Whatever happened to acid rain? - Joseph Goffman
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- Опубліковано 12 кві 2021
- Discover what causes acid rain, and how scientists were able to largely eliminate this major environmental threat.
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In 1963, scientists studying Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest made a shocking discovery. Their most recent rainfall samples were nearly 100 times more acidic than usual; which could destroy the area’s ecosystems in a matter of decades. What was causing this deadly rainfall? And what could be done to stop it? Joseph Goffman details how scientists transformed this major threat into a minor issue.
Lesson by Joseph Goffman, directed by Nick Hilditch.
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Acid rain joins quicksand as things I learned during childhood that I thought would be a bigger part of my life
Also, remember to stop, drop, and roll every time you catch on fire.
acid rain is a big part of everyone's life...especially if you consider the phosphorous cycle.
Most quicksand areas are fenced off, almost all construction areas are quicksand
@@BigBodyBiggolo Jesus, that explains a whole lot. Back in May I went to a private beach where they were refilling the sand on the shore. The first like 2 days there was a huge rusty pipe going across the shoreline. When they finally moved everything (onto the front of the house next to ours... but unrelated) me and my friend went swimming. We were doing fine until we almost drowned because a strong current dragged us over an exposed deep area of some sort, we weren't sure how deep but we definitely couldn't feel the floor and we were struggling. We obviously got out but were shook. So shook that we went out the next day at low tide to investigate.
What we found was a trench running through the shoreline with its own mini current, and at the place we remember escaping, we found "the hole." It was filled with murky water; couldn't see the bottom of it and we were right next to it, but I had to know how deep it was. So as I get closer to put in my hand my feet start SINKING. in fact the whole area between this trench and the sea is so freaking soft it traps you just by walking on it. Thats when we realized this was real, legitimate QUICKSAND. I knew not to move and my friend slowly pulled me out but it was really clinging to me.
TL;DR Almost drowned at a beach construction was occurring at, and when we came back to investigate we found genuine quicksand.
@@ViktorTheMusician oh with low tide you were fine, you are far less dense than quick sand, you actually float better on quick sand than water because how dense it is however if the tide rised then you might have a problem for sure.
Pulling you out slowly was smart though as you can be ripped apart if you get pulled too hard and too fast, that thing is super dangerous in that sense.
Far less dangerous than cartoons for sure tho
Childhood biggest concerns, next to quicksand
And sharks in the pool
:)
I was worried about acid rain as a kid, I would have been even more terrified if I learned about acid snow/fog at the same time as well.
Crocodile sewers aswell and spiders going into your ears while sleeping
cockroaches landing on your face
I remember being taught about acid rain as a kid back in elementary and middle school, i hadn't even thought about it until now but it almost seemed as if out of nowhere within the last decade acid rain was forgotten. I hadn't even heard its name again until i saw this video in my recommended.
Same.
Hey, remember the hole in the ozone layer that was going to kill us all? We changed the chemical propellants in spray cans and switched a couple of refrigerants and now it's largely repaired itself.
@@danlorett2184 yet global warming is causing havoc still
@@pascualsmithvaldes9038 The Earth hasn't warmed since 1998. Satellite data (the most comprehensive data set that requires no "adjustments" shows exactly that.
Every other data set requires "adjustments" and even though they are legally required to, the scientists who do these adjustments refuse to release the raw data and show how they make the adjustments. Global warming isn't a thing - global GREENING is. That's what the major consequence of CO2 levels rising is.
@@danlorett2184 yes that's why they stopped calling it "global warming" and switched to "climate change," because smoothbrains and highschool dropouts couldn't understand what was actually being discussed
I remember when acid rain almost killed the Autobots on an episode of Transformers. I was terrified!
Lol its not that kind of Acid lol, do you remember laws preventing rain water from being used for stuff in certain states, thats bc those states rain waters PH balance was off making the rain acidic, but not the kind that burned you lol
@@MrJohndrow he was a kid how would he know🤡 i remember the episode and F-yes it was terrifying lmao!
I remember the acid rain on Ben 10
Oh which show was this one? I don't quite remember it but it feels vaguely familar.
Lmaoooooo
This is the first time I heard someone talk about acid rain since I learned about it back in 5th grade.
@@topsuperseven7910 seems legit
@@topsuperseven7910 Those are quite the accusations, could you provide something to back that up?
@@topsuperseven7910 surprised you didnt blame it on vaccines
Same
@@topsuperseven7910 lol ok then. Got some credible evidence?
I have, no joke, been wondering about this topic for DECADES. It was SUCH a huge topic back in the 90s. They talked about it in school, in textbooks, on Captain Planet, etc. And then it was just dropped, gone and forgotten like Y2K. But I always remembered it.
I forgot about it until I saw this video. I remember people used to complain about it causing spots on their cars.
Climate change denialists actually bring it up sometimes, because to them the issue falling off the radar is "proof" that it was "fabricated". Really the reason it got more or less solved is because it was relatively cheap to do, unlike climate change unfortunately.
@@helloitismetomato No one denies that the climate changes. They just don't think man has as big of an effect on the changes as some people want to claim it does.
@@Craig_Narramoore Many have denied it and continued to do so. Also many move the goalpost after being proven wrong to it being either harmless or something we can't do anything about. Which is funny, as even pretty much every oil company acknowledges it's existence, effect and probable causation.
@@Craig_Narramoore That's a popular bit of nonsense, but it's the rate of change, and the fact that the cause is obvious and will get much worse that makes man made climate change a very real concern. You can pretend it's not there, but you'd be closing your eyes while standing infront of oncoming traffic.
The Bermuda Triangle and acid rain. Things that were going to get us all when I was a kid.
Don't forget the hole in the ozone.
Killer Bees
clueless.
@@OhNoNotAgain42 Now it's murder hornets!
"Companies denied responsibility and cast doubt on the research"
50 years from the 1970s and nothing's changed. Now there's a thought for ya.
I I remember I learned about acid rain as a kid from a book, I haven’t heard of it for years until mow
Same
I also heard about it just mow
same
(“Mow”)
Same but now I haven't heard about acid rain
Yeah those companies “convinced” the politicians real good.
