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SYSK Selects: Whatever happened to acid rain? · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: M Hey everybody, it's me Josh and for this week's
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Speaker 1: S Y s K Selects, I've chosen whatever happened to
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Speaker 1: Acid Rain from back in two thousand twelve. It's the
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Speaker 1: story of one of those really neat rare times when
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Speaker 1: humanity came together and said, no, no more, we're going
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Speaker 1: to actually save the plan at this time. Let's hope
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Speaker 1: we can do this again. In the meantime, sit back
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Speaker 1: and enjoy. Welcome to Stuff You should Know, a production
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Speaker 1: of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome
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Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
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Speaker 1: and we're doing this again. We're bringing the science this
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Speaker 1: time for once in our lives. Acid Rain, Yeah, failing
0:54
Speaker 1: down from the acid clouds. That's not how that song goes.
0:58
Speaker 1: That's not how acid rain by to John Daego, that
1:01
Speaker 1: guy is so great. We watched that again the other
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Speaker 1: day just by a chance, and I hadn't seen it
1:06
Speaker 1: in a couple of years, and it's still just these
1:08
Speaker 1: are hard to like Chad said, our friend, it's hard
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Speaker 1: to believe that that voice comes out of that guy,
1:13
Speaker 1: and he's kind a new one. Like Mother Economy, good. Yeah, Yeah,
1:17
Speaker 1: he's a good guy. Um. I don't know what chocolate
1:20
Speaker 1: rains about, but there's a good call out. I would
1:24
Speaker 1: be very interested to hear everyone's interpretation of what chocolate
1:28
Speaker 1: rain means good. I'd like to hear that too. Um.
1:33
Speaker 1: Let's see, Chuck. Do you remember back in the eighties
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Speaker 1: hearing about two things too terrifying environmental things. One the
1:46
Speaker 1: ozone layer, specifically the whole in the ozone layer, and
1:52
Speaker 1: two acid rain. You throw an apartheid and that is
1:56
Speaker 1: the eighties. Yeah, I'm not gonna play sen City nope. Um, yeah,
2:01
Speaker 1: that's pretty much. Also, don't forget cocaine, Ronald Reagan, jelly
2:05
Speaker 1: Beans and the A Team and Magnum. But he kind
2:11
Speaker 1: of transcends the eighties really, if you ask me, he's
2:13
Speaker 1: just a man of all time. Fair. Yeah, never gets told. Um.
2:18
Speaker 1: The weird thing is is, since I guess maybe the
2:21
Speaker 1: mid nineties or whatever, you don't hear about any of
2:23
Speaker 1: those things except for Magnum any longer. Yeah. Because of
2:28
Speaker 1: of course, global warming took over and everyone's afraid we're
2:31
Speaker 1: gonna melt now, and so they said, well, we don't
2:33
Speaker 1: need to worry about acid rain anymore. We fix that problem, right.
2:36
Speaker 1: I think there's a perception that you know, acid rain
2:38
Speaker 1: was fixed and taken care of, and astoundingly in a
2:42
Speaker 1: lot of ways it has been. Yeah, they've come a
2:45
Speaker 1: long way, baby, those on layer, by the way, has
2:47
Speaker 1: not been As a matter of fact, another one opened
2:49
Speaker 1: up in the Antarctic. Now now we have two. But
2:53
Speaker 1: that's a that's another topic of discussion. Acid rain, let's
2:56
Speaker 1: get back to it, though, is a very uh, it's
2:59
Speaker 1: a nice success to or in a lot of ways,
3:01
Speaker 1: and it came from a comprehensive understanding of a problem
3:06
Speaker 1: and a comprehensive will to address it. That's right, that's
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Speaker 1: how you take care of stuff. There is still a
3:12
Speaker 1: long way to go though, you always bringing me back
3:16
Speaker 1: down earth. Not completely fixed, but it is good. It's
3:18
Speaker 1: heartwarming to know that you can see a problem and
3:21
Speaker 1: and reduce something like acid rain. Precisely so, Chuck, what
3:26
Speaker 1: is acid rain? Acid rain, Josh, is a trans boundary issue,
3:31
Speaker 1: which means even though it just occurs in the mainly
3:35
Speaker 1: occurs in the northern hemisphere, it's still is going to
3:38
Speaker 1: cross over and effect the rest of the world. And
3:41
Speaker 1: the reason that's worth mentioning is because for many years
3:44
Speaker 1: up until the nineteen eighties, Um, they thought it was
3:47
Speaker 1: a very local problem. Yeah. Uh, and then they realized,
3:51
Speaker 1: oh no, it's not, and everybody kind of got on
3:53
Speaker 1: board with fixing it. That's try. Um, But like you said,
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Speaker 1: northern hemisphere, it occurs mostly there because we're the dirtiest,
4:01
Speaker 1: more industrial, most polluting. Yeah. So specifically, what it is,
4:05
Speaker 1: UM is rain with acid in it. Literally, uh, emissions
4:12
Speaker 1: of sulfur dioxide s O two, nitrogen oxides in O
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Speaker 1: X from things like cars and factories, power plants, all
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Speaker 1: those nasty things, lightning strikes, volcanoes, the natural ones UM.
