Acid Rain And The Sneaky Policy That "Solved" It - Cheddar Explains

[@scarlettsteele7999]

This is interesting because I remember learning about acid rain in school as a child and I remember being so scared and concerned about it and the problems they said it was causing and then I never heard of it again and always wondered why. Thanks for solving this personal mystery!

[@cheddar]

Same!

[@scarlettsteele7999]

@Karin Shedd lol I’m sure that was a common thing. I used to see pics of LA on the news and be like “wow good thing SF isn’t that bad” even though SF (where I grew up) was only marginally better. I remember the first time I breathed relatively clean air, but sf now is so much better than it used to be.

[@AdamArtzi]

Idk why you should be scared, I mean look at Sam from Death Stranding, his kinda burned from acid from time to time but still walks.

[@scarlettsteele7999]

@@AdamArtzi what’s Death Stranding? sorry that went over my head 😵‍💫

[@Lvlaple4Ever]

Because it has always been another leftist propaganda but of the past.

[@larrywhite9246]

As a chemical engineer who worked on SO2 reductions in the 1970's, I found this an excellent video on acid rain with one exception. I heard about cap/trade for acid rain issues, but saw no cap/trade activity in my work to reduce SO2. The one week training I took back then (Research Triangle Park) on the Clean Air Act had no mention of cap/trade. My involvement in reducing SO2 emission dealt with EPA emission limits and the ambient air quality standards that are to be met. The financial incentive was to avoid paying fines for exceeding limits. The regulatory approach (stop production of chlorofluorocarbons) was used in response to the Ozone depletion and it worked. For today's environmental crisis (global warming), there is a push to use an economic approach rather than a regulatory approach. My hope is that your video was not influenced by those pushing the economic approach. Don't get me wrong, the wallet is the best regulator. But other options to solve global environmental issues should always be considered for specific situations.

[@QT5656]

Excellent comment 👏

[@rustknuckleirongut8107]

Having grown up in northern Europe in the eighties there seemed to be no cap and trade here either. We flat out paid for facilities to clean SO2 from the German coal operated power plants. Both the effects of acid rain and the effects of cleaner air could be seen with the naked eye. In the early eighties going to my families mountain cabin you could watch a line of death descend where all the fir trees above the line(About 900 meters above sea level) were dying and brown and all the trees below were green. It is a stark reality check to see a physical line in the landscape where trees were dying above it. The efforts to clean the emissions of German coal power plants had an almost immediate effects and in about ten years things were getting back to normal. Doing something worked. It is better to so something rather than nothing. This is the argument that has always swung me toward action when it comes to climate change/global warming: If you do something the worst that happens if you are wrong about climate change being real is that you wasted some money, but the consequence of being wrong when you think climate change is not real is the possible extinction of the human race in a few hundred years to a few thousand years time. You may say a thousand years is a long time, but it is only a tiny fraction of the time humans in our form has lived on earth and several orders of magnitude shorter than life has thrived on earth.

[@salzkasten]

You guys had your wealth. If we go the regulatory route boomers would have been the last rich generation. So thank you, no I father have climate change.

[@agsystems8220]

The cap and trade was a political and economic trick which was extremely effective, even if it was never used. The point is that you can shut down a lobbyist who is claiming that it is impossible for their industry to meet proposed limits by telling them that they can be legal by buying emissions from somewhere else. Almost like a miracle those same industries were able to find ways to limit their own emissions rather than pay. Corner case 'what if' strategies in a scenario can affect the optimal core strategies while rarely if ever being appropriate themselves. An escape route on at the bottom of a hill for trucks that have brake issues can make the whole road flow much faster because trucks can go faster safely, for example. Nuclear weapons dominated the international relations of the cold war, but were never used.

[@larrywhite9246]

@@agsystems8220 You make a good point that I hadn't thought of. Using a political trick to get done what needs to be done.

[@Inspirement]

As a Swede, I'll tell you that you did a way better job in pronouncing our language than many other youtubers do.

[@manganvbg90]

No, it was horrible 😂

[@4zazel777]

@Karin Shedd the "é" is pronounced the same way as in French, like paté =). Thanks for very informative video! I will watch also the bosse's "debate" :-)

[@moscanaveia]

It would be concerning if she could pronounce them better than other swedes

[@mo_3924]

Schweden

[@thebigpicture2032]

Ah the good old days when problems were solved by first agreeing there was a problem.

[@SaveMoneySavethePlanet]

Right? It’s crazy how many people seem to just have their fingers in their ears and are humming loudly these days!

[@QT5656]

Oh many of them know. They are simply investing their billions in bunkers, islands, and rockets, whilst also spreading misinformation to keep their carbon heavy stock portfolios generating easy money.

[@jokuvaan5175]

But agreeing there was a problem first required untold amount of damage to human health and nature that couldn't be denied. Kinda like how nations have only now unilateraly accepted that climate change is real and we should do so.ething about it when natural disasters have become more frequent, the loss of snow in northern hemisphere us irrefutable in data, glaciers about to disappear and entire nations are about to sink underwater

[@Yakeru35]

The good old days when problems were highlighted by researchers and every meaningful action was killed in the egg by politics and lobbyists ? The good old days when it took several decades to finally address the issue once unimaginable amount of damage was already done, just because public and international pressure was getting high enough to start a commercial war or affect a re-election ? 40 years that researchers are warning the world about climate change, and what are the governments doing ? Promoting mining again to produce more electric cars ... haha nothing has changed, things are just getting worse, faster.

[@MyRegardsToTheDodo]

One of the main problems today is that we can't seem to agree on anything.

[@learnmyname123]

As a child born in the mid 90's, I would like to thank those Canadian protesters for my life being without serious acid rain.

