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

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: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: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.

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