Global Air Pollution, From Above

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."

Comments

Take note

[AKAImBatman]

Take note everyone, the biggest red blob is over China (insert communist jokes here). For all the whining and complaining about how the US should have joined the Kyoto accord, it's very easy to see that China is the #1 offender, and that Europe is not doing so hot itself. What good would Kyoto have done if it exempted the country who needs it most?

That being said, China is still developing. Pollution should be a big concern for them, but it's an unfortunate fact of life for now. As their technology improves, the pollution levels should drop. With one caveat, that is:

Many modernized countries have sent their manufacturing to China. Thus placing restrictions on countries to reduce their emissions will do little good when we've already sent the real pollution over there. I'm not sure how we can respond to the situation, but it's important to pay attention to it.

The blob over Canada is actually a bit surprising, but I'm guessing that's related to the earlier article on the odd increases in pollution levels. I do have a thought on why North America sees less pollution than Europe, however. Since the North America has a massive amount of farmland and forest land, a good deal of the pollution is sapped up by these massive carbon sinks. This doesn't actually impact NO2 levels, but it does explain some of the pollution reduction.

FWIW, it seems that NO2 is primary produced by cars. Moving to the hydrogen vehicles of the future may help stop almost all NO2 production.

(P.S. I know slashdotters have a penchant for insulting people, but please try to keep your replies civil. I don't know everything, so correct me in a polite manner. Thank you.)

Re:Take note

[Anonymous Coward]

The real problem here is that the blob over China/Eastern Russia is only going to get much worse. More and more Chinese will start using motor vehicles and even industry won't limit production.

Re:Take note

[JeffSh]

you are exactly right

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_ coalfire.html

i had to repost, my first post was to the wrong place.. woops.

Re:Take note

[plopez]

I can't get to the link due to what appears to be the slashdot effect, but the synopsis says NO2 only.
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.

Re:Take note

[TheAxeMaster]

FWIW, it seems that NO2 is primary produced by cars. Moving to the hydrogen vehicles of the future may help stop almost all NO2 production.

except for the fact that even with hydrogen powered vehicles you're still burning air unless you're talking about fuel cell technology, which is still too young to be widely useful. So even if we switch to burning hydrogen, you've still gotta burn it with air, which is something like 70% nitrogen, so it won't make a difference.

Re:Take note

[Anonymous Coward]

When it comes down to it, the only way the US would be harmed by Kyoto is electric power generation and automobiles. Since manufacturing is no longer done in this country, it wouldn't really harm industry. All of our pollution is now from power plants or cars. People have claimed that the purpose of Kyoto is to harm the US economically. I think the real purpose is to change American lifestyles and force them to take inefficient public transit and use less electricity. Either way, Kyoto is dead in the water. The only countries who agree to it are the ones that can use it as a weapon against competitors. Since the US Senate voted 98-0 in favor of scrapping it, this treaty will never be ratified, with or without Bush's support.

Re:Take note

[aeroegnr]

Even if all the cars in the world were hydrogen, we would still be polluting. Where do you think the electricity to make the hydrogen comes from? In the U.S., we'll have to get realistic about nuclear power and reprocessing, or else we won't have any alternatives to coal.

Re:Take note

[JeffSh]

this link works

Re:Take note

[Martin Blank]

The blob over Canada looks to me more like it's over the industrial sections of the Northeast, particularly the steel belt running from Ohio through Pennsylvania. I know the steel producers are regularly villified for pumping evil into the air, so perhaps this is just one more of them.

Re:Take note

[lphuberdeau]

You've got a good pair of eyes! The image is very small. I can barly see a thing. Anyway, the blob you see in Canada seem to be in Alberta, where they extract petrol.

Pollution level does match the population density, it's just plain normal.

Re:Take note

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that the map shows nitrogen dioxide, not carbon dioxide. Most industrial air pollution can be filtered or avoided without reducing the amount of burnt fuel, but not carbon dioxide, which increases global warming. I would not be surprised to see a much higher CO2:NO2 ratio over North America and Europe than over China and other developing countries.

Re:Take note

[drmike0099]

Looks like it's largely spilling out from the major industrial areas, which doesn't jive with the article you quote, but does go along w/ the article that the picture is in. It's spilling largely from the Detroit/Chicago area in the USA (as well as Pittsburgh/south NJ), eastern China, and southern England on that map, which coincides nicely w/ industrial centers. There really wasn't anything on top of Canada, I grew up under the northern end of that big red blob, and I was in upstate NY.

One of the lower posters also raised a good point. Being a successful economy means you can use your sources of energy to create more money. The USA has mastered this, largely because we were one of the first nations to do this, and because we were blessed w/ huge amounts of wood, then coal, and then oil that allowed us to get so far ahead. This is grossly oversimplified, but a lot of our infrastructure is already paid for, so our energy is cheap. Contrast that w/ China, who is just now trying to create that "good living through more energy" that we've enjoyed for decades, and you realize that their costs are higher. If they did it in a environmental way, it would cost even more, and they wouldn't make it as far w/ the same amount of money. It's easy to see why they have a black cloud, cuz that's what their money dictates. They'll spend more money in the future on it, but not until their (newly wealthier) middle class starts demanding it, and then they'll pass the cost along.

Re:Take note

[krlynch]

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.

Re:Take note

[Specter]

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

Re:Take note

[Atzanteol]

The blob over Canada is actually a bit surprising

Looks like it's the Michigan Lakes area. That's a heavy industrial area in the US (steel mostly I think).

Re:Take note

[Anonymous Coward]

For all the whining and complaining about how the US should have joined the Kyoto accord, it's very easy to see that China is the #1 offender, and that Europe is not doing so hot itself. What good would Kyoto have done if it exempted the country who needs it most?

Umm... what? That makes no sense. The #1 offender being exempted doesn't magically erase the good of all the other countries signing the treaty. It's like saying "what's the good of arresting lesser terrorists if we haven't arrested Bin Laden?"

(P.S. I know slashdotters have a penchant for insulting people, but please try to keep your replies civil. I don't know everything, so correct me in a polite manner. Thank you.)

For future reference, characterising other people as whiners is not a good idea if you want replies to be civil.

Re:Take note

[ILL Clinton]

If you look closely you can see that the U.S. has some hot-spots, concentrated over the northeast and the west coast. Which include New York and L.A. respectively.

That's similar to how the electoral map looks.

ILL Clinton
Maker of Machinima movies.

Re:Take note

[Fallen Kell]

Well, also take note that the "red zones" across northern/central US also coorespond very well with the large concentration of coal burning power plants that exist in that area (mainly due to the easily availability of coal in that region).

So, I while car may be the primary producer, the amounts created are able to be dissapated/reduced/reused/stored by the environment/local areas. While coal power plants and coal fires produce a dramatic spike that can not be absorbed by the surrounding environment.

Re:Take note

[halftrack]

I'm a bit confused by the angle of your post. It seems to me that you would want China to reduce its emmissions too. However according to wikipedia China emits 2.3 tons per capita of CO2 while the U.S. 20.1 tons per capita (Europe at 8.5 tons per capita.) and isn't this the way to look at emissions? I believe that there is a base energy requirement to support one person and that for most of the world this - sadly - means burning fossil fuels. (At least at present time.) Thus shouldn't China really be allowed to release 5 times (gross product) as much as the U.S?

Now there aren't AFAIK any restrictions on China or other developing countries, but China has ratified the agreement and when they really step up as an industrialized country they will have restrictions imposed thus it is in their interest to stay within the future requirements.

Had there been placed restrictions on China or other developing countries they probably never would have signed the agreement because it might have inhibited their growth. (Now what is the real reason the U.S. isn't signing?)

Furthermore I don't think the true objective is reduced emissions, we're far to spoiled to let that happen. The point is getting a situation under control before it gets out of hand.

(P.S. I know slashdotters have a penchant for insulting people, but please try to keep your replies civil. I don't know everything, so correct me in a polite manner. Thank you.)
Ditto

Re:Take note

[AKAImBatman]

The #1 offender being exempted doesn't magically erase the good of all the other countries signing the treaty. It's like saying "what's the good of arresting lesser terrorists if we haven't arrested Bin Laden?"

Look at the map. The NO2 levels in all other areas of the world don't even begin to compare to those of China.

For future reference, characterising other people as whiners is not a good idea if you want replies to be civil.

My apologies:

s/whining and complaining/loud vocal complaints/g

Re:Take note

[Anonymous Coward]

The map doesn't track CO2, so the coal fire has nothing to do with the map. The map shows NO2: Nitrogen Dioxide.

Re:Take note

[Specter]

Well if per capita is how we're going to measure it then pollution reduction is going to get a lot more popular in the US! Just think all we have to to is bump the population up to bring our per capita numbers down!

Just think: "Save the environment, have sex TODAY!"

Woo hoo!

Re:Take note

[bobbozzo]

NO2 is one of the pollutants that is measured and restricted in California's smog tests.

Re:Take note

[Anonymous Coward]

P.S. I know slashdotters have a penchant for insulting people, but please try to keep your replies civil. I don't know everything, so correct me in a polite manner. Thank you.

I'm not going to correct you, cause what you say is true.

For all the whining and complaining about how the US should have joined the Kyoto accord, it's very easy to see that China is the #1 offender, and that Europe is not doing so hot itself.

What I don't really understand though the is whole "Hey, we're not as bad as them " argument, which many on /. seem so fond of dragging out again and again. Yeah, great...

Re:Take note

[essreenim]

(insert communist jokes here).
Duhhh, China is not communist truely. Its more of a dictatorship.
There are no marxist nations in the world at the moment - the closest are the highly affluent Scandinavian nations such as Finland..

Re:Take note

[demachina]

I think this satellite is almost entirely mapping pollution from coal fired power plants, and coal involved industry like steel production.

"The blob over Canada is actually a bit surprising"

Not sure which blob you are talking about. The really bad one in Eastern North America is almost certainly coming from the massive concentration of coal fired power plants in Ohio, Pensylvania and West Virginia some of which drifts in to Canada.

The lighter blob in Western Canada is almost certainly coal fired power plants in Alberta. they get half their electricity from coal and were trying to build more last I heard.

Not sure why the submitter is surprised there aren't more blobs over the U.S. There is one really nasty dense one over the Northeast where there is massive use of coal. All the lighter blobs over the west are also almost certainly coal fired power plants, there aren't a lot of cities or heavy industry in the Western U.S., its mostly farms, desert and empty space.

The cities on the Pacific Coast are in a long skinny line which probably serves to preclude a build up of a big blob for this satellite to see.

Coal plants in the West are a massive pollution source but they are spread out over a wide area so they end up not looking bad in this kind of measurement because the wind spreads it out so the concentration stays low.

I really doubt cars even come close to matching coal fired power plants for concentrated NO2 production. Maybe they match it in total but its much more diffuse than coal fired power plants which are giant blinking red blobs of concentrated NO2 to this satellite.

Its pretty obvious China is A) doing all of the worlds heavy manufacturing. Steel production in particular shows up well to this satellite. B) making heavy use of coal for power. China produces 75% of their power with Coal which is why they are the massive red blob they are.

Germany also gets 50% of its power from Coal which I wager accounts for some of the blob over Western Europe.

If the Bush administration figures out this satellite is doing what I think it is, which is mapping coal fired power plant pollution, there may be a sudden failure of this satellite after a mysterious missile launch from the U.S.

Re:Take note

[Anonymous Coward]

On of the resons behind the tough NOx standards In California was a compromise between the state and the car industry. The three major car corps lowered their complains on some of the CO2 standards in return of getting higher/tougher NOx values. That way they could get protection from foreign diesel car manufacturers...

IIRC they used some old and bogus(60's) argument from the enros about "acid rain in Yellowstone"..

Re:Take note

[WebMasterP]

Actually, it wouldn't be too bad if you made the hydrogen from hydroelectic, solar, or wind-powered sources. I know, it probably won't happen, just a thought.

Re:Take note

[Mad Martigan]

Hopefully, the Olympics will bring some positive changes to China. One of the conditions of winning the Olympic bid was to make the Olympics 'green.' I'm not exactly sure what that's supposed to mean, but there have been fairly incredible improvements in the various levels of pollution in and around Beijing.

Also, China has undertaken construction of a 400 Megawatt wind plant that will be completed in time for the games. Apparantly, (according to Wired, at least) it will be the world's largest wind project.

So, for now at least, China is the polluted nightmare of the world, but it looks like they're trying to make some efforts to get pollution under control. //

Re:Take note

[Mac Degger]

There's an even better, yet much more cynical, reason why NOx and SOx are so heavily regulated; they're the polutants which you can see and smell. SOx isn't even that bad for you, but it smells like shi^H^Hsulfur. There are other polutants which are much, much worse for you, much more deadly, but aren't as readily visible or nasally detectable.

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.

Re:Take note

[essreenim]

you are exactly right
The region marked out around China has as much population as the whole of the U.S combined - so no excuses, and YES - George Bush has the worst environmental record of ALL your presicdents throughout history. Vote John Kerry - for the danity of the rest of the world. I beg you.

Re:Take note

[Vellmont]

If you accept that human emissions of greenhouse gasses contribute to global warming (which it sounds like you do) then you'd also agree that we have to do something about stopping it. The developed countries including the US should be the ones leading the charge away from greenhouse gas emissions. This is for no other reason than it's the developed countries that are best able to afford the changes to power plants, fuel efficient cars, etc.

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:Take note

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

No, that's just a Republican website that attempts to blame China for Bush's global warming. Everyone knows the Chinese, Russians, Indians and Europeans commit no environmental wrongs!

Re:Take note

[halftrack]

Don't usually reply to myself (though I often find myself talking to myself,) but after reading the Wikipedia article on the Kyoto accord I would like to make another point which I forgot to point out in the previous point. Namely that giving quotas to developing nations will tempt them to sell these at the cost of further development. It's sad but true, but development comes at an environmental cost. However as another post pointed out, industrialized nations can afford environmentalism, developing nations can't.

This may not be strictly true in a longterm perspective, but a countrys economy tends to be governed (sometimes not governed) by short term goals. If there's peace then that's often feeding the hungry, educating them and giving them clean water. If the energy needed comes from coal, so be it, it's cheap.

Re:Take note

[bergeron76]

Actually, you can't get to the site due to the NO2 effect; not the slashdot (/.) effect.

Re:Take note

[Anonymous Coward]

God, it must suck to be a democrat.

Re:Take note

[Anonymous Coward]

You are absolutly right. The red "dot" is in china. But then you start to mix things up.

The Kyoto-Protocol is on CO2 emmission. In that area the USA is the "world leader". Also you have to remember that Europe have a more dense population than the USA. Not to talk about China ...

Another thing you should remember is, that the NOx is produced by burning coal or oil. In most western countries, special filters reduce the NOx concentration in the exaust gases.

The red area in north Italy is produced by the heart of the Italian industry. And because of the Alps in the north and mountains from the north to the south. The zone has less air movements.

The only thing I cannot explain it the red area in
the Nederlands nad Belgium. I would expect such a dot more or less in the Ruhr-Area.

One idea is: The region has a very dense population. And they grow cows there, which generates methane and NOx.

Re:Take note

[Anonymous Coward]

(thread hijack)

The Uni of Heidelberg Satellite site.

Re:Take note

[Kent_Franken]

There are underground coal fires all around the world, not just China. However, according to the article, coal fires in northern China alone are responsible for between two and three per cent of worldwide emissions of carbon dioxide - the main greenhouse gas. And here is another article from the BBC.

Re:Take note

[Anonymous Coward]

"When it comes down to it, the only way the US would be harmed by Kyoto is electric power generation and automobiles. Since manufacturing is no longer done in this country, it wouldn't really "harm industry. All of our pollution is now from power plants or cars. People have claimed that the purpose of Kyoto is to harm the US economically. I think the real purpose is to change American lifestyles and force them to take inefficient public transit and use less electricity. Either way, Kyoto is dead in the water. The only countries who agree to it are the ones that can use it as a weapon against competitors. Since the US Senate voted 98-0 in favor of scrapping it, this treaty will never be ratified, with or without Bush's support."

And Bush haters, please take note that Senator Kerry was one of those 98 Senators who voted against the Kyoto Treaty during Clinton's Administration but then has the audacity to criticize the current President for vocally opposing that very same treaty.

My feeling is we in the U.S. could meet the pollution levels if the rest of the nation met California's smog standards. Hell, even all of California isn't under the same smog standards. Here in Sactown, we are under SmogCheckII because we are a total pollution sink, yet San Francisco qualifies for SmogCheckI which is less strenuous because their smog doesn't stay in the City, it travels to Sactown. Then, if you go a step further and classify SUV smog standards with that of regular automobiles instead of with light trucks, you'll again see improvements in emmission standards. And that's before pushing for more hybrids or fuell cell technology.

Re:Take note

[jericho4.0]

Here is the original map, or at least a bigger one.

I noticed a few interesting things on it. One being the Alberta oir industry, as you noticed. The other is the ripples over the Himalayas.

Re:Take note

[AKAImBatman]

If you accept that human emissions of greenhouse gasses contribute to global warming (which it sounds like you do) then you'd also agree that we have to do something about stopping it.

Actually, my approach is more practical. Humans are good at killing humans. Nature will survive just fine with or without us. So from my perspective I'm not really worried about massive climate changes, and more with the quality of life.

To be perfectly honest, I think a lot of the climate changes have to do with natural cycles in the Earth's history. Since we've actually been in one of the colder periods of Earth's history, it's only natural that things should warm up a little. While many of us are attached to geography as we know it today, who's to say that the geography that's evolving will be a problem? As my wife says, "we'll finally find out what's underneath the South Cap!" :-)

Re:Take note

[spuzzzzzzz]

I've always worried about the danity of the world. Does this have something to do with moving to the Netherlands?

Re:Take note

[Breakfast Pants]

Yes there is a difference. Burn hydrogen with air and you get water. The nitrogen stays in the air and doesn't chemically combine with anything to any relevant degree; what's your point again?

Re:Take note

[7infinity]

For all the whining and complaining about how the US should have joined the Kyoto accord, it's very easy to see that China is the #1 offender, and that Europe is not doing so hot itself.

The Kyoto Protocol addresses Greenhouse Gases, of which NOx is only a small player. NOx is primarily a local problem (it has a short atmospheric lifetime), and has been controlled in much of the developed world for the benefit of the local population.

As far as pollutants with global effects, e.g. CO2, the US is by far the dirtiest, emitting 1/4 of the world's Greenhouse Gases. That's right, 1/4 of the responsibility for climate change from 1/20 of the worlds population.

Re:Take note

[spuzzzzzzz]

The important thing to note is that this map measures NO2 (which is basically smog) emissions. NO2 is a lot easier to filter than CO2, which is the main greenhouse gas. So developed countries, with better filters, might show up as having low NO2 emissions even though they are producing lots of CO2.

Re:Take note

[Anonymous Coward]

You must also notice that the population density in this aera of europe is about 360/km2. for comparaison the population density of the usa is 31/km2
In europe the pollution standards are very very strict, and the diesel engines don't emit more particles than the others. The main source of NO2 is the industry.

Even if there isn't any big red point over the usa, it produces about 25% of the world CO2 with only 4% of the world population.

(sources wikipedia)

Re:Take note

[Lars T.]

Just that Kyoto isn't about general polution, but CO2 and global warming. NO2 is not a greenhouse gas.

Re:Take note

[Incadenza]

There's an even better, yet much more cynical, reason why NOx and SOx are so heavily regulated; they're the polutants which you can see and smell. SOx isn't even that bad for you, but it smells like shi^H^Hsulfur. There are other polutants which are much, much worse for you, much more deadly, but aren't as readily visible or nasally detectable.

In Europe they try to get CO2 emissions down.
In the US/Canada they try to get NOx emissions down.
Guess which one is worse for your health? There's nothing cynical about trying to reduce NOx emissions

What is cynical, is trying to reduce CO2 emissions by burning more diesel. Already in 1998 the WHO gave out a warning that exhaust fumes (and especially the small particles emitted by diesel) kill about as much people as traffic accidents (80,000 vs 120,000 deaths a year). Life expectancy for people living near a highway are 10 years below average. And what do they about that? Less CO2 - more pollutants, and bad way to go.

Re:Take note

[Ricdude]

Introducing diesel cars that meet stricter emissions requirements in the US only requires reducing the sulfur content of diesel fuel. Once that happens, the US can use all the cool exhaust treatments that are used *today* in the EU to meet their stricter emissions requirements. In 2006, ULSD (ultra low sulfur diesel) standards take effect, and you will see some more diesel vehicles on the market.

Last year, the only manufacturer of diesel passenger vehicles in the US was Volkswagen. This year, Mercedes (3xx CDI), and Jeep (Liberty CRD) also join the field. By 2006, who knows, maybe we'll even have diesel-electric hybrids...

Re:Take note

[Vellmont]

To be perfectly honest, I think a lot of the climate changes have to do with natural cycles in the Earth's history. Since we've actually been in one of the colder periods of Earth's history, it's only natural that things should warm up a little.


Maybe, but I'm not sure we have the luxury of waiting another 50 years to collect enough data to determine exactly how much of the warming effect is man-made (and controllable) and how much is beyond our control. From everything I hear it sounds like there is an non-negligible impact on global warming from human released greenhouse gasses.

The disaster isn't quite that humans will become extinct, it's that large costal cities will go underwater as glaciers melt and raise sea levels. I just don't think that's a trivial effect that you shouldn't be concerned about. You claim we're "attatched to the geography as we know it today", which I guess is technically true, but it really seems to trivialize the effects of global warming. The gun may not be pointed at our head, but it certainly seems like we could lose some fingers or a hand.

Re:Take note

[AK Marc]

Moving to the hydrogen vehicles of the future may help stop almost all NO2 production.

The NO2 is produced by burning fuel under high compression in the presence of N2 (which makes up most of the air, and don't take me pointing that out as condescending, I'm making sure everyone else reading can play along). If we were to replace all gasoline with H2 for fuel and burn it in internal combustion pistion engines like we use today with gasoline, then oxides of nitrogen will be produced. Heat, compression, and oxygen will lead to the creation of oxides of nitrogen. It will take moving to fuel cells (which can work with gasoline) to remove oxides of nitrogen from the list of by-products.

Re:Take note

[emeitner]

The Kyoto Treaty is about CO2(and its affect on the Greenhouse Effect), NOT NO2.

NO2 comes from general combustion of hydrocarbons.
The US produces a lot of CO2, but less NO2. Why? Catalytic converters. We Have not yet been able to create a catalytic convertor that can crack a CO2 molecule :) ....so the US will still be a large producer of that pollutant.

Re:Take note

[gwernol]

Looks like it's largely spilling out from the major industrial areas, which doesn't jive with the article you quote, but does go along w/ the article that the picture is in. It's spilling largely from the Detroit/Chicago area in the USA (as well as Pittsburgh/south NJ), eastern China, and southern England on that map, which coincides nicely w/ industrial centers. There really wasn't anything on top of Canada, I grew up under the northern end of that big red blob, and I was in upstate NY.

England isn't a major industrial nation - hasn't been for about 50 years. What remains of its heavy industry is concentrated in the north of the country, not the south, so this doesn't seem to align. I'd guess its actually the (mostly non-industrial) pollution from London.

Likewise I'm not sure what accounts for the large concentration of NO2 shown over the north of Italy. It looks like the Alps are generating a lot of pollution. That can't be right...

Re:Take note

[(54)T-Dub]

My girlfriend is currently doing a study abroad program in Jinan, China right now and the pollution is rediculous. She was there for a week before a rain storm came in and revealed the mountains a couple miles from her hotel. She is also suffering from chronic headaches as a result of not getting enough oxygen. The sickness rates in parts of china are around 50% because of what pollution does to the immune system. What is particularly sad is that this is not simply issolated to the metropolitan/industrial area's. Factories dump chemicals in rivers which of course effects all the farmers and villages that live off of the water.

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.

Re:Take note

[cofaboy]

but if you read it it states that some fires have been dated as burning from the Pleistocene era which is the first part of the Quaternary period of geological time, beginning 1.64 million years ago and ending 10,000 years ago. The polar ice caps were extensive and glaciers were abundant during the ice age of this period, and humans evolved into modern Homo sapiens sapiens about 100,000 years ago. ( tiscalli encylopedia I'm not that clever ) On this basis if CO2 and NO will cause global warming and acid rain, we'll need sunblock SPF 500 and stainless steel umbrellas

Re:Take note

[Tim C]

What good would Kyoto have done if it exempted the country who needs it most?

Well, look at it this way - even if that one country was responsible for 50% of the emissions, you could still cut world-wide emissions by up to 50%.

Besides, I personally don't think "Well, no-one else is bothering, so why should I?" is a good enough reason to not do something. That's just me though, and I can certainly see the attraction.

Re:Take note

[multiplexo]

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.

Western Europeans living in smaller, more distributed communities than Americans? I don't think so. Let's look at Germany as an example. Germany has a population of 82 million in an area of about 349,000 square kilometers, which, as the CIA factbook helpfully points out, is somewhat smaller than Montana. When you put 82 million people into an area this size it doesn't matter what kind of community they live in, smog is going to affect them. And as far as living in "smaller, more distributed communities" goes where is this in Western Europe? While countries in Western Europe such as Germany and the Netherlands don't have US style sprawl they make up for it in population density. The Europeans I've seen don't live in smaller, more distributed communities, they live in denser, more distributed communities.

Re:Take note

[botrunner]

Compare the map with the world coal fire distribution: http://www.gi.alaska.edu/~prakash/coalfires/global _distribution.html

Re:Take note

[jsebrech]

I think the real purpose is to change American lifestyles and force them to take inefficient public transit and use less electricity. Either way, Kyoto is dead in the water. The only countries who agree to it are the ones that can use it as a weapon against competitors. Since the US Senate voted 98-0 in favor of scrapping it, this treaty will never be ratified, with or without Bush's support.

Wow, a lot of myths there, let me just cover the major ones.

Myth #1: public transportation is always inefficient.

Take a look at the public transportation systems of most of europe. There's no reason public transportation needs to be expensive, low-comfort, or have lousy geographic availability.

Myth #2: the american lifestyle must be changed to reduce energy use in america.

In fact, america could cut its energy use in half without a measurable impact on consumer lifestyles, through tried and tested energy reduction policies which have been employed in europe for years (and europe is pretty bad itself when it comes to energy use), but because the US energy industry funds american politicians (democrats and republicans) heavily, nothing ever gets done about it.

Myth #3: kyoto can't be realized without US cooperation

All that is needed is russia ratifying it, and putin recently said he will. So within a year kyoto will become active, if putin keeps his word that is.

Myth #4: kyoto is a tool for the rest of the world to "go after" america.

Kyoto is simply a tool to stop greenhouse gas levels from rising further, because they're already at the highest they've been in a million years, and if they rise much further dramatic climate change is inevitable. The cost of not doing anything far outweighs the cost of preventing it. The last time there was this much carbondioxide in the atmosphere, there were no polar ice caps. The sad thing about kyoto is that it was watered down significantly to be palatable to the US, and still america broke its word and didn't ratify it.

Myth #5: the only countries to join kyoto are those that have petty political reasons

Right now, 126 nations have joined kyoto (and not just signed the treaty). This is the vast majority of the planet, if measured in population (but sadly, without the US and russia, not in pollution).

Re:Take note

[demachina]

"God, it must suck to be a democrat."

Dunno. You all to find one an ask 'em. I know its completely lost on Americans but you dont actually have to be either Republican or Democrat. I'm about as independent as they come and don't have any use for either one of them.

Since you are accusing me of being a Democrat for assessing this map as mostly coal pollution, I'm assuming you are saying you are a Republican and are a big fan of coal pollution. If so you should interpret this map as a guide to quality places to live. You want to move to the red areas, they are kind of like the "Red States" on the electoral map.

Re:Take note

[ColaMan]

Breakfast Pants, Thank you for your completely incorrect post.
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

[Wanker]

After a bit of Googling, I found some "teaser" images advertising the purchase of the raw data, including links to SO2 and O3 maps.

http://www.temis.nl.nyud.net:8090/airpollution/ (nyud.net cached copy)

Nitrogen Dioxide:
http://www.temis.nl.nyud.net:8090/airpollution/no2 .html (nyud.net cached copy)

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.

Re:Take note

[Lars T.]

FWIW, it seems that NO2 is primary produced by cars. Moving to the hydrogen vehicles of the future may help stop almost all NO2 production.

Not if they burn their hydrogen.

Re:Take note

[DeputySpade]

Pardon me, Mr. Coward (+1, Insightful), but if "manufacturing is no longer done in this country", what is that giant red blob surrounding the Great Lakes? Likewise, what is all that red doing in or near silicon valley?

