David-- Not graduating high school in NJ until 1960, I can only speak from a perspective that is a bit later in time (i.e., when I was working on air pollution modeling and air quality improvement in the SF Bay Area). First, recall that an adage back in the 1940s and 1950s (and for some pollutants/polluters it likely persists to the present) seems to have been ŒThe solution to pollution is dilution¹ and so, for power plants, there was an effort to build tall stacks and just get more widely spread the pollution rather than reduce the emissions. Power plants not the main problem in LA‹mainly it was the industry and population growth during WWII that was seen as the cause. My understanding is that conditions were so bad in the LA Basin (in part at the time due to still allowing open burning, etc.), with sources very dispersed, that there was a need for rapid and significant improvement which would be more rapid than could be accomplished by limiting emissions. So, while they did stop open burning, they were left with a very serious ongoing problem (getting rid of the smoke also possibly let more light through to increase ozone formation). At that point, a lot of rather fanciful ideas got suggested, and it is those ideas that Neiburger discusses and dismisses.
By the time of the Bay Area modeling work I was doing in the early/mid 1970s, when the new EPA threatened sanctions for not improving air quality, those in the Bay Area, with guidance from our models, started a major effort to limit hydrocarbon emissions and thus change the chemical mix along a path that would considerably more rapidly reduce ozone levels than cutting both HC and NOx emissions proportionately (as EPA was encouraging). It started working and so the process of cutting HC emissions continued, and so the Bay Area largely or completely avoided sanctions. In Los Angeles, the air there was so far above standards that meeting the deadline would have required draconian cuts in emissions (so not being able to drive several days a week, etc.), and so they basically (and I paraphrase liberally and politely) that EPA had better send in the military to enforce what would be required for those in charge there were not going to approve the level of cutbacks that EPA and science suggested. After a bit of a standoff, the outcome was that Congress allowed more time (a couple of times?). So, it was not a view that emissions controls would never work, but that they would not work nearly fast enough, given what was possible technologically and politically. Hence, creative sorts tried to come up with other solutions, hoping to reduce health consequences in LA (so good intent, but unworkable schemes). In the end, it was suffer the health and welfare consequences until technology could come through decades later. Mike On 4/14/11 1:18 PM, "David Hawkins" <[email protected]> wrote: > Fascinating, Mike. > Do you recall whether the advocates for these approaches in the late 50s > rationalized them as needed because of a view that society would never pursue > serious mitigation? > > David > > From: Mike MacCracken [mailto:[email protected]] > Sent: Thursday, April 14, 2011 01:00 PM > To: Geoengineering <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [geo] Re: paper on altitude dependence of climate forcing and > response from black carbon aerosols > > One of the potential dissertation topics suggested to me in late 1965 or early > 1966 by Dr. Edward Teller, who had been a leader in forming the Department of > Applied Science of the University of California Davis where I was a graduate > student, was to explore the potential for dispersing Los Angeles smog by > depositing stripes of black carbon from airplanes at just the right interval > to excite waves in the boundary of the mixed layer and the inversion layer. I > chose not to pursue this, but in doing a bit of research on the idea, I read a > fascinating paper by UCLA meteorology professor Morris Neiburger in Science in > 1957 (see Neiburger, M, 1957, ³Weather Modification and Smog,² Science, Vol. > 126, No. 3275 4 October 1957, pages 637-645‹file was too large to attach ) > that was written to discount a number of other hypotheses for getting rid of > LA smog. The LA leaders had several years earlier decided not to provide > several million dollars to Dr. Irving Krick who claimed he had a secret > approach for doing this that he would not, and I think never did, reveal. > (Krick was a professor at CalTech, as I recall, known best for asserting that > he could make long range weather forecasts based on sunspot and related solar > cycles, a technique demonstrated, as I understand it, by his weather > prediction on D-Day.) In any case, there were quite a number of ideas for > regional scale modifications of the environment back in those days. In the > end, success has come from reducing emissions. > > [Incidentally, for my dissertation project, I chose another of Teller¹s > suggestions, namely to convert the first global, moist, atmospheric GCM > (constructed by Dr. Chuck Leith) into a latitude-vertical (so 2-D) global > climate model to evaluate proposed hypotheses for explaining glacial cycling. > At the time, Hayes and colleagues had not published their paper finding > Milankovitch-driven variations in ocean sediments, so quite a number of other > hypotheses were being discussed, including Ewing and Donn¹s Arctic cycling > hypothesis (published in Science in the 1950s), which was the main one I > tested, and discounted.] > > Mike MacCracken > > ****** > > On 4/14/11 12:17 PM, "Ken Caldeira" <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Thanks to Oliver Morton for pointing out the attached paper from 1976, which >> may be of historical interest to readers of this group. >> >> >> On Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 6:12 PM, Ken Caldeira >> <[email protected]> wrote: >>> Dependence of climate forcing and response on the altitude of black carbon >>> aerosols >>> >>> George A. Ban-Weiss1 , Long Cao1, G. Bala2 and Ken Caldeira1 >>> Abstract >>> >>> Black carbon aerosols absorb solar radiation and decrease planetary albedo, >>> and thus can contribute to climate warming. In this paper, the dependence of >>> equilibrium climate response on the altitude of black carbon is explored >>> using an atmospheric general circulation model coupled to a mixed layer >>> ocean model. The simulations model aerosol direct and semi-direct effects, >>> but not indirect effects. Aerosol concentrations are prescribed and not >>> interactive. It is shown that climate response of black carbon is highly >>> dependent on the altitude of the aerosol. As the altitude of black carbon >>> increases, surface temperatures decrease; black carbon near the surface >>> causes surface warming, whereas black carbon near the tropopause and in the >>> stratosphere causes surface cooling. This cooling occurs despite increasing >>> planetary absorption of sunlight (i.e. decreasing planetary albedo). We find >>> that the trend in surface air temperature response versus the altitude of >>> black carbon is consistent with our calculations of radiative forcing after >>> the troposphere, stratosphere, and land surface have undergone rapid >>> adjustment, calculated as ³regressed² radiative forcing. The variation in >>> climate response from black carbon at different altitudes occurs largely >>> from different fast climate responses; temperature dependent feedbacks are >>> not statistically distinguishable. Impacts of black carbon at various >>> altitudes on the hydrological cycle are also discussed; black carbon in the >>> lowest atmospheric layer increases precipitation despite reductions in solar >>> radiation reaching the surface, whereas black carbon at higher altitudes >>> decreases precipitation. >>> >>> http://www.springerlink.com/content/98480557727889h8/ >>> >>> Ban-Weiss, G., et al, Climate Dynamics, 20011 >>> >>> ___________________________________________________ >>> Ken Caldeira >>> >>> Carnegie Institution Dept of Global Ecology >>> 260 Panama Street, Stanford, CA 94305 USA >>> +1 650 704 7212 <tel:%2B1%20650%20704%207212> >>> [email protected] >>> http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab @kencaldeira >> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. 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