Acid rain is caused by high levels of sulfur dioxide & nitrogen oxide pollution. A cap-and-trade program was written into law in the '90s which limited sulfur dioxide & nitrogen oxide pollution. Since then, both gases are released dramatically less often here in the US, but it's still unfortunately common in places like China with weaker regulations.
@graphite It [i]was[/i] happening. One of the alerts was trees dying unexpectedly in Scandinavia, traced to Sulphur Dioxide fumes blown by the prevailing Westerly winds from British steel-works' coking-plants, and coal-fired power-stations.
Quite some time ago in large biomass boilers like where I work. It became a federal requirement to install A scrubber system. They help remove hydrogen chloride from the exhaust stream. Hydrogen Chloride readily combines with water to make Hydrochloric Acid. Acid rain. Coal fired and gas fired power plants have to use them as well. Reducing HCI output along with Sulfur Dioxide and Sulfur Trioxide. Components of Smog
Short answer: fixed by government regulations on sulfur in coal.
Seems there is acid rain denial among some folks who don't live in the areas where forests were decimated by acid rain. I didn't know acid rain denial was such a big thing!
Environmental regulations reduced SO2 which reduced sulfuric acid in rain. What a difference 30 years made! Note that rising pH means falling acidity. Every increase of 1 in pH equates to a reduction by a factor of 10 in acid concentration. pH of 7 is neutral.
@MissingLink says [quote]Maybe it's in the ozone hole[/quote]
@gol979 says [quote]Disappeared through the hole in the ozone layer 😉[/quote]
Funny you should mention that!! The antarctic ozone hole is a case that demonstrates both humanity's ability to affect the atmosphere and humanity's ability to fix the damage we've done. The ozone hole began shrinking when we reduced CFC outputs by over 99%.
[quote]NASA began measuring Earth’s stratospheric ozone layer by satellite in 1979. By the time the Montreal Protocol went into effect in 1989, ozone concentrations (in Dobson units) had declined significantly over the Antarctic, enlarging the ozone hole. [/quote]
The American Chemical Society says: [quote] [b]Chlorofluorocarbons and Ozone Depletion[/b] A National Historic Chemical Landmark . . . “When we realized there was a very effective chain reaction, that changed the CFC investigation from an interesting scientific problem to one that had major environmental consequences,” Rowland told Chemical & Engineering News in an extensive interview in 2007. “You don’t often get many chills down your back when you look at scientific results,” he added, but that had been one of those moments.[/quote] https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/cfcs-ozone.html
@ElwoodBlues Want more? [quote]Research studies in the laboratory show that chlorine (Cl) reacts very rapidly with ozone. They also show that the reactive chemical chlorine monoxide (ClO) formed in that reaction can undergo further processes that regenerate the original chlorine, allowing the sequence to be repeated very many times (a chain reaction). Similar reactions also take place between bromine and ozone.
But do these ozone-destroying reactions occur in the "real world"? All the accumulated scientific experience demonstrates that the same chemical reactions do take place in nature. Many other reactions (including those of other chemical species) are often also taking place simultaneously in the stratosphere. This makes the connections among the changes difficult to untangle. Nevertheless, whenever chlorine (or bromine) and ozone are found together in the stratosphere, the ozone-destroying reactions are taking place.
Sometimes a small number of chemical reactions are so dominant in the natural circumstance that the connections are almost as clear as in laboratory experiments. Such a situation occurs in the Antarctic stratosphere during the springtime formation of the ozone hole. Independent measurements made by instruments from the ground and from balloons, aircraft, and satellites have provided a detailed understanding of the chemical reactions in the Antarctic stratosphere. Large areas reach temperatures so low (less than 80°C, or 112°F) that stratospheric clouds form, which is a rare occurrence, except during the polar winters. These polar stratospheric clouds allow chemical reactions that transform chlorine species from forms that do not cause ozone depletion into forms that do cause ozone depletion. Among the latter is chlorine monoxide, which initiates ozone destruction in the presence of sunlight. The amount of reactive chlorine in such regions is therefore much higher than that observed in the middle latitudes, which leads to much faster chemical ozone destruction. The chemical reactions occurring in the presence of these clouds are now well understood from studies under laboratory conditions that mimic those found naturally in the atmosphere.[/quote]
@ElwoodBlues This is literally the peek of science and government coming together to solve a problem. What we have failed to do on just about every other issue from climate change to COVID.