/me mutters: "... not done in this country... sheesh..."

Re:Take note

[mikael]

I know Brussels is said to generate a lot of hot air, but I didn't believe it would be that visible from space. Either that or it's the result of Amsterdam's relaxed drug controls on Cannabis.

The main pollution hotspots in Europe seem to be the Liverpool/Birmingham/London transport route, Paris(France), Madrid (Spain), Milan(Italy), Warsaw(Poland), Minsk (Belarus) and Moscow(Russia). Car pollution seems to be the most likely explanation.

Re:Take note

[chasm!killer]

OK, burn coal or gasoline and the nitrogen stays in the air and doesn't chemically combine with anything. If you don't burn it in air....

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_ safety.html,
http://www.hut.fi/Units/AES/projects/renew/fuelcel l/posters/hydrogen.html and http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2003/ShaniChristoph er.shtml.)

Re:Take note

[Wise Dragon]

I could be wrong, but I believe hydrogen powered cars also produce NO2. NO2 is produces when oxygen and nitrogen react at high temperatures. The primary benefit of Hydrogen is that it does not produce CO2 or leave unburned hydrocarbons and sulfuric compounds when burned. I think NO2 can be reduced by the use of catalytic converters.

Re:Take note

[CaptainCarrot]

As much to the point, it coincides with dense population areas where people drive lots of cars. If it was from industry you'd be seeing practically nothing from south NJ; there's no industry to speak of there.

Only in China, where there are very few cars relatively speaking, is the plume likely to be mostly due to heavy industry.

Re:Take note

[ElectricRook]

Please don't interrupt fantasies with facts...

Re:Take note

[stox]

SOx + Water = Acid ( eg. Sulfuric Acid )
NOx + Water = Acid ( eg. Nitric Acid )

Acid rain is causing a great deal of damage in various portions of the world. Acid rain also results in releasing huge amounts of CO2 into the environment by freeing it from carbonates.

I would say that they are worth worying about.

Re:Take note

[Anonymous Coward]

(P.S. I know slashdotters have a penchant for insulting people, but please try to keep your replies civil. I don't know everything, so correct me in a polite manner. Thank you.)

It's really difficult to keep replies to karma whores civil, so please try to reduce your uninformed comments on every article to a minimum. Thank you.

Slashdot

Re:Take note

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually wind and solar power are fairly cheap in some areas. It wouldn't be suitable for powering the grid in most places, and is unreliable, but for the manufacture of hydrogen solar and wind would work fine, and posibly even be cheaper than nuclear. I agree however that wind and solar aren't always an option due to geography, so most of the power grid will still need to be powered off of nuclear.

Re:Take note

[Talez]

I thought cats did a decent job of getting the NOx out of the air.

Or are you talking about how the new emissions regulations are bastards about what comes out of the car in the first 30 seconds?

Re:Take note

[shimmin]

Russia joining Kyoto is a bit of a joke, because its quotas are based on its pollution levels during the Soviet era. It meets its quotas by bringing its fuel economy up to par, and then has enough headspace left over to sell energy to eastern Europe and Germany. Russia is Kyoto's loophole: it allows Europe to meet quotas in part by redistributing production instead of reducing it.

Re:Take note

[drmike0099]

I found more info on it, this from a study done about 4 years ago in California (since I was curious why that map showed essentially nothing over Los Angeles, which has a ton of traffic, improved emissions standards notwithstanding). It didn't actually answer my question, but it's interesting nonetheless (pasted from a PDF). While this talks mostly about traffic, it does mention power plants, which is probably responsible for some of the really wacky ones you see on there (like China's incredible numbers, and the concentration around Lake Michigan, despite having far fewer cars than DC or LA). Just a hunch. The original reference is located here: http://www.oehha.ca.gov/air/pdf/oehhano2.pdf

"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

Re:Take note

[Anonymous Coward]

Putin wants to sell credits for CO2 emissions, doesn't he? Would Russia lower the amount of CO2 being produced, or increase it through a net increase of credits?

Re:Take note

[Anonymous Coward]

To expand on that, acid rain kills fish by lowering the pH in lakes as well as killing off large numbers of trees, in addition to other nasty things.

So cynical, yeah, but overly so.

(trees dying and not being replaced reduces the amount of CO2 absorbed, btw... so reducing acid rain also reduces CO2).

Re:Take note

[angel'o'sphere]

Unfortunatly your post is not insightfull but ignorant, as you seem to be a Kyoty Treaty Busher ... :D

This article is about NO2, the Kyoto Treat is about CO2.

The math and scinece to discover the diverence in meaning, and long term difference is up to you.

CO2 is a green house gas, NO2 not. I'm not interested wether americans kill them selves via O3 created from NO2 ... but I'm interested if americans kill me via CO2 causing a autumn storm causing a spring flood in the northern sea.

angel'o'sphere

Re:Take note

[Anonymous Coward]

The SO2 emissions from the oceans would most likely be from areas with lots of undersea vents.

Re:Take note

[angel'o'sphere]

while you are right about the coal fire in china you are greatly mistaken with the rest of your post.

The US emits in total more than 10 times the CO2 than china does.

Regards,

angel'o'sphere

Re:Take note

[mchappee]

You Said------
However according to wikipedia China emits 2.3 tons per capita of CO2 while the U.S. 20.1 tons per capita (Europe at 8.5 tons per capita.) and isn't this the way to look at emissions?
---------------

This post reminds me of the Daily Show when Samantha Bee said something like "But when the graph is viewed from this angle (bar graph falls over so only the bottom is seen) then the results are much closer". Sorry if that doesn't translate well. The point is, if you choose to defend an angle come Hell or high water, you will be able to find (or create) facts to prop-up your position. Mine is simply "No, per capita is the wrong way to go here. Kyoto is about countries, not about people."

Matthew

Re:Take note

[eean]

The point is the Bush administration just blew off the Kyoto protocol and didn't do anything to try and improve it.

"and that Europe is not doing so hot itself."
Who said they were? Those countries have pledged to reduce greenhouse admissions.

Re:Take note

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess I shouldn't have farted when they took that picture... Now your all gonna die...

Re:Take note

[angel'o'sphere]

LOL,

and burning fuel with air gives you what? CO2 and water and leaves the nitrogen back in the exhaust, right?

So where does the NO2 produced in car combustion engines come from? From nothing?

Probably you rethink your argument a little bit again.

angel'o'sphere

Re:Take note

[Anonymous Coward]

My apologies.

I was confused by the self rightious and bitchy tone of your writing.

Re:Take note

[Anonymous Coward]

Very probably, the wind brings a lot of this "pure american" air on top of canada. We have a lot of acid rain falling on our head, and since a long time. It is a known fact that most of the pollution from north us comes to embrace us all.

In regard to the FTAA, canada should be able to sue the states for imposing it all this pollution. ... or not?

Re:Take note

[bgeer]

The blob over Canada is actually a bit surprising

It's also surprising that you think a blob that's clearly below the great lakes is in Canada. Between this and the hilarious "eastern russia" comment in the story, I have to wonder if you guys were playing tetris on your palm pilot in geography class.

Re:Take note

[Anonymous Coward]

So to say the US is blameless is premature...

Hmmm... do you suppose that's why the original poster never said that the US is blameless?

Also, I strongly disagree with your assertion that sheeps' bladders may be used to predict earthquakes.

Re:Take note

[TykeClone]

My feeling is we in the U.S. could meet the pollution levels if the rest of the nation met California's smog standards.

Not sure if it is the case anymore, but it's my understanding that the equipment required for California emissions controls have "issues" when confronted with cold weather. Would a car equipped for that SmogCheckII work in the upper midwest in February?

Re:Take note

[Medevo]

I think he is talking about that lighter coloured section in the northwest.

That blob, while not red, is still important. It appears to be about where I live (Alberta). We produce a lot of oil for cars (we don't have emissions regulations on vehicles that I am aware of), and consume a lot of coal for electricity. Because the costs for using oil and coal for everything is quite a bit lower here, even the attempts to add wind power are limited at best.

Medevo

Re:Take note

[Anonymous Coward]

BZZT! Try again. The US only produces twice of China's emissions. Keep in mind though, that China is nowhere near the US's technology level. China's emissions are likely to increase substantially. The US's world share of emissions, however, are only 24% of all CO2.

Re:Take note

[TykeClone]

Just think: "Save the environment, have sex TODAY!"

It would also help save social security! When our folks start retiring, we're going to need a hell of a lot more young ones starting in the job market to pay for their retirments!

Re:Take note

[globalar]

GDP calculations, especially with regards to China, are under debate. GDP doesn't measure a lot of important things. Basically, every argument against GDP as a vital metric can be applied to China. Standard of living and environmental degradation especially apply here.

Also if you're calculating in terms of GWP, then CO2 is baseline (actually 1). NO2 contributes, on this scale, 310x more to global warming vs. C02. Brings a different perspective if the scale is appropriate.

I basically agree with your post. To add, it is unclear when China will pursue international relations as a developed country. However, it is likely not to be any time soon. China recieves special WTO status, World Bank favor, and Kyoto perks for their current undeveloped, non-market status. Therefore, China's GDP may well rise while issues like human health suffer.

Re:Take note

[tverbeek]

Between the references to "the blob over Canada" (actually Ohio and environs) and to the one over "the east of Russia" (actually a country known as "China", including the city of Beijing), the geographic knowledge being shown here is a bit disappointing.

Some of the other "hot" spots visible in the larger version of the map correspond to Hong Kong (China), Seoul (Korea), Tokyo (Japan), Bangkok (Thailand), Delhi (India), Qatar (Qatar), Riyadh & Mecca (Saudia Arabia), Jerusalem (Israel), Moscow (Russia), Johannesburg/Pretoria (S.Africa), Venice/Milan/Genoa (Italy), Amsterdam/Brussels/Bonn (Netherland/Belgium/Germany), London (England), the DC-to-NYC region, Montreal & Toronto (Canada), Chicago, Minneapolis/St.Paul, Mexico City (guess), Denver, Santa Fe, Salt Lake, Phoenix, Vegas, and of course LA and San Francisco (all un-specified cities being in the U.S.A. of course).

Re:Take note

[dbIII]

In your car's engine, Nitrogen in the air combines with Oxygen in air to create oxides of nitrogen, commonly called NOx for brevity.

That's probably the main motivation to move to pollution shifters like electric cars or hydrogen - it isn't difficult or paticularly expensive to get rid of all the NOx and SOx in a big power plant that sits still (water does the work), but in a car it is difficult and expensive. Smog is behind the move, not energy efficiency.

The USA had paticularly nasty problems with acid rain mainly due to high sulphur coals, so much so that no administration could ignore it, so scrubbers were put in all over the place decades ago. Hence not a great deal of NOx or SOx.

Re:Take note

[DrMrLordX]

Actually, old Warsaw-pact nations were notoriously bad about local and regional pollution. The storeis about industrial zones in East Germany alone were enough to curl my toenails. It's not only captialists that have polluted, and, honestly, when an authoritarian oligarchy of some sort begins polluting, who will challenge them?

Re:Take note

[iwadasn]

This is NOX only. In the US, the largest contribuitors to NOX are generally industries and coal power plants, which is why the rust belt shows up so readily (so RED-ily, if you'll pardon the pun).

This is exactly why the AGs of several north eastern states have resorted to lawsuits, it turns out that a large fraction of the air pollution in NYC, for instance, comes form factories and power plants in Ohio.

We know this partially because of the great blackout only a few years ago. When all the powerplants and factories were offline for a few days, the air cleared up dramatically, even in New England, despite the fact that the New England power plants (and cars, etc...) were still working. Clearly the primary source of the air pollution was Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, etc..., a fact that the scientists (and lawyers) had claimed all along, but it took a blackout (which shut off all those plants) to conclusively prove it beyond any doubt. During the blackout the levels of NOX, SOX, etc... fell dramatically (like by 90% or so) over large swaths of the country in only a couple days.

Keep in mind that this is NOX measured in the study, not CO2, they are wholly different. The US produces lots of CO2 (benign except for global warming effects), but much less NOX and SOX and such than many other areas. If you don't consider CO2, then the US is downright clean, if you consider only CO2 (as the Europeans try to convince people to do) then the US has a horrible record.

Re:Take note

[nester]

egr also reduces pumping losses

Re:Take note

[ErikZ]

You have X dollars. Do you go after the polutants that you can't see or smell, or the ones you can?

Re:Take note

[Anonymous Coward]

Likewise I'm not sure what accounts for the large concentration of NO2 shown over the north of Italy. It looks like the Alps are generating a lot of pollution. That can't be right...

It's Berlusconi-ooze...

Re:Take note

[Anonymous Coward]

So you think it would be normal for Lichtenstein to pollute as much as the US? One thing is obvious, common sense is not your strong point...

Anyway you can look at the "graph" however you wish, the US is the country which pollute the most.

Re:Take note

[Anonymous Coward]

The large maps show the nitrogen oxide levels roughly correspond with how much is emitted by the countries, which makes sense. NO2 emissions per capita

Re:Take note

[amper]

Some things to think about, courtesy of the CIA World Factbook

US population (2004/07 est.): 293,027,571
China population (2004/07 est.): 1,298,847,624

US population growth (2004 est.): 0.92%
China population growth (2004 est.): 0.57%

US industrial production growth (2003 est.): 0.3%
China industrial production growth (2003 est.): 30.4%

US GDP per-capita (2003 est.): 37,800 USD
China GDP per-capita (2003 est.): 5,000 USD

US GDP real growth rate (2003 est.): 3.1%
China GDP real growth rate (2003 est. official data): 9.1%

US electricity consumption (2001): 3.602 trillion kWh
China electricity consumption (2001): 1.312 trillion kWh

US oil consumption (2001 est.): 19.65 million bbl/day
China oil consumption (2001 est.): 4.57 million bbl/day

US natural gas consumption (2001 est.): 640.9 billion m^3
China natural gas consumption (2001 est.): 27.4 billion m^3

How long do you think it will take China to catch up with the US? How much energy will China be using then? How much pollution will China be creating then?

And, as an aside:

US GDP (2003 est.): 10.99 trillion USD
China GDP (2003 est.): 6.449 trillion USD

US current trade account balance (2003): -541.8 billion USD
China current trade account balance (2003): 31.17 billion USD

How long will it take the US to go totally bankrupt?

Re:Take note

[Spangston]

In the Montreal Gazette the other week when Putin declared he was going to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, there was a story about major pollution producing nations, and it pointed out that while we don't pollute much (quantity of it), Canadians, as a nation, use more resources per capita than most nations in the planet. Kinda makes me feel ashamed; I thought we were doing pretty well with our general pollution consciousness and recycling programs (not as well as Germany, but then again, who DOES do as well as the Germans?!).

We currently recycle about 14% of our waste, as opposed to Germany's (I think) 68%. Gotta love Germans!

Re:Take note

[Zinoc]

Singapore has fantastic and efficient public transport system. They just bothered to spend money on a good infrastructure. But I will admit it does help that they are a small (but rich) island .

Re:Take note

[titusjan]

Likewise I'm not sure what accounts for the large concentration of NO2 shown over the north of Italy. It looks like the Alps are generating a lot of pollution. That can't be right...

That is not the Alps but the Po-delta, the main industrial aera of Italy. Italy has an economy comparable in size to England or France so it is not so surprising.

Re:Take note

[kisak]

For all the whining and complaining about how the US should have joined the Kyoto accord, it's very easy to see that China is the #1 offender, and that Europe is not doing so hot itself.

No, Europe isn't doing so hot. That is why they signed up for the Kyoto accord.

So, how hard do you think the Chinese would laugh if the Bush administration tried to convince China about the need to reduce their pollution? This after Bush has worked hard ("it is hard work") for four years to lower environmental standards in the US (and the world in the process). Now consider again why working together internationally is important for everyone.

Re:Take note

[Mugros]

"Some of Chinese coal fires have been dated to the Pleistocene Era." Do all the cars in the US exist so long?

Re:Take note

[Jace of Fuse!]

Let's also not forget that actually MAKING a solar cell uses toxic chemicals, and the process of making and properly disposing of (or recycling an old and no longer useful) a solar panel consumes more energy than you ever got out of the solar panel during it's life time. They don't last forever, you know.

This isn't to same some breakthrough won't clean up the production process. Nor does it mean we won't come upon some type of solar cell that is more efficient and more environment friendly (both to produce and to dispose of). We aren't there yet, otherwise Solar would be emmensely more popular than it currently is.

Re:Take note

[Mugros]

http://www.learn-line.nrw.de/angebote/agenda21/arc hiv/03/daten/d8535CO2Top10.htm
http://www.learn-line.nrw.de/angebote/agenda21/arc hiv/03/daten/CO2abskopf.htm

The USA produces twice as much CO2 as the average european country. And the european countries are reducing the output of the gases mentioned in the kyoto accord. The USA increases its output. Kanada also a major polluter. China is producing 1/6 of the CO2 that the USA is producing per capita. China 3, USA 19 (tons/year)

Re:Take note

[Anonymous Coward]

The method described seems very uncertain, and
i could not find any independent verification
of the results. So this plot seems too
experimental to be taken into consideration for
any serious decision-making or discussion.
The plot is "interesting" at best...
Frank T.

Re:Take note

[Barryke]

i concur with this post.

You're invited to read it. Go now.

Kyoto is neccesary. This map is not linked to kyoto.

Re:Take note

[argStyopa]

The 'real reason' Kyoto wasn't signed by the US is because it was blatantly a yoke on successful countries, while it completely exempted roughly 2 billion people (China and India particularly). Let me see...that sounds suspiciously like Churchill's definition of socialism: the equal distribution of misery.
and the US is rather reactionary when confronted by blatantly socialist policies ESPECIALLY when they are presented like a 'sign it or else' from the world community.
I think your idea of emissions controls per capita makes superficial sense, but again, Kyoto didn't suggest this. Kyoto had NO limits for China or India - to speak of it from an equitability point of view, these countries would immediatly increase in value as destinations for the fleeing heavy industries of the developed world. Is that fair to make the Chinese and Indian peoples such targets?

A more reasonable distribution of emissions limits would be by productivity. Having giant masses of unemployed peasants shouldn't be a way for any state to 'game the system' and inflate its emissions limits, should it?

US GDP = roughly $11 trillion
China's GDP (if you can believe the figures) = roughly $1 trillion
So the US should by this standard have an emissions limit 11 times China's.

If Kyoto were phrased that way, you'd find a lot more acceptance of it in the US, I'm guessing.

Re:Take note

[Anonymous Coward]

THANK YOU!
this should actually be in the story

Re:Take note

[sm1979]

I have heard this argument about the US and China a couple of times, it doesn't get more true by repeating it. The US is (still by far) the main producer of CO2 at least producing 150 % as much as China which is number two.

The US is producing 25 % of all worldwide CO2 with only 4% of the population while China's contribution is exactly in parallel with their percentage of world population.

Of course, this doesn't necessarily apply equally to NOx pollution. If I remember correctly, NOx gases are filtered by modern cars' catalysators which are obligatory in Europe for quite some years already causing a significant drop in Ozone levels (on the ground of course) and therefore a drop in smog.

I remember regular smog warnings when I was younger but they don't exist anymore, ozone ground levels are exceeded occasionally during summer times.

So, to sum it up, NOx levels might be more affected by technological progress and money than CO2 levels.

Re:Take note

[spuzzzzzzz]

oopsies: 's/Netherlands/Denmark/'

Re:Take note

[dajak]

Take note everyone, the biggest red blob is over China (insert communist jokes here). For all the whining and complaining about how the US should have joined the Kyoto accord, it's very easy to see that China is the #1 offender, and that Europe is not doing so hot itself.

The custom is obviously to rank offenders per capita. The EU and China have significantly more inhabitants than the US, and much higher population densities.

US carbon emmissions and energy consumption per capita are well over the EU level. Westerners have no moral right to tell the Chinese, who use just a fraction of what westerners use, that they are polluting the environment excessively. Chinese pollution will rise as its economy grows, even if they switch to cleaner production methods. The US is by far the #1 offender, and could easily - and more cheaply than its competitors - reduce its emissions.

If you insist on ranking terrirories on absolute emmissions I suggest that you stop inventing your own territorial units and compare sovereign countries. I can assure you that no European country comes even close to US levels.

I do have a thought on why North America sees less pollution than Europe, however. Since the North America has a massive amount of farmland and forest land, a good deal of the pollution is sapped up by these massive carbon sinks.

North America has a massive amount of farmland and forest because it has a low population density, and it has less pollution in absolute terms mostly because there are less polluters around.

If I extrapolate the population density of my country (the center of the red blob in the northwest of Europe) to the US, the US would have 3.8 billion inhabitants and US citizens would have to start being much more careful with pollution and the use of land.

Re:Take note

[Shadowlore]

It seems to me that you would want China to reduce its emmissions too. However according to wikipedia China emits 2.3 tons per capita of CO2 while the U.S. 20.1 tons per capita (Europe at 8.5 tons per capita.) and isn't this the way to look at emissions?

Ordinarily, i'd agree. bu tint his case, per-capita means nohting. The environmental effects are per-unit of pollution. it doesn't matter if it's 5 people putting out 100 tons total or 50 people putting out 100 tons total. What matters is the total.

This is a case where the effect is what needs to be measured, not the per-capita output. If you wanted to measure per-capita you must take into account the effects of international trade. Consider the possibility that country A produces 10T/cap versus country B at 5T/Cap. But it so happens that Country B enjoys the fact that country A actually manufactures the goods used in B, and the manufacturing process produces a few T/Cap.

Thus, IF one wants to measure, it has to be aggregate, not per-capita. Further, sinks must be taken into account as well. If country A produces 1000 T/year versus B producing 500T/year, but A has the vegetation and sinks that soak up or consume 750T/year, whereas B only sinks/consumes 100T/year, A is the least polluting.

Yet another reason singlenumberitis is such a bad affliction. ;)

Re:Take note

[TyrranzzX]

#1: Europe is different than the US: most people in the US have to commute miles and miles to get to work, in europe it's different. Imagine commuting 100 miles into a city or industrialized area and then back again, every day. Additionally, europe is smaller than the US, and if you look at the european population density and compair it to the US, the US was planned out so that we'd have mass feedlot suburbs and communtes to work. Yes, public transportation can work, but we're talking on a larger scale than europe. #2: Look, the american lifestyle, the european lifestyle, the japanese lifestyle, the canadian lifestyle, all of these wasteful, toxic lifestyles need to be done away with in favor of ones that are sustainable. You can justify it any way you want because you've grown up with all these nice things, but I'v come to the realization that most people who buy into a good life are idiots and moreso, they're keeping themselves from developing as human beings. We can only throw away so much before the bell curve principle begins to kick in and we've got to go back into the dumps and begin digging stuff out. #3: No, it really can't. So long as america provides an incentive to it's, and other, companies to bribe governments and move to other countries with less stringint standards and pollute, it won't work. #4: It only seems that way because america pollutes a bunch, and if it brought itself into line with other countries, it'd lose profits. We've been under the rule of neocons for quite some time here (far too long for my taste) and their political policy is, essentially, that we're in a position to take over the world, and therefore, we shoudl enslave the rest of the worlds populace to ensure we can live the most wasteful, fake lifestyle imaginable. Therefore, they hate the kyoto protocol, becuase it doesn't go along with those plans. #5: Tell me one thing that's come out of the UN that has been good for people?

Re:Take note

[Anonymous Coward]

an even bigger one can be downloaded from here

Re:Take note

[mark2003]

Gnnnaaargh!!!!

I can feel myself on the verge of going postal...

Why oh why is the future of the world's environments going to be decided by idiots like you? If you could keep the resulting problems from global warming within your own borders I wouldn't care what you did and neither would anyone else. But you can't...

Why should my country/continent/world suffer because you feel it is your God given right to drive a 3 tonne SUV that gets 8 miles to the gallon? What is wrong with trying to be more energy efficient, both in industry and personally?

It says something outrageous when your government denies the existence of global warming but yet comissions the Pentagon to investigate the security and military implications. Says to me that you don't care about stopping it because it might have a negative impact on your standard of life instead you want to look at using the military to maintain your standard of life at the expense of others.

Didn't want to rise to the bait but couldn't help it...

Re:Take note

[mark2003]

Nice response - "many of us are attached to geography as we know it today".

Please repeat that glib statement to those who will lose their homes, their livlehoods and very likely their lives. Do you think farmers scraping a living in the low lying areas of Bangladesh would appreciate your sanctimonious b*llsh*t when their means of feeding their families disapears under sea level? Are you unattached enough to your own house/land to let these people have it instead?

Re:Take note

[Anonymous Coward]

Pollution gets carried to other parts of the world in the air.

Re:Take note

[AKAImBatman]

The shoreline will disappear at the rate of about an inch every five years. Run for the hills.

OR, maybe the problem will be so slow and obvious that allows us time to fix it. We could put up retainer walls like the Dutch, or we might rebuild the shotelines in that time and not notice. We are talking about a few hundred years here.

As for hurricanes and such, it's again an issue that we don't truly know if the CO2 surplus is actually causing the problem. Especially when you consider that a single volcano erruption has more environmental impact than the entire modernized world combined. As a result, there's some question over whether we could stop things from heating up or not.

Even if we are causing the hurricane problems, it just comes back to my original statement. We're very good at killing ourselves, and that's why it makes sense to reduce pollution. Nature will do fine with or without us. No need to get all offended by such a statement.

Re:Take note

[Anonymous Coward]

The section over Canada is in Alberta pretty much where the OIL wells are. Thats my guess for the Canadian supply of the NO2.

Re:Take note

[beakburke]

Agreed, but the Montreal Protocol was economically insignificant compared to what we would have to do to even reduce the rate of emmissions growth in CO2, let alone reduce it.

Re:Take note

[mark2003]

Maybe where you live the shoreline will disapear at the rate of an inch per 5 years. However people in the Maldives are a bit upset that their entire nation is expected to be under water in less than a century. They can't afford to build walls to stop this and why should they pay for the impact of someone else's selfish energy usage? Or are you suggesting that they should all leave their homes behind?

With respect as to whether we are responsible - that is still only an issue in the US press and US politics. A vast majority of scientists support this hypothesis and a vast majority of people believe it worldwide.

Again though I think you are making some rather glib statements - it's easy to make these comments when someone else will reap what you sow...

Re:Take note

[WhytTiger]

Actually, I just got back from China, and I can attest that their air quality is unbelievably bad. The air pollution is almost as thick as fog, and you can seriously taste it. I understand that in china it's largely due to coal being their main source of energy, and I was told that there are plans to go mostly nuclear in the next decade... but now that I've seen it, I think they will have to do a lot more than just that.

Re:Take note

[Atzanteol]

Ahhh, maybe. I thought he was looking at the red-bit on the border...

Re:Take note

[pete-classic]

That link gives me a 404.

Anyway, that phenomenon isn't unique to China. We have several going here in the US. Most famously the Centralia, PA fire.

I don't really know anything about this in terms of pollution as compared to the fire you cite, or number of cars, etc.

-Peter

Re:Take note

[BlurredOne]

The blob over Canada actually makes sense. The blob is located over Alberta, the countries #1 oil and gas producing province, and a major supplier of US oil.

Kind of interesting that it is such a small blob for the amount of refining, etc done.

Re:Take note

[MtViewGuy]

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.

The primary reason why oxides of nitrogen and sulfur dioxide emissions are heavily regulated is that these pollutants have far more serious effects on lower altitude air quality than other pollutants. That's why you used to have extremely serious smog problems in the Los Angeles area where the oxides of nitrogen and sulfur dioxide would literally turn the sky brown for weeks on end, and why many older European buildings suffered serious damage from the effects of these gases.

Anyway, the phaseout of high-sulfur diesel fuel (which will be complete by September 2006) will allow diesel engines to be sold in all 50 US states again, because this will allow for the wide availability of next-generation diesel engines with extremely precise fuel delivery (thanks to common-rail fuel delivery and direct fuel injection into combustion chamber) and improved exhaust emission controls (namely a new catalytic converter that not only drastically reduces normal exhaust pollutants of oxides of nitrogen, sulfur dioxide and unburned hydrocarbons, but also "burns off" diesel particulates). Switching to these new cleaner diesel engines also has another advantage: you dramatically reduce carbon dioxide output because diesel engines are 35-45% more fuel efficient than gasoline engines of the same power output. Finally, diesel engines are easily adaptable to non-petroleum based biodiesel fuel (after all, Rudolf Diesel's first prototype engine ran off peanut oil!); this means we could find a source of biomass (e.g., certain types of algae) that when produced on a very large scale could power these diesel engines pretty much forever! :-)

Re:Take note

[amorsen]

Vegetation doesn't sink CO2. It will go back into the atmosphere when the vegetation dies. Also, I frequently see the argument that the US produces so much stuff which is exported to the whole world, benefitting everyone but causing pollution in the US. Well, if the net exports are so huge, where does the trade deficit come from?