_“Let me put it to you this way. I'll give you a million dollars.”_
_“Ah yes I see it now.”_
They're like babies
XD
And it’s the exact same excuse they use for absolutely everything
threats are also a very common tactic to sway the less greedy politicians. so there are those who are convinced by money, those who are convinced by threats( having someone else elected in your position, cutting funding which will hurt your next campaign etc.) and then there are those who end up in a car crash
A direct bribe is far too conspicuous and risky, Lobbying is all about the art of wielding leverage.
"Don't think of today's failures, think of tomorrows failures instead"
- Cain
E
@Myth Tree wait, really? Do you happen to have some recourses/evidence about this?
There's a fair amount of misinformation and conspiracy theories in the comments and I somewhat fault this video for not being explicit enough with the information. The cap and trade program was a huge success and the US reduced SO2 emissions by a whopping 95% between 1970 and 2020. The cap and trade program described in the video was retired because there were hardly any SO2 emissions left to regulate. The US emitted 31.2 millions of SO2 in 1970, in 2020 the US emitted 1.8 million tons. That is the reason why acid rain went away. Most of that reduction occurred during the cap and trade program. I am a little disappointed that the video did not go into the full details. Nitrous oxide(NOX) also took a similar reduction from 26.8M tons in 1970 to 7.9M tons in 2020. This regulation was considered a success because it allow producers to manage when they would upgrade to cleaner technology while still driving overall reductions. In the end the reductions occurred quicker than projected by the government schedule and it's one of the few government programs that I have seen that actually exceeded their goals. The fact that this is not common knowledge is actually pretty sad, this is a real success that should be touted more.
No. It was determined the fear it generated didn’t match the money it could recapture. So it was repackaged into a Greta Thunberg.
@@spittinvenom9671 lmao I didn’t know y’all was still angry about that girl. You’re right in the 70s they knew their plans wouldn’t hold a candle to a 15yo from Sweden so they just shut it all down cause the Swedish girl makes American politicians so much more money how could we not see it before
@@lilkris3008 not angry about her at all. Just that fear sells. And y’all are buying.
@@spittinvenom9671 oh the irony
@@spittinvenom9671 yeah who exactly when you say buying we’re not paying taxes for her to fly around she’s rich and chose to do what something she felt was important like the parkland kids or any other young person fear sells for the news the government is already paid
Remember kids its not corruption if its called something else like lobbying
Why bother lobbying when you can coup the US gov and have open company rule?
Did you guys finish watching the video? (apparently not)
@@dimamatat5548 FBI, CIA, and the US military already watching your every move from the moment you mention coup: yeah ahahaha... you can just coup the government if you have enough people it'll be so easy...
@@tacomeme429 You can have direct corporate control. See: Honorable East India Company controlling India, Congo Free State run as King Leopold's private property, etc.
@@tacomeme429 Also, they have a solid support base of neoreactionaries who said they prefer corporate rule over democracy.
“In the US, corporations lobbied the government “ - literally every video about an issue that we knew about, but ignored
Anyone remember the Big Tabaco CEOs all testifying to Congress in unison that their private science (probably 1% of their budget and focused on marketing) had informed them that nicotine was not addictive?
Yes, all Communist movements have that theme.
@@topsuperseven7910 How is Communism relevant in an discussion regarding Capitalism?
@@FalloutUgglan It's the most relevant thing there is when that communism (or those communists) are creating fake science stories to scare the public into dismantling, slowing or just getting more and more control over that capitalism.
Understand now?
@@topsuperseven7910 If you call that communism then USA is already a communist country
Acid rain is still a thing in certain locations. Enclosed atmospheric areas containing industrial operations for example. It doesn’t necessarily destroy every ecosystem though. Localized systems can adjust and adapt. This doesn’t make it ok but it’s important to understand that ecological impact is not equivalent to obviously visible external damage. I know many other environmental professionals who don’t even understand this concept so it is difficult to address this type of pollution. Emissions reduction strategies and scrubbing can do work wonders at the source.
Thank you for your thoughtful and well written comment, it’s refreshing to see.
So if I get Gonorrhea I can just scrub my balls?
@@ge2623 based
Not ok? It does make it a non-problem if the eco-systems that it affected have adapted to it. Kinda like the seasonal fires in California who's forests have incorporated it in its eco system as well.
@@oniemployee3437 Did you just casually promote the existence of _wildfires?_ Environment or not, people are burning to death (animals too but whatever).
Acid rain was rightly recognized as a problem by policies and the problem was then solved with process engineering. The recapture of sulfurous components is quite easy and financially feasible since the amount of sulfur in the flue gas usually isn't very high to begin with, but extra cost is extra cost, so regulations are still needed as motivations. As part of the chemical engineering community, I'm quite proud of this. It is, however, quite infuriating to see people come up with absurdities like "they moved the problem to China/India/etc." or "the problem was never real"
Scientists: Acid rain harms and we have evidence to prove that it comes from your air pollution.
Companies: That is not our problem and there is no acid rain to begin with.
Scientists: Climate change harms and we have evidence to prove that it comes from your excess CO2 emission.
Companies (and Republicans): That is not our problem and there is no climate change to begin with.
Government: if you don't stop making acid rain, you'll lose money
Companies: that is completely our problem and acid rain is the biggest threat to humanity.
Basically yeah.
@@Hamza-vm9oj more or less
They just straight up denied it
Ah the humble cooling tower, still misunderstood. The structure used to illustrate a smoke stack only releases clean steam.
I know, poor cooling tower :(
The contrails of the land
Yeah. Even science books use them as illustrations for air pollution which feeds wrong information to the people.
@@GriseWeisshark Because the people who write them promote solar and wind over nuclear. Nuclear produces much more power compared to maintenance and is much safer in terms of deaths per petawatt-hours. Id much rather have a few tons of radioactive waste buried underground than millions of tons of particulate in the air for me to inhale.
@@nathanoher4865 Probably has something to do with how difficult solar and wind are to kill people by accident or create weapons from.
Acid Rain was the '60s and '70s "Doom & Gloom" prediction of the moment.
Did you watch the video? Regulations and technology helped stop acid rain from becoming doom.
