
Toxic fog settles over Salt Lake City - ttar
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-204_162-57565487/toxic-fog-settles-over-salt-lake-city-doctors-warn/
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seanmcdirmid
I did grad school in SLC and they suffer from the same
geographical/topological problems as Beijing: both cities are basically bowls
trapped in by mountains on all sides, where wicked inversions often occur in
the winter that trap pollution in with no relief until the winds blow in. Now
for this from the article:

> For weeks, industrialized cities in northern China have been dealing with
> bouts of sickening smog several times more toxic than Utah's. But by U.S.
> standards, Utah's pollution index is off the charts with readings routinely
> exceeding a scale that tops out at 70 micrograms a cubic meter. The EPA sets
> a standard for clean air at no more than 35 micrograms.

70 AQI, talk about first world problems! Right now in Beijing its around 90,
and that is considered very good for us! Last night was 486, and I was crazy
enough to go for a walk. Many of us laowai in Beijing get depressed in the
winter because of the poor air quality.

~~~
Volpe
> Many of us laowai in Beijing get depressed in the winter because of the poor
> air quality.

I'm confused about the implication here. Are westerners (laowai) more prone to
getting depressed from poor air quality? Chinese (native/migrant) aren't
affected?

~~~
bbuffone
As a westerner in beijing, i think everyone is affected the same by air
pollution, though the difference is the "choice" of being here vs. not.

You can see first hand the difference between the Beijing sky and that in
Boston. <http://sdrv.ms/10T8oof>

I feel more depressed in the summer time when the air pollution is high. In
the summer, the pollution feels smothering and then the oppressive heat of the
city can be overwhelming.

In the winter Beijing somedays just feels smokey.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Beijing summer high AQI is nowhere near winter high AQI! Summer, you have
rain, wind, and all the nice stuff that blows out the pollution. Summers in
Beijing just feel bad because its hot and muggy + some pollution mixed in.

We are all affected the same sure enough, but our* expectations might be
higher since back home we think "90" is high, when in Beijing that is almost a
clean air day. The rest of north and central China is pretty much the same,
while the southerners and definitely the westerners (like, west of LanZhou)
will complain about the AQI in Beijing just as much as the foreigners do.

* There are many countries with problems as bad or worse than China. If you come from one of those countries, then Beijing might not seem so bad.

~~~
bbuffone
Agreed, about the pollution levels. My personal view is that the summer is far
more depressing (heat, muggy, pollution) then the air in the winter. After 3
years in beijing, most Beijing people talk about the pollution far less, than
housing prices, getting a Beijing hukou...

~~~
seanmcdirmid
When we foreigners get together, we talk about pollution and the GFW since
most of us don't hope to buy a house or get hukou :)

------
bencpeters
A BIG part of SLC's air quality problem is that we have so much industrial
pollution in the area. Kennicott operates one of the largest strip mines in
the world in the valley, and their operation alone accounts for ~1/3 of the
air pollution. There are also a lot of oil refineries in the north SL area
that spew pollution constantly.