Re:Take note

[Shotgun]

WOW! So that's all it takes. Just reduce the sulfur content. It's amazing that it could be so easy. I was thinking that we could all just switch out to hydrogen power blimps and bicycles.

Ricdude, removing the sulfur is the HARD job at the refinery. Middle East oil is so highly prized because it is a low sulfur source. Many of the new oil finds are actually old oil finds that were passed over because they had a high sulfur content. A major portion of the oil company research dollars is invested in finding a way to economically ditch the sulfur. The sulfur doesn't just cause pollution, it also DESTROYS THE REFINERY EQUIPMENT!! For instance, the platinum catalyst used in the cracking process are quickly destroyed with very small amounts of sulfur.

The car companies have a huge vested interest in less sulfur in the fuel. Engines are designed defensively against sulfur. The whole point of changing your oil every 3000 to 6000 miles is that it uses up its ability to neutralize acids produce by ....(get ready. here it comes)...SULFUR!! Regardless of what you see in comercials for synthetic oils, thermal breakdown of oils in anything less than endurance racing conditions is a non issue. Most vehicles can't stress the oil enough physically without blowing a gasket.

The whole history of the IC engine is as much a study of improving fuel as it is a study of metallurgy. The words "only requires" in this instance is extremely naive, misleading and ignores over 100 years of study to do just that. Low sulfur fuels are only being made available now because it is being legislated, but that doesn't mean that it is easy. Furthermore, all the refineries have to install new expensive equipment and use expensive processes together. One company doing that alone would quickly go out of business, as their product would have to be priced much higher than the competition. (Yes, I think regulation has actually worked in this particular instance.)

Re:Take note

[Shotgun]

>Myth #1: public transportation is always >inefficient.

>Take a look at the public transportation systems >of most of europe. There's no reason public >transportation needs to be expensive, >low-comfort, or have lousy geographic >availability.

While you're doing all that looking, try to taking a look at population densities. A bus makes sense in New York or Washington, DC. They are marginal in Raleigh, NC, as nearly all of the busses you see running are mostly empty. Try extending the routes out to Apex, NC and you'd have a big bus driving around empty most of the time. Start up mass transit in Dunn, NC, and it'd be cheaper to just have people call the bus to come to their house when they needed to go somewhere.

The first thing you need for MASS transit, is a MASS of people. Very few places have that in North America (and those that do have a bus system, believe it or not). So quit with the "they do it like this in Europe" bullshit. This ain't Europe.

Re:Take note

[Ricdude]

Random thoughts.

1) Europe seems to have no problem selling ULSD. Neither does the state of California. If it increases the price of petroluem based fuels, in order to preserve life on this planet as we know it, so be it.

2) I change my oil at the recommended interval of my manufacturer, 10,000 miles. Diesel (Cx rated) engine oils have additives to help deal with the high sulfur content of today's fuel supply.

3) Biodiesel has negligible amounts of sulfur in it. Ethanol probably also has negligible amounts of sulfur in it, but I'm not that up on the details of Ethanol as a fuel. So far, about 1/3 of the fuel I've put in my VW TDI Beetle has been biodiesel. (Yes biodiesel increases NOx emissions over petrodiesel, but with emissions systems designed for ULSD, that pretty much goes away.

4) It's going to happen by 2006, unless unnamed political factions overturn the ULSD mandate as handily as they did the EPAct.

My point is that diesel technology in this country is at least 5-10 years behind that in Europe, largely due to the lack of low sulfur fuel. Moving to a low sulfur fuel supply means we can clean up the diesel emissions to the LEV or ULEV (maybe even SULEV) levels. If that's because German metalworking is superior to that in the US, then we should learn something...

Re:Take note

[aminorex]

The population of the maldives will relocate, or they will all die. End of story.

Re:Take note

[Mac Degger]

Which is exactly the point I'm trying to make...any sane person would not use that as the deciding factor, but would instead go after the most harmfull, instead of the ones which 'smell bad'.

Re:Take note

[mentaldrano]

Thanks for the detailed analysis. It really NOx my SOx off.

Re:Take note

[Christopher Thomas]

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.

"Hydrogen" usually refers to fuel cells, which combine hydrogen and oxygen in a low-temperature electrochemical reaction rather than a high-temperature combustion reaction.

Hydrogen fuel cell cars have plenty of problems, but NOx emissions isn't one of them.

Re:Take note

[mark2003]

You callous f*cker!

What would you think if I said "I need more power for my fantastic lifestyle so I'm going to flood your village to create a hydroelectric plant. You're not going to get any benefit from this - it's just so I can have more powerful air-con, better TV, bigger fridge etc. You can either move, with no compensation or assistance, or you can die."

Wouldn't that be terrorism? But hey who cares - it's not you that suffers...

Re:Take note

[Bush Pig]

I just read an interesting news item in a GIS trade comic I subscribe to (www.positionmag.com.au). Apparently NASA is closing its Earth Observation section to focus on President Bush's priorities, including a amnned mission to Mars. To quote the article: "The move reduces the ability of the agency to play a role in the climate change debate".

I finally understand why Bush is suddenly taking an interest in space exploration. Damn, he's got some smart (but evil) people working for him.

Re:Take note

[Anonymous Coward]

You have no friggin idea what you are talking about.

Most of the steel industry in those areas is dead. Gone. Has been for years. The plants are shut down, if not sold to foreign companies who keep them shut down.

The villification of the steel industry that went and has gone on is utterly stupid. Part increased regulations, esp. environmental, and part cheap foreign labor. Basically, the result was a loss of huge numbers of domestic jobs. The work went overseas, where plants do not have to meet air quality standards, including Kyoto, meaning the net result is more pollution.

The blob you are referencing has more to do with the energy plants, mainly coal burning power plants.

Yeah, they burn much. Thanks to the non-compromising environmental asses who consistently run on negative "no" nuclear energy anything, no nuclear plants were built, no adequate funding for research into nuclear disposal was given, no adequate funding of safe nuclear plant research occurred too, and no adequate funding for building of safe transport containers.

Instead of improved safety regulations and plant designs, including mandated plant upgrades, we burn coal. A lot of it. Residences in the area? Mainly oil. More akin to diesel fuel.

btw, the energy companies in this country aren't going to pick up and leave. Unlike the steel industry, their customers are here, unless they start shipping electricity across the Pacific using superconducting cables (iow, not technically feasible). So you can regulate the industry, and do so with an iron fist. Problem is, the Green Party and the like are clueless and extreme, which makes them ineffective to combat the financial ties the energy industry has with government.

And no, costs will not go up. Contrary to popular belief, plants are built based on need; if they can make money, they'll build it. Infrastructure improvement do cost, but they receive such a tax break, it's a wash. The main cost for most energy companies, besides the energy source, are the workers--pensions, retirement, health. The point being, electricity prices are where they are mainly due to infrastructure and logistical costs, not meeting federal regulations or the cost of new plants.

I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[jmorris42]

The submitter is suprised, but I'm not. Wealthy nations can AFFORD the luxury of enviromentalism, unlike poor ones like the former Soviet block and the third world. The solution is obvious, encourage more nations to become wealthy by helping them become free.

No serious student of current events can escape the reality that political freedom and economic prosperity are linked. The old soviet empire attempted to foster economic openness to gain it's productivity benefits while keeping political freedom in the hands of the Party. They failed. China is making the same attempt and the signs are they are also going to fail. Freedom is the natural state of affairs and you can't supress it in one sphere while keeping it in the others.

Rising standards of living solve most of the pressing problems facing the world today. Birth rates are lowest in the free/wealthy nations and highest in the poor/oppressed ones. Wealthy/Free nations don't tend to make war on each other. Wealthy nations don't tend to produce terrorists either.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[aeroegnr]

Wow seems like some people don't like your opinion. (being modded straight down to hell) I definitely agree with what you just said.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[Capitalist1]

Actually, the wealthy nations pretty much *are* responsible for modern terrorism, but only because our universities have become such cesspools of the comfortably reality-deficient.

The basic pattern is: 1) guy from some backwards country wants an education 2) guy goes to a Western university, where he find that the Marxist and Multiculturalist professors teach him that the West is evil and everything the savages back home tell him is superior to the West 3) guy believes them, goes home, and becomes the most savage of the savages, because he believed what the Western professors taught him.

Terrorists don't usually come from the poorer strata. They come from the people who are affluent enough to find their way into our intellectual death camps.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[aeroegnr]

Yeah, and afghan females just voted for the first time--ever--thanks to U.S. involvement.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[cephyn]

Yeah but what percentage of all afghans couldn't vote because the US can't control the guerilla insurgencies and warlord violence in certain areas of the country?

Doing something poorly or half-assed isn't always better. I'm sure that most afghans would prefer to be alive than the ability to vote. Taking the time to do something right is important, especially when lives are on the line.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[bigtallmofo]

I believe in your first statement, that wealthy nations can afford the luxury of environmentalism and that goes a long way in curbing pollution from industrial sources. However, I think that as a developing nation becomes wealthy and enacts pollution controls on industry, any environmentalism is offset by sheer numbers of individuals. This is a very complicated subject, but to take just one example... Currently, 1 in 3,000 Chinese people owns a car (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/06/0 628_040628_chinacars.html). This small number has many reasons not the least of which is that they just can't afford them. As average wealth increase, so too will the number of cars on the road. As stated, this is a very complicated subject with lots of variables, but I would expect that as China becomes wealthier that they would definitely not see any decreases in the amount of pollution they emit.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[l0ungeb0y]

"The solution is obvious, encourage more nations to become wealthy by helping them become free."

So, BushCo should just keep trucking the troops into every non-democratic country to enforce democracy at gunpoint? I mean, Iraq and Afghanistan are such "Cataclysmic Successes" [Bush, 2004] and we all know that our humanitarian efforts are applauded by the international community.

I'm sure most non-G8 countries are lining up to be the next ,a href="http://home.iprimus.com.au/korob/fdtcards/Ce ntralAmerica.html">El Salvador, Columbia, Honduras, Nicauragua et al. I mean America is only acting in everyones best interest when they assisinate DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED LEADERS who happen to be communist or socialist and surplant them with their own corporate owned "Democratic" puppet.

I'm sorry to sound trite, but your notion of a "simple solution" is so utterly niave and devoid of a clue that if you were in front of me at this moment, I'd be laughing hysterically while back handing you. Your statement is so stupid as to be both laughable and violently aggravating.

Someday you might decide to turn off Fox, pick up a book on US Foriegn policy in developing countries and realize that most countries hate us. Not for our freedom or SUV driving big Mac eating way of life, but for our policy of expolitation, assasination, political subversion and hypocritical support of biological warfare and terrorism where and when it serves out needs.

Actually, my simple plan would be for the US to get the fuck out of everyones face and go back to it's pre-WWI stance of isolationism and work on our domestic policy and our own problems instead of creating new ones for everyone else.
Hahaha -- Like that will ever happen.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[pclminion]

The solution is obvious, encourage more nations to become wealthy by helping them become free.

Unfortunately, the entire world cannot be free, because it simply isn't big enough. Imagine cramming 100 people in a 12' by 10' cell and telling them "Now, be free and happy!" What's going to happen?

Inevitably, some of the people who are stronger, more intelligent, or more persuasive than the others will end up shoving the "undesirables" into a cage in the corner of the room in order to give themselves "breathing space."

With 6 billion people on this planet, global freedom is a luxury we cannot afford.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[Aglassis]

You said: "Rising standards of living solve most of the pressing problems facing the world today. Birth rates are lowest in the free/wealthy nations and highest in the poor/oppressed ones. Wealthy/Free nations don't tend to make war on each other. Wealthy nations don't tend to produce terrorists either."

Nothing new sadly enough. George C. Marshall said in his 1953 Nobel Peace Prize lecture:

The third area I would like to discuss has to do with the problem of the millions who live under subnormal conditions and who have now come to a realization that they may aspire to a fair share of the God-given rights of human beings. Their aspirations present a challenge to the more favored nations to lend assistance in bettering the lot of the poorer. This is a special problem in the present crisis, but it is of basic importance to any successful effort toward an enduring peace. The question is not merely one of self-interest arising from the fact that these people present a situation which is a seed bed for either one or the other of two greatly differing ways of life. Ours is democracy, according to our interpretation of the meaning of that word. If we act with wisdom and magnanimity, we can guide these yearnings of the poor to a richer and better life through democracy.

Of course Marshall wasn't the first to say this (general idea), and was not the last either. If you look through the lectures in the Nobel archives, you will see this point stated over again many times. Its probably the most overlooked item by most people for achieving world peace because it is also one of the most difficult to accomplish.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about? There were no attacks against voters during that election. 100,000 security forces present warded off the Taliban. All they did was talk.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[Anonymous Coward]

The solution is obvious, encourage more nations to become wealthy by helping them become free. Big thanks from Russia for "helping us to become free", for the support of Yeltsin regime, for the devastated economy, poverty, for nations of the former Soviet Union fighting against each other. I surely believe now that U.S. means only good for us and wants us to be wealthy and strong. I think our brothers in the former Yugoslavia, once a paradise of the "communist camp", will say you many thanks as well. One day, we all will.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it may be more accurate to state that wealthy countries can afford the luxury of outsourcing the pollution to poor countries.

China is becoming the manufacturing center for the United States, so we can export all the pollution problems to their country. We just need to keep hoping that everyone keeps lending us trillions of dollars to prop up the trade deficit.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[Anonymous Coward]

It must suck to be a democrat.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[bergeron76]

Evolution.

Each of these respective 'regions' are adapting. It's Darwinism (mother nature, whatever) at it's finest.

Mutations are probably more likely to occur in the impoverished regions. It's just a hunch, but I bet I'm right.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[roman_mir]

I agree that enviromentalism is a luxury.

I don't agree that you can force a political freedom onto a nation. I am sorry to inform you - the former soviet union is not a free democratic country any more once again. It was to be expected, I never believed that those people can achieve democracy, they are not proactive (gees, this word is haunting me) they are in fact very very inert. The new generation there is not inert but it is so cynical and criminal and they don't give a flying f.ck about democracy to be honest with you. They only care about the money nowadays.

BTW. China and Russia don't compare. In Russia noone was allowed their own business, everything was planned by the state. In China they are trying to have an economical democracy under a communist political system. Maybe it will work better for them, who knows. Can't be certain. It could be better than even what democratic countries have today, or it could be much worse. Time will tell. About pollution: you are right, they will not care about this stuff for a long long time.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[jmorris42]

> So, BushCo should just keep trucking the troops into every
> non-democratic country to enforce democracy at gunpoint?

That wouldn't be very practical for obvious reasons of logistics, but in theory it would actually work. But it would be a very sub-optimal solution.

A much less costly course of action would be to finish the job in Afganistan and Iraq, then once they are far enough along to be free and prosperous enough to serve as role models, give the rest of the Middle East a wee bit of a nudge towards instability and let the dominos fall into place.

The rest of the world can most be helped by ceasing to cause harm by participating in marxist instituitions like the World Bank, the IMF and most of the UN agencies. Instead push policies to strengthen local private commerce and industry instead of making the despots and transnational corporations ruling most of the third world stronger.

Finally, the US and the Free World should become better at evangelism, sending not only the message of Freedom but the gritty details of HOW to establish a free society and the rule of law. Think Voice of America with a vengence.

Oh, and if it appears I support a violent solution in the Middle East and not elsewhere; there is no inconsistancy. They have decided the world isn't big enough for Islam and Western Civilization. I agree with them and wish them a speedy exit.

Think about it, a world free, prosperous and at peace. Ready at last to leave the cradle and reach for the stars. We could have it in our lifetime if we only believed in ourselves enough to think our values worthy enough to encourage others to emulate them.

Or more bluntly; as a practical matter all we have to do is totally defeat the last vestiges of Communism, who now only live in Red China, Cuba, Universities the world over and the top levels of the Democratic Party.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[TheSync]

No serious student of current events can escape the reality that political freedom and economic prosperity are linked.

Actually there is a lot of evidence that democracy can reduce economic growth in developing countries. You can look at India, which was mired in democratic socialism for years until they decided to end the "permit Raj", economically reform, and start significant economic growth.

China is growing very quickly, because the dictatorship demands that institutions (courts and such) have pro-growth policies. Private property is better protected in "communist" China today that in democratic Russia.

We can look at countries such as South Korea that developed well under dictatorships.

Even Iraq did pretty well, until Saddam got into war with Iran. Which shows that dictators can help development, as long as they don't turn on it.

On the other hand, developing nations do seem to reach an economic level where dictatorship is incompatible with further growth. South Korea hit that point and democratized, and China will reach that point soon as well.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[jmorris42]

> Unfortunately, the entire world cannot be free,

Yes they can. And if the average person had even 25% of the average US income the next generation wouldn't be much larger than the current 6b and the one after would be smaller.

> With 6 billion people on this planet, global freedom is a luxury we
> cannot afford.

Unless you are posting from a third world country at an Internet Cafe you are one selfish bastard. And have a mindset that scares the hell out of me. Freedom is the birthright of EVERY SENTIENT BEING, not just Americans.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[Anonymous Coward]

"Unless you are posting from a third world country at an Internet Cafe you are one selfish bastard. And have a mindset that scares the hell out of me. Freedom is the birthright of EVERY SENTIENT BEING, not just Americans."

I thank God for that fact every day. If my cow, ol' Bessie had the right to freedom, I think I'd be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[replicant108]

Maybe it may be more accurate to state that wealthy countries can afford the luxury of outsourcing the pollution to poor countries.

Please mod parent up.

It is also worth pointing out that it is physically impossible for every country to be as wealthy as the USA - and yet people act as if this was an actual goal of global capitalism.

If we seriously want to address this problem we will have to face up to the basic facts, including the difficult ones.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[johnnyb]

This seems much more intelligent and noble than what the current nobel peace prize winner seems to think (she thinks that AIDS is a bioterrorism virus developed by mysterious westerners in order to control black people).

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[cephyn]

Holy shit are you kidding me? Wow.

Pay attention.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[Anonymous Coward]

"Even Iraq did pretty well, until Saddam got into war with Iran. Which shows that dictators can help development, as long as they don't turn on it."

Or the Shah of Iran. Or Napoleon III of France. Or even Hitler if you don't count the genocidal attrocities and WWII.

It was pointed out well in my college days that in terms of the arts, they tend to be funded better under monarchs than under republics. I'm sure the argument could also be applied to the sciences as well. Just look how the Clinton Administration axed the George H.W. Bush proto-Project Prometheus program only to have the George W. Bush Administration restart it 8 + years later. I fear that if Kerry becomes President, it'll be axed again and the monies funneled into some other lame bureaucratic social do-gooder program instead of propelling mankind to a second planet to conquer and ruin its environment... :)

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[StateOfTheUnion]

Rising standards of living solve most of the pressing problems facing the world today.

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.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[Anonymous Coward]

"Yeah, and afghan females just voted for the first time--ever--thanks to U.S. involvement."

Somehow I don't consider that a positive achievement. Women voted Bill Clinton into office, and could send Kerry to the White House this time 'round. And have you seen how they drive??? :)

Maybe there are common sense truths to Islam after all... ;)

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[pclminion]

Unless you are posting from a third world country at an Internet Cafe you are one selfish bastard. And have a mindset that scares the hell out of me. Freedom is the birthright of EVERY SENTIENT BEING, not just Americans.

Way to completely misunderstand the argument.

If we want to save the earth, we must give up our "freedom" to pollute as we wish, drive whatever car we wish, have as many children as we wish, etc.

It's simple. If you want everybody on earth to be "free," whatever you might mean by that, you're going to have to drastically reduce the population from its current level. We simply can't have 6 billion people walking around, doing whatever the fuck they want to, using whatever resources they want to.

Believing that I'm some kind of monster or wacko just because I pointed out the obvious, is simply self deception which enables you to ignore the actual argument.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[jmorris42]

> I don't agree that you can force a political freedom onto a nation.

There is compelling evidence to the contrary. Germany and Japan were both totalitarian regimes that were taught from scratch how to be a representive republics and over fifty years later are still generally free countries. Yes Japan alightly reverted to form with a bit of an authoritarian nature and Germany slid back towards Socialism (along with most of Europe and to a lesser degree the US) but are hanging in there pretty good. If we can tell the Democrats to STFU long enough to build up Iraq and Afganistan I am confident we can bring them into a state where they are a flavor of free with perhaps a slight tang of theocracy remaining.

> the former soviet union is not a free democratic country any more
> once again.

Not suprising. Those peoples never had any cultural history of self governing instituitions to revert to and since they fell from inside instead of losing a war, the West never had a chance to rebuild them. But I do think they still have a chance to come into the light, and a better one if we in the West would step up and help them out.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[jmorris42]

> Actually there is a lot of evidence that democracy can reduce economic growth ...

> ...mired in democratic socialism

And what the heck does "democratic socialism" have to do with Freedom?

As for your mention of property rights in Russia today, well they aren't yet doing a very good job in the Freedom dept now are they? You need the rule of law as a precondition for liberty and they ain't got it. But they are trying and with a little help could still pull it together.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[Anonymous Coward]

> So, BushCo should just keep trucking the troops into every
> non-democratic country to enforce democracy at gunpoint?

That wouldn't be very practical for obvious reasons of logistics, but in theory it would actually work. But it would be a very sub-optimal solution.

This presumes that the Bush policy actually generates democratic countries. History doesn't seem to demonstrate this. Vietnam and central america aren't really any more democratic than the were before as the result american military intervention.

Neither is Irak. At the rate things are going, Irak will remain in a the state of civil war as long as foreign troups are there since that's how resitance works. But after troops have left, what seems to likely occur is another fundamentalist dictatorship just like the one in Iran or other middle east countries. So far western style democracy isn't in the cards.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[roman_mir]

Germany and Japan had to be completely destroyed for this effect that you are describing. I mean they were anihilated. Japan was bombed by the USA with so many bombs prior to the Hiroshima/Nagasaki that about 80 Japaneese cities were 60-90 percent destroyed, burned down. Germany and Japan were not allowed to have a millitary of their own for the longest time. Are you telling me that USA is ready to start a war on Russia any time soon to help them to 'see the light of democracy' at the end of the tunnel of a nuclear war?

I wonder.

What about Iraq, you think Iraqi people can be bombed into democracy?
Did Vietnam become a better democracy after years of war?

I doubt that Germany and Japan are a good indicator of what can be achieved, especially unilateraly.

I do not believe Russia can be made into a democratic country for another 250 years.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[l0ungeb0y]

You sir are a fascist and I mean that in the most literal of sense per the definition of fascism. More over, your statements fall in line with the ideals of the neoCons and thus I take it you are a whole-hearted supporter of Bush and a Fox News educated brownshirt. I'll stretch is a bit, but not far, and suppose you consider anyone who would question the President or voice dissent of the US Government to be a traitor.

By calling for the end of the Democratic party in part or in whole, you are saying America should be a dictatorship, And by calling for the destruction (speedy exit -- same as destruction?? I think so) of all non-democratic, non-judeo-christian societies, I think you would have fit in quite well in Nazi Germany. It seems you share our current Governments Totalitarian and Nationalistic doctrines. Hence, my referring to your beliefs as Fascist and my wanting to back hand you.

You see, unlike you, I am a patriot. I believe in freedom, personal choice and the fact that as long as there is more than 1 person alive on this earth you shall have conflict. Moreover, I believe in the right to disagree but I accept violence as a possible outcome of any dispute. I do not fear violence nor do I care to give up essential liberties for a false sense of security. You and I have EXTREME conflict. You see, I believe in the ideals that founded this country, I believe in the Freedom of the individual to think and share his own thoughts without fear of persecution, imprisonment and death. I believe that all people should be allowed to worship any god or no god at all, I believe in my inaliable rights and that people have the right to act against their government should the need arise. While you on the other hand support the annihilation of all you fear or do not understand. Your mind set much like Bushco's is that all people not like you should either conform or perish. That in my mind is treason to the our Democratic charter and to your fellow American. For it betrays the very essence of Democracy and Liberty. You and all neoCons like you are nothing but brownshirts who thrive on fear and hate and practice violence to make your case. And that's why if we ever did met up, there would be blood. Because as an American I understand who the enemy is, it's people like you who would attempt to take away my rights and the rights of all americans and to subvert that to a fascist regime of endless war to impose it's views of right/wrong unto the world.

You may think I'm taking it out of context, but I'm only taking your argument to it's logical conclusion. Because once Fascism starts it will not stop until defeated in an act of great bloodshed.
The neoCon ideal is for a controlled Police State where corporate self interest reigns supreme over the rights of the people and all people are monitored by their peers, all dissent quelled and diversity of thought excised. Already America has been agressive in confiscating the rights of Americans to speak and travel freely in the name of "terrorism". Already we have seen politicians call each other "traitors" for speaking in dissent, already we have seen the ignorant citizen who confuses Nationalism with Patriotism. Nazi brownshirts were no different, they thought themselves to be patriots as well. So we see it again, the brownshirts such as yourself eating it all up on Fox and goosestep to the Ashcroft war against civil liberties applaud the war on terror and think your actions Patriotism. The natural outcome of the Patriot Act legislation, the war on terror and the NeoCon ideal is to transform America, if not the whole world into a Police State in the name of "National Security". Don't believe me? Then look at the Patriot Act.... Secret warrants, secret arrests, secret imprisonment with secret charges for indefinate periods of time, secret trials and secret convictions. When I was a child, that is exactly exactly what I was told were the policies of America

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[LS]

Ok, enough with the capitalist propaganda. No one should ever use the word "freedom" as an absolute in the context of the United states. Instead, try "more free", or "additional freedoms". Citizens of all nations, including the United Stattes, are NOT free.

LS

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[MikeCapone]

Wealthy nations don't tend to produce terrorists either.

Don't be mistaken, they are the number 1 source of them... in other countries.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[demachina]

"China is making the same attempt and the signs are they are also going to fail."

Bullshit. China is almost assured of being a raging economic success at this point, as long as they can keep a handle on their raging growth. You specifically mentioned them, and tried to dismiss them, because they derail your whole "Freedom and Democracy = "Wealth" theory. Singapore is another raging financial success and they aren't a towering symbol of freedom either.

The U.S.S.R's major economic failing was they chose economic isolation, and the west obliged and economically isolated them. They also impaled themselves on a misguided war in Afghanistan, a quagmire very similar to Vietnam and the new Iraq.

China astutely figured out they had lots of the thing Capitalis want most, cheap, oppressed, well educated labor. Rather than fighting the West like the U.S.S.R they threw their doors open and hung out a welcome sign. Capitalists can't tear down their factories in the West and ship them to China fast enough.

China is almost certain to surpass the U.S. as the world's economic superpower unless something cataclysmic happens, especially if the U.S. keeps its head up its ass and keeps handing all its capital and IP over to China.

"Rising standards of living solve most of the pressing problems facing the world today."

Excepting of course energy consumption and pollution.

"Wealthy/Free nations don't tend to make war on each other."

No but they do make war on poor nations especially ones they want to turn in to colonies, reference the British empire, the French empire, the German empire, the American empire(formally dominating the Phillipines and the entire Western Hemisphere and now moving to Asia and the Middle East.

Its a lot easier to be a "free/wealthy" nation when you are looting poor third world nations where you've installed dictators who do your bidding.

"Wealthy nations don't tend to produce terrorists either."

Saudi Arabia is a very wealthy nation, though the wealth is poorly distributed, and it produced most of the 9/11 hijackers.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[Anonymous Coward]

Not suprisingly, this is one the reasons that the SAT has such a large percentage of questions on reading comprehension. I can in now way see how you interpreted the news articles that you cited to be preventing the ability of Afghans to vote because "the US can't control the guerilla insurgencies and warlord violence in certain areas of the country". This is obviously not the case. All the news articles that I saw praised the lack of violence in the election.