[@hughlawson1051]

In the early 80's I was working for Westinghouse at a turbine outage at the Sutton Coal-Fired Power Plant in Wilmington, NC. I was told by one of their engineers that the EPA uses opacity as a measure of smokestack emissions. The EPA inspector had a collection of differently shaded lenses with which to compare the smoke from a chimney. The less light a lens let pass, the higher it's opacity value. This worked great because the EPA inspector did not need to announce himself to make an inspection. He did not even need to visit the plant, he just needed to drive by it. In time the utility companies came up with a work-around that was cheaper than cleaning up their emissions. They discovered that if they pumped sulfur into hot exhaust gas, the clarity of what came out the stack would improve. One drawback to this approach was that it created sulfuric acid. Which is how I ended up finding out about the practice. I sometimes rode my bicycle to work. On calm mornings the smokestack smoke would not get blown away by the breeze. In fact, on very calm mornings it would even drift down to the ground, where I would ride through it. When I mentioned my burning eyes to the head of engineering at the plant he explained the sulfur, the EPA, and opacity. This was the same plant where I learned about radioactive coal-ash yards. But that is another subject.

[@the_retag]

Dude

[@hughlawson1051]

It was legal.

[@IamACanadian47]

I live up here in northern Ontario Canada, namely Sudbury. We are the nickel capital of the world and are based on a asteroid impact site called the nickel basin. Our mining and processing is so common that the rocks here became black and pitted from the rain and it got so bad NASA sent astronauts up here to train for the moon landing because we were so close to resembling the surface of the moon. When I was growing up I could see the smokestacks from almost anywhere I hiked and you could see and smell it all the time, but we have been ‘re-greening’ now for half a century and we are much healthier for it!

[@Nick-pb7pz]

I took the chi-cheemaun up to sudbury when I was a kid, it's a really nice place

[@IamACanadian47]

@@Nick-pb7pz Thank you, most of my family lives on Manitoulin Island and even they comment every once in a while about how much improved Sudbury has become.

[@rogerclarke7407]

1983 I started working in Sudbury. I still remember looking across the Wanapitei River valley and noticing no trees on the other side.

[@B.D.F.]

That Inco Superstack…

[@OK-ws7ti]

Saultite here, same but to a lesser extent with steelplant and tube mill

[@Oaty86]

I don't see how the policy to reduce emissions was "sneaky" as the title implies. If anything it was overt and obvious forcing people to act otherwise getting fined. It would be sneaky if the policy was something like a tax break on making alternative fuel powerplants, therefore, reducing emissions, but it was nothing like that. It was a direct policy to combat the situation and was not hidden inside some other bill to sneak it in, it was direct.

[@kennethkho7165]

taxbreaks are not sneaky either. along with taxes and fines, those are the main instruments to shape the market.

[@pierregravel-primeau702]

but nobody would clic on a video about how policy and democracy worked 40 years ago... You have to give it a conspiracy twist...

[@Nealetony]

When i read sneaky i thought maybe policy makers redefined what could be called acid rain.

[@belldrop7365]

The sneaky thing is adding it in sneakily in the title.

[@TehConqueror]

the sneaky thing is the "fuck you got mine" attitude european/western nations have regarding asian/african industrialization. the sneaky thing is the lack of reparations to the damaged communities and environments. We pulled out the knife but didn't stop the bleeding and called it healthcare.

[@NotHPotter]

The problem with the pH scale is that the average person neither understands that it's logarithmic nor how that changes the fundamental nature of the scale.

[@lolll3360]

I mean it's literally taught on school so you'd have to be a complete fool to but understand it .

[@ZeroKitsune]

@@lolll3360 Honestly no. I've actually had lab-based sciences more than once and no, they don't bother to really explain it in any detail beyond "lower is more acidic, higher is more basic." Not to mention that "more acidic" doesn't actually equal "more corrosive" at all.

[@HerbaMachina]

@@ZeroKitsune yeah, PH is one of the worst explained chemistry subjects by far. It's also really annoying when they limit it to H+ and OH- ions, when really PH is just the measure of the ratio between the charge of + and - ions in a mixture or solution, and for the sake of easy comparison we use the H+ or OH- equivalent. That's why salt water is slightly basic even though there is no conventional acid in it (well unless you are counting water, which can technically be grouped as an Acid due to its molecular structure)

[@ritwikreddy5670]

@@lolll3360 never underestimate the foolishness of people.

[@LechuKawaii]

In my case, I only had one year of chemistry at school and it was very basic. So yeah, I was never told about the pH scale

[@crusinscamp]

Anecdotal: I worked at a service station, filling cars with gasoline, along with other work, back in the 1970s. On pre-emission control cars you could tell if they were running rich or lean. Rich (hydrocarbon & CO emissions) could make you dizzy, and lean (nitrogen oxides) made your eyes sting. That all faded from the scene as emission controlled cars became prevalent. A lot of the impetus for emission control in cars came out of California, and even does to this day. Side note, 5:20 is a picture of Chernobyl, which occurred in the 1980s. The drifting of nuclear fallout was discovered during early atomic bomb testing. An interesting 1950s story is how classified atomic bomb testing in Nevada was discovered in New York by Kodak (the camera & film company).

[@reaganharder1480]

And then the US government made an agreement with Kodak to give them advanced warning of their bomb testing so long as Kodak didn't tell anyone else they were doing it.

[@RichJordan3]

Great video, having been born in the 80s I've heard of acid rain but never experienced it so thus really explained a lot. Even happier to see last week's props in the background!

[@cheddar]

Good eye!

[@AwosAtis]

I experienced it in the 80's. I was starting my family back then. My recollection was mostly dramatic media reports of killing our planet and protests by young people. I remember the smog crises in the cities of the 60's and actually was affected when I visited any city. Cities then had a noxiousness in the air that was mostly gone in the 80's and doesn't exist today. Acid rain? No personal experiences that I remember other than what the media had to offer.

[@psychohist]

@@AwosAtis A significant amount of the smog was attributable to the acidic emissions mentioned in the video, especially SOx and particulates carrying it.

[@PLuMUK54]

This is probably the best presentation of this topic I have ever seen. Although, at the end, I feel that I have learnt a lot, I never felt swamped by data, facts and figures, which so many channels like to do (probably to show how clever they are). Well done. As a retired teacher, I appreciate how much effort your effortless performance took.

[@jbeaudoin11]

To show evidence that support their message ? They could say pretty much anything. W/o evidence it's worth nothing, even tho people just eat it as truth w/o questioning. This video doesn't show any evidence that we solved the original problem: acid rain. All we know from the video is that we reduced our sox and nox emissions and we need to trust that it solved the acid rain problem.