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Speaker 1: They will actually react with water vapor in the atmosphere
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Speaker 1: and turn into acid, sulfuric and nitric acids, and they
4:33
Speaker 1: can fall in the form of wet rain, um, snow, sleet, fog,
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Speaker 1: or they can be deposited as particulates and gases. That's
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Speaker 1: dry acid rain. Well, the whole dry things called acid
4:47
Speaker 1: deposition because it can be wet or dry, right, and
4:50
Speaker 1: it's being deposited exactly on the earth. Yeah, that's what
4:53
Speaker 1: that word is. It's branched from deposit, isn't it. I
4:56
Speaker 1: think so? Yeah, it didn't even occur to me. Um,
5:00
Speaker 1: and so you so bravo unexplaining acid rain, and bravo
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Speaker 1: Sarah Dowdy who wrote this. Yeah, she did a very
5:07
Speaker 1: good job on this. UM. And when you can't just
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Speaker 1: be like, well this this rain seems a little hanky,
5:13
Speaker 1: so we're going to say that that's acid rain, they
5:15
Speaker 1: actually know. Um, there's a there's a very um strict
5:20
Speaker 1: definition of what constitutes acid rain, and they used the
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Speaker 1: pH scale to determine it, good old pH scale. So
5:27
Speaker 1: the pH scale is um this spectrum between highly acidic
5:31
Speaker 1: and highly basic, right, and um, acid rain obviously falls
5:36
Speaker 1: towards the acidic side of the scale. And in the
5:39
Speaker 1: middle of this scale is pure water. And that's at
5:42
Speaker 1: a seven point. Oh, it's not at zero. It's entirely neutral.
5:46
Speaker 1: It's neither basic nor acidic. Yeah. I just find it
5:48
Speaker 1: interesting that it's a scale of zero to fourteen with
5:52
Speaker 1: seven being in the middle. Seven's in the middle of
5:54
Speaker 1: zero to fourteen. Yeah, But I mean it just for me,
5:58
Speaker 1: I would say zero is neutral and anything above would
6:01
Speaker 1: be negative. But whatever. In the Grand tradition of um
6:05
Speaker 1: civilization established by the Romans, though, the pH scale starts
6:08
Speaker 1: at one rather than zero. Um, but yeah, I see
6:12
Speaker 1: what you're saying. Actually here, I like the fact I
6:16
Speaker 1: think it goes from one to fourteen. Well, then Sarah
6:18
Speaker 1: got it wrong. Um, in the the graph here says
6:22
Speaker 1: one to fourteen. I wonder, um, but back to its
6:26
Speaker 1: sevens in the middle either way, six seven, Yeah, so
6:34
Speaker 1: it would start at zero, I guess. Um, So the
6:39
Speaker 1: more acidic is the lower numbers, and the more basic
6:42
Speaker 1: is the higher numbers. Right. The thing is is rain
6:45
Speaker 1: isn't neutral. No, normal rain still is slightly acidic, and
6:49
Speaker 1: it hits about five point six on the pH scale, right, Um,
6:55
Speaker 1: so why well, it combines with carbon dioxide in the
6:59
Speaker 1: atmosphere to form as slightly acidic um carbonic acid deposition,
7:05
Speaker 1: which is branched from the root word deposit. That's right.
