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'Sooty Birds' Reveal Hidden US Air Pollution (bbc.com)
Soot trapped in the feathers of songbirds over the past 100 years is causing scientists to revise their records of air pollution. From a report: US researchers measured the black carbon found on 1,300 larks, woodpeckers and sparrows over the past century. They've produced the most complete picture to date of historic air quality over industrial parts of the US. The study also boosts our understanding of historic climate change. [...] This new study takes an unusual approach to working out the scale of soot coming from this part of the US over the last 100 years. The scientists trawled through natural history collections in museums in the region and measured evidence of black carbon, trapped in the feathers and wings of songbirds as they flew through the smoky air. The researchers were able to accurately estimate the amount of soot on each bird by photographing them and measuring the amount of light reflected off them. "We went into natural history collections and saw that birds from 100 years ago that were soiled, they were covered in soot," co-author Shane DuBay, from the Field Museum and the University of Chicago, told BBC News. "We saw that birds from the present were cleaner and we knew that at some point through time the birds cleaned up -- when we did our first pass of analysis using reflectance we were like wow, we have some incredible precision." Their analysis of over 1,000 birds shows that black carbon levels peaked in the first decade of the 1900s and that the air at the turn of the century was worse than previously thought.
Was this a study that they planned to do, or was this something they did on a lark?
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
In before whiny APK wannabe troll.
Air pollution is not climate change. One of these is real and actually matters. Particulates in the air can be dangerous to health. Please don't try to spin unrelated and legitimate research to push your climate change fiction.
I wonder if they corrected for where the birds were collected. Population density was far lower then, and perhaps the soot was heavier, but also more local.
Intuitively speaking, I have trouble with the idea that the air all over the USA a century ago was more polluted than what I experienced in and around the 1970's, when the very rain was killing vegetation, the Delaware and other rivers ran with suds and rainbow slicks, and large areas of New Jersey were swamps of outright pollution.
The air was worse back then? Locally, sure. Like what happened to London England. But everything? Seems dubious. Very.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
What is the airspeed velocity of a soot-laden songbird?!
How was the effect of smoking being allowed and banned at the museum accounted for?
How was oil or candle lamps being used at the museum accounted for?
They were Angry Birds. Watch out pigs!
Air pollution is unrelated to global warming.
Ah no. You are horribly misinformed. The same things that cause air pollution also cause global warming.
Burning fossil fuels for example. It's a 1.0 correlation.
Stop hijacking legitimate research to promote your global warming propaganda.
Seriously?
I'm trying to figure out which one of you is Russian.
The measurable filth on those birds is nothing but a hoax. And even if it's true: how do we know exactly how they got that crap on them. For all we know, they frequent bars that allow smoking. Or maybe they drive diesel trucks.
My guess is that they frequented tall smoke stacks and chimneys as elevated safe perches.... Remember this was before the current crop of telephone poles and wires sprang up. It was trees or a building for the most part.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Gee, they took stuffed birds that were collecting dust in dark closets for 100 years. And they reflected less light. Is it a surprise? How do they correlate it to soot?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
uh, you're claiming in 1917 there weren't telephone poles and power lines.....?????
I'm trying to figure out which is a shill for Microsoft
Neither was a bird.
Not as many as there are now. Rural electrification didn't take place in earnest until after 1936 and that didn't subsidize phone until the mid 40's....
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
most the birds might have been captures near cities / suburbs. I have family pics of the time, can tell you chicago area had a buttload of electrification. heck, the first electric train line was in 1880s.
The fanboi on the other hand, is easy to spot.
"Sooty Birds" is a failed version of "Angry Birds" targeted at smokers. It's now being re-branded for millennials as "Vaping Birds".
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Both.
In 1920, just 35 percent of American households had electricity. https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/how-the-1920s-thought-electricity-would-transform-farms-510917940
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
we will have the return of soot. Excellent!
Good point.. Where did the birds come from? Did they study that part too?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Has anyone noticed that a creimer post is like a loud fart during a silence in a crowded restaurant? It immediately changes everyone's day for the worse, except creimer who sees nothing wrong.
I'll bet that they come back far worse than what is expected.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Coming up with conclusions, and then trying to find data to fit your conclusion is NOT science and does NOT follow the scientific method.
To the contrary, that's exactly how the Scientific Method works. I have a proto-theory, and then I draw some conclusions from it. Then I invent an experiment to check the conclusions (e.g. I try to falsify them). If the conclusions hold, I have a very promising proto-theory. I draw some more conclusions from the theory and invent more experiments. If they still hold, I call it a theory.
The experiments themselves could be performed in a controlled environment, which makes interpretation of the measurement data easy. Sometimes, it's not possible or easy to control the environment, then I have to collect and interpret the data much more carefully. Sometimes, I can't even create an environment for my experiment at all, I just have to collect the data from whatever natural events happen. In the case of the gravitational waves (which were just conclusions from Albert Einstein's theory of General Relativity), at first, we just had some data that could be interpreted as being results from gravitational waves (the two neutron stars PSR 1913+16 circling each other closer and closer and thus losing energy), and then we invented an apparatus to actually measure gravitational waves coming through (the LIGO), getting much better data, which fits the theory.
See subject: Whoever the fool is attempting to "impersonate me" only proves that I've REALLY 'gotten to them' somehow (thanks).
As far as "AssFux" Ash-Fox? That whimp's a weasel who ALWAYS starts w/ me (he's 'butthurt' I've busted him up on tech issues is all that is).
* I am with you on something though - there is a TON of bogus downmoderation but as the saying goes? "When all your opposition has is censorship you've obviously won"
&
I am highly against the LOON(s) who shot all those folks up in Vegas - I think it's somekind of falseflag OR an attempt @ further dividing our nation up ala the KING of bogus evil in that capacity, George Soros paying off groups like BLM & Antifa to do so - but GUNS DON'T KILL PEOPLE - people do. NO reason to ban guns!
APK
P.S.=> Provoking weasel reactions like yours is all the satisfaction anyone needs seeing as you try to "impersonate" me loser... apk
"just"? that's a lot. the big cities and suburbs had it, lots of it. and the phone lines went coast to coast
Fake News!!!
Has anyone noticed that a creimer post is like a loud fart during a silence in a crowded restaurant? It immediately changes everyone's day for the worse, except creimer who sees nothing wrong.
Has anyone noticed that this creimer fixation is stinking up Slashdot?