Submitted by Viv Forbes, Rosewood Qld Australia
A month ago an arsonist lit a bush-fire that spread into the Morwell open cut coal mine in Victoria. Residents of the nearby town lived for weeks in choking polluted air.
This fire is a clear demonstration of what causes most air pollution – the open-air combustion of complex carbon-bearing products such as coal, oil, grass, sugar cane, cow dung, trees, wood, paper, urban rubbish, plastic bags, rubber tyres or other organic material.
Asian smogs have a few special features – yellow dust from the massive Gobi Desert, fine ash and toxic fumes from dozens of volcanoes in Indonesia, funeral pyres along the Ganges, smoky mosquito fires and forest-clearing fires, millions of wood and dung cooking fires, hundreds of out-of-control coal-seam fires in China and India, and obsolete “back-yard” boilers and furnaces from the Mao era. In large Asian cities, pollution is multiplied by unburnt fuel and particulates spewing from old engines in millions of cars, trucks and motorbikes that clog the roads.
The fumes from open fires and dirty engines often contain soot, fine ash, unburnt hydrocarbons and oxides of sulphur and nitrogen. This is the pollution everyone can see and smell. Notice that NONE of this real pollution is caused by invisible, life supporting, non-toxic carbon dioxide which, along with nitrogen and water vapour, are the main exhaust gases from well-designed boilers burning clean coal in modern power stations with the latest pollution controls.
The western world has gone through its “city smog” phase of development. Places like London (“the Big Smoke”) and Pittsburgh (“Steel City”) solved their pea soups many decades ago by outlawing the burning of dirty coal in open fires and stoves, by cleaning up industrial smelters and by providing urban heat, light and energy using piped coal gas and modern magic – pollution-free electricity from distant coal-fired power stations with modern pollution controls.
“Clean coal by Wire” using clean washed coal in modern out-of-town power stations will work the same magic in Asian cities today.
Disclosure: Viv Forbes is a non-executive director and shareholder in an Australian coal exploration company, but these opinions were held and stated long before that association. This does not alter the truth about the causes of real air pollution.
If you would like to read more see:
Locals Cough in the Morwell Smog:
The World has thousands of natural and accidental coal fires:
http://gizmodo.com/the-worlds-oldest-underground-fire-has-been-burning-fo-1539049759
Is Coal Dirty?
http://carbon-sense.com/2012/07/14/is-coal-dirty/
Coal Combustion & the Grand Carbon Cycle:
http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/coal-combustion.pdf
this kind of “thinking” is right up there with “Why do you have to kill animals? Can’t you just buy your meat at the store like everyone else?”
Surface coal fires are a menace and sometimes burn for years. China was losing millions of tons each year, fires caused by faulty mining and the bush fires that raged in Indonesia lasted years, caused by surface coal seam fires. India is the same. These fires cause immense pollution, and we have a burning mountain in NSW, caused by a subterranean brown coal burning and has done for thousands of years. Unless you spend billions these fires are hard to stop. But burning mountain is a tourist attraction? They can erupt again too.
They stopped burning coal and coke and replaced it with coal lite. In London it took about 10 years of a smoke free zones to clean up the thames, and dolphins or purposes were seen again, and swallows came back and starting nesting on business houses again. A very good omen it was said. But it didn’t stop the Thames freezing again at Windsor in 1963.
17 March: Guardian: Anne Penketh: Parisians driven to revolt by car ban in fight against pollution
Only half of city’s drivers will be allowed on French capital’s roads on any given day via scheme based on number plates
From 5.30am, a scheme of alternating driving days, based on odd and even number plates, will come into effect for cars and motorcycles after Paris pollution reached dangerous levels for five consecutive days.
Even before the restrictions were announced, Parisians were given free travel on buses, metros and public bikes over the weekend. The smog hanging in a haze over the French capital is the result of a string of warm days and cold nights and has caused the worst pollution levels since 2007.