7:09
Speaker 1: Um so, uh so acid rain is something like five
7:13
Speaker 1: point three to four point oh as far as um
7:17
Speaker 1: acidity goes right, four point three to five okay, Um, yeah,
7:22
Speaker 1: that's a big difference. Um. And it's something like what
7:25
Speaker 1: the the acidity between orange juice and black coffee? Yeah,
7:30
Speaker 1: which Sarah is keen to point out, which is a
7:32
Speaker 1: bit of a misnomer. While that's true, you can't say
7:34
Speaker 1: well like, well, it's just like coffee. And then you're like,
7:36
Speaker 1: that's not gonna the coffee in your grass and it's
7:38
Speaker 1: not gonna kill it. See I'm and yeah, my hat
7:43
Speaker 1: was off to her for saying, like what boa we
7:45
Speaker 1: don't just be like orange juice is fine. Coffee is fine,
7:48
Speaker 1: because if you think about it, if a rained orange
7:49
Speaker 1: juice all the time, it'd probably have the same impact.
7:53
Speaker 1: Be awesome. Now, just like hold the old cup out
7:55
Speaker 1: the window at the morning, I'd be like, oh, it's
7:57
Speaker 1: with pulp today. Um. The problem with acid rain, though, Josh,
8:03
Speaker 1: even though it is has the acidity of a coffee
8:08
Speaker 1: or an orange juice, it um can wreck small parts
8:11
Speaker 1: of an ecosystem. And as we all know, if you
8:14
Speaker 1: wreck small parts of an ecosystem, there's a domino effect
8:17
Speaker 1: that occurs that spreads throughout an ecosystem. One of the
8:21
Speaker 1: most valuable things on the planet is something like plankton. Yeah,
8:25
Speaker 1: plankton is high currents. It's like honey buns in prison,
8:28
Speaker 1: but for them, yeah, you know, pretty much. And when plankton,
8:31
Speaker 1: which is very very sensitive, that changes in pH um,
8:35
Speaker 1: especially when it becomes more acidic. When plankton dies in
8:39
Speaker 1: small invertebrates die then yeah, it starves out the larger animals,
8:45
Speaker 1: fish and frogs, and then we start to get hungry,
8:49
Speaker 1: especially the French who we frog legs e g. Acid
8:52
Speaker 1: Rain is a huge problem in France, that's right. And
8:55
Speaker 1: eventually it's just mass hysteria pretty much cats and dogs
9:00
Speaker 1: living together kimberally from different strokes into with green hair.
9:03
Speaker 1: That's right. Uh. There are a couple of UM programs
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Speaker 1: UM that monitor this. UH. In the US, the National
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Speaker 1: Atmospheric Deposition Program and they handled the wet deposition and
9:15
Speaker 1: the clean Air Status and Trends Network UM handled the
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Speaker 1: dry And what they're looking for is trying to determine
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Speaker 1: the critical load, which is how much an ecosystem can
9:25
Speaker 1: UM take before it starts saying, Man, I'm breaking down.
9:31
Speaker 1: You're killing me with his stuff. UM. And the pH
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Speaker 1: scale is determined by UH, the concentration of hydrogen ions
9:40
Speaker 1: right in a substance. That's what makes it either UM
9:43
Speaker 1: acidic or basic. Right. So what these programs are doing
9:47
Speaker 1: is measuring the concentration of hydrogen ions to determine acidity.
9:52
Speaker 1: And they say, oh, well, this is this is too
9:55
Speaker 1: much science. I would just walk out and be like,
9:58
Speaker 1: look at this this plank and it's not looking very healthy.
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Speaker 1: This is acidic. I don't even need to measure this stuff.
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Speaker 1: You can just spot unhappy plankton pretty much nice. It's
10:07
Speaker 1: not how it Once you know what to look for,
10:10
Speaker 1: I'll teach you sometimes it's not hard. When you've met
10:12
Speaker 1: happy plankton, your life will never be the same. The
10:15
Speaker 1: difference is like night and day. So um surface waters
10:20
Speaker 1: are where acid rain is going to hit you most
10:24
Speaker 1: initially um precipitation, And you don't really think about this.
