Oh Dear, It’s another Joe Romm head exploder. The improvement is verified by satellite data and the results are peer reviewed. Yet the EPA still insists on closing coal plants nationwide.
NASA Satellite Confirms Sharp Decline in Pollution from U.S. Coal Power Plants
A team of scientists have used the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on NASA’s Aura satellite to confirm major reductions in the levels of a key air pollutant generated by coal power plants in the eastern United States. The pollutant, sulfur dioxide, contributes to the formation of acid rain and can cause serious health problems.
The scientists, led by an Environment Canada researcher, have shown that sulfur dioxide levels in the vicinity of major coal power plants have fallen by nearly half since 2005. The new findings, the first satellite observations of this type, confirm ground-based measurements of declining sulfur dioxide levels and demonstrate that scientists can potentially measure levels of harmful emissions throughout the world, even in places where ground monitoring is not extensive or does not exist. About two-thirds of sulfur dioxide pollution in American air comes from coal power plants. Geophysical Research Letters published details of the new research this month.
These maps show average sulfur dioxide levels measured by the Aura satellite for the periods 2005-2007 (top) and 2008-2010 (bottom) over a portion of the eastern United States. The black dots represent the locations of many of the nation’s top sulfur dioxide emissions sources. Larger dots indicate greater emissions. (Credit: NASA’s Earth Observatory)
The scientists attribute the decline in sulfur dioxide to the Clean Air Interstate Rule, a rule passed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2005 that called for deep cuts in sulfur dioxide emissions. In response to that rule, many power plants in the United States have installed desulfurization devices and taken other steps that limit the release of sulfur dioxide. The rule put a cap on emissions, but left it up to power companies to determine how to reduce emissions and allowed companies to trade pollution credits.
While scientists have used the Ozone Monitoring Instrument to observe sulfur dioxide levels within large plumes of volcanic ash and over heavily polluted parts of China in the past, this is the first time they have observed such subtle details over the United States, a region of the world that in comparison to fast-growing parts of Asia now has relatively modest sulfur dioxide emissions. Just a few decades ago, sulfur dioxide pollution was quite severe in the United States. Levels of the pollutant have dropped by about 75 percent since the 1980s due largely to the passage of the Clean Air Act.
Smokestacks from a coal power plant in Maryland jut into a hazy skyline. Credit: Jeff Stehr, University of Maryland
Artist’s concept of the Aura spacecraft. Credit: NASA
› Larger image Vitali Fioletov, a scientist based in Toronto at Environment Canada, and his colleagues developed a new mathematical approach that made the improved measurements a reality. The approach centers on averaging measurements within a 30 miles radius (50 km) of a sulfur dioxide source over several years. “Vitali has developed an extremely powerful technique that makes it possible to detect emissions even when levels of sulfur dioxide are about four times lower than what we could detect previously,” said Nickolay Krotkov, a researcher based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and a coauthor of the new paper.
The technique allowed Fioletov and his colleagues to pinpoint the sulfur dioxide signals from the 40 largest sulfur dioxide sources in the United States — generally coal power plants that emit more than 70 kilotons of sulfur dioxide per year. The scientists observed major declines in sulfur dioxide emissions from power plants in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia by comparing levels of the pollutant for an average of the period 2005 to 2007 with another average from 2008 to 2010.
“What we’re seeing in these satellite observations represents a major environmental accomplishment,” said Bryan Bloomer, an Environmental Protection Agency scientist familiar with the new satellite observations. “This is a huge success story for the EPA and the Clean Air Interstate Rule,” he said.
The researchers focused their analysis on the United States to take advantage of the presence of a robust network of ground-based instruments that monitor sulfur dioxide emissions inside power plant smokestacks. The ground-based instruments have logged a 46 percent decline in sulfur dioxide levels since 2005 — a finding consistent with the 40 percent reduction observed by OMI.
