 On Point Vincent Carroll, editor of the editorial pages, writes his On Point column most weekdays. He is also an author and freelance writer. Reach Vincent Carroll at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com. |
Carroll: Ozone surprises
If it’s hot and dry, it’s ozone weather.
Know how hard it will be to reduce ozone if metro Denver falls out of compliance with federal standards this summer? Or if the Environmental Protection Agency actually tightens those standards in the near future?
As it happens, both propositions appear likely.
The non-technical answer is that it will be very difficult to reduce ozone — but not necessarily for the reasons you’ve been led to believe.
Consider this startling fact: Both across the country and on the Front Range, ozone concentrations appear to be higher generally on weekends than during the week.
According to a study finished just last month by two California researchers and Doug Lawson, a scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden who sits on the state Air Quality Control Commission, peak ozone levels at monitors along the Front Range have produced mostly higher readings on Sundays than on Wednesdays.
Think about that. Wouldn’t you expect the opposite? Wouldn’t you expect ozone to be higher on days when our vehicles are spewing lots more pollutants — especially ozone “precursors,” as they’re called — into the atmosphere?
But as Lawson points out (and as he and others have explained in previously published research), the mix of pollutants may be at least as important as their total quantity.
So while there are fewer hydrocarbons polluting the air on Sundays than on Wednesdays, the decline in nitrogen oxides(NOx) is even steeper because so many diesel trucks and buses are off the road.
And because of the way hydrocarbons and NOx react together, ozone tends to form earlier on weekends and grow more concentrated.
Why does this matter? In part because you will often hear that if we just reduced overall driving, it would solve the ozone problem. Yet that’s not necessarily so.
Also, current federal emission rules are projected to reduce NOx emissions proportionally more than hydrocarbons over the next few years.
Oops.
Finally, the Ritter administration is pushing the use of E-85 fuel (85 percent ethanol), which will also add to the ozone problem.
Oops again.
Some suggest we crack down on oil and gas development in and around Weld County. Trouble is, the Air Quality Control Commission has already lowered the boom there; meanwhile, it’s not even clear that such energy production contributes much to ozone.
After all, as Paul Tourangeau, director of the state’s Air Pollution Control Division, confirmed when I spoke with him recently, there is no significant trend in metro Denver ozone levels between 1996 and 2006 — a period, you’ll notice, that includes the energy boom.
Ozone levels have fluctuated “within a band,” Tourangeau said, driven heavily by meteorology. The years 1998 and 2003 were particularly bad, for example.
Alarmingly, Tourangeau observed that ozone at levels of 40 to 50 parts per billion sometimes drifts in from out of state. With the EPA considering a standard of 70 parts per billion, no wonder he says “this is going to be a challenge.”
So what can be done?
California’s experience suggests that state regulators may opt to punish us all. They could mandate expensive “boutique” fuel blends, for example, and tighten tailpipe standards, though neither tactic delivers much punch.
Their other instinct will be to nag: Don’t mow or fill your gas tank until the evening; go easy on the charcoal lighter fluid; keep those paint cans covered. Take the train.
Lawson and others familiar with the data are skeptical of these tactics and have long preferred targeting high-emitting vehicles, a small minority of the total fleet that contributes a large share of the total hydrocarbon pollution from mobile sources.
“A single high emitter is the annual equivalent of dumping 25 gallons of gasoline on your driveway and letting it evaporate,” he told me.
Colorado is beginning a high-emitter program, but it’s a pale shadow of what it could be if we were serious about vehicles that run dirty. Winston Churchill once quipped that “Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing .. . . after they have exhausted all other possibilities.”
Let’s hope he’s not right once again.
Reach Vincent Carroll at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com.
He is right Vince. I went to buy a lawn mower earlier this year. There were dozens of gas models and no electric. The guy at Home Depot told me electric mowers are "special order" (I wound up buying an electric model, in-stock, Black & Decker from Sears). So why are electric mowers so hard to find, and why do consumers still embrace gas powered technology? It should be a declining technology because it is killing us in the meantime.
Posted by hikingartist on July 22, 2007 10:06 PM"state regulators may opt to punish us all"
I find that statement to be ridiculous. The folks that work at CDPHE are just trying to find solutions to a difficult problem (ozone). You don't mention in your column that if Colorado does not fix its ozone problem and is designated as "non-attainment" there are very severe federal penalties. Namely, we stand to lose ALL of our federal highway funding, as well as a pay to pollute structure, which will drive industries away from our state. Spending a little bit more on gasoline seems like a small price compared to these options.
Posted by SWreader on July 23, 2007 10:22 AMHow does using a little less gasoline affect anything SWreader?
Using gasoline lawnmowers is "killing us". Whew..why ain't I dead yet hikingartist I'm 62 and have been mowing for 50 years?
The big "oops" in all of this is the mandating of E85 for cars. Another wrong direction because of the bogus CO2 scare. Our illustrious mayor wants to add more ozone with a million trees planted in 20 years. Will we be able to meet Ozone level tests then?
Every 20 years from 1930 on we've had climate crisis after climate crisis. It lasts long enough for more government mandates and the for a few groups to get money from concerned citizens.
