Acid Rain

=gov john sununu signed bill but ~ montreal? and climate legis.---<a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bush-had-a-lasting-impact-on-climate-and-air-policy/">https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bush-had-a-lasting-impact-on-climate-and-air-policy/</a> obitno lnxBush Had a Lasting Impact on Climate and Air PolicyThe late 41st president started the national climate assessment and enacted policies to target acid rain
By Scott Waldman, E&E News on December 3, 2018Bush Had a Lasting Impact on Climate and Air Policy
The late President George H.W. Bush is the reason why President Trump has been asked about climate change in the last week more than at any other time in his presidency.
Through legislation he signed in 1990, Bush started the National Climate Assessment, a sweeping study documenting climate change’s impacts on the United States. The Trump administration released the latest iteration on Black Friday and has since downplayed its definitive body of research, making false claims about its accuracy and inadvertently drawing more attention to the clear science that shows Americans will be increasingly at risk as a result of climate change.
Bush’s presidency came during a different time, when bipartisan actions to reduce greenhouse gases and other pollutants seemed possible, observers said. The very existence of the NCA is a reminder that Republicans in Washington once crafted aggressive climate policy.
“We know that the future of the Earth must not be compromised,” Bush told the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1990. “We bear a sacred trust in our tenancy here and a covenant with those most precious to us—our children and theirs.”
Bush died Friday in his Houston home. He was 94.
It was during Bush’s presidency that the federal government stepped up its work on global warming and established an ongoing account of the latest research into how the country would be affected by climate change. Bush was also president during the development of the Montreal Protocol, which drastically cut the chlorofluorocarbons that were destroying the ozone layer.
Through a 1989 presidential initiative, Bush established the U.S. Global Change Research Program, a program encompassing 13 federal agencies that seeks to understand the changing Earth system. The following year, he signed into law the Global Change Research Act of 1990, which mandated that the National Climate Assessment come out every four years.
Top Bush aides recognized that climate change was a serious issue that would require a policy response, according to a series of formerly classified memos released to The Washington Post in 2015 by the National Security Archive.
“If the climate change within the range of current predictions actually occurs, the consequences for every nation and every aspect of human activity will be profound,” acting assistant secretary of State Richard Smith wrote in a 1989 memo.
Thirty years ago, crafting international agreements to address climate change was a Republican concern. Bush’s presidency was a different era for Republican environmental policy, but also a turning point that shifted away from aggressive actions, said William Reilly, who served as EPA administrator under Bush.
“Bush did everything anyone could have asked of on him on climate except commit to stabilization,” he said. “He committed to very substantial research budget to major investments by NASA on upper atmospheric ozone monitoring and on climate monitoring. NOAA was well-funded.”Bush’s actions on climate change came after what may be his strongest environmental legacy, the signing of the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments. The revisions to the act changed the way the country regulates several key pollutants.
“Building on Congressional proposals advanced during the 1980s, the President proposed legislation designed to curb three major threats to the nation’s environment and to the health of millions of Americans: acid rain, urban air pollution, and toxic air emissions,” EPA states on its website. “The proposal also called for establishing a national permits program to make the law more workable, and an improved enforcement program to help ensure better compliance with the Act.”
Significantly, the amendments targeted acid rain that was destroying forests and lakes, dramatically reducing the pollution that caused the problem to such an extent that it is no longer a major issue in the United States.
But the political capital Bush spent on the Clean Air Act diminished his work on climate policy, Reilly said. At the Group of Seven meeting in Paris in 1989, environmental groups trashed Bush for not committing to a stabilization of greenhouse gases, Reilly recalled.
That convinced Bush that pushing too far on environmental policy would hurt him politically with his base while failing to win any converts on the other side.
“That was kind of the beginning of Bush’s disillusion about his likely winning popularity by things he did in the environment,” Reilly said. “From the point of view of the environmentalists, he was Reagan’s vice president. And he did the Clean Air Act, he got really nothing for it ... Bush decided finally, and the people around him had decided long before, that the environment would not work for him politically.”
Since Bush left office, his Republican predecessors, George W. Bush and Trump, have been increasingly hostile to climate science and have resisted meaningful policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Much of their criticism has centered on the economic costs of environmental policy, a stance that environmental groups have widely denounced.
The latest National Climate Assessment shows that climate change will kill more Americans, displace thousands and cost tens of billions of dollars annually. Democrats have touted the findings as evidence that the government needs to craft significant climate policy and have promised to use its revelations in court cases challenging the administration. Some Republicans have acknowledged that the report requires action from Washington, as well, but most have questioned its findings without presenting any evidence to the contrary.
Trump has said he doesn’t “believe” the report. The United States was the only country at the Group of 20 meeting this weekend to refuse to sign a statement reiterating support for the Paris climate accord (see related story).
By contrast, the late Bush was able to craft bipartisan environmental policy that has had a lasting effect, said Jason Bordoff, a former Obama administration energy and climate policy aide and the founder of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.
“From promoting cap and trade to curb acid rain to an international agreement protecting the ozone layer to climate change research, President George H.W. Bush was part of a Republican tradition of support for environmental protection, science and bipartisan cooperation that unfortunately is too rare these days,” he said.
Environmental groups have been some of the harshest critics of George W. Bush and Trump. By contrast, they issued a number of statements of praise for the environmental legacy left by George H.W. Bush.
“By cutting pollution from cars, trucks, power plants and other sources, the measures have sharply reduced toxic chemicals in the air we breathe, dangerous ozone and the acid rain that was destroying American forests,” said Rhea Suh, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, in a statement. “The measures decreased asthma attacks, bronchitis, heart disease and other ills, preventing some 200,000 premature deaths and 20 million lost days at work or school every year to deliver up to $90 in public health benefits for every dollar invested in compliance.”
Bush was capable of seeing that protecting the economy and the environment did not have to be in contrast, said Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, who worked with Bush to help pass the bipartisan Clean Air Act amendments as well as ratify the 1992 U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Krupp said Bush deserves credit for curbing acid rain pollution that was devastating Northeastern forests in the 1980s. He noted that sulfur dioxide pollution, which caused the acid rain, has been cut 88 percent since 1990.
“He knew that our country matters far more than political party or personal ambition, and that the national interest demands that we protect America’s precious natural heritage,” Krupp said in a statement. “And he knew that there is no inherent conflict between environmental progress and economic progress, because the well-being of the nation requires both.”
Reporter Robin Bravender contributed.
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from E&E News. E&E provides daily coverage of essential energy and environmental news at www.eenews.net.==<div class="widget__brief" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Tim RadfordAs the global temperature steadily rises, it ensures that levels of one of the most potent greenhouse gases are increasing in a way new to science: the planet will have to reckon with more <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/methane" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">methane</a> than expected.Researchers who monitored one bog for three years in the Alaskan permafrost have identified yet another instance of what engineers call positive feedback. They found that global warming meant earlier springs and with that, earlier spring rains.</div><div class="js-appear-on-expand" style="transition: all 350ms ease 0s; height: auto; overflow: hidden; opacity: 1;">And as a consequence, the influx of <a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-02/uow-esr020419.php" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">warm water on what had previously been frozen ground</a> triggered a biological frenzy that sent methane emissions soaring.One stretch of wetland in a forest of black spruce in the Alaskan interior stepped up its emissions of natural gas (another name for methane) by 30 percent. Methane is a greenhouse gas at least 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide.As a consequence, climate scientists may have to return yet again to the vexed question of the carbon budget, in their calculations of how fast the world will warm as humans burn more <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/fossil-fuels" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">fossil fuels</a>, to set up ever more rapid global warming and <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-change" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">climate change</a>, which will in turn accelerate the thawing of the permafrost.The evidence so far comes from a detailed study of water, energy and carbon traffic from just one wetland. But other teams of scientists have repeatedly expressed concern about the integrity of the northern hemisphere permafrost and <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018GL081274" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">the vast stores of carbon preserved in the frozen soils</a>, beneath the shallow layer that comes to life with each <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/arctic" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">Arctic</a> spring."We saw the plants going crazy and methane emissions going bonkers," said <a href="https://www.engr.washington.edu/facresearch/newfaculty/2011/rebeccaneumann.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">Rebecca Neumann, an environmental engineer at the University of Washington in Seattle</a>, who led the study. "2016 had above average rainfall, but so did 2014. So what was different about this year?"What mattered was when the rain fell: it fell earlier, when the ground was still colder than the air. The warmer water saturated the frozen forest, flowed into the bog, and created a local permafrost thaw in <a href="https://study.com/academy/lesson/anoxic-environment-definition-conditions.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">anoxic conditions</a>: the subterranean microbial communities responded by converting the once-frozen organic matter into a highly effective greenhouse gas.Alarm Rises"It'd be the bottom of the barrel in terms of energy production for them," Neumann said. "The microbes in this bog on some level are like 'Oh man, we're stuck making methane because that's all this bog is allowing us to do'."As global average temperature levels creep up, so does <a href="https://climatenewsnetwork.net/permafrost-thaw-flood-emissions/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">alarm about the state of the vast tracts of permafrost</a>, home to <a href="https://climatenewsnetwork.net/methane-from-permafrost-melt-more-than-thought/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">huge stores of frozen carbon in the form of semi-decayed plant material</a> that could be released into the atmosphere to fuel further global warming, with <a href="https://climatenewsnetwork.net/arctic-methane-melt-could-cost-60-tn/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">devastating consequences</a>.<a href="https://climatenewsnetwork.net/spring-moving-forward-record-rate/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">Spring has been arriving earlier everywhere in the northern hemisphere</a>, including <a href="https://climatenewsnetwork.net/migrant-birds-face-risk-in-earlier-springs/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">the Arctic</a>, with <a href="https://climatenewsnetwork.net/speed-of-arctic-changes-defies-scientists/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">unpredictable impacts on high latitude ecosystems</a>.The permafrost itself has been identified as a vulnerable region, change in which could tip the planet into <a href="https://climatenewsnetwork.net/hothouse-earth-could-soon-be-unavoidable/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">a new and unpredictable climate regime</a>, and geographers only this year have <a href="https://climatenewsnetwork.net/permafrost-thaw-unsettles-the-arctic/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">started to assess the direct hazard to the communities that live in the high latitudes</a> as once-solid ground turns to slush under their feet.More EvaporationMuch more difficult to assess is how the steady attrition of the permafrost plays out in terms of the traffic of carbon between rocks, <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/oceans" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">ocean</a>, atmosphere and living things: <a href="https://climatenewsnetwork.net/water-soil-muddy-carbon-budget/" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">researchers are still teasing out the roles of all the agencies at work</a>, including subterranean microbes.In a warmer world, evaporation will increase. Warmer air has a greater capacity for water vapor. In the end, it means more rain will fall. If it falls in spring or early summer, the research from one marshland in <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/alaska" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">Alaska</a> seems to suggest, more methane will escape into the atmosphere.Right now, the rewards of the study are academic. They throw just a little more light on the subtle machinery of weather and climate. The test is whether what happens in one instance is likely to happen in other, similar terrain around the high latitudes."The ability of rain to transport thermal energy into soils has been under-appreciated," Neumann said. "Our study shows that by affecting soil temperature and methane emissions, rain can increase the ability of thawing permafrost to warm the climate."</div>