A revolutionary streak runs through French society. Rules are made to be broken, as anyone who has tried to use a pedestrian crossing in Paris knows. Parisians interviewed on Sunday said that, particularly in the case of those working in the suburbs, their car is essential for travel and they would be prepared to defy the temporary ban and risk incurring a €22 (£18) fine…
Seven hundred police will be deployed in Paris and 22 surrounding areas to monitor the scheme, which will be enforced for the first time in 17 years..
The government scrambled to issue a list of exceptions, which include electric and hybrid cars, taxis, and cars with at least three people on board to encourage car-sharing. But all trucks will be banned.
Minute PM10 particles (less than 10 micrometers in diameter) emitted by diesel exhausts, heating systems and industrial emissions, are blamed for the pollution. The safe limit is 80 microgrammes of PM10 particulates per cubic metre, but on Friday, the level peaked at 180 microgrammes prompting authorities to urge people to stay indoors as much as possible and to leave their cars at home.
According to the Paris Air Quality Index, Friday’s level was as bad as that in Beijing, one of the world’s most polluted cities where policies of alternate driving are enforced during smog emergencies. A French television report pointed out that Rome has also introduced alternating driving, carrying penalties of €155…
Clean Air in London tweeted on Friday morning that London’s pollution level was “worse than Shanghai (having a bad day) and over twice Beijing.”
By Sunday evening, French weather forecasts were predicting that although high pollution levels would return on Monday, they may not reach the records of last week.
With municipal elections scheduled for next Sunday, the emergency smog-tackling measure brought in by the Socialist government and endorsed by their Green coalition partners risks becoming a political football in the polls.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/16/parisians-driven-revolt-smog-car-ban
Meanwhile we had a few days of smog alarm in our country, in our case mainly caused by millions of – here popular – small diesel cars plus a lot of heavy diesel trucks passing the country. Our local weather woman (a fanatic alarmist) was quick to tie the smog and the passing of 400 ppmv CO2 at Mauna Loa again this year together in such a way that the media thought that CO2 was the main cause of the pollution. Every title in the press was about CO2 “pollution”. J.P. Van Ypersele, vice president of the IPCC was quick to add his twitter voice: “Did you know how significant is the new #CO2 record concentration (401.62 ppm, March 12) compared to past 800000 yrs?”, forgetting to tell the audience that the 400 ppmv was already passed last year… For those who can read Dutch (or use Google Translate…):
http://www.knack.be/nieuws/planet-earth/onze-lucht-was-nooit-zo-slecht-co2-vervuiling-overschrijdt-historische-grens/article-normal-133641.html
Forgot to add: the tweet of our weather woman was: “humans never inhaled such an acid air”. Seems that her knowledge of chemistry is as bad as her knowledge of climate… If what we inhale is 0.04% CO2 today or doubles to 0.08% in the future, what we exhale must be far worse with 4% CO2: good to dissolve all steel, concrete,… where humans are living if she is right… The newspapers first used the “acid air” as title, but later changed that to “pollution”, there were too many reactions on that failure…
given the CAGW crowd expend so much energy scaring children!
17 March: UK Telegraph: Alan Titchmarsh: Young people are becoming ‘fearful’ of the great outdoors
If we do not convince teenagers gardening is not just for their granddads the planet will be on “shaky ground”, Alan Titchmarsh warns, as he calls their lack of access to horticulture “criminal”
By Hannah Furness, Arts Correspondent
Alan Titchmarsh, the broadcaster, wants “growing things” to be made part of the national curriculum, as children and young people are becoming “divorced from the great outdoors”.
Saying they were already well-versed in issues of climate change, he argued it was even more important for them to understand how the natural world works to stop them becoming “fearful”.
Speaking at a South London school, he added the planet would be left in “very shaky hands” in the next generation, if nobody was left to understand it…
“They all know about climate change and global warming, but it’s far more important – I would have thought – for them to know what happens when you plant a seed, how to make it grow, how food is produced, how the environment is purified by plants and organisms, how our entire livelihood depends on things that grow.
“Without plants, this planet would disappear…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/10699190/Alan-Titchmarsh-Young-people-are-becoming-fearful-of-the-great-outdoors.html
much exploitation of children by flannery in latter part of the audio:
AUDIO: 12 March: ABC Big Ideas: Tim Flannery
In his first major public appearance since the government abolished the Climate Commission, Tim Flannery joined Anne Summers in conversation about the climate and other challenges to our environment..
