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Toxic fog settles over Salt Lake City

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Re: Toxic fog settles over Salt Lake City

#11

Post by regehr »

regehr wrote: post #4

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.

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.

Re: Toxic fog settles over Salt Lake City

#12

Post by 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.

Re: Toxic fog settles over Salt Lake City

#13

Post by 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.

Re: Toxic fog settles over Salt Lake City

#14

Post by ars »

thoughtcriminal wrote: post #12

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.

> 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.)

Re: Toxic fog settles over Salt Lake City

#15

Post by [deleted] »

thoughtcriminal wrote: post #12

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.

[deleted]

Re: Toxic fog settles over Salt Lake City

#17

Post by darrenkopp »

thoughtcriminal wrote: post #12

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.

Have you seen the public transportation in Utah? We got a commuter rail train in 2002 for the olympics, which was pretty much limited to a small area in downtown Salt Lake, and then a straight line down through sandy. Then a few years ago we got Front Runner, which is a somewhat fast commuter train between Ogden and salt lake, but which costs somewhere around $250/month last time I checked.

Buses are OK, about as good of a system as you would expect buses to be, but if you are looking to go from where I live to salt lake you are probably looking at an hour to an hour and a half, which seems pretty good when you consider that it takes 45 minutes - 60 minutes on Front Runner (30 miles).

Re: Toxic fog settles over Salt Lake City

#18

Post by 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.

Re: Toxic fog settles over Salt Lake City

#19

Post by bbuffone »

Volpe wrote: post #3
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #2

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 sever…

> 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?

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.

Re: Toxic fog settles over Salt Lake City

#20

Post by jonpeda »

ars wrote: post #14
thoughtcriminal wrote: post #12

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.

> 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.)

I like how you immediately contradicted your conclusion with the obvious counterexample.
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