grist sum MoD<div>
</div><div>The other “merchants of doubt” profiled by Oreskes and Conway traveled a similar path. Physicist William Nierenberg’s work on the Manhattan Project led him in the early 1960s to become NATO’s chief scientist working on developing weapons to use against the Soviets. Astrophysicist Robert Jastrow moved from NASA into a leading position supporting Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, aka, Star Wars) to counter “Soviet hegemony,” which he called the “greatest peril” in U.S. history.What all these men have in common (aside from their background in physics) is the belief that the Cold War didn’t end with the collapse of the Soviet Union. In their minds, and in the minds of their followers, “real Americans” are still battling socialism, only now the threat comes primarily from within. Grasping that bizarre and paranoid notion is central to understanding their motivations and methods.In the 1950s, Big Tobacco had begun using scientists to sow doubt about links between their product and cancer. As the evidence against them mounted in the 1970s, the tobacco industry realized they needed something more. They found it in Seitz, who was not merely a scientist, but the former president of the Academy of Sciences.
R. J. Reynolds put Seitz in charge of the company’s biomedical research grant program. The amount of money available was staggering. In 1981, Oreskes and Conway write, the American Cancer Society and the American Lung Association together contributed $300,000 to research. In that same year, Big Tobacco directed $6.3 million to researchers who consistently found no evidence conclusively linking tobacco to serious medical problems....While Seitz was busy doling out “research” funds for R. J. Reynolds, his colleague, William Nierenberg, was leading the fight in a different arena: to prevent the federal government from taking action on acid rain. Once again, Oreskes and Conway do an excellent job of bringing to life a complex and important environmental battle that is poorly remembered today. In 1982, Nierenberg was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to lead a review of the scientific evidence concerning acid rain. Had the acidity of rain in the northeastern part of the United States really increased? If so, how serious was the problem? And what caused acid rain? Was it naturally occurring, or did humans play a role in creating the problem?The questions were valid, or at least they had been when the phenomenon was first examined a decade earlier. A broad scientific consensus had emerged over several years, so that by 1979 it wasn’t news to most scientists in the field when Scientific American published an article explaining to the public that “In recent decades, the acidity of rain and snow has increased sharply over wide areas. The principle cause is the release of sulfur and nitrogen by the burning of fossil fuels” to generate electricity.  What’s more, the National Academy of Sciences had released a report in 1981 with similar conclusions, but going even further. That study concluded that there was “clear evidence of serious hazard to human health and the biosphere” from acid rain, requiring immediate action.The Nierenberg Panel produced a report at war with itself, marked by a key internal contradiction. For the most part, the executive summary agreed with the 1981 NAS study. But, write Oreskes and Conway, an appendix was added suggesting that “we really didn’t know enough to move forward with emissions controls.” The confusion bred by the report cast just enough doubt on what was actually known about acid rain to allow the Reagan administration to do exactly what it had wanted to do all along: nothing. The misleading appendix was written by Fred Singer. In the early 1980s, Singer was a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, arguably the most influential conservative think tank during the Reagan era. Created with an initial quarter-million dollar grant from beer magnate and right-wing Republican activist Joseph Coors, the group was initially led by Paul Weyrich, who combined absolute allegiance to the Free Market, ultra-nationalism, and fundamentalist evangelical Christianity of the narrowest kind. (Along with Jerry Falwell, Weyrich founded the group Moral Majority.)
Nineteen eighty-four marked a key moment in Oreske and Conway’s darkly fascinating history of selling doubt. The issue at the center of events at the time had no obvious relation to climate change. The controversy involved missiles, specifically, Ronald Reagan’s $60 billion program to build an impenetrable “missile shield” over the United States. Most scientists regarded SDI as technologically impossible and almost certainly destabilizing. Over a thousand experts signed a petition stating that they would refuse any government funding of projects that could further SDI. The move enraged Seitz and his colleagues Nierenberg and Robert Jastrow. In reaction, the three hawks formed the George C. Marshall Institute, a conservative think tank dedicated to selling Star Wars to policy makers and the public. For Seitz and his colleagues, GMI represented a decisive step away from the scientific community — and from science itself. With the fate of the country hanging in the balance, an ideology devoted to the red, white, and blue came before science, which prided itself on being colorless and colorblind.As the unworkable SDI inevitably faded, GMI turned to other ideological battles, including ozone depletion and global warming. Their adversaries saw these as scientific issues, not clashes of ideology, which gave GMI an advantage. Science recognizes the inevitability of uncertainty. The point isn’t to go for perfection but to continually refine models of how complex phenomena work. Science uses doubt as a tool, a prod to deepen understanding. Seitz and his associates used doubt as a weapon against science. They seized on inevitable uncertainties in scientific models as evidence that the models had no value, or worse. In 1987, for example, Singer, then working at the Department of Transportation, wrote an article published in The Wall Street Journal that was rife with inaccuracies and distortions minimizing the importance of the discovery of a hole in the ozone layer, a portion of the lower stratosphere that blocks most harmful ultraviolet rays from reaching the surface of the earth.“It was the beginning of a counternarrative,” write Oreskes and Conway, “that scientists had overreacted before, were overreacting now, and therefore couldn’t be trusted.”That same counternarrative of denial continues today, stronger and more strident than ever, and now focused on creating doubt about all aspects of climate change. The ultimate goal hasn’t changed since the tobacco days — preventing government regulation of industry. In a 2007 <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/id/32482/page/1" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; line-height: inherit; background: transparent;">article</a>, Newsweek called the George C. Marshall Institute “a central cog in the denial machine.” GMI has received millions of dollars from conservative foundations and corporations. Exactly how much isn’t known because in 2001, tired of facing criticism over the fact that one of the largest corporate donors to its anti-global warming work was oil giant ExxonMobil, GMI made its donor list secret.The denial machine contains a huge number of cogs, and it would take an encyclopedia to list them all. The authors do an excellent job, however, of touching on many of the cogs inside that dreadful box, from clueless writers (<a href="http://grist.org/article/2009-04-27-a-false-choice-from-a-famil" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; line-height: inherit; background: transparent;">Bjorn Lomborg</a>, <a href="http://grist.org/article/Why-does-NYT-keep-Tierney" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; line-height: inherit; background: transparent;">John Tierney</a>, <a href="http://grist.org/article/2009-04-07-post-reporter-calls-out-will" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; line-height: inherit; background: transparent;">George Will</a>) to odious politicians (Sen. James Inhofe, Vice President Dick Cheney) to the scores of conservative foundations that wrap themselves in the flag that they disgrace by their actions.</div><div>==</div>