And the next ice age, and the ozone level, and killer bees, and meteors, and HIV/AIDS, and global warming, and Swine flu, and Avian flu, and anthrax, and .... Now it’s “climate change” and Coof-19. Whatever to keep fear high and taxes higher, at least in First World countries. China and India get a free pass as usual.
@@Tofuey Or, the people who were the 'doom & gloom'ers are trying to re-write history, like a certain husband of a ketchup magnate, who predicted all the global warming cr@p and we'd be under water for the last 20 years, constantly moving the goal posts and flying private jets around the world...
@@steveclark5206 yeah we solved most of those problems because we paid attention to them. We'll solve global climate change and the covid pandemic if we treat them like the threats they are.
@@kevinshumaker3753
Your logic is "Even though companies are forced to apply to these mandates by governments in order to protect the environment, surley theres no way any of this has actually protected the environment."
Do you even hear yourself? How can you claim other people are lying about a topic you literally know NOTHING ABOUT.
People like you alwasy devole you argument to "Well how do we know they aren't just lying." Yet there are literally thousands if not millions of research papers out there that show the effects of this and scientific research and evidence that went into fixing it.
But don't worry about reading any of it because I'm sure you aren't smart enough to understand it anyways 😉
Just let the smart people work hard to fix the world's problems and you can continue to not believe people who spend their entire lives learning and researching these things because they care.
Chocolate Rain: Some stay dry and other feel the pain.
Acid Rain: "Ethnicity? What's that?"
this is great😂
As a kid we were so afraid of acid rain... Never hear about it now. When I mentioned it to my kids they were gobsmacked and couldn't believe it. The 100 (show on tv) had dealt with acid rain like what we feared would happen back in the 80z. I'm glad you made this vid. I didn't have any answers for the kids about how come we don't hear about it now.💚✌
Ikrr, as kids we used to wait for the first rain of the rainy season to fall so that we don't get harmed from the acid rain. Today it rains acid all the time
hopefully those days will return :D
@@okurrt5836 like the 1st rain cleared away the acid from the rest of the rains? 🤔
Are you located in India where you currently have this problem?😳
Blessings n LOVE to you and yours 💚
yesss just because at that first rains used to clear acid and all, today it's skeptical. I am in India, and thanks for those blessings 😊
blessings to you and your loved ones too ❤️❤️
This is what I was thinking when I read the title! I remember thinking it was going to start being dangerous to even walk outside... But then they stopped talking about acid rain and I was too young to know why, and I forgot about it til now. XP
you know people are educated when they use television as their scientific reference point
"but corporations lobbied against it" literally the source of every problem in modern human history.
Sad but true lol
well, that and religion :)
@@katiepaine Eh, religion* doesn’t do as much as it used to after people started learning more and stop taking it so seriously. Effectively the sway corporations have now are effective as religions had way back then.
*Christianity in the west at least
@@katiepaine Religion as in.. religious organizations that are basically the same thing as modern corporations
True.
I have been skiing in the European Alps for decades and believe me, even back in the 90s the forests were in bad shape, dying. They are in much better shape now so this has clearly been working.
That's because it's warmer now and CO2 concentrations are much higher, not because of the rain. Warmer weather means longer growing seasons. Higher CO2 concentrations mean more plant food at that altitude.
@@johnnyappleseedgate2232 In the 90s the trees were obviously weak/diseased.
The damage to forests was almost never from true acid rain, which is elevated acidity that gets in the clouds literally coming down as rain across huge areas that can cover continents. Nearly all of the harm, in reality, was from very localized, direct factory emissions originating from relatively close-by. Which, if you think about it, was a much easier and far more localized problem to solve. And that's why it was easy to fix once local people knew what was happening.
Except for the cutting down of trees so people can ski....
@@petermartin9494 that doesn't disprove what I said. Plants are better able to fight disease when the growing seasons are extended and nutrients are more readily available.
Where I grew up, near a major Canadian city, we weren't allowed to eat the snow because it had a higher acidity than was generally safe. Most of the time it rained so much the pollutants were miniscule, but after a dry spell you could smell the difference. It smelled of ozone, but without the static build up. And that was normal for me.
The government was just terrorizing you. It smells weird when precipitation dries. That’s it.
bad lock
@sarahluchies1076 - Thanks for sharing. I guess your local govt. advised to not eat the snow? What do you mean "not allowed", was there a law created? Similar to the law in California that one is "not allowed" to eat oranges in a hotel room? Due to an old myth that there was a substance in oranges which could interact with bath salts and create a dangerous reaction, which is obviously false. However interestng to know that people in some parts of Canada weren't allowed to eat snow!
We should be worried about nature in general.
YES
@@primuse.x.e6141 of course
Yep
if you get SO2 and N you get *SOON*
Not nature...it's us and how we treat nature lol
When I was a kid in the 90's my parents made me wait about 10 mins before going to play in the rain because we were told it was most potent at the start of rainfall.
Lol
I feel sorry for your childhood
They might have mixed up some other advice and told you wrong, or you misheard some advice.
It's best not to drive and/or be careful driving on roadways during the first 10 minutes of rainfail because many cars leak and spread motor oil over the course of days or weeks without rain, and the oil doesn't mix with water making the initial minutes of rainfall extremely slick and dangerous compared to constant rain.
I had to do the same thing. Mostly because of the small wooden gnomes that were living in my stomach.
I don't know why everyone scoffed at that idea. It makes perfect sense. The rain falls through the air, collecting the pollutants, and carrying them to the ground. There's only X quantity of those pollutants in the air, they're going to diminish at some point.
I remember learning about this in school as a kid and being terrified of it!!
I see a huge problem in our future produce supply. I've heard about acid rain since the 70s. I know from my own garden the ph in the soil doesn't stay consistent. You have to add to it in order to grow. If the world doesn't keep up, we'll all suffer from the damage we've caused. Most home gardeners do test the rain water because we've seen the damage it can do to our gardens. When St. Helens erupted it caused acid rain. It took a few days to reach the Midwest but we saw the effects on our gardens. That's when I got interested in testing the ph of rain.
