Author: chogan@directresearch.com

Post #1791: Wheezing geezers! It’s a smog alert!

 

I’m old enough to recall when America stood tall, and produced its own air pollution.  Instead of having to import it from Canada.

To cut to the chase:  Air pollution in the DC area is at an extreme level today.  This, owing to Canadian forest fires.  But the level of particulates in the air — currently a PM 10 reading of around 300 (micrograms per cubic meter) — would not have been hugely unusual in the 1960s.  Back then, each year, about 10% of U.S. cities would have seen at least one day with particulates roughly at that level. 

It just takes a bit of work to find the data, and translate the obsolete measure (total suspended particulates) to the modern data (PM 10).

And so, as with our recent “extreme” winter weather, the long-term trend obscures the fact that things were much different in the recent past.  Cold weather that triggers alarms today would have been a yearly occurrence three decades ago (Post #1664).   And particulate levels that result in cancellation of outdoor activities today, would, in the 1960s, have been —  not common, exactly — but frequent enough that all of us of that generation recognize the term “smog alert” as shorthand for a day with bad air pollution.

 

Back when I was a kid …

I had an funny interaction at my bank this morning.  Had to get a document notarized, and ended up chit-chatting with the Notary Public.

Talk turned to the unhealthful air today, the result of smoke from Canadian forest fires.  Said smoke now blanketing much of the U.S. Northeast.

In all innocence, I said something like “this reminds me of my youth.”   My assertion being that, back in the 1960s, in the Washington DC area, we routinely had summertime air that looked about like the air we have today.  Visibility was a mile or two.  Beyond that, everything sort of faded to a gray-white.  The summer sky was always a uniform fish-belly white, from the combination of humidity and particulates in the air.

That opaque air,  in turn, was due to the routinely high levels of air pollution.  That era predates pretty much every form of air pollution control.  Power plants burned coal, and nobody had heard of smokestack scrubbers. Catalytic converters for cars didn’t come in until 1974, so unburnt hydrocarbons ruled the suburban air.  And car fuel systems were open to the air — you simply dumped gas vapors every time you filled up.  Worse, carburetor bowls were vented directly to the atmosphere, leading to continuous dumping of gasoline vapors as you drove or parked.

In this area, the result was massive amounts of photochemical and other types of smog.  Or “haze”.  In the summertime, the most common weather report was hot, humid, and hazy.

But the notary was a young guy, and he frankly did not believe what I was saying.  Having grown up well after the mid-1960s passage of the Clean Air Act, he could not conceive of a world where the current level of air pollution was considered — well, not normal, exactly — but not uncommon, either.

So that’s the task for today.  Was the air in this area routinely hazier back in the day, or is it merely my memories that have become hazy?

Historical Air Pollution Levels

For sure, the U.S. had some dramatic, short-lived air pollution events in that era.  Today, newspapers are recalling the Great New York Smog of 1966.  Such extreme but short-lived smog events were common in New York city, in that era.  Pollution levels during those smogs equaled or exceeded current levels.

And, of course, Los Angeles famously had a unique problem owing to geography.  Air trapped in the Los Angeles basin would more-or-less accumulate everything emitted into it, leading to chronic visible smog.

But I’m looking for information on day-to-day air pollution and visibility levels, going back to the 1960s, ideally in the summertime, in the  Washington DC area.

The problem is that, at the very best, I can find modern-format going back as far as 1980.  That appears to be the year when U.S. EPA  put into place the National Air Quality System (reference), which is an arrangement for gathering and storing air quality data from monitoring stations all around the U.S.

Worse, older EPA air quality data use an outdated measure of particulates.  Currently, we track PM 2.5 and PM 10, the numbers referring to the maximum size of the particles (in microns?)  By contrast, EPA  data from the 1960s uses Total Suspended Particulate, which apparently corresponds to something like PM 50, and is routinely several times higher than the current PM 2.5 or PM 10 measures.  That said, when the annual 90th percentile of maximum daily total suspended particulates was around 400 (micrograms per cubic meter), it’s clear that there was a lot of stuff in the air back then. 

Source:  1973 national air quality report, downloaded from this EPA page on historical air quality reports. Number EPA-450/1-73-001-a.

By contrast, today’s air quality crisis is due to PM 2.5 concentrations around 200 (micrograms per cubic meter), and PM 10 concentrations around 300 (same units).

Source:  Accuweather, data for the DC area, 2 PM 6/8/2023

Luckily, the EPA reports themselves provide a rough crosswalk between the older total particular matter and newer PM 10 measures.  Based on a comparison of the 1990 (left) and 1991 (right) reports, PM 10 appears to run about 2/3rds the value of total suspended particulates, as measured by the EPA.