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wiki

Acid rain is a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain" title="Rain" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">rain</a> or any other form of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precipitation_(meteorology)" title="Precipitation (meteorology)" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">precipitation</a> that is unusually <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid" title="Acid" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">acidic</a>, meaning that it possesses elevated levels of hydrogen ions (low <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PH" title="PH" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">pH</a>). It can have harmful effects on plants, aquatic animals and infrastructure. Acid rain is caused by emissions of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur_dioxide" title="Sulfur dioxide" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">sulfur dioxide</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_oxide" title="Nitrogen oxide" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">nitrogen oxide</a>, which react with the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water" title="Water" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">water</a> molecules in the atmosphere to produce acids. Governments have made efforts since the 1970s to reduce the release of sulfur dioxide into the<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere" title="Atmosphere" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">atmosphere</a> with positive results. Nitrogen oxides can also be produced naturally by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning" title="Lightning" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">lightning</a> strikes and sulfur dioxide is produced by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic" title="Volcanic" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">volcanic</a> eruptions. The chemicals in acid rain can cause paint to peel, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrosion" title="Corrosion" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">corrosion</a> of steel structures such as bridges, and erosion of stone statues.

<h2 style="font-weight: bold; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border: none; display: inline; line-height: 1.3; background: none;">Contents</h2>

[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#" class="internal" id="togglelink" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">hide</a>] </div>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-1" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#Definition" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">1 Definition</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-2" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#History" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">2 History</a>

<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-3" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#History_of_acid_rain_in_the_United_States" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">2.1 History of acid rain in the United States</a></li>

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<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-4" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#Emissions_of_chemicals_leading_to_acidification" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">3 Emissions of chemicals leading to acidification</a>

<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-5" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#Natural_phenomena" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">3.1 Natural phenomena</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-6" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#Human_activity" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">3.2 Human activity</a></li>

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<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-7" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#Chemical_processes" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">4 Chemical processes</a>

<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-8" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#Gas_phase_chemistry" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">4.1 Gas phase chemistry</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-9" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#Chemistry_in_cloud_droplets" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">4.2 Chemistry in cloud droplets</a></li>

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<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-10" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#Acid_deposition" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">5 Acid deposition</a>

<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-11" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#Wet_deposition" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">5.1 Wet deposition</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-12" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#Dry_deposition" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">5.2 Dry deposition</a></li>

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<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-13" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#Adverse_effects" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">6 Adverse effects</a>

<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-14" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#Surface_waters_and_aquatic_animals" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">6.1 Surface waters and aquatic animals</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-15" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#Soils" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">6.2 Soils</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-16" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#Forests_and_other_vegetation" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">6.3 Forests and other vegetation</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-17" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#Ocean_acidification" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">6.4 Ocean acidification</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-18" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#Human_health_effects" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">6.5 Human health effects</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-19" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#Other_adverse_effects" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">6.6 Other adverse effects</a></li>

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</li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-20" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#Affected_areas" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">7 Affected areas</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-21" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#Prevention_methods" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">8 Prevention methods</a>

<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-22" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#Technical_solutions" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">8.1 Technical solutions</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-23" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#International_treaties" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">8.2 International treaties</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-24" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#Emissions_trading" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">8.3 Emissions trading</a></li>

</ul>

</li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-26" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#References" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">10 References</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-27" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#External_links" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">11 External links</a></li>

</ul>

</div>

US hist:

In 1980, the U.S. Congress passed an Acid Deposition Act.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#cite_note-Lackey-16" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[16]</a> This Act established an 18-year assessment and research program under the direction of the National Acidic Precipitation Assessment Program (NAPAP). NAPAP looked at the entire problem from a scientific perspective. It enlarged a network of monitoring sites to determine how acidic the precipitation actually was, and to determine long term trends, and established a network for dry deposition. It looked at the effects of acid rain and funded research on the effects of acid precipitation on freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems, historical buildings, monuments, and building materials. It also funded extensive studies on atmospheric processes and potential control programs.