As a chemist I have to say the pH of the rain is not that important in changing the pH of the soil - which is buffered by minerals and organic acids. In extreme cases like Mount St. Helens where you have ash fallout as well as rain, well that is different. Most plants like acidic soils down to 6.5 .... much lower for acid loving plants like blueberries 4.5 to 5.5. Generally very hard to get a good pH reading on rain water as it is so pure ( low ionic strength ). Just test the soil.
@@Pneuma40 we do test the soil thru out the growing season. After St. Helens our vehicles were covered in Orange and gray dust. Like I said it took a few days to reach us and that happened without rain. The local conservation dept tested the rain a few days later. They're the ones that explained to us what was going on and why it affected the plants.
@@Shari466 ln Spokane Wa they were shoveling it off their cars and roofs with snow shovels.
We outsourced almost all industrial production to China. Thats what happened. We sent the problem to China.
Could you say that again? I heard 'sent all the jobs to china'.
Actually US industry hasn't really lost capacity. Just don't need as much people working in it due to automation and streamlining of supply chains. Just look at Northern Indiana and you will still see a huge industrial zone. But instead of requiring hundreds of thousands of people to do tough manual labor, it just needs thousands to oversea the equipment and do repairs. Additionally most of the old industrial cities became too expensive and hard to expand for heavy industry. They got forced out to the fringes or other regions. US industry is much more decentralized.
Exactly the same way most usa petrolium companies send fracking to latinamerica
@@joseph1150 This. So much this. People often underestimate how much automation has changed industry in the US. They have this weird notion that we can get back to previous decades' levels of job creation when the reality is that automation has made those models obsolete.
And it's only going to get more automated from here on out. I, for one, welcome our glorious robotic overlords.
@@viking8796 tell me you are a redditor without telling me you are a redditor
This was my term paper in HS. We took rain samples from different parts of the city and analyzed it. Since my mom was a chemist, we had access to a professional ph meter. We had samples that got as low as a 4 range (can't remember the specific readings because this was back in the 90s).
What year was that?? And i hope you brought it up to the city...
what city did you live in?
I did some science fair projects on the corrosion effects of weak-ish acids on various materials. 2 or 3 years in a row (can't quite recall). I do remember getting a $50 prize from the Society of Corrosion Engineers, which was totally unexpected and cool.
Yeah, acid rain was not a false alarm. There were lakes and forests dying from it before our eyes. You could see it happening one year to the next. Cap-and-trade got power plants to add pollution controls (scrubbers) and switch to less horrible fuel (mostly low sulfur coal), and that made a big difference. It isn't actually complicated.
So... xenomorph blood?
And?
Is that why Timothy Leary used to stand out in the rain with his head back, mouth open, and tongue out?
Acid rain, Ozone Layer, and Quicksand were all things I learned about as a child in the 80's and thought were all really dangerous.
Taj Mahal, the National Heritage of India and one of the Seven Wonders of the World turned from white to yellow due to aid rain as it was made from Marble.
That is really a shame. Although Taj Mahal is not technically one of the Seven Wonders of the World...
@@bilibili68 what?
@@bilibili68 what? How? Ok then care to elaborate?
@@utubedano Only one of the seven wonders of the world survived and is intact, the great pyramid.
Keep in mind that these are ancient monuments not from the middle ages.
@@utubedano I think bilibili68 understood it as referring to the seven wonders of the ancient world, which it isn’t part of. It is part of the new seven wonders of the world though.
In my home country (Russia) acid rain was a regular occurrence well into the 1990s. As soon as a storm would start, everyone in my home town would run for cover. I once failed to reach it. Acidity of the rain was such that I had chemical burns on my skin and my hair thinned out and fell off completely in the following weeks. I did not have it for over a year. Even my outfit got damaged. 1990s in my home town were a wild time. Factories operated without any filters. Every morning, there would be a tender smell of chlorine in the air and green clouds would float up into the sky.
In Norway the forests was not healthy due to acid rain caused mostly by the Ruhr district in Germany. I can not remember any chemical burs or anything of that magnitude, but I live at 63N, and it was probably way worse closer to the emissions.
so, what color is the sky on YOUR planet was not just being funny???
what was your home town?
Seeing what coverage of Russia. I can kinda believe it. But what of china?
@@pascualsmithvaldes9038 Yekaterinburg
Oh that's weird, I never learned the backstory, but I did learn about the economics behind the response to acid rain in class. People often forget that economics is fundamentally the study of how to manage scarce resources, and that fully includes addressing environmental issues like acid rain, groundwater usage, recycling, and etc. in a way that is fully optimal for society as a whole.
This was always something I’ve heard continually throughout my elementary and middle school years but don’t really here as much about anymore nowadays
The fact that this was literally a disaster in SimCity at one point shows just how seriously the world was still taking it when I was growing up.
Ah yes when having too much heavy industrial zones in Simcity 3000 :D
Yeah, this and giant Lizard attacks.
The music in the first SNES one was awesome. It fit the game perfectly
I think one of the key points to take away from this video is that action was taken that was effective AND economically feasible. They (we) fixed the problem without destroying the economies of the countries that decided to act upon the problem. Good video.
Have to keep how doable it was in mind, but also remember how much resistance there was to do anything at all. And we have to remember that those companies and their politicians are still actively fighting against having to do these things at all. Cap and Trade and other regulations are talked about at rallies and speeches the same way "Communists" are, with dripping hate and scorn.
@@dimamatat5548 In the event of an economic crash, no one's gonna have any money to spend on the environment. It's a fragile balance
Only liberals can save our planet. Conservatives want to plunder the planet for their selfish needs
@@dimamatat5548 That is perhaps the most privileged take in this comment section. Yes the economy matters, yes the environment matters. But the simple fact is, is that without money you end up without shelter or food and could very well end up on the street. In the grand scheme of things it is best to balance both, which someone as sheltered from the harsh truths of life as you, wouldn't understand even if someone explained it to you.
@@dimamatat5548
So if the planet is fine, but we all STARVE TO DEATH, it's all good right?
This planet was here BILLIONS of years before we came into the picture, and it will be here BILLIONS of years after we're extinct.
