June 14, 2012 • 30 mins
Along with the hole in the ozone layer, acid rain was one of the first international environmental threats. It's fallen to the wayside in the face of climate change, but we have yet to lick it. Join Chuck and Josh as they revive the 80s drumbeat.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, that's Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
and we're doing this again. We're bringing the science this
(00:23):
time for once in our lives. Acid Rain, Yeah, boarding
down from the acid clouds. That's not how that song goes.
That's not how acid rain by Dejoon Daego. That guy
so great. We watched that again the other day just
by a chance, and I hadn't seen it in a
couple of years, and it's still just he's hard to like,
(00:45):
Chad said our friend, it's hard to believe that that's
voice comes out of that guy. And he's kind a
new one, like mother Economy really good. Yeah, yeah, he's
a good guy. Um. I don't know what chocolate Rains about,
but there's a good call out. I would be very
interested to hear everyone's interpretation of what chocolate rain means
(01:06):
that too. Um, let's see, Chuck, do you remember back
in the eighties hearing about two things too terrifying environmental things.
One the Ozone layer, specifically the whole in the ozone layer,
(01:28):
and two acid rain, you throw an apartheid and that
is the eighties. Yeah, I'm not gonna play sen City nope. Um, yeah,
that's pretty much. Also, don't forget cocaine, Ronald Reagan, jelly
Beans and the team and Magnum. But he kind of
transcends the eighties. Really, if you ask me, he's just
(01:50):
a man of all times, never gets old. Um. The
weird thing is this, since I guess maybe the mid
nineties or whatever, you don't hear about any of those
things except for Magnum any longer. Yeah, because of course
global warming took over and everyone's afraid we're gonna melt now,
and so they said, well, we don't need to worry
(02:10):
about acid rain anymore. We fix that problem. Right. I
think there's a perception that, you know, acid rain was
fixed and taken care of, and astoundingly in a lot
of ways, it has been. Yeah, they've come a long way, baby.
Those Onlaer, by the way, has not been. As a
matter of fact, another one opened up in the Antarctic.
Now we have two. But that's a that's another topic
(02:31):
of discussion. Acid rain let's get back to it though.
Is a very Uh. It's a nice success story in
a lot of ways. And it came from a comprehensive
understanding of a problem and a comprehensive will to address it.
That's right, that's how you take care of stuff. There
is still a long way to go, though, I was
(02:51):
bringing me back down earth. Not completely fixed, but it
is good. It's heartwarming to know that you can see
a problem and and reduce something like acid rain precisely, so, Chuck,
what is acid rain? Acid rain, Josh, is a transboundary issue,
which means even though it just occurs in the mainly
(03:11):
occurs in the Northern Hemisphere, it still is going to
cross over and affect the rest of the world. And
the reason that's worth mentioning is because for many years,
up until the nighties, um, they thought it was a
very local problem. Uh, and then they realized, oh no,
it's not, and everybody kind of got on board with
fixing it. That's ry Um. But like you said, Northern Hemisphere,
(03:34):
it occurs mostly there because we're the dirtiest, more industrial,
most polluting. Yeah. So specifically, what it is, um is
rain with acid in it. Literally, Uh, emissions of sulfur dioxide,
s O two, nitrogen oxides and O X from things
like cars and factories, power plants, all those nasty things,
(03:57):
Lightning strikes, volcanoes, the natural ones. Um. They will actually
react with water vapor in the atmosphere and turn into acid,
sulfuric and nitric acids, and they can fall in the
form of wet rain, um, snow, sleep, bog or they
can be deposited as particulates and gases. That's dry acid rain. Well,
(04:21):
the whole dry things called acid depositions because it can
be wet or dry, right, and it's being deposited exactly
on the earth. Yeah, that's what that word is. It's
branched from deposit, isn't it. I think so, Yeah, it
didn't even occur to me. Um and so you so
bravo unexplaining acid rain, and bravo Sarah Dowdy who wrote this. Yeah,
(04:43):
she did a very good job on this. UM. And
when you can't just be like, well this this rain
seems a little hanky, So we're gonna say that that's
acid rain. They actually know. Um, there's a there's a
very um strict definition of what constitutes acid rain. And
then they use the pH scale to determine it. Good
old pH scale. So the pH scale is um this
(05:05):
spectrum between highly acidic and highly basic, right and um.
Acid rain obviously falls towards the acidic side of the scale,
and in the middle of this scale is pure water.
And that's at a seven point. Oh, it's not at zero.
It's entirely neutral. It's neither basic nor acidic. Yeah. I
just find it interesting that it's a scale of zero
(05:27):
to fourteen with seven being in the middle. Seven's in
the middle of zero to fourteen. Yeah, but I mean
it just for me, I would say zero is neutral
and anything above would be negative. But whatever. In the
grand tradition of Um civilization established by the Romans, though,
the pH scale starts at one rather than zero. Um.
(05:47):
But yeah, I see what you're saying. Actually here, I
like the fact I think it goes from one to fourteen. Well,
then Sarah got it wrong. Um, in the the graph
here says one to fourteen. I wonder, um, but back
to its seventh in the middle either way, seven, Yeah,
(06:10):
so it would start a zero. I guess. Um. So
the more acidic is the lower numbers, and the more
basic is the higher numbers. Right. The thing is is
rain isn't neutral. Normal rain still is slightly acidic, and
it hits about five point six on the pH scale. Right,
(06:31):
Um so why well, it combines with carbon dioxide in
the atmosphere to form a slightly acidic um carbonic acid deposition,
which is branch from the root word deposit um. So
uh so acid rain is something like five point three
to four point oh as far as um acidity goes, right,
(06:54):
four point three to five okay, Um, yeah, that's a
big difference. Um, And it's something like what the acidity
between orange juice and black coffee? Yeah, which Sarah is
keen to point out, which is a bit of a misnomer.