From the start, policy advocates from all sides attempted to influence NAPAP activities to support their particular policy advocacy efforts, or to disparage those of their opponents.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#cite_note-Lackey-16" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[16]</a> For the U.S. Government's scientific enterprise, a significant impact of NAPAP were lessons learned in the assessment process and in environmental research management to a relatively large group of scientists, program managers and the public.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#cite_note-17" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[17]</a>

In 1991, DENR provided its first assessment of acid rain in the United States. It reported that 5% of New England Lakes were acidic, with sulfates being the most common problem. They noted that 2% of the lakes could no longer support Brook Trout, and 6% of the lakes were unsuitable for the survival of many species of minnow. Subsequent Reports to Congress have documented chemical changes in soil and freshwater ecosystems, nitrogen saturation, decreases in amounts of nutrients in soil, episodic acidification, regional haze, and damage to historical monuments.

Meanwhile, in 1989, the U.S. Congress passed a series of amendments to the Clean Air Act. Title IV of these amendments established the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_Rain_Program" title="Acid Rain Program" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Acid Rain Program</a>, a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cap_and_trade" title="Cap and trade" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">cap and trade</a> system designed to control emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. Title IV called for a total reduction of about 10 million tons of SO2 emissions from power plants. It was implemented in two phases. Phase I began in 1995, and limited sulfur dioxide emissions from 110 of the largest power plants to a combined total of 8.7 million tons of sulfur dioxide. One power plant in New England (Merrimack) was in Phase I. Four other plants (Newington, Mount Tom, Brayton Point, and Salem Harbor) were added under other provisions of the program. Phase II began in 2000, and affects most of the power plants in the country.

During the 1990s, research continued. On March 10, 2005, EPA issued the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR). This rule provides states with a solution to the problem of power plant pollution that drifts from one state to another. CAIR will permanently cap emissions of SO2 and NOx in the eastern United States. When fully implemented, CAIR will reduce SO2 emissions in 28 eastern states and the District of Columbia by over 70% and NOx emissions by over 60% from 2003 levels.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#cite_note-US_Environmental_Protection_Agency-18" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[18]</a>

Overall, the program's cap and trade program has been successful in achieving its goals. Since the 1990s, SO2 emissions have dropped 40%, and according to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Research_Institute" title="Pacific Research Institute" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Pacific Research Institute</a>, acid rain levels have dropped 65% since 1976.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#cite_note-sfgate.com-19" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[19]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#cite_note-20" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[20]</a> Conventional regulation was utilized in the European Union, which saw a decrease of over 70% in SO2 emissions during the same time period.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#cite_note-21" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[21]</a>

In 2007, total SO2 emissions were 8.9 million tons, achieving the program's long term goal ahead of the 2010 statutory deadline.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#cite_note-22" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[22]</a>

The EPA estimates that by 2010, the overall costs of complying with the program for businesses and consumers will be $1 billion to $2 billion a year, only one fourth of what was originally predicted.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#cite_note-sfgate.com-19" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[19]</a>

....

<h2 style="font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 1.3; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background: none rgb(255, 255, 255);">Affected areas</h2>

<p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; line-height: 22.4px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Places significantly impacted by acid rain around the globe include most of eastern Europe from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland" title="Poland" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Poland</a> northward into Scandinavia,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#cite_note-37" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[37]</a> the eastern third of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States" title="United States" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">United States</a>,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#cite_note-38" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[38]</a> and southeastern <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada" title="Canada" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Canada</a>. Other affected areas include the southeastern coast of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China" title="China" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">China</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan" title="Taiwan" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Taiwan</a>.[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed" title="Wikipedia:Citation needed" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">citation needed</a>]

<h2 style="font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 1.3; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background: none rgb(255, 255, 255);">Prevention methods</h2>

<h3 style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; border-bottom-style: none; line-height: 1.6; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background: none rgb(255, 255, 255);">Technical solutions</h3>

<p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; line-height: 22.4px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Many coal-firing <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_station" title="Power station" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">power stations</a> use <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flue-gas_desulfurization" title="Flue-gas desulfurization" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">flue-gas desulfurization</a> (FGD) to remove sulfur-containing gases from their stack gases. For a typical coal-fired power station, FGD will remove 95% or more of the SO2 in the flue gases. An example of FGD is the wet scrubber which is commonly used. A wet scrubber is basically a reaction tower equipped with a fan that extracts hot smoke stack gases from a power plant into the tower. Lime or limestone in slurry form is also injected into the tower to mix with the stack gases and combine with the sulfur dioxide present. The calcium carbonate of the limestone produces pH-neutral <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_sulfate" title="Calcium sulfate" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">calcium sulfate</a> that is physically removed from the scrubber. That is, the scrubber turns sulfur pollution into industrial sulfates.

In some areas the sulfates are sold to chemical companies as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gypsum" title="Gypsum" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">gypsum</a> when the purity of calcium sulfate is high. In others, they are placed in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landfill" title="Landfill" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">landfill</a>. However, the effects of acid rain can last for generations, as the effects of pH level change can stimulate the continued leaching of undesirable chemicals into otherwise pristine water sources, killing off vulnerable insect and fish species and blocking efforts to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restoration_ecology" title="Restoration ecology" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">restore</a> native life.

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluidized_bed_combustion" title="Fluidized bed combustion" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Fluidized bed combustion</a> also reduces the amount of sulfur emitted by power production.

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_emissions_control" title="Vehicle emissions control" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Vehicle emissions control</a> reduces emissions of nitrogen oxides from motor vehicles.

<h3 style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; border-bottom-style: none; line-height: 1.6; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background: none rgb(255, 255, 255);">International treaties</h3>

<h3 style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; border-bottom-style: none; line-height: 1.6; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background: none rgb(255, 255, 255);">Emissions trading</h3>

<div class="hatnote relarticle mainarticle" style="font-style: italic; padding-left: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 22.4px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Main article: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emissions_trading" title="Emissions trading" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Emissions trading</a></div>

<div class="hatnote boilerplate seealso" style="font-style: italic; padding-left: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 22.4px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">See also: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_Rain_Program" title="Acid Rain Program" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Acid Rain Program</a></div>

The first emissions trading market was established in the United States by enactment of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Air_Act_(United_States)" title="Clean Air Act (United States)" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990</a>. The overall goal of the Acid Rain Program established by the Act<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#cite_note-39" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[39]</a> is to achieve significant environmental and public health benefits through reductions in emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx), the primary causes of acid rain. To achieve this goal at the lowest cost to society, the program employs both regulatory and market based approaches for controlling air pollution.

===

src 16

Science, Policy, and Acid Rain: Lessons Learned1

Robert T. Lackey and Roger L. Blair

National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

200 SW 35th Street

Corvallis, Oregon 97333

Abstract

Throughout the 1970s and 80s there was an ongoing scientific and policy debate about the effect

of sulfur deposition (popularly referred to as "acid rain") on ecological resources in the United States.

The National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program (NAPAP), an interagency organization created by

a 1980 act of Congress, was a response to the debate. It is from the perspective of scientists working in an

assessment program that the following "lessons learned" are developed: (1) Get the policy questions

clear; (2) Focus science on science questions; (3) Feed the client regularly; (4) Conduct an assessment at

the end -- and at the beginning; (5) Learn to live with 80%; (6) Recognize that research enterprises are

more easily corrupted than individual scientists; ( 7) Keep the "is" and the "ought" separate; (8) Avoid

hubris before the mahogany table; (9) Remember that the distribution of benefits and costs is crucial;

(10) Appreciate that research budgets follow fear; (11) Put those resources on the table; and (12) Help

policy analysts and decision makers outgrow their science-envy. Participating in NAPAP was sometimes

painful for many scientists, but it was also rewarding. Policy advocates from all sides attempted to use

the program to support their own policy marketing efforts, or to disparage those of their opponents. Some

very good science was accomplished with s

===

Our cap-and-trade plan to reduce acid rain cut sulfur dioxide emissions in half, at a fraction of the expected costs.