The *TRICK* is finding a BALANCE, *NOT A BAN* ... They did that with the cap and trade regulations. THAT is the lesson you need to be walking away with.
Acid rain was one of those things we heard about in the 80's, 90's, and early 00's. It was everywhere, on TV shows, movies, cartoons, textbooks, but then it became forgotten about, except occasionally as a distant memory. I'd wondered why I hadn't heard much about it since I was in my early 20's.
I been asking myself this for years! I was waiting for a video to come out about this! I haven’t seen acid rain in about 20 years.
I met the guy who held the patent on those "de-sulfurizing scrubbers". There were metal screens placed in the smokestacks. Then water was run across the screens. When the SO2 contacted the screen, a catalyst caused the water and SO2 to combine resulting in H2SO4 (sulfuric acid) which ran off the screens into collecting tubes that eventually ran to railroad tank cars.
There was suddenly so much sulfuric acid that railroad sidings across the country started filling up with tank cars full of sulfuric acid which was now a glut on the market. It was basically free now. All you had to do was pay for the cost of transporting it to where you needed it.
The video makes it sound like this happened in the eighties, but I'm pretty sure I met this guy no later than '79 and he was telling me all of this in the past tense. It had already happened by then.
You are correct SO2 and NOx emissions were regulated as part of the clean air act in 1970. Had a professor in 2001 who was a republican and he liked to make it known to all the Env. Eng. students that both the clean air act and clean water act were signed into law by republicans. (I think both Nixon)
@@BrentTJo True, and every single government since has weakened the EPA
sulfur TRIoxide and water make H2SO4. count your oxygens .
catalyst's just lower the activation energy and are not consumed. those scrubbers are producing
calcium sulphite +h2o+ co2 as a byproduct s
do your freaking homework d.a.
@@wolu9456 I don't have to do my homework because I already have a masters degree in environmental engineering. The reaction is as followed:
2 SO2 + 2 H2O + O2 -> 2 H2SO4
SO2 is a byproduct of burning fossil fuels containing S, almost no SO3 is ever produced that way. It's a bad look when you are wrong and condescending at the same time.
Such a cool little piece of history :)
I watched this entire video when I wasn't even that passionate about the subject, now I lowkey am, very interesting thanks.
That's one thing I love about Ted ed. I couldnt care less about hummingbirds. But I watched that video 3 times and it was very cool.
@@nathanp928 lol
@@nathanp928 sad
I mean it's good that you care about the environment but like what about buff hummingbirds
HAHAHAHA..I have beach front land I'll sell you super cheap in Nevada. It's all a hoax and today, they think it is the next crisis. Just to keep a running count, there was Environment, then covid, now race, so once it wears off, this is their "new crisis" to get folks like you scared and worked up on false information leaning to one side far from facts
@@SkyBlueOffRoad No evidence that it's a hoax and plenty of evidence to support the crises that are very much happening but okay
Ok, that rain transition was the best animation I've seen in a while. It's a serious topic, but dang that was nice.
i remember being taught about acid rain in middleschool in the mid 2000's in the EU, stating something like 'this is still a big problem and will be the end of civilization as we know it by the end of the century'.
Interesting topic, thanks for easing my childhood worry of actually 'melting in the rain like a snowman'.
Anyone's who's seen Castles like Winchester in England knows Acid is no joke.
Why?
Even taj mahal
@@xayalatagizadeh9917 cuz acid rain is yellowing marble monuments and buildings so taj mahal has turned pale now
@@xayalatagizadeh9917 even tho delhi govt is taking steps but the rain in ind comes from South Side so what's the use of banning use of gas emitting fuels in just the golden Triangle why ain't whole india 🙁
@@balakrishnashetty7855 thank u, it is clear
I didn't know we dealt with acid rain, too! This and the repaired ozone layer are wonderful examples of how global action *can and does* make a difference in saving humanity's ability to live on this planet. 😍😍
And an excellent example of how corporations use the exact same excuse to get out of all reform
repaired ozone layer? yeah nah my country would like to chat (australia, right under the biggest hole in the ozone layer)
@@lizardgirl413 it's slowly getting better again, after years of getting worse.
Global Action you say. The reason why developing countries are polluting more is because the developed ones shifted their pollution to these countries and/or don’t help these countries reduce their pollution at all. Global action needs global cooperation, which always has been, is, and likely will be VERY unlikely.
Discontinuance of leaded gasoline was another significant action.
I assumed acid rain went the same way as the "New Ice Age" scare of the 1970's.
Yeah they were so scared of the possibility of an ice age coming they figured out how to prevent it from happening by starting a global tourist industry starting in the mid 1960’s to today using jet aircraft which release huge amounts of jet exhaust above 30000 ft. And effectively stops the planets radiant heat from escaping the planet into outer space thusly the temperature of the planet has been going up and ice age prevented so far.☃️😳
This was such a big deal when I was a kid and was rumored going to get worst but it went away. Ty for video
A different animation style every time, LOVE IT!
Different style your mom
@@bienmartinez8252 Keep it up with those jokes Martinez, maybe even someday you'll get out of 5th grade!
@@oliverelfenbaum7119 LMAOOO NOPE
@@bienmartinez8252 made me giggle bro😂
wow, i thought acid rain was still a problem here in the states. its actually kinda nice to hear that acid rain was managed contained. when you hear about manmade climate change its usally the kind of irreversible destruction but hearing we were able to fix even a small part gives me a smidgen of hope
I remember hearing when I was younger about the west coast having serious air pollution and smog, making L.A. hazy even on completely cloudless days due to car exhaust. but I suppose now there's been restrictions on gas emissions from vehicles since then, and the air has been cleared up. I believe it's also still a major problem in densely populated areas in china
@@charityquill4965 L.A is still polluted yet not nearly as much
@@pascualsmithvaldes9038 I took an environmental chemistry class in college (A really fascinating and informative course if you can find a professor who actually teaches it rather than just rants about how pollution is bad) and he talked about how smog affected him as a kid, how surprised he was when he moved and found that he wasn't hacking and wheezing after running around outside, and things like that.
