From: stephen@orchid.UCSC.EDU (x4604 (Hauskins))
Newsgroups: ba.politics
Subject: Re: Duh, he don't need no facts, he'sa Politically Correct, duh ...
Date: 23 Dec 92 16:28:05 GMT
Organization: Santa Cruz
NNTP-Posting-Host: orchid.ucsc.edu

In article <1992Dec23.105727.19221@netcom.com> phil@netcom.com (Phil Ronzone) writes:
>    >It is easy to sink you. If we look at the majority on the
>    >newsgroup, they disagree with most of what you say, not
>    >becuase it is fashionable, but becuase you lack insight and
>    >the ability to interpret information correctly.
>    >
>    >Forest have and are dying from acid rain effects on soil and
>    >lakes.
>
>So, you believe that forests are dying fromm acid rain? Golly, that's
>going to surprise a lot of scientists. Pray tell, upon WHAT scientific
>evidence do you base this on? We are breathless ...
>
>In the meantime, to further this interesting debunking, I've ordered
>through the library a political analysis -
>
>    "Reports on the failure of Congress and the Bush administration
>    to study the National Acid Precipitation Assesment Project
>    (NAPAP) report before voting on the Clean Air act. A $500 million,
>    ten year study initiated by Congress which concluded that the
>    President's crash program to cut sulfur dioxide emissions has no
>    ecological, health, or economic justification. By W.T. Brookes.
>
>and a scientific one on acid rain on lakes and such -
>
>    [Analysis] based the Environmental Protection Agency's National
>    Surface Water Survey (NSWS) to indetidy the role of acidic
>    deposition relative to other factors in causing acidic conditions
>    in an estimated 1180 lakes and 4570 streams in the United States.
>    Science, 5/24/91.
>
>W.T. Brooks quotes from the Science article in making his point.
>
>Y'all go ahead and get your copies too. I know that it is such a drag for
>all you PC(tm) types to have to deal with facts, but hey, life's tough.
>

I am not interested in political analysis of a scientific problem.  Read
the following if you will.

Just for Fun, here's an abstract from the AGU meeting next week

	Acidification Rates in Forested Catchments in Central Europe

T. Paces (Czech Geo. Survey, Malostranske nam. 19, Prague, 118 21,
CZECHOSLOVAKIA)

	Central Europe receives the highest acidic deposition in the
world.  A mean deposition rate of SO2 in the most acidified catchments
is 700 mmol H+/m2/yr.  About 50 mmol is due to H+ in acid rain, 550 mmol
results from dry deposition of SO2 and 100 mmol of H+ is generated by
the deposition of NOx and transformation of N species in soil. This
acidification leads to the complete dieback of spruce (Pices abies)
forest.  Protons are consumed by hydrolysis of rock-forming minerals
with a rate of 180 mmol H+/m2/yr.  The exchangeable base cations in soil
are exchanged for protons and Al3+ with a rate of 430 mmol H+/m2/yr and
the mobilisation of Al and its subsequent reaction with SO4(2-) to
produce jurbanite consumes protons with a rate of 110 mmol H+/m2/yr.
The biogeochemical processes in the extremely acidified catchments are
probably reversible.  This is indicated by a systematic decrease in
SO4(2-) and H+ runoff since 1978, after the dead trees were removed and
the adsorption capacity for dry SO2 and NOx within the catchments
decreased.

	Hydrogeochemical monitoring of the forested catchments in
the Czech Republic will hopefully yield quantitative data on the
behaviour of the forest ecosystems after the economic changes in this
country were introduced in 1990 and pollution loads of the acidic
oxides have started to decrease.

	(Paces documented a rapid die-off of forests once the soils
had been completely acidified.)  His name should have \/ over the c.

So the point is, politics can do what they want, and you can worry
over that, but the science is not in yet, to how and why acid rain
effects the environment completely, and also, it has been shown that
sulfric acid may not have as important role as thought, but that  nitric acid
may be more important (car emmisions).
>
>
>BTW - for other literature-ignorami, "Oh sink me" is the line the Scarlet
>Pimpernel used when told a lie of such vast proportions that his only
>socially correct response (when he was playing the fop) was to feign
>great amusement.
>
>

Thank you for enlighting all of us on your reading skills and memory.
Like golly, we didn't know.
>
>
>-- 
Newsgroups: ba.politics