Try to comprehend what you read, not spit it back out again with a bias.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[ozborn]

No serious student of current events can escape the reality that political freedom and economic prosperity are linked. The old soviet empire attempted to foster economic openness to gain it's productivity benefits while keeping political freedom in the hands of the Party. They failed. China is making the same attempt and the signs are they are also going to fail. Freedom is the natural state of affairs and you can't supress it in one sphere while keeping it in the others.
Many countries have "free markets" and capitalist ownership relationships and have remained dictatorships. That includes numerous countries in Western Europe (prior to WW2), Russia and Belarus today, numerous Latin American countries a various points throughout the 20th (El Salvador, Brazil, Argentia, Bolivia, Chile under Pinochet, Nicaurgua under Somoza), a variety of African countries, Asian countries, etc... The link between capitalism and democracy is empirically false.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[protohiro1]

"marxist instituitions like the World Bank, the IMF"

That is hilarious. The far left and the far right agree that the World Bank and the IMF are evil! Far lefties like the World Workers Party and ANSWER think the World Bank and the IMF are merely the tools of international corporations and capitalists. You think they're Marxist. The political spectrum really is a circle.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[Anonymous Coward]

You sir, are out of your mind. I would suggest you take a year or to and go live somewhere that isn't, say backwoods Louisiana and experience the world before you decided that the Democratic party and world universities are vestiges of the fucking COMMUNIST PARTY. That's just totally insane. Do you think that people that get MBAs at harvard are fucking communists? I spent $90,000 at a university. Doesn't sound very fucking communist to me. Remove your tin foil hat.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[Shadowlore]

Bullshit. China is almost assured of being a raging economic success at this point, as long as they can keep a handle on their raging growth. You specifically mentioned them, and tried to dismiss them, because they derail your whole "Freedom and Democracy = "Wealth" theory. Singapore is another raging financial success and they aren't a towering symbol of freedom either.

Bullshit on you. His argument was that wealth and economic freedom result in political freedom. That argument was clearly stated. Yet you went for a strawman. Tsk. Tsk.

"Rising standards of living solve most of the pressing problems facing the world today."

Excepting of course energy consumption and pollution.

Actually pollution levels drop as wealth increases. Try some research it may open your eyes. Energy consumption increases until the wealth builds to a point where it can be decreased through technology. Again, this is borne out by history. One example is the whaling industry. the move to kerosene as opposed to whale oil for lamps and heating resulted in a large drop in total energy consumption.

"Wealthy/Free nations don't tend to make war on each other."

No but they do make war on poor nations especially ones they want to turn in to colonies, reference the British empire, the French empire, the German empire, the American empire(formally dominating the Phillipines and the entire Western Hemisphere and now moving to Asia and the Middle East.

You just inadvertently made the PP's point.

China is almost certain to surpass the U.S. as the world's economic superpower unless something cataclysmic happens, especially if the U.S. keeps its head up its ass and keeps handing all its capital and IP over to China.

Not keeping up on reality eh? China is actually losing mass amounts of manufacturing jobs ... more so than the US.

Singapore is far free-er than it was prior to the economic changes; and friends there tell me it is also moving more toward more freedom.

Anyone who beleives Iraq and Vietnam are the same war in different times and places, understands neither Vietnam, nor Iraq; regardless of whether they think the Iraq or Vietnam wars were right or wrong.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[beakburke]

You are only half right. Rising standards of living reduce population growth as well, so you have to take that into account. Wealthy nations also tend to make pollution reductions first. It's true that the US produces a lot of garbage and CO2, but their pollution control laws for other things (air and water) are much more strict. The reason is simple, air and water polltion became problems first, when the US starts to run out of landfill space or starts to see climate problems that can be directly attributed to global warming(in a couple decades) you will see real action in those areas. But until people begin to be SIGNIFICANTLY affected by them, you won't see much in the way of government provided solutions.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[beakburke]

The US can be accused of doing lots of very bad things in the rest of the world, but I wouldn't say that looting is one of them. WRT Saudi Arabia, there is wealth in Saudi Arabia, but it is not a very "free" country, and that wealth is controlled by a small group of people. (The society is much more stratified than even Marx would dream of the arch-capitalists.) That, and the state-funded preaching of a particularly extreme religious sub-sect of Islam leads to all sorts of problems, and the wealthy Saudi's know it. But of course how do they deal with it without loosing their power, since that is THEIR goal.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[Spheroid2]

You know, I was agreeing with you until the last sentence.

Spain?
Northern Ireland?

Don't fall for the current USA world propaganda message and confuddle war and terrorism.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoever modded parent down does not know history well. Try these for examples: Lenin and Pol Pot. The latter went to France for his "education". The former was also educated and shipped back by rail...

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[Anonymous Coward]

> Bullshit on you. His argument was that wealth and economic freedom result in political freedom

Try reading some more, Singapore is already rich, China is getting richer, Saudi Arabia is on average wealthy. There is little evidence of growing political freedom in any of those places or others I could mention.

Your strawmen burn too easily.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[dajak]

Yeah, and afghan females just voted for the first time--ever--thanks to U.S. involvement.

Uh, no. Afghanistan did have universal suffrage from 1964 on. It was lost somewhere in the eighties while the US was arming muslim fundamentalists. One can argue about how democratic Afghanistan really was, but women did have largely equal rights in the constitutional monarchy and the socialist republic of Afghanistan.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[demachina]

"The US can be accused of doing lots of very bad things in the rest of the world, but I wouldn't say that looting is one of them"

I guess you are unaware of where the term Banana Republic comes from and it isn't a yuppie clothing line.

In case you were unaware the U.S. seized California and the rest of the Southwest from Mexico by force.

The U.S. seized Cuba, the Phillipines and assorted islands from Spain in the Spanish American war, and occupied them as colonies for most of the 20th century. It was a war based on a contrived incident with the battleship Maine, and a yellow journalism campaign by the Hearst newspapers. It has a lot in common with how we were suckered in to the war in Iraq, and acquisition of our newest colony.

The U.S. toppled the sovereign government of Iran in a CIA backed coup, after the Iranians took control of their oil fields back from their former colonial masters, the British. The U.S. installed a despotic dictator, the Shah of Iran, and control of Iran's oil was given largely to U.S. oil companies.

This list goes on for an hour...should I keep going.

The original post said "Wealthy nations don't tend to produce terrorists either." I established that is provably false and there is no such correlation. Saudi Arabia is a wealthy nation and is the nexus of the terror network that is Al-Qaida. Osama Bin Laden is in fact from one of Saudi Arabia's richest families. Did it stop him from being a terrorist, no it just made him a well funded one especially early on, when he had a couple hundred million of his families money to work with.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[demachina]

"Bullshit on you. His argument was that wealth and economic freedom result in political freedom. That argument was clearly stated. Yet you went for a strawman. Tsk. Tsk."

No I didn't. I cited a bunch of examples where its obviously not true, China and Singapore in particular. You can add Saudi Arabia, and most of the wealthy oil dictatorships in the Middle East. There is no such correlation no matter which way you run the equation. Nazi Germany went from economic collapse to world leading economic powerhouse, while the rest of the world was in depression, under one of the most repressive of regimes.

"Not keeping up on reality eh? China is actually losing mass amounts of manufacturing jobs ... more so than the US."

Thats silly. Their economy is tettering on the edge due to explosive growth. Sure there are manufacturing jobs moving in to even poorer, cheaper places, but its mostly because China's economy is overheating. To paint it like China is headed towards the same outsourced purgatory as the U.S. is silly. They are to the point they can't safely grow any faster.

"Anyone who beleives Iraq and Vietnam are the same war"

Didn't say they were the same war, they just have key factors in common, and with the U.S.S.R's debacle in Afghanistan. They were all places where unpopular governments were being propped up by a superpower's conventional army who faced a guerilla insurgency that they proved incapable of defeating. Afghanistan and Vietnam turned in to decade long quagmires that nearly destroyed superpowers, and probably did in the case of the U.S.S.R. It is quite possible Iraq will go the same way.

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[cephyn]

Oh yeah it was a total party all around! great job US! Hey, instead of skimming headlines and press releases, try reading (and comprehending) some actual reporting.

Doesn't sound so safe and peaceful, now does it?

Re:I'm not suprised, because I have a clue

[StateOfTheUnion]

I agree with your statements generally, but in context, I don't think that they are contrary to my original statements.

I agree that population growth delines with rising standards of living, but even if world population were at a standstill and everyone shared the western standard of living as it is now, the environment would be crippled in a matter of years (not decades).

Also, wealthy nations do produce the strictest environmental protection laws (as I said in my previous post Kuznet's curve as interpreted by Yandle demonstrates this); however, one must consider the amount of pollution produced before reaching the inflection point of the Kuznet curve. In other words how much pollution would countries produce on their way to becoming wealthy enough to think about pollution control. And once they start caring about the environment and reducing pollution, how much pollution are they already producing (In other words, a fractional reduction of a huge number is still a huge number).

A current example of this is China . . . with air pollution currently so bad, it is affecting air quality on the west coast of the United States, it will be a long time before China is wealthy enough to consider long term pollution control. And when they do start to reduce pollution, where are the starting from? A 5% reduction in pollution by a future China is a huge reduction, but there is still a huge amount of pollution being produced.

Johannesburg glowing

[Splinton]

I see Johannesburg is the bright spot in Africa - probably has much to do with Sasol oil-from-coal.

Re:Johannesburg glowing

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Probably likely to be the inefficient burning in Soweto and high motor vehicle use too.

I expect that altitude and distance from the sea are also contributors. Burning at altitude probably produces a higher reading than at sea level since there's less gas around to dilute and there's less complete combustion. I expect the sea would have a moderating effect too (perhaps why places like LA and Mexico City don't show up).

NB all the "I expects" because I hunch that this is what happening and I have no scientific backup.

Re:Johannesburg glowing

[Anonymous Coward]

...or it might be that catalytic converters on cars are still a rarity in SA, where the average age of cars must be >15 years!

Re:Johannesburg glowing

[refactored]

Probably not sasol, as it has a fair amount of scrubbing equipment. Probably the many coal fired power plants and/or burning of cheap high sulphur coal for home heating / cooking.

China

[Anonymous Coward]

Stange one? You mean China? Yea just wait 10 years when their output increases.

too late!

[TheAxeMaster]

already killed it!

anyway russia's regulations probably aren't as strict as they are here. I know that's an odd thing to say, that someone else is worse than us but it's true in a lot of places.

Re:too late!

[ernstp]

There's nothing over Russia on this map. Go find an atlas.
A map that's a bit hard to read, unless there's a high-res version I'm missing.

Re:too late!

[mrsev]

> There's nothing over Russia on this map. Go find an atlas.

Too ture, there is only a little bit in yellow running along the line of the trans siberian railway, and a few spots round Moscow. The bit that I find worrying is round Holland and Belgium comapred to the rest of europe. What are they burning?

Re:too late!

[falken0905]

What are they burning?

Cannabis.

Re:too late!

[Dynedain]

Amsterdam/Rotterdam is the largest seaport in the world.

The Netherlands and Belgium are basically the valve on the pipeline that is most of Europe's heavy industry.

Oh, and they mine a lot of natural gas.

red blob over east russia

[Anonymous Coward]

that is likely due to some forest fires that have been burning in siberia

Re:red blob over east russia

[ernstp]

I just want to say this again, that's not Russia. It's China!
And the image only shows nitrogen dioxide, which is a _man made_ pollution, unlike CO2, which could be produced by forest fires!

Re:red blob over east russia

[blooba]

or it could be vladivostok, which is their industrial center, and home to one of their huge-ass naval bases.

Re:red blob over east russia

[pclminion]

Forest fires producing nitric oxide? They must have some really weird trees over there...

Re:red blob over east russia

[Anonymous Coward]

N2 is almost 80% of the atmosphere.

What, you thought trees were burning in a vacuum? Or that the N2 got shoved aside for a neat little C + O2 -> CO2 reaction?

Re:red blob over east russia

[ybryukhov]

The spot on the upper map is probably Ural mountains area with Ekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk - relatively big insdustrial cities.

A quick mirror

[Exocet]

Since this site will probably get slashdotted ...I went ahead and made a quick PDF mirror of the article.

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.

Re:A quick mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm... I'm getting a 404. Thats what you get for karmawhoring.

Re:A quick mirror

[caryw]

(somehow using wget?)

wget -m (mirror)
like this: http://patriot.net/~cary/www.physorg.com/news1524. html

hell of a lot more bandwidth than your poor ADSL line. enjoy.

- Cary
-- Fairfax Underground: Where Fairfax County comes out to play

Re:A quick mirror

[Exocet]

Yeah, but looking at their source it looked like they were using full or hard links ( as opposed to ) to their images. Does wget re-write those? I didn't think it did.

Re:A quick mirror

[caryw]

Absolute vs relative links.

An example of an absolute link is: http://www.some.damn.server/images/pic.gif
Relati ve link: /images/pic.gif

And no wget -m did not re-write those absolute links automatically, I had to manually do it.
Perhaps there is some easier way that I do not know?

Re:A quick mirror

[Exocet]

I think you (royal you) would have to find some software which did that. I specifically didn't use wget because I didn't feel like I had time to go through and manually fix all the links.

Re:A quick mirror

[caryw]

Easy with a little sed and awk :)

Old story I know but maybe you'll click your profile and see you have a reply.

- Cary

Re:A quick mirror

[Exocet]

BTW, I found a fairly good way to do quick mirrors of single pages with graphics:

httrack -%F "Mirrored [from host %s [file %s [at %s]]]" -w
http://www.doot.org/monkies.html -%e0
-* +*.css +*.js -ad.doubleclick.net/* +*.gif +*.jpg +*.png +*.tif +*.bmp +*.swf

Red blob

[Hatta]

I'm a bit surprised not to see that many red blobs above US and the strange one is on the east of Russia.

That's the "Red menace", we've known about that since the '50s

That blob...

[drivers]

on the east side of Russian is called "China."

Re:That blob...

[Anonymous Coward]

Try Mongolia.

Re:That blob...

[pbox]

Well, the red blob IS in china. It is the triangle roughly between Beijing, North Korea and Hanzhou, The northern industrial region in China.

I guess the blurb was written by someone attending geography classes in a US highschool...

Re:That blob...

[antic]

Visit Beijing, Datong and all the areas around there and you'd understand why that red blob is there!

Re:That blob...

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess he didn't RTFA either since it states:

"Then a very high concentration is found above north eastern China"

Steve.

Not Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks more like Northern China, which would make more sense.

night map

[Coneasfast]

note how the red areas are somewhat similar to the light areas on the nasa night map

Re:night map

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, it's proof that people bring not only pollution with them, but also light! You're going to win a big prize for this!

Re:night map

[ernstp]

Whith the exception of South America, which doesn't seem to produce NO2!

Keep it up guys! :-)

Re:night map

[GileadGreene]

...nasa night map

Actually, to give credit where credit is due, I believe that the map in question was produced by the DMSP, i.e. the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program. Hardly a NASA effort.

Re:night map

[solarium_rider]

Hmm, also looks similiar to a sim city air pollution map. That's easy to fix, just plant lots of trees and parks. Other tips you can do to reduce pollution:
-Apply all of the environment ordinances
-Encourage High Tech Industry
-Reduce Traffic Congestion
-Use water Treatment Plants
-Use Clean Energy
-Export your trash

Re:night map

[John (Annoyed Grunt)]

Anyone have ideas about why there is a light green patch in the middle of Africa? It is one of the darkest areas on the night map.

not so surprising

[uujjj]

The US does have fairly strict emmisions laws (hence the small number of diesels). Any Americans who have traveled to Europe in the summer months will notice that they often have higher smog. London and Rome are especially nasty.

Re:not so surprising

[uujjj]

emissions. lo siento

Re: not so surprising

[l0wland]

Do you have any idea how many V6 and V8-engines there are driving around in the US, compared to Europe? Do you have any idea about what the emission is of diesel-engines that use particlefilters (compulsory since some years), compared to regular gas-engines? And you really wanna say that cities like London and Rome have higher smog than the larger cities in, say, California?

Do you know why the USA never signed Kyoto? Because it's industry can't work by the strict anti-pollution rules that Kyoto prescribes.

Re: not so surprising

[uujjj]

Los Angeles and Sacramento are smoggy, as well as some smaller cities in the Central Valley (esp. Fresno and Bakersfield). San Francisco, San Jose, and San Diego, however, are not particularly smoggy. I would say (based on only 18 days I have spent there over my lifetime) that London is comparable to Sacramento in smog, though you should realize the average summer high in Sacramento is 34C. London gets really nasty when it's that hot. Please do not confuse greenhouse emissions with the smog-forming pollutants mentioned in the article. The US has made no attempt to regulate the former (state of California excepted) but strictly regulates the former under the Clean Air Acts of 1970 and 1990 (the ones Bush wants to weaken with his "Clear Skies Initiative").

Re:not so surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

If you do your homework, you will find that modern diesel engines have very low emissions levels. Also, diesel can be produced sythetically produced using a Gas To Liquid (Fischer-Tropsch) process from Methane (produced domesically, lowering dependence on mid-east oil) or Hydrogen (produced from renewables) and CO from biomass (net zero CO2 emissions, near point of use production). They can operate on bio-diesel produced from waste cooking oil or vegetable/seed oils, or a mix of bio-diesel and petroleum/synthetic diesel. So in the long run, the preference would be for MORE diesel engines, not fewer.

Re:not so surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Having lived in Rome for 3 years before moving to LA, I have to laugh about your post ... really bad.

Yes, there is smog in Rome 3 days a month in summer when it is hot, but that's still way better than the complete absense of air and light in the stinking hole called LA.

Re:A quick mirror - I'm an idiot

[Exocet]

It's here. Sorry for the bad link, should have checked it in the preview.

hmm..

[Anonymous Coward]

ok it's down... can someone please post an updated pic of it with the red blob included over where the server is located.. thanks..

Political

[Hao Wu]

Remember - if you do not vote with Slashdot, you are killing this planet on purpose. You are lower than Holocaust perpetrator. Kill yourself now, if you don't totally agree with scientific Slashdot proof that you are a EARTH MURDERER.

Re:Political

[ddelrio]

I am so tired of the /. moderation. The last comment was topical--it addressed a criticism made by another poster. If anything, it was humorous--yet I am nevertheless branded as an off-topic troll. If that's the state of affairs on /., then fine. I'll wear my scarlet letters with pride.

Re:Political

[Anonymous Coward]

The last comment was topical--it addressed a criticism made by another poster.

That's one way of looking at it. Another is: you responded to a troll.

Re:Political

[Anonymous Coward]

And here I am responding to a reply to a reply to a troll. Trolled troll? Troll troll, troll. Troll.

Reply here, and help me go so meta I can taste my own tubgirl.

Re:Political

[Anonymous Coward]

meta moderation is a lot of fun.
you got the last laugh.

Dihydrogen Monoxide is at fault

[Ucklak]

I didn't see anything in the article about DHMO.

I'm sure that DHMO has something to with this since it is far worse for the environment.

Re:Dihydrogen Monoxide is at fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahahahahah, not! This joke was funny the first time around, not so funny the second time, not at all funny the third time, and it's definitely not funny now the 978th time around. For once, I wish jokes were patentable so that lazy boring nerds with absolutely no creativity would stop regurgitating them at every little opportunity.

Anyway, please mod parent redundant and put it out of its misery.

Re:Dihydrogen Monoxide is at fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Concentrations of NO2 are shown on the map in red. Concentrations of DMHO are shown on the map in blue.

And not only that...

[daveschroeder]

...but China is set to outpace US oil consumption very soon.

With this much competition for oil, and peak oil production close or possibly already passed, it's sobering to think about what could be...

(And alternative fuels won't be the only way to release ourselves from oil dependence. One would hope that we'd continue to heavily research nuclear, including fusion, options; plans for complete nuclear non-proliferation completely kill any significant efforts in these areas, even for energy means.)

Re:And not only that...

[Ctrl-Z]

(And alternative fuels won't be the only way to release ourselves from oil dependence. One would hope that we'd continue to heavily research nuclear, including fusion, options; plans for complete nuclear non-proliferation completely kill any significant efforts in these areas, even for energy means.)

Are nuclear options not alternatives to fossil fuels?

Re:And not only that...

[AKAImBatman]

Are nuclear options not alternatives to fossil fuels?

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.

Re:And not only that...

[ivan256]

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

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.

Re:And not only that...

[Madcapjack]

I recall that China plans to go massively nuclear- I bet that this will help immensely...though maybe not for auto pollution. China goes Nuclear

Re:And not only that...

[Mr. Slippery]

using all that nuclear generated electricity that has become so plentiful.

Not quite. Uranium is still a limited resource; the idea of "electricity too cheap to meter" is (like a lot of pro-fission thinking) is a product of Gernsbackian imagination.

While you're at it, change your house over to electric heat from oil.

Electric heat, no; very inefficient. Ground source heat-pumps, yes.

Re:And not only that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Uranium ore is about as common as silver. Not everywhere, but common enough. The big item in use of fuel is whether breeder reactors are used or not. By using a breeder reactor, you will only slightly (or not) enrich it, and you will use much less fuel in proportion to the energy put out (due to the production and later fission of plutonium). The use of such reactors is purely a political problem.

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.

Re:And not only that...

[Christopher Thomas]

Not quite. Uranium is still a limited resource; the idea of "electricity too cheap to meter" is (like a lot of pro-fission thinking) is a product of Gernsbackian imagination.

The idea of "electricity too cheap to meter" is a fantasy because you still need a bigarsed steam-powered generator no matter what the heat source, not because of fuel concerns. The quantity of fuel used is so vastly lower than the amount of coal and oil burned in fossil fuel plants that the cost of mining really isn't that much, even given the relative scarcity of the element itself.

It won't run out any time soon either if you reprocess spent fuel and also breed fissile materials from thorium, but both of those have materials-handling and security problems (not unsolvable, but enough that the US doesn't use them).

Electric heat, no; very inefficient. Ground source heat-pumps, yes.

Electric heating is as efficient as gas heating; in both cases, you're turning virtually all of the available energy into heat. A heat pump is more efficient than either because it draws heat from the surrounding area (at such a relatively small temperature difference, it costs less to do this than to just dump heat into the house). The reason we use gas heating instead of electric is that electrical energy is more expensive to produce, joule for joule, than the equivalent amount of natural gas. This is a production issue, as opposed to a point-of-use issue.

In short, while I agree with your positions, I disagree with the reasons :).

Re:And not only that...

[Anonymous Coward]

With fuel reprocessing, we could power the world using only existing, already-mined Uranium for a very long time. Without reprocessing, we'll run out of uranium in less then 100 years.

Therefore, I endorse reprocessing :)

Re:And not only that...

[Lars T.]

...but China is set to outpace US oil consumption very soon.

Well, if they use four times as much as, they'll use as much as the US - which has a fifth of the population. Very close, that.

Re:And not only that...

[goldstein]

Electric heating is not efficient if you examine the problem from a systems perspective. There are substantial inefficiencies in generating the electricity (by converting heat to mechanical energy and then converting the mechanical energy to electricity) and, to a lesser extent, in distributing it. For a given amount of electricity, you will only get a fraction of the heat that was used to generate it.

Re:And not only that...

[WindBourne]

Electric heating is as efficient as gas heating; in both cases, you're turning virtually all of the available energy into heat.... The reason we use gas heating instead of electric is that electrical energy is more expensive to produce, joule for joule, than the equivalent amount of natural gas.

Hummmmm. Let me see if I understand your point. For Gas Heating, we

1. Drill for Natural gas, store it, and then ship it via pipes to end points (homes)
2. Burn it in a furnace.
3. Circulate it via air.

.
OTH, for electrical heat, we

1. Drill for Natural gas, store it, and then ship it via pipes to end points.
2. Burn it in a furnace.
3. Circulate steam to turn generators.
4. Send electicity via power lines.
5. at home, heat an element that generates heat. Typically, it does not even have a blower to circulate the heat.

.
And in your opinion, the later is equal efficiency to the first? That is there is not 1 iota of lose in converting to steam, power generation that is sent long distance over wire, and heating via resistance?????????

Re:And not only that...

[Mr. Slippery]

The quantity of fuel used is so vastly lower than the amount of coal and oil burned in fossil fuel plants that the cost of mining really isn't that much, even given the relative scarcity of the element itself.

Actually tailings are really really nasty; there are lots of problems with water contamination.

Electric heating is as efficient as gas heating; in both cases, you're turning virtually all of the available energy into heat.

Not if you consider the small percentage of the heat energy at the power plant being converted to electricity. Yes, in you electric heater, almost all the power is converted into heat (some comes out as those cheery red photons we all love), but a heck of a lot of power gets wasted before it gets to your electric heater. I meant this "big picture" efficiency.

Re:And not only that...

[Christopher Thomas]

Electric heating is not efficient if you examine the problem from a systems perspective.

This was clearly spelled out in my original post. Where are you disagreeing with me?

Re:And not only that...

[Christopher Thomas]

And in your opinion, the later is equal efficiency to the first?

What part of "joule for joule, electrical energy is more expensive to produce" wasn't clear enough in my original post? You even quoted this.

You've just spent 20 lines agreeing with me.

Re:And not only that...

[Christopher Thomas]

Actually tailings are really really nasty; there are lots of problems with water contamination.

Quantities will still be far less than the wastes (and other environmental disruption) caused by coal mining and oil drilling and shipping of both substances. I agree that with any form of mining, you have a negative environmental impact; it's just that I rarely see people appreciating exactly how much less material is needed.

I'm also amused by listing sodium chloride as a contaminant. While it will cause problems with the local environment, calling it "salt" would put things like its relative toxicity in perspective.

Not if you consider the small percentage of the heat energy at the power plant being converted to electricity.

Apparently I should have put the sentences about production of electricity causing it to cost more per delivered joule in bold caps, because you're the third person who seems to have missed it.

Re:And not only that...

[Anonymous Coward]

The second law of thermodynamics hits again!

Yes, if you are going to convert energy to anything other than heat, the second law means that you are going to have to reject heat to do so. But if you only make heat, there is no efficiency loss. So the overall efficiency of electric heating will be less than gas (and gas won't be 100% efficient because theoretically there are pumps required to push it to your house which can equivalently be run on natural gas).

The key thought: a heat engine rejects heat to maintain entropy constant. A heater doesn't care about entropy, therefore its operation is 100% efficient.

Re:And not only that...

[Anonymous Coward]

"This was clearly spelled out in my original post."

Hardly.

"1. Electric heating is as efficient as gas heating; in both cases, you're turning virtually all of the available energy into heat...
2. This is a production issue, as opposed to a point-of-use issue."

I wouldn't say you spelled it out clearly. In line 1 cited above, you say that you are turning all of the available energy received by the consumer into heat, but don't explicitly say that it is the energy received by the consumer. In line 2 cited above, you qualify your previous statements. If the lines were reversed, much less confusion would have occured.

Re:And not only that...

[ivan256]

the idea of "electricity too cheap to meter" is (like a lot of pro-fission thinking) is a product of Gernsbackian imagination.

Who said anything about it being too cheap to meter? We're talking about feasably replacing gasoline and coal with nuclear, not making energy free. Indeed it could be cheaper, but it wouldn't be free.

Electric heat, no; very inefficient. Ground source heat-pumps, yes.

Inefficient, yes, but better than burning oil or natural gas in every house? Debatable. It certainly less poluting and almost certainly less expensive than coal or gas in the long term. It's also likely better than trucking hydrogen around as the parent to my comment suggested.

Too many people look to still-developing technologies to solve our energy problems. The problem with that is that there's always something better on the horizon so you're continually chasing a moving target, and using technology that isn't ready taints the public's perception of that technology in the future. Solar is a perfect example of this. Lots of people added solar to their houses in the '80s and now they, and anybody that knows them, wouldn't touch solar with a 10 foot pole (not to mention the fact that 20 years later it's still not quite ready). Nuclear technology is mature and ready to solve our current energy problems *today* with practically no additional development. In 20 years when the technology that seems promising now, but it a little bit out of reach is mature we can switch if it's enough of an improvement.

Re:And not only that...

[Dashing Leech]

You've just spent 20 lines agreeing with me.

I had to go back and check, but yes he did effectively support your statement. What seems to be the difference, and rampant on Slashdot, is different definitions of "efficiency". You say that generating heat from electrical sources is about the same efficiency as from burning gas, which is probably true depending on where you draw the line of input-output. He says that given the same amount of gas fuel to start with, heat from electricity must go through more steps and hence more losses, and hence less heat output per unit of gas fuel input, and hence less efficient. This may or may not be true depending on how they are converted. Even home furnaces vary quite a bit in efficiency. You only indicate the extra cost these steps add.

So, it seems you are both right, or both wrong, depending on how you draw your input-output lines for defining efficiency and on what conversion devices you are referring to. Unfortunately, defining energy efficiency is not as straighforward as many would think. Even the science of thermodynamics has a number of efficiency definitions for energy conversions. I find this is how most energy related arguments break down, everyone has a different definition of the metrics they're describing.

Re:And not only that...

[Mr. Slippery]

Who said anything about it being too cheap to meter?

Lewis Strauss, chairman of the US Atomic Energy Commission, in 1955. It's become something of a cliche since then.

Solar is a perfect example of this. Lots of people added solar to their houses in the '80s and now they, and anybody that knows them, wouldn't touch solar with a 10 foot pole (not to mention the fact that 20 years later it's still not quite ready).

