Thanks for the info. Yet another proof that when it comes to environmental phenomena, nothing is simple. We all need to work together, and attack the problem from all possible angles.

The simple truth is we all breathe from the same air pool. No frontiers there.

marguerite manteau-rao
green blogger
http://lamarguerite.wordpress.com

For all those complaining about the strict US emissions standards which are hard to meet with diesels, just look at what diesels are doing to Europe. If you look at the report and search for diesel, you'll see multiple places where they blame the increased diesel vehicle share on multiple pollution problems. For examples, from "Key Messages" sections 3.3 on PM.

"The... situation is especially due to emissions from
the transport sector, where reductions resulting
from a shift to lighter fuels are counteracted by
an increasing share of diesel vehicles and rising
traffic volumes."

and

"There is an indication of a relative increase in
direct emissions of NO2 from road vehicles,
corresponding to an increase of the diesel
fraction of light duty vehicles."

THANK YOU CARB for not letting this happen here ! 50 state legal diesels are coming back to the US starting this year, and I'm happy about that, but only because the gov't has actually done their job for a change and made sure they'll be relatively clean. (Now if the gov't would only do something about the gas hogs, we'd actually get somewhere, but perhaps Peak Oil will take car of that soon).

Anyone notice that what is written does not match what the graph shows?

anybody know if the emissions of particulate matter,etc, from large ships burning "bunker fuel" to drive a steam turbine are of similar conern as that caused by burning it in a diesel? thanks,Richard C Burton

From looking at the sulphur line it appears that significant changes in pollution levels will come only from changes in the fuel. Cleaner air requires cleaner fuel.

It is surprising to see such wide differences in pollutants emission between countries.

Germany (and other countries) has done very well for a highly industrialized nation and should be properly compensated.

Iceland seems to be much talk and poor actions/results.

Turkey, Greece, Portugal and Chyprus should be called upon to redress and/or pay for the overall lack of success they had.

Canada would really look dreadful, even much worse than Turkey. Shame on us for polluting so much more than 15 years ago. Are we like Iceland...much talk and no actions? Should we pay for our inaction?

This data has little meaning. There is no discussion of HOW OFTEN the populatiosn has expereinced bad air.

It could be that in 1997 they had bad air every day for hours on end. And today they had bad air for 20 minutes one day a year. The stats would still say the same percentage of the population was expsoed to bad air. or the obverse could be occurring.

Nonsense reports based on nonsense data are not worth the effort to read themtorealize its BS.

If the report is a job justification of some agency, they might not want ot admit any progress even if there was cosniderable improvemnt tocontinue their budgets. OTOH, If the report was prepared by some agency that wanted to say they were doing magnificently well, they could point to the same percentage of the population seeing polluted air as they hide that now they breath it much of the time as opposed to only occasionally back then.
You can't tell the purpose of such a dumb report without a program. allyou can say is:

Garbage IN Garbage OUT.

This data has little meaning. There is no discussion of HOW OFTEN the populatiosn has expereinced bad air.

It could be that in 1997 they had bad air every day for hours on end. And today they had bad air for 20 minutes one day a year. The stats would still say the same percentage of the population was expsoed to bad air. or the obverse could be occurring.

Nonsense reports based on nonsense data are not worth the effort to read themtorealize its BS.

If the report is a job justification of some agency, they might not want ot admit any progress even if there was cosniderable improvemnt tocontinue their budgets. OTOH, If the report was prepared by some agency that wanted to say they were doing magnificently well, they could point to the same percentage of the population seeing polluted air as they hide that now they breath it much of the time as opposed to only occasionally back then.
You can't tell the purpose of such a dumb report without a program. allyou can say is:

Garbage IN Garbage OUT.

Nonsense!

GarBage IN GarBaGe out!

WAh! WaHH! Wah!!

Stan:

You are largely off-base. The text of the report (pp. 30-50 or so) defines yearly exposure limits for each pollutant. These are often expressed in terms of: "No more than x days per year in which concentrations of pollutant y exceeded concentration z for at least q hours running." These exposure limits have been set at accord with Europe's best guess as to what are maximum "safe" exposures over time. It would seem that you did not take the time to peruse the report before firing off your response.

It may be true that this sort of chart masks certain forms of progress: e.g. in 1996 some fraction of the overexposed population may have been exposed to five times as many days as the standards call for, while the rest of the overexposed population was only exposed to twice as many days, whereas by 2006 there were no more areas which were five times overexposed, and everyone was just receiving twice the approved exposure. This development wouldn't come out in the chart. But the fact that an equal number of people are still overexposed -- as counted against a well defined and non-trivial standard -- is a relevant finding.

I would have preferred a chart that included either multiple levels (fraction of the population overexposed, fraction of the population massively overexposed, etc.), or a cumulative person-overexposures tally -- someone who was exposed to just the right number of days when pollution levels were just above the threshold would count once, while someone exposed to twice as many days, or to the same number of days but with concentrations twice as high, would count twice, etc. That would provide a little more color to these findings.

Large share of the PM emissions doesn't come from the engines, but from the tires and road. While engines have gotten cleaner, traffic volumes have increased and thus we don't see improvement in PM.