Up Sucker Creek

Up Sucker Creek
Photo Courtesy of the Lake Oswego Library

Monday, December 15, 2014

Smog: Past, present and future

More people, more cars, cleaner air.  

The story about China's fouled air is from last winter, but it's highly unlikely China has made much of a dent in its air pollution problems that quickly.  It takes years to either switch from coal-fired electrical plants or to install air scrubbers in all.  Let's hope the transition comes soon.

For those who are concerned about global warming, cheap, reliable and plentiful electricity would do for the world what all the trains, bicycles and compact cities will do.  (Read old blog post and/or other web articles about Bjorn Lomborg's ideas to combat climate change.)

For those who don't know or remember, air and water pollution was much worse than today back in the 1940s through the early 1970s, in Portland and elsewhere in the US, but LA was the poster child for smog.  Below is another article I ran across about smog in LA after WWII.  Portland had similar problems.  If one was on the west side of town in the hills looking east, there were days brown haze blanketed the city making it difficult to see the foothills of the Cascade range and Mt. Hood, when not obscured, was tinted gray.  Backyard burning, unregulated tailpipe emissions, low mpg automobiles and industrial smokestacks all contributed to the foul air.  Along with LA, Portland's frequent temperature inversions kept the dirty air close to the ground and in one place.  

Where has all that smog gone?  We have more people and more cars and more industry now, but the major pollution sources are, to a large extent, taken care of.   Those who lack the perspective of time should know we are working on incremental fixes now, and that most of the hard work has been done.  The history lesson on Los Angeles smog is a good one to read.





Christmas Eve in LA, 1948.  The traffic was clear, unfortunately, the air wasn't.  Photo: USC

LA Smog: the battle against air pollution. 
Marketplace.org  July 14, 2014  By Sarah Gardner  

Back in the 1950s and 1960s people in Los Angeles breathed some of the dirtiest air in the world.


Greener cars have improved LA air quality
CS Monitor,  August 25, 2012

YouTube Video by Honda: The Never Ending Race

Photo by Reuters
These Pictures Capture Just How Horrifying China's Smog Situation Is Right Now
While smog is an ever-present reality in many of China's cities, it becomes particularly bad to the north as winter approaches. When cold weather hits, China's coal plants come to life. But warming the homes of nearly half a billion people can take its toll. Researchers estimate that people who lived in northern China in the 1990s will live about five and half years less than those in the south.

Last month, officials in Beijing (no stranger to smog) announced a plan to reduce air pollution around the country. They proposed cutting coal consumption for primary energy use to under 65 percent by 2017. Last week, city officials in the capital passed an emergency plan for periods where heavy pollution is anticipated for three or more days, enacting driving restrictions according to license plate 
numbers.

 Satellite view of China's smog. NASA

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