10:28
Speaker 1: You think it, well, it rains in a lake, what
10:30
Speaker 1: in a and in a river? What it does is
10:32
Speaker 1: it rains on the ground. And although sure it rains
10:35
Speaker 1: on the water surface, it's also going to run through
10:38
Speaker 1: soil to get to water. Right. One of the purposes
10:41
Speaker 1: of soil. One of the functions that provides is um buffering. Uh,
10:47
Speaker 1: water that percolates through it toward groundwater, towards bodies of water.
10:52
Speaker 1: And what's buffering me? Well, it has the ability to
10:56
Speaker 1: neutralize acids. Yeah, and then awesome, yeah, I think it
11:00
Speaker 1: brings everything more towards purified water or neutral pH right, yeah,
11:06
Speaker 1: but I think specifically with a lot of like the um.
11:10
Speaker 1: The minerals that are in the soil, like say calcium,
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Speaker 1: they counteract acidic um rain acidic water to bring it
11:18
Speaker 1: more toward neutral Right. The problem is when the soil's
11:22
Speaker 1: buffering capacity is overloaded, there's just too much for it
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Speaker 1: to handle. A lot of that unneutralized acid gets passed
11:29
Speaker 1: along into the body of water, and then you start
11:32
Speaker 1: to have those big problems with the little unhappy plankton. Yeah,
11:35
Speaker 1: it's almost like a water filter that's past its date,
11:40
Speaker 1: you know, it just can't filter anymore. Nice analogy, Thank you.
11:59
Speaker 1: That's why why ska um. So we've talked about what
12:11
Speaker 1: happens where the French end up with a lot of
12:14
Speaker 1: big problems in um coastal areas. Uh, nitrogen, Remember we
12:20
Speaker 1: have UM what is it? Sulfuric acid? And what acid?
12:25
Speaker 1: What for acid? Raine? Yeah, nitric acid? Okay, So nitric
12:29
Speaker 1: acid is based on nitrogen. Nitrogen has a really interesting
12:33
Speaker 1: impact on coastal waters where when it's deposited UM, it
12:38
Speaker 1: supports algae blooms because algae love nitrogen. And when algae
12:45
Speaker 1: blooms take place, algae starts to die eventually, and they
12:49
Speaker 1: sustain bacteria specifically aerobic bacteria that flourishes itself and sucks
12:55
Speaker 1: up all the oxygen in the water, starving fish, shellfish,
13:00
Speaker 1: um plants, and eventually like leading to at the very
13:05
Speaker 1: least a strain, if not a collapse on coastal ecosystem. So,
13:08
Speaker 1: too much acid rain will increase algae. Increased algae means
13:13
Speaker 1: increased dyeing algae, and increased dyeing algae means increased bacteria,
13:17
Speaker 1: and they rob fishes of their oxygen. Yeah, that's a
13:23
Speaker 1: domino effect. One of the things I love about acid
13:25
Speaker 1: rain is just how elegantly understandable it is. It is
13:29
Speaker 1: very basic and simple. I love it. It's not basic
13:32
Speaker 1: acidic UM. So this we're not done with the soil too,
13:37
Speaker 1: by the way, in a in an addition to UM,
13:41
Speaker 1: I guess decreasing its buffering capacity or overloading its buffering
13:46
Speaker 1: capacity UM. Acid rain has the terrible habit of drawing
13:53
Speaker 1: aluminum out of the soil. Yeah, it's normally locked in
13:56
Speaker 1: the soil. Acid rain draws it out, which means that
13:59
Speaker 1: tree it can suck it up, and that's poison to them.
14:03
Speaker 1: That's a toxin. Yeah. And Sarah makes a good point here.
14:07
Speaker 1: It's not like a it's not a situation where you're
14:10
Speaker 1: gonna find a rainforest has leveled all of a sudden
14:13
Speaker 1: because of acid rain, or you're gonna find a lake
14:17
Speaker 1: or a river that looks nasty and decaying and disgusting
14:21
Speaker 1: water might actually look cleaner. Yeah, and then ironic it is.
14:25
Speaker 1: It's ironic and beautiful. And um, what it's gonna do
14:28
Speaker 1: to your forest is it's gonna stunt its growth and
14:31
Speaker 1: over time it's gonna have an effect. Yeah, like you're
14:35
Speaker 1: gonna have bald trees. Um. Because in addition to this,
14:42
Speaker 1: toxins coming out in the soil on low lying areas
14:45
Speaker 1: from acid rain um, and it also degrading helpful minerals
14:50
Speaker 1: like we said, like calcium and other things that trees
14:52
Speaker 1: also use. UM. In higher elevations, that acid rain turns
14:58
Speaker 1: into an acid fall. That is added. That's crazy to
15:01
Speaker 1: me that that I'm going to say at this time,
15:04
Speaker 1: that is a great band name, Acid fog. Yeah. Uh.