WTF are you talking about? Photovoltaic is ready for many applications, and people are using it right now to live off the grid, or to run their meters backward. If Regan hadn't kowtowed to fossil fuel companies and gutted renewables research as soon as he got into office, photovoltaic would be ready for even more applications.

Nuclear technology is mature and ready to solve our current energy problems *today* with practically no additional development.

Fission can't be said to be ready until waste disposal and nuclear proliferation are solved issues; even then it's only good for a few hundred years. Better to put the resources into developing renewables.

Re:And not only that...

[ivan256]

Lewis Strauss, chairman of the US Atomic Energy Commission, in 1955. It's become something of a cliche since then.

I know. I meant that nobody had said it in the context of this discussion.

Photovoltaic is ready for many applications, and people are using it right now to live off the grid, or to run their meters backward.

A distinct minority of people. I'd venture to guess that it's less than the number of people who installed solar in the early '80s, but I don't have statistics to back that up. I'm not saying it isn't ready for some uses, but it's certainly not ready to solve the worlds energy problems, whatever the reasons for that are.

Fission can't be said to be ready until waste disposal and nuclear proliferation are solved issues; even then it's only good for a few hundred years. Better to put the resources into developing renewables.

Proliferation issues are political, not technical. The same is arguable for disposal (most disposal or disposal preperation technologies are considered proliferation, thus banned). As for it only being good for a few hundred years, that's fine... It only needs to hold us until the next technology is viable (both technically and economically... the economic side is another thing that alternative energy advocates seem to forget about). Nuclear alone isn't the answer. Nuclear plus research into the next technology early on is what should be happening... If we manage to learn from our history, the goal should be to never get ourselves into an energy crisis like we're having today ever again, not to find a "set it and forget it" solution right out of the gate.

Re:And not only that...

[bluGill]

The gas furnace in my house is 85% efficient. Terrible by todays standards. (92% is the lowest I've seen in a few years) Sure an electric furnace would be 100% efficient in my house, but the power plant that makes that electricity is at most 60% efficient. Already a large gap to overcome.

There are transmission losses for both. About 10% for electric. I don't know what the gas cost is. I find it hard to belive that it would be enough to make my gas furnace less efficient than electric. (ground source heat pumps would of course be better, but that is a different measure)

Re:And not only that...

[the_2nd_coming]

fusion can not be used for weapons tech, unless you think that a noble gas can some how be used to make a bomb.

also, if people would just start using Thorium to make nuclear fission power, proliferation would not be a problem because thorium and its by products from fission cannot be used for weapons.

Re:And not only that...

[dbIII]

The idea of "electricity too cheap to meter" is a fantasy

We have to get to nuclear power that is cheap enough to compete with other energy sources first. Those 1950's white elephants burn tax money to produce electricity - the peaceful side of the bomb has proved horribly expensive, but appears to have worked as a PR exercise.

Re:And not only that...

[cfan]

Electric heating is as efficient as gas heating ; in both cases, you're turning virtually all of the available energy into heat.

But producing electricity is not 100% efficient, so elettricity heating is a lot less efficient than gas heating ! 1 kg of gas used for heating gives you a lot more of "useful" heat than 1 Kg of gas used for producing electricity used for heating.

Re:And not only that...

[Christopher Thomas]

But producing electricity is not 100% efficient, so elettricity heating is a lot less efficient than gas heating !

This was pointed out in my original post, and in my response to the first three replies, who also seemed to have missed that part.

Re:And not only that...

[Christopher Thomas]

Sure an electric furnace would be 100% efficient in my house, but the power plant that makes that electricity is at most 60% efficient. Already a large gap to overcome.

This was pointed out in my original post, and in my responses to the first three replies, who also seemed to have missed that part.

Russia?

[Zocalo]

Um, no, that's largely China and maybe the Korean peninsula, although it does extend far enough to the North to encompass Vladivostok I think. Still, I suppose they have a better excuse than we do here Europe... That big red blob is mainly over the lowlands of Holland and surrounding areas, so it's either tulips or the output from the "coffee" shops of Amsterdam. I'm thinking it's probably not the tulips. ;)

Re:Russia?

[Dark Lord Seth]

Actually...

That's something I've noticed here in the Netherlands; things look decrepit. I went to a city in the south of this country, which in in the big red blob on the map ( town where I live in just on the edge ) and during the train ride, I couldn't start counting the rusting barges in the water, the abandoned factories and production plants, the run-down warehouses filled with rusting barrels that contain god-knows what and a surprising amount of heavier industry such as steel mills, paper mills and chemical plants.

Been to Belgium a few years ago as well... One of the things I remember most was the state of the houses and roads down there. Everything just seemed undermaintained down to an atrocious level. It's scary to know that south of here in the NL and in Belgium, in the middle of that big red blob, everything seems to be stuck in the 70s in some sort of permanent economic paralysis. I thought both BE and the NL were supposed to be developed countries that were doing pretty decently?

Then again, I might have just seen the worst areas and I would only recognize economic prosperity if it would start buying me beer, porn and other life essentials.

Re:Russia?

[Anonymous Coward]

Vladivostok is out on the coast. And its just a relatively small port city.

At the NE point of Manchuria, more or less where the red stuff ends, is Khabarovsk. I recently read that is actually the biggest city in Eastern Siberia.

But bigger cities like Harbin & Heilongjiang are pretty close by, so you really can't see much with the shitty resolution of that map. I was hoping someone would find a link to something with way better resolution.

Re:Russia?

[delphi125]

It is the Ruhr in Germany. This area used to make messerschmidts in WWII; now it makes Athlons. And much more. Holland is fairly low on heavy industry but Rotterdam probably has more oil refineries in a single place than anywhere else.

As to China, nobody mentioned the underground continuous coal fires (I got that from here a month or two back).

Re:Russia?

[geschild]

If burning of greener pastures (aka 'grass') were the reason for this pollution I think you'd actually have a working argument to get people to stop using drugs. At least over here...

But all kidding asside: what you're seeing is the result of three regions of very dense heavy industry and, for the Dutch part, refineries. As another poster pointed out, the 'Botlek gebied' has probably the highest concentration of petro-chemical industry in the world. Between Rotterdam on the north side, Antwerpen on the south side and the 'Ruhr gebied' on the east side you have enormous concentrations of heavy industries.

And so the Dutch are responsible for heavy pollution in two areas. The other being 'light-pollution' due to our enormous amount of greenhouses. Nice little critters, aren't we? ;P

Re:Russia?

[AgentSmit]

Ok, enough stereotypes about Holland. I hate tulips (never even been to the fields in my life which covers more than 25 years) and marihuana stinks ;).

The main reason for this big red area above Holland is the port of Rotterdam and all its industry. Note that, despite very strict environment rules in The Netherlands, the exhaust of NO2 is still a big problem. Being from Rotterdam I am not particularly proud of this, but on the other end its quite an inevitable effect of having the biggest port on the face of this planet! Keep this in mind and you even start to realize this red blob could have been much worse! So let's point our fingers to China now...

Re:Russia?

[dajak]

That big red blob is mainly over the lowlands of Holland and surrounding areas, so it's either tulips or the output from the "coffee" shops of Amsterdam. I'm thinking it's probably not the tulips. ;)

Amsterdam is actually close to the edge of the red blob. This area in the Netherlands (Rotterdam, Eindhoven), and the adjacent areas in Germany (Ruhr area), Belgium, and northern France are very heavily populated and have a very dense concentration of heavy industry (petro-chemical, chemical etc.).

Of course, per capita these countries still produce less pollution than the US. Netherlands and Belgium are among the most densely populated countries in the world.

Re:Russia?

[dajak]

That's something I've noticed here in the Netherlands; things look decrepit. I went to a city in the south of this country, which in in the big red blob on the map ( town where I live in just on the edge ) and during the train ride, I couldn't start counting the rusting barges in the water, the abandoned factories and production plants, the run-down warehouses filled with rusting barrels that contain god-knows what and a surprising amount of heavier industry such as steel mills, paper mills and chemical plants.

I don't know how often you go to other industrial areas in the world, but I can assure you that the Netherlands does not look 'decrepit' by international standards. My hunch is you hardly ever leave the Netherlands (except for mediterranean tourist areas maybe that are not at all representative of what the world looks like).

Visit the uglier parts of the Rust Belt in the USA. This area in the Netherland, Germany, and Belgium you talk about is the European equivalent of the Rust Belt. If you travel by train, you will obviously see the ugliest part of any country.

Been to Belgium a few years ago as well... One of the things I remember most was the state of the houses and roads down there. Everything just seemed undermaintained down to an atrocious level. It's scary to know that south of here in the NL and in Belgium, in the middle of that big red blob, everything seems to be stuck in the 70s in some sort of permanent economic paralysis. I thought both BE and the NL were supposed to be developed countries that were doing pretty decently?

Compared to the US this area is certainly not 'stuck in the 70s'. Remaining heavy industry in this area is cleaner than its American equivalent, and in many areas (like steel) far more competitive, without taxpayer support. Belgium is doing well. Germany is not.

People in the Netherlands north of the Rhine spend an unusually large amount of money on the maintenance of their house if they own it. Visit for instance Switzerland and compare the state of the houses with its GDP/capita. Compared to the Netherlands north of the Rhine most of the civilized world looks decrepit. It is a cultural thing. Some cultures prefer to invest their money in cars, or food.

Re:n/t

[Anonymous Coward]

sorry about that.

Coral cache of mirror

[FooAtWFU]

I have a Coral cache of the pollution image map.

I am not a biologist

[Anonymous Coward]

But since when is pollutions of this kind (along with acid rains) that localized? For example acid rains and excess nitrogen in the northern part of europe is mostly caused by industry in the southern and eastern part of europe. So I wouldn't go as far to start blaming the countries that have red blobs over them... And absolutley not a justification for the US' lack of ratification of the Kyoto protocol.

Re:I am not a biologist

[pclminion]

Yeah, pollution spreads from its point of origin, so? If I fart, the smell wafts in all directions, but it's still stinkier a foot away from me than if you were ten feet away.

Bizarre analogy, I know.

MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

ASP.Net and MS SQL Server are the wave of the future. Bow down to Microsoft innovation, you sexless open source hippies!

Re:all the pollution activist in the US are pointl

[fiannaFailMan]

the rest of the world pollutes far more than the US nowdays and they don't really care that Johnny Q Hippy dosn't like it. They'll happily continue strip mining and using mercery to strip out copper from ore while they eat a tiger mcmuffin. All the eco freaks do is help ensure the US can't compete as well in the global market.

Read my lips. The US contains 5% of the world's population but consumes 25% of the world's resources.

Not in this context

[daveschroeder]

"Alternative" in this context usually refers to non-nuclear (and non-fossil fuel). Wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, etc.

Re:Not in this context

[WindBourne]

Considering that this sotry and threads are about air pollution, Nukes are an alternative.

Re:A quick mirror - I'm an idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

post bad link, then a good one, great way to get modded informative for 2 posts aint it!

woah, take it easy, i'm just kidding.

Where are the third world offenders?

[Sheepdot]

One of the biggest reasons why global warmning proponents have had issues in third world countries is not because their facts are inherently in err, but because the developers cannot understand why "Americans want us to make them a building" and "Other Americans want us to make it the 'wrong way'". They know how to make a building, the same way they always have, yet some foreigner comes in and says they are doing it 'wrong'. It's like telling them, "You're not doing it the way God wants you to".

You can't tell someone that the world is dying when it is right in front of them, unchanged for years. They are trying to make a living, they get offered an opportunity to improve their environment, and don't change. Yet for some reason, even with *this* atmospheric data you can see who the "big offenders" supposedly are.

Why then, do global warmning advocates expend so much time and effort making third world countries try to adhere to restrictions even the US and China don't want to?

Re:Where are the third world offenders?

[ctr2sprt]

Why then, do global warmning advocates expend so much time and effort making third world countries try to adhere to restrictions even the US and China don't want to?

Everything is easier when you do it right, or at least better, the first time around. Building an environmentally-friendly factory may cost $2.5 billion. Retrofitting a smog-blasting factory to blast slightly less smog will cost hundreds of millions of dollars... and it still is going to pollute more than a better design.

Even on a small scale this is true. We all know that simple things like shutting off lights, not running the faucet when brushing your teeth, etc. can have a dramatic (and positive) effect on our environment. But in order to work, everyone needs to do it. Well, it's damn hard to get 250 million people to change their wasteful habits. But people in Africa, for example, don't have those habits yet. So why not help them get the right ones, even if they think it's pointless? Really, it is pointless right now, but if suddenly half of Africa becomes heavily industrialized a la China...

Re:Where are the third world offenders?

[osu-neko]

One of the biggest reasons why global warmning proponents...
Why then, do global warmning advocates...

Global warming proponent? Global warming advocates? Are these the people Louie Anderson used to joke about, who stand outside in the middle of the Minnesota, winter spraying aerosol cans? "Come on, global warming!"

Re:Where are the third world offenders?

[Sheepdot]

I agree on the small things. They can see the changes that turning off the lights saves power. They can't see how fitting a filter to the end of a smokestack is going to save/benefit them.

Re:Where are the third world offenders?

[TykeClone]

You've apparently not stood outside in the middle of winter in Minnesota :)

GLOBAL AIR POLLUTION PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

[Mstrgeek]

a well done site dealing with air pollution

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

Re:GLOBAL AIR POLLUTION PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

[Anonymous Coward]

The Sydney Morning Herald has a piece on the pollution ciris in China:

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/10/11/109740 65 06445.html

Re:A quick mirror - I'm an idiot

[Exocet]

Haha yeah, I thought about that. The public humiliation is enough to keep me from doing it again, rest assured. :P

One step China has taken -

[Tristan7]

China has prohibitted the burning of wood by anybody, and has undertaken a massive reforestation project across the nation. Wood fires produce incredible amounts of pollutants, especially open cooking fires. By reforesting wherever they can, various types of pollution will be reduced. Of course, all this takes time, but it is a good step.

Re:One step China has taken -

[bluGill]

I don't know how it affects pollution, and I know nothing about China's forests. In the US though, forests need a fire every few years to take care of the deadwood.

This is of course in general. I don't think it applies to rain forests. It does apply to California (next time you hear about a forest fire destroying homes, remember those forests need a hot fire to!). It also applies to most of the rest of the country (the proper fire is not as hot as in California so it won't destroy homes)

Re:One step China has taken -

[ArsonSmith]

Wrong, they don't "need" a hot fire. They only have fires to get rid of the dead wood that the greens lobby against cleaning out because some animal may live in there.

Without cleaning these forests out we get forest fires. a fire isn't required and is actually quite damageing during dry seasons because it kills off ALL the live trees as well. Controlled burning and wood fuel cutting permits go along way to prevent forest fires.

Re:One step China has taken -

[bluGill]

There are trees that do not release seeds until AFTER a fire. In California this is fairly common. In other areas you are correct, we don't need a fire so much as something to clean the forest out.

You're kidding, right?

[Delusional]

Are we looking at different images, or are the commenters just as ignorant of geography as the average slashdot reader is ignorant, of, say, the mating rituals of the human species? Or have we been overrun by neocons?

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:You're kidding, right?

[AKAImBatman]

The single biggest blot, other than the one over everybody's favorite red menace,

Am I the only one who gets a real kick out of this statement? :-D

Re:You're kidding, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Other,

Than trying to bash the US do you actually have anything to say that is worthwhile?

Re:You're kidding, right?

[Delusional]

At the risk of taking flamebait at face value -

I opened this post up to see the comments and saw an awful lot of, "gee, the US ain't so bad" comments - too many to choose just one to reply to, in fact - including several that apparently attributed to Canada the blob stretching from New York to Chicago, showing either a rather frightful ignorance of geography or a failure to look at the actual image. I simply wanted to point out that, according to both wackjob Hippie rhetoric and the satellite imagery in question, the US is easily the most egregious offender among "developed" nations.

And yes, Europe has a good blob going too, but let's remember that Europe has about twice the population of the US, in about two-thirds of the space, and still manages a smaller blob.

Wake up and ditch the SUVs, folks.

Re:all the pollution activist in the US are pointl

[Anonymous Coward]

Pollution, by it's very nature, is a problem that transcends boundaries and political lines. It is a problem that all nations have to fight together. American manufacturing continues to exist, and it is because of the environmental laws that we are finding new ways to manufacture without the same amount of waste. It has become a problem of finding the most efficient way to utilize limited resources available. It's also an effect of the position of the united states as a post-industrial economy. Yes, manufacturing is still important to America. Yes, other countries are polluting more than we are. Does that mean that we should increase our greenhouse gas outputs to match? No. As a global leader, it is the responsibility of the United States to show that it is possible to continue manufacturing without the waste and pollution of generations past.

good start

[Doc Ruby]

With or without Kyoto, China would be pumping pollution into the air. But with Kyoto, the rest of us would be pumping less, so that alone is reason enough to comply. The other, more subtle, reason is diplomatic. It's impossible for the US to pressure China into even minimal Kyoto compliance when the US hasn't signed it. Signing it would help us pressure them. Kyoto is a good start, which is better than nothing. The perfect is the enemy of the merely good. Even humans have to take baby steps towards big changes, walking before we run. Giant polluting countries are even more disposed towards incremental progress.

Re:good start

[banzai51]

It's not good for everyone because the Kyoto accords basicly require the US to pay for the whole damn thing. We have our pollution problems, but Europe has been very slow in acknowleging thier piece of the puzzle. Plus, leaving big polluters like China out, and not taking Russia to task for their situation, just won't get us anywhere. In short, Kyoto wasn't about attacking pollution, it was about extorting money out of the US.

Re:good start

[Anonymous Coward]

With or without Kyoto, China would be pumping pollution into the air. But with Kyoto, the rest of us would be pumping less, so that alone is reason enough to comply.

Thus giving China an enormous advantage that it can use to accelerate its overtaking of western industrial power.

The other, more subtle, reason is diplomatic. It's impossible for the US to pressure China into even minimal Kyoto compliance when the US hasn't signed it. Signing it would help us pressure them.

Pressure them into what exactly? The Kyoto protocal places virtually no restrictions on China. When it was drafted, in the early 90s, China had yet to emerge as the driving force behind the expansion of the world economy.

Kyoto is, simply put, about the reallocation of wealth under the guise of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Europe, in voluntarily meeting its objectives, is damning itself to industrial inferiority. The one good thing the Bush administration did was refuse to ratify it.

Even if we take the less cynical view that Kyoto really is about the environment, it's a treaty drafted in the geopolitical climate of the early 90s. Its assumptions are laughably dated after only a decade or so - the remnants of the Soviet Union have ceased to be an industrial power, China emerged as the main global industrial entity, and technology in the western world will significantly reduce CO2 emissions in the next few decades. So why exactly should we voluntarily attach the ball and chain that is Kyoto, while allowing our main industrial adversary to expand in whatever way it sees fit?

Re:good start

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, this is why having Russia sign it is a good thing, they can quite easily pressure the US together with Europe because if even Russia can comply the US should easily be able to.

Re:good start

[Doc Ruby]

Let's see some backup to this novel idea that Kyoto requires the USA to pay for the entire regime. Something consistent with your actual statements, not some softpedaling to the effect that the US would have the biggest change, as we're the biggest polluter, which is a good reason for the US to pay its way.

Re:good start

[Doc Ruby]

The US is still the world's main industrial entity, Russia is still a big industrial producer, and Kyoto would have given us the tools to get China under some control. Without it, we've got nothing - and over the time in which China could gain industrial supremacy, we'll all choke on the fumes. We have to start with something that has some effect, both in reducing global pollution, and in gaining traction on China's runaway pollution. If you maybe had some alternative to Kyoto that could do both of those right away, sure, we'd be better off with that. But we've got *nothing* effective without Kyoto. It would be nice to just wave a wand and get rid of both pollution and China's race to the top of industrial production. But instead we're racing them to the bottom of the garbage heap, which none of us can sustain.

Re:good start

[Doc Ruby]

The best pressure Russia can supply is competition in the sequestration credits market. That pressures countries like Russia, the US and China to reforest land denuded by generations of profligate clearcutting. And yes, even dirty Russia can comply without destroying their already sickly economy. The US can of course do even better. Once we're on board, we can compete with one another to clean up the mess we've made.

Re:good start

[Anonymous Coward]

The issue isn't whether or not China is party to Kyoto. In the Kyoto Treaty, China is one of the nations that is exempted from regulations due to the fact that its still a developing country. China isn't worried about Kyoto because they don't have to do jack to implement it. This is why Kyoto is fundamentaly flawed.

Re:good start

[Lars T.]

Let's see: Europe fixes their polution problems, while the US somehow manages to both sit on their thumbs and point fingers at China - and "Europe has been very slow in acknowleging thier piece of the puzzle". Yeah, right.

Re:good start

[Lars T.]

PS: Yes, we are all after you - because you act like paranoid pricks.

Re:good start

[DAldredge]

Please read some of the info that has come out in the past 6-12 months on the polution problem in China. With mosts of the worlds FDI going to china the problem will only get worse.

Re:good start

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the US is still the main industrial entity. Russia is a "big" industrial producer, but not even close to what it was as a superpower. Russia has already met its Kyoto protocal obligations without having to try - it's funny what the brutal collapse of the entire nation's economy will do. But the main hole in the protocol is China, which doesn't even have a mandated GHG reduction target.

In today's world, Kyoto is, to be overly simple, "unfair." But, you say, it's better than nothing. Perhaps, but that assumes that nothing will be done otherwise.

I'm of the opinion that technology, combined with some subtle legislative pushes and global market forces, will get the world's CO2 production under control. So called heavy hybrids, which are virtually an inevitability, will be able to take most people to work every morning on electricity alone. Even if we burn coal to make that electricity, it's still a substantial reduction in CO2 emissions due to the efficiency gains.

But it's reasonably likely that the electricity itself will come from nuclear sources. China, for all the bad things we can say about it, is pushing ahead with an incredibly ambitious pebble-bed nuclear reactor program. Once China proves that the technology is viable by building literally hundreds of these reactors, the world will follow.

The technology itself is sound: it's not science fiction, it doesn't rely on things that have yet to be invented... for heavy hybrids, oil prices just need to go up a bit more. Even in the medium-term, this is an inevitability: if we haven't reached peak oil production yet, we will in the next ten years - that's almost a certainty. For pebble-bed reactors, China needs to build them (and will - this is not speculation, but their stated plan) and demonstrate their effectiveness so that the rest of the world can finally abandon its fear of the atom.

A big worldwide push to severely restrict the actions of heavy industry will seem like an absurd idea once a few shifts in technology trends reduce CO2 emissions by more than the Kyoto protocal could have ever done.

This problem was born of technology, let it also be solved by it. To meet Kyoto requires that we cut back on industrial production. On the other hand, if we extend the timeline a bit and let things sort themselves out, we can balance economic factors with environmental ones. The way I see it, we're already working our way out of the hole we dug in the late 20th century. It might not be apparent yet, but we've begun. Have some patience... we may continue recklessly polluting for another two decades, but it's the long run that matters more.

Re:good start

[TykeClone]

In all seriousness - what about cropland? How does a small chunk of the country being reforested compare to endless acres of corn, soybeans, wheat, and other assorted growing things?

Re:good start

[Doc Ruby]

International treaties aren't driven so much by fairness as by leverage and momentum. Getting China to join the Kyoto treaty, by exempting it from its provisions, doesn't do any more harm, but it gets momentum. These are not agreements among friends to timeshare a car - they're diplomatic negotiations among billions of people, represented by rich, powerful people. Tactics that wouldn't fool you for a minute are routinely practiced to great effect around the world all the time. Kyoto is one of these times.

Re:good start

[Doc Ruby]

Unless something is done. If nothing changes, nothing will be different. When the only tool you have is a hammer, if you don't hit some nails, nothing gets done.

Re:good start

[Doc Ruby]

Cropland amounts for relatively small amounts of sequestration. Largely because even if an acre sequesters more carbon in, say, soybeans, over 50 years, than in a mass of trees, that soybean carbon is released into the atmosphere by metabolization. Just as the trees are worthless for sequestration if they're burned for fuel. Trees, however, are manufactured into persistent products, so their carbon stays out of the atmosphere. And we're not talking about small chunks of reforested country. Especially in Russia, we're talking about millions of acres of reforestation. Which forests are currently dissolved in the air in CO2.

I'd like to see some actual pictures of Greenhouse skies transformed into acres of forest, sequestering the dangerous carbon in equal units. It might be as galvanizing an educational aid as exhaling lungfuls of cigarette smoke through a handkerchief prove to teenagers.

Re:good start

[banzai51]

Europe fixes their polution problems, while the US somehow manages to both sit on their thumbs

Wow, talk about opening your mouth and proving beyond all doubt that you are ignorent. If you think for a second that Europe a) has owned up to being a major polluter and b) done much to stop it while c) American has done nothing in the last 20 years you're not looking. Clue: Try actually READING the Kyoto accords.

Re:good start

[Lars T.]

Errm, yeah, right. Whatever. Sure.

Re:good start

[TykeClone]

Not all of the soybean plant is used. Most of it is tilled back into the ground and only the beans themselves are harvested. Same with corn and wheat. The reason that the soil is actually black in the midwest (as opposed to what they call soil in other parts of the country!) is that the crop plants (and the prairie plants before them) are sinking carbon from the atmosphere and locking it back into the soil.

Re:good start

[beakburke]

The "Profligate clearcutting" all seems to have grown back in the last number of decades already, particularly in the US. As a previous poster already said, Russia has to do LESS THAN NOTHING to meet their part in Kyoto, since their target emissions levels are HIGHER than current production (because it was based on Soviet era emissions and production). China isn't restricted in any way by Kyoto, since they are considered "undeveloped' and thus Kyoto will have absolutely no effect on global warming, but it is going to cost all of the signers a pretty penny.

Re:good start

[Doc Ruby]

OK, compare the volume of retilled soyl (;) with the volume of a forest. After 80 years of retilling, vs. 80 years of forestry, which acre has the highest new elevation? That's the carbon sequestration advantage of forests.

In point of fact, I favor sugarcane for sequestration. It's got the highest photosynthetic efficiency of any land plant (8% of a quantum-theoretical 12%). It grows really fast and large, makes really strong fibers. And its sugar can be extracted through ancient, low-impact processing methods well integrated with the rest of the environment and many indigneous cultures. That sugar can be easily fermented into ethanol, and bioreacted through a fuelcell for high-efficiency energy, without emissions. Something like 2% total efficiency, from Sun to wire, can be obtained, without the losses in transmission and infrastructure manufacturing of semiconducting solar cells. The sugarcane also has promise in cleaning polluted water and soil. Plus, it tastes good!

Re:good start

[Doc Ruby]

No, the Soviet manufacturing, subsidized by their enslaved Russians and vampirized Eastern European (and other) satellites, has collapsed in the market economy. So they meet Kyoto requirements by retooling after losing a huge war. And their expanses of clearcut forest look like carbon credit farms, especially when they can continue to clearcut them again and again, using the wood. They'll probably ship it to Japan, for chopsticks, because the US has run out of wood that cheap. Most of our clearcut forests are now suburbs, cranking out the carbon dioxide like nobody's business.

China's Kyoto exemption, as I have reiterated in this thread since the beginning, does not increase their pollution production, but it does get them started on the regime. That's better than nothing. The rest of the world has also gotten on the path, bearing in actual effect the costs once merely deferred by smokestacks and exhaust pipes to the future and the distance. The future is here, what goes around, comes around, in this connected globe. China might be the country of tomorrow, but tomorrow always comes. Now that is evident, we must do something to stop killing the skies, or these enhanced sunsets might be numbered.

Re:good start

[TykeClone]

In Iowa, I can dig as deep as I'd care to, and not dig out of black topsoil. As I go north into Minnesota (into forested areas), the black topsoil occupies the top inch or two above sand and gravel. A bit farther north (in the boundary waters area), the top soil is just an inch or so above the rocks of the Canadian shield.

From that super-unscientific method of research, I'd say that large crops of plants related to grasses to a pretty good job of gathering up carbon - better than forests.

As far as sugar cane goes - that kind of goes with what I was saying - small, fast growing plants do more for removing CO2 than large trees - especially when those trees start to shade the areas under them pushing out competing plants from growing near them.

I'd agree on the ethanol bit, but up here in the land where sugar cane doesn't grow, corn is a good substitute. The worst bit about the efficiency of creating the ethanol is the amount of electricity required.

Re:good start

[Doc Ruby]

I'm not so sure that the soil to which you're referring represents as much carbon sequestration as an 80' forest, and their topsoil underneath. Much of the mass in these fast-growing plants is water; compare the mass of a dried treetrunk to a bundle of dried corstalks. And their speed of growth is apparent in multiplying their annual small starting size, compared to the accumulated mass of the trees, and the leaves most of them shed into topsoil.

