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Southern California Sees Its Longest Streak of Bad Air In Decades (sfchronicle.com)
According to state monitoring data, Southern California violated federal smog standards for 87 consecutive days -- the longest stretch of bad air in at least 20 years. "The streak is the latest sign that Souther California's battle against smog is faltering after decades of dramatic improvement," reports San Francisco Chronicle. From the report: The ozone pollution spell began June 19 and continued through July and August, with every day exceeding the federal health standard of 70 parts per billion somewhere across Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. It didn't relent until Sept. 14, when air pollution dipped to "moderate" levels within federal limits for ozone, the lung-damaging gas in smog that triggers asthma and other respiratory illnesses. It's not unusual for Southern California summers to go weeks without a break in the smog, especially in inland communities that have long suffered the nation's worst ozone levels. But environmentalists and health experts say the persistence of dirty air this year is a troubling sign that demands action. Regulators blame the dip in air quality in recent years on hotter weather and stronger, more persistent inversion layers that trap smog near the ground.
All the fires they've had this year made things worse too.
Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino? That's an area bigger than South Carolina, West Virginia, and 8 other States. For our European friends, that's an area larger than Belgium. So, SOMEWHERE in that area it was above the limits. Yeah, doesn't seem quite so bad now...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Pretty much... I have been in all four counties at least 4 days in the past three months, and never really noticed it especially bad... aside from the feedlot in Ontario. Mostly in the morning, so it would usually be less then, but not especially bad.
I live by the ocean though, so I am not getting it consistently bad; this could skew my perception.
every day exceeding the federal health standard of 70 parts per billion somewhere across Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties
Not the ENTIRE area, just somewhere in that area. AC needs to learn to read, rather than spending all that time trying to dream up snarky remarks...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Not the ENTIRE area, just somewhere in that area.
I wish there was a way to concentrate it right at the Trump apologists.
We feel your pain... I live in Ventura, to stay as far away from that lot as I can, and still be in the "greater LA area"...:)
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Smog is a global problem.
Isn't your meme how everyone is fleeing California?
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The chemicals concerned (e.g. NOx, O3) have a low lifespan in the atmosphere and so are not going to make the trip across the Pacific. A more interesting question is how much of China's smog is as a result of USA manufacturers moving their production to China.
Also says this
"Further complicating the picture is climate change—the major factor behind the longer fire seasons and bigger fires. This creates a feedback loop, where megafires exacerbate climate change, which then encourages even bigger wildfires. One study found that from 1984 to 2015, climate change doubled the area burned by wildfires across the West, compared to what would have burned without climate change."
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You liberal morons hate science when it talks about there actually being differences between genders, or that there actually are genders--or when it talks about differences in intelligence levels across populations (even populations of the same race, so leave that out of this). When science doesn't fit your narrative you don't just ignore it, you actively suppress it.
Also, the last time I checked, California is governed by not just liberals but actual total leftists and has been for quite some time. They have stricter regulations on just about everything imaginable and pretty much get their way on anything that gets proposed--and yet you still have this problem while other areas don't have that problem. Now why might that be? Geography certainly. As others have pointed out and you've roundly ignored, it's been proven (again, by science) that suppressing wildfires is bad for forests and leads to bigger and worse wildfires when they finally do break out. Nobody in California wants to hear that though because naturally occurring wildfires may be beneficial for forests and a part of the natural cycle of things but they are of course not good for real estate developers and other bigwigs who make up the top end of the "small class of wealthy people and huge underclass of poor and illegal aliens with no middle class" that your ill-conceived social experiments have wrought.
In other words, you mindless twerp, all of this really proves that leftists are total failures at governing, that their policies objectively and provably don't work because nature doesn't give a damn about your political opinion, and that leaves you with the only options leftists ever have open to them--suppress the message and, when you get in power, literally kill the messengers. It is you who are obsolete and since you're probably young and stupid, let me give you some advice: being obsolete before you even get started is a bad position to be in.