15:08
Speaker 1: But so just imagine like trees bathing in that all
15:11
Speaker 1: the time, um, that that strips their leaves and basically
15:15
Speaker 1: makes them chili. Yeah. And that's why when you see
15:19
Speaker 1: mountains in the Appalachian Mountains that have bald peaks. It's
15:24
Speaker 1: not because trees can't grow up there. They could grow
15:27
Speaker 1: up there if they weren't sucking in and being surrounded
15:30
Speaker 1: by acid clouds. That's nuts. Just it doesn't have to
15:35
Speaker 1: be a rain in right, Yeah, you know, it's just
15:37
Speaker 1: in particulates in the air. Uh. And that that kind
15:42
Speaker 1: of leads to how it affects us because we are
15:46
Speaker 1: not nearly as sensitive to these kind of changes um
15:51
Speaker 1: with acid that that acid rain brings. Right now, it's
15:53
Speaker 1: not gonna burn. You know, you can swim in a lake, uh,
15:57
Speaker 1: an acid lake, and you will be fine. Um. But
16:01
Speaker 1: an acidic lake, let's say. And yeah, because it's just
16:05
Speaker 1: above battery acid. So you couldn't swim in a battery
16:08
Speaker 1: acid like that. That's terrible. Um, But you could swim
16:11
Speaker 1: in an acidic lake as far as acid rains concerned. Um.
16:16
Speaker 1: The problem comes with that dry deposition the um sulfuric
16:21
Speaker 1: and nitric ox or nitric acids combine UH in low
16:27
Speaker 1: lying areas with ozone yeah v O c s and
16:33
Speaker 1: create small which is bad for your respiratory system ground
16:37
Speaker 1: level baby. Um. It can also do things like if
16:44
Speaker 1: you've ever seen an old building that is uh, or
16:47
Speaker 1: a monument that's got these little smooth grooves that could
16:51
Speaker 1: be acid corrosion for like years and years at a
16:55
Speaker 1: wear away stone. It'll it's no friend to your car
16:59
Speaker 1: paint job, that's for sure, which I mean if you're
17:01
Speaker 1: into your car, it's a big deal. Yeah. That tree, sap, pollen,
17:04
Speaker 1: bird droppings, and acid rain are the four enemies of
17:09
Speaker 1: your of your auto paint. They're considered corrosive, environmental fallout,
17:14
Speaker 1: and friend of Mako. Yeah, Micho loves that stuff. Um so.
17:20
Speaker 1: Uh the idea about acid rain, consider this that stone
17:25
Speaker 1: statue you're just describing. That takes a long time. A
17:30
Speaker 1: lot of orange juice rain has to fall on that
17:32
Speaker 1: thing for it to become pockmarked and weathered prematurely. Right, Um,
17:38
Speaker 1: and it's had actually plenty of time to do that
17:41
Speaker 1: build a statue where James almost you'd be like it
17:45
Speaker 1: spinning image. So sorry. Um so the man you got
17:52
Speaker 1: me with that just so on cool. The reason the
17:55
Speaker 1: reason it's had a long we've had a long time,
17:58
Speaker 1: or that that statue is weathered over a very long
18:00
Speaker 1: time because we've had acid rain for quite some time,
18:02
Speaker 1: ever since the beginning of the industrial revolution, they think
18:05
Speaker 1: pretty much, because remember they thought it was very localized problem.
18:07
Speaker 1: And the reason they thought it was local was because
18:09
Speaker 1: it had such quick rapid effects. But the acid rain,
18:14
Speaker 1: I don't know who who coined the term acid fog,
18:17
Speaker 1: but acid rain was coined by an Englishman named Robert
18:20
Speaker 1: Angus Smith back in eighteen seventy two. Yeah, and it
18:25
Speaker 1: was the monuments that made him say, what in the
18:28
Speaker 1: heck is going on here? And there weren't a lot
18:30
Speaker 1: of people back then, like I was thinking when I
18:33
Speaker 1: read this, Like, man, it would have been great if
18:35
Speaker 1: during this boom of ingenuity and industrial revolution there were
18:40
Speaker 1: just as many people concerned with the impact it might have.
