Of course you’ll continue to see power plants built in the US since you can’t import electricity via ship. Unfortunately for rate payers, all those power plants are required to have some form of politically correct baggage as part of the total package in order to get approvals. Most utilites are now required to have a certain percentage of wind power, even though wind power provides neither baseline power nor peaking power, making it absolutely worthless.
Natural monopolies such as utilities will continue to expand capacity, since they will simply pass on the exponential cost increases onto the captive rate payers.
I noticed the subtilties of your statement - your clients are building power plants et al e.g. natural m
Thats right blame the greedy trial lawyers. By the way which lawyers make more money, Plaintiffs Attorneys(who only get paid % & then only if they prevail) or Corporate Defense lawyers who get paid by the billable hour whether they win lose or draw.
Wrong. Environmental attorneys are paid by the number of lawsuits they file, regardless of whether they win lose or draw. And it’s the taxpayers who are paying their salaries.
Don’t you find it curious that environmental lawyers can make as many material false statements as they like without accountability, but corporations can be dragged across the coals if they fail to dot an “i”?
One thought is that you might be seeing the effect of film - Kodachrome was noted for giving skies a distintive cyan coloration.
I can say with some certainty that we’re not getting as much brown haze in southern California as we were 35 years ago, so the emissions controls on cars are working. On the other hand, the number of days where the air is sparkling clear seems to have gone down. The latter might be due to an increased number of particulates in the air - which a fair amount probably comes from diesel engines (and a surprising amount comes from cooking). I also noticed a distinctive change in sky color in the years after the eruption of Pinatubo in 1991.
One other possibility for the difference in sky color is the amount of jet aircraft traffic now as opposed to 45 to 50 years ago. A great example was on a flight to Lost Wages 10 years ago, my seatmate (a former co-worker) and I were perplexed by the dark bands on the ground below, wondering what geologic process created them - we the
Erik – For a long time I ascribed what I saw to what you suggest – differences in film color balance – but after some time I realized that the difference in color rendition, saturation, brightness, and contrast was across-the-board regardless of whether it was Kodachrome II, E-4 Ektachrome, Anscochrome, or whatever. When you have a huge data set of, say, 20,000 slides all taken in one state or one city, and they’re scattered from 1950 to 2000, the differences are startling.
Too, there are long term cycles of wetter and drier periods, at least in the West. These average about 25-40 years in length. The drier and warmer periods see significant upticks in airborne dirt and particulate from increased fire activity. The wetter and cooler periods less so.
In the 1870s and 1880s, there were dust storms in Kansas and Wisconsin. During the period 1918-1938, airborne particulate was particularly high because of deep plowing techniques being used in Western dryland agriculture, as a dry period commenced. The airborne pollution that resulted was definitely the result of human activities. A wetter, cooler period ensued during the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, and into the 70s, and since then, another cyclic dry period has been unfolding, forest fire frequency and intensity has been rising significantly since 1980, and natural wind-generated erosion of dry sites has accelerated. In particular, like volcanic ash, forest fire particulate is generated in huge volumes that is ejected high into the atmosphere where it tends to stay put. Human-caused pollution tends to stay closer to the earth where rain washes it out of the atmosphere. Human activities are no doubt part of the cycle, but do not drive the cycle. Indications are that a cooler, wetter period may be commencing
The fact that you see this on multiple film types, supports the observation of greatly increased haze as opposed to “the film” making the observed difference.
The Red Robin a few miles south of here has a spectacular aerial view of downtown Chicago taken ca 1930. One reason why my brain recognized that as an old shot was the clarity of the air that wouldn’t be present in a shot done in recent decades.
Michael,
You may be on the right track as to why particulates are at higher concentrations now as opposed to the 50’s and 60’s. I am still willing to bet on much of the loss of spectacularly blue skies is due to dispersion of aircraft contrails (much but certainly not all).
Of course you’ll continue to see power plants built in the US since you can’t import electricity via ship. Unfortunately for rate payers, all those power plants are required to have some form of politically correct baggage as part of the total package in order to get approvals. Most utilites are now required to have a certain percentage of wind power, even though wind power provides neither baseline power nor peaking power, making it absolutely worthless.
Natural monopolies such as utilities will continue to expand capacity, since they will simply pass on the exponential cost increases onto the captive rate payers.
I noticed the subtilties of your statement - your clients are building power