While that's true, you can't say, well, like well it's
just like coffee and then you're like that's not gonna
still coffe in your grass and it's not gonna kill it.
(07:16):
See I'm and yeah, my hat was off to her
for saying, like what what what? We don't just be
like orange juice is fine, coffee is fine, because if
you think about it, if a rained orange juice all
the time, you'd probably have the same impact. Would be
awesome about just like all the old cup out the
window each morning, I'd be like, oh, it's with pulp today. Um.
(07:37):
The problem with acid rain though, Josh, even though it
is has the acidity of a coffee or an orange juice,
it um can wreck small parts of an ecosystem. And
as we all know, if you wreck small parts of
an ecosystem, there's a domino effect that occurs that spreads
throughout an ecosystem. One of the most valuable things on
(07:58):
the planet is something like plankton. Yeah, plankton is high currents.
It's like honey buns in prison, but for the yeah,
you know pretty much. And when plankton, which is very
very sensitive to changes in pH um, especially when it
becomes more acidic, when plankton dies and small invertebrates die,
then yeah, it starves out the larger animals, fish and frogs,
(08:23):
and then we start to get hungry, especially the French
we frog legs e g. Acid rain is a huge
problem in France, that's right, And eventually it's just mass hysteria.
Pretty much got some dogs living together kimberally from different
strokes and up with green hair. That's right. Uh. There
are a couple of UM programs UM that monitor this
(08:44):
UH in the US, the National Atmospheric Deposition Program and
they handled the wet deposition and the Clean Air Status
and Trends Network. UM handled the dry And what they're
looking for is trying to determine the critical load, which
is how much an ecosystem can UM take before it
starts saying, man, I'm breaking down. You're killing me with
(09:08):
this stuff. UM. And the pH scale is determined by
UH the concentration of hydrogen ions right in a substance.
That's what makes it either UM acidic or basic. Right.
So what these programs are doing is measuring the concentration
of hydrogen ions to determine acidity. And they say, oh, well,
(09:30):
this is this is too much science. I would just
walk out and be like, look at this. This plankton
is not looking very healthy. This is acidic. I don't
even need to measure this stuff. You can just spot
unhappy plankton pretty much. It's not how you Once you
know what to look for, I'll teach you sometimes it's
not hard. When you've met happy plankton, your life will
(09:50):
never be the same. The difference is like night and day.
So UM surface waters are where acid rain is to
hit you most initially, um, precipitation, and you don't really
think about this. You think it, well, it rains in
a lake, what in a and in a river. What
it does is it rains on the ground. And although
(10:11):
sure it rains on the water surface, it's also going
to run through soil to get to water. Right. One
of the purposes of soil. One of the functions that
provides is um buffering uh water that percolates through it
toward groundwater, towards bodies of water. And what's buffering me? Well,
it has the ability to neutralize acids. Yeah, and then awesome, yeah, um,
(10:36):
I think it brings everything more toward purified water or
neutral pH right. Yeah, but I think specifically with a
lot of like the um, the minerals that are in
the soil, like say calcium, they counteract acidic um rain
acidic water to bring it more toward neutral right. The
(10:57):
problem is is when the soil's buffering capacity is a reloaded,
there's just too much for it to handle. A lot
of that unneutralized acid gets passed along into the body
of water, and then you start to have those big
problems with the little unhappy plankton. Yeah, it's almost like
a water filter that's past its date. You know, it
(11:17):
just can't filter anymore. Nice analogy, thank you. UM. So
we've talked about what happens where the French end up
with a lot of big problems in UM coastal areas.
Uh nitrogen, Remember we have UM what is it sulfuric
acid and what acid? Yeah, nitric acid. Okay, So nitric
(11:39):
acid is based on nitrogen. Nitrogen has a really interesting
impact on coastal waters where when it's deposited UM, it
supports algae blooms because algae love nitrogen. And when algae
blooms take place, algae starts to die eventually, and they
sustained bacteria, specifically aerobic bacteria that flourishes itself and sucks
(12:05):
up all the oxygen in the water, starving fish, shellfish,
um plants, and eventually like leading to at the very
least a strain, if not a collapse on coastal ecosystem.
So too much acid rain will increase algae. Increased algae
means increased dyeing algae, and increased dyeing algae means increased
(12:26):
bacteria and they rob fishes of their oxygen. That's a
domino effect. One of the things I love about acid
rain is just how elegantly understandable it is. It is
very basic and simple. I love it. It's not basic acidic. Um.
So this we're not done with the soil too, by
(12:47):
the way, in a in an addition to UM, I
guess decreasing its buffering capacity or overloading its buffering capacity. Um.
Acid rain has the terrible habit of drawing aluminum out
of the soil. Yeah, it's normally locked in the soil.
(13:07):
Acid rain draws it out, which means that tree roots
can suck it up, and that's poison to them. That's
a toxin. Yeah. And Sarah makes a good point here.
It's not like a it's not a situation where you're
gonna find a rainforest is leveled all of a sudden
because of acid rain, or you're gonna find a lake
or a river that looks nasty and decaying and disgusting
(13:31):
water might actually look cleaner. Yeah. And then ironic it is.
It's ironic and beautiful. And um, what it's gonna do
to your forest is it's gonna stunt its growth and
over time it's gonna have an effect. Yeah, like you're
gonna have bald trees. Um. Because in addition to this,
(13:52):
toxins coming out in the soil on low lying areas
from acid rain um, and it also degrading helpful minerals
like we said, like calcium and other things that trees
also used. Um. In higher elevations, that acid rain turns
into an acid fog. That is a did that's crazy
to me that that I'm going to say at this
(14:13):
time that is a great band name acid yeah. Uh.
