Latest / Stuff You Should Know / Whatever happened to acid rain?

Transcript

Whatever happened to acid rain? · Stuff You Should Know

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