The same market-based approach is at the heart of<a href="http://www.edf.org/climate/california-climate-launch-pad" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.15s ease-in 0s;">California’s Global Warming Solutions Act (AB32)</a> to cut greenhouse gas emissions, creating the largest carbon market in North America. Cities in <a href="http://www.edf.org/climate/why-china-center-our-climate-strategy" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.15s ease-in 0s;">China</a> are now adopting and testing similar measures.

<div class="boxInner" style="margin: 0px; padding: 8px 60px 5px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-align: right; display: block; background: url(" https="https" www.edf.org="www.edf.org" sites="sites" all="all" themes="themes" edf="edf" images="images" nextbutton.gif="nextButton.gif" no-repeat="no-repeat" white="white">How and why carbon markets work</div>

</div>

<h3 style="line-height: 25px; margin: 30px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; vertical-align: baseline; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The acid rain challenge</h3>

<p style="margin: 0px 0px 25px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; vertical-align: baseline; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Thirty years ago, scientists and fishermen began noticing an alarming decline in animal and plant life in lakes and forests throughout the eastern United States.

A National Academy of Sciences report pinpointed the source of the problem: sulfur dioxide emissions, mostly from coal-fired power plants.

SO2 was causing rain and snow to turn acidic, and that acid rain was killing aquatic life and damaging forests. The discovery sparked a heated debate over how to reduce sulfur emissions.

Traditional, top-down government regulation would have simply directed every plant owner to cut pollution by a specific amount in a specific way. But this method, critics said, would cost too much, impede innovation and ignore the knowledge and initiative of local plant operators.

<p style="margin: 0px 0px 25px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; vertical-align: baseline; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The way forward, EDF experts argued, was to harness the power of the marketplace. Our cap-and-trade approach, written into the 1990 Clean Air Act, required that overall sulfur emissions be cut in half, but let each company decide how to do it. And power plants that cut their pollution more than required could sell those extra allowances. A new commodities market was born.

Under this market-based plan, sulfur emissions have gone down faster than predicted and at one-fourth of the projected cost. By 2000, scientists were documenting decreased sulfates in Adirondack lakes, improved visibility in national parks and widespread benefits to human health. The Economist called it "the <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/1200205" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.15s ease-in 0s;">greatest green success story</a> of the past decade."

<p style="margin: 0px 0px 25px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; vertical-align: baseline; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In October 2011, the California Air Resources Board voted to create a cap-and-trade market for greenhouse gases, as required by AB32, the state’s landmark bipartisan 2006 climate bill, which EDF cosponsored and defended in court.

AB32 aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions in California, the world’s eighth largest economy, to 1990 levels by 2020, while generating one-third of its electricity from renewable sources like solar and wind.

The cap-and-trade market alone, which began in 2013, is predicted to slash the state’s warming emissions by an amount equivalent to taking some 3.6 million cars off the road.

==

srcwtch:

myths:

The program established to deal with the problem of acid rain in the United States is often cited as an example of the success of the "cap and trade" approach now being advanced as a solution to global warming. In July, 1998, Environment magazine published a major critique of "four key assumptions and arguments" of the acid rain debate:<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Dispelling_the_myths_of_the_acid_rain_story#cite_note-1" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[1]</a>

<dd style=" line-height: 1.5em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-right: 0px;">First, that acidification was a new problem or newly discovered environmental problem in North America when it became a major policy question in the late 1970s. Second, that sulfur dioxide controls would necessarily be expensive. Third, that the highly touted allowance trading system created under the U.S. Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 would reduce control costs. Fourth, that controls would have a serious negative impact, especially on coal and utility companies. Questions raised about each of these assumptions or arguments point to omissions in the acid rain story. As we continue to grapple with this issue, we need to recognize how actual occurrences differed from myth. (The first of these assumptions is examined largely in the context of Canada; the last three largely but not entirely in the context of the United States.)</dd>

</dl>

</dd>

</dl>

The article has this to say about the third "myth" -- the efficacy of the allowance trading system:<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Dispelling_the_myths_of_the_acid_rain_story#cite_note-2" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[2]</a>

The successful implementation and low compliance costs of Phase I of the Clean Air Act Amendments have been widely credited to the introduction of an allowance trading system for sulfur dioxide. The now regulated utility companies need one allowance for every ton of sulfur dioxide they emit in any given year. Since they receive from EPA only enough allowances to cover allowable emissions, they have three options (other than limiting power generation) to ensure compliance. The familiar ones are adopting control technology to reduce emissions or switching to low-sulfur coal or natural gas. The new option under the CAAA was buying additional allowances to cover their excess emissions. After reducing its emissions to the required amount, a utility can sell any excess allowances that it may still have.

</dd>

</dl>

</dd>

</dl>

The allowance trading provision of the 1990 amendments is a variant of the idea, familiar to economists, of tradable pollution permits. Despite its recent press coverage, this system was more refinement than innovation. Its roots go back to EPA's so-called bubble and offsets policies of the 1970s. Under those arrangements, companies could place all their plants in a given region under a hypothetical bubble and cooperate with others to reduce overall emissions at those particular plants where it was least costly to do so, rather than reducing on a uniform plant-by-plant basis. The bubble policy was, in effect, an intrafirm trading scheme without actual allowances. Emissions trading was also a feature of key acid rain related congressional bills debated over the course of the 1980s (albeit not a much-discussed feature) and of many studies done at this time (including the ICF study for the environmental groups noted earlier). In 1980, a senior EPA official made the argument that the most cost-effective acid rain control program would be one in which market forces, including a tradable permit system, determined control strategies. Appropriately enough, the occasion was a flue gas desulfurization conference.(36)

</dd>

</dl>

</dd>

</dl>

Some utility officials predicted that the value of a sulfur dioxide allowance (i.e., the marginal cost of reducing emissions by one ton) would be $1000 or more, and that it would rise over time.(37) EPA, depending on various sources, estimated a unit cost of $500 to $600, $750, or $400 to $1000. Private, pre-auction transactions in 1992 reportedly took place at around $300-$400 per allowance. Immediately prior to the first official auction in 1993 the average price was about $250 and falling. It then sank over the next four years from around $180 to $159, then to $132 and finally to $68 in 1996. The value of each allowance then rose somewhat during late 1996 and early 1997 and settled into the $90 to $100 range by mid-1997.(38) ([ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 2 OMITTED] on this page.)