18:44
Speaker 1: But it just couldn't have worked that way. It's almost
18:47
Speaker 1: like they just had to do their thing and then
18:50
Speaker 1: leave us to figure out how to fix it, how
18:52
Speaker 1: to clean up the mess sort of. I don't know
18:55
Speaker 1: if those things to two things could have evolved simultaneous.
18:58
Speaker 1: So I think you're onto some thing. I mean, maybe
19:00
Speaker 1: we wouldn't have, um, I don't know, the iPhone. Maybe
19:07
Speaker 1: who knows, Maybe we would I don't know. Maybe we'd
19:09
Speaker 1: be better off, yeah, a lot better off. Maybe we
19:12
Speaker 1: would have more stuff, Maybe it would have changed the
19:14
Speaker 1: way of thinking rather than just get get get, you know,
19:18
Speaker 1: it would have been get. But also, how's this going
19:20
Speaker 1: to affect other people? So Smith was a man alone.
19:26
Speaker 1: An early ecologists will say, yeah, it's so good for him. Man,
19:31
Speaker 1: you've been coming up with some great, like off the
19:33
Speaker 1: cuff creative solutions. Well, that's not a solution. And if
19:39
Speaker 1: we had a time machine, it would be yeah, the
19:42
Speaker 1: way back machines in the shops. That's why s k
20:10
Speaker 1: uh So scientists did determine UM by what the seventies
20:16
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, the acid rain was a problem, and it
20:20
Speaker 1: was trans boundary, it's not just local. And so then
20:24
Speaker 1: in eighty thankfully the Acid Deposition Act I said you
20:28
Speaker 1: know what, we're gonna study this for ten years and
20:31
Speaker 1: we're gonna see what's going on. Ten years later in
20:33
Speaker 1: nineteen nine and they said, yep, it's a big problem. Yeah,
20:36
Speaker 1: so we need to do something about it, and they
20:38
Speaker 1: did very quickly. Congress um took the already established Clean
20:43
Speaker 1: Air Act and added UM sulfur dioxide and uh nitrous
20:48
Speaker 1: oxide nitrogen oxide right yeah, to the list of like
20:53
Speaker 1: most wanted reduction people materials. And this was in with
20:59
Speaker 1: the Clean Air Act and the Acid rain program. So
21:04
Speaker 1: this is when everything really starts to come into effect, right, um,
21:08
Speaker 1: and it I guess at least as far as sulfur
21:12
Speaker 1: dioxide emissions went, it was wildly successful. Compared to nineteen
21:17
Speaker 1: eight levels. In two thousand ten, the the sulfur dioxide
21:23
Speaker 1: emissions have been reduced by that's good. That's astounding, dude,
21:29
Speaker 1: that is astounding because consider this, that's not from hitting this.
21:33
Speaker 1: Since that's hitting it, we already got it back down
21:39
Speaker 1: to fifty seventeen years. That's amazing. And the way they
21:44
Speaker 1: did that is through a cap and trade scheme. I
21:47
Speaker 1: kind of like the old cap and trade. It makes
21:49
Speaker 1: a lot of sense. Cap and trade, Josh. Basically, what
21:53
Speaker 1: they say is we're going to set a cap for
21:55
Speaker 1: how much s O two that your power plant can create.
22:00
Speaker 1: It's a limit, um, but they set the cap and
22:02
Speaker 1: they says, you know what, you've got these allowances though
22:05
Speaker 1: if you come under, you get these credits and you
22:07
Speaker 1: can actually sell those to other companies that are in need.
22:10
Speaker 1: And it just I don't know something about it makes
22:12
Speaker 1: sense to me. It makes a lot of sense. And
22:13
Speaker 1: then over time you decrease the amount that that people
22:20
Speaker 1: are allowed to admit. And when you're cutting it into
22:22
Speaker 1: these allowances, those allowances by by virtue of the scarcity
22:28
Speaker 1: of them, become more valuable. Yeah, it really incentivizes you
22:32
Speaker 1: to do something about it for your company exactly. So
22:34
Speaker 1: that worked really well for nitrous oxide or for sodium
22:38
Speaker 1: sulfur dioxide. Man, what are we even talking about here?
