RE: [Paddlewise] ACA and Subaru

> From: "Michael Daly" <michaeldaly_at_rogers.com>
> Subject: RE: [Paddlewise] ACA and Subaru
> 
> On 3 Feb 2004 at 15:28, Steve Brown wrote:
> 
> <snip>
>>> I think the air is generally clean enough, 
> 
> 
> Based on the wrong information.  It's filthy and getting worse every 
> year.

Assertions like the one above, without data to back them up, are 
misleading at best and at worst, make it very difficult to make further 
progress. Both the air and water today are *much* cleaner than they were 
20 years ago, thanks to various regulations and programs.

Those of you older than, say, 30 may remember what a street full of cars 
smelled like before catalytic converters, what the Thames or Charles 
rivers smelled like, or what the skies over Gary, Indiana or the 
industrial areas of East Germany looked like back a few decades. Cars 
today, for instance,  put out barely a few percent of the emisssions of 
pre-EPA regulation cars. The shift from high-sulfur coal and oil to 
better burning technologies as well as gas and nuclear has radically 
changed air quality.

In the city of Kyoto, for example: Between 1965 and the present, dust 
fall has decreased from 8 tons/Km^2/month to 2 tons. Between 1984 and 
the present, sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere has decreased by 80%, 
carbon monoxide has decreased by 40%

EPA stats (and I am sure there are many who will see these as 
fabrications of a conspiracy) at 
http://www.epa.gov/ttn/chief/trends/trends98/chapter3.pdf
show major decreases in almost all emissions over the past 30 years, 
with many levels now at or less than pre-1940 levels. Some emissions, 
like lead, have been cut drastically. Marginal increases in a very few- 
like ammonia and oxides of nitrogen- still reflect large unit decreases 
per capita or per unit of industrial output.

Every summer there's a classic car "cruise" that brings a few thousand 
cars to my suburban Detroit neighborhood for a weekend- what a friend 
calls "ozone inaction day". One afternoon walking around these 
pre-emissions control cars is all it takes to remind me of the changes 
made in the last few decades.

-- mike

--------------------------
Michael Edelman
http://foldingkayaks.org
http://findascope.com
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