Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Why would you phrase your question to regard only a 20-year chunk of time, focus only on "common pollutants" when the overall debate is about the aggregate effect of air pollution and climate change?
It would be almost 30 years. Pollution control within the US really didn't start gaining ground until that time and it's when my Graph starts (see below).
Quote:
Why would you suggest we set CO2 aside, when that is the crux of this discussion?
I'm setting CO2 aside because your comment implies that we are emitting an ever growing amount of pollution into the atmosphere which is simply not the case. The common tactic employed by the green movement (not that I'm saying you are doing it) is to lump CO2 into the same category as "pollutants". We could argue the semantics but the fact is when you say "pollution" or the term you have used "waste gases" the general perception by the public is going to be belching smoke, dirty water and three eyed fish.
IMO when you talk about CO2 you need to separate it from that context and call it what it is. It's a greenhouse gas which as I already mentioned is essential for life on this planet. If you want to lump CO2 into the same category as pollution I could justify calling water vapor pollution.
As far as the answer to my question as an aggregate the emissions of the six most common pollutants have dropped by 54% since 1980:
And just to add one more thing before you go off on the"See it works" argument it won't work for CO2 for a variety of reasons. Lead for example was simply removed from gasoline and other products as an additive. One way they dropped Sulfur emissions is by an ever increasing amount of coal being mined from the Powder River Basin where production went from almost nothing in the early 1970's to about 40% of the coal used in this country today. It's simply has a lot less sulfur in it, as an ironic twist less BTU's which requires more of it to be burned which of course produces more CO2. Other things like wet scrubbers have also been employed or even the process for burning it has been adjusted. These are all minor adjustments that really didn't cost a lot of money.
None of that applies to CO2, it's an enormous volume to deal with and is going to be produced through burning no matter what you do. The one solution suggested most are familiar with is sequestration which will be very expensive and it's not even suitable in many parts of the country becsue of the geology.
Power companies are heavily regulated, in my state, anyway. It is anything but easy for NVEnergy to have a rate increase approved. I'm sure the state will allow a little leeway, but the company will not be allowed to simply pass costs to consumers as a matter of convenience.
Increases will either be approved, or, like nuclear power subsidies, consumers will pay through increased taxes.
IMO when you talk about CO2 you need to separate it from that context and call it what it is. It's a greenhouse gas which as I already mentioned is essential for life on this planet. If you want to lump CO2 into the same category as pollution I could justify calling water vapor pollution.
I don't know of a better way to quantify CO2 than as a "waste gas". That's what it is when it comes out of our bodies or our industry. I specifically avoid calling it a pollutant because I agree with you. It is not a pollutant in the same sense as toxic waste or fly ash. Now, I did reference actual pollutants in my original statement, so I do see how you could draw the parallel.
However, it is more disingenuous to say that CO2 is essential for life on the planet. So is Oxygen, but increase O2 content in the atmosphere just a few percent and everything that doesn't die in the global conflagurations dies from oxygen poisoning. Want to experience this for yourself? Breathe hard and deeply for 2 minutes and you will start poisoning yourself by hyperoxygenating your blood.
Something similiar happens if we increase the CO2 content of the atmosphere. Fortunately, we don't all burn before we asphyxiate thanks to the inert nature of the CO2 molecule. Happily, there's not enough carbon trapped in fossil fuels to kill us. After all, that's carbon which has been in the environment since the beginnings of life on Earth. At some point in the past, it was nearly all liberated and floating around in the air. However, it was captured and subducted into the Earth's crust, eventually becoming tar, coal, or oil. This process took millions of years and the reduction in greenhouse gasses gradually changed the climate to what we have today. Now we're looking at liberating the majority of that trapped carbon over the course of 500 years or so. An eyeblink in geological time. That's spinning the climate wheel back to the Jurassic period or earlier, but over the course of a ridiculously short period of time. It probably won't kill us all, but it will be a very exciting time, to say the least.
So back to the discussion of greenhouse gasses to which cap-and-trade applies and your next post...
None of that applies to CO2, it's an enormous volume to deal with and is going to be produced through burning no matter what you do. The one solution suggested most are familiar with is sequestration which will be very expensive and it's not even suitable in many parts of the country becsue of the geology.