22:41
Speaker 1: That's why I just say s O two UM. And
22:44
Speaker 1: with nitrogen oxides, they didn't institute a cap and trade
22:48
Speaker 1: until like two thousand three, so it was lagging a
22:51
Speaker 1: little bit. But it too is something of a success story.
22:54
Speaker 1: They Um they reduced it from twenty seven million tons
22:58
Speaker 1: in his sixteen point three million tons in two thousand
23:02
Speaker 1: and eight. That's pretty good. And so this has had
23:07
Speaker 1: a discernible effect on the environment. Um apparently. Uh, let's
23:12
Speaker 1: see the acidic lakes. The number of acidic lakes throughout
23:17
Speaker 1: the country have reduced dramatically. UM. There are seventy percent
23:23
Speaker 1: fewer acidic lakes and streams in Wisconsin and Michigan than
23:26
Speaker 1: there were in four UM. A third of the bodies
23:30
Speaker 1: of water that were acidic in the early nineties in
23:33
Speaker 1: the Adirondacks and the Northern Appalachians are now not considered
23:37
Speaker 1: acidic at all. So there have been like huge strides
23:42
Speaker 1: made other places there have not been. And also you
23:45
Speaker 1: found this really good little kind of overview about acid
23:48
Speaker 1: rain and what happened to it by Nina Rostogi from Slate.
23:51
Speaker 1: That's whose stuff I'm quoting right now. So there have
23:54
Speaker 1: been huge strides, but there's still, like you said, originally
23:58
Speaker 1: a long way to go. Yeah. The National Acidic Precipitation
24:02
Speaker 1: Assessment Program said that, Um. Another another is what we
24:08
Speaker 1: need to hit to really restore these ecosystems. And I
24:12
Speaker 1: think we're headed there. It sounds like it. Ye like
24:15
Speaker 1: we'll check in in ten years and follow up on this.
24:19
Speaker 1: M Who am I kidding? We could do well? No,
24:26
Speaker 1: well we'll well it'll be our comeback special. Okay, whatever
24:30
Speaker 1: happened to whatever happened to acid ring? Great? Um, But Chuck,
24:34
Speaker 1: I think that this is a really valuable lesson. If
24:37
Speaker 1: you have a non polarized international initiative to take care
24:45
Speaker 1: of a problem, and you can shout down business interests
24:49
Speaker 1: and just say no, this is what you're doing and
24:51
Speaker 1: here's how you're gonna do it. Um, you can make
24:55
Speaker 1: things happen. Yeah, I guess no one was saying accid
24:59
Speaker 1: rain doesn't exist. Rain is really not bad. It was
25:02
Speaker 1: pretty much nonpolarizing except for a big business and also
25:05
Speaker 1: where any jobs lost by this cap and trade scheme?
25:08
Speaker 1: Was industry hurt by this cap and trade scheme? I
25:11
Speaker 1: would wage, You're probably not. Do you think I would
25:14
Speaker 1: wage or not? But they're still in business. They're just
25:16
Speaker 1: doing it with clean coal and wet scrubbers and yeah,
25:20
Speaker 1: all that all that good stuff. Yeah, it's interesting. And
25:23
Speaker 1: I'm not even an environmentalist. I hate the environment. I'm
25:26
Speaker 1: just fascinated by this stuff. That's not true. Well, if
25:30
Speaker 1: you want to learn more about acid rain or acid fog,
25:33
Speaker 1: you can type either of those words into the search
25:35
Speaker 1: bar at how stuff works dot com and that will
25:37
Speaker 1: bring up this very interesting article by Sarah Dowdy. And uh,
25:41
Speaker 1: I said, um, acid fog, which means it's time for
25:44
Speaker 1: listener mail. I'm gonna call this m I T nerd alert.
25:51
Speaker 1: I got a very nerdy email from an m I T.