Now, for the rest of you, conservatives are scarcely perfect. Conservatives do favor big business too much, they have in the past allowed the few to get away with way too much and push the costs of their messes off on the public. Leftists may be off the handle about global warming causing specific things but pollution is bad and should be held to a minimum--and people who cause environmental disasters like dumping chemicals into rivers and such should be held criminally accountable and financially accountable for their mess. That's the problem with pollution--it doesn't cost anything. Sincere minded people who want it to cost something aren't wrong about that because that's using economics to solve a problem caused by economics. In other words, everyone needs to grow up and figure out how to make things work.
Damn, what would I do without my sexting apps, ANTIFA-chic clothing, and E Coli lettuce?
Now it seems either, all the regulation is counterproductive to the end goal or it doesn't do anything but cost money and thus energy
False. We had a severe problem in LA with air quality in the seventies, children with bleeding lesions on their lungs and the like. We instituted the CARB and cleaned that problem right up. However, the USA has been exporting its production to China, and the pollution doesn't stay in China. And sadly, it comes to Los Angeles. What's needed is not less regulation, it is more. As a nation (and not just California) we should place tariffs on goods which come from polluters, to account for the cost of the pollution. That would mean massive tariffs on Chinese goods. We don't do this because some already-rich pricks want to get richer by selling us the toxic fruit of Chinese pollution.
The regulations did what they were supposed to in California. But China doesn't have such regulations, and even where they do, the state-operated businesses don't have to follow them.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Given the previous O3 levels have changed historically, we may well have been above the current limit - but it wasn't newsworthy because the limit was higher.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
That really surprises me, but I agree that the source appears valid.
If what you're saying is true, then kids would still have the same problems, emissions have doubled since the 70's and Ozone doesn't have a lifespan long enough to travel the ocean (O3 is highly reactive and breaks down in a matter of days, much faster than average air currents)
If China would be the problem, we would expect Seattle and parts of Canada and Mexico as well to be much more affected. So the claim that California's problems are "China's fault" is poorly supported. On the other hand, places with less regulation have improved their emission rates much better than CA. Likewise 1970's Democratic-Socialist "model city" Detroit has the same problems, much higher pollution levels now compared to similar cities in the 70s even though they've likewise regulated the crap out of their industry.
My theory is that regulation drives up cost and innovation down leaving less money to replace inefficient processes. Everybody agrees that pollution is bad and we've improved since the 70s, but business people understand that whatever you dump/waste during a process has a cost of money and energy. Thus all emissions are by definition inefficiencies in a process that can be improved ONLY by engineering and innovation NOT by regulation and limitation. Businesses really don't want to pump 50% of their fuel in the atmosphere like they were doing in the 70s. Government's role is to stimulate that innovation and efficiency, not stifle it.
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If what you're saying is true, then kids would still have the same problems, emissions have doubled since the 70's
Which emissions, where?
and Ozone doesn't have a lifespan long enough to travel the ocean
The big problems are particulates, VOCs, unburned hydrocarbons, and oxides of nitrogen, not ozone.
If China would be the problem, we would expect Seattle and parts of Canada and Mexico as well to be much more affected.
Why? You don't know how air currents work?
My theory is that regulation drives up cost and innovation down leaving less money to replace inefficient processes.
Your theory is dumb. Regulations drive efficiency by demanding it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
California has way more people living in it now, than in the 70's as well.. regulate all you want, but more population = more pollution.
Wrong. There is not a direct link between those two things. That's how much we've cleaned up emissions, especially in California. The EPA tells us that todayâ(TM)s cars emit 75 to 90 percent less pollution per mile driven than cars made in 1970 did. You can have three times as many cars, and still have less pollution from that source. We also cleaned up industrial sources significantly.
The fact is that you can have less pollution with more people if you start out with excessive pollution.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Reading the article I can't help but to think it's a Democratic commercial. They like regulation. We need more! Yea, not so fast. Nothing on what's really the cause, just a guess.