</dd>

</dl>

</dd>

</dl>

<dd style=" line-height: 1.5em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-right: 0px;">Various explanations have been offered to explain the low price of the allowances and the lack of trading, especially prior to 1996. Some suggested it was due to the lack of familiarity on the part of utility executives with this type of mechanism. "You have a lot of really bright engineers who have a preference for technology over financial tools," suggested one, possibly somewhat frustrated, sulfur dioxide allowance broker. Others argued the utility industry was disinterested in profit and averse to risk. Utility planners think that "if you screw up, you get shipped off to count transformers." It is, offered one analyst, a bit like trying to teach an elephant to dance.(39)</dd>

</dl>

</dd>

</dl>

All such explanations assume that if these concerns and biases were absent, utilities would naturally be plunging into the allowances market. The simple fact is that many do not have to do so to any significant extent. Even given the prevailing bargain prices for sulfur dioxide allowances, they have other cost-effective options to meet their Clean Air Act obligations, particularly reducing emissions through fuel switching.(40)

</dd>

</dl>

</dd>

</dl>

Allowance trading should not be equated with market mechanisms. To make this equation, as many do, is to ignore the most important element of Title IV. The 1990 CAAA allowed utilities to choose how they would reduce their emissions. It did not force a technological solution, as the 1977 act had effectively done, or prescribe the emission standards to be met by every smokestack. The new act said, to coin a phrase, "just do it." In this way it brought market forces into the decision calculus of the players. These coal-utility market forces, particularly bargain prices for low-sulfur coals, have been more useful in keeping compliance costs down than the highly touted trading system.

</dd>

</dl>

</dd>

</dl>

<dd style=" line-height: 1.5em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-right: 0px;">It has been suggested that "the allowance system does not have to work very efficiently to achieve a large proportion of the economic benefits that have been estimated."(41) Indeed, the allowance market does not have to work at all for most of the cost savings to be realized. Trading may well become a more important factor in reducing compliance costs in the future, if more stringent sulfur dioxide controls are legislated. For now, it is more like the icing on an already sweet cake. The cost effectiveness of fuel switching is the main underlying reason why there has been so much compliance at such substantial savings with so little trading.</dd>

</dl>

</dd>

</dl>

<h2 style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border: none; display: inline; background: none;">Contents</h2>

[<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Dispelling_the_myths_of_the_acid_rain_story#" class="internal" id="togglelink" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">hide</a>] </div>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-1" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Dispelling_the_myths_of_the_acid_rain_story#Resources" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">1 Resources</a>

<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-2" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Dispelling_the_myths_of_the_acid_rain_story#References" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">1.1 References</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-3" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Dispelling_the_myths_of_the_acid_rain_story#Related_SourceWatch_Articles" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">1.2 Related SourceWatch Articles</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-4" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Dispelling_the_myths_of_the_acid_rain_story#External_links" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">1.3 External links</a></li>

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<h2 style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); background: none;">Resources</h2>

<h3 style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom-style: none; background: none;">References</h3>

<li id="cite_note-1" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Dispelling_the_myths_of_the_acid_rain_story#cite_ref-1" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style=" top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px 1px 1px 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important;">Jump up↑</a> Don Munton, "Dispelling the myths of the acid rain story, part 2," Environment, July 1, 1998</li>

<li id="cite_note-2" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Dispelling_the_myths_of_the_acid_rain_story#cite_ref-2" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style=" top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px 1px 1px 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important;">Jump up↑</a> Don Munton, "Dispelling the myths of the acid rain story, part 2," Environment, July 1, 1998</li>

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<h3 style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom-style: none; background: none;">Related SourceWatch Articles</h3>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Climate_impacts_of_coal_plants" title="Climate impacts of coal plants" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Climate impacts of coal plants</a></li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Sulfur_dioxide_and_coal" title="Sulfur dioxide and coal" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Sulfur dioxide and coal</a></li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Coal_Studies" title="Coal Studies" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Coal Studies</a></li>

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<h3 style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom-style: none; background: none;">External links</h3>

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<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Special:Categories" title="Special:Categories" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Categories</a>:

<li style=" margin: 0.125em 0px; display: inline-block; line-height: 1.25em; border-left-style: none; padding: 0px 0.5em 0px 0.25em; zoom: 1;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Category:Coal_Issues" title="Category:Coal Issues" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Coal Issues</a></li>

<li style=" margin: 0.125em 0px; display: inline-block; line-height: 1.25em; border-left-width: 1px; border-left-style: solid; border-left-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0px 0.5em; zoom: 1;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Category:Energy" title="Category:Energy" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Energy</a></li>

<li style=" margin: 0.125em 0px; display: inline-block; line-height: 1.25em; border-left-width: 1px; border-left-style: solid; border-left-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0px 0.5em; zoom: 1;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Category:Environmental_issues_of_coal" title="Category:Environmental issues of coal" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Environmental issues of coal</a></li>

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larry bell forbes 2014

Remember the big “acid rain” scare during the 1970s and 1980s attributing damage to lakes and forests to emissions from Midwestern utilities? If so, did you ever hear the results of a more than half-billion-dollar, 10-year-long national Acid Precipitation Assessment Program study that was initiated in 1980 to research the matter?[cf 60 min?]

Probably not.

As it turned out, those widespread fears proved to be largely unfounded, since only one species of tree at a high elevation suffered any notable effect, and acidity in lakes was traced to natural causes. The investigating scientists reported that they had “turned up no smoking gun; that the problem is far more complicated than it been thought; that other factors combine to harm trees; and that sorting out the cause-and-effect was difficult and in some cases impossible.”

Robert Bruck, a North Carolina State University plant pathologist who worked on the project, <a href="http://www.apple.com/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline; background: transparent;">observed</a>: “if you’re environmentally oriented, you going to find things to be concerned about; if you’re one who finds no reason to get excited, you’ll find much to support that too.”

Although the Reagan-Bush administration refused to sponsor any acid rain legislation before the results were in, the regulatory groundwork had already been established through the EPA to avoid letting a perfectly good crisis go to waste.

Senator John Heinz (R–PA) and Timothy Wirth (D-CO) had previously cosponsored a “Project 88” to provide a pathway for converting environmental issues into business opportunities. That media-fueled alarm about acid rain provided a great basis for new “allowance trading” legislation to create markets for buying and selling excess sulfur dioxide (SO2) credits. Project 88 became the Clean Air Act of 1990.

Carbon-Capping Cronies: Enron, Al Gore and Friends

One of the<a href="http://www.investigatemagazine.com/archives/2006/03/investigate_oct_5.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline; background: transparent;"> big traders in the SO2 allowance market was Enron</a>. Back at that time in the 1990s the company was diversifying its energy business, and already owned the largest natural gas pipeline that existed outside of Russia, a colossal interstate network. However natural was having difficulties competing with coal.

The hype about global warming which had been ginned up by then-Senator Al Gore’s famous 1988 congressional hearings on the matter provided what Enron recognized as a dream opportunity. After all, since a cap-and-trade market had been established for SO2, why not do the same for CO2 which was already being blamed for a climate crisis? Natural gas was a lower CO2-emitter than coal. Besides, they knew exactly where to go in Washington to get some help.

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Air-Con-Seriously-Inconvenient-Warming/dp/0958240140" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline; background: transparent;">Enron’s CEO Ken Lay had met with President Clinton and Vice President Gore in the White House on August 4, 1997</a> to prepare a strategy for the upcoming Kyoto conference in December. Kyoto was the first step toward creating a carbon market that Enron desperately wanted Congress to support.

But there was one very pesky problem. Unlike SO2 which really does produce unhealthy smog, CO2 wasn’t a pollutant…at least not yet…and therefore EPA had no authority to regulate it. So after Al Gore’s Senate pal Timothy Wirth was appointed to become undersecretary of state for global affairs in the Clinton-Gore administration, Enron’s boss Lay began working closely with him to lobby Congress to grant EPA necessary CO2regulatory authority plus also gain public support for the U.N.’s Kyoto Protocol initiative.