25:53
Speaker 1: Student and I teased her and said, I'm gonna read
25:56
Speaker 1: this on the air and make fun of you. Is
25:57
Speaker 1: that okay? And she went, oh yeah, and here's some
25:59
Speaker 1: other stuff you can make for what I mean about
26:01
Speaker 1: um Hi, Josh and Chuck and Jerry. I love your
26:04
Speaker 1: recent episode on how language evolved. But as an m
26:06
Speaker 1: I T. Senior graduating in a month which is probably
26:09
Speaker 1: like right now, actually, um I felt it my duty
26:12
Speaker 1: to make a very important correction to your intro. We
26:15
Speaker 1: are called the m I T Engineers, not the m
26:17
Speaker 1: I T eggheads. I think I called a egeads. Indeed,
26:21
Speaker 1: our unofficial school song is the M I T. Engineer's
26:24
Speaker 1: Drinking Song, which includes many nerdy jokes, some of the
26:27
Speaker 1: expense of that small liberal arts school up the river Harvard. Additionally,
26:32
Speaker 1: our mascot is Tim the beaver, Tim being M I
26:36
Speaker 1: T spelled backwards. It's so glamor because beaver's are nature's engineers.
26:42
Speaker 1: In fact, every class has a special ring called the
26:45
Speaker 1: brass Rat, which depicts a beaver on a bezel the
26:49
Speaker 1: eazy e L What is that? See, I'm so done.
26:52
Speaker 1: I don't even know what a bezel love. We would
26:54
Speaker 1: not make it an M I T. I suppose. Supposedly,
26:57
Speaker 1: it's one of the most recognizable rings in the world.
27:00
Speaker 1: Man um I started listening to the podcast during long
27:02
Speaker 1: long hours and lab and grateful and I'm grateful to
27:05
Speaker 1: you guys for entertaining me during my past four years.
27:08
Speaker 1: In m I T P S and m I T
27:11
Speaker 1: we refer to everything by number, including majors and buildings linguistics.
27:16
Speaker 1: The field of Mr Chomsky is called Course twenty four
27:20
Speaker 1: the Inimitable Mr Thomas Gnome I believe, Oh yeah uh,
27:24
Speaker 1: and is housed in a pretty crazy looking building, Building
27:27
Speaker 1: thirty two, a k a. The Status Center. Sorry ramble on.
27:31
Speaker 1: I'm very proud of my soon to be alma mater
27:33
Speaker 1: and PPS. I thought of one more really geeky thing
27:36
Speaker 1: you might want to make fun of regarding M I
27:38
Speaker 1: T S mascot, the Humble Beaver. One of our cheers
27:41
Speaker 1: for our football games is called the Beaver cheer, and
27:44
Speaker 1: I will do that right now. I'm a beaver, you're
27:47
Speaker 1: a beaver. We are beavers all, and when we get
27:50
Speaker 1: together we do the beaver call. E to the U
27:55
Speaker 1: D you slash d x E to the x d
28:00
Speaker 1: X CO sign secont tangent sign three point one four
28:07
Speaker 1: one five nine integral radical m U d V. I'm
28:13
Speaker 1: sure these are smart things. I don't understand, uh, slipstick
28:16
Speaker 1: slide roll m I t go tech. I feel like
28:20
Speaker 1: you just issued some sort of orders that only like
28:23
Speaker 1: three people understand, and now they're carrying out some sort
28:25
Speaker 1: of terrible mission. Yeah, like the nuclear suitcases, like heating
28:29
Speaker 1: up right now, the bomba side. Yeah, I can't even
28:32
Speaker 1: say you're beaver cheer. That's how dumb I am. It's okay, Chuck,
28:35
Speaker 1: who's that from? Laura? Thanks a lot, Laura. That was
28:39
Speaker 1: a good one. So let's see Chuck. Oh, what were
28:41
Speaker 1: we gonna ask for? Um? Is that to be? Oh?
28:44
Speaker 1: What does chocolate rain means? Yeah, we want to know
28:47
Speaker 1: what chocolate range means. Also, if your Tason Day and
28:50
Speaker 1: you listen to this, if you tell us what it
28:52
Speaker 1: means that would hold a lot of water, that would
28:55
Speaker 1: be great. That would be pretty special. You can tweet
28:57
Speaker 1: to us Taison Day or otherwise um at s y
29:00
Speaker 1: s K podcast. You can also visit us on Facebook
29:04
Speaker 1: right Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know, or
29:08
Speaker 1: you can send us an email to stuff Podcasts at
29:10
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
29:16
Speaker 1: a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more
29:18
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29:27
Speaker 1: H