But so just imagine like trees bathing in that all
the time, um, that that strips their leaves and basically
makes them chili. Yeah. And that's why when you see
mountains in the Appalachian Mountains that have bald peaks, it's
(14:33):
not because trees can't grow up there. They could grow
up there if they weren't sucking in and being surrounded
by acid clouds. That's nuts. Just it doesn't you have
to be raining, right, yeah, you know, it's just in
particulates in the air. Uh. And that that kind of
leads to how it affects us because we are not
(14:56):
nearly as sensitive to these kind of changes um with
acid that that acid rain brings. Right now, it's not
gonna burn. You know, you can swim in a lake, uh,
an acid lake and you will be fine. Um, but
an acidic lake, let's say, and yeah, because it's just
above battery acid. So you couldn't swim in a battery
(15:17):
acid like that. That's terrible. Um, But you could swim
in an acidic lake as far as acid rains concerned. Um,
the problem comes with that dry deposition. The UM sulfuric
and nitric ox or nitric acids combine UH in low
lying areas with ozone yeah, VOCs and create small which
(15:45):
is bad for your respiratory system ground level baby. Um.
It can also do things like if you've ever seen
an old building that is UH, or a monument that's
got these little smooth grooves that could be acid corrosion
for like years and years to wear away stone. It'll
(16:06):
It's no friend to your car paint job, that's sure,
which I mean if you're into your car, it's a
big deal. Yeah. That tree, sap, pollen, bird droppings, and
acid rain are the four enemies of your of your
auto paint. They're considered corrosive, environmental fallout, and friend of Mako. Yeah,
Micho loves that stuff. Um so, uh, the idea about
(16:32):
acid rain, consider this that stone statue you're just describing.
That takes a long time. A lot of orange juice
rain has to fall on that thing for it to
become pock marked and weathered prematurely, right, Um, and it's
had actually plenty of time to do that. What the
statue of Edward James almost you'd be like spinning image.
(16:57):
So sorry, um so the man you got me with that?
So cool? The reason the reason it's had a long
we've had a long time, or that that statue was
weathered over very long times because we've had acid rain
for quite some time, ever since the beginning of the
Industrial Revolution, they think pretty much because remember they thought
it was very localized problem. And the reason they thought
(17:18):
it was local was because it had such quick rapid effects.
But the acid rain, I don't know who who coined
the term acid fog, but acid rain was coined by
an Englishman named Robert Angus Smith back in eighteen seventy two. Yeah,
and it was the monuments that made him say, what
in the heck is going on here? And there weren't
(17:40):
a lot of people back then, like I was thinking
when I read this like, man, it would have been
great if during this boom of ingenuity and industrial revolution
there were just as many people concerned with the impact
it might have. But it just couldn't have worked that way.
It's almost like they just had to do their thing
and then leave us to figure out how to fix it,
(18:02):
how to clean up the mess sort of. I don't
know if those things to two things could have evolved.
So I think you're onto something. I mean, maybe we
wouldn't have um, I don't know, the iPhone. Maybe, who knows,
Maybe we would I don't know. Maybe we'd be better off, yeah,
a lot better off. Maybe we would have more stuff.
(18:23):
Maybe it would have changed the way of thinking rather
than just get get get, you know, it would have
been get. But also, how's this going to affect other people?
So Smith was a man alone. An early ecologist will say, yeah,
it's so good for him. Man, you've been coming up
with some great, like off the cuff, creative solutions. Well,
(18:47):
that's not a solution. If we had a time machine,
it would be okay, Yeah, the way back machines in
the shops. Uh. So scientists did determine um by what
the seventies nineteen seventies that acid rain was a problem,
and it was transboundary, it's not just local. And so
then in night thankfully the Acid Deposition Act, I said
(19:12):
you know what, we're gonna study this for ten years
and we're gonna see what's going on ten years later
in nineteen nine and they said, yep, that's a big problem. Yea,
So we need to do something about it, and they
did very quickly. Congress um took the already established Clean
Air Act and added UM sulfur dioxide and UH nitrous oxide,
(19:32):
nitrogen oxide right to the list of like most wanted
reduction people materials. And this was in with the Clean
Air Act and the Acid Rain program. So this is
when everything really starts to come into effect, right UM.
And it I guess at least as far as sulfur
(19:56):
dioxide emissions went, it was wildly successful. Compared to nine
eight levels in two thousand ten. The the sulfur dioxide
emissions have been reduced by that's good. That's astounding. That
is astounding because consider this, that's not from hitting this.
(20:17):
Since that's hitting we already got it back down to
seventeen years. That's amazing. And the way they did that
is through a cap and trade scheme. I kind of
like the old cap and trade. It makes a lot
of sense cap and trade, Josh. Basically what they say
(20:37):
is we're gonna set a cap for how much s
O two that your power plant can create. It's a limit, um,
but they set the cap, and they says, you know what,
you've got these allowances though, if you come under, you
get these credits and you can actually sell those to
other companies that are in need. And it just I
don't know, so I'm about it makes sense to me.
It makes a lot of sense. And then over time
(20:59):
you decrease the amount that that people are allowed to admit,
and when you're cutting it into these allowances, those allowances,
by by virtue of the scarcity of them, become more valuable. Yeah,
it really incentivizes you to do something about it for
your company exactly. So that worked really well for nitrous
(21:19):
oxide or for sodium sulfur dioxide. Man, what are we
even talking about here, um, And with nitrogen oxides, they
didn't institute a cap and trade until like two thousand three,
so it was lagging a little bit, but it too
is something of a success story. They um, they reduced
(21:39):
it from twenty seven million tons in nineteen eighty to
sixteen point three million tons in two thousand and eight.