Sequestration is a waste of time, money, and there's no evidence that it is a long-term solution.
The solution is to stop liberating it altogether. Cease mining coal. Cease drilling for oil. Shut down all coal-fired burners. Scrap all oil-powered burners and engines. While fossil fuels are a convenient energy source, they are limited and imperfect. We will run out of coal within the next 300 years (oil within 100) anyway, let's phase it out in 100 years, reduce the impact on the climate, and prepare ourselves for their eventual depletion.
Nuclear fission powerplants can replace coal for baseload electrical power. Hydrogen, with significant difficulty, can replace hydrocarbons as transportable stored power. These are not easy propositions, but they must occur eventually. It can't be done tomorrow or even in the next 10 years, but over the course of the next 100 years it is a quite achievable goal to eradicate fossil fuel usage. Cap-and-trade is a step toward assessing the fair cost of hydrocarbon fueled industry, and pushes us down the path toward new technologies.
And yes, wind, solar, nuts, corn, and other hippy-dippy power sources have their place in this scheme as well, but they simply aren't scalable to replace hydrocarbons.
However, it is more disingenuous to say that CO2 is essential for life on the planet. So is Oxygen, but increase O2 content in the atmosphere just a few percent and everything that doesn't die in the global conflagurations dies from oxygen poisoning. Want to experience this for yourself? Breathe hard and deeply for 2 minutes and you will start poisoning yourself by hyperoxygenating your blood.
I'd have to agree I should probably not suggest it's "harmless" however the amount of CO2 we are pumping into the atmosphere overall is not drastically changing it's composition.
Granted this minuscule amount *could* cause the temperature of the planet to rise but there is so many other variables that *could* cause it to rise too. We need reliable science to determine that and as of right now the reliable science is questionable. The really sad thing about the AGW scandal if it's determined they cooked the books is that all that time and money will have been wasted.
As an aside I've heard the asphyxiation argument before in another post. It's purely academic as you pointed out because you couldn't reach levels like that. Based on the above graph and a percentage 4% where CO2 starts to become detrimental I did some quick calculations and came out to something like 54,000 years to reach 4%.
The solution is to stop liberating it altogether. Cease mining coal. Cease drilling for oil. Shut down all coal-fired burners. Scrap all oil-powered burners and engines. While fossil fuels are a convenient energy source, they are limited and imperfect. We will run out of coal within the next 300 years (oil within 100) anyway, let's phase it out in 100 years, reduce the impact on the climate, and prepare ourselves for their eventual depletion.
Nuclear fission powerplants can replace coal for baseload electrical power. Hydrogen, with significant difficulty, can replace hydrocarbons as transportable stored power. These are not easy propositions, but they must occur eventually. It can't be done tomorrow or even in the next 10 years, but over the course of the next 100 years it is a quite achievable goal to eradicate fossil fuel usage. Cap-and-trade is a step toward assessing the fair cost of hydrocarbon fueled industry, and pushes us down the path toward new technologies.
Couldn't agree more and I would suggest it could be done faster but we don't need to drive the bus off the cliff to achieve it either. My guess is within 30 or 40 years fossil fuel will be a thing of the past if the market is left to do it's thing. Creating a source of energy that is sustainable and cheap is quite a plum to pick, by subsidizing renewables and penalizing fossil fuel not only are you taking that incentive away but you're putting the ball back into the fossil fuel camp.
I'd have to agree I should probably not suggest it's "harmless" however the amount of CO2 we are pumping into the atmosphere overall is not drastically changing it's composition.
Yes, but a drastic change in composition is not needed to cause a "drastic" change in the climate. It all depends on your definition of "drastic." I mean, a sea-level change of 30 feet isn't really "drastic" considering the depth of the oceans or the elevations of the majority of landmasses.
The last time the planet saw CO2 concentrations at this level was during the Paleogene period, about 23 million years ago. So, if you liked the climate after the extinction of the dinosaurs and the evolution of small furry mammals, well then you'll think things are just ducky. Then again, the climate is not simply a function of CO2 concentrations.