[@TheKarinTS]

@@jbeaudoin11 Hi! If you want more in-depth explanations of this whole situation, peep the description box. We link all our sources. I find the most helpful ones to be the Ambio article and the Poisonous Skies book.

[@moscanaveia]

@@jbeaudoin11 Reducing SOx and NOx emmissions does curb acid rain. What you need to know is not the data about acid rain, it is the chemistry of these compounds. If you bubble either of those gasses through distilled water, you will produce the acids and therefore the pH will lower, as the water becomes acidic due to the acid produced. Calling that into question is tantamountto disputing a basic fact of chemistry that has been known for some 200 years, or more

[@jbeaudoin11]

@@moscanaveia I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm just saying we don't see the results on the rain acidity in the video. Also, making something in a lab (controlled environment) is not the same as outside. You have a lot more variables in the real world. You can try to simulate the results from small scale, but can't assume it's gonna be the same outside.

[@moscanaveia]

@@jbeaudoin11 The causes of acid rain are these compounds. The science behind this is well understood, both on its fundamental level and on the environmental level. Burning fossil fuels produces a devil's bouquet of harmful substances, but the ones that cause acid rain are nitrogen and sulfur oxides. Therefore, the way to reduce the problem of acid rain, we need to target those two categories of chemicals. Now whether state regulation has worked or not to ensure companies reduce their SOx and NOx emissions is another story, but with fewer of thhose emissions, the acidity of rain returns to normal. Period.

[@albertbatfinder5240]

The important lesson of the acid rain story is that rich European countries realised there was little point spending billions reducing their emissions from 3% to 1% (those last bits are always the most expensive) when their neighbours were still spewing out sulphur at 30 times the rate. So they funded the clean-up in poorer countries. Way cheaper and much, much more benefit. Today, when you talk about international emissions trading credits, nationalist conservatives will bleat “why should my country’s dollars be spent abroad!” Well, there are sometimes good reasons. Very, very sensible reasons.

[@whiteknightcat]

Kind of like "We shouldn't be sending a billion dollars in foreign aid to Country X to help their people!" Followed by "We need to spend TENS of billions of dollars protecting our border from 'invaders' from Country X!"

[@alehut]

Hi Karin, I'm an engineer working in this field. I enjoyed the video, thanks for bringing some attention to air quality in a time when many are focused on climate change to the exclusion of regional and local impacts. I do take issue with the claim that NOx "primarily comes from the burning of gasoline by power plants or cars." In fact, no significant amount of NOx is associated with gasoline combustion at power plants. Coal is responsible for the vast majority of NOx emissions from the US electrical generation sector (80% in 2017), followed by natural gas (13%) and oil (5%). Whenever "gas" is referred to in this context, it's natural gas or similar; not gasoline. In terms of the cars part of the claim, while it is true that "on-road non-diesel light duty vehicles" is the largest individual line item when summarizing US EPA's emissions inventories by sector (see ref. at the end), this item still only accounts for 16-17% of total NOx emissions. There are too many other contributing sources for the "NOx primarily comes from here" framing to be reasonable in my professional opinion. For example, diesel is a MUCH more NOx-intensive fuel than gasoline, both in terms of total contribution and in terms of emission rates (~efficiency); but the way the accounting works, diesel emissions end up spread out across a few different sectors and subcategories. If you know where to look, diesel accounts for close to 25% of total NOx emissions. And that still leaves more than half the total unaccounted for. Beyond which, sector-to-sector comparisons of this sort can in many ways be apples-to-oranges, if our mind is set on solutions-gas engines in cars are about as clean as we can possibly make them at this point, but the same cannot be said of gas engines in lawn equipment (which resides in another category), diesel engines generally, or many other combustion sources. There are strong and ongoing efforts on behalf of industry to promote the idea that emissions generally are a problem of cars and NOT of industry; or a problem of passenger cars and NOT freight trucks; and so on. Bad actors in this arena have never stopped this finger-pointing, deflection, and lying with statistics, they just play games with the messaging and continue working against the public interest for their own financial protection. Your misstatement in this video, while only a very small part of the overall presentation, unfortunately plays into industry narratives in a way that is unsupportive of efforts to more firmly regulate industrial and other non-consumer sources of NOx and SOx. Ultimately, what your audience should understand is that this problem of acid rain, to the extent that it comes from human-caused emissions of NOx and SOx, is a problem of A) burning fuels-any fuels!-especially at high temperatures, and B) governments failing to require sources to use available technology to adequately control the NOx and SOx that they produce. Yes, the cars that you and I use in everyday life are a factor, but they are not in any reasonable sense the primary factor. Yes, the vehicle fleet needs to turn over to zero-emission technology and preferably faster than it already is, but so much attention has been given to the automobile that in the current moment, socially and politically, non-vehicle sources are very much the elephant in the room. Federal emission inventory data is publicly available at www.epa.gov/air-emissions-inventories/2017-national-emissions-inventory-nei-data.

[@benoithudson7235]

While today there’s very little oil used for power, it was common in the 1960s and only started declining in the 1970s for economic reasons.

[@TheKarinTS]

Thanks for the awesome clarification and expansion! I love hearing from experts in the field because, as much as I can quibble over how exactly to phrase things or summarize them, I hate to think I'm skimming over things or misrepresenting them. Appreciate the link!

[@odizzido]

Thanks for this reply

[@crazydragy4233]

Awesome addition to the video! So glad to see so many people with expertise commenting.

[@BrooksMoses]

And one of the unfortunate tradeoffs is that, just based on thermodynamic limits, the best way to substantially increase the efficiency of getting energy from burning fuel is to burn it at higher temperatures. So one of the best ways to reduce CO2 production will increase NOx production, and vice-versa.

[@Chrischi4598]

Fun fact, what helped solve the acid rain problem the most in Germany, the the fall of the wall. Because after that, all the ugly dirty factories in the east closed down (for various reasons)

[@lordunhold5381]

West germany drastically modernized its industry in the 70s ... when germany reunited east germany had still the economy of the early 60s

[@MrAlexandru1997]

I'm surprised no one mentioned that in the video pure distilled water has pH of 7... pure distilled water has a pH of 5. Tap water has a pH of 7. Distilled water is slightly acidic because carbon dioxide instantly dissolves in the water mass forming carbonic acid. Other than that, great video!