That's pretty good. And so this has had a discernible
effect on the environment. UM. Apparently, Uh, let's see the
acidic likes. The number of acidic lakes throughout the country
(22:02):
have reduced dramatically. UM. There are seventy fewer acidic lakes
and streams in Wisconsin and Michigan than there were in UM.
A third of the bodies of water that were acidic
in the early nineties in the Adirondacks and the Northern
Appalachians are now not considered acidic at all. So there
(22:23):
have been like huge strides made other places there have
not been. And also you found this really good little
kind of overview about acid rain and what happened to
it by Nina Rostogi from Slate. That's whose stuff I'm
quoting right now. So there have been huge strides, but
there's still, like you said, originally a long way to go. Yeah.
(22:43):
The National Acidic Precipitation Assessment Program said that. Um. Another
another is what we need to hit to really restore
these ecosystems, And I think we're headed there. It sounds
like it like we'll check in in ten years and
follow up on this. M Who am I kidding? We could?
(23:08):
Well no, well, well well it'll be our comeback special.
Whatever happened to whatever happened to acid? Right? Great? Um,
but Chuck, I think that this is a really valuable lesson.
If you have a non polarized international initiative to take
(23:28):
care of a problem, and you can shout down business
interests and just say no, this is what you're doing
and here's how you're gonna do it. Um, you can
make things happen. Yeah. I guess no one was saying
that should rain doesn't exist is really not bad. It
was pretty much nonpolarizing except for big business. And also
(23:49):
where any jobs lost by this cap and trade scheme?
Was industry hurt by this cap and trade scheme? I
would wage, you're probably not I would wage or not.
But they're still in business. They're just doing it with
clean coal and wet scrubbers and yeah, all that all
that good stuff. Yeah, it's interesting. And I'm not even
an environmentalist. I hate the environment. I'm just fascinated by
(24:11):
this stuff that's not true. Well, if you want to
learn more about acid rain or acid fog. You can
type either of those words into the search bar at
how stuff works dot com and that will bring up
this very interesting article by Sarah Dowdy. And uh, I said, um,
acid fog, which means the time for listener mail before
(24:32):
listener mail quickly. We are going to Comic Con this
year for the first time. Yeah, like we're like presenting
at comic Con. We're not just going as fans. And
this is the one in San Diego, the original the
original comic Con that is coming up in uh what
mid July? Yeah, July twelve, Yeah, San Diego ce A
and I guess what do We were not quite sure
(24:54):
when we're going, so we just want to say stay
tuned for details. Yeah, but we will be there. I
mean like we have flights booked in every thing, hotels,
the whole stup bank. Yeah, and it may or may
not our presentation may or may not include certain other
I don't think we should go any further. You're gonna
get us in trouble. Well, we're trying to land some
some whales. Okay, I'm gonna call this m I t
(25:17):
nerd alert. I got a very nerdy email from an M.
I T student, and I teased her and said, I'm
gonna read this on the air and make fun of you.
Is that okay? And she went, oh yeah, And here's
some other stuff you can make fun of me about.
Um Hi, Josh and Chuck and Jerry. I love your
recent episode on how language evolved. But as an m
I T. Senior graduating in a month which is probably
like right now, actually, um, I felt it my duty
(25:40):
to make a very important correction to your intro. We
are called the m I T Engineers, not the m
I T eggheads. I think I called a meg heads. Indeed,
our unofficial school song is the m I T. Engineer's
Drinking Song, which includes many nerdy jokes, some of the
expense of that small liberal arts school up the river Harvard. Additionally,
our mask dot is Tim the beaver, Tim being M
(26:03):
I T spelled backwards. It's so glamor because beaver's are
nature's engineers. In fact, every class has a special ring
called the brass Rat, which depicts a beaver on a bezel.
Be eazy e l what is that? See, I'm so dumb.
I don't even know what a bezel. We would not
make it an M I T I suppose supposedly it's
(26:24):
one of the most recognizable rings in the world. Man
um I started listening to the podcast during long, long
hours and lab and grateful and I'm grateful to you
guys for entertaining me during my past four years. In
m I T PS and m I T we refer
to everything by number, including majors and buildings linguistics. The
field of Mr Chomsky is called Course twenty four The
(26:47):
Inimitable Mr Talks gnome I believe uh and is housed
in a pretty crazy looking building, Building thirty two, a
k a. The Status Center. Sorry to ramble on, I'm
very proud of my soon of the Alma Mater and PPS.
I thought of one more really geeky thing you might
want to make fun of regarding M I T S mascot,
the humble Beaver. One of our cheers for football games.
(27:09):
It is called the Beaver cheer, and I will do
that right now. I'm a beaver, You're a beaver. We
are beavers all and when we get together we do
the beaver call. E to the U D you slash
d x E to the x d x CO sign
(27:30):
secont tangent sign three point one, four, one five nine
integral radical m U d v IM. These are smart
things that understand. Uh, slipstick slide rule m I T
go tech. I feel like you just issued some sort
of orders that only like three people understand, and now
(27:52):
they're carrying out some sort of terrible mission. Yeah, like
the nuclear suitcases, like heating up right now, the bomba side. Yeah,
I can't even say, you're beaver cheer. That's how dumb
I am. It's okay, Chuck, who's it from? Laura? Thanks
a lot, Laura. That was a good one, And I
have one for you. You want to hear an engineer
joke that my dad, who was an engineer, taught me
a long time ago from the Herbal Elvis himself. Let's
(28:14):
hear it takes a minute. When will you bear with me?