One of us is going to have to get off their lazy wristpads and find some sequestration comparisons, per acre, of various plant species. Or, more appropriately, of different actually cultivated acres, including the various plants and organisms that actually accompany one another in the field. I'm betting on the trees :).

BTW, I don't think sugarcane is "small", compared with soybean. Again, those annual sequestration stats will resolve our mutual speculation.

Re:good start

[TykeClone]

BTW, I don't think sugarcane is "small", compared with soybean. Again, those annual sequestration stats will resolve our mutual speculation.

Absolutely not - I meant small in comparison to an 80' tree!

Re:good start

[Doc Ruby]

Even compared to the tree. Sugarcane grows densely to several meters tall, much thicker than the widely-spaced trees several times taller. Again, actual sequestration stats will help us distinguish. My initial research shows that pure "species mass per acre" measures are misleading:
" The team discovered that the acres which were interplanted with Albizia trees (Albizia falcataria) were able to sequester more carbon than areas where eucalyptus trees were planted alone. The researchers believe that this is due to the nitrogen-fixing qualities of the Albizia trees."

Interestingly, that research was conducted on "a former sugar cane farm" in Hawaii. So the numbers we seek might lie just a few clicks away.

Re:good start

[TykeClone]

By my reading, they're saying that nitrogen-fixing plants do more "good" in regards to capturing carbon than normal plants on their own.

Soy beans and "Autumn Cardinal Olive" shrubs both are plants suited for temperate zones that fix nitrogen into the soil (as a matter of fact, that is why most large fields of corn are rotated every other year with soybeans).

Re:n/t

[Anonymous Coward]

If the missus is up on blocks, then go to the pub.

Obligatory

[sokoban]

In Eastern Soviet Russia, Nitrogen dioxide pollutes you.

Re:all the pollution activist in the US are pointl

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just a crying shame that the rest of the 75% are consumed by nations that could care less about emission regulations....

That's where the Arctic haze comes from

[RealAlaskan]

I'm not surprised about the concentrations of pollution in Northern China and Siberia. The Soviets put quite a lot of industry in Siberia (why?) and it pollutes a lot. After all, the folks in Moscow were never going to smell it.

In Alaska, we often see a hazy sky, caused by pollution from Siberia and points east.

For the long term, we should probably be more worried about the Soviet nuclear waste the Soviets and now the Russians have accumulated in the Arctic and Pacific Oceans. Then there's the nuclear plants, two of them in Siberia, that we're down wind of. They were built by the same government which brought us Chernobyl.

If you're looking for things to worry about, you'll never run out.

Re:That's where the Arctic haze comes from

[Mr_Icon]

The Soviets put quite a lot of industry in Siberia (why?)

• When nazis were advancing, a whole lot of factories were pretty much picked up and moved far away from the front -- mostly Urals
• Siberia is where all the prisoner slave labor was kept, though they mostly performed low-level tasks such as mining and building railroads, which made these industries relatively easy to access.
• Siberia is very far from borders and very hard to get to for an invading force, and since a lot of heavy industry were considered military targets, placing them in Siberia made sense
• You don't have to worry about cooling in Siberia. :)
• Keeping potentially dangerous industries in one of the most sparsely populated regions of the country makes lots of sense.

However, to my knowledge, most Soviet-era factories were abandoned in late 80s and early 90s, when the economy completely tanked, so the ecological situation should actually be dramatically improving there, since I would estimate that at most 5-10% of those factories are still operational, and even those have heavily modernized. Current Russian economy is almost solely based on exporting oil, natural gas, and other natural resources, and importing the same stuff that you guys in the US are importing yourselves--from China and neighboring industrial armpits.

So, I wouldn't go around blaming Siberians for spoiling your air. There's just not much there to spoil it. Remember, Russia is about 140 million people and dwindling rapidly. It's hard for us to compete with Indo-China and South Asia, with almost 3 billion people population.

--The Soviet (former)

Re:That's where the Arctic haze comes from

[RealAlaskan]

I understand what you're saying about industries fading away in the Russian far West, and I agree that Siberia probably isn't producing nearly as much air pollution as it used to. However, I wouldn't assume that the local pollution situation is getting better there. Read this account of how old chemical and nuclear waste storage areas are deteriorating and leaking. Mostly a local problem, I guess.

Also, I understand that most new oil production there is in the Arctic. We'll see how much of a mess that makes. I suspect that since the western oil companies are getting involved, that we won't see any deliberate pollution, but who knows. One of the big attractions of Russia for them is the lax attitude towards pollution. Certainly, they aren't interested in producing in Alaska, where they get not only high costs, but also bad publicity for even trivial spills.

Re:That's where the Arctic haze comes from

[dbIII]

Then there's the nuclear plants, two of them in Siberia, that we're down wind of

Don't worry, the advertising agencies tell us that nuclear power is so clean you can brush your teeth with it, and so cheap that your taxes don't have to pay for any of it. Others, without the benefit of special white powder, just see it as an expensive way to boil water, with a financial break even point always just around the corner (Yes I know folks, sometime someone will build a pebble bed reactor big enough to power a provincial city somewhere - but it hasn't happened yet).

Re:That's where the Arctic haze comes from

[Anonymous Coward]

The Chernobyl reactor design is completely safe if operated in accordance with instructions. To cause it to actually _blow up_ requires that someone override safety systems AND drive it into an unstable state (either alone is not dangerous).

We do now know how to build plants which can't explode (they still produce dangerous waste products of course) but it isn't felt to be important because a randomly selected teenager with a copy of the manual translated into their native language could have kept Chernobyl from exploding. Just leave the safeties switched on, and if you screw up it shuts down. Only trained technicians deciding to explicitly override safety features could make it blow up. They did, and it did. That's what was genuinely scary at Chernobyl and in the USSR's nuclear power industry - the culture of safety had degraded to the point where people routinely took risks that went far beyond the pale.

Surprisingly few of the people involved in this grave error died from the resulting accident, at least in the days immediately following.

Re:That's where the Arctic haze comes from

[Hoi Polloi]

"sometime someone will build a pebble bed reactor big enough to power a provincial city somewhere - but it hasn't happened yet"

Actually China is doing this right now. New Nukes for China

Re:That's where the Arctic haze comes from

[dbIII]

"sometime someone will build a pebble bed reactor big enough to power a provincial city somewhere - but it hasn't happened yet"
Actually China is doing this right now. New Nukes for China

Try reading the article, the reactor size is only 10MW, which is absolutely tiny on the scale of electricity generation since the 1930's. It is a prototype.

Re:Are you crazy?

[Exocet]

Well, it's a just a mirror and I clearly stated it was a PDF which I think Slashdot's denizens don't like for some reason. So I figure I'm safe and if not, oh well.

It's not like the article points directly to a 245KB PDF right off've my web server. :P

BTW: I fixed it so both links work, so no more 404 off've the "bad" initial link.

Rivers ?

[uebermts]

from looking at the european map, it seems like, that most red parts are over rivers (Thames, Rhine, Po). Is that a coincidence (most cities where founded near rivers) or has it a direct reason with water ?

Re:Rivers ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like in the US shippers come inland on the rivers. It only makes it comon sense to shoten the distance to lower costs transporting hazerdous materials. I grew up in Houston and you can light the houston ship channel on fire if you wanted to, but just be leary as it would take out the entire gulf coast and go up the mississippi.

Re:Rivers ?

[Hannes Eriksson]

Also looking at the map, it seems like, that the map doesn't show all of Europe. I am living off scale! I'm 300 miles north of the map, you US-centric unsensitive slobs/zealots!
On the other hand, the air/water here is clean enough that you could clean many things by placing them in the rain... Total R0xx0r!

Re:Rivers ?

[Artifakt]

How far North did the sattelite orbit? We missed Hannes!

Re:Rivers ?

[Anonymous Coward]

The coincidence is that humans have built many of our power plants along the rivers, because of (1) available cooling water to drive the steam reactions, and (2) potential transportation of fuel along the waterways. The red line of pollution in the USA on that map corresponds to the Ohio River, where most of AEP's old coal power plants live. Of course, the EPA has been tracking all of this for some time...

Re:Rivers ?

[Anonymous Coward]

European industrial centres are old (about as old as the USA). They date from the era when water transport dominates, so they tend to be on naviable rivers.

Opening our eyes

[Doc Ruby]

The article's maps show an example of how "human activities impact air quality". But of course Greenhouse deniers will whine that there's no evidence that puny humans can affect the big, wide world. There's ample evidence that we are locked in a vital interaction with our atmosphere, affecting it for better or worse with our industrial activities. When you hear people denying even the possibilities that are demonstrated simply and graphically as this, you can discredit any further comments. Or let them draw you into their denial to your mutual detriment.

Re:Opening our eyes

[Entrope]

Help, I'm locked in a vital interaction with the atmosphere -- if I stop breathing, I die!

You speak of "Greenhouse deniers" without defining them or explaining why they are relevant. This kind of map shows only one kind of pollutant, and does not purport to show a causal relationship between human-generated pollution and temperature. Ranting about them with such a flimsy basis is only reducing yourself to the level of "Greenhouse deniers."

Decades ago, people were worried about nuclear winter. It never happened, largely because nuclear bombs have not been used in war since WW2. Pollution is similar: Global warming can be caused by excess pollution, but there are many other -- including more local -- reasons to reduce pollution. There are links to elevated cancer rates, birth defects, and a host of other health-related problems, for both humans and other animals, when pollution goes up; none of these rely on the much more tenuous (and less well-understood) link between global temperatures and air pollution.

If we are fortunate, we will never find out how much air pollution is too much for our planet to handle. We can improve our chances by arguing clearly and coherently to reduce pollution, rather than resorting to hyperbole or patronizing.

Re:Opening our eyes

[Doc Ruby]

Help, I'll never know whether nuclear war causes nuclear winter!

Greenhouse denial is everywhere. The name is descriptive enough to know what it means, but I'll explain (as I have in umpteen other Slashdot posts). The Greenhouse is the accumulating atmospheric defect (from human perspective) that traps more solar energy than the biosphere has adapted to survive. It's a feedback loop, with excess CO2 gas - and others, like the NO2 demonstrated in this map - trapping more energy, which causes more biological cycles to release more CO2 into the atmosphere. The CO2 balance moves from one equilibrium to another, at differing concentrations. Some of these biological cycles include human activity, like burning oil and coal, or their byproducts. It's a cycle because the the increased concentration causes more extreme weather fluctuations, which stimulate burning more fuel (air conditioning, heating, transportation for refugees and commuting, etc), which generates more CO2.

People are very attached to their energy consumption, and the changes are relatively slow (over lifetimes and generations). So it's easy to deny the process, especially when the most powerful people depend on the industries that perpetuate the process. So people deny the Greenhouse. They are Greenhouse deniers. Like most pathological denial, they demand black and white proofs of subtle, complex phenomena, and make black and white statements to support their denial. So Greenhouse deniers will say that there's no evidence for human effects on the environment. This map is just another compelling confrontation with that denial, from which deniers cannot recover, at least in credibility from naive listeners.

There are lots of reasons to quit polluting. The Greenhouse is one of them. And the stubborn danger from Greenhouse deniers is a reason to cite examples like this when debunking their delusions.

Re:Opening our eyes

[MarcQuadra]

Hey there!

I'm not denyig that atmospheric pollution isn't going to raise temperatures, but I'm not going to delude myself into thinking that the temperature doesn't change dramatically all on it's own.

By focusing on 'greenhouse' gasses and relatively harmless stuff like NO2 and CO2, we're losing track of the really dangerous TOXIC stuff getting dumped all over the planet in the air, ground, and water.

Listen, even if we raise the temperature some it's no big deal compared to the destruction of higher life in the seas. If we keep up our current levels of pollution, were going to be hard-pressed to drink clean water, breathe clean air, and swim with anything beyond jellyfish and red tides.

'Global Warming' is, in my opinion, a massive DISTRACTION from the real problems that are lurking right around the bend.

Re:Opening our eyes

[Doc Ruby]

Since *your* time is limited, *you* work on organic pollution. I will do my part to work on whatever I have prioritized. If were an organization with conflicting priorities, we could spend some of our energy hashing this out. Instead, we're just two people discussing these issues in public. You do your thing, I'll do mine, and anyone else watching can do theirs.

Re:n/t

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck, I got first post.

Pity the boozers are shut(ting) now.

Still, I can flip her over and pot the brown.

Re:all the pollution activist in the US are pointl

[fiannaFailMan]

I entirely agree, the rest of the world could care less because they care a lot more than the US. The US, however, couldn't care less.

Re:all the pollution activist in the US are pointl

[Brandybuck]

Yet according to this map the US isn't producing 25% of the pollution...

I don't believe it

[bigtangringo]

I'm sorry but I don't believe anything scientists say about the climate.

If you read http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/environment/ it's quite obvious climatologists have no idea what the hell they're talking about as almost every article contains something about "this new information radically changes the way scientists think about xyz."

Don't get me wrong, we do need to stop burning fossil fuels, stop driving SUVs and shoot trash into the sun. Climatologist is still synonymous with quack in my book.

Re:I don't believe it

[pclminion]

You "don't believe it?" How can you "not believe" a map? Do you think the satellite is biased? Tell me, do you think the satellite will vote for Nader?

Re:I don't believe it

[bigtangringo]

I believe the map shows NO2 levels accurately, I don't believe that it's necessarily a bad thing or even caused by humans.

Re:I don't believe it

[genner]

Clearly this satellite supports the green party.

Re:I don't believe it

[pclminion]

I believe the map shows NO2 levels accurately, I don't believe that it's necessarily a bad thing or even caused by humans.

Please. This argument might be remotely plausible if we were talking about CO2. NO2, on the other hand, is highly reactive and can't exist in equilibrium in the atmosphere.

If some natural process was producing huge amounts of NO2, and that process tended to be concentrated in areas of high population density (as the map clearly shows), don't you think we would have discovered and studied that natural process by now?

And as for whether NO2 is harmful, apparently you haven't breathed any lately.

Re:I don't believe it

[chrome]

I, for one, welcome our new satellite masters!

Re:I don't believe it

[El]

Don't get me wrong, we do need to stop burning fossil fuels, stop driving SUVs and shoot trash into the sun. Well, 2 out of 3 ain't bad... wouldn't shooting trash into the sun take more energy that all those SUVs combined? And personally, I think that todays garbage is tomorrows valuable resource -- all we need to do is figure out a way to store the trash for a few hundred years until the technology to economically extract resources out of today's trash is developed. Isn't all that fossil fuel actually yesterday's trash?

Re:I don't believe it

[bigtangringo]

Odd, the maps of population density and NO2 levels show huge areas that are very heavily populated being near empty of NO2.
Granted, there are some sections of the map where large concentraions of people and NO2 coincide but there are many others that do not.

Re:I don't believe it

[dbIII]

stop driving SUVs and shoot trash into the sun

I don't think you realise the gravity of the situation.

Re:all the pollution activist in the US are pointl

[Martin Blank]

Among the larger nations, the US has the highest per-capita emissions in many things. But I think there's something more complex here. For example:

How many nations produce automobiles? US vehicles are used around the world.

How many nations produce aluminum? This is an extremely power-intensive procedure. (Anyone know what fraction of the US grid goes to these plants?)

I'm not sure about worldwide aluminum production, so I may be off there, but it's something to consider.

This story and an earlier one on /. ....

[3seas]

... and then there is the dark ages --- talk about air pollutants...

Re:you are exactly right

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that I was going to email you, but if I wanted to I couldn't figure out how.

Re:all the pollution activist in the US are pointl

[TheSync]

The US contains 5% of the world's population but consumes 25% of the world's resources.

Not sure what your exact definition of "resources" is, but one should remember that the US produces 25% of global GDP - that is, 25% of the worlds goods and services.

Looking at pollution, CO2 emmissions per dollar of US GDP have been steadilly decreasing for 50 years. On the other hand, CO2 emmissions per capita in the US (and the UK) have held pretty steady, despite significant increases in GDP per capita.

The Oxbridge CO2/GDP Analysis has some more data.

Just in case...

[Anonymous Coward]

If the link doesn't work, try this instead:

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEM340NKPZD_index_0.html

Which is a direct link to the source article.

Re:all the pollution activist in the US are pointl

[krlynch]

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.

Depending on how you quantify that . . .

[mosb1000]

Of course, that depends how you quantify resources. Do you use the dollar value of the resources, or the mass, or the volume? Perhaps some other index all together is in order. At any rate most of our food is domestically, and a good portion of that really isn't on the global market. Certainly our water consumption is not an issue since other countries could never use that.

Really the only resource we use a lot of is oil, and boy do we use a lot of that.

Huh?

[Snodgrass]

from the article:
"Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) is a mainly man-made gas...It also plays an important role in atmospheric chemistry, because it leads to the production of ozone in the troposphere"

Wait...I thought mankind was destroying the ozone layer, but man-made chemicals play an important role in ozone creation?

Obviously there's probably some sort of something or other going on here.

Re:Huh?

[phebz23]

The Troposphere is the layer of the atmosphere that we exist in, and makes up about 75% of the total atmosphere. The 'Ozone' layer or the Stratosphere is above it. You can find more info on Wikipedia.

Re:Huh?

[Bootsy Collins]

Wait...I thought mankind was destroying the ozone layer, but man-made chemicals play an important role in ozone creation?

This is the stuff they were supposed to teach you in high school.

Both of the statements you say above are true. Yes, processes associated with human activity (basically, the production and release of chloroflurocarbons) have, over time, resulted in a degradation of the stratospheric ozone layer (there is, fortunately, some evidence that things are finally improving here, but that's another conversation). And yes, pollutants associated with human activity produce tropospheric ozone.

These two statements do not in any way conflict. The key is the presence of the words "stratospheric" and "tropospheric."

Ozone is toxic to humans; you don't wanna breathe it. So you don't want it in the troposphere (low altitudes, where we are). If it's up in the stratosphere (very high altitudes), it's not around us, so we're not breathing it. Ozone in the stratosphere also does a good job of screening out sunlight of potentially harmful energies; ozone in the troposphere isn't effective at screening out UV radiation.

So to summarize:

Stratospheric ozone: good.
Tropospheric ozone: bad.

Unfortunately, tropospheric ozone doesn't really get much of a chance to rise up and replenish the stratospheric ozone, because ozone is such a fragile molecule. So you can't look on it as a good thing for that reason, either.

Re:Huh?

[M. Baranczak]

Executive summary:

Ozone in upper atmosphere: good (absorbs UV rays).
Ozone near the ground: bad (it's poisonous).

See here for more info.

-1, Flamebait

[Anonymous Coward]

...

Surprised not to see many red blobs over the US?

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess you've been listening to the Gospel according to the Liberal Media(tm) a little too much. Ask yourself why many cars can't be imported into the US because of the high cost of complying with US emissions standards. While you're doing that, ask yourself how many cars and motorcycles in asia don't even have catalytic converters on them.

China vs America in a few years

[agulliford]

America are without doubt the energy gluttons of today. China will almost certainly be the energy gluttons of tomorrow(Here is a nice article in The Times on that.)

However America can do something about it right now if they want to while China probably cannot. Indeed, if the USA do not act now they probably will not be able to in ten years because by then the Chinese renminbi will be the foreign reserve currency of choice & the USA economy will most likely be running on fumes. China's growth was 9% last year & they now have the second largest GDP (by purchasing power parity) on the planet. Exports to the USA are rising at 20% pa. This is probably the Americans last chance.

Re:China vs America in a few years

[Anonymous Coward]

Oblig. offtopic American political nonsense...

That's why we need to re-elect Bush, then he can annex China as the 51st state and see, America's problem solved. How could it be possible? Just throw more military spending at the problem. Have to protect our new industrial center and all.

Better quality images?

[Alcimedes]

I know some folks who teach courses on air pollution. Just wondering if anyone knew where I could get higher quality versions of those nitrogen pollution maps. Since the course has been taught for 10 years, I'm sure the images they're using are out of date.

Re:Better quality images?

[Anonymous Coward]

You should try in the ESA page:

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEM340NKPZD_index_1.htm l

There are a good article and a lot of dates.

If you dont find what you want I suppose you can try to contact them.

Re:all the pollution activist in the US are pointl

[radinator]

"Read my lips. The US contains 5% of the world's population but consumes 25% of the world's resources."

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.

Well obviously...

[nmb3000]

In Soviet Russia, air pollutes YOU!

precursor to The Day After Tomorrow

[coconutstudio]

What does it all mean? Could this be the precursor as to what event is to come? Is there a possibility that we may face cataclysmic disaster in the near future? Should we consider moving South of the 45th parallel? Could global warming really start an ice age? Will we be addressed by an acting president on the Weather Channel?

Re:precursor to The Day After Tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

Could John Burroughs really be Elvis Presley?

difference between NO2 and CO2

[pepax]

You are confusing NO2 (in the maps) with CO2 (your post). Since the Kyoto protocol tries to regulate CO2 and not NO2, you are completely off the mark here. Btw., nitrogen oxides are produced during any burning process that involves air, because at high temperatures the nitrogen that's present in the air but normally relatively inert does react with the oxygen that's also in the air. So, even hydrogen based cars using air to burn the hydrogen will produce oxides of nitrogen, such as NO2.

validity of the study

[theMerovingian]

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:validity of the study

[theMerovingian]

(disclaimer: yes I am a prefessional geographer)


On the other hand, I am not a prefessional speller...

Re:validity of the study

[Colin Smith]

Interesting the concentration round the industrial north of Italy as you say, bounded by the mountain ranges.

Re:validity of the study

[Anonymous Coward]

Naturally, in locations where airflow is reduced, the vertical profile of ANY gas concentration will be higher.

Gasses do not self-concentrate. Areas of reduced airflow will only become "more" polluted if there is a source of gaseous pollution within that area. The only way that you might be correct is if the relevant portion of the air column is far better mixed (due to uplift, etc) in these areas than in the rest of the world, so that the mass per area of surface appears higher. However, I an not aware of stagnant "upper" atmospheric areas, so I don't believe that that was the intent.

Dispersion can only reduce the concentration of a substance. Stagnation generally exacerbates local pollution problems, not regional pollution problems (which tend to be long range transport problems involving atmospheric reaction products, i.e., acid rain, rather than the source gasses).

Re:validity of the study

[theMerovingian]

Atmospheric pollutant concentrations expressed as mass per unit volume of atmospheric air (e.g., mg/m3, ug/m3, etc.) at sea level will decrease with increasing altitude because the atmospheric pressure decreases with increasing altitude. (cribbed from here: http://www.air-dispersion.com/formulas.html#altitu de/concentration, see also equations listed)

The same reason we have sharply higher rainfall in areas facing coastal winds and abutted by mountain ranges would cause increased pollutant concentration in the same areas.

Will post more detailed info if you reply :)

It's easy, really...

[jellisky]

Notice that NO2 leads to the production of ozone in the TROPOSPHERE.

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:n/t

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll need a driptray.

NO2 is not that good.. N2O is much better :)

[roman_mir]

Nitrogen dioxide should be harvested and converted to very very useful Nitrous Oxide, which is very very very hahhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
jahahhahahaaaaaaaaaduuude it's funny :)

Re:all the pollution activist in the US are pointl

[michael_cain]

The US contains 5% of the world's population but consumes 25% of the world's resources.

And produces just over 21% of the world's goods and services. Yes, Japan and Germany are more efficient about it than we are, but not that much more once you consider that they have some geographic advantages. Canada, whom no one ever seems to bitch about, uses more energy per-capita than the US. The simple fact is that the only way the US can cut its use significantly is to become "poorer" by consuming less: one car per family, not two; 1000 sq ft homes, not 2000 sq ft; one TV, one PC per household; a radically different diet because shipping food around the country or across the ocean takes up sizeable amounts of energy; less air conditioning (try living in Houston that way); and so on.

NASA?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you mean NOAA.

Actually...

[Jack Zombie]

That blob is neither China itself, nor Eastern Russia, nor the east side of a russian, but a graphical representation of NO2 pollution levels over a region of China. /grammar nazi, joke

Re:all the pollution activist in the US are pointl

[Incadenza]

How many nations produce automobiles? US vehicles are used around the world.

They are also produced around the world. You surely don't think every Ford or Chrysler was built in Michigan?

what are the facts though

[Jay9333]

Maybe bush has the worst record in your opinion... but the facts of the matter are air quality has improved in the 4 years he has been president. He cited that in the last debate, and I haven't heard anyone debunk it.

What are you going by? For all I know you're going by the fact that he supported legislation to allow thinning and management of the types of forests we saw are timberboxes a couple of years ago with the horrible and destructive fires out west. In that case... you and I can look at the same data and I can come to the conclusion that Bush actually has a better record on the environment then Clinton, since Bush has helped protect it from being burnt to ashes! We're talking minimal forest management here, not clear cutting.

Re:what are the facts though

[Squareball]

Lest we forget that Kyoto was voted down by the entire senate.. that includes John Kerry and John Edwards.

Re:what are the facts though

[tulax24]

What does improving air quality mean? This is a vague and unmeasurable statement(Yes I heard him say it too). My hunch is that this is referring to particulates, sulfur dioxide, or something of this sort, which likely have improved. Certainly it is not talking about reduced CO2 emissions, and most other greenhouse gases, which have worsened signifigantly under Bush.

People keep pointing out that we didn't join Kyoto because the developing countries, ie China, didn't have strict limits. Thats true. Yes joining would put us at an economic disadvantage. However, when it comes to preventing a global catastrophe, I think its time to stop talking about who's playing fair, and take action. Whats more important, giving your grandchildren a chance to live in a world similar to the one you were given, or your stocks going up a couple points?

As to the thinning and forest management, this was a gift to the timber industries, and is much more than is required to prevent forest fires.

If you want to compare Bush's record to other presidents, have a look at the total amount of land reserved for preservation. His doesn't even compare to other presidents.

Re:what are the facts though

[Anonymous Coward]

So the "Bush said so" fact is good enough for you? Go research it yourself rather than wait for someone else to do the work for you...

Re:what are the facts though

[Anonymous Coward]

jay's not a scientist, or at least he doesn't claim to be. So for someone like him to start arguing about his own research would be vain anyway. He cited an administration that employees hundreds of scientists. Feel free, coward, to cite claims by companies or government officials countering the administration's claims. I'm sure he'd be open to that. All jay said is that he hasn't seen anyone do that. I agree with him. With all the fury that the demoncrats go after Bush's claims, you'd think they'd be all over that one if it weren't true.

Ok, who else thought of placing a park?

[grasshoppa]

Who else thought that you could place a few parks to clean the air in the area?

Ah, simcity...:)

I was suprised too !

[Jackal82277]

I was surprised not to see a small red dot over Jamaica.

Re:Take note - Blame Clinton for Kyoto

[MerlynEmrys67]

Why is Bush being blamed for backing out of Kyoto... Clinton was the president when he signed the treaty. He knew full well it would never pass muster in the Senate - so never asked for it to be voted on...

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.

Zentradi take note

[Illserve]

Of how easy our industrial centers are to spot from orbit.

We micronians are entirely ignorant of space-war tactics.

Ever been out west?

[El]

there aren't a lot of cities or heavy industry in the Western U.S., its mostly farms, desert and empty space. How true! Last time I was in Los Angeles, all I saw were farms, desert, and empty space! And by the way, doesn't Alaska get most if it's electricity from coal? Where is the red dot over Anchorage?

Re:Ever been out west?

[demachina]

If you'd read my post, dumbass, I said all the cities on the pacific coast are in a long skinny line and prevailing winds blow the auto pollution in to otherwise empty deserts, hence you dont get the high concentrations over a wide area like you do in the Northeast. Compared to the rest of the West San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle are tiny specks.

"And by the way, doesn't Alaska get most if it's electricity from coal?"

I'm only aware of one coal mine in Alaska at Healy and I think the new power plant there is state of the art for pollution reduction. It went online around 1998. Alaskan electricity consumption must be tiny compared to the densly populated Northeast, no one lives there and its not a manufacturing mecca. Not sure how their total production compares to Alberta or what kind of pollution controls Alberta's plants have.

Again this satellite is picking up concentration. One coal power plant complex in an otherwise empty region isn't going to show high concentrations of NO2 especially if the plant has state of the art for NO2 pollution controls. You can reduce NO2 with state of the art plants, its much harder to do anything about the CO2.

Good book

[Cygnus78]

A good book about the environmental problems is Earth Odyssey by Mark Hertsgaard. Good section about China and the problems there.

Some photographs from China...

[antdude]

See Yahoo!'s News images I saw yesterday:

#1, #2, and #3.

