Thursday, January 02, 2020

Pollution, pollution

Somc bunny not to be named later sucked Eli into Twittering with another RWNJ TV meteorologist type but something interesting came out of it.  While berating China and India for not being the biggest polluters on the planet, this map was posted


There are some interesting things about the map.

First, the big blob in Saudi Arabia and the smaller one in southeast Nigeria mark out oil patches.  Second the blobs in northeast China and the Ganges River Valley in India are IEHO markers of coal burning and ICE transportation.  (Look at SE Asia, not wonderful but the traffic is really bad there too.  Third, it would be interesting to know what is going on in northern Nigeria, Niger and Chad as well as the Sahara in general and Mongolia. Is that simply blown sand? The World Health Organization has detailed and up to date maps

FWIW Brazil and southern Africa show the effects of seasonal biomass burning.

That's EHO, but it lead to a paper by Papiya Mandal, R. Sarkar, A. Mandal and T. Saud, "Seasonal variation and sources of aerosol pollution in Delhi, India" who analyzed the sources of carbon in Dehli over a year. OC1 below traces biomass burning, EC2 and EC3 diesel engines and OC2, OC3, OC4, OP and EC1 gasoline vehicle exhaust or coal combustion.


Conclusion: Biomass burning is bad, but fossil fuels kill and oh yes, the situation has really gotten evil in Australia.
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4 comments:

  1. Mike Dombroski3/1/20 1:04 PM

    Is there any better argument (than that map) that economic growth is the solution to air pollution?

    ReplyDelete
  2. EliRabett4/1/20 12:27 AM

    Talk to an Australian

    ReplyDelete
  3. Bernard J.5/1/20 11:01 AM

    Canman confuses economic growth per se with the actual underlying reasons for pollution reduction. F'rinstance, had he made that statement 250-70 years ago he'd have been laughed off the stage.

    And this Australian says that Canman is full of it. The growth snake is biting its own tail.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Brian7/1/20 1:54 PM

    Re Mongolia:

    1. Ulan Bataar has terrible air quality: combo of very cold in winter + coal burning plants + coal burning at homes + burning rubber tires at home for heat(!!) + very bad topography. That only explains a small part of Mongolia's problem though.

    2. The country has seasonal dust storms in the spring, the usual dry season when the snow melts and dust kicks up. The dry season appears to be lengthening.

    On the plus side, Mongolia could be wind powerhouse if anyone paid attention and made some investments.

    ReplyDelete

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