So an engineer, a priest, and a doctor are all
playing golf one day, and um, ahead of them are
these guys and they stink they're hitting there, they're driving
in like the opposite direction of the whole. They're just
really terrible at the game of golf. So the beer
(28:35):
guy comes around on his cart and um, the priest
is like, do you have any idea. Who these guys
are there? They I've never seen anybody play golf this badly.
And the beer guy goes, oh, those are three firefighters,
and um, they put out the clubhouse when it caught fire.
But they all lost their sight in this fire. So
we let them play whenever they want. And then priestly
(28:56):
takes a step back and puts his heart on his
or his hand on his heart, and he goes, Oh,
Faith and Begora, just give me their names. I'm gonna
go pray for them. I'm gonna have my whole my
whole church pray for them at mass this Sunday that
they their sight is restored. And the doctors like that
is terrible, Like, here's my card. Make sure that these
guys get in touch with me because I know some
(29:17):
really good eye surgeons and making we can do something
about them. And the engineer goes, why can't they just
play at night? Pretty good? Huh, very nice, Mr Clark,
thank you very much. Like a good joke like that.
It's a good one, just not a one liner, but
it told joke. Yeah, I love it. Yeah. Um, so
let's see, Chuck, Oh, what were we gonna ask for? Um?
(29:41):
Is that to be Oh, what does chocolate rain means?
We want to know what chocolate rain means. Also, if
your tas on day and you listen to this, if
you tell us what it means that would hold a
lot of water would be great. That'd be pretty special.
You can tweet to us taison day or otherwise um
at s Y s K podcast. You can also visit
us on Facebook right Facebook dot com slash stuff you
(30:04):
Should Know, and you can send us an email at
Stuff podcast at Discovery dot com. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.
M brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
(30:28):
It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, that's Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
and we're doing this again. We're bringing the science this
(00:23):
time for once in our lives. Acid Rain, Yeah, boarding
down from the acid clouds. That's not how that song goes.
That's not how acid rain by Dejoon Daego. That guy
so great. We watched that again the other day just
by a chance, and I hadn't seen it in a
couple of years, and it's still just he's hard to like,
(00:45):
Chad said our friend, it's hard to believe that that's
voice comes out of that guy. And he's kind a
new one, like mother Economy really good. Yeah, yeah, he's
a good guy. Um. I don't know what chocolate Rains about,
but there's a good call out. I would be very
interested to hear everyone's interpretation of what chocolate rain means
(01:06):
that too. Um, let's see, Chuck, do you remember back
in the eighties hearing about two things too terrifying environmental things.
One the Ozone layer, specifically the whole in the ozone layer,
(01:28):
and two acid rain, you throw an apartheid and that
is the eighties. Yeah, I'm not gonna play sen City nope. Um, yeah,
that's pretty much. Also, don't forget cocaine, Ronald Reagan, jelly
Beans and the team and Magnum. But he kind of
transcends the eighties. Really, if you ask me, he's just
(01:50):
a man of all times, never gets old. Um. The
weird thing is this, since I guess maybe the mid
nineties or whatever, you don't hear about any of those
things except for Magnum any longer. Yeah, because of course
global warming took over and everyone's afraid we're gonna melt now,
and so they said, well, we don't need to worry
(02:10):
about acid rain anymore. We fix that problem. Right. I
think there's a perception that, you know, acid rain was
fixed and taken care of, and astoundingly in a lot
of ways, it has been. Yeah, they've come a long way, baby.
Those Onlaer, by the way, has not been. As a
matter of fact, another one opened up in the Antarctic.
Now we have two. But that's a that's another topic
(02:31):
of discussion. Acid rain let's get back to it though.
Is a very Uh. It's a nice success story in
a lot of ways. And it came from a comprehensive
understanding of a problem and a comprehensive will to address it.
That's right, that's how you take care of stuff. There
is still a long way to go, though, I was
(02:51):
bringing me back down earth. Not completely fixed, but it
is good. It's heartwarming to know that you can see
a problem and and reduce something like acid rain precisely, so, Chuck,
what is acid rain? Acid rain, Josh, is a transboundary issue,
which means even though it just occurs in the mainly
(03:11):
occurs in the Northern Hemisphere, it still is going to
cross over and affect the rest of the world. And
the reason that's worth mentioning is because for many years,
up until the nighties, um, they thought it was a
very local problem. Uh, and then they realized, oh no,
it's not, and everybody kind of got on board with
fixing it. That's ry Um. But like you said, Northern Hemisphere,
(03:34):
it occurs mostly there because we're the dirtiest, more industrial,
most polluting. Yeah. So specifically, what it is, um is
rain with acid in it. Literally, Uh, emissions of sulfur dioxide,
s O two, nitrogen oxides and O X from things
like cars and factories, power plants, all those nasty things,
(03:57):
Lightning strikes, volcanoes, the natural ones. Um. They will actually
react with water vapor in the atmosphere and turn into acid,
sulfuric and nitric acids, and they can fall in the
form of wet rain, um, snow, sleep, bog or they
can be deposited as particulates and gases. That's dry acid rain. Well,
(04:21):
the whole dry things called acid depositions because it can
be wet or dry, right, and it's being deposited exactly
on the earth. Yeah, that's what that word is. It's
branched from deposit, isn't it. I think so, Yeah, it
didn't even occur to me. Um and so you so
bravo unexplaining acid rain, and bravo Sarah Dowdy who wrote this. Yeah,
(04:43):
she did a very good job on this. UM. And
when you can't just be like, well this this rain
seems a little hanky, So we're gonna say that that's
acid rain. They actually know. Um, there's a there's a
very um strict definition of what constitutes acid rain. And
then they use the pH scale to determine it. Good
old pH scale. So the pH scale is um this
(05:05):
spectrum between highly acidic and highly basic, right and um.