I agree that public transportation and re-thinking commuting is a good step,
but it would be great to see some movement on the very controllable industrial
pollution problems we have in a state with some of the most lax environmental
laws in the nation.

~~~
VaedaStrike
Ben here made my point right after I pointed it out. He brings up Kennicott's
Bingham Copper mine but seems ignorant that pound for pound of copper it's the
cleanest copper produced on the planet.

He also seems to not address the reality that our geography would trap a lot
of pollution regardless of where it was originally produced, simply by virtue
of the valley's geography.

I'm not against cleaning things up as much as possible. But do you really
think shutting down the cleanest copper operation on the planet is a net gain
for the environmental movement? Are we really okay with bad air as long as we
don't directly produce it? How many of us have smart phones and computers (we
are discussing this on HN are we not?)? How guilty do we feel about the
pollution produced in 3rd world countries where much of the Rare Earth
Elements used in them are mined?

Please people, reconsider the degree of outrage simply because you can see the
dirty air. Illusory and placebo environmentalism is not the means to a better
world. We need to see things in a planetary perspective if we want to really
address planetary problems, and being enraged about SLC's air quality in the
middle of an inversion is like getting worked up about polluted water after
watching Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. Sure the water is atrocious and
it's a crying shame, but the water is likely no less polluted in any other
metropolitan area hit by a hurricane, it's just the Geography is less
advantageous to New Orleans.

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austenallred
I live in Provo (just south of Salt Lake City), and I start coughing every
time I go outside. I'm fine as long as i'm indoors. The last time I felt like
this is when I lived in Beijing for a stint, and before that when I lived in a
couple mining towns in Ukraine with no regard for pollution control (Mariupol
and Gorlovka).

It's not surprising though, Utah is the perfect storm for this type of
pollution. Surrounded by mountains on all sides, the inversions that come
every winter drop the temperature by 10 degrees and trap bad air in. Combine
that with awful transport (a result of a history of conservatism, a balanced
state budget, and towns being spread out as soon as you leave the major
freeway), and it's not surprising that this happens pretty much every year.

I'm just grateful Geneva sold off the steel refinery in Orem; the air is
noticeably cleaner.

------
ars
Since the problem is soot they should ban diesel vehicles (unless they are
very new super clean ones).

So instead of encouraging mass transport they should reduce it. (Assuming they
use typical dirty diesel buses.)

Ordinary gasoline vehicles with catalytic converters really don't make much
soot. Attempting to restrict those is not the best way to solve this.

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regehr
A professor in atmospheric sciences at the U of Utah has a great blog and has
been writing a lot about the inversions lately:

<http://wasatchweatherweenies.blogspot.com/>

I live in SLC. The air is indeed pretty ugly right now. On the other hand, my
house is a few hundred feet higher than the valley floor and is mostly above
the inversion.

~~~
regehr
To give a few more details, an inversion is where there's a layer of air where
it gets warmer instead of colder as you go up. For example, last night at the
SLC airport it was 4 degrees F whereas at the top of one of the 11,000 foot
peaks near Snowbird it was 34 degrees F.

When we're in a high pressure system (i.e. nice weather) and solar heating is
limited due to low sun angle and snow on the ground, this situation is stable.
It happens in many valleys in the western US. This becomes a problem in a few
specific valleys where a lot of people live (and drive cars). Usually we get a
few weeks of this every winter.

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richeyrw
I live in SLC. It is pretty bad, though to be fair you get really pretty
sunsets...

~~~
michael_michael
And with a good strong wind you get the added bonus of smelling dead brine
shrimp rotting in the great Salt Lake. I lived there for most of my life and
will never forget that smell.

~~~
sievert
I know now where I will never live

------
brokentone
Poorly written article from the AP. "...and want large employees to let people
work from home." - Bullies who insist on no telecommuting?

Ambiguous reference between the SLC situation and LA... "That's equivalent to
a bad day in the Los Angeles area."

Then the reading was 130, the EPA limit is 35, but the scale tops out at 70?

I'm now more confused after reading this article. 1/5 would not read again.

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fowkswe
SLC, and every other major American city for that matter, is never going to
solve their smog problems when they are built such that inhabitants REQUIRE
the use of a vehicle to perform the necessary tasks to exist.

Elon Musk might have a solution (thought I'm skeptical) but public
transportation cannot to fix the environmental effects of urban sprawl.

------
pudakai
I spent a year in Idaho years ago. I was really surprised at how smoggy/dirty
the winter air gets in some of these Mountain west places that are prone to
inversions.

On top of that, woodburning in fireplaces/stoves is also really popular in
some of these areas. I remember a few days in Pocatello where you could barely
see to the end of the block.

------
VaedaStrike
Geographically we share the sink hole status with New Orleans, only instead of
water it's dirty air that our geography grants us. One thing that drives me
nuts about these superficial looks at this is that the inversion would happen
to us even if we shut down the refineries and stopped driving. In fact Utah
air quality has been steadily improving even while our geography remains the
same and our population rises and the number of cars on the road go up.

Stories like this are so easy to take out of context. We have the single
largest pollution producing facility, the Bingham Mine/Smelting facilities.
Yet when that's reported I don't see people mention that it produces the
cleanest copper, environmentally speaking, of any other facility on the
planet.

Happily we're not burning coal to keep our homes warm any more, but back when
we did Utah's air was far dirtier.

I worked for a time as housekeeping in the Salt Lake Temple and the stories I
heard were almost legendary of the kind of cleaning they'd have to do in there
back when coal burning was THE way to heat homes in the winter.

But good reporting, in terms of getting readership up and people turning their
heads, demands things get taken out of context.