[@crazydragy4233]

Seems like there's a couple minor hiccups like that sprinkled out through the video but only people adequately versed on the topics notice. Still a pretty good video, the big picture at least, but definitely not perfect.

[@JamEngulfer]

I really liked the presentation style in this video, it’s fun and a bit more casual than most ‘explainer’ videos.

[@cheddar]

Thanks! It's what we are going for.

[@ARCHITACADEMY]

@@cheddar Your engagement with the comments also put you higher than other channels.

[@ThePixel1983]

Yes, the dramatic pauses were *chef's kiss*

[@tibsie]

I distinctly remember, when I was at high school during the 90s, taking samples of water from various locations along our local river and showing the increase in acidity as it got closer to our local coal fired power plant as it flowed downstream.

[@chengyiq3066]

Hmm No wonder I remember being told as a kid to not go outside during rain because it was acidic, not anymore now. Thank you for explaining it

[@uncinarynin]

Acid rain was also an east/west thing in the 1980s. Which led west Germany to finance desulphuriser units for east Germany. Also Czechoslovalia still emitted a lot of SOx leading to dying forests in both Germanys. Luckily this could be solved by taking the right measures. High sulphur oil used to power ocean ships is also a problem.

[@mikefochtman7164]

I remember here in the US, acid rain was more of a problem in the northeast and places like NY wanted places like Indiana and Ohio to curb their emissions. Of course those states were like, "Hey, WE don't have a problem with acid rain, why you blaming us?" I think that's why it had to be pushed at the federal level and states like NY and Maine were FOR it, but industrial states that didn't suffer the consequences (TX, OH, IN) tended to fight against it.

[@ItsJust2SXTs]

you can see on satelite map of chemical the SOx path from those ships, it's crazy...

[@ravenken]

We also have acidified the soils. We know little to nothing regarding the biome of soil but we have undoubtedly killed/destroyed it through ongoing acid rain. This has probably contributed to the insect apocalypse.

[@crazydragy4233]

I didn't even think about that but you're obviously right! I hope in the future there's more focus on soil in general. It seems like such an overlooked subject even though it's also a backbone to all of society.

[@Sacto1654]

The emissions of oxides of nitrogen and sulfur were not only damaging freshwater lakes, but they were also starting to seriously damage the outsides of buildings, too. That's why cutting these emissions had major positive immediate effects.

[@Mutantcy1992]

And likely also a big part of why people cared enough to fix this problem. Between the health problems and the paint on buildings and cars being damaged, it was really obvious what was happening.

[@grogery1570]

I guess when the rain started to strip the paint on the coal lobbies buildings they knew the game was up!

[@abhisheksoni2980]

In India we had a show called 'Shaktiman', a superhero, who talked about environmental and health issues at the end of the show. In one dramatization, a girl opens window and acid rain drops on her hands, burning through her skin, deforming her forever. 😁😁 I don't think lemon juice can do that

[@oliquin-roo3420]

I wonder if the show you speak of was Captain Planet. It was animated and he solved global issues along with 5 or 6 kids i think.

[@gangswagster]

@@oliquin-roo3420 or you could've just googled the name, no need to wonder.

[@capital_low]

@@oliquin-roo3420 you can say that was the Indian version of captain planet.

[@Bhatakti_Hawas]

Ah childhood

[@ATomRileyA]

Haha, i remember the hysteria about acid rain too so made me laugh with it melting her hands as that is what we were made to believe as kids, Fear mongering is the same as its always been now its global warming but it will soon change as the planet is getting colder so now it will have to pivot to ice age stuff from the 60s. One thing that has remained constant is the climate alarmists have always been wrong, their models are always wrong but somehow they keep the fear mongering going. It is a great scam for the climate credits and plenty of money to be made just ask al gore he is going to make big money from his climate credits. I am going to predict a little ice age instead lol.

[@karl810]

I remember an old British TV series called The Last Train, they woke up decades later to acid rain (Amongst other things) that peeled the paint off cars (obviously dramatised) but I always wondered why that particular problem wasn't included in other "dystopia future" stories I'd watched or read.

[@baronvonlimbourgh1716]

Probably because there wouldn't be a dystopian future anymore at that point. Humans would have gone extinct long before that point.

[@jaredjohansen2612]

In the late '90s one of my chemistry professors had us doing homework problems about acid rain leading to heavy metals leaching into surface water. The problems went something like, if the pH of the lake drops from 6.8 to 6.3 then how much does the concentration of cadmium go up in the lake water? You could say that our homework was teaching us about more than solubility. I don't remember if the problems included having us look up the LC50 for cadmium, etc...

[@Pistolita221]

wow, I would have never thought of this if you hadn't commented, thanks.

[@bronzedivision]

Nuclear power and we never have to think about this again, or climate change. Sadly there's almost complete overlap between the people who accept the science of acid rain and people who deny the science of nuclear power. So they've worked at least as hard to undermine the best (and only) solution to their problem.

[@erinatornow]

yeah, because the people which are promoting nuclear power the strongest often ignore the science around it (referring to the history of final storage for nuclear waste in Germany) and in other fields of environmental problems (the same people that said "split the atom" were promoting coal power, at least here in Germany). And because nuclear power was originally promoted, because the military needed much reactors for bomb production ("Atoms for Peace" and such bullshit). However, I would kindly contradict you, because calling nuclear power "the best" or "the only" solution to acid rain or climate change would miss some hard facts (stability of the electricity supply, mining of nuclear fuels, danger of proliferation of fissible material,...) although nuclear power is an energy source that should be considered in the energy mix. AND acid rain isn't just the problem of environmentalists but of the whole society and the whole economy (the economic damage of acid rain is giant compared to prevention costs, it's just a problem of externalities)

[@bronzedivision]