Acid rain obviously falls towards the acidic side of the scale,
and in the middle of this scale is pure water.
And that's at a seven point. Oh, it's not at zero.
It's entirely neutral. It's neither basic nor acidic. Yeah. I
just find it interesting that it's a scale of zero
(05:27):
to fourteen with seven being in the middle. Seven's in
the middle of zero to fourteen. Yeah, but I mean
it just for me, I would say zero is neutral
and anything above would be negative. But whatever. In the
grand tradition of Um civilization established by the Romans, though,
the pH scale starts at one rather than zero. Um.
(05:47):
But yeah, I see what you're saying. Actually here, I
like the fact I think it goes from one to fourteen. Well,
then Sarah got it wrong. Um, in the the graph
here says one to fourteen. I wonder, um, but back
to its seventh in the middle either way, seven, Yeah,
(06:10):
so it would start a zero. I guess. Um. So
the more acidic is the lower numbers, and the more
basic is the higher numbers. Right. The thing is is
rain isn't neutral. Normal rain still is slightly acidic, and
it hits about five point six on the pH scale. Right,
(06:31):
Um so why well, it combines with carbon dioxide in
the atmosphere to form a slightly acidic um carbonic acid deposition,
which is branch from the root word deposit um. So
uh so acid rain is something like five point three
to four point oh as far as um acidity goes, right,
(06:54):
four point three to five okay, Um, yeah, that's a
big difference. Um, And it's something like what the acidity
between orange juice and black coffee? Yeah, which Sarah is
keen to point out, which is a bit of a misnomer.
While that's true, you can't say, well, like well it's
just like coffee and then you're like that's not gonna
still coffe in your grass and it's not gonna kill it.
(07:16):
See I'm and yeah, my hat was off to her
for saying, like what what what? We don't just be
like orange juice is fine, coffee is fine, because if
you think about it, if a rained orange juice all
the time, you'd probably have the same impact. Would be
awesome about just like all the old cup out the
window each morning, I'd be like, oh, it's with pulp today. Um.
(07:37):
The problem with acid rain though, Josh, even though it
is has the acidity of a coffee or an orange juice,
it um can wreck small parts of an ecosystem. And
as we all know, if you wreck small parts of
an ecosystem, there's a domino effect that occurs that spreads
throughout an ecosystem. One of the most valuable things on
(07:58):
the planet is something like plankton. Yeah, plankton is high currents.
It's like honey buns in prison, but for the yeah,
you know pretty much. And when plankton, which is very
very sensitive to changes in pH um, especially when it
becomes more acidic, when plankton dies and small invertebrates die,
then yeah, it starves out the larger animals, fish and frogs,
(08:23):
and then we start to get hungry, especially the French
we frog legs e g. Acid rain is a huge
problem in France, that's right, And eventually it's just mass hysteria.
Pretty much got some dogs living together kimberally from different
strokes and up with green hair. That's right. Uh. There
are a couple of UM programs UM that monitor this
(08:44):
UH in the US, the National Atmospheric Deposition Program and
they handled the wet deposition and the Clean Air Status
and Trends Network. UM handled the dry And what they're
looking for is trying to determine the critical load, which
is how much an ecosystem can UM take before it
starts saying, man, I'm breaking down. You're killing me with
(09:08):
this stuff. UM. And the pH scale is determined by
UH the concentration of hydrogen ions right in a substance.
That's what makes it either UM acidic or basic. Right.
So what these programs are doing is measuring the concentration
of hydrogen ions to determine acidity. And they say, oh, well,
(09:30):
this is this is too much science. I would just
walk out and be like, look at this. This plankton
is not looking very healthy. This is acidic. I don't
even need to measure this stuff. You can just spot
unhappy plankton pretty much. It's not how you Once you
know what to look for, I'll teach you sometimes it's
not hard. When you've met happy plankton, your life will
(09:50):
never be the same. The difference is like night and day.
So UM surface waters are where acid rain is to
hit you most initially, um, precipitation, and you don't really
think about this. You think it, well, it rains in
a lake, what in a and in a river. What
it does is it rains on the ground. And although
(10:11):
sure it rains on the water surface, it's also going
to run through soil to get to water. Right. One
of the purposes of soil. One of the functions that
provides is um buffering uh water that percolates through it
toward groundwater, towards bodies of water. And what's buffering me? Well,
it has the ability to neutralize acids. Yeah, and then awesome, yeah, um,
(10:36):
I think it brings everything more toward purified water or
neutral pH right. Yeah, but I think specifically with a
lot of like the um, the minerals that are in
the soil, like say calcium, they counteract acidic um rain
acidic water to bring it more toward neutral right. The
(10:57):
problem is is when the soil's buffering capacity is a reloaded,
there's just too much for it to handle. A lot
of that unneutralized acid gets passed along into the body
of water, and then you start to have those big
problems with the little unhappy plankton. Yeah, it's almost like
a water filter that's past its date. You know, it
(11:17):
just can't filter anymore. Nice analogy, thank you. UM. So
we've talked about what happens where the French end up
with a lot of big problems in UM coastal areas.
Uh nitrogen, Remember we have UM what is it sulfuric
acid and what acid? Yeah, nitric acid. Okay, So nitric
(11:39):
acid is based on nitrogen. Nitrogen has a really interesting
impact on coastal waters where when it's deposited UM, it
supports algae blooms because algae love nitrogen. And when algae
blooms take place, algae starts to die eventually, and they
sustained bacteria, specifically aerobic bacteria that flourishes itself and sucks
(12:05):
up all the oxygen in the water, starving fish, shellfish,
um plants, and eventually like leading to at the very
least a strain, if not a collapse on coastal ecosystem.
