An AIR QUALITY ADVISORY is in effect through midday today for Taylor county, Lincoln county, Langlade county, and all areas to the south. Air quality advisories are issued by the DNR when particulate pollution reaches certain critical levels in the atmosphere where they affect human health. The people most at risk are the elderly and people with breathing problems. These groups should not do strenuous activities outdoors on days with advisories. The primary meteorological reason we have an air quality advisory is that there has not been much wind over the last couple of days and light winds continue today. Without much wind, there is nothing to whisk the polluted air from the region and it builds up to unhealthy levels.
The root cause of the particulate pollution is something different - it is our fossil fuel economy. Let me tell you a story. When I first started driving to Wausau to work at WSAW in 1995, I was living in Nekoosa (then Wisconsin Rapids a bit later). During my drive to work on the county highways and the freeway (I-39) I might see 2 or 3 vehicles in the early morning hours, 2 to 3 am. I would usually encounter 1 or 2 vehicles on Grand Avenue all the way from Rothschild to downtown. Now I drive (or ride bicycle) only 3 miles through town and it is typical to encounter a dozen or more vehicles. There are more people and there are more cars on the road. The big city smog and pollution is creeping up on us. If we follow the same path of growth that other areas of the country, then we are in for more roads, more sub-divisions, more highway interchanges, more concrete, and of course more pollution. I could go on about this pollution feedback cycle and how hard it is to break out of it, but I already did back when I penned the concrete life: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. Part one is probably the best. Scratch that, I tried to go back and link to the original articles but I think they got nuked when we switched blogging software. That is a shame because they were interesting. I also got a little depressed writing them because it is unlikely that the suburban sprawling polluting culture can be reversed anytime soon. The technological trends that give hope are alternative energy and information technology. The more people that can make a living from home using the internet, the less people that will need to be on the road. The more we can use solar power to drive the economy the less fossil fuel pollution will occur. One trend I am following particularly close is electric vehicle (EV) development. If the U.S. is going to hold on the to suburban concrete/driving culture then EVs are the best near term hope. Yes, I know that the electricity to run electric cars would still be generated mostly from fossil fuels, however, it is much easier to filter and clean-up a few thousand power plants than hundreds of millions of tailpipes. If more people drove electric cars, there would be less particulate pollution in our cities.
At this point in the blog entry I would usually link to a bunch of new positive EV articles. Alas, I don’t have any, but I have accumulated a bunch of various alternative energy news stories. So here ya go:
A proposed superconducting superstation could connectthe three big energy grids in the U.S. to newer renewable energy sources. It is hard to imagine a ring of super conducting wires (that need to be refrigerated – extremely cold) that needs 60 square kilometers of land could ever be economical, but apparently it has been studied, and perhaps some higher temperature superconducting wire (like ambient temperature) will be invented in the near future. I like the idea, but I get a queasy feeling about huge projects like this. They have long time frames to implement and usually have cost overruns. Also, such a large important part of the nation’s energy infrastructure would be a prime target for terrorists and hard to defend.
More people are talking about autonomous cars. I can’t wait for this development. Not only would it reduce pollution but reduce accidents as well. I would feel much safer on the road with a bunch of computer drivers (including my own car) than with human drivers.
Harnessing waste heat could double the battery life for laptops and cell phones. This has been a dream of many engineers for decades and now that we can manipulate the structure of devices at the nanoscale, it is becoming a reality.
Another thin film solar company Solextant claims to have made a breakthrough in solar cell design that could bring thin films above the 10% efficiency mark. This would be a dramatic improvement, not only from the efficiency standpoint but from the cost standpoint. Thin film solar cells can be made more cheaply using roll-to-roll or ink jet printing technology.
Even the ethanol business could get a boost. A company (ZeaChem) claims it can increase the yield of cellulosic ethanol production by 50%. ZeaChem still has a ways to go to prove the advantages of its process but it is good to see some new ideas (something other than the yeast/grain ethanol situation).
And finally a follow-up on the Sandia laboratory effort to create fossil fuel from CO2 using sunlight as an energy source. They have created a demonstration unit.It still has a ways to go to prove market viability, but hooray for Sandia anyway. At least it can be shown that we can make fuel out of CO2. If this process is a smashing success then maybe power plants would not have to sequester CO2 underground.
Have a fine Monday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.
Posted under Alternative Energy, Pollution
This post was written by jloew on November 23, 2009