@@erinatornow Gosh, wow! There's not many popular misconceptions or outright urban legends about nuclear power you haven't proven you know well. Clearly you have a cultivated and refined kind of ignorance. The one about stability of electricity supply is the most amusing I think because every source with any kind of credibility at all as well as simply common sense makes it clear that nuclear power is outright the MOST reliable energy source. There's simply no debate about the topic at all. This is extra comical since your attempt to imply unreliability is often stated as a counter point to wind and solar power which are defined by their intermittent operation. So much so that they need constant backup. So that issue is an outright and crushing win for nuclear power. But you did get close to being right about when thing, and that was when you said that nuclear should be part of the energy mix. That part is 100%. :P Nuclear power just does everything better than all the other proposed options. And I want to emphasize 'proposed' because they don't actually work. Now, before you reply with more ignorant and deeply unscientific accusations against nuclear energy. You need to understand how much of a point you don't have! All of your attempted arguments are in the form of negative comparisons against nuclear power. But that's an automatic fail as you don't have anything to compare it with. Literately nothing. No one has ever made a scientifically valid and practical case for an alternative. So you need to do that FIRST. Come up with an option that isn't nuclear power, then prove it works at all. Only after that can try and compare it to nuclear energy. But until you do that you've got nothing. Your implied alternative of wind and solar power is the biggest fantasy of all. And Germany is proof of that. They have no idea how to get to 100% renewables, because it's impossible, they're expending their coal fleet and building natural gas power plants left and right. The whole effort is really a farce. Germany today has spent more time struggling to reach 50% renewable power than France spent leisurely building 50+ reactors to achieve 75% nuclear power. Yet, today France with mostly nuclear power enjoys a much lower price per kWh and 1/5 the CO2 emissions.

[@austinsalkowski]

You guys should do a series on all the issues humanity has solved throughout time, would make for some informative and uplifting stuff.

[@FGH9G]

Oh thank God! They brought back the usual narrators! What a relief, I really was not a fan of the previous "Discovery Channel" narration style haha.

[@Burnlit1337]

I want her wall of props to fill up as she makes these awesome and entertaining videos. Keep it up!

[@Tinky1rs]

I like your videos! The topics in general are more worldwide than some of the others that are very USA-specific. At the end I had to remember reading pieces on hypoxic parts of the sea from the IPCC report, as well as ocean algae blooms. Sea algae are sometimes hailed as something positive (converting CO2 into O2), but they cause economic and environmental problems as well, in part due to waste run-off from continents.

[@SalivatingSteve]

Yeah I’m she mentioned the issue of ocean acidification due to excess CO2.

[@dominikmilien]

At 1:58 there is a mistake, carbonic acid is H2CO3, not H2CO2 as written in the video

[@AnalogueKid2112]

I’m an air quality scientist and I approve all of this video except the likely inadvertent mention of burning gasoline for electricity. Even in past decades, when petroleum was used for power generation, it was generally #2 or #6 fuel oil. #6 is particularly terrible from an emissions standpoint, so it’s good it has gone away, at least in the US. Might still be used in the Middle East though

[@OriginalPiMan]

Diesel generators are still common where grid connections aren't available and for larger vehicles, such as diesel trains. I don't think petrol generators are particularly common, but the two are pretty similar, at least in the fuel used.

[@therealspeedwagon1451]

What kind of fuel do you think is best when the power goes out? Like during a storm what fuel is best for a generator?

[@tedz2usa]

Incredible reporting by Karin Shedd. All the science was accurate and well-presented and explained for the general public to understand. Hope you continue to produce great videos like these!

[@TheKarinTS]

Thanks Ted! Science explainers are my favorite to do.

[@ABaumstumpf]

The lowest recorded pH for any rainfall that i could find verified (given your own sources) was 2.85 - where does the 1.7 come from? There is one mentioning of that in a magazine, but that was for evaporating fog, not rain, and was unsubstantiated. Such a pH for rain would basically have wiped out nearly all live in an area if that ever occured. Also would have been nice to see the average ph for acid rain mentioned.

[@relo999]

I suspect Germany somewhere. I remember seeing a complete forest being dead in the late 90's, not burned or something like that but just dead.

[@TheBlumann]

dude....shout out to the parents/guardians for the reporter and her sister. They did something right, clearly.

[@Mutantcy1992]

@Karin Shedd 👈

[@jimmysmith8231]

I spent a couple of decades of my career building large scale acid plants that removed both SO2 and SO3 from the emissions of nickel, zinc and copper smelters. In one facility in Central Asia, we removed 99.7% of the SO2 and all of the SO3 emissions from a smelter (along with all of the HCl & HF emissions). To know the scale of the removal of these chemicals from this plant alone, if you were to put three days production in the 90 ton rail tank cars used for acid transport, the line of rail cars would be a mile (1.6 km) long. One day while I was in the town for a meeting, a young woman walked up to me and told me “I know who you are.” As I had never seen her before, I asked her “Who am I?” She then said “You’re the man who will make the smoke go away. Thank you.” It was the greatest compliment of my entire career.

[@RoronoaZorosHaki]

I thought acidity was a log scale. Theres no way the acidity of fog was "closer to lemons than water."

[@stapleman007]

Yeah, the log scale isn't linear. But people can barely think in linear terms.

[@skapur]

I am quite disappointed that you are unwilling to name China as the biggest current producer of SOx and NOx

[@marcsarfati3291]

10:00 mark Yes, there is a lot of lakes in North America. That is why LA LAKERS are called LAKERS. They were named after all the northern lakes of Minnesota.

[@allangibson2408]

Which is odd because LA is a technical desert…

[@taptiotrevizo9415]

When I hear acid rain I think of Venus's sulfuric acid rain

[@cheddar]

Lol... Could be worse, right?

[@zardozmyrh7789]

🏳️‍🌈☠️👺🚨☠️☠️ Just think that a senile old man who under his wife's direction and amino witch from the UK help to destroy the Earth and now they're both dead basically getting away but with it.

[@Reaperman4711]

I was wondering why we moved from acid rain being the major environmental cause--good to hear this mostly worked out, since it kind of dropped from the media radar. At 9:26 it seems I need to do some googling on bodies of water are pulling co2 from the air to become more acidic. I wonder how much it's pulled out to do that to ph, and what we could be looking at for levels going forward.

[@diegomontilva6039]

So that's why I never heard of it again after elementary school, thank you!