So too much acid rain will increase algae. Increased algae
means increased dyeing algae, and increased dyeing algae means increased
(12:26):
bacteria and they rob fishes of their oxygen. That's a
domino effect. One of the things I love about acid
rain is just how elegantly understandable it is. It is
very basic and simple. I love it. It's not basic acidic. Um.
So this we're not done with the soil too, by
(12:47):
the way, in a in an addition to UM, I
guess decreasing its buffering capacity or overloading its buffering capacity. Um.
Acid rain has the terrible habit of drawing aluminum out
of the soil. Yeah, it's normally locked in the soil.
(13:07):
Acid rain draws it out, which means that tree roots
can suck it up, and that's poison to them. That's
a toxin. Yeah. And Sarah makes a good point here.
It's not like a it's not a situation where you're
gonna find a rainforest is leveled all of a sudden
because of acid rain, or you're gonna find a lake
or a river that looks nasty and decaying and disgusting
(13:31):
water might actually look cleaner. Yeah. And then ironic it is.
It's ironic and beautiful. And um, what it's gonna do
to your forest is it's gonna stunt its growth and
over time it's gonna have an effect. Yeah, like you're
gonna have bald trees. Um. Because in addition to this,
(13:52):
toxins coming out in the soil on low lying areas
from acid rain um, and it also degrading helpful minerals
like we said, like calcium and other things that trees
also used. Um. In higher elevations, that acid rain turns
into an acid fog. That is a did that's crazy
to me that that I'm going to say at this
(14:13):
time that is a great band name acid yeah. Uh.
But so just imagine like trees bathing in that all
the time, um, that that strips their leaves and basically
makes them chili. Yeah. And that's why when you see
mountains in the Appalachian Mountains that have bald peaks, it's
(14:33):
not because trees can't grow up there. They could grow
up there if they weren't sucking in and being surrounded
by acid clouds. That's nuts. Just it doesn't you have
to be raining, right, yeah, you know, it's just in
particulates in the air. Uh. And that that kind of
leads to how it affects us because we are not
(14:56):
nearly as sensitive to these kind of changes um with
acid that that acid rain brings. Right now, it's not
gonna burn. You know, you can swim in a lake, uh,
an acid lake and you will be fine. Um, but
an acidic lake, let's say, and yeah, because it's just
above battery acid. So you couldn't swim in a battery
(15:17):
acid like that. That's terrible. Um, But you could swim
in an acidic lake as far as acid rains concerned. Um,
the problem comes with that dry deposition. The UM sulfuric
and nitric ox or nitric acids combine UH in low
lying areas with ozone yeah, VOCs and create small which
(15:45):
is bad for your respiratory system ground level baby. Um.
It can also do things like if you've ever seen
an old building that is UH, or a monument that's
got these little smooth grooves that could be acid corrosion
for like years and years to wear away stone. It'll
(16:06):
It's no friend to your car paint job, that's sure,
which I mean if you're into your car, it's a
big deal. Yeah. That tree, sap, pollen, bird droppings, and
acid rain are the four enemies of your of your
auto paint. They're considered corrosive, environmental fallout, and friend of Mako. Yeah,
Micho loves that stuff. Um so, uh, the idea about
(16:32):
acid rain, consider this that stone statue you're just describing.
That takes a long time. A lot of orange juice
rain has to fall on that thing for it to
become pock marked and weathered prematurely, right, Um, and it's
had actually plenty of time to do that. What the
statue of Edward James almost you'd be like spinning image.
(16:57):
So sorry, um so the man you got me with that?
So cool? The reason the reason it's had a long
we've had a long time, or that that statue was
weathered over very long times because we've had acid rain
for quite some time, ever since the beginning of the
Industrial Revolution, they think pretty much because remember they thought
it was very localized problem. And the reason they thought
(17:18):
it was local was because it had such quick rapid effects.
But the acid rain, I don't know who who coined
the term acid fog, but acid rain was coined by
an Englishman named Robert Angus Smith back in eighteen seventy two. Yeah,
and it was the monuments that made him say, what
in the heck is going on here? And there weren't
(17:40):
a lot of people back then, like I was thinking
when I read this like, man, it would have been
great if during this boom of ingenuity and industrial revolution
there were just as many people concerned with the impact
it might have. But it just couldn't have worked that way.
It's almost like they just had to do their thing
and then leave us to figure out how to fix it,
(18:02):
how to clean up the mess sort of. I don't
know if those things to two things could have evolved.
So I think you're onto something. I mean, maybe we
wouldn't have um, I don't know, the iPhone. Maybe, who knows,
Maybe we would I don't know. Maybe we'd be better off, yeah,
a lot better off. Maybe we would have more stuff.
(18:23):
Maybe it would have changed the way of thinking rather
than just get get get, you know, it would have
been get. But also, how's this going to affect other people?
So Smith was a man alone. An early ecologist will say, yeah,
it's so good for him. Man, you've been coming up
with some great, like off the cuff, creative solutions. Well,
(18:47):
that's not a solution. If we had a time machine,
it would be okay, Yeah, the way back machines in
the shops. Uh. So scientists did determine um by what
the seventies nineteen seventies that acid rain was a problem,
and it was transboundary, it's not just local. And so
then in night thankfully the Acid Deposition Act, I said
(19:12):
you know what, we're gonna study this for ten years
and we're gonna see what's going on ten years later
in nineteen nine and they said, yep, that's a big problem. Yea,
So we need to do something about it, and they
did very quickly. Congress um took the already established Clean
Air Act and added UM sulfur dioxide and UH nitrous oxide,
(19:32):
nitrogen oxide right to the list of like most wanted
reduction people materials. And this was in with the Clean
Air Act and the Acid Rain program. So this is
when everything really starts to come into effect, right UM.
