World's pollution hotspots revealed from space

NewScientist ^ | 2004-10-12 | NewScientist.com news service

[Boundless]

A global map of nitrogen dioxide in the atmosphere has revealed the most precise view yet of pollution hotspots around the world.

[FreedomFarmer]

Just as a note, NS is the DEBKA of science sites. Just this week, they have 3 homosexual genetic proof articles running.

[Remole]

The big red splotch in S. Africa is Johannesburg, but I agree that it's larger and redder than I expected. Also, how about the pinkish hue throughout the Congo River system? Must be from slash and burn agriculture.

[Boundless]

> ... NS is the DEBKA of science sites ...

I don't know if I'd go that far, but I wouldn't pay for
their propaganda in any event (nor for Scientific
American, which I let lapse this year).

> Just this week, they have 3 homosexual genetic
> proof articles running.

I saw the one today. Certainly "proof" of nothing, but
interesting from a "correlation" point of view.

[familyop]

100 years ago, there were many more full, busy rural communities. Since then, people have been concentrated more in the cities by leftist, anti-agricultural policies, thus not allowing the Earth to do its cleansing thing in those low-lying, arable lands around our largest cities.

But the left is not concerned with those lands where food and animals can grow densely. Lefty thinks it's pretty in the sterile west and doesn't want any unwashed, conservative rif-raf living around her. She fantasizes that she is the only intended arbiter of her scenic, dry places where those populations should be living--where drainage and filtering would be better for larger populations. ...where very little grows.

So she tries to keep most of the population concentrated in what would otherwise be greener earth.

[Boundless]

> I audited a business man just back from China.
> He said it was badly polluted a hundred miles
> away from the bigger cities.

FR has had a number of China pollution scandal/crisis
postings lately. Armed with the satellite NO2 view of
Mordor, we can see why.

[Paladin2]

Also Quebec.

[cogitator]

The article is silent on this, but click on the image and take a gander at China.

Silent? It says: "The map, based on 18 months’ worth of satellite data, shows very high levels of NO2 above major European and North American cities and across much of north-east China."

It says the ship track detection is "surprising". The level of pollution in China is NOT surprising. It's a mess. It's all the factories and coal-burning power plants. I've been to Guangzhou in the winter (the orange spot in southern China). First day there, in a hotel on the Pearl River, we couldn't see a big bridge about 3/4 of a mile away. We got lucky with a cold front that cleared the air out the next day and could see it. But it's usually choking with smog.

[DrDavid]

I don't know if I'd go that far, but I wouldn't pay for their propaganda in any event (nor for Scientific Liberal Political American, which I let lapse this year).

[Boundless]

>> The article is silent on this, but...

> Silent?

Edit error. I intended to restate that before
posting, and blew it.

However, the article might as well be silent on it,
because the NO2 footprint over China is so glaring.
It could be as intense there as in the rest of the
world combined.

[cogitator]

Armed with the satellite NO2 view of Mordor, we can see why.

Chuckle. I like that. Of course, the problem with Mordor was that it was a volcanic basin surrounded by high mountains that did not allow tropospheric interaction with oceanic weather systems originating in the Bay of Belfalas, but that's just details.

For grins, here's a radar image of Okmok Caldera in the Aleutians, which I've always considered the best Earth-equivalent of Mordor. The floor of Kilauea caldera looks more like Mordor, but it doesn't have mountain in the middle and a ring of mountains around it.

[jpl]

In the U.S. the pollution is almost entirely situated over Kerry country, which leads me to the conclusion that pollution must help make people stupid.

[angkor]

The problem in Bangkok and Jakarta is the huge number of vehicles combined with a climate that traps the emissions.

[ClaireSolt]

Well, that's just a nuisance, anyway. A a previous poster said, blue states don't actually do anything about pollution except talk about it or throw money at it. They would never actually correct it.

That nuisance line is a pretty good summary of a philosophy. It applies to education, too. You wouldn't actually expect schools to graduate people who could read and write, just as you wouldn't expect law-enforcement to eradicate drug crime and prostitution.

Or, could we expect people to actually stop using heating oil in the NE to heat their homes. No, because people like John Kerry don't approve of any of the alternatives either. Just treat the pollution as a nuisance and try to blame it on someone else.