Plants outpollute cars, trucks

[ben_meyers]

Apr. 13, 2008 12:00 AM
McClatchy Newspapers
FRESNO, Calif. - An astonishing fact is buried in dirty-air data: Trees and plants in California's San Joaquin Valley produce far more hydrocarbons than vehicles do.
In the summer, crops, trees, lawns and the rest of nature release 360 tons daily of the key smog component.
That's four times the hydrocarbons than from cars and trucks.
Hydrocarbons combine with other gases in vehicle exhaust to form the San Joaquin Valley's ozone, considered one of the nation's worst air problems.
For now, nobody is advising people to chop down their trees to save the air.
But scientists do say people should plant trees such as the Modesto ash, oleander and Bradford pear, which don't emit a lot of hydrocarbons, and avoid the high-emitting trees - the sycamore, eucalpytus, weeping willow and cottonwood, they say.

Isn't this why the Native Americans and early settlers called this area the "Valley of Smoke"?


http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2008/04/13/20080413env-smog0413.html

[jpak]

1. Channeling Ronald Regan again??? What horseshit

:rofl:

Smog formation requires two major precursors - photoreactive hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides (NOx - nitric oxide + nitrogen dioxide).

Terrestrial ecosystems release *some* hydrocarbons but virtually *NO* NOx.

Trees and plants do *NOT* cause photochemical smog on their own - they need fossil fuels, cars and industrial furnaces to do that.

Anything else is right wing pseudoscience.

:puke:

BTW: smog significantly reduces photosynthesis in plants - and volatile hydrocarbon production...

Trees and volcanoes cause smog! (More myths from the "Wise Use" movement). (anti-environmental movement)

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-17981214.html

Wise Use movement spokesperson Dixy Lee Ray stated in 1993 that the interaction between sunlight and plant hydrocarbons created ozone. Forests would be more polluted than cities if trees caused air pollution. Ray had previously claimed that ozones created by human activity were dangerous.

As I drive to work each day, there is a point on the Ventura Freeway, just before it drops into the lower parts of the San Gabriel Valley, where I am treated to a panoramic view of much of the Los Angeles basin. Almost invariably, the vista includes a layer of brown air hovering close over the horizon. This casts (to indulge in a pun) something of a pall over my spirits.

However, according to the anti environmentalist "Wise Use" move meet, I really have nothing to worry about. Smog, after all, is little more than a minor irritant. I have this on the authority of none other than the late Dr. Dixy Lee Ray, who in her final years was an officer of the Mountain States Legal Foundation (that creation of Joseph Coors which gave us James Watt, Ronald Reagan's bad choice for Secretary of the Interior, and Ann Gorsuch, Watt's bad choice for head of the Environmental Protection Agency) and an enthusiastic spokesperson for the "Wise Use" movement. Speaking on a talk show on religious radio station KKLA in 1993, Dr. Ray reassured a caller in the following exchange:

<snip>

While she was speaking of only two of the many pollutants in the chemical soup that people breathe each day in southern California--hydrocarbons and ozone--Ray, supposedly speaking as a scientist, was making the same old claim once made by Ronald Reagan: that smog comes from trees. Let's dissect Ray's remarks in some detail, starting with her assertion that ozone in the lower atmosphere is largely harmless. (Readers of this article should be warned in advance that I will be considering scientific issues in some detail. While this may be tough going for some, it is necessary in refuting the claims of the "Wise Use" movement.)

<more>

[jpak]

2. What next? Volcanoes and sea salts destroy stratospheric ozone???

:D

Volcanoes are responsible for global warming????

:D

Environmentalists want to ban Thanksgiving Dinner???

:D

The Spotted Owl is reproducing itself into extinction???

:D

Please...please...please...post more ignorant RW anti-environment drivel!!!!1111

:rofl:

[juno jones]

3. "Look at THOSE TREES!

Stealing MY oxygen!"

with apologies to John Waters.

[PetrusMonsFormicarum]

4. If I was a tree

I'd sue their asses.

[jpak]

5. Biogenic VOC and ozone

http://www.eeb.princeton.edu/~dpurves/voc_ozone.htm

<snip>

However, VOCs are also released by trees, and in many parts of the world these biogenic emissions of VOC exceed anthropogenic emissions. Also the biogenic VOCs are more reactive than typical anthropogenic VOCs, and they are released preferentially on the hot, bright days which, for other reasons, provide the best conditions for ozone production.

Now, before we get too carried away in blaming trees for pollution(you may remember that Ronald Reagan did exactly this), or for that matter before anyone gets too heavy accusing me or the many other ecologists that work on biogenic VOCs and tropospheric ozone of running an anti-tree or pro-industrial pollution campaign (!), there are two really important things to get straight:

(1) the NOx required for ozone production comes almost entirely from anthropogenic sources, without this human pollution there would be no ozone problem.

(2) in fact, when NOx levels are low, as they would be without humans, the VOCs act IN REVERSE to reduce ozone concentrations. So the same chemicals that, in the present atmospheric environment, contribute to ozone formation would actually reduce ozone levels. We make a good thing bad!

<snip>

[kestrel91316]

6. Why are you citing scientists??? You obviously don't believe in science.

Or rather, you only believe the most whacko, out-there, fringe-y nutballs claiming to be scientists........

Take your spam back to FR where it belongs.