State officials posted the Valley’s eighth ozone pollution advisory of the season Tuesday, a fact clean-air activists noted repeatedly as they argued against a plan to repeal Arizona’s vehicle-emissions rules barely six months after they took effect. Arizona’s plan to cut clean-car program criticized by activists

Maricopa County’s ozone season starts today with a fresh burst of heat and sunlight, two key ingredients needed for unhealthful levels of the smog to form.

Temperatures could rise to nearly 100 degrees today as a strong high-pressure system creates the ideal conditions for ground-level ozone. The other elements – vehicle exhaust, power-plant emissions, gasoline, paint and industrial solvents – are always in abundant supply.  Read more…

My gripe? While I agree that vehicle exhaust is always in abundant supply, I don’t imagine power plants contribute any significant amount of pollution to the Phoenix area. The closest big power plant is Palo Verde nuke which is by definition smog-free. There are a bunch of small-scale power plants within the valley but they tend to be natural gas fired, which is very very clean smog-wise. The nearest big coal plant, which are among other pollutants very smoggy are hundreds (?) of miles away.

I wonder how much of smog is contributed other than from vehicle exhaust (and fueling)?? I doubt very much.

Experts warn of poor Valley air quality The Arizona Republic. A familiar brown cloud is settling over a cool, dry Valley, prompting air-quality experts to warn that residents could be in for a particularly dirty winter.

Bad air expected for Valley through the holidays Bob McClay/KTAR PHOENIX — The Valley’s brown cloud season has arrived, with poor air quality that irritates respiratory systems … Mark Shaffer with the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality. …said the high pressure creates an air bubble that collects ozone below 5,000 feet.

For those of you who don’t follow such minutia, the Phoenix area is what is termed a “Serious Non-Attainment Area” for various forms of air pollution. This leads to, of course, some amount of human misery especially via various lung diseases, but it also brings the specter of loss of federal funds if the air isn’t cleaned up. Some local (state, or maybe county?) agency must produce a plan to clean up the air to the satisfaction of the EPA; that plan (critique here dated 9/13/2010: EPA Disapproves Air Quality Plan for Phoenix ) was rejected in part because “EPA has determined that the SIP (State Implementation Plan) over-emphasized emission reductions needed from construction-related activities and de-emphasized emission reductions from other sources”, you know,  other source like, for example, those produced as a result of using motor vehicles.

So the story is that Washington D.C. enacted a law that mandates that anyone who sells food must charge 5 cents for each bag given. Customers can either bring their own bags, or not use a bag, or pay the nickel. There were the usual predictions of the world coming to an end, however the WSJ story claims no major disruptions have occurred, and even some who opposed the tax initially now have changed their minds.

The bags often become floating trash and muck-up the Chesapeake watershed — a negative externality. The tax is designed to cut disposable plastic bag consumption and, it is hoped, plastic bag waterway pollution by 50%.

Here where I live, we have no such bag tax, of course, but it is trendy for grocery retailers to offer customers a nickel credit for each bag brought in that is then reused — a positive incentive.

Looking around here, it is obvious that the (coincidentally) equal positive incentive has had very little impact on bag usage, whereas the incentive in D.C. has had a large impact. I’ve also noticed that initially the grocers offering the incentive volunteered the credit, and now they seem to “forget” or not notice to give the credit unless the customer points it out, and most/many aren’t likely to do that to earn a nickel or a dime.

I’m thinking there must be a lesson here for things like free parking; which is that positive incentives have little impact, while negative incentives have a huge influence on behaviors.

The Arizona Republic ran this USA Today story under the better-named  headline “Gulf spill can’t rival oil seepage from cities: Over time, tiny drips add major pollution to oceans”.

“Human-caused spills send more than 300 million gallons of oil into North American waters every decade, an amount roughly double the highest estimate of the BP spill”… “the largest human-caused source of oil into the environment is the byproduct of millions of autos and other oil-powered devices.”

Land-based oil spills add up, too

USA Today, 6/30/2010

Human-caused spills send more than 300 million gallons of oil into North American waters every decade, an amount roughly double the highest estimate of the BP spill, according to studies by some of the world’s top scientists.

Worldwide, the numbers are even starker, according to Oil in the Sea III, a 2003 report from the National Academy of Sciences that several top scientists say remains the best estimate of oil’s impact on oceans. The estimated 4 billion gallons leaking into oceans each decade from all sources is more than 25 times the highest estimates of what has spewed into the Gulf.

“Wherever I am, I always go down to the beach — and I always find tar balls,” says Merv Fingas, a Canadian researcher who co-authored the study. “That was probably completely untrue even 30 years ago.”

Scientists cannot compare the damage from the routine discharges into oceans and estuaries with that of the Gulf spill because there has been so little study of the issue. The report called for additional study, but Fingas told Congress this month that little has been done to research and monitor spills.

“There is a very serious knowledge gap on discharges,” Fingas said.

Another factor that has not been thoroughly studied: natural seepage of oil from under the sea. The study estimates that 493 million gallons a decade enters the waters off North America, mostly in the Gulf and off California. Worldwide, an estimated 1.8 billion gallons of oil seeps out per decade.