This is Tim Flannery’s interaction with the audience…
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/bigideas/tim-flannery/5291070
In France today we have a ban on cars with even plate numbers, announced late Saturday evening for maximum confusion. Being blamed on high pollution, but this most likely comes from the east (Belgium/Holland but above all Germany – France has barely any heavy industry left except around Lyon). Doesn’t apply to electric cars and hybrids though as they are ‘CO² free’. Pure propaganda of course.
The battle against life-sustaining atmospheric trace-gas is already withering back into the objective of some fringe parties. The others are already focusing their attention back into priorities, including nature conservation of course.
It’s been quite a sad sort of laugh watching AGW fanboys/girls struggling with the certitude that coal use is not going away. It’s such an jarring sacrilegious stumbling-block to their ideologically edifice that they can’t even get their head around the unadorned basis, that 7.2 billion people plus low-cost high abundance means vast quantities of coal are going to be used for as far as we can envision, unless a low cost practical super energy source is discovered that we don’t yet know about.
AGW’s only answer = destroy the economy
Yeah, that’ll work a treat, 7.2 billion people going without electricity due to a chronically fractured economy is going to solve everything. I grew up using a backyard thunder-box for the first 12 years or so, and foregoing indoor plumbing so I can go dig a hole behind a tree to squat is not much recompense for volunteering to saving the world. And yeah, I lived in the bush and squatted for most of a year when I was 5 years old. I have a part of one of my toe nails missing today to prove that shovels and little kinds that are in a bit of a hurry to squat over an adhoc shallow hole don’t mix too well (not to mention the declining opportunities for unused digging places for a family of five, within walking range). Excuse me while I go cook a hot meal, have a hot shower, and put my cloths into the washing machine.
Here’s the Air Quality Index page for Beijing. The air quality seems to have a negative correlation with the wind speed. http://aqicn.org/city/beijing/
Beijing reports only the PM10 number, the big chunks. The PM2.5 fine particulates are measured at the US Embassy.
And Anthony’s home town http://aqicn.org/city/california/butte/chico-east-avenue/
World coverage is kind of hit and miss. http://aqicn.org/city/all/
The aqicn.org web site has apps and widgets you can download for mobile devices.
I’m happy to witness the poor visibility phenomena in France this week. It had been nicely dry, warm and sunny all week with a deep blue sky – you know – the type of spring weather AGW tries to delay or avoid at all costs. Saturday was back to AGW normal – cloudy with cold drizzle.
The following mornings, before the sunrise a dense mist rose from the ground and dissipated once the sun’s rays had warmed enough. That is not the first time I’ve seen it here or anywhere.
I’ve observed that the more expensive the clean energy is, the more the impoverished locals resort into burning their rubbish. Judging from the smoke hovering above the villages late in the evenings that is. The AGW-crowd may be pleased to learn that the less incomplete the combustion, the more complex molecules (like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) are released into the atmosphere instead of CO2.
Following the AGW logic all the way through, that’s perhaps what we’ll revert back into one way or the other http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-13/top-global-emitter-china-best-on-climate-change-figueres-says.html.
Sorry, meant to write ‘the less complete the combustion, the more complex molecules are released’
It’s surely time that somebody spoke a good word or two about ‘carbon dioxide emissions’, and I had a go at it this morning at
http://donaitkin.com/ken-henry-as-climate-scientist-is-the-game-shifting-to-reducing-emissions/
I’m beginning to wonder whether or not there is a new word change coming — we won’t talk about extreme weather any more, or climate change. Let’s go to a softer phrase that most people like — ’emissions reduction’!
I have been involved up to my nose for years in the development of ultra-low emission coal burning stoves for the multitudes of poor people in Asia who are unlikely to use anything else in the next few decades. I therefore object to the title ‘dirty coal’. Good coal combustion in a combustor designed for that coal, whether brown or not, produces so little PM2.5 that they literally clean the air almost the entire time they are operating. I have extensive measurements to prove it.