“Now that we’ve confirmed that the technique works, the next step is to use it for other parts of the world that don’t have ground-based sensors,” said Krotkov. “The real beauty of using satellites is that we can apply the same technique to the entire globe in a consistent way.” In addition, the team plans to use a similar technique to monitor other important pollutants that coal power plants release, such as nitrogen dioxide, a precursor to ozone.
OMI, a Dutch and Finnish built instrument, was launched in 2004, as one of four instruments on the NASA Aura satellite, and can measure sulfur dioxide more accurately than any satellite instrument flown to date. Though OMI remains in very good condition and scientists expect it to continue producing high-quality data for many years, the researchers also hope to use data from an upcoming Dutch-built OMI follow-on instrument called TROPOMI that is expected to launch on a European Space Agency satellite in 2014.
On July 6, 2011, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR), requiring 27 states to significantly reduce power plant emissions that contribute to ozone and fine particle pollution in other states. This rule replaces EPA’s 2005 Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR). A December 2008 court decision kept the requirements of CAIR in place temporarily but directed EPA to issue a new rule to implement Clean Air Act requirements concerning the transport of air pollution across state boundaries. This action responds to the court’s concerns.
Re: CFL lights and mercury:
What people forget is that local landfills BAN the CFL lights because they are “Toxic” Therefore many of the more rural landfills require homeowners to store the used bulbs at home until the landfill has a “Hazardous Waste Day”
I was talking to a small business owner in Tennessee a couple of days ago about this. His town has a “Hazardous Waste Day” once a YEAR. We were discussing whether or not he should put a lock on his dumpster to prevent people from dumping the bulbs in his dumpster.
In my area I had to put in locked gates to keep people from driving down my private road and dumping construction and hazardous waste.
Given the number of dump sites along my country road, I will GUARANTEE these bulbs are going to get flung from cars like beer cans and soda bottles do or they will be buried in the regular household waste. (Don’t leave finger prints or received envelopes, that is how we caught one of the Jack@**’s who dumped on my land)
crosspatch says:
Okay…but is there any evidence that Mt Pinatubo was only a small belch in terms of SO2 emissions, as was claimed?
This paper http://toms.umbc.edu/Library/carn_bluth_GRL03.pdf gives an estimate of Nyamuragira’s yearly-average SO2 emissions from its eruptive emissions of ~0.4 million tonnes per year (note that a teragram is a million tonnes). [see paragraph 16] That is well less than the U.S. SO2 emissions of more than 10 million tonnes. [They note “However, we stress that this only accounts for eruptive emissions, and at present we lack constraints on whether Nyamuragira emits significant SO2 between eruptions.” They further note that because of the large SO2 flux rate during the eruptions themselves, “a high volume, sustained eruption from the volcano could have a severe environmental impact.”]
It is also worth noting also that, unlike CO2, the effects of SO2 (at least SO2 emitted into the troposphere) are more localized, so a volcano in Africa, even if it emits a lot of SO2, would not affect air quality in the U.S. as much as a much smaller amount of anthropogenic U.S. emissions would.
Dan Evens says:
December 3, 2011 at 5:04 pm
…….t the dial back shold not be done with fire-sale panic. All that will do is tank the economy and under cut the very research that will let us solve our problems.
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The entire point is to tank western civilization.
From Maurice Strong, now advisor to the Chinese government He said this at the opening session of the Rio Conference (Earth Summit II) in 1992.
In his essay Stockholm to Rio: A Journey Down a Generation, Strong writes
Strong is a key player and master manipulator with the morals of a mink. If you do not know of him I suggest you study up.
William Martin says:
December 3, 2011 at 10:59 pm
Dear All,
…..I am looking for an explanation or reply to the comment that ‘Australians must do something about reducing carbon dioxide emissions because they are the largest ‘per capita’ emitters in the world’…..
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Try looking at Energy Consumption as a starting place.
Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption
Wiki has a chart of the top Coal producers and Australia is NOT top ranked and also exports to China
Energy Statistics > Usage per person (most recent) by country: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/ene_usa_per_per-energy-usage-per-person Lists Australia as #5 for energy use per person.
