Wednesday, July 28, 2004

MORE ON THE ATLANTA OZONE FRAUD

Australian earth scientist Warwick Hughes has weighed in here on the fraud I reported below on 19th. The fraudulent Greenie claim was that reduced traffic during the Atlanta Olympic games reduced ozone in the air and hence asthma.

Warwick's findings in brief are that ozone fluctuations observed in other areas well away from Atlanta traffic mirrored those of Atlanta -- so traffic had no role in the matter. A few excerpts:


"All my ozone data analysis experience tells me that big city summer ozone peaks will be broadly influenced by daytime max temperature and meteorological factors such as wind; I would be sceptical that a slight decrease in vehicle emissions could dominate over these more important factors....

The graph below shows clearly that across a broad region of Georgia and Alabama the Olympic period happened to be characterized by the lowest ozone levels of the 1996 summer. So you would have to suspect that the lower ozone levels in Atlanta during the Olympics are also following this regional trend which is no doubt due to broad scale meteorological factors and nothing to do with traffic....

We decided to compare data from a central Atlanta station and a rural site 80 kms NW, Yorkville; taking ozone and nitrous oxide (NO) numbers for August 2001, a cooler year with lower ozone similar to 1996... It is strikingly obvious that Atlanta and Yorkville have broadly similar daily ozone peaks, some days Yorkville even exceeds Atlanta !!! This is despite much higher overall NO numbers in Atlanta, those car exhausts, with several very high peaks. Note the very high NO peaks do not shift the ozone peaks much, so it is hard to see a strong relationship between NO and ozone. So where does this leave the much trumpeted claim that a slight reduction in traffic during the Olympics could have caused lower ozone levels ? NO numbers for Yorkville are insignificant, just showing as the purple trace along the bottom of the graph. When will the EPA's start telling the truth about urban ozone?"

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

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