Quote:
Granted this minuscule amount *could* cause the temperature of the planet to rise but there is so many other variables that *could* cause it to rise too. We need reliable science to determine that and as of right now the reliable science is questionable. The really sad thing about the AGW scandal if it's determined they cooked the books is that all that time and money will have been wasted.
The AGW "scandal" is nonsense and all science is "questionable". The real problem with climate change calculations is that there is no "control Earth" whose atmosphere we are not altering in order to compare our "experimental Earth's" results to. The ultimate in junk science is to conduct an experiment with no control, which is what we are doing by liberating megatons of naturally-sequestered carbon. This is an "experiment" we need to stop as soon as humanly possible.
Essentially what you can take away from the science of climate change is this: Policy makers have asked scientists what will happen if we increase CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere by 200 PPM. The answer is simply this: "We don't know. Probably something not good. Stop doing that."
I think the previous NASA administrator put it best (even though he infuriated a bunch of eco-nuts by saying it): Climate change is occurring, there is no denying it, but we cannot say we know which climate is "best". (paraphrasing)
This is pretty much a no-brainer. You can argue this matter until you're blue in the face, but the fact remains that we don't know what will happen when we go from 200 PPM to 500 PPM CO2 in <200 years. It's never happened in recorded history. What's beyond that edge? Don't know. Maybe it's a pool filled with marshmallows and puppies. Or maybe it's a 40-foot drop onto jagged rocks. Probably rocks. Recommend we don't close your eyes and jump off.
The sooner we stop the inefficient burning of oil (we should be conserving it for plastics production) and the hazardous burning of coal, the better.
On the whole, it is likely that an investment now in terms of increased energy costs through cap-and-trade will save money down the road in terms of mitigation of climate change and conservation of limited hydrocarbon resources.
Sequestration is a waste of time, money, and there's no evidence that it is a long-term solution.
The solution is to stop liberating it altogether. Cease mining coal. Cease drilling for oil. Shut down all coal-fired burners. Scrap all oil-powered burners and engines. While fossil fuels are a convenient energy source, they are limited and imperfect. We will run out of coal within the next 300 years (oil within 100) anyway, let's phase it out in 100 years, reduce the impact on the climate, and prepare ourselves for their eventual depletion.
Nuclear fission powerplants can replace coal for baseload electrical power. Hydrogen, with significant difficulty, can replace hydrocarbons as transportable stored power. These are not easy propositions, but they must occur eventually. It can't be done tomorrow or even in the next 10 years, but over the course of the next 100 years it is a quite achievable goal to eradicate fossil fuel usage. Cap-and-trade is a step toward assessing the fair cost of hydrocarbon fueled industry, and pushes us down the path toward new technologies.
And yes, wind, solar, nuts, corn, and other hippy-dippy power sources have their place in this scheme as well, but they simply aren't scalable to replace hydrocarbons.
Whole-ee cow.
Nuclear is potentially much more hazardous to the environment. Each step of it's mining, ore transportation, refining, fuel delivery, and especially storage of spent feuls is merely an accident waiting to happen. Nuclear fission is little better, uses the same feuls, and won't be a viable consumer technology for many decades to come.
Shutting down all your "evil machines" would bring this nation to a complete halt and destroy what little economic stability we have. Your timeline is also incorrect. As more advanced tech is developed, more coal and oil become available, pushing the envelope back even farther.
Also, are you aware of the energy it takes to create hydrogen? Are you even aware that, today, most of the hydrogen used for vehicles is made using petroleum products?
Until better, more efficient solar cells are developed, they will never be marketable as a cheap supply of power. Currently they are too expensive, require to much energy to produce to offset any savings in energy produced, and take up too much space.
Wind is indeed a viable alternative in some areas of the country. However, people seem to have an aversion to "cluttering their skyline".
Cap and trade isn't a solution, it's a hysterical-reaction, quick-fix, hey-look-at-us-we're-doing-something-so-vote-for-us band-aid program that will waste billions in tax revenue and cost consumers billions as well, while hardly impacting the amount of crap spewed into the air or accelorating research into new energy sources.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Pollution control within the US really didn't start gaining ground until that time and it's when my Graph starts (see below).