And lobby they did. Between 1994 and 1996 the Enron Foundation contributed nearly $1 million to the Nature Conservancy, and together with the Pew Center and the Heinz Foundation they engaged in an energetic and successful global warming fear campaign which included attacks on scientific dissenters. Incidentally, the Heinz Foundation, headed by Teresa Heinz Kerry, generously provided a $250,000 award to Al Gore’s star congressional hearing witness, NASA’s James Hansen, who subsequently went on public record  supporting  her new husband John Kerry’s failed presidential bid.

An <a href="http://cei.org/op-eds-and-articles/enron-sought-global-warming-regulation-not-free-markets" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline; background: transparent;">internal Enron memorandum stated</a> that Kyoto would “do more to promote Enron’s business than almost any other regulatory initiative outside the restructuring [of] the energy and natural gas industries in Europe and the United States.”

The rest, as they say, is history. Al Gore and his partner David Blood, the former chief of Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM) took big stakes in the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) which was poised to make windfall profits selling CO2 offsets if and when cap-and-trade was passed in Congress.  Speaking before a 2007 Joint House Hearing of the Energy Science Committee, Gore told members: “As soon as carbon has a price, you’re going to see a wave [of investment] in it…There will be unchained investment.”

Thanks to a 2010 Republican mid-term House cleaning that didn’t occur.

Windy Hurricane Sensationalism Poses Extreme Science Threat

There’s nothing like terrible and destructive weather events to stir up climate scaremongering. A notable example occurred just prior to the release of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007 Summary for Policymaker’s Report following the devastating 2004 summer storm season which witnessed five landfall hurricanes in Florida which captured media attention throughout the world.

Opportunities to link this unusual pattern to man-made global warming were not lost on some IPCC officials, particularly Dr. Kevin Trenberth, a scientist in the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in New Zealand. In October of that year he participated in a press conference <a href="http://www.apple.com/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline; background: transparent;">that announced</a>: “Experts found global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense activity.”

But there was a serious challenge. The IPCC studies released in 1995 and 2001 had found no evidence of a global warming–hurricane link, and there was no new analysis to suggest otherwise. Dr. Christopher Landsea, an expert on the subject at the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, was astounded and perplexed when he was informed that the press conference was to take place.

As a contributing author on both of the IPCC’s previous reports and an invited author for the upcoming 2007 report, Landsea believed there must be some huge mistake. He had not done any work to substantiate the claim. Nobody had. There were no studies that revealed an upward trend of hurricane frequency or intensity…not in the Atlantic basin or in any other basin.

Landsea wrote to top IPCC officials imploring, “What scientific, refereed publications substantiate these pronouncements? What studies being alluded to have shown a connection between observed warming trends on Earth and long–term trends of tropical cyclone activity?”

Having received no replies, he then requested IPCC leadership assurance that the 2007 report would present true science, saying: “[ Dr. Trenberth] seems to have come to a conclusion that global warming has altered hurricane activity, and has already stated so. This does not reflect consensus within the hurricane research community… Thus, I would like assurance that what will be included in the IPCC report will reflect the best available information consensus within the scientific community most expert on this specific topic.”

After the assurance didn’t come, Landsea resigned from the 2007 IPCC report activities  and issued an open letter presenting his  reasons.

And while the IPCC press conference proclaiming that global warming causes hurricanes received tumultuous responses in the international press, Mother Nature hasn’t paid much attention. In reality, there has been no increase in the strength or frequency of landfall hurricanes in the world’s five main hurricane basins during the past 50-70 years; there has been no increase in the strength or frequency in tropical Atlantic hurricane development during the past 370 years; and the U.S. is currently enjoying the longest period ever recorded without intense Category 3-5 hurricane landfall.

By the way, while there also hasn’t been any increase in mean global temperatures during lifetimes of most of today’s high school students, Kevin Trenberth’s theories still get lots of attention. Searching for answers as to where the “missing heat” that greenhouse gas emissions should have trapped in the Earth’s climate system went, he speculates that the  oceans ate them.   Unfortunately, the science to support this most recent assertion is once again missing as well.

The Big Himalayan Melting Glacier Snow Job

Although the IPCC is broadly represented to the public as the top authority on climate matters, the organization doesn’t actually carry out any original climate research at all. Instead, it simply issues assessments based upon supposedly independent surveys of published peer-reviewed research. However, some of the most influential conclusions summarized in its reports have neither been based upon truly independent research, nor properly vetted through accepted peer- review processes.

IPCC’s representation  in its 2007 report that global warming would likely melt Himalayan glaciers by 2035 prompted great alarm across southern and eastern Asia where glaciers feed major rivers. As it turned out, that prediction was traced to a speculative magazine article authored by an Indian glaciologist, Syed Hasnain, which had absolutely no supporting science behind it. Hasnain worked for a research company headed by the IPCC’s chairman, Rajendra Pachauri. IPCC’s report author, Marari Lai, <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1245636/Glacier-scientists-says-knew-data-verified.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline; background: transparent;">later admitted to London’s Daily Mail</a>, “We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policymakers and politicians and encourage them to take action.”

Well, they were successful and did get some action. This dire prediction prompted concern that rivers fed by the melting Himalayan glaciers would flood, then dry up once the glaciers retreated, endangering tens of millions of people in lowland Bangladesh.

Retired Air Marshal A.K. Singh, a former commander in India’s air force, then foresaw resulting mass migrations across national borders, with militaries (including ours) becoming involved. Purportedly influenced by this, Senate Armed Services Committee members <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/hillary-clinton" class="exit_trigger_set" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline; background: transparent;">Hillary Clinton</a> (D-NY) and John Warner (R-VA) snuck some language into the National Defense Authorization Act which required the Department of Defense to consider the threat of climate change effects in its long-range strategic plans. <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2011/05/31/the-new-military-war-against-climate-change/" class="exit_trigger_set" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline; background: transparent;">One of those national security threats that DOD planners mentioned in 2009 was that global warming would melt the massive Himalayan ice mass</a>.

Political Science: The Winners and Losers

So just how well did this sort of this political science pay off in supporting the various agendas? Well, in the case of Enron…obviously not so great. As for Al Gore, even though his carbon cash-in plans got capped he still harvested lots of the green he was peddling. His pals did okay too. Timothy Worth landed a position as Vice Chair of the United Nations Foundation and the Better World Fund. James Hansen who Al’s congressional hearings catapulted to fame is thankfully no longer at NASA, but is still scoring lucrative talking gigs in between routine arrests at Keystone XL Pipeline protest rallies.

EPA’s employment growth and regulatory ambitions have obviously benefited from IPCC’s alarmist agendas. Its 2009 “endangerment finding” decreeing that atmospheric concentrations of six greenhouse gases (including CO2) “threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations” was based entirely upon IPCC claims which were refuted at the time even by its in-house “Internal Study on Climate” report conclusions. That report, authored by my friend Alan Carlin who was then a senior research analyst at EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics stated:  “…given the downward trend in temperatures since 1998 (which some think will continue until at least 2030), there is no particular reason to rush into decisions based upon a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain most of the available data.”