[@tburrrg2502]

Being able to work on content with my sister is a dream of mine!! How cool that you guys got to partner up on this video!!

[@grafknives9544]

The change in emissions in Europe is so drastic, that farmers need to use sulphur as fertilizer, whereas in 60-2000, sulphur was free, falling from the sky

[@BernardLS]

Meanwhile the refineries around Europe are paying to dispose of the sulphur they extract from the crude oil they refine. The problem with atmospheric distribution of 'free sulphur' was that it went everywhere in excessive quantities and did more harm than good; looks like the farmers will have to pay the cost of increased production.

[@SheilaTheGrate]

Oh god, this reminds me of how zebra mussels cleaned all the heavy metal poisoning from the Great Lakes :(

[@peter_smyth]

1:57 That should be H2CO3.

[@Mutantcy1992]

Good catch. They got the structure right at least

[@stephens1393]

This is a good reminder that 1. these types of human-caused global problems definitely exist, 2. people tend to resist or deny them (mostly for economic reasons), and 3. governments, activism, and cooperation can solve them and the economy can keep on ticking (never mind making the world a cleaner, safer, more pleasant place)

[@ethanmackler1160]

I camped in Killarney Provincial Park in Northern Ontario for 5 days. Some of the lakes are gatorade blue and you can drink from them without purifying the water first because there's no life. Which was a neat experience narrowly, but drove home how deeply nature can be changed by acid rain in general and pollution in particular.

[@kahlilheslop7883]

One of Ontario's lakes contains the world's largest freshwater island (Manitoulin Island) ...which itself contains a lake with its own island.

[@wepped482]

So, if a volcano explodes putting sulfuric ash in the atmosphere causing earth to experience another 'year without winter' like nothing experienced since 1816.. Would we get more acid rain?

[@allangibson2408]

Yes. Extremely acid rain and a drop in atmospheric ozone levels as the elemental sulphur and chlorine burns in the upper atmosphere. We don’t notice the drop in ozone and rise in UV however because total light levels drop drastically. However as volcanoes are time limited it washes out and neutralised by the more alkaline sea water… Most of the cooling is also however due to lofted fine volcanic ash that rains out with the sulphur.

[@angelwhispers2060]

Johnny was a chemist's son but Johnny is no more. What Johnny thought was H2O was H2 s04. This rhyme was taught in high school because H2SO4 looks exactly like regular water. It smells only faintly eggy and is the reason that absolutely NO eating or drinking was allowed in the lab for any reason.

[@JillLampi]

You are SO worth watching right to the end. Thanks for the laughs amongst the knowledges.

[@bluemonkey1796]

This video was very insightful. Great reporting. It really nox'ed my sox's off!

[@ycplum7062]

Reminds me of El Paso not meeting their air quality targets despite air quality models saying they should be on target and potentially being penalized the city. El Paso invited the EPA to the city, took them to the top of a mountain ridge and pointed to the south where small columns of black smoke was riding in the sky. El Paso said that was tires being burned for heat in Juarez and there was nothing El Paso can do about that. EPA modified El Papa's air quality targets.

[@haylengonzalez-pita1335]

My students learned so much from this great video! Thank you.

[@byuflash2]

Reducing CO2 isn't the final boss in a video game. It's the secret boss you only unlock after playing on the hardest difficultly and beating what you thought was the final boss.

[@zapfanzapfan]

Pronunciation was pretty good and I'm sure Odén forgives you for calling him Oden (Norse god) ;-) I remember acid rain and forest death being in the news a lot in the 80s and helicopters dumping chalk in lakes to counter it.

[@Benbobr]

Good Job! Spread The Word! There are things more important than industrial growth out there.

[@crazydragy4233]

Great video! The topic is covered from multiple key perspectives, so it gives a good full picture "recap" of the situation!

[@QT5656]

The issues caused by dioxins, mercury, CFCs, DDT, and acid rain should've been a wake up call to take pollution seriously. Instead we've sleepwalked into crisis due to lead, PFOAs, CO2, and microplastics.

[@lw7238]

Everyone is so use to hearing about it that it seems like know one cares. From how many fish people can safely eat a year to car testing sites and ozone health warnings in the summer. Soon the current virus will be just a shot you get every year like the flu shot.

[@Sinaeb]

B-b-but regulations and red tapes bad!

[@atenas80525]

Overall a very good video, tight formatting and things flowed together well - but I think the end kind of strayed, the section on CO2 was not as tight as the rest of the video Question - the implication of your video is to move away from fossil fuels and towards electrification, which will require 1,000's of times the mining we do now. Mining does not have a good history when it comes to waste and waterways. As we move more and more towards electrification and mining are we really only trading one problem for another? How will we maintain environmental safeguards, especially in developing nations? Thanks

[@SalivatingSteve]

A middle ground solution is to use non-fossil based biofuels, such as ethanol from corn or algae. In theory burning ethanol isn’t really “increasing” CO2 levels, but is transferring it between stages of the carbon cycle - growing the corn/plants pulls CO2 out of the atmosphere and stores that carbon in the plants, we process it to make biofuels, then burn the biofuels which releases CO2 back into the atmosphere (along with other combustion by-products). This is what they do in Brazil.

[@atenas80525]

@@SalivatingSteve thanks for responding - I'm not well versed in biofuels, so could you add a little info? Could we possibly grow enough to replace fossil fuels?

[@anthonymorales842]

This was a real serious topic in grade school. My science, math and english teachers where avid fisherman and native trout populations where dropping fast(New England). Native trout are reside in the purest of streams. It became classroom discussion often.

[@CannabisTechLife]

Pronunciation is on point since I can listen to this at 1.75 and still hear things just fine.

[@ShiningSakura]

I wish our water was 5ph in utah.... we practically drink rocks at 7.8ph. Makes our water taste great... but some of my freshwater fish don't like it as much. They do just fine and have adapted to tap water here, but if I want to breed certain neato ram cichlids I need to soften my water or the eggs become so hard the poor baby fish can't hatch. there are some that have been bred to handle this issue, but that water is 6.5-7 ph.... 7.8 ph is still too hard. its sooooo much easier to make water hard rather than soft.