No

[YrWrstNtmr]

With or without Kyoto, China would be pumping pollution into the air.

How about a different Kyoto? One that doesn't major current and future polluters blameless, and penalize everyone else.

Kyoto is a good start, which is better than nothing. The perfect is the enemy of the merely good.

And the well meaning but fundamentally flawed is the enemy of the good.

Re:No

[Doc Ruby]

How *about* a different Kyoto? Where is it? If we give Bush 4 more years, will his "better Kyoto" be just around the corner? Even Kyoto took time, and it's already the law in many countries. How about complying with Kyoto, while we spend the time producing this next step? The workable, though flawed, is what is known in international negotiations as the "good enough for a start". Those fundamental flaws are the motivators to come up with something better. While doing nothing is drowning us in our own pollution, as we can easily see in this new map.

Re:No

[YrWrstNtmr]

Why bring Bush into it? This is not strictly a Republican thing. The Kyoto Protocol is/was universally reviled by both the Clinton and Bush administrations. 95-0 against in the Senate under Clinton in 1997. VP Gore signed it, but it was never submitted to the Senate for ratification. Gore's signing was simply for show.

Bush has said he agrees with the general ideas, but not the details of this particular treaty. Accepting a flawed reaty may well prevent you from getting something that actually works.

Major flaws
1. Major producer China is exempted. Net increase in the coming years.
2. Former Soviet Union states are already below their 1990 levels. They are then allowed to sell credits to other states. Net CO2 decrease - zero.

Here's my proposal:
Decrease a countries net CO2 output by X%, within Y years. Initial CO2 measuring point being the day it is ratified in that country. No exceptions, no CO2 credits. 'Reduce by X%'. Period.
This has several beneficial effects. 1. A level playing field. 2. Encouragement to ratify quickly, before your CO2 output increases even further. 3. Richer countries gain moneymaiking opportunities for helping poorer countries to meet their requirement. 4. Poorer countries get the technology transfer.
Alas, this would never fly, because it doesn't give an automatic advantage to some, and penalize others.

I completely agree with you that CO2 output should be reduced. Where we disagree is who. Doing the wrong thing, even under the best of intentions, is usually worse than doing nothing. We all live on the same ball. Let's all work together.
I'd really like to see a 10 year comparison of that data rather than a one time shot.

Re:No

[Doc Ruby]

Doing too little is almost always better than doing nothing. Especially because doing something generates momentum, and mistakes can be fixed, while doing nothing dispels momentum, and there's nothing to fix.

If *I* were setting up these treaties, I'd factor the costs of the CO2 pollution into the total economy. I'd set a short (12year) ramp for all economies to achieve CO2 balance, through CO2 reduction, sequestration, and purchase of credits for unbalanced CO2. Countries get the prices of CO2 credits scaled to their average per-capita income, proportional to their average per-capita CO2 output, during their rebalancing phase. But I'm not setting these regimes, nor are you. Instead, we're either nudging China into Kyoto and beyond, or we're doing nothing - those are the two actual alternatives. And so we're doing nothing to stop them. And we're all paying the cost of the damage, which means the US is paying most of the cost.

Re:all the pollution activist in the US are pointl

[Anonymous Coward]

"Read my lips. The US contains 5% of the world's population but consumes 25% of the world's resources."

Yeah, and we in the U.S. are the world's economic engine. When we have a recession, the whole world's economy goes into free fall. Maybe if you Europeans worked harder - instead of slothing around with your social welfare problems - you could contribute more to the world's economy so we wouldn't have to and then we could do something about our pollution since its so damn important.

I think instead of criticizing the U.S., many of the "member states" of the European Union should start paying us back your WWII debt. Or do we have to forgive yours along with the Third World's as well due to fiscal irresponsibility and failed leadership? Oh wait, your user name says "FiannaFail." Your country, *Eire*, doesn't have WWII debt because your nation chose to sit out of the *Big One.* My mistake - and not even a NATO nation still. Sheesh... And Ireland still receives U.S. aid...why?

Eastern Russia? Try China

[pertinax18]

Eastern Russia is definitely not the problem. If the article poster had any sense of geography, he would have noted that the "red blob" is over China, specifically Beijing, Harbin, Xian and other immense northern Chinese industrial cities.

Eastern Russia - Norilsk Nickel

[nicolaiplum]

I expect the blob of NO2 in the middle of Siberia is Novosibirsk and particularly smelters of (or formerly of) Norilsk Nickel, at one time the single biggest source of SO2 in the world. Way to go...

Re:Eastern Russia - Norilsk Nickel

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe Norilsk is actually to far north to show up on the map. Isn't it almost on the north coast?

New Zealand is Pollution-free

[vik]

New Zealand is obviously pollution free. So clean, in fact that it does not show on the map at all - even in outline!

Vik :v)

Re:New Zealand is Pollution-free

[refactored]

No we stink as well, just that the trade winds whip it into the wide blue pacific (almost) as fast as we make it.

Re:New Zealand is Pollution-free

[Ghouki]

"..we stink as well..." ...you must be from Roto-vegas! ;)

Re:New Zealand is Pollution-free

[Anonymous Coward]

New Zealand is obviously *NOT* pollution free. Our sheep fart with green gas and their farting contributes to the global warming as much as NO2 does.

Map of China's coal fires

[theslashdude]

Map of China's Coal Fires

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!

global pollution image

[jangobongo]

I agree with you, when you look at the image from the article showing the pollution concentrations, they seem to be aligned with the largest populated industrial areas, even in the US.

The other thing I notice is that there seem to be "tails" from the concentrated areas that trail off to the west in lighter shaded bands (due to the earth's rotation?).

Big shocker

[ICECommander]

Now there's a shocker: areas that have nitrogen oxides producing industry have more nitrogen oxides.

Better Pictures at ESA

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out the ESA version, It has much larger pictures. At least until it gets Slashdotted... http://www.esa.int/export/esaEO/SEM340NKPZD_index_ 1.html

Re:all the pollution activist in the US are pointl

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the less developed countries always will polute less per capita. If China manages to reduce population while producing the same economic/waste output they would be on a par with the US polution and standard of living as well. The polution should be measured per population times standard of living (in goods not in dollars) plus climate allowances - cold countries have to burn more. So if China elects to have a large population that's their business but it should not simply count towards polution.

Europeans live sitting in each others laps

[HornWumpus]

That's the simple explanation for why Europe is relatively filthy in just about every way vs. the United States (esp outside the NE corridor).

More people more filth. Very simple. When many of them are french the filth level just compounds.

But because they travel MUCH fewer miles/personyear and because they are packed together tight enough for mass transit to work they use less energy. BFD. Whay they pay in inflated land prices we have left to run our V10s (pussy V8s).

Why did'nt the US ratify Kyoto? It's a bad treaty that will put perverse incentives in the marketplace as it values immissions of CO2 differently in different places.

Some of the uninteded consquences are obvious. Move all energy intensive industrys into third world nations where the immissions are unregulated, ship the products (already true for labor and energy intensive/ Want to send Aluminim after steel?). So now the few powerplants in the third world are being used to produce aluminum for first world markets. Native users get no power etc

Re:Europeans live sitting in each others laps

[Anonymous Coward]

Why did'nt the US ratify Kyoto? It's a bad treaty that will put perverse incentives in the marketplace as it values immissions of CO2 differently in different places.

Pure, unadulterated nonsense.

Sure, Kyoto has problems. But the US didn't just not ratify Kyoto -- it refused to even join in the talks, where it could get Kyoto into the shape it could have been. The US rejected even talking about the CONCEPT of an environmental treaty.

The US dumped Kyoto because George Bush was pandering to the oil and coal producers in the US. Pure and simple.

Re:all the pollution activist in the US are pointl

[Martin Blank]

No, but the number produced in other nations isn't that large. How many cars does Sudan make? How about Indonesia? Thailand? A lot of those made in the US are still exported to other nations, and I suspect that, with a few exceptions such as Japan and maybe a handful of European nations, even those countries that do produce cars and trucks don't do so to nearly the same volume as does the US.

That's FANCY SCIAMACHY World Map ;)

[Anonymous Coward]

yes i'm trying to be funny.....but in a dry wit sort of way ;)

Re:night map / congo

[markus_baertschi]

This is one of the first things that hit me: The entire Congo area is light green, while it's equivalent in America (Amazon) remains dark. While the sparks are bright in the US, Eu and China, this is a much larger area with a significant level.

Why ?

Markus (scratching his head and thinking)

That strange one on the east of Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm a bit surprised not to see that many red blobs above US and the strange one is on the east of Russia."

That's China Fucktard.

Your surprised because?

[Ominous Armed Cow]

1. You didn't know that air quality in the U.S. has been improving continuously over the last several decades, even during the big bad Bush administration?

2. You didn't realize that color coded pictures of gases says nothing about the source of a gas, even if you were to blame it on humans based on someone's unchecked assertion.

Re:all the pollution activist in the US are pointl

[Anonymous Coward]

The map does not show all pollution, only nitrogen dioxide. Emmission controls have helped a lot in reducing nitrogen dioxide and sulpher dioxide (which contribute to smog and acid rain), but the US still releases lots of CO2 (which contributes to global warming).

PSA

[MightyYar]

I'm surprised this hasn't already been said:

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 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:PSA

[TykeClone]

So - your power company is spending extra money to produce expense power, while getting tax credits, and you're paying extra to receive it.

Not bad at all.

Re:PSA

[MtViewGuy]

That would be great if it weren't for those insane elitist NIMBY's that are holding up innovative wind power programs such as the proposed wind farm off the coast of Massachuetts.

I'll put the wind farm southeast of Nantucket Island (that will avoid the impact on air and sea traffic between Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket Island and the US mainland) with 200 three-megawatt wind turbines; that will generate some 600 MW of power, more than enough to power every building on both Nantucket Island and Martha's Vineyard.

Re:PSA

[MightyYar]

I think that I said it was 20% more expensive... what was your point? Some people are willing to pay more for "expensive" energy that doesn't pollute. That was the whole point of my post.

Re:PSA

[MightyYar]

To be fair, there were some problems with earlier wind farms. For one thing, they moved too fast and would kill birds. They now move much slower (without giving up efficiency) and they don't put horizontal surfaces on them that might attract birds.

Re:PSA

[TykeClone]

The power company is doing it anyway for tax credits. They're just getting you to pay extra for something that they were going to do anyway.

Alliant Energy does the same thing in Iowa. I've chosen not to sign up for it, but that's my choice. That choice has not affected the number of windmills in northern Iowa. As a matter of fact, most of the windmills in my part of the state are owned by a Florida power company looking to get those credits!

I don't have a problem with it, I was just pointing it out. If you'd like to do it, go ahead!

Re:PSA

[MightyYar]

I don't know what the energy regulation is like in Iowa, but in PA it has been partially de-regulated. That is, PECO still has a monopoly on the infrastructure but you are allowed to pick any supplier that you want. Whether PECO gets tax breaks or not, the main reason that they offer wind power is because they were losing customers and reams of publicity to competitors like Green Energy, which offer energy from purely renewable sources.

So again, while I can't speak for Iowa, you signing up as a customer DOES make a difference in places with deregulated energy.

Actually I just clicked on the map of Iowa that they have on the Green Energy site, and it says that Iowa is not currently deregulated. I know that the entire Northeast is now, though. So I'd say, yeah, it looks like it's not really a choice for you just yet.

is china in eastern russia now??

[riprjak]

I dont know which article the poster was reading, but it looked like the big red spot was smack bang over bejing in china and not in eastern russia.

I could be mistake, since we are so unpolluted down here in oz :)

err!
jak.

Hate to argue, but...

[phamNewan]

The most intersting thing of note is the concentration scale -1 to 6. Nothing on the units. Without the units that picture means exactly zero. Those units could be ppb (parts per billion), or ppm(per million). Almost any cool picture of pollution can be generated to show these results if the scale is small enough.

So while the study produced an interesting picture that shows something, maybe, by not scaling it properly, the entire thing useless.

NO2 by the way only means that nitrogen and oxygen were mixed at high temperature. Cars are the most common source of NO2 pollution. Industrial pollution is much better measured by different chemicals.

Re:Hate to argue, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. (To a point)

Even without units, you still have a relationship. I know that 6 is six times greater than 1. Unless of course they redefined the numeric scale.

Without units, it is hard to tell how bad things are. But you can still see where the worst areas are.

After all, this is statistics. You just have to understand what you are talking about and do not infer anything but what is shown.

Re:Hate to argue, but...

[entrigant]

From TFA:

The image shows the global mean tropospheric nitrogen dioxide (NO2) vertical column density (VCD) between January 2003 and June 2004, as measured by the SCIAMACHY instrument on ESA's Envisat. The scale is in 1015 molecules/cm-2. Image produced by S. Beirle, U. Platt and T. Wagner of the University of Heidelberg's Institute for Environmental Physics. Credits: University of Heidelberg

Look harder next time :).

Re:Hate to argue, but...

[otuz]

Mod parent up!

Re:Hate to argue, but...

[phamNewan]

That is interesting. That means that the maximum concentration is 2.26e-7 ppb. That is a concentration of 2.26e-16. So each increase in scale is 3.78e-8ppb. This is the real difficulty, the scale is so very, very, very small that it takes virtually no change to register.

This is of course assuming standard conditions of 273 Kelvin, and 1 ATM. Upper atmosphere could be a bit different from that, but the even 4 or 5 ORDERS of MAGNITUDE difference would still make this a very, very small difference.

The impressive part of this is that they can monitor concentrations so small.

Manmade gas?

[HermanAB]

So what is causing the mild concentration in tropical Africa? There is no industry there. The monkeys must be farting a lot...

Re:all the pollution activist in the US are pointl

[Space_Balls]

Have you EVER been outside the US? How many cars do you see in Europe that are MADE IN THE USA(not made by a US company) Here are the statistics: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/ind_car_pro Granted: The US is of course one of the biggest producers of cars, but per capita, Europe or Japan got it beat by a big margin.

Note to self.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fully read the parents posts before posting myself.

Re:all the pollution activist in the US are pointl

[Alaska Jack]

I basically agree with this, and wanted to add one thing.

I see this "25 percent of the world's resources" line constantly parroted by environmentalists, or those predisposed to ... well, let's not say anti-Americanism; perhaps just those inclined to believe the worst about America.

You point out that even if true, the statistic has to be stacked up next to the U.S.'s *output*. I think that's true. I also think you need to consider the nature of the output.

U.S. goods and services are used all over the world. And I'm not just talking about trade. There are also things like defense.

For 50 years it was U.S. Army tanks standing between the Red Army and the Fulda Gap. As I've pointed out in other /. posts, these tanks represented a MASSIVE U.S. subsidy of Western Europe's defense. They provided the peaceful conditions Western Europe needed, after a millenia of warfare, to develop stable, prosperous polities.

Those tanks are made out of steel. Steel factories produce pollution. I guess the point is pretty clear, so I won't belabor it.

- Alaska Jack

See what you want to see?

[Kell_pt]

I'm always surprised at how people manage to interpret things the way they want, despite obvious proof on the contrary.

First, I don't see how anyone can look at that map and claim Europe has more pollution than the US. C'mon, are you... visually deaf? Use a ruler if it needs be, but please take a close look. I understand that the 1st map being zoomed in can play a role in there, but please, just put it in perspective. The blob just above Italy is about 1/6 size of the one above the US, while the other large blob in Europe is about 1/5th that of the north american one. I mean... c'mon... :)

Second, bear in mind that NO2 is by far not the only polluting agent that human activity sends into the atmosphere - and it's not the only one that is nocious. It does cause O3 to build up, which would be a good thing in the upper layers of the atmosphere but deadly and poisonous at human-reachable levels (ever noticed there are pool-cleaning systems that use O3 (ozone) instead of clorum? ;)

I urge the 1st poster to really go and revisit that link and read the whole article, and actually examine the map in comparable zoom factors. And yes, that's China and not Russia, like another not-so-geographically-challenged reader pointed out. :)

I did like that comment about industry from more advanced countries fleeing to China where regulations are not as harsh - food for thought. I suppose it's ok if we go and poison other countries to protect our way of life. :) Perfectly sound reasoning. *grin*

Re:See what you want to see?

[Anonymous Coward]

C'mon, are you... visually deaf?

If I may be so bold as to suggest that there already exists a word that means visually deaf - and that is "blind".

Re:See what you want to see?

[chrome]

C'mon, are you... visually deaf?

If I may be so bold as to suggest that there already exists a word that means visually deaf - and that is "blind".

I didn't see that one coming ..

Re:See what you want to see?

[Kell_pt]

Just "blind" could come out (or go in) as an insult. "Visually deaf" will probably make the reader stop for a split of a second, maybe even smirk. And that's a bit more like I'd want it, as it (hopefully) promotes thought and not resent (of course this IS slashdot, but...). *winks*

some basic engineering for you

[astro-g]

when you burn fuel in a heat engine
(any heat engine, stirling cycle, IC, steam, jet turbine) you get Energy and Anergy.
Energy is the total output energy of the presumably chemical reaction driving the engine.
Anergy is the Usefull fraction of energy, that can actually be used for motive power, or whatever.
To get more Anergy for the same Energy you want to get the difference in temperature between the inside of the engine, and the cold side heat dump as great as possible, and the conductivity between them as great as possible.
therefore, to create a more efficient engine you have one goal. a higher operating temperature.

Exhaust gas recirculation is used to make sure that all fuel products are completely consumed.
Particulary to reduce emissions of carbon monoxide.

Re:some basic engineering for you

[ColaMan]

Those all all good engineering points, but sadly, higher combustion temperatures mean more NOx. So, the overall engineering intent is to find the sweet spot between NOx production and efficiency... which leads to losses in performance and fuel economy.

And Exhaust gas Recirculation *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 gives a pretty good overview of emission control systems on cars.

What about the sinks...

[Anonymous Coward]

USA also sinks 5+ x as much CO2/capita as China!

There is no base energy requirement per person.
Some need very little. If you live in the tropics at altitude or in trade winds, you don't need climate control to live. Granted you don't need it in Northern Canada either, but the old folks woudn't last as long.

Sure, the USA enjoys the fruits of a post industrial nation but why not?

now we know

[WormholeFiend]

where all the ricers hang out with their tricked out hondas.

Feeding the trolls.....

[jmorris42]

> By calling for the end of the Democratic party in part or in whole,
> you are saying America should be a dictatorship,

Not at all, just because I believe the Democratic party, as it is currently lead, is imnicial to American ideals doesn't mean i advocate one party rule. Parties have come and gone in the past, another would most likely replace it. For that matter, given my own preferences the Republican party would be next to get thrashed at the polls. I'l like nothing better than to see the Libertarian wing of the Republican party break out and join their more left leaning kin in the LP, but that ain't practical so long as the Democratic Socialists are a few percentage points from victory.

> I'll stretch is a bit, but not far, and suppose you consider anyone
> who would question the President or voice dissent of the US
> Government to be a traitor.

Not at all, I only call traitors a traitor. Seeing as John Forbes Kerry committed an overt act of treason on live TV (lending aid and comfort to an enemy while actual combat was occuring, by speaking what he had to know at the time were falsehoods but ALL should know now he did advance the enemy cause and directly caused additional torture of American POWs) I certainly feel justified in calling your probable candidate a traitor. That does not make you one automatically, only a misguided fool.

There is a world of difference between disagreeing with your government and becoming a traitor. Hell, I disagree with at least half of what shrubbie has done.

> I think you would have fit in quite well in Nazi Germany.

And with that I call Godwin's Law on thee and sign off.

Re:Feeding the trolls.....

[l0ungeb0y]

Ahhh call Godwins law... but since I did not call you a Nazi, only a fascist by your statement, that argument is full of shit. I even took the time as to illustrate why I was referring to your statements as those parallel to fascism. What better and more appropriate example of fascism should I submit???? Should I have referred to it as "the unspeakable German Regime of the 30's and 40's"? Or simply as Nazis????

There are many interesting parallels to Bush/Ashcroft et al and Hitler/Naziism. Your failure to see that shows your limited scope of thought.

So it seems I get the last word here. :)
I'll take it for all it's worth.

Funny how you ignored my statements about the Patriot act and it's provisions for secret search warrents, secret arrest, secret detention for indefinite periods and secret trials/convictions.
By Voting for Bush, you directly support that Act.

And what's this:
(lending aid and comfort to an enemy while actual combat was occuring, by speaking what he had to know at the time were falsehoods but ALL should know now he did advance the enemy cause and directly caused additional torture of American POWs)

You made no direct reference to this. Are you referring to his publicly throwing of his vietnam medals during protest? If so, by calling a man who on his own volition put his life on the line for his country and who found our actions there injust and in fact criminal a traitor is a hell of a thing to say and reinforces my beliefs that you could give a damn about our protected rights.
We have the right to voice dissent, we have the right to protest and we have the RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS AGAINST OUR GOVERNMENT. And don't forget we are a nation founded by traitors who bore arms against our government, a government that is still respected today. King George lived long after the MAgna Carta and his actions were an act of war against a group of insurgent radicals in a domain controlled by the British Government and said act of war was approved by the house of lords, their version of the Senate.

No, Kerry is no traitor, he bled for this country. Hence, the purple hearts. The purple hearts he threw away. He bled for those medals, he was luckky to be alive to recieve those. And you call him a traitor for excising his Constitutional right to assembly and free speech????? And then call Godwins law?
As I said, you are a supporter of fascism and against our National Charter, namely the Constitution.

Before reading your last reply I was almost feeling I had been a bit harsh... but I see I was entirely sport on as to what you really are. You are the one who has views that are inimical to ideals of America's veru foundation and would readily support the rise of a police state to imprison and execute all those who spoke out against our governments actions. By stating your 50% dissagreement regarding Bush, who cares??? It just brands you a coward for not having the balls to do shit, yet whine about and then turn around and call those that served and bleed, yet spoke out loud traitors. What a pussy. Just like Bush. Did he bleed? Hell no. BUt he'll get up and wear a flight suit under a banner that says "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED". While our fellow Americans continue to die in greater and greater numbers. And this is the man you'll vote for.

And hell yeah I'm voting for Kerry, I'd rather vote for Nader, but even if he did win, he'd get nothing accomplished because he would have no pull in either the House or the Senate. We need some real reform, we need to stop the legalized bribery of our Congressmen and Senators.

By voting Bush or any neoCon Republican, you are condoning the wholesale takeover of the military/industrial complex. Eisenhaur is beyond a doubt one of the greatest Republicans ever. I man, had I been even born then, would have voted for in a heart beat. I vote independently, regardless of party. If Giulianni were to run for pres, I just might vote, or Arny even, being a California citizen, I respect he h

Re:Feeding the trolls.....

[scottgfx]

You wouldn't by chance listen to Neal Bortz on the radio, would you?

Re:all the pollution activist in the US are pointl

[Martin Blank]

You're missing my point.

Lots of pollution over the US. Lots over Europe. Lots over Japan. Less over less-developed nations. How much of that is because the industries are located there, and not in the other nations? Some of these industries require a lot of electricity, and so are difficult to place in other countries. Those areas export to the less-developed nations. Rich providing goods for poor. Now do you get my point?

Blob over Canada

[DogsBollocks]

The blob over Canada appears to be Alberta, one of Canada's richest Provinces due to the amount of oil wells and natural gas plants. It looks like the main culprit here though may well be the Athabasca Tar Sands in Fort McMurray. (North Eastern Alberta) Apparently the largest deposit of oil ever but its trapped in sand, the exctraction process generates huge amounts of noxious fumes but the Government turns a blind eye because of the revenue stream. After all money is more important than the environment.

Re:Take note - Blame Clinton for Kyoto

[PacoTaco]

All Bush did was react to the reality of the situation

Yep, that's definitely Bush's strong point.

Another great article on that site

[Anonymous Coward]

is here http://www.physorg.com/news1041.html

A CO2 filter?

Air Improves Despite Bush

[cmholm]

Regarding Jay's points on the Bush environment record:

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.

removing co2

[Anonymous Coward]

Removal of rain forrests = more co2. They are gone. Soccer Moms need their all terrain vehicles in order to drive around town, so cleaning up cars is not an option. Nuclear power is scary so we can't use that. Wind power is much more expensive , and far more dangerous to the maintenence technicians who are required to climb up the towers daily. (dif towers each day)

An option to reabsorb co2, which is pulled into the structure of plants, could be to grow more plants.

A faster and possibly diasterous option is to dump fertilizer into the oceans to increase algae. It would increase the rate of co2 absorbtion by the ocean, and give us more o2 in return. But marine biologists probably have something to say about the ecological effects.

People could also turn off their televisions and dare I blaspheme, their computers.

I'll be dead before the climate goes nutty. So meh

aahh!

[Anonymous Coward]

In soviet russia... wait, no, pollution is ALREADY there!

Re:Take note - Blame Clinton for Kyoto

[EvolutionKills]

Quit with the jackass attitude and listen to the argument being made by the people who fault Bush for his actions with regard to the Kyoto Treaty--especially listen to why Kerry faults him for it. It is NOT being said that the Kyoto Treaty was flawless or should have been supported. What Kerry has said is that Bush was presented with a flawed treaty and, instead of having his people re-work it and lobby for the US's interests to be better supported by the treaty, he walked away from an international effort that would have been especially useful in smoothing over our relations during a period in which we were not exactly in everyone's good graces.

No doubt at this point somebody'll say that we can't be controlled by international entanglements that could hamstring our domestic policies or "way of life" (whatever that is). That is sometimes true, as in the case of our necessary defensive capabilities, but the obvious reality of the world is that we NEED allies, both strategically and tactically, if we're going to defend ourselves and obtain favorable import/export agreements with other countries. The most odious issue with Bush's involvement with the Kyoto Treaty is that it's another instance of his squandering international goodwill with a cavalier cowboy attitude. This is the basic neocon modus operandi and there's no indication that they've learned anything or will change if re-elected/appointed.

Re:Take note - Blame Clinton for Kyoto

[Artifakt]

Kyoto, as finalized, was very seriously flawed, simply because it treated nations such as China and India, both nuclear powers, as entitled to claim special impoverished 3rd world nation status. These latest poliution study results show why that was a really bad idea. There are good reasons why Kyoto needed rejected in that form.
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.

East of Russia? That's Beijing dude...

[Anonymous Coward]

heh, see subject.

Re:Take note - America just as bad.

[Travy.b]

America looked pretty shocking to me.

Regardless of exactly where it sits, its still looks to be the third worst after the eastern Europe and China area. Not to mention there are a Billion + people over there.

I'm in Australia. So I can Gloat since we're all blue ;)

Rich nations have huge debt & mortgaged future

[tentimestwenty]

Unfortunately your argument that wealthy/free nations reduce pollution and discourage terrorism is only for the short term. Most of them got to be wealthy through force, environmental pillage, or through running up huge debts to increase the standard of living. Resources run out and debts eventually get called. At that point, it all turns back to force. If you're thinking that we have so many enlightened nations now compared to the past, remember that most of it is from a mortgaged future. The only way to have long term prosperity is to concentrate on extreme efficiency, thoughtful reuse and recycling and clean energy sources. Then the social prosperity can have a meaningful base.

Re:all the pollution activist in the US are pointl

[Space_Balls]

Now I get your point, I didn't read your post well enough. :)

"Steel Belt"???

[Black-Man]

Huh? Like have you been living in a cave? The steel industry in WesternPA and Eastern Ohio imploded in the early 80's. Given this fact and the fact of the massive population migration, I doubt it's being caused by automobiles.

The Ohio River Valley is a chemical belt and my best guess would be these plants that run from Louisville/Huntington/Parkersburg/Wheeling.

Re:"Steel Belt"???

[Martin Blank]

I imagine the other industries there are as much (or more) to blame, but the "implosion" didn't kill off the steel mills as you seem to think. The US still produces more than 90 million tons of steel per year, behind only China and Japan.

The Alberta blob explained (kinda)

[MachDelta]

The lighter blob in Western Canada is almost certainly coal fired power plants in Alberta. they get half their electricity from coal and were trying to build more last I heard.

Yup. About 50% of our electricity is coal fired, another 40+% is gas, something like 5% hydro and the rest is change (wind/biomass/whatever). All told it adds up to somewhere around 12,000mW total capacity. And from what I can find, in the next few years this is what we're planning:

Wind: 800mW
Bio: 40mW
Hydro: 110mW
Coal: 2700mW
Gas: 1000mW

So while we should be increasing our Wind and Hydro output (especially wind), the lions share of the pie will still be going to coal and gas.
Some of the highlights include: Genesee 3, which is supposed to come online within a year or two and be our largest coal fired plant yet (something stupid like a 500mW peak output). Then theres a 1.9 billion dollar proposed expansion to the plant at Keephills that would ADD 900mW (!). Enermax wants to add another 400mW worth of capacity somewhere in the south too. On the gas side of things, two 300+mW plants (Meadow Creek and Crossfield) are supposed to be running sometime around 2006.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot one... Since us Albertans, like our Texan relatives to the south, like everything big and expensive, theres a proposal kicking around somewhere for a 1000mW coal fired plant at Brooks by 1010 or later. Yikes.