Source:  1990 and 1991 EPA air quality trends reports, from this page at the EPA.

The upshot.

Today’s PM 10 concentration of 300 (micrograms per cubic meter) is equivalent to a reading of about 450 (same units) for total suspended particulates. Which is just slightly higher than the 90th percentile figure from the 1960s, from the graph above.

In other words, back in the 1960s, every year, 10% of U.S. cities would have seen an air pollution day that was nearly as bad as what DC is experiencing today. 

That doesn’t mean that the average was that bad.  It really means that “smog alerts” were not unheard-of, when I was a kid.  And that, thankfully, that’s no longer true, so the current generation no longer has to treat them as just another fact of life.

I still have not found the data to address the main question of visibility.  Was the air routinely as opaque as it is today, back when I was a kid?

Currently, Dulles Airport is reporting visibility of 2 miles.  But apparently, visibility is only kept in the raw hourly observations, and so far, I have not been able to find 1960s visibility data for my area, from any source.  If I find it, I’ll post it.

 

G23-021: Dance of the mustard flowers.

 

Recall that I swore my mustard plants were moving.

Heliotropic?  That is, moving to face the flowers into the sun?

Maybe.

So I did a little time-lapse video.  This is one day of the mustard bed in my garden.  Roughly 8 AM to 8 PM, with a brief interruption in the middle to add a tin-foil shield.  All condensed into about 30 seconds via YouTube.

The dance of the mustard flowers appears far more complex than simple heliotropism.  And far weirder.

Enjoy.

 

Post #1790: Surface energy, or one of the many reasons why stone countertops are inferior.

 

The featured image above is from Formica.com

I dislike many aspects of the kitchen in my house.  The previous owners took a well-designed and well-built 1959 house, and basically screwed it up by, among other things, putting in a trendy “designer” kitchen.  Amongst the hate-able aspects of that kitchen are the obligatory granite countertops.

Today, as I was housecleaning, scraping little bits of crap off those perpetually-grungy kitchen countertops, I had a flash of insight.

Seems like stuff sticks to these granite countertops to an extent that never happened with our old Formica (r) countertops.  It’s almost as if granite countertops are mostly for show, and are a really poor choice if you are actually going to use your kitchen intensively.  Heck, I keep a plastic paint scraper at the sink, just for scraping up the most-stuck-on stuff from those countertops.  I’m pretty sure I never needed that with Formica (r).

Gunk just seems to glue itself to those granite countertops.

That’s when the light bulb lit.  It really isn’t my imagination that granite is tougher to keep clean than Formica (r).  My perpetually grungy granite is the flip side of the difficulty of gluing certain types of plastic.  If Teflon is at one end of the spectrum, then polished granite is somewhere near the other end.

It’s all about surface energy.

Continue reading Post #1790: Surface energy, or one of the many reasons why stone countertops are inferior.

G23-020: Mustard-induced hallucination, or is mustard heliotropic?

 

As an aging individual, sometimes I see things that aren’t there.

Bearing that in mind, I swear that my mustard plants move over the course of a day.  At least the younger ones. They seem to face their flowers into the sunlight.  Which would make them, technically, heliotropic.

Like sunflowers.

But with mustard, you get nothing near as showy as sunflowers.  Sunflowers stake their whole reputation on that.  With mustard, it’s a lot subtler.  It leaves me guessing whether they actually moved, or whether I’m just imaging it.   You look at the bed in the AM sun, and you say, are those plants doing what I think they’re doing?  Or is that just an effect of the angle of the sunlight?  Repeat in the P.M.

And, unlike sunflowers, where you have big, individually-identifiable blooms, with mustard, it’s more of a herd phenomenon.  The whole stand of mustard seems to be leaning one way or the other, depending on the time of day.

OK, fair enough.  I find the perception of diurnal mustard movement to be mildly entertaining.  And almost totally ignored on the internet, which is perhaps even more amusing.

But is it real?

First, the heliotropism appears to be somewhere in the mustard gene pool.  You can find the extremely rare internet reference stating that some varieties of mustard are heliotropic.  Like so:

Source:  https://www.picturethisai.com/wiki/Sinapis_arvensis.html.  You have to open links to find this particular text.

Next, can I catch them in the act with a couple of simple snapshots from my phone/camera?

Eh, maybe.

In this first shot, I’m using a weedy vine in the background as a landmark.  Note that the stem that was bent right (around 1 PM) was fully upright by evening.

This second example is closer to what I actually experience.  Around 1 PM, it sure looks like all those stems are leaning toward the sunlight.   Note the strong leaners circled.  But, but the end of the day, those strong leaners are gone, and things just … seem a lot more vertical.