Sulfuric acid is still in our water out here in Appalachia. It comes from piles of waste material from coal mining that were abandoned irresponsibly that leach sulfur dioxide into the groundwater and rivers. We're trying to fix it but there's no national attention to the issue of acid mine drainage like there was with acid rain, since acid mine drainage doesn't effect wealthy cities. Acid mine drainage destroys ecosystems, making rivers nearly devoid of oxygen, and threatens our drinking water. And we know exactly how to fix it, there are just not enough resources being put into restoration projects. So that in many areas of West Virginia all they can afford to do is dump a pile of crushed limestone into the river every few years, which certainly is better than nothing but still leaves toxic levels of heavy metals in the groundwater.
Nowadays it’s Glyphosate rain, caused by chemical farming (roundup) ruining the earths rivers and water aquifers
China will never stop their pollution. I would love to see a TED talk deal with this political issue in a serious manner.
Not going to happen, China owns TED.
What a great vid. I remember this being a very serious concern in the 90s and simply stopped hearing about it.
A hopeful message for the many environmental problems we're still facing.
Decades of utterly failed predictions will never end your psychological fear of nature. It literally doesn't matter what is occurring; those with a fear psychology will always perceive the world as frightening.
STEPH FOR MVP
Great video! However I have a small piece of criticism. At 3:54 the "smoke stack" looks more like a cooling tower.
The difference is important because cooling towers are always releasing water vapor or fog and the public can confuse this with smoke. This can cause unnecessary worry.
Otherwise the video is great and I love the beautiful animations.
@@DNANDROID Leaded fuel was not the cause of acid rain. How can it be?
@@DNANDROID Where is the source? Pb(Et)4 is very well soluable in unpolar solvents, like gasoline!
yes!!! it is a pet peeve of mine.
@@DNANDROID I advise that you watch the video again. When burning Sulfur, you form SO2, which then forms H2SO3 with water or it can oxidize to SO3 with the oxygen from the atmosphere to form then, when mixed with water H2SO3. Lead there or not. It has nothing to do with lead.
@@DNANDROID Correlation doesnt imply causation. As you didnt explain the effect of lead on acid rain on a chemical level. I think the topic is closed
I know one thing that happened to it. Congress allotted $35 million to study it, and they sent out people to sample all the lakes and ponds in the NE states, where the claims about it were the most vocal. When the results came in, only one small pond in upstate NY had any level of acidity to it. And that pond had no access to it by road or trail. I myself never heard about it again. I read comments here about people who never heard about it, all of a sudden. I am pretty sure that that study meant no one talking about acid rain would ever be listened to again.
In my county in N Illinois, a friend in a weekly group was the county coroner, and he told me about an incident in a county board meeting. Our county was like 90% or 95% woods and lakes. An activist came to the board meeting, claiming that one particular lake had a shitload of acid in it. The board was alarmed, and the board tasked my friend to go get samples from that lake and have them tested. He did, and he told us how they found no acidity at all in that lake. And that at the next county board meeting the activist was there. They informed him of the lack of acidity, and the activist started accusing them - my friend especially - of not taking it seriously. Screw him.
I used to live near this big paper factory where we had acid rain several days a week. Thankfully it shut down.
What a cool video! My country largely avoided the problem of acid rains by having most of our power come from hydroelectric damns, but acid rains is a problem we should always be on the look out, so that the consequences are never impossible to deal with
Props to your country
Sweden?
@@navyasharma2750 Brazil
O I thought it was Laos
@@mariadinizcosta7098 how did you know that?
When it comes to environmental issues I love when we mostly solve a problem that was once worse before
I love how nobody ever talks about India, Russian Federation or China when it comes to enviromental, racial or religion issues. Like you have a big garden and there used to be a fires every summer, you made it but now you become furious about every spark that appears there... while all your neighbors have massive fires 5 meters high all around you all the time but you rather ignore it and pat yourself on the shoulder how safe your neigbourhood became. Fcking hyprocrites
@@ddvffcescfe2368 Well, you know the problem with Russia.
can't say anything about other 2.
I love when government agencies and big business conspire to create a boogie man to scare the public. Then, the solution to the problem, removes money from the general public and gives it to government agencies and big business.
@@ddvffcescfe2368 what does that have to do with this comment? And people do talk about china and stuff, they literally mentioned it in this video. People just focus more on western countries in the west because surprise.... People in the west are more focused on their own countries 😐. And yes, those places are terrible with the environment and they need to be held accountable, but that doesn't mean other countries should use that as an excuse not to find ways to improve/ help the environnment??
i remember hearing that topic a lot in school.. and after some years just dissapearing. never thought about what happend to it :D
a nice touch up for me
"Pro-environment policies would raise energy costs and cost jobs."
The problem is that this is a true statement, at least in the short term. So rather looking at it as a "Who is right?" kind of a thing, we should be looking at it as a balancing act. For instance, an interstate highway is very intrusive upon the environment. But is it worth having?
To have a high level of technology, you need to intrude upon the environment to some extent. We're getting better at minimizing the impact, but we wouldn't be in this position if we hadn't already made many advances in the past. Some of them very costly.
In other words, we will need a higher level of technology to allow us to advance while still preserving the environment. If we got rid of all technology (some people advocate for this) we would go back to clear-cutting forests for firewood. The ecological impact would be reckless, disastrous, and most likely irreversible.
Progress the technology, while also preserving and even enhancing the environment. We can do that. If you cut one tree down, plant two new ones. That sort of thing. Instead of having enviro-nazis, have people practicing good stewardship of the land. It makes sense.
Today, places like Kansas have more trees than they did 200 years ago. Why? Because the people who moved there planted trees. It was all grass fields before, but now there are plenty of trees. This can be done.
Ideally we get to a state where we have pristine land AND Star Trek levels of technology. That should be our goal. We shouldn't have to choose.
And we won't choose. We're already making progress on the environment and technology at the same time. That's not going to stop.
Your equating our technology to Star Trek? Luke Skywalker fell in love and french kissed his sister, so Yes, being from Florida I agree.
@@ge2623 Wrong show mate.
@@ge2623 pretty sure that's star wars
Another solution, reduce overall population size by gradually reducing food production.
@@anarkistogre how's that going to? Serious question here I'm actually confused.