I've been through the fires of the first gulf war supposedly causing a rash of birth defects and early deaths (didn't happen). I lost a business in Northern California because of the "spotted owl" fiasco..5 years later it's reported by the same group who's actions brought about the closing of 2 out of 4 lumber mills, the spotted owl actually thrives in "new growth" because of the lack of underbrush.. their prey are more visable. "Oops again" to the loss of several thousand jobs and businesses going under (mine was one, oh did I mention that?)
In the 70's and late 80's it was global freezing and the exact same outlandish statements were made.
We had until the 90's to get our "sh*t" together or we were all going to die!....Now it's another "Oops" we meant warming, yeah that's it warming..
Then you read geologists and astronomers about the cyclic cause of global warming being the sun and water (95% of the green house affect) and whoa..another "oops" in the making.
In the meantime thousands of farmers are switching to corn for E85 (increases ozone). When the bottom falls out of that, will the farmers face what the western slope faced when oil pulled out of its shale oil experiments.
Oops! Sorry about that...
Good news on the horizon. Last July Ford anounced a whole fleet of buses for Florida that were run on internal combustion engines burning Hydrogen.
If this were done for autos and the "big rigs" we would suffer very little re-tooling expense, very little retooling expense as compared to Hydrogen "fuel cells".
These little buggers are only really good below 40 mph in saving gas, the technology is expensive and it adds weight to the car (decreasing efficiency since weight is one major hold up on better gas mileage).
If we are foolish enough to go electrical we will cripple the aftermarket in one step. Lots of jobs, lots of revenue for Uncle will be lost.
If we go Hydrogen, we gain efficiency in fuel(higher mileage not less as compared to E85) and it puts out less ozone not more.
Hydrogen powers the sun! We now have the technology (as proven by Ford) to run Hydrogen.
Refining it from water has two advantages. We can leverage current power grid centers to "refine" it and the output is 2 parts Hydrogen and one part Oxygen. Is that "clean" enough?
We don't have to drill for water. We have the oceans, seas, rivers, streams and lakes if not the rain fall to draw from and that means, finally..we wouldn't be tithing to Allah every time we filled up as we do now.
We are supplying the financing to those that wish to kill us by purchasing gasoline.
Instead of harping on big oil, we might want to look at OPEC and discover the real reasons for 3 dollars a gallon. After all they tend to set the world market base price do they not?
Yet it's bad America, bad bad....
In response to hikingartist, I for one perfer using gas lawn mowers mainly because, at least for the one I used, it was immensly underpowered. It seemed slow and not up to the job. Also, a cord attached to a lawn mower is a big hassle.
Posted by Gas Lawn Mower User on July 23, 2007 02:25 PMFather Omalley-Lemme ask you, there were no ozone warnings 50 years ago, right? Not even 20 years ago. I grew up in the 60-70's (it figures, right) & never heard of ozone warnings until the late 90's. The atmosphere is slowly getting dirtier. I don't believe that because of what I read, but because of what I see. Melting glaciers, receeding icecaps, changing weather patterns & oh yeah, regular ozone warnings & annual forest fires, to name a few signs. Maybe you ain't dead yet because of it, but do we wait until people are dying before we make the change?
But I do heartily agree with you on one point: "We are supplying the financing to those that wish to kill us by purchasing gasoline." Seems like a pretty foolish strategy to be financing our enemy.
Mower User- A cord is a big hassle? Its simple really; start mowing close to the plug-in point & work outward. That way the cord is always behind you. Speaking of hassles, what about storing & the smelly refilling of a gasoline engine? And the subsequent oil change? And the fouling spark plugs? And the clogged air filter?
There are none of these issue with an electric mower. Plug it in & go.
Incidentally, I see where someone was seriously injured today by a mower, a gas mower I suspect. Our electric shuts off completely as soon as you release the handle; a small hassle, but now it makes sense.
PS They also make electric mowers with battery packs-wow! no cords!
So, let me see...half a gallon a week to mow my grass and 10 gallons to get me back and forth to work. I really don't see any argument in gas mowers in the grand scheme of things
I also wonder how much fuel is burnt to produce the electricity to mow my grass with an electric mower. I suspect it is more than my half gallon of gas.
Posted by Zorander on August 2, 2007 04:15 PMFor those who posted up to now, google for "Asian Dust" and "Ethanol". Both are science, not computer models. Asian dust flowing east out of Mongolian Desert in China, travels over S. Korea and Japan, over the ocean, up to Alaska with wind currents at 30,000 to 40,000 feet , down west coast of U.S. and over Rockies from West to East, across entire country. Carries volcano gases , industrial emissions, around and around the planet. Detected and tracked by satellites and airplanes for past 30 years.
That makes more sense to me of acid rain in our forest, than media hype of front range activities traveling west up into the Rockies.
Also for Ethanol, autos can tolerate 5 to 10% mixed in with gasoline. But ethanol must be trucked to mixing sites, since it would require completely new and different pipelines. Also ethanol attracts moisture that can freeze in fuel lines or in storage tanks. And ethanol when burned, emits formaldehyde, so we can all be embalmed while still alive.
Don't take my word for it. Look it up with an open mind. I also do not buy "global warming" since earth has always gone through cyclical periods, caused more by ocean currents. But people make a lot of money scaring other people on regular basis.
Posted by Frank25 on August 4, 2007 11:11 PM