Honestly, I think I’m going to have to set up a video camera can catch them in the act.  That will be tomorrow’s task.  And if these move, as I think they do, compressing a day of video into a few seconds should show that clearly.

Stay tuned.

Post G23-018: The lesson: Pick the right variety?

 

The New Testament clearly justifies getting rid of unproductive plants (see Post #G23-012, Luke 13:6-9 and the Chainsaw of Time).

I find no guidance on getting rid of excessively productive plants, just because keeping up with the harvest is a burden.

Tentatively, I’ll have to put such an act in the same category as wasting food.  Which would make it a minor sin, as I was raised.

At any rate, I went out this AM to putter around my backyard garden.  Forty-five minutes later, I was still bending over my 14-square-foot pea patch, picking the last of just over a pound and a half of snow peas.  That brings the total for the year to about 4.5 pounds of peas.  No signs of a slowdown yet.

I guess for talented gardeners, that would be normal.

For me, it’s unprecedented.  Until now, peas have always been a placeholder in my garden, filling the space until it got warm enough to plant something productive.  Better than nothing, but not by a whole lot.

I’m doing nothing differently, so it has to be the variety:  Snowbird.

The joke here is that I chose these solely because I was too lazy to put up a pea trellis.  The choice had nothing to do with supposed high yield.  Snowbird was one of the few bush-type snow peas that would stand on their own, without being given a trellis to climb.

Sure, the Burpee catalog talks about yield:  “Very early, erect, dwarf plants 18” tall produce amazing numbers of 3″ pods in groups of two to three.”

But you’d have to be an idiot to take that at face value.  When’s the last time you read a Burpee seed description that said “treasured for their mediocre yield and so-so disease resistance”.

My only problem with this is that it’s throwing off my schedule.  I have such disdain for peas, as a food crop, that I already scheduled this patch of garden to be re-planted to okra.

The okra seedlings are up, but the peas won’t yield.  Or fail to yield, as the case may be.

As garden problems go, that’s a good one.  So these peas are turning out to be the first pleasant surprise of the 2023 gardening year.  Snowbird is now my go-to snow pea, and I would definitely recommend them to a friend.

Post G23-017: A burdensome pea harvest with Snowbird peas.

 

Edit 5/24/2024:  In hindsight, the Snowbird peas were good for eating fresh, but not cooked.  Frozen, then cooked, they were stringy.  Occasionally, spit-out-a-wad-of-string, stringy.  But they were fine when raw and crisp.

Also, the yield is shaping up to be much poorer in my second year of growing Snowbird peas.  The bed of pea plants doesn’t look anywhere near as nice as last year.  The peas plants appear sparse, and short.  No idea why the stark contrast to last year’s abundant crop.  But this year looks much more in line with peas being a mere placeholder in the garden, as described below.

The upshot is that this is a fine snow pea, but not as good as you’d think, reading the original posting.

Original post follows:

For me, peas have always been something that you grow because you can.  Toss them in the ground in early spring, and you’re guaranteed to get something.  Not a lot, but better than nothing.

They’re kind of a garden placeholder.   When the weather warms up, you cut them down and plant something better.

But this year is different, and I’m not quite sure why.

I followed the same ritual this year as in the past.  I used pea inoculant, and planted the peas on St. Patrick’s day.   They came up right on time.  Started picking snow peas about a week ago.

But unlike prior years, these peas just won’t quit.  Today I spent the better part of an hour picking snow peas, and ended up just shy of two and a half pounds of them.  That’s on top of the pound and a half already blanched and frozen.  Plus a few handfuls eaten along the way.

That’s from the roughly 14 square feet of garden bed pictured above.  Judging from the new blossoms on the plants, they’re nowhere near done yet.

Qualitatively different from prior years.  So many peas that I got tired of picking them?  Never had that happen before.

The only real difference this year is the variety — Snowbird.  In the past, I’ve gone with traditional vine-type peas (e.g., Oregon Sugar Pod, or Sugar Anne snap peas).  But this year, I didn’t feel like putting up a trellis for the peas.  Snowbird is a dwarf, bush-type snow pea.  If you plant thickly enough (and put a few sticks in the ground), the entire pea patch will stand up on its own.  As above.

So I’m going to chalk it up to the variety.

I’m sure there are gardeners out there who routinely get this kind of yield out of their peas.  But this is a new one on me.  Changes the whole way I view them.

Anyway, as my reward for an hour of pea-picking, I’ll get to spend the next hour in the kitchen blanching and freezing vacuum-packs of snow peas.

There are worse ways to spend a Saturday afternoon.

Post #1789: The deadweight loss of credit card rewards

 

There are good reasons that economics is called “the dismal science.”

“The Deadweight Loss of Christmas” (Google reference for .pdf) is surely a case in point.  In that scholarly analysis, a Yale economics professor takes the time and effort to quantify the economic inefficiency of Christmas gift-giving.