One of the unanswered questions that keeps me up at night
I'm just worried that we haven't seen chocolate-rain in quite some time now.
You know, I remember when we used to play in it and eat it, but now...
The weather forecast says that it's insane!
*CHOCOLATE RAAAAAIN!*
WOW, what weird nostalgia *that* dragged up from the depths of my brain!
That’s a throw back. Never really understood the vid or song. Now I’m older, I’ll have to look it up. Why did it go viral?
@@modestdaddy2000 idk, but the meaning is talking about racism. Idk how tho
Very informative. Thanks
It's still an issue in upstate NY. It may be "decreased" but it's not gone and is still wreaking havoc on the wildlife and ecosystem there
As was wondering the same thing. As a child, we had to watched doc about it. But when I got older I never heard about again.
Pretty sure the lobbying groups put a lid on this story from getting out because they didn't want people to know about it and set a precedent where environmental activism actually forces companies to change their ways. Companies and the government only treated this with such urgency because it was destroying nature at an alarming rate. Imagine what they could do to solve the much slower but definitely devastating environmental issues if they tried?
When the problem was slowly getting fixed (same with hole in the ozone layer), it is not so news worthy and there are always other disasters, wars etc. to fill the news. The news also has a bias towards negative news, so things getting back to normal is not so interesting.
@@hittingyouoverthehead Every lobby group you think is putting a lid on things has an opposing lobby group trying to rip the lid off. Even sitcoms had episodes about acid rain in the 70s - Hollywood deciding that it needed to tell the people what to think (as they often do). Sure it took a while, but they passed legislation to fix the problem and yes, they actually fixed it. Videos like this always want to paint industry as the bad guy for not immediately jumping when someone comes along with a new theory on the pollution they're emitting - if they did, they'd all go broke in no time and 90% of the things they tried to improve wouldn't even be correct - we only hear about the ones that are properly researched and proven to be correct.
@@nickh5081 Which lobbying group is trying to pull the lid off the fact that we fixed acid rain? It's already been done but surely there are lessons to be learned from it. Why do you think we don't talk about this as often as the other successes that humans have had like eradication of small pox?
The studies of the effects of global warming have been conclusive for decades now. It has been certified by several research organizations too. Why haven't we taken any action on it?
Did you ever wonder why you never heard about it again? You'd think this story of how government regulations SAVED PLANET EARTH would have been one of the MAJOR ongoing incredible stories of your lifetime, monuments, everyone on earth would have this story embedded in our culture.
Yet, you remember it as a child then never heard about it again until just now?
I like how they changed the title from "should you be worried about acid rain" to "whatever happened to acid rain"
This is cool. I was thinking about the Ph of the rain a couple weeks ago.
I remember being in the rain one day and i just stuck my tongue out to drink some of it "i was 8 i barely knew i was alive" and it tasted so bad and burned my tongue till this day i think about it whenever it rains
This is EXACTLY what we’re learning right now in class! I was having trouble upstanding the vocabulary, and this helped a lot! It just showed up on my feed😂
Let us know if they still have a "nuclear smoke stack" image or picture when teaching it.
Weirdly this was something I focused my mind on the last couple days...
Look up fish rain, a real thing
Look up May 2021 NYC "heaven stairway" incident, also real
you watched kurzgesagt
Google definetely and absolutely had nothing to do with it.
This needs to be celebrated!
I am astounded we are not congratulating these scientists and highlighting these advances more!
The title is so apt, i HAVE forgotten a bout acid rain, because the main stream is not considering it as big a. Threat anymore.
This is proof that small steps can lead to big results in the LING TEmlRM. This needs to be more visible!!!
this is the best environmental news i've witnessed in a very long time. thank you.
Also that's why vehicles have catalytic converters on them.
I grew up near a coal refinery and after it rained you could sometimes see the yellow traces of sulphur at the brims of tried up rain puddles.
Are you sure that just wasn't pollen?
@@YouTrolol that would be a lot of pollen
Funny I live just a few miles from a coal power planet most of my life and I have never seen that.
@@crackedemerald4930 that’s pollen my guy. Happens all over the south if you don’t live in a large city.
@@jeffreyfinney251 i live very far south in a medium city and never seen that much pollen accumulating
Glad to know things can work out for the better.
Literally what we need to do in order to fix any realistic problem. Just do unbiased research, talk to each other like adults and find a solution that makes it better without hurting one party severely. It's not that complex.
Yes, well, unfortunately communication and high social standards are real skills and they do not get nutured half as much as they need it. Basically all human interactions get easier when all participants at least havethe basics down. Yet the way industries are often build still, the people with the most means for change are naturally the least likely to give a damn.
At the very least now we start to see more and more actually social and considerate changes. Too slow, yet, but better than nothing.
Used to live in a mining town in the 80's , this problem was so bad it was eating the paint off the vehicles .
holy smokes, did NOT know that.
The quote by Helen Keller: "Do not think of today's failures, but of the success that may come tomorrow" is sooo good and wise. It keeps me motivated
Not even remotely related to the video, but thanks
@@shashwatsharma2596 how isn't it related to the video? Did you see 0:02? Ted Ed likes to give quotes at the start of their videos.
@@sadkritx6200 sorry about that, I didn't make that connection
@@shashwatsharma2596 no problem 😊
Lol, Imagine a blind and deaf girl actually saying that quote in person?
I remember my parents telling me in the early eighties that I could not stand outside during rain falls + catch drops on my tongue because of acid rain.
I was tought about acid rain when i was in primary school, and never heard of it again!
Acid rain is one of my childhood memories. Aww, Nostalgia.
Acid rain and lots of great music. What a time to be alive :P
“We can’t reduce emissions! It’ll make electricity cost more and it will cost people jobs! Somehow.”
“We’re doing it, and we’re going to further decrease the amount of pollutants you can emit.”
“Alright well I guess we’ll just put in these cheap filters.”
Except the filters weren't cheap. And the installation of these filters actually increased energy costs.
It was so bad that several measures of inflation exclude energy to make the overall figure look good
US energy inflation is expected to be 14.21% this year alone.