[@baronvonlimbourgh1716]

Always the same with corperations. Ask them to do to not ruin our world or lives or, god forbid, carry responsibility for anything they do and suddenly they can spend billions on trying to weasel out of doing the right thing. And people STILL fall for their BS and try to defend it. It's a miracle the planet is still habitable at all.

[@SaveMoneySavethePlanet]

I have a pet theory that UBI is the single most important step we can take in our fight against climate change. Because I think most of the people falling for the corporation’s BS are really just willfully believing what they think will keep a paycheck in their pocket and food on their table. If we take away that insecurity then we may be able to convince more people who work in fossil fuel industries that the industry needs to shut down.

[@baronvonlimbourgh1716]

@@SaveMoneySavethePlanet how would you take away that insecurity? All it would do is introduce a new one. Or do you think UBI would magicly become the first thing they won't spend billions lobying against, fighting in court continiously or push and fund politicians that threaten it's existence and limit eligibility? One more thing they can threaten to take away from people once they grew dependent on it. It is just another patch on another symptom. Surpressing symptoms is useless, it leaves the rot and sickness in place and forces it to find another place surface and express itself. It's a waste of time.

[@SaveMoneySavethePlanet]

@@baronvonlimbourgh1716 what’s your solution then? The way that you word your dislike of UBI leaves me feeling that you won’t like any solution that I can offer. If you have one that you like though then I’d be keen to hear it.

[@baronvonlimbourgh1716]

@@SaveMoneySavethePlanet UBI is just another form of redistribution. Redistribution never works long term. Just get it right from the start.

[@DMahalko]

There needs to be something below UBI for the severely dysfunctional and mentally unstable homeless, where people are directly provided shelter, clothing, food, and a small UBI on top of that to get them back on their feet. If they can recover and move out/up to private housing, great, but if they can't, they can uses the provided services to keep them from starving or freezing to death in a cardboard box in a back alley.

[@rice0009]

Good video. Very informative, with information presented clearly in understandable chunks.

[@tnick00001]

Mounting your elbows on the table like that almost makes your gestures seem dismissive. Though, it was a great video with great information. Keep up the good work :)

[@anchiit]

A Karen we can root for

[@rodrigosoaresschug]

bro she a shawty

[@baronvonlimbourgh1716]

@@rodrigosoaresschug ok, never heard about a shawty. What does it mean?

[@stabbrzmcgee825]

30 % in acid terms is 1/3 of a pH unit, so open that little item up for view. Just saying. Yes, a system that is buffered in terms of pH=7.8 will not be happy for quite a while when forced to a pH of 7.5 (like oceans), but it is also not even remotely close to systems that wanted 7-8 and were pushed to 2-3 by SOx and NOx (like fresh water lakes). Perspective and order of magnitude do matter. I am not trying to pooh-pooh acid effects from CO2 but I am trying to compare apples to apples and not oranges.

[@crazydragy4233]

We'll realistically we'd be dead long before ruining the ocean like that.

[@grindanb7169]

Great presentation and delivery!

[@IamACanadian47]

P.S. A famous director of the science center up here in Sudbury ie. Science North once said ‘if greenhouse gas was like acid rain where you could see it, smell it and taste it; things would be much different today”.

[@benmcreynolds8581]

CFCs and aerosols are a huge factor to a impact in our atmosphere. Those molecules stay in our atmosphere for so long and really change how the light and UV rays behave from our sun to our planets atmosphere which greatly effects our climate and weather. It's pretty crazy to think certain things can go and sit high up in our atmosphere and alter how UV light moves through our atmosphere, so then it greatly alters how heat or acidity collects in our planet.. I hope we find ways to enhance rain and clouds in areas of doubt or too much heat. I know people like sunny weather but we need rainy weather to make sunny weather enjoyable and not just dangerous and depleting our water table and ice shelf's.

[@Ron_the_Skeptic]

Don't get too excited about CO2 causing problems. CO2 is still at historically low levels and still far below optimal levels for plant growth.

[@susanfarley1332]

Almost 50 years ago I remember reading a magazine article about acid rain and what made a big impression on me is when it told of lady's stockings melting on the clothesline and holes being eaten in clothing. Years later while traveling down the east coast I was shocked to see in Savannah, GA a paper mill surrounded by pine forest. The forest on the west side of the mill had all turned sickly yellow and dying. It started next to the mill and spread several miles. The sea breeze blew the mills emissions inland. It was sickening.

[@sathirafernando6036]

I was waiting for a "knocks your socks off" joke, but it never came 😢

[@-gemberkoekje-5547]

Being alive in only the 21st century I remember seeing this stuff in games and wondering if it was real or not, having never heared of it outdide of that.

[@crazydragy4233]

In our schooling the topic came up quite a few times in different subjects (chemistry, geography) but even in Primary school it's taught. Interesting to see it differs like that.

[@anwarabdullah6723]

Is that red thing in the background a 3D model of a uterus or am I going crazy? By the credits I realized there is a sperm cell too.

[@whiteknightcat]

Thank you! I'm glad I'm not the only weirdo who noticed that!

[@bernardfinucane2061]

Another thing that happened was the fall of the Soviet Bloc. It dramatically reduced pollution in Europe.

[@vuchaser99]

And moving industry to India and China

[@EvanMoon]

The video game Idea was nice - The boss would be a black cloud with red rain as it’s weapon and you would play as a fish or a squid

[@Vortexone112]

Perfect example of how we can only make environmental policy changes when it’s actively endangering our lives. The big issue is once climate change has became bad enough to put us in danger there’s no fixing it or going back. It’s irrecoverable.

[@SaveMoneySavethePlanet]

Exactly, I’m worried that their won’t be a big push for climate action until the 40’s but by then it’ll be too late to do more than just preserve a little corner somewhere.

[@SeekingTheLoveThatGodMeans7648]

@@SaveMoneySavethePlanet The world has appeared to be a wonderful evolver environment, but it needs fairly long spans of geologic time. I'm not here to say there is no divine plan in it (in fact I positively say there is, and that's why I say it's stupid to argue about the creation story, as it comes from a different plane than our physical science) but this is what seems to be going on at a physical plane. The existential question is whether it will keep up with larger human activity. The plagues and judgments of the closing book of the bible might in part be anticipating the failure of the earth to do this. Yes, people will still adapt --- a lot -- but in many ways it won't be an earth as we knew it. The world of humanity will have "Babyloned" itself to death with the love of wealth that "we cannot take with us" and whose acquisition most harms the poorest.