Honestly though, its not really suprising. Alberta produces (and consumes) about half of Canada's coal. And last I heard, at our current pace our estimated reserves would last us a good 800 years or so. We keep growing at an accellerated rate, and people demand cheap, reliable energy... so coal is the obvious answer, despite all the environmental problems.

So yeah. A heavy dependance on our abundant sources of coal, coupled with some heavy industry, and an ever booming oil/tarsands rush in the north to dig up the 1.7 trillion barrels of oil stuck there - and Alberta gets a pretty yellow spot on the map. (Go us. Woo.)


The sad part is that just next door (Saskatchewan) we're sitting on the worlds largest known deposits of uranium. Couple that with our relatively safe CANDU reactors, and Canada should have more energy than we could ever dream of consuming (lots of which i'm sure our American friends would be happy to purchase from us). We've even got a great place to bury the waste (a big chunk of granite that runs underneith like half the freakin country - aka the Canadian Shield). You couldn't ASK for a better setup.
And what happens? Mr. nuclear-boogieman strikes again. *Sigh*


Now if you'll excuse me, I think i'm going to go take up smoking.
Might as well die from my own stupidity instead of somebody elses.

Re:The Alberta blob explained (kinda)

[amorsen]

Hmm, 12000mW. So one guy on a bike can cover Canadas power needs. Perhaps you need to check your units.

Re:all the pollution activist in the US are pointl

[TykeClone]

Canada, whom no one ever seems to bitch about, uses more energy per-capita than the US.

Given the winters there - duh :)

China Air pollution

[awful]

I just spent a week in Beijing - the pollution there was the worst I have ever experiened. You couldn't see buildings that were more than a few blocks away.

Re:China Air pollution

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot to say that you didn't even try to look _at_ the buildings with all those chinese women wondering everywhere....

Re:all the pollution activist in the US are pointl

[Martin Blank]

As a follow-up, I do hope that the technology that is used in Western factories makes its way to the nations that do pick up these industries for themselves, as they tend to be cleaner and more efficient, if more expensive. Starting off on the right foot with the new factories could well help some of those developing nations to avoid some of the pollution problems we've seen in the last century.

Liberal HOKUM

[Anonymous Coward]

Global warming is a myth. Enviro-terrorists promote the idea of global warming, and the concept of "man made" climate change in order to bring about a new dark ages. In actual fact, the environment today is many times cleaner than it has been for centuries and improving ALL the time. Numerous studies from many scientists have confirmed this as fact, and it follows logically from proper economic theory as well. So don't beleive the bullshit. Buy whatever car you want. Buy whatever house you want and as many toys as you want and remember that every time you throw an old cell phone in the trash for a new one, you are pissing a snooty assfaced liberal off.

Protect America. Vote Bush Cheney 2004.

The other solution

[Anonymous Coward]

There's an alternative that would allow to reduce global pollution and allow everyone to live better on this planet: reduce the number of people.
I'm serious. Reducing the number of children per couple, and actually moving towards a decrease of the world population is the only possible way forward.
The world population has *DOUBLED* in the last forty years. That is absolutely scary. The human species has no longer any natural enemy. And when a living species has no enemies, they keep reproducing until all available resources are exausted.

We need to avoid that.

Re:all the pollution activist in the US are pointl

[Anonymous Coward]

Thus, we use the energy more efficiently than the rest of the world.

Thus, we use the energy more efficiently than SOME UNKNOWN QUANTITY OF the rest of the world.

You were right to correct him, but you come across as the stereotypical american with your leading statements.........

ha ha

[ylikone]

That is some nice satire there... pretty much sums up the idiotic close-minded views of most conservatives!

Re:ha ha

[Zinoc]

Seems to be an awful lot of red ...roughly right above Washington DC.. :)

East of russia ?!?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

You've got D grades in geography class...
That is China...

Re:all the pollution activist in the US are pointl

[dbIII]

How many nations produce automobiles? US vehicles are used around the world.

That was the past - now in most places you will see more trucks and busses from Brazil than you will from the USA, and most of the cars will be from Asia or Europe. I think you'll find that Korea exports far more vehicles than the USA now.

What arrogant nonsense

[anwaya]

Freedom is the natural state of affairs

No, it isn't. If it were, it would be; and it hasn't been, and isn't now. The natural state of affairs is exactly what we have, which includes a few people who enjoy what they call freedom - often at the expense of the many.

Rising standards of living solve most of the pressing problems facing the world today

No they don't. In particular, it doesn't solve the finite resource problem which stands directly in the way of this "ten billion millionaires" pipedream.

Wealthy/Free nations don't tend to make war on each other

Except that they do, time and again. They have civil wars, world wars, and armed territorial confrontations. There are trade wars, fish wars, and little islands invaded in the Carribean, South Atlantic, and Mediterranean. Though perhaps, perhaps - warring is a disqualification for freedom. Is that right? Are there any free countries at all, or are you the only one?

Wealthy nations don't tend to produce terrorists either

Apart from the IRA, Bader-Meinhof, RAF, the Weathermen and the SLA, to name a few from recent history; and then there's the terrorists produced in nations oppressed and exploited by the "free/wealthy nations". Look at the Libertarian theme park Iraq has become: are not the followers of Moqtada Al Sadr free now Hussein is gone, and free to organise themselves into a militia, bear arms and shoot their liberators and fellow citizens? Whoopee!

Finally, you claim you have a clue, and imply the article's submitter does not. Your clue is, apparently, that freedom solves all ills - including air pollution. Which it does not. It's taken environmental regulation inspired by (obviously clueless) bleeding-heart tree-hugging liberals, like those that protected the spotted owl, to reduce SO2 production in the US: the utopian ideal of freedom you present (glancingly here, more directly in your other posts) has no room for this... restraint! On Free Choice!

No one would survive your model of freedom and prosperity producing world peace, because there'd be no-one to make your clothes, build your housing, make your domestic appliances, or grow your food, because prosperous people with your particular clue just don't do that kind of work, do you?

High-res Images

[KlausBreuer]

Am I the only one who immediately wanted to see these charts in high-res?

Well, here you can get them:

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEM340NKPZD_index_1.htm l

Danity

[phatphil]

Moving to the Netherlands would be Dutchity wouldn't it?

I think it's the Danish who would know more about Danity.

Seriously, looking at that satellite image of the polution over Europe, there's a heck of a lot in the English Channel near Dover, Calais, and Zeebrugge. Just a guess, but this may be something to do with the ferries and the refineries in that area.

Take note

[famebait]

Right, I'll try to be polite, but this is costing me, OK:

You demonstrate later in the post that you do in fact understand the difference between NOx and other pollution, and yet you use a NOx map to make sweeping claims about pollution distribution and causes. What gives? Are you purpousely trying to mislead, or could you just not bother to go back and fix the post when you discovered the flaw? (and who modded that insightful?)

For all the whining and complaining about how the US should have joined the Kyoto accord, it's very easy to see that China is the #1 offender, and that Europe is not doing so hot itself.

Kyoto is not a badge for achievement, it is a commitment to future reductions. USA refuses to commit, and is being criticised for exacly that. Plus, see above point.

What good would Kyoto have done if it exempted the country who needs it most?

Sorry, I can't respond politely to this.
"If we can't solve everything in one fell swoop it is clearly best not to start at all."?
You cannot be serious.

Go South Africa!

[Cophee]

I cannot express in words the pride I felt seeing my home country South Africa feature so "industrially" on this pollution map.

A little education

[EmagGeek]

"I'm a bit surprised not to see that many red blobs above US and the strange one is on the east of Russia"

The reason you don't see more blobs over the US is because we have the most stringent atmospheric pollution laws on the planet. Cars in the US are held to the strictest standards in the world for NOx emissions, as are most newer industrial installations. You see a bunch of crap over the northeast because this is where the industrial revolution started, and there are STILL old plants there that are not covered by the new laws - and it's amazing how far companies will go to keep those plants going to avoid having to comply with the new laws (which are very expensive). In fact, the entire northern half of New Jersey, quite possibly the smelliest, dirtiest place on the planet, is home to some of the oldest industrial plants in the country.

Why are you surprised to see a red blob almost completely covering the populated regions of China? China has no emissions laws, and no environmental policy to speak of (or human rights, or IP rights, or any other rights for that matter), so it shouldn't be surprising to see pollution there.

moderatirs running mad? Re:Take note

[angel'o'sphere]

I got two TROLL mods in this threat.
Thanx, seems I have an "mod down on sight" enemy in /.?
angel'o'sphere

Air pollution

[sprocketonline]

It may appear that china and europe have as bad a problem as the USA, but the population in both of these places is a huge proportion greater than that of the USA. Therefore the pollution per person in the USA is far higher than that of any other individual country in the entire world, which is frankly atrocious. As the Kyoto agreement is now by majority of countries an UN agreement, it seems only right for the US to sign up. Yes the US might lose heavy industry to the developing world due to higher pollution penalties, but it has been doing so for the past 50 years. It doesn't matter who is president so long as pollution decreases faster than it's current state

Misunderstanding Kyoto

[Zopilote]

Most of the countries that have signed onto Kyoto are either hyper-environmental (Europe) or third-world countries which are exempt from many of its provisions (China and others). I don't doubt the environmental sincerity of many of the signing countries. However, it would not be inaccurate to say that the vast majority did not have to sacrifice much themselves, and thus may see it as one way to "reign in" the "big bad polluters" like the U.S. and Russia at little cost to themselves. This is the flaw in Kyoto: allowing developing countries to pollute more than developed countries and thus make the developed countries (the worst polluters? Look at China) hesitant to sign.

This is why the Senate did vote 95-0 against the Kyoto accord under the Clinton administration, which is definitely not a myth.

Take a look at http://www.sepp.org/pressrel/petition.html for more.

You might be interested...

[daveschroeder]

...in this thing called the hydrogen bomb, or "H-bomb". You might have heard of it.

The Progressive magazine even did a story about how one works in 1979.

Re:You might be interested...

[the_2nd_coming]

you idiot!!!! the fusion bomb is not made from by products of the combining of hydrogen. god you are retarded.

Re:You might be interested...

[daveschroeder]

Fusion is fusion, you fucking retard.

Also, you're not really making any sense:

the fusion bomb is not made from by products of the combining of hydrogen

Yeah? And? You said "fusion can't be used for weapons tech". However, "fusion" can and has been used for weapons, for decades.

Also, much of the research into fusion for the production of energy also has nothing to do with hydrogen, but e.g. Helium-3.

It makes me smile that you just made yourself look like even more of a moron, and that a lot of people will get a good chuckle reading the dogshit that just fell out of your mouth for a long time to come.

Re:You might be interested...

[the_2nd_coming]

you idiot. the original post mentioned fusion not being able to provide a safe energy source because of the Threat of proliferation. the fact is that a Fusion plant doe snot produce anything that is weponizable like a fission plant does.
sure, the PROCESS of two particles fusing together into one particle releases energy and can be controlled o create a weapon, but a fusion energy plant is no more dangerous to world peace than a hydrogen fuel cell.

face the facts, you were wrong and now you are trying to cover it up.

man made polution

[Anonymous Coward]

"...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."

I am too, I didn't knew they eat that much burritos in Russia and China.

Or does this mean that the US burritos are "cleaner" than others'.

Grandparent almost right

[beakburke]

What he forgot, and is hilighted your India example, is that it's not "democracy" so much as freedom. Yes it is possible for more authoritarian governments to be more "free" than "democratic" countries. The question is whether authoritarian governments will be able to stay free over time and whether democracy is better at protecting freedom in the long run.

Mod parent up!!

[beakburke]

NT

Power Plants

[Hoi Polloi]

Actually this is coming from coal fired power plants in these regions. The issue of acid rain generated by these plants polluting the NE has been a source of political fights for some time now. NJ filed a lawsuit against Ohio because of this.

NJ Lawsuit Victory

A few more reasons...

[Hoi Polloi]

- Putting industry in Siberia puts your factories closer to warm water ports. Most ports elsewhere in Russia freeze over in the winter.

- Most of Russia's mineral and oil wealth is concentrated in Siberia (result of the Siberian traps volcanism?). Smelters and other such dirty industries will go where the minerals are.

Re:all the pollution activist in the US are pointl

[dajak]

I see this "25 percent of the world's resources" line constantly parroted by environmentalists, or those predisposed to ... well, let's not say anti-Americanism; perhaps just those inclined to believe the worst about America.

It is just a fact, and the US has no good reason for consuming that much energy.

You point out that even if true, the statistic has to be stacked up next to the U.S.'s *output*. I think that's true. I also think you need to consider the nature of the output.

The US imports more than it exports. The US consumes most of its production itself. The US hardly exports energy-intensive goods, like steel or cars. I agree that the relation between energy consumption and output is relevant, but this analysis only makes countries like China and Japan look better. The US looks even worse.

U.S. goods and services are used all over the world.

Not energy intensive goods. US car brands, inasfar as they are successful at all internationally, produce their cars locally. In Germany for instance. Japan South Korea, and Germany are exporters of cars. The US steel industry only survives because of huge import tariffs that make US steel cheaper inside the US. The US exports scrap steel for steel mills abroad.

The US economy is dependent on exports of services and software licenses.

And I'm not just talking about trade. There are also things like defense.

For 50 years it was U.S. Army tanks standing between the Red Army and the Fulda Gap. As I've pointed out in other /. posts, these tanks represented a MASSIVE U.S. subsidy of Western Europe's defense.

Those tanks are made out of steel. Steel factories produce pollution. I guess the point is pretty clear, so I won't belabor it.

This reference to the US worldwide protection racket is irrelevant to this subject. There always were more European than US tanks defending the Fulda gap, and the US has a very easy task defending its home territory. I am aware that the US spends a huge amount of money on its army, but I do not buy the argument that it used more steel for tanks over the last decades than Europe or Russia. Besides that, the number of tanks is negligible compared to the number of cars, and tanks have a long lifespan.

China and Kyoto

[Phronesis]

You are exactly right that China is set to become the number one offender in CO2 emissions. My question is how President Bush plans to convince China to do anything about it when he is not willing to cut CO2 emissions in the US.

As another poster has pointed out, China emits only a small fraction as much CO2 per capita as the US does (US has about 5% of the world's population and produces about 20% of the world's anthropogenic CO2 emissions), so imagine what China's total CO2 emissions will be when its per capita GDP matches the US.

Is the US doing anything to encourage China to join an international treaty to limit its CO2 emissions? No. Why not?

Don't forget the oil sands!

[voodoo1man]

I was at a talk given by Jeremy Hall today, and he mentioned that the Suncor oil sands processing facilities are the single largest consumers of energy in Canada. When you factor in Syncrude and Shell's Albian venture, that adds up to a lot of pollution. He mentioned that the demand is so great that the government is considering building a nuclear reactor just for those sites (with waste to be dumped somewhere is Saskatchewan :)).

Re: Slashdot Lawyer

[Hoi Polloi]

I did read the article. Take that chip off of your shoulder. They are developing them. I didn't say they were operational.

Re: Slashdot Lawyer

[dbIII]

They are developing them. I didn't say they were operational.

Which bit of not yet or someday soon did you not understand? I read the article too - maybe pebble bed will live up to the promises, but it has not yet proven itself to be the first example of cost effective nuclear power.

Better inherent safety will cut the costs, and get rid of the silly excuse that nuclear plants could break even if it wasn't for all of this expensive safety gear that greenies insist they use.

Re:all the pollution activist in the US are pointl

[Alaska Jack]

1. "It's just a fact." a) you don't cite the source, and b) I'm suspicious of this figure anyway. Things like that are just too hard to quantify. I work with complex systems all the time, and I'm keenly aware of the difficulty is scaling variables up that high. For example, how could you possibly account for the burning of wood for home fires? There is simply no way to accurately gauge this consumption.

2. "Imports more than it exports." Again, impossible to quantify. For example, what about services? What about know-how? The U.S. is the most prodigous supplier of innovation the world has ever known, together with perhaps Renaissance Italy, modern Japan and perhaps 19th-Century England. So to what degree, exactly, has the world benefited from the invention of the transistor?

To put it another way: You can calculate the value of a bottle of medicine sent from the U.S. to a country abroad. But you can't calculate the value of lives saves as the result of U.S.-based pharmaceutical R&D. I'm sorry, but this whole exercise is a pretty superficial endeavor. You want a certain result, you look for it, and *bingo*, there it is.

3. The US hardly exports energy-intensive goods, like steel or cars.

Same problem of superficial analysis. We import cars, BUT WE EXPORT MONEY IN EXCHANGE FOR THOSE CARS. And where we *export* things, we get criticized to. For example, we export Big Macs and get criticized for ramming our culture down the throats of the world.

You seem to be criticizing things like steel tariffs. I agree with this, but it must also be noted that your criticism is all over the map. Tariffs are a barrier to consumption. If there were no tariffs, steel would be cheaper here. We'd import more of it, and consume *more* of it (plus the energy required to process it).

4. So far so good, but you reference to the U.S. worldwide protection "racket" just makes me ill. That "racket" is the reason you are writing your smug SlashDot critiques in English and not in German or Russian. U.S. cemeteries all across Europe testify to that "racket."

Europe has been under a Pax America for the last 50 years. Before that, well, let's see what the oh-so-civilized Europeans were up to: World War One, World War II, The Hundred Years War, The Spanish Civil War, the Crimean War, the Wars of the Roses, The bosnian conflict, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. Also, "racket" is an unusual term in that normally the "victims" pay some sort of tribute to the racketeers. Funny, but I don't remember the Marshall Plan that way.

Three countries were divided in half after WWII. One half of each fell under the U.S. "racket." In which respective half would you prefer to live?

South Korea or North Korea?
West Germany or East Germany?
Taiwan or Communist China?

5. Given your inane remark, it comes as no surprise that your elaboration is riddled with non-sequiturs. "There always were more European than US tanks defending the Fulda gap." You mean tanks operating under the auspices of the U.S.-organized NATO? And clearly, I was simply using *tanks* as a metaphor for the massive U.S. defense subsidy of Western Europe, from boots on the ground to F-15s patrolling the skies overhead. Whether or not you consider that subsidy a "racket," it is indisputable that it allowed WE countries to divert their resources to other matters: Developing prosperous economies, healthy polities and the political freedom to bitch about the U.S. every chance they get.

- Alaska Jack

Re:all the pollution activist in the US are pointl

[dajak]

Things like that are just too hard to quantify. I work with complex systems all the time, and I'm keenly aware of the difficulty is scaling variables up that high. For example, how could you possibly account for the burning of wood for home fires? There is simply no way to accurately gauge this consumption.

The resources consumed are quantifiable if they are part of the world market. Even wood. You are right that it is very hard to take all local consumption of local production of energy into account, and that that means that the figures for the third world are not reliable. The relative figures for US, EU, Japan etc. are far more reliable.

For example, what about services? What about know-how?

The US mostly exports services. know-how cannot be exported in an economic sense.

BUT WE EXPORT MONEY IN EXCHANGE FOR THOSE CARS.

You are importing cars. Global capital flows are actually from the EU and Asia to the US.

Tariffs are a barrier to consumption. If there were no tariffs, steel would be cheaper here. We'd import more of it, and consume *more* of it (plus the energy required to process it).

You are right. But this is no reason for tariffs.

So far so good, but you reference to the U.S. worldwide protection "racket" just makes me ill.

You are the one that introduces it to this topic. Does the US somehow have special economic rights because it protects us? The EU will disagree.

Europe has been under a Pax America for the last 50 years. Before that, well, let's see what the oh-so-civilized Europeans were up to: World War One, World War II, The Hundred Years War, The Spanish Civil War, the Crimean War, the Wars of the Roses, The bosnian conflict, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.

This list spans quite a lot of time. Parts of Europe also had periods of relative peace under a British, Habsburg, Frankish, Roman etc. protection racket.

The US is not more peaceful than the average other country. It is just very big, and therefore rarely suffers the consequences directly. Smaller countries like mine are the ones that are completely destroyed once or twice in a century by a bigger one.

Also, "racket" is an unusual term in that normally the "victims" pay some sort of tribute to the racketeers. Funny, but I don't remember the Marshall Plan that way.

George C. Marshall was a far better man than many after him who keep making a connection between the "Pax Americana" and the "right" of the US to ignore treaties, make war, and create unfair economic advantages for itself.

"There always were more European than US tanks defending the Fulda gap." You mean tanks operating under the auspices of the U.S.-organized NATO? And clearly, I was simply using *tanks* as a metaphor for the massive U.S. defense subsidy of Western Europe, from boots on the ground to F-15s patrolling the skies overhead.

You connected steel and energy consumption to tanks. I can assure you we would have had even more tanks if the U.S.-organized NATO would not have existed. The European countries combined did have significantly more tanks than the US throughout the cold war.

Europe also used to have different type of armies (static mass conscript armies), because it prepared for a defensive and total war on its home turf. After the soviet union collapsed, we drastically reduced the size of the army because we perceive no threat that we cannot handle.

The US did not, and it is still present in Europe even though we do not need them for defense. Those bases in Europe are now used as support bases for operations in the middle east. The US is still very welcome as a NATO ally, but it is not "protecting" us.

The US is also giving the EU very confusing signals on whether it wants the EU to arm itself or be dependent on the US. When the EU for instance launches Galileo the US government is bitching about it because it makes European weapons technology independent fron US

Re:Take note - Blame Clinton for Kyoto

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, he reacted. Gore would have stood there and stared.

Two differences

[beakburke]

China siging Kyoto doesn't "get them on the regime" They aren't going to be required to do anything unless they sign some additional agreements. But this agreement itself does nothing to address the issue, outside of some sort of "feel-good-cause China-signed-it". It doesn't guarantee future Chinese CO2 reductions at some point. China could simply agree not to sign on to new caps. China can sign this and not be obligated to do anything, now or in the future.

Secondly, forested acres in the US have increased over this century, even with the rise of suburbia. Sure, some forested areas have been permanently developed. But somehow total forest acerage has managed in increase. One reason this is possible is that for all the clearcutting we have done, most of the developed land wasn't forests, it was farmland; well, that and the fact that the land area of the US is so large to begin with that even with all of the rampant development we still haven't managed to pave most of the country.

I'm not criticizing Russia, to them this makes perfect economic sense. They can suddenly make big money off of something that they "own" that was worthless to them yesterday. Why wouldn't they want to sign on. But this doesn't hold for the US or China. The fundamental problem is that oil has been so cheep for so long. Eventually, technology will make other energy sources cheeper as oil slowly becomes more expensive. I'm pretty sure this will start happening well before the end of the century (when the global population is predicted to start falling BTW). So I feel like we might end up devoting our public resources to the wrong place if we were to do as some suggest and start a sort of "environmental manhattan project".

similarities

[Doc Ruby]

I know that Greenhouse deniers and other polluters like to say forestation is "increasing", fabricating that intriguing little factoid so it flows around the pseudoscience grapevines. The fact (pp. 5-6) is that forests declined from 1045M acres, when Europeans arrived to colonize North America, to 759M acres by 1907. Though that acreage is described even by the USDA Forest Service as 747M acres in 1997, almost a 2% drop. In fact, only the North has reforested at all since 1907, steadily returning from 139M to 170M acres in 90 years, still down from 298M acres in 1630 (and still showing periods of net cutting, during WWII, Vietnam and Reagan/Bush). In the South, lost acreage appears to have slowed to a halt after the relatively slow clearing of about 10M acres (2%) in the first 275 years was followed by the loss of about 6% after 1907, accelerating to compensate while the rest of the country slowed. Something like 30% of the US land area came under Federal control, with limited or no logging, after 1907 in the wake of Teddy Roosevelt's prescient vision of conservation. Of course that's changing, so we're probably not really stable at 30% total loss.

Russia cut so much of its forest in a desperate drive to create liqiod wealth, while dragging hundreds of millions out of feudal poverty and creating an industrial technology system. Now that it's capitalist, it can drop many of those people back into poverty while exporting oil from its unmatched reserves that used to subsidize the population, keeping them from revolting as they had against past tyrannical governments. Monetizing their role in sucking up our mess in new forests not only invests money in a low grade biotech that immediately supports the planet. It also gets them started in a cycle of harvest that maintains the CO2 balance (and other ecologies) while continuing to deliver materials for other sustainable global industries.

China is just getting to where Soviet Russia was in the 1950s. Unfortunately, their rise from feudalism (through mafiaism) is also accompanied by both the vintage Soviet militarism and the increase in pollution, floating atop an economic expansion that allows them to ignore their integral role in global cooperation. But like the Soviets, their growth will haunt them, and they'll be increasingly tractable in treaties as that cooperation increases in economic importance to their decisionmakers. We can start now by including them in treaties like Kyoto, even though it doesn't change them yet, because it does no harm while establishing momentum. That's how we get people to join regimes for real results. Waiting to start until their participation is crucial for survival gives them too much power in negotiations, while leaving too little time to build that momentum. The inevitable can begin sooner, bringing inevitable results closer and reducing the time spent transitioning to sustainability.

There's No Less Oxygen

[billstewart]

The problem isn't that there's any less oxygen - it's still about 21%, and the altitude is about 60 meters above sea level, so the atmospheric pressure is about what you're used to. The problem is all the other junk in the air. It's possible that she's getting less oxygen into her bloodstream because her breathing is affected by irritants like sulfur and nitrogen oxides or maybe carbon monoxide, but there isn't significantly less oxygen around her.

While there are Libertarians who have a Rush-Limbaugh-like dislike of the environment, there are many others who view pollution as a form of trespass and aggression that's reasonably actionable. Unlike Communism, where the government owns the industries and over the last century has displayed an appalling willingness to destroy the environment because they care more about making their 5-year-plan quota than about preserving the people's health, and unlike Capitalism, where the industries control the government and not only get away with pollution but have a strong incentive to make short-term destructive decisions because next year somebody else may bribe the politicians better and displace the current capitalists' access to the commons, in a free-market Libertarian society, there's more incentive to make good long-term decisions because you want the value of your land to increase and you can't depend on the government to give you more of it if you've trashed what you've got, and you don't want people suing you because of the damage your chemical dumping has caused (or pouring the waste from your factory back in the front door if you've gotten the courts to say it's safe.) (There are socialist societies like Sweden that have been better-behaved, but pretty much all of Eastern-Bloc communism has been an environmental disaster, including Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, China, and North Korea. I'm not sure about Vietnam, though they had American help in messing up the place, and some areas like Cambodia and Laos weren't sufficiently industrialized to have modern industrial pollution problems in most areas as opposed to traditional agricultural pollution.)

Re:There's No Less Oxygen

[(54)T-Dub]

I see where you are coming from Bill and I have a lot of sympathies with Libertarianism as I used to be registered as one. Please don't think that I am in any way a socialist, I can't stand the very idea. I just find it ironic that a government that is supposedly "for all the people" allows private industry to trounce on the public land/air so much.

There are a few reasons I'm now registered as a Democrat.

• I wanted to vote in the DNC primaries and I live in CA
• The extreme nuts that the party seems to pull together like the ones you mentioned and the gun nuts.
• Issues that server a public a larger good like: The Enviornment

The enviornmental issue was really the final thing that pushed me away from Libertarianism. While I believe that the market has the capability to do a better job at protecting the enviornment I feel that we have some very large hurdles to overcome before that will happen. First and foremost people have to be educated as to the economic viability of protecting our enviornment (I believe this applies to helping the poor as well). Westerners need to borrow from some of the eastern philosophy of looking more than 5 years out and apply that to things like the enviornment.(And so do some eastern countries ;-)

For example ... I enjoy camping in the woods quite a bit but the amount I pay for a campsite (and subsequent use of the many miles that surround that campsite) is probably far less than the shorterm economic opportunities available in the same area. I mean just simple logging would probably generate far more revenue from a national park in 1 year than the camping fees generate in 20.

The problem I find with issues like this is that you get into an area where it takes a very long time for the economic advantage of say preserving a national forest to be realized. The advantages are subtle too, like a healthier more productive work force, cleaner air etc. There are things that benefit our society as a whole and in the long run the economy that are hard for short sighted individual companies to realize. It's very easy to fall prey to the "there is always more" mentality that has really started to plague us.

Btw, the last thing I want is for some company to buy up the land and charge incredibly high rates to experience it. I firmly beleive in public beaches and public land. Everyone should have an equal right to the beauty in America.