At present the City of Ulaanbaatar is replacing about 200,000 domestic stoves with vastly cleaner ones based the science of improved combustion. Paris and Beijing are not NEARLY cities with ‘bad’ air pollution in terms of what residents of lesser-known regions suffer. Ulaanbaatar peaked at 5500 micrograms of PM2.5 this winter – that isn’t a typo. 180 is for sisies.
The idea that 180 micrograms per cubic metre requires such drastic and disruptive interventions is part or a new wave of fanatical environmentalism. PM2.5 is the new CO2. Watch the EPA.
Soon people driving tractors or harvesting food or walking in the forest or digging in their flower beds will be warned to wear air purifying filters over their mouths at all times. A typical school classroom easily exceeds 100. And playing in a sandbox?!? OMG get those kids moved into a safe environment and arrest those parents!
As CO2 crashes and burns, watch for the rise of the PM2.5 Godzilla coming to snuff out your lives. Think of the children!
Strangely enough, not a single real problem mentioned by Viv is addressed or tackled by Co2 taxes, carbon credits or multiple repeating research into solar panels, let alone a cure. Indeed it tends to highlight the very real problem, real problems that need real fixes are totally neglected because they do not fit the CO2 gods wishes
But ethical climate “scientists” will cherry pick that list of problems and select say, particulates, then study a size that is not a problem but suits their findings, predetermined of course.
Interestingly, green energy initiatives in the UK might be driving a renaissance of dirty energy.
When we lived in the UK, we installed a coal / wood heater, and burned often green wood, because we couldn’t afford to heat our house with electricity, thanks in part to green tariffs.
We were probably breaking clean air laws – but so was everyone else on our street.
redc1c4 says:
March 17, 2014 at 12:10 am
“this kind of “thinking” is right up there with “Why do you have to kill animals? Can’t you just buy your meat at the store like everyone else?””
Having one big coal plant with flue gas scrubbing is more efficient and cleaner than having a million small coal ovens. A coal plant can deliver district heating as well as electricity.
Similarly having one big slaughterhouse where cattle is processed might arguably be far more efficient than having lots of single households slaughtering their own animals.
Do you have difficulties understanding this?
Jaakko Kateenkorva says:
March 17, 2014 at 1:58 am
“Following the AGW logic all the way through, that’s perhaps what we’ll revert back into one way or the other http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-13/top-global-emitter-china-best-on-climate-change-figueres-says.html. ”
Well, smog cools.
The French reaction to the ban on cars based on number plates will probably be to find another car to use on alternate days with the opposite number. Civil disobedience is in their DNA. The Greeks here don’t take much notice of that sort of thing either.
pat says:
March 17, 2014 at 12:18 am
With municipal elections scheduled for next Sunday, the emergency smog-tackling measure brought in by the Socialist government and endorsed by their Green coalition partners risks becoming a political football in the polls.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/16/parisians-driven-revolt-smog-car-ban
_______________________
An obvious case of “give them enough rope to hang themselves”.
The Parisian smog situation is a perfect example of what happens when you institute so-called “green energy” policies. Diesel is well-known to be a dirtier fuel, even with the newer engines. Yet, it is supposedly more energy efficient, thus emits somewhat less “carbon”. They’ve substituted emissions of black carbon and sulphur for an entirely benign and even beneficial non-polluting gas. Not very bright of them. On top of that, by creating energy poverty you get people burning dirtier fuels, adding even more to the pollution.
Yes, but think of the wind turbines! Given pollution hanging around the cities, I assume there’s not much wind. How’s the wind power recently?
The French only abide by laws that they consider just. i.e. laws that do not affect them personally.
As there are many cars in most French families the correct plated ones will have been driven in from the suburbs for use on the day, and exchanged at night for the correct one for tomorrow. Flouting and or bypassing the law is a National Pastime.
Here in Brittany we mostly burn wood. As a cloud of smoke hovers low over the town every night we comfort ourselves with a glass of wine and the knowledge that alongside Drax we are saving the planet. Vive la France
“The French only abide by laws that they consider just. i.e. laws that do not affect them personally.”
In practice, this means that they only abide by those laws which tell their neighbors what to do but which they themselves profit from.