“The amount of natural seeps is just horrendous,” says James Coleman, head of Louisiana State University’s Coastal Studies Institute and chairman of the 2003 study. “Every time we go down in a submarine or do a side-scan sonar, we find more.”

Although massive blowouts receive the most attention, the largest human-caused source of oil into the environment is the byproduct of millions of autos and other oil-powered devices.

Oil that drips from a car’s crankcase or gasoline that spills at a gas station eventually washes down gutters and storm drains into rivers that drain into the sea, the report said. Other significant sources include recreational boating, commercial ships and tankers, and oil production.

Because the government and industry do not track these spills, the totals could be much higher, the study concluded. Scientists estimated that human spills in North America could be as high as 6.3 billion gallons a decade.

Alex Horne, University of California-Berkeley professor emeritus of ecological engineering, says he has frequently encountered the smell of dumped fuel or the rainbow sheen of oil while working on wetlands pollution.

“This is something that goes on year after year,” Horne says. “And it’s going to keep on going on. There is no end in sight to land-based spills.”

Even small spills can harm the environment, according to the report and scientists. Oil products contain toxic compounds such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons that are known to cause cancer in humans and can kill marine wildlife.

They aren’t, of course, actually free — thus someone else is paying, not the driver using it, it is external to the cost of driving; call it socialism for drivers. Thus leading to ever more demand for more driving and more parking spaces.

from the Arizona Republic 12/28/2009; Ahwatukee Park-and-Ride Lot Expanding.

In the example mentioned in the story, 353 spaces are being added to the existing 562 for a cost of $3M. That’s $8,500 per space. But that is only the cost of construction (or land but that is cheap); the ongoing costs aren’t listed but they are significant. A not exhaustive list would look something like; lighting, maintenance like sweeping and cleaning, and re-sealing asphalt, full-time(one employee ~ 50hrs/week) security during operating hours, cost of operating the small building (heat and cooled approximately 24×7, even though no one is usually there; didn’t these people ever hear of a programmable thermostat?).

see Doug Shoup’s book mentioned here; The High Cost of Free parking.

In the particular example of a transit park-and-ride lot it gets even more interesting because of the cross-subsidies involved in mass transit. One wonders if the best use of presumably limited transit funds is to build parking spaces for the relatively well-off remote suburban commuters. This lot serves only one bus line; a rapid/express (no intermediate stops) route between Ahwatukee and downtown Phoenix. The line only runs one way, and only in the morning and evening. Thus the parking spots have low turnover — one spot equals one round trip rider.

This was mainly a polemic against the tar sands (though the industry prefers the term oil sands) industry as practiced in Alberta, Canada, and how it connects to provicial politics there. The problems with the industry are legion: they use enormous amounts of natural gas to extract and upgrade the tar; loads of water is used; this load of water is then collected in highly toxic tailings ponds. Open pit/strip mining uses less natural gas than in situ extraction, but leaves obvious scars. And in any event, only 20% of the bitumen is available through mining — the other 80% requires in situ (referred to as SAGD,  Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage).

The biggest thing that I was surprised at was how far along the industry is: it currently produces (er, I prefer the term extracts) 1.5million barrels a day — and has serious plans to increase to 5million within a decade or so. As Nikiforuk points out, such an increase would wreak all sorts of havok, and may in fact be not feasible.

The EROEI, being quite poor; and as an alternative to natural gas, nuclear energy may be substituted.

There are a couple of dimensions to the problem, the advocacy site www.leadfreewheels.org focuses on the direct risk of lead poisoning to childred touching them. But beyond that they get ground to dust by passing traffic and they enter the ecosystem, e.g. as runoff polluting groundwater, or airborne as fine dust that can be inhaled or ingested.

Interesting question over at treehugger — do street sweepers pick these loose pieces of toxic waste up? And, if they do, then what happens to them?

The story of the use of lead additives in US fuel, and the industry’s wanton disregard for human health, is sickening and it haunts us to this day “Even though leaded gasoline is largely gone in North America, it has left high concentrations of lead in the soil adjacent to all roads that were constructed prior to its phaseout. Children are particularly at risk if they consume this”

Motor vehicles are the largest source of ozone pollution.

Here are some snippets from the LA Times story:

Environmental scientists already knew that increases in ozone during periods of heavy pollution caused short-term effects, such as asthma attacks, increased hospitalizations and deaths from heart attacks….But the 18-year study of nearly half a million people, reported today in the New England Journal of Medicine, is the first to show that long-term, low-level exposure to the pollutant can also be lethal.

The researchers found no increase in deaths from cardiovascular disease associated with ozone levels — those deaths are caused primarily by the fine particulates present in air pollution.

They also found no increase in overall mortality, suggesting that ozone is causing deaths in people who were probably going to die in another year or two anyway, according to epidemiologist Joel Schwartz of the Harvard School of Public Health, who was not involved in the study.

“We do know that ozone is particularly dangerous for people living with existing asthma or lung disease,” Jerrett said. And it didn’t matter what someone’s weight, income or education was. “It seems to affect a lot of people relatively equally.”

– Low-level ozone exposure found to be lethal over time, 3/12/2009, The Los Angeles Times.