There is a reason why only rich countries like US, Canada, EU*, etc. use these on large scale
It's also the reason poorer countries like Russia, China, India, etc. still don't use them
*I know EU isn't a country
Too bad nobody wanted nuclear power...
@@DownWithBureaucracy yes, but one Chernobyl event makes most people think twice about it
@@skiinggator a valid concern, one which must always be on the minds of those who design and promote nuclear. I don't want to downplay chernobyl, or 3-mile Island, or Fukushima, but the facts of the matter support nuclear as the safest energy source, the cleanest energy source, and the only source that can replace fossil fuels in their entirety today if we'd only build the damn things
@@DownWithBureaucracy - I wholeheartedly agree. I'm just saying it's a tough sell to the public.
Thanks for making this interesting and informative video
It's sad that only bad news get any air time or get posted online. No one knows that acid rains and the ozone hole are enviromental problems that humanity actually managed to solve...
As a citizen of India, this gives me hope. The Taj Mahal in Agra has been a victim of acid rain for so long that it's marble has lost it's charm a little. Hope the policy makers learn from the Western nations & tackle acid rain asap!
You'd _think_ that companies would learn that sooner or later their chickens will come home to roost, but they keep on fighting this kind of thing until it's unavoidable and it just costs them more in the long run through -lobbying- bribes and legal fees than if they'd just sucked it up and done the right thing in the first place.
What do you expect from an entity whose purpose is to maximize its own interests before others! LMAO humanity at its worst
Well no, unfortunately it often costs them less in legal and liability fees/costs. They don't pollute out of spite, they do it because its cost efficient even considering the future costs.
But...money.
LAST TIME I HEARD ABOUT ACID RAIN WAS FROM MRS. FRANKIE
She said she was with her parents and this tree in the back suddenly started growing TONS of pinecones, they all assumed this meant it was super healthy
It later died, acid rain had seriously injured it and all those pinecones was it using its last bit of life to ensure its line lives on
Also this was in 4th grade and Mrs. Frankie died the summer after, due to cancer I think
Rest in peace, you were a really good teacher
Gosh yes I had totally forgotten about that.
It's good to know at least something I heard about as a kid was solved
And the Rubiks Cube.
Not really solved, just turned out not to be much of a problem. There’s a lot more info in scientific publications that you can look up.
@@zac3392 Or......I can just UA-cam everything and get ALL the answers...
As a kid in the 90s, we learned about avid rain, and it gave me so much anxiety. And then I never heard about it since, until now.
I wish the media was about informing people about important stuff instead of just reporting on Drama and twisting the reality
I wish we learned out this kind of stuff in school, it's very interesting!
Wow, the animations are excellent! :)
UA-cam channel kurzgesagt : Allow us to introduce ourselves
Woah! Acid rain is much more interesting and dangerous than I thought.
Like a cute stray cat that you want to pet...
I learned about about acid rain in the 80s but finally saw it in action in the November Rain video.
I’m only 26 years old and we were taught about acid rain and why to avoid it! Super weird!!!
The way they solved the issue with cap and trade was genius and perfectly reasonable. My only issue with green new deals has been the treating of absurd laws as reasonable. The problem with 100% clean renewable energy is it’s impossible to keep that consistent enough for our daily lives.
That’s not my main issue tho, my main issue is we have a solution to slowing pollution to a crawl, but not to 0% so it’s discarded. That and the miss placed fear of this energy during its inception caused people to discard it entirely.
Nuclear energy is among the lowest pollutants just under wind and solar. A mix of those 3 would solve most of our waste and pollution problems. And there’s a theory about burning un-radioactive waste to make it entirely waste free.
My issue as well with the green new deal is it’s run on fear mongering to get people to put in policies that either don’t work or are ineffective because no debate is being had since any second opinion is being met with “you want to watch our planet die!” “is the coal industry paying you?!” “Nuclear bad!”.
The over reaching fear mongering used to push the green new deal is the very reason I'm wary of supporting it. I was a teenager during the 90s so I get to see all the environmental alarms and actual, working, efforts to address them. It took them mere years or at most a decade to solve all those problems. This green new deal, however, is part of a decades long climate-based campaign that keep rebranding itself.
My analogy to the green new deal is this: A rich man gave you and your family a big mansion to live in for free but you have to move immediately. When you arrive...there is no mansion. Just an empty lot where a group of architects still drawing up the plans. Oh, you have to pay those architects.
@@dareka9425 well said
Bruh, you can literally go online and see that every single congress person that's against The Green New Deal has received millions of dollars from these industries (mostly from the Oil and Gas Industry, not Coal. The Coal Industry doesn't have that much money to throw around these days). This stuff is not a secret. If someone calls out another Senator for "being in the pocket of Big Oil," they're just spitting straight facts.
@@TheAntiSanta “is the coal industry paying you?!” Found em, he’s right here officer.
@@TheAntiSanta That reminded of a comment by a minister in my country made just a month ago. He said that while on a helicopter ride he was flabbergasted by the sight the state's thick, green and undisturbed forest. He proclaimed that we should utilized this God given gift for economic progress. Everyone knows his words are just a politician's way to open up land for more exploitation. They have been using helicopters to campaign in remote villages for decades so it's impossible for any of them to miss the sight of the vast jungle beneath them.
A decade earlier they even tried to weasel in 13 new mini hydroelectric dams that my state don't even need. Everyone knows dam constructions means more lands will be opened up for logging activities and later oil palm plantations. The 13 dams were announced just as the biggest dam in nation(but later downsized) was just about to be operational. And the funny thing is, that dam's electricity is exclusively sold to the industrial sector near coast and to neighboring countries. Locals still have to rely on the localized fossil fuel generators and an old dam made decades ago.
I have always wanted to know that.. Thank you , Ted Ed ❤️😊☺️
Glad to hear that
The last time I heard about acid rain, the Bermuda triangle still existed.
what happened to it?
@@Ben-li9zb The illuminati killed everyone who ta-
@@krazus2036 everyone who ta? what does ta mean? one sec someone's at my door...
Amazing video but I don't understand why in the thumbnail the acid rain drop has a skull in it? That's calcium (which would get corroded by the acid).
good post.