The idea is simple.  If you buy something for yourself, you know exactly what you want.  By contrast, if somebody buys you a gift, they have to guess what you’d like.  And to the extent that they guess wrong — by a little or a lot —  the value of the gift, to you, may be well be below the purchase price.  And that gap between what the gift-giver paid, and what the gift-recipient would have been willing to pay — that’s the deadweight loss of Christmas.

Economists have a simple (if entirely soulless) solution:  just give money.  The gift recipient can then buy themselves exactly what they want, and the total satisfaction or “utility” of the transaction is maximized.   A gift of money eliminates the deadweight loss involved in trying to guess somebody else’s preferences.

A different deadweight loss

Which brings me to my newly-acquired, soon-to-be-cancelled Best Buy credit card.

I made a major electronics purchase a few weeks back.  The sales clerk at Best Buy talked me into getting a Best Buy credit card.  Normally, I say no to all such offers.  But the deal was that this would give me an instant 10% off the not-inconsiderable sales price.

Cash back, right?  Who would turn that down.

Only, this credit card doesn’t work like that.  What I actually got was, in effect, store credit.  I got “rewards” equal to 10% of the value of the purchase.  Rewards that could only be redeemed in Best Buy merchandise.  Worse, that’s how the card works for all purchases made on it.  There is no “cash back” feature.  All rebates are in the form of additional “rewards” that can be cashed in for Best Buy merchandise.

I guess this is a fairly good deal, if you have an ongoing need for the stuff Best Buy sells.  But I don’t.  Worse, I’m on a tear to get rid of stuff, the process of Döstädning, or Swedish death cleaning (Post #1667).  The last thing I need is yet another electronic doo-dad or small appliance.

And so, what ensued was not unlike the deadweight loss of Christmas.  I wasn’t given specific gifts, for sure.  But in order to get my money’s worth, in effect, I had to choose my gifts out of a catalog of stuff that I didn’t really need or want.

For something that was free*, it was a surprisingly grueling process.

*  As a responsible parent, and an economist, whenever my children used the f-word (free) around me, I would immediately snap “pre-paid”.  So I use the term loosely here.   The plain fact is that the cost of all such givebacks has to be worked into the original purchase prices, so that Best Buy can remain in business.  So these “rewards” aren’t free, they are merely pre-paid.

At my wife’s suggestion, I went for batteries, because those are consumables, and we’ll eventually use them up.  Once I got past about $50 worth of alkaline batteries, I was stumped.  But, gosh darn it, I was not going to leave money on the table.  So I spent hours swapping stuff into and out of my on-line shopping cart, in an attempt to get things I might use, whose prices summed to just over the total “rewards” I had been granted.

I recall buying a flashlight.  And a pocket knife (a.k.a, future contribution to the TSA).  Because you can always use another one of those.  The rest of it is a blur.

I hope I’ll be pleasantly surprised when the packages show up.  Or at least recall that I ordered it.

In any case, once I’d finally made my purchases, and burned up those rewards, I had the funny feeling that I had come across this process before.  But it took me another day to realize that what I was experiencing was the deadweight loss of Christmas.

In effect, I gave myself some gifts that I didn’t much want.

For sure, if there had been a straight-up cash-back option, I’d have taken it.  In fact, in hindsight, if they’d offered me half that dollar amount, as cash back, I’d have taken it.

Thus validating the fundamental insight of The Deadweight Loss of Christmas.

Post #1788: Recycling plastics, Part 2: My Town tells me to do the wrong thing. Does yours?

 

I am in the middle of looking at plastics recycling in my area.

Any internet search in this area feeds you a lot of pessimism about the entire concept of plastics recycling.  People say that it’s not worth doing, that it’s greenwashing, that it’s a scam, that it all ends up in the landfill, and so on.

But is that true?  It all seems to start from a figure that just 5 to  8 percent of U.S. waste plastic is recycled.

Less than an hour of internet search, and I now know that figure is totally irrelevant to the situation I’m investigating.  The often-cited 5% is for every conceivable form of plastic waste — stuff that was tossed in the trash, stuff that was tossed on the ground, plastic resins that are not recyclable, plastic items that are not inherently recyclable, plastic integrated into multi-material items, and so on.

That’s a problem, for sure.  But right now, I just want to know what happens if I properly handle a recyclable plastic object, where I live.  I want to know two simple things:

  • What plastic should go in the recycling bin, here in Vienna, VA, and
  • What fraction of (say) a clean #1 (PETE) bottle actually gets recycled?

Continue reading Post #1788: Recycling plastics, Part 2: My Town tells me to do the wrong thing. Does yours?