anyway.
Remember your schooling? “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Why doesn’t “trickle-down economics” work? Because money is power, and the people with the money don’t want to give it up, especially to the people without any money. However, they WILL give some of it to greedy politicians in an attempt to cause the politicians to pass laws that make life easier for the people with the money.
Where do you fit? People with money? People without any money? Or greedy politicians?
Let me make it easier for you. People with money tend to be Republicans. People without any money tend to be Democrats. Greedy politicians tend to drift to whichever party they believe will best support their greed.
“Wait a minute!” you say? “What about the Kennedys?” you say? “What about people without any money who vote Republican?” you say?
Well, people who are born with a lot of money can pretty much do what they want, and people who do not have any money would always like to have more. Some people are benevolent and like to help out their fellow human beings as much as possible. Other people are naturally mean and selfish and want to acquire as much money, power, more money and more power as they can.
So, forget the party of your parents. Forget the economic situation as a whole that the country is in and whom the politicians blame for it. Forget the personal life-styles of individual politicians in office.
Remember this: Republicans are conservative, tend to support people with money and try to find ways that those people can keep their money and acquire more money.
Remember this: Democrats are liberal, tend to support people without money and try to find ways that those people can live better lives and perhaps acquire a little more money.
Best of all, forget “politics” and remember that only about 30% of eligible voters can determine how your life is affected.
Are you in the 25% upper class, the 50% middle class or the 25% lower class? Did you vote in the last election? Do the politicians speak for you?
Your choice determines your own future.
I rest my case.
The Naked Curmudgeon
curmudgeon n [origin unknown] (1577) a crusty, ill-tempered, and usu. old man. naked adj 6: devoid of concealment or disguise. Attempting to cover everything that annoys me, Dan Culberson.
SOPA ^ H.R.3261 – Stop Online Piracy Act; editorial by Jann Scott
Jan 11th
Editorial by Jann Scott
Below is the actual bill before congress. You can read it for yourself. In Boulder there is a severe reaction to this bill by techies led by tech entrepreneur Brad Feld. In a tweet to me he said that he does “not support Piracy or Hacking or theft:” so why is he against this bill??
Privately most techies are hackers, steal songs and movies and feel the internet should remain a lawless wild west. They think everything on the Internet should be in the public domain. They are anti-business anti capitalist though many of them work in so called Start-up business’s. They are anti-protected rights though all techies demand it for themselves. We have come to a cross roads where the US Congress has now taken up the cause of protecting artists and film makers from world wide internet Piracy and Organized crime.
At Boulder Channel 1 we see both sides of the issue. We are concerned about censorship and the far reaching arm of a bad law. We have been victims of it many times. So we don’t like the idea of government reaching into our television channel or newsroom. On the other hand we don’t steal movies or music. We don’t allow criminal enterprises to advertise with us. So we are pretty clean.
Other issues at hand are hacking, corporate espionage, identity theft, credit card theft and theft of anything online. This now becomes a moral crisis for all in the Boulder tech world.
