Posted by sabro on December 20, 1999 at 06:45:13:
In Reply to: Air Pollution and Earth as out Habitat posted by Shellz on December 17, 1999 at 16:47:35:
I think shelz is asking some very good questions.
Certainly there are better places to ask them, but since it's an emergency, this eclectic group of highly intelligent and interesting cruisers can at least give you a few answers:
1. Mexico City and Los Angeles are both geographic basins.
They are surrounded by mountains and hills.
They have a lot of polution sources and nowhere for the stuff to go.
On days when a natural thermal inversion layer forms, all that junk from cars and industry reacts with sunlight and water vapor to form smog. Yeech!
Los Angeles was known to Native Americans as the valley of smokes long before the first Ford came off the line.
By the way, LA has very few smog alerts. The air quality is better than it has been in thirty years and Houston is now the U.S. smog capital. All those pollution control measures are finally working, and a lot of Angelinos must be riding on two wheels.
2. Haze is not smog. It is mostly water vapor, although it may contain eye stinging, throat irritating ozone. Haze usually happens when there is warm high pressure system and an onshore flow. The moisture and other gunk gets caught under the aformentioned thermal inversion layer.
Haze in LA usually comes with smog. It obscures vision, totally blotting out the mountains.
3. Air pollution travels with the prevailing winds.
Anywhere there is a lot of cars, industry or open burning pollution is a problem, and not all of it is man made either.
The brown-purple or yellow hydrocarbon componenets tend to be photo reactive, and may fall out in the evenings after the sun goes down.
Rain, fog and snow also rid the air of pollutants, which may get washed into streams and lakes and cause a host of other problems.
4. I've never been to Singapore, but I hear it's smoggy. I don't know of any environmental organizations there.
5. This is a Suzuki Savage Q&A board. The Savage is a classic looking single cylinder motorcycle. It is a good alternative to the auto. Buy one and save the planet.
Ride safe and breathe free,
Sabro