And for those people big on Public Transit they need to know that it's all a
placebo. It's not actually better for the environment. Just because you don't
see smoke coming out of the actual car you're ridding in doesn't mean it's not
being pumped out somewhere else down the line, and to add to that you need to
realize all the pollution incidental to building and maintaining the
infrastructure of whatever your chosen transit option is. Many also don't
realize that in a place as sparsely populated as Utah (speaking here relative
to actual big cities) public transit is even more illusory. Presently, for
example, I'm here in Lima Peru. If there's ever a city that embraced public
transit it's Lima. Yet for significant portions of the day a great many busses
and combis and all types of public transit run relatively empty. Yes, commutes
and weekends the economies of mass transit seem dead obvious, but don't fall
for confirmation bias, if your public transit is available all day long then
any benefits you get from packing busses or trains full at commute time has to
be balanced out from the costs, fiscal and pollution and energy consumption
wise, from the whole of the cycle. And if you bleed a lot of advantages in a
city like Lima, Salt Lake doesn't have a prayer. I'd wager good money that
public transit is lucky to break even with cars when it comes to pollution
produced per transit cycle- if fiscal price is any indicator of impact on
energy use and pollution production from any and all corners of the full life
cycle of things.

------
kephra
This reminds me again at

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sheep_Look_Up>

The most frightening scifi I ever read because many of its predictions became
true, starting with US voting for a cowboy actor as president.

------
thoughtcriminal
I'm amazed by people's ability to rationalize why it's okay to continue
commuting long distances and driving cars in general, despite the toxic smog
that gets deadlier every year.

Instead of making those hard changes like using public transit or living
locally, I guess everyone is waiting for Elon Musk to save the world with his
magic-mobiles.

Go ahead, downvote me for telling the truth. I got karma to spare.

~~~
ars
> Instead of making those hard changes like using public transit

Actually diesel buses make more soot than cars. For this problem, public
transit is not the solution. (Unless you use LNG buses.)

~~~
agscala
What are you talking about? The idea is to reduce the total number of cars by
getting everyone using public transit. One bus might make twice as much soot
as a car, but the bus can bring a lot more than two cars off the road if
people ride the bus.

~~~
ars
Buses make about 150 to 250 times as much soot. Not twice as much. Old buses
granted. Newer ones are much better.

~~~
saosebastiao
Have you been reading research papers from the 1950's? If you get on any bus
anywhere in the US, you are virtually guaranteed that the bus is less than 10
years old. The average replacement time for Municipal buses is 7 years...10
years with complete engine replacement.

~~~
ars
I was driving behind a bus in the US just last week - every time the bus
accelerated a huge cloud of black smoke poured out of it.

Yes, new buses are good. But there are still plenty of old ones. (And this one
didn't look old.)

~~~
saosebastiao
Ah yes, we should go ahead with a ban on public transportation due to a
fucking anecdote. You and my former boss would get along quite well.

~~~
ars
I guess you are not as secure in your beliefs as you thought if you need to
resort to swearing. You thought buses are modern and clean, and when you
discover different you swear?

Diesel is very polluting compared to gasoline and I hate it. And stop/start
diesel is the worst. So despite its great reputation public buses are not the
automatic win they are made out to be.

~~~
saosebastiao
They aren't beliefs. And yes, I have a tendency to curse when people advocate
for very stupid policies using ideas that can be refuted in less than 5
minutes on Google.

~~~
ars
I did do some google searches first.

Buses help with traffic and CO2, they do not help with soot. And the city in
this article is having trouble with soot.

It would be wonderful if all buses were LNG, then there'd be little drawbacks.
But right now they aren't, and because LNG is more expensive cities are buying
diesel instead.

PS. In general cursing means you acknowledge your position is incorrect but
you wish to use bluster to defend it anyway. It makes little difference if you
don't intend this meaning - this is the meaning that is transmitted.

~~~
saosebastiao
In general, being wrong makes you wrong. It makes you more wrong when you tell
someone who is right that they are wrong. Soot per passenger hasn't been
anywhere near car levels for over a decade. You have to go back past the 1990s
to find buses that fare worse than cars on per passenger soot emissions. In
2007, diesel soot emissions were regulated to similar standards as gasoline
vehicles. Stop being wrong if you want to be right.