The same site list Australia as #177 (29.3%) for Energy Statistics > Electricity > Production by source > Fossil fuel (most recent) by country http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/ene_ele_pro_by_sou_fos_fue-electricity-production-source-fossil-fuel
I hope that helps with your question and gives you a starting place.
Pete in Cumbria UK says:
December 4, 2011 at 3:13 am
The parallels between CO2 and SO2 are getting kind of ‘uncanny’ and even as just a ‘cow farmer’ growing grass forage for my animals, I’ve discovered the benefits of extra sulphur in the fertilizer I buy. Sulphur is an essential plant (and animal) nutrient (is it used to make protein?)…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Some proteins.
From a good article on sulfur in the body. http://pigmanagement.blogspot.com/2009/08/sulfur.html
Rik Gheysens says:
December 4, 2011 at 4:34 am
…..“Mercury in fluorescent lighting”.(http://www.mijnbestand.nl/Bestand-YLBHPNAA6ADP.pdf) ….
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Thank you!
Another report to hand out to the neighbors and to send off to the Congress Critters.
This is a really good report to give to the small business owners with dumpsters. They are the ones who have to worry about unwanted bulbs being dumped in their garbage and then finding themselves fined.
Gail Combs says: December 4, 2011 at 7:18 am
Gail, a request. Sometime, in the past week I think, you or someone in a discussion with you posted a short video of CO2 emissions and sinks. I have been going through the posts trying to locate it to no avail. If you know that which I speak of, would you be so kind as to re-post it, or direct me to it. Thank you in advance.
From Joel Shore on December 4, 2011 at 6:08 am:
I knew that would happen! Ah, if I could only fiscally benefit from a bet made with myself…
A person thinking as a scientist would acknowledge they erred by mismatching the units. Indeed, “make sure the units match” was drummed into me repeatedly throughout my education in the physical sciences, it’s an absolutely fundamental principle for comparisons and calculations.
And here you are seriously, not jokingly, seriously arguing how it doesn’t matter since the numbers were close enough and you gave yourself a large margin of uncertainty (of which “around one year” is supportable, two years is way too large). Could one expect to get a paper through peer review with such a units mismatch, or at least one not foretelling of Calamitous Consequences from Catastrophic Climate Change? Heck, could you even get a teacher to give you credit for an answer on a quiz with that reasoning?
To me, this speaks volumes towards your prompt readiness to defend Climate Science™ as practiced by the “legitimate” Climate Scientists you find acceptable. You delivered your Important Message, that’s what counts, the rest is just trivialities.
Thank you for the confirmation.
kadaka: When I err, I admit it. But there is nothing I said in my original post that was erroneous in the least. I never equated short tons with metric tons (tonnes). Here is my full statement on the subject in that post:
In fact, I had noticed that the two had these different units, but it wasn’t relevant because all that I said in my post is that the 20 million (metric) tons of CO2 estimated to have been emitted from Mt. Pinatubo is equal to 1 or 2 years of SO2 output from the U.S. That is a correct statement, independent of the fact that the source that I linked to showed the value for emissions in short tons and not metric tons.
To me, your sniping on this issue speaks volumes to how “AGW skeptics” make something out of nothing! Here, I am correcting a claim that was off by a factor of more than 100 and you are sniping at me because you think that I might have not noticed that the link that I gave had units that differ by about 10% from metric tons, even though there was nothing in my post to indicate that I had in fact made such an error. How bizarre!
Point! for Joel Shore!
From Joel Shore on December 4, 2011 at 1:31 pm:
The original claim by Sandy used tons, with no indication that was metric tonnes instead of customary short tons. You repeated the same number.
Sandy: Mt. Pinutabo injected 20 million tons of SO2 into the atmosphere.
You: … is about 20 millions tons of SO2, i.e., the same as what was apparently put out by Mt. Pinatubo.
