On Feb 25, 11:21?pm, chateau.murray.takethis....DeleteThis@dsl.pipex.com (The
Older Gentleman) wrote:
> modern diesels are amazing.
>
> The thing is, they're mostly in Europe. The US simply doesn't get the
> diesel thing.
California's unique geology and weather conditions drives the entire
country's air pollution legislation.
Nobody wants what happened to California to happen across the entire
USA.
Europe is different geologically. The Alps and the Pyrenees run east
and west. Africa and Europe are two continents joined and separated by
those mountains. The Mediterranean sea filled up only recently,
perhaps within the racial memories and myths of modern humans.
Driving through Greece and Italy reminded me of California's central
valley. The fog and smog and lack of visibility and the oleanders and
the diesel trucks could have been on the Plain of Thessaly, or near
Tulare.
Diesel fuel is cheap in Europe, but costs more in California than
regular grade gasoline, partly due to state and federal taxes.
There are far more trucks on European roads than private automobiles,
travellers can take the trains everywhere.
If a diesel truck in Germany belches out a lot of soot, Hungary and
the Ukraine get the particulates.
I was sitting in a sidewalk cafe on Capri, as a diesel truck drove by
and belched soot on my food.
The marble buildings in Pisa are chocolate brown from diesel
emissions.
Parisians who own marble buildings were allowed to choose between
cleaning the soot off their facades or paying their taxes.
Got earthquakes and 14,000 foot tall mountains in Europe?
Blame it all on plate tectonics. The Pacific plate is trying to crawl
under the North American plate and that has raised up high north/south
mountain ranges that act as walls to trap air pollution in the Los
Angeles basin and the San Joaquin valley.
Los Angeles county actually is better oriented to get rid of smog than
the central valley. The San Gabriel mountains are to the north of the
populated areas.
When the wind blows, Los Angeles' air pollution gets blown over the
pass between Mt. San Gorgonio and Mt. San Jacinto into the low desert
around Palm Springs.
Then the winds turn around and the Santa Anas blow the smog back to
Los Angeles.
It sucks to live in Pomona or Chino. My college friend said that he
lived in Pomona for six months before he saw Mt. Baldy.
California's SJV is about 600 miles long and 150 miles wide. It's a
wonderfully warm agricultural, dairy, and beef raising area.
Hoardes of smoky diesel trucks replaced the older railroad system that
hauled oranges and milk and oil to market. Dairies in Tulare county
produce more milk than Wisconsin or Switzerland, but that milk has to
be moved to market by endless lines of diesel trucks.
Environmentalists have revised cow pollution emissions downwards by
half. They are now saying that only 6 pounds of volatile emissions
come out of a cow's ass every day.
>From 4400 foot Tejon Pass in the Tehachapi mountains, you could once
see clear to Fresno, 100 miles away. From Morro Rock in Sequoia
National Park, you could see the ocean, 150 miles away.
The naturalist John Muir could see the snow covered peaks of the
Sierra Nevada mountains 150 miles away as he walked from San Francisco
on his
explorations a century ago.
But that was before air pollution filled up the central valley. There
is no wind in the morning and cool air from the north causes a fog
which is an essential component of smog.
The diesel emissions and the cow farts are the other component, the
sun powers smog too, and the sky here is reddish grey. Some of the
color is from dust raised by farmers' plowing.
The smog is killing the trees in the forests. The ecosystem is dying,
why speed up the process by
building more diesel engines?
The American Motorcyclist Association published the smog emissions
limits for 2008. Motorcycles have to be cleaner running now.
Lawn mowers and weed whackers and stationary diesels were listed in
terms of tons of air pollutants emitted.
But diesel engines in trucks were mysteriously absent from the
legislation.
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