Yet as IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer <a href="http://blog.heritage.org/2010/11/19/climate-talks-or-wealth-redistribution-talks/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline; background: transparent;">admitted in November 2010</a>, “…one has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. Instead, climate change policy is about how we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth…”

And who are the real losers of such agenda-driven science? One of the biggest is climate science-related credibility. Fellow Forbes contributor Patrick Michaels recently posted an article quoting Dr. Garth Paltridge, a former chief research scientist with Australia’s prestigious Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization. Referring to a dilemma in the overselling of global warming, <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmichaels/2014/02/03/will-the-overselling-of-global-warming-lead-to-a-new-scientific-dark-age/" class="exit_trigger_set" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline; background: transparent;">Partridge observes</a>: “The trap was fully sprung when many of the world’s major national academies of science (such as the Royal Society in the U.K., the National Academy of Sciences in the U.S.A and the Australian Academy of Science) persuaded themselves to issue reports giving support to the conclusions of the IPCC. The reports were touted as national assessments that were supposedly independent of the IPCC and of each other, but of necessity were compiled with the assistance of, and in some cases at the behest of, many of the scientists involved in the IPCC international machinations. In effect, the academies, which are the most prestigious of the institutions of science, formally nailed their colours to the mast of the politically correct.”Partridge then predicts some potentially horrific consequences when the day of reckoning finally arrives. Noting that this day is approaching, he states: “…the average man in the street, a sensible chap who by now can smell the signs of an oversold environmental campaign from miles away, is beginning to suspect that it is politics rather than science which is driving the issue.” This, he concludes:“is a particularly nasty trap in the context of science, because it risks destroying, perhaps for centuries to come, the unique and hard-won reputation for honesty which is the basis of society’s respect for scientific endeavour.”

When this occurs, we all lose.

==

seattle times 1991

<a href="http://search.nwsource.com/search?sort=date&from=ST&byline=Howard%20Kurtz" style="text-decoration: none;">Howard Kurtz</a>

Washington Post

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According to CBS' 60 Minutes,'' a $500 million federal study released last fall takes the conventional wisdom about acid rain and shoots it full of holes.''

According to The Wall Street Journal, the report's findings ``expose the irresponsible hysteria fomented by environmental groups and encouraged in hyperventilating media reports.''

According to Reed Irvine, head of Accuracy in Media, a conservative media watchdog group, the report discredits ``the fearmongers in the environmental movement, the government and the media who have been portraying acid rain as one of those critical problems that must be solved if we are to save the country, civilization and the planet.''

The focus of this rhetorical assault is a 10-year study by the National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program (NAPAP), an inter-agency body created by Congress in 1980 to settle once and for all the debate over the effects of acid rain caused by industrial pollutants.

In three volumes weighing more than 5 pounds, the study concluded that acid rain, while still a problem, has caused far less damage to the nation's forests and lakes than previously estimated.

Yet the report was virtually ignored by The Washington Post and given scant attention by most other major news organizations last year, even while Congress debated and approved new acid-rain controls that will cost up to

$4 billion a year.

Some reporters say privately that it is difficult to write stories that debunk the conventional wisdom of environmental activists, whom the press treats more deferentially than industry spokesmen and other lobbyists. Striking the right balance is particularly difficult on complex science stories, where reporters must rely on ``experts,'' many of whom have ideological axes to grind.

In that regard, critics say, the recent acid-rain report on CBS' ``60 Minutes'' was one-sided because correspondent Steve Kroft included none of the prominent scientists who believe the NAPAP report understated the dangers of acid rain.

Still, the question remains: Why has the most expensive acid-rain study ever conducted received so little media coverage? Several factors are involved:

-- The findings were released in dribs and drabs, in draft'' reports and at scientific conferences, from 1987 through last year, so journalists were never presented with a dramatic new'' report.

-- The report's credibility was hurt by charges from some scientists and environmentalists in 1987 that NAPAP softened its findings under political pressure from the Reagan administration.

-- By the time the massive external review draft'' was released in September, Congress, the Bush administration, the utility industry and environmental lobbyists had cut most of their deals on revising the Clean Air Act, and the news coverage was largely being driven by politics. The legislative debate was essentially over before the report came out,'' one reporter said.

-- The study contained such voluminous data that many groups found something to support their view. While industry officials hailed the report, William Rosenberg, assistant administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said it did show a lot of damage'' from acid rain and that skeptics are interpreting the data the way they want to.''

The NAPAP report said there was ``no evidence of a general or unusual decline of forests in the United States and Canada due to acid rain,'' except for red spruce trees at high elevations.

While acid rain is helping to damage aquatic life in about 10 percent of Eastern lakes and streams, the study said, the number of lakes damaged has remained unchanged since 1980. The report also said that acid rain is contributing to the erosion of buildings and statues and is reducing visibility in the Eastern United States.

Michael Weisskopf, The Washington Post's environmental reporter, said he was on vacation when the report was released. But he said many people involved in the acid-rain debate told him it had little news value.

Just because the government threw a load of money at this thing doesn't mean it's a precious document,'' Weisskopf said. There are enough reports on this subject to line your bookshelves. . . . This is such a dynamic city, with so many pressure groups pushing their point of view, you don't have to do investigative reporting to find these reports. If they are truly important, they are promoted and put forward.''

New York Times reporter Philip Shabecoff noted in a story last March that the NAPAP report has come under criticism from some distinguished scientists that are reviewing it,'' some of whom charged that the program ignored a number of studies suggesting serious air pollution problems.'' But he reported that other experts found the conclusions ``essentially right.''

Shabecoff said last week that the report gave fairly short shrift'' to a body of evidence compiled by highly regarded scientists that acid rain is one of a number of air pollutants that at high altitudes . . . have led to substantial death and deterioration of trees.''

Nevertheless, he said, ``It should have been given more serious treatment by the media. There's a lot of good science in it.''

The controversy was rekindled two weeks ago when James Mahoney, NAPAP's director, said on 60 Minutes'' that news accounts had presented an extreme'' view of acid rain.

Mahoney, in an interview, criticized The Washington Post for its acid rain coverage, saying the paper ``has never, ever carried any article about this program, even though The Post holds itself out to be the paper of record about government business. . . . If you read only The Washington Post, you wouldn't know this program existed.'' Weisskopf did mention the NAPAP study in a November story, and The Post published two articles about it in 1987.

Mahoney also said his report never claimed ``that acid rain is no problem. We find damage to lakes, damage to materials, risk to public health. . . . The only question is how much reduction is appropriate and how much benefit are we going to get from the cost.''

David Hawkins, senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, called the study ``a very expensive exercise in documenting the obvious.'' For example, he said, NAPAP focused on lakes that are constantly acidified, while three times as many lakes are subject to occasional acidification.

Hawkins, who appeared on the 60 Minutes'' broadcast, said the program essentially took industry's characterization of NAPAP's findings. . . . Many scientists were shocked by the one-sidedness of the scientific presentation.''

All the ``60 Minutes'' guests except Hawkins supported the

NAPAP findings, including Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, conservative columnist Warren Brookes, an Ohio coal-company president, Mahoney and Edward Krug, chief watershed scientist at the University of Illinois, who worked on the study.

Even some of the NAPAP participants disagree on its findings. Twelve scientists who worked on the study have charged in a letter that ``60 Minutes'' misrepresented the report's data on water damage.

And the EPA said in a statement that Krug has limited scientific credibility'' and is well outside the mainstream of scientific consensus on the acid-rain issue.''

Krug called the EPA's criticism peculiar'' because the agency was part of the NAPAP study. He said that despite outrageous claims'' by some scientists, the effects of acid rain ``are less than 1 percent of what people were claiming 10 years ago.''

Jeff Fager, a 60 Minutes'' producer, said the segment was meant to focus on a very expensive government study which wasn't paid much attention.''

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