You presented the numbers as the same. You never mentioned the units difference, did not link to any source stating the first number as metric tonnes, gave zero indication that the numbers given as the same were using different units. When called out on it, you now state that of course you realized from the beginning they were different units, they were close enough so you made no error, etc. This akin to buying something online with a $20 purchase price, paying $20, having it pointed out that was 20 Canadian dollars while you paid US, then replying that of course you knew that and you paid close enough anyway.
Sounds like a textbook rebuttal, from a Climate Science™ textbook. Kinda like what we’ve been seeing post-Climategate and Climategate 2.0. Do you wish to add that your remarks are taken out of context? 😉
kadaka: Now you are going around in circles. If one interprets Sandy’s number as being in short tons and the EPA’s number as being in short tons, then there was no conversion issue at all and your whole argument is moot, so why did you ever make the claim that there was a conversion issue to worry about in the first place?
As it happens, I did look up to verify that Sandy’s number for Mt Pinatubo was itself correct and it was there that I found the source was ~20 using metric tons.
As for your Canadian / U.S. dollars example: You are again failing to deal with the issue of uncertainties. Sure, if you want a number accurate to a few sig figs, then you have to be careful regarding such conversions. However, if you are dealing with the sort of rough estimates that we are dealing with here, it is not worth stressing over a 10% issue when you only quote the answer to within a factor of two. If I had said that the output from Mt. Pinatubo was, say, 1.64 times the amount of SO2 emitted in the U.S. in 2005, then it would have been important that I had made the comparison with both numbers in the same units; however, I would argue that the bigger error in that case would be believing that either of the two numbers are really known to such a high degree of precision.
As a physics lecturer, I am often dealing with students who don’t understand the concept of significant figures very well…and when you need to be careful to keep a lot and when you don’t. Perhaps you were never taught this in whatever training you had? Or perhaps you are just grandstanding here to try to distract from the fact that it took someone who doesn’t go around proclaiming himself far and wide as a “skeptic” to actually find the factor of over 100 error in a claim that someone made here and that two other commenters responded to be saying “Exactly.” (To be fair, bill http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/03/coal-confirmed-by-nasa-as-getting-cleaner/#comment-818335 says that he was on too the same thing that I noted.)
kadaka;
You presented the numbers as the same. You never mentioned the units difference, did not link to any source stating the first number as metric tonnes, gave zero indication that the numbers given as the same were using different units. When called out on it, you now state that of course you realized from the beginning they were different units, they were close enough so you made no error, etc>>>
Sorry, but the initial claim was that Mt Pinatubo eruption put out 300 times as much SO2 as did the US in a year. What you are trying to argue here is that Joel Shore is wrong because his answer wasn’t precise in terms of tons or tonnes.
Either way, the original claim was wrong. Be it by a multiple of 300 or 270, it is still way, Way, WAY wrong. You are trying to quible over “how much wrong”. Er… wronger. Uhm…more wrong. Whatever. The claim is wrong, not even close.
But …but …but …methane!
Yeah, but SO2 is not the source of life–CO2 is. Therefore the ferocious Econazis are unimpressed. Their aim is to torture and kill as many living things as possible, especially people.
From davidmhoffer on December 5, 2011 at 4:48 pm:
I am doing nothing of the sort.
I knew the numbers were way off because I checked them myself. I have not argued that part. What I did note was the units mismatch, for which I gave Joel a friendly poke in the ribs, which only deserved no reply or something like “ha ha, pull the other one.”
But apparently Mr. Joel Shore, physics lecturer, is incapable of letting pass the mere mention of anything resembling an error on his part, when there’s enough wiggle room to allow for deniability, and has transformed this into a full-throated defense where He Did Completely Absolutely Positively Nothing Wrong At All. And for this round there’s a shift from complaining about what this says about the mindset of “AGW skeptics,” as if the “other side” never quibbles about the small details, but now he’s busy insulting my education.
It’s been quite amusing.
See JAXA IBUKI map.
The only way CO2 levels will fall is if the underdeveloped world industrializes aggressively, so it becomes a net CO2 sink like the West.
Ijit.