Why don't you hear about acid rain or global cooling any more?

Question

have they been dis-proven?

Answer 1

Ken may not realize this since he is obviously not a scientist but acid rain was first proposed and used as a scare tactic in Europe.  It was true that some pollution resulted in increasing acidity of the rain.  What is not true is that it led to any significant deforestation or harm.  People that are easily swayed by the latest doomsday cult are eager to believe all sorts of explanations.  Some pretend that the alarmism against acid rain led to less polution and solved the problem.  One of the people above thinks it is still a problem.  It is not.  He is simply gullible in my opinion to left wing propaganda.  The same thing is done with global cooling.  There are alarmist that suggest that human emissions of sulfur created the cooling the in the 1970s and that due to environmentalists coming to the rescue and reducing sulfur, we now have warming.  It is mind boggling to me that there are otherwise intelligent people out there that are so eager to believe these doomsday scenarios.  The truth may be a little bit more boring but the truth is we don't have as much impact as they suggest.  When you live in the City, I think you are more inclined to see the environment as gravely endangered.

Answer 2

As others have stated, acid rain is certainly real.  The reason we don't hear about it is because it has been greatly reduced here in the US.  HOWEVER, it has not been entirely eliminated here, and it is very likely a problem in other countries that aren't using our smokestack treatment technologies.

Jim, I hope you're joking about being an environmental consultant.

The existence of acid rain, and the harmful effects it has caused, are well documented.

Answer 3

You forgot the hole in the Ozone layer.  CFCs have been banned, yet the hole has not repaired itself and does not show any trends in repairing itself.

Answer 4

Surely you're not calling into question if acid rain was real are you? You do realize that the rain pH levels were actually measured (no computer models necessary)?  Standard rainwater has a pH level of about 5.6.  During the peak acid rain period rainfall was measured with a pH level of 3.0 and lower (assuming you probably never took chemistry, the lower the pH the more acidic).

And the myth about scientists in the 70'd warning about global cooling is debunked in this study:

http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/1310...

Edit:

eric c - Just like our response to global warming will take decades before we see the results (CO2 remains in the atmosphere for a long time), so it is with the ozone hole recovery.  The worlds atmospheric system isn't like a light where a simple flip of a switch has an instant and noticeable effect.

Answer 5

Acid rain was greatly reduced by regulation of pollution, particularly coal burning power plants.  Acid rain was caused by man and we fixed it.

Global cooling was something proposed by a few scientists back in the 70's and the mass media jumped all over it.  The scientists at the time were cautious in their predictions since they knew their science was very immature at the time.  However, mass media and the public were not as cautious and said the scientist were saying an imminent ice age was coming and the scientists did no such thing.  As a matter of fact the ice age they were talking about was something occurring over thousands of years and was not a threat to the current civilizations.  So it was not disproven nor was it ever proven.  Climatology has advanced significantly since that time.

Answer 6

...but i hear ed............

Answer 7

A stopped clock is right twice a day, and acid rain was real.    They went up, they traced the chemicals in the tall smokestacks in the rust belt, they found the compounds that form when those chemicals combine with water vapor - in clouds that, prior to passing over the rust belt, had neither those chemicals or the compounds, and they found the compounds in lakes in New Hampshire.

The point is, they don't have anything like that on man-made global warming.

The point is, for every acid rain there's at least one Monsanto butterfly or teflon bird, Silent Spring, nuclear "cancer cluster" or Patagonian sheep - one assertion that is frequently repeated, that inspires protestors to dress up in costumes, that often ends up being used to justify limits on commercial activity, that is later determined to be pure urban legend - though usually the limits aren't repealed.

It would appear that, as eric suggests, the ozone hole / CFC story should be included on the list of urban legends, with the butterflies and the birds.

EDIT - Ken, the way they described it back in the 1980s we'd see the results by now.   Now they say "oh, those evil bad capitalists were even worse than we thought" - and now we "won't see the results for decades" - i.e., when it's too late to reverse the ban and when the people who came up with the CFC theory will be retired or dead.   Clearly it doesn't work the way they said it worked when they got their ban passed.

There are many false alarms for every true problem, and often the true problems aren't the crises the environmentalists build them up to be.

Ultimately the problem will be that someday there will be a real crisis on our hands, but nobody will listen to the environmentalists because of all the previous false alarms.

The movement really does have a boy who cried wolf problem.

Answer 8

Because liberals don't want to talk about acid rain...there is not enough scare tactics in rain...but the destruction of the planet and killing of harmless polar bears will surely ensure their victory in November...duh! :)

Answer 9

We in the Adirondacks speak about acid rain and the damage it's doing to our local ecology every day.  You just haven't been listening...

Answer 10

It's the 21st century get with the program...I am still wondering about that ozone hole that was going to widen in the 70's and everyone was going to be scorched to death.

Answer 11

From the posts here most seem to have little idea about the ozone hole here is a link from the people who first discovered it

http://www.antarctica.ac.uk//about_antar...

Scientists lead the way on this till CFC's were banned by the Montreal Protocol of 1987 with 191 countries signing to date.

And as to it's repairing itself, scientists have said from the start this would be a long process in the order of another 50 years.