[@relatively_random4903]

The classic applies: kzbin.info/www/bejne/pIS7epiqhZqcl80

[@PeterShipley1]

Cheddar is amazingly good at cramming 2 or 3 minutes of information into a 10 minute video..

[@danwylie-sears1134]

Acidity is not just a different number to express the same concept as pH does. Acidity is how much strong alkali you would need to neutralize each milliliter of a solution. If you dilute a strong acid with water, the pH barely changes. But the acidity is decreased proportionally. Or to put it the other way 'round, if you put a drop of concentrated strong acid in a gallon of water, the pH goes most of the way to zero. But it only takes a drop of equally-concentrated strong alkali to neutralize it. The difference is buffering. Put the same drop of strong acid into a gallon of milk instead, and the pH will barely change. Milk has lots of protein, which can bind the hydrogen ions, turning (for example) NH2 groups into NH3 groups. If you put enough acid into the milk to bring its pH down to 2, you'll need to put a correspondingly large amount of alkali to bring it back to the starting pH. Milk adjusted to pH 2 by the addition of strong acid is more acidic than water adjusted to pH 1.5, because it effectively has more acid in it.

[@digitalkarma4691]

Sandra Shedd has to be the most overqualified highschool science teacher in existence.

[@JT-Works]

Were you afraid to say "China" is still causing acid rain at the end there?

[@AM-nn9sv]

I remember the Acid Rain issues when in school. Thank you for putting together a concise article/story that was not grounded in earth-ending psyco-wokeness. The mainstream media should take a lesson from your format.

[@QT5656]

Rather than anything woke, it sounds like what you are referring to is click bait headlines delibrately meant to create outrage. It's nothing to do with wokeness - its making money out of outrage.

[@kas7145]

I like the uterus in the background. If you throw it, can you yell "YEETERUS!"? 🤣

[@numeristatech]

Very interesting. I remember watching Tomorrow's World in the UK going on about acid rain in the 1980's.... and it sort of just ... stopped. It seems mad that we understood weather patterns for years but it only seems that we understood that pollution moved with it from the late 60's early 70's and you are very possibly correct by noting that this only really got traction with decision makers after 1987 and Chernobyl. We all "knew" that this is the logiciel conclusion to throwing pollutants high into the winds... but it seems it took 150-200 years for it to "click" that it was bad...

[@thomasw4422]

More like it took that long to convince politicians that powerful people who were making bank of it needed to be taken down a peg before they poisoned us all .

[@willinwoods]

Your Swedish pronunciation NOx my SOx off. Sorry. (Not sorry.)

[@matt007]

I’d love to see a video on how homeless are destroying the environment with feces and drug paraphernalia which makes its way into the storm drains and eventually oceans. Not to mention damage to the landscapes.

[@reginaldchesterfield8110]

Exactly!!!!!!

[@b22chris]

That would be pretty anti-woke.

[@twerkingfish4029]

Is this really that big of an issue? Especially when compared to a lot of other environmental issues this seems like a drop in the bucket.

[@baronvonlimbourgh1716]

Yeah, time something was done about that. Solve homelessnes

[@b22chris]

@@twerkingfish4029 you clearly have never been to LA or San Fran haha

[@jaybrown6225]

As a Canadian I have to let the US off the hook. We made our own acid rain. The second tallest structure in Canada is the Inco Superstack. It was built to disperse the sulphur gases away from the city of Sudbury by being 1250 tall and placing the gases higher in the air and dispersing them over a wider area. I actually thought this was going to be the "sneaky" policy your title referred to. It appears that it was still in use up til 2020. - WIKI - "In contrast to the reduction of SO2 emissions, Inco's Superstack stands out in North America in its arsenic, nickel and lead emissions to the atmosphere. Using data compiled by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, Inco alone accounts for 20% of all of the arsenic emitted in North America, 13% of the lead and 30% of the nickel. The EPA regulations in the United States require a primary lead smelter to limit emissions of lead to 3.0 gm per tonne of product. With this emission factor, Copper Cliff would be required to limit emissions of lead to approximately 1 tonne per year, demonstrating that the actual emission is about 150 times greater than allowed by US regulations for a lead smelter. Even with the 85% reduction postulated by Hatch, Inco would still emit 10 tonnes per year of lead, or four times the amount allowed by the EPA for a lead smelter.As a result of the excessive lead emissions from the Inco Superstack, the surrounding community of Copper Cliff was found to have levels of lead in soil tests at a level sufficient to cause harm to young children."

[@BernardLS]

So little better than Norilsk Nickel or Thomas Midgely as eco-saints. What would it cost the global community if Inco just turned the tap of?

[@Sparticulous]

More I hear about him. Bush senior seems to be our last competent president

[@carlpult5235]

The issue is less that the game is super hard, but that its Super Mario and ~50% of the population(and 99% of capital) keep screaming "go Left" directly into your ear and will stab you if you don't.

[@NewCreationInChrist896]

John 3:16💝

[@TheGeeoff]

Looks like KZbin has you trending on the algorithm. Congratulations!

[@Juan-fv4sg]

the quality of videos has gone up. good work

[@ImTHECarlos98]

Early af, damn.

[@jghifiversveiws8729]

You and me both brother

[@taptiotrevizo9415]

Me too

[@lironmtnranch4765]

Great video! Something that needs to be addressed is the common claim "Climate scientists don't know what they're talking about, because they used to cry global COOLING until the 70s." THIS IS ANOTHER PROBLEM THAT GOT SOLVED BY TECHNOLOGY. Particulates and aerosols were blocking so much sunlight that global cooling was an actual danger. These are also technically the easiest to remove from large scale "smokestack" industries. By removing particulates and aerosols but ever increasing CO2 emissions, the balance now favors trapping more heat instead of blocking or reflecting it in the atmosphere.

[@brunoethier896]

FYI, it was not only canadian lakes that were dying, it was also maple forests that took 40 years to mature enough for Maple syrup production... 🤔