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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.

18 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. Fires by phalse+phace · · Score: 3, Informative

    All the fires they've had this year made things worse too.

    1. Re:Fires by schwit1 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Nice try.

      “We have 100 years of fire suppression that has led to this huge accumulation of fuel loads, just dead and downed debris from trees and plant material in our forests, and in our woodlands,” says Berleman. “As a result of that, our forests and woodlands are not healthy, and we’re getting more catastrophic fire behavior than we would otherwise.”
      https://www.motherjones.com/en...

      Jerry Brown would rather spend the money on a train to nowhere and banning plastic straws.

    2. Re:Fires by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 4, Insightful

      From the article:

      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.

      Yeah. And the fires.

      Even here in Seattle, we had a week or so of horribly, smoggy air that was outside the "safe" levels, and that's pretty rare for this area. You could see the haze drifting over from the fires on satellite imagery.

      One could argue that a warming and drier climate encouraged the development and spread of wildfires over a sustained period, but it's pretty odd to not even mention them as a major contributing factor for this season's bad air.

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    3. Re:Fires by Ichijo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Which side is the "nowhere" side, Los Angeles or San Francisco?

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    4. Re:Fires by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Yep, I read it. But you might not be aware that, according to observational data, wildfire smoke may interact with local pollutants to create ground-level ozone.

      https://www.sciencedaily.com/r...

      The Seattle smog was different, but the larger point I was making was that wildfires are huge events that undoubtedly have a very real impact on the regional environment. I'd be very surprised if the two events weren't linked. Can that be proven yet? No, but if you see correlating data, you have to at least LOOK to see if there may be causality before dismissing it out of hand.

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    5. Re:Fires by drinkypoo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Nice try.

      The forests are not substantially different after 100 years of fire suppression than they were after 90 years of fire suppression, but fires are much, much more severe than they were 10 years ago. That puts the lie to the notion that it's the built-up undergrowth responsible for the new severity of fires. They're getting fire tornadoes for the first time in built-up areas, not just in forests, which also has nothing to do with that undergrowth. You are in denial.

      Jerry Brown would rather spend the money on a train to nowhere and banning plastic straws.

      The train is meant to go everywhere, and without all the whiners and the corporate interests fighting it, it would. And it might anyway. Banning plastic straws costs almost nothing as government action is measured, and it has the potential to make a substantial difference in oceanic pollution. Like six-pack rings, plastic straws seem to have a disproportionate effect on marine life.

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    6. Re:Fires by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      Except it's hella ableist,

      No, no it isn't. You can still have them if you ask, especially if you have a disability. The law only prohibits giving them to people who don't ask for them.

      and actually not at all effective because plastic straws from North America and Europe are present contribute homeopathic amounts of oceanic plastics

      Banana peels on football fields, not eyedroppers in tank cars.

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  2. Umm - 4 counties? Perspective... by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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...

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  3. Re:DENIALIST FAGGOT LYNNFAG DENIES THE FACTS by h33t+l4x0r · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Not the ENTIRE area, just somewhere in that area.

    I wish there was a way to concentrate it right at the Trump apologists.

  4. How much of that comes from China? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Smog is a global problem.

  5. None in this case by Bruce66423 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:None in this case by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      Nonsense. Got any more lies which are easily disproven?

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  6. But the same article.... by tanveer1979 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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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    1. Re:But the same article.... by dryeo · · Score: 2

      What he said was that twice the area got burned, not twice as many fires. Could be the same number of fires, each one burning double what it would have if it was cooler and/or damper.
      I don't know about California, but where I am further north, the early warm springs has caused a lot of undergrowth of grasses and such which then dries out and forms fuel. Whether the early springs are caused by climate change or natural variation is hard to pin down but statistically the winters have been getting warmer, spring showing up earlier and summers drier.

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  7. Re:This Republican trashmind doesn't understand fi by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  8. Re:Just eject California into the Pacific by rfengr · · Score: 2

    Damn, what would I do without my sexting apps, ANTIFA-chic clothing, and E Coli lettuce?

  9. Re:How is that possible? by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

    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.'"
  10. Re:How is that possible? by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

    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.

    --
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