New rules and regulations were put in place to curb and reduce levels of pollutants. For example, living in the northeast, all a person had to do was was to go to s cemetary. .Headstones that were in place for hundreds of years literally began disolving with 20 years, so much so that it has become nearly impossible to read the names and date etched into them identifying the people buried. This is a fact. I recall going with my parents to the cemetary on memorial day to lay flowers and reading the headstones. Returning as an adult, some of the older stones and monuments from the 16,17, and 18th which were readable once, are almost wiped clean.
@HoraceGreenley Seems there is acid rain denial among some folks who don't live in the areas where forests were decimated by acid rain. I didn't know acid rain denial was such a big thing!
Environmental regulations reduced SO2 which reduced sulfuric acid in rain. What a difference 30 years made! Note that rising pH means falling acidity. Every increase of 1 in pH equates to a reduction by a factor of 10 in acid concentration. pH of 7 is neutral.
@zonavar68 There's a silly rumor going around that volcanoes emit far more CO2 than human activity. That silly rumor was debunked in 2009, [b]LOL!!![/b]
[quote]According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the world’s volcanoes, both on land and undersea, generate about 200 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually, while our automotive and industrial activities cause some 24 billion tons of CO2 emissions every year worldwide. Despite the arguments to the contrary, the facts speak for themselves: Greenhouse gas emissions from volcanoes comprise less than one percent of those generated by today’s human endeavors.[/quote] [b]https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earthtalks-volcanoes-or-humans/[/b]
Want more details? [quote] 33 measured degassing volcanoes emit a total of 60 million tons of CO2 per year. There are a total of ~150 known degassing volcanoes, implying (based on the measured ones) that a total of 271 million tons of CO2 are released annually. 30 historically active volcanoes are measured to emit a total of 6.4 million tons of CO2 per year. With ~550 historically active volcanoes total, they extrapolate this class of object contributes 117 million tons per year. The global total from volcanic lakes is 94 million tons of CO2 per year. Additional emissions from tectonic, hydrothermal and inactive volcanic areas contribute an estimated 66 million tons of CO2 per year, although the total number of emitting, tectonic areas are unknown. And finally, emissions from mid-ocean ridges are estimated to be 97 million tons of CO2 annually.
Add all of these up, and you get an estimate of around 645 million tons of CO2 per year. Yes, there are uncertainties; yes, there's annual variation; yes, it's easy to get led astray if you think that Mt. Etna is typical, rather than the unusually large emitter of CO2 that it is. When you realize that volcanism contributes 645 million tons of CO2 per year – and it becomes clearer if you write it as 0.645 billion tons of CO2 per year – compared to humanity's 29 billion tons per year, it's overwhelmingly clear what's caused the carbon dioxide increase in Earth's atmosphere since 1750.
In fact, even if we include the rare, very large volcanic eruptions, like 1980's Mount St. Helens or 1991's Mount Pinatubo eruption, they only emitted 10 and 50 million tons of CO2 each, respectively. It would take three Mount St. Helens and one Mount Pinatubo eruption every day to equal the amount that humanity is presently emitting. [/quote] [b]https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/06/06/how-much-co2-does-a-single-volcano-emit/?sh=4c086085cbf5[/b]
@HumanEarth Oh, another acid rain denier, [b]LOL!!![/b] Here, lemme put this where you can't miss it.
Acid rain denial seems most common among some folks who don't live in the areas where forests were decimated by acid rain. I didn't know acid rain denial was such a big thing!
Environmental regulations reduced SO2 which reduced sulfuric acid in rain. What a difference 30 years made! Note that rising pH means falling acidity. Every increase of 1 in pH equates to a reduction by a factor of 10 in acid concentration. pH of 7 is neutral. Sure, you're gonna pretend all that scientific data collected over decades is "a lie." But do you have any evidence for that claim? Any evidence of malfeasance? No, you don't. It's just another baseless claim about another imaginary GiAnTt CoNsPiRaCy!!
remember back in the early 80s there was a hysteria about how teenagers were going to overwhelm authorities with crime and violence, the "Do you know where your kids are?" PSAs, etc.. lol good times 😂😂😂