And it I guess at least as far as sulfur
(19:56):
dioxide emissions went, it was wildly successful. Compared to nine
eight levels in two thousand ten. The the sulfur dioxide
emissions have been reduced by that's good. That's astounding. That
is astounding because consider this, that's not from hitting this.
(20:17):
Since that's hitting we already got it back down to
seventeen years. That's amazing. And the way they did that
is through a cap and trade scheme. I kind of
like the old cap and trade. It makes a lot
of sense cap and trade, Josh. Basically what they say
(20:37):
is we're gonna set a cap for how much s
O two that your power plant can create. It's a limit, um,
but they set the cap, and they says, you know what,
you've got these allowances though, if you come under, you
get these credits and you can actually sell those to
other companies that are in need. And it just I
don't know, so I'm about it makes sense to me.
It makes a lot of sense. And then over time
(20:59):
you decrease the amount that that people are allowed to admit,
and when you're cutting it into these allowances, those allowances,
by by virtue of the scarcity of them, become more valuable. Yeah,
it really incentivizes you to do something about it for
your company exactly. So that worked really well for nitrous
(21:19):
oxide or for sodium sulfur dioxide. Man, what are we
even talking about here, um, And with nitrogen oxides, they
didn't institute a cap and trade until like two thousand three,
so it was lagging a little bit, but it too
is something of a success story. They um, they reduced
(21:39):
it from twenty seven million tons in nineteen eighty to
sixteen point three million tons in two thousand and eight.
That's pretty good. And so this has had a discernible
effect on the environment. UM. Apparently, Uh, let's see the
acidic likes. The number of acidic lakes throughout the country
(22:02):
have reduced dramatically. UM. There are seventy fewer acidic lakes
and streams in Wisconsin and Michigan than there were in UM.
A third of the bodies of water that were acidic
in the early nineties in the Adirondacks and the Northern
Appalachians are now not considered acidic at all. So there
(22:23):
have been like huge strides made other places there have
not been. And also you found this really good little
kind of overview about acid rain and what happened to
it by Nina Rostogi from Slate. That's whose stuff I'm
quoting right now. So there have been huge strides, but
there's still, like you said, originally a long way to go. Yeah.
(22:43):
The National Acidic Precipitation Assessment Program said that. Um. Another
another is what we need to hit to really restore
these ecosystems, And I think we're headed there. It sounds
like it like we'll check in in ten years and
follow up on this. M Who am I kidding? We could?
(23:08):
Well no, well, well well it'll be our comeback special.
Whatever happened to whatever happened to acid? Right? Great? Um,
but Chuck, I think that this is a really valuable lesson.
If you have a non polarized international initiative to take
(23:28):
care of a problem, and you can shout down business
interests and just say no, this is what you're doing
and here's how you're gonna do it. Um, you can
make things happen. Yeah. I guess no one was saying
that should rain doesn't exist is really not bad. It
was pretty much nonpolarizing except for big business. And also
(23:49):
where any jobs lost by this cap and trade scheme?
Was industry hurt by this cap and trade scheme? I
would wage, you're probably not I would wage or not.
But they're still in business. They're just doing it with
clean coal and wet scrubbers and yeah, all that all
that good stuff. Yeah, it's interesting. And I'm not even
an environmentalist. I hate the environment. I'm just fascinated by
(24:11):
this stuff that's not true. Well, if you want to
learn more about acid rain or acid fog. You can
type either of those words into the search bar at
how stuff works dot com and that will bring up
this very interesting article by Sarah Dowdy. And uh, I said, um,
acid fog, which means the time for listener mail before
(24:32):
listener mail quickly. We are going to Comic Con this
year for the first time. Yeah, like we're like presenting
at comic Con. We're not just going as fans. And
this is the one in San Diego, the original the
original comic Con that is coming up in uh what
mid July? Yeah, July twelve, Yeah, San Diego ce A
and I guess what do We were not quite sure
(24:54):
when we're going, so we just want to say stay
tuned for details. Yeah, but we will be there. I
mean like we have flights booked in every thing, hotels,
the whole stup bank. Yeah, and it may or may
not our presentation may or may not include certain other
I don't think we should go any further. You're gonna
get us in trouble. Well, we're trying to land some
some whales. Okay, I'm gonna call this m I t
(25:17):
nerd alert. I got a very nerdy email from an M.
I T student, and I teased her and said, I'm
gonna read this on the air and make fun of you.
Is that okay? And she went, oh yeah, And here's
some other stuff you can make fun of me about.
Um Hi, Josh and Chuck and Jerry. I love your
recent episode on how language evolved. But as an m
I T. Senior graduating in a month which is probably
like right now, actually, um, I felt it my duty
(25:40):
to make a very important correction to your intro. We
are called the m I T Engineers, not the m
I T eggheads. I think I called a meg heads. Indeed,
our unofficial school song is the m I T. Engineer's
Drinking Song, which includes many nerdy jokes, some of the
expense of that small liberal arts school up the river Harvard. Additionally,
our mask dot is Tim the beaver, Tim being M
(26:03):
I T spelled backwards. It's so glamor because beaver's are
nature's engineers. In fact, every class has a special ring
called the brass Rat, which depicts a beaver on a bezel.
Be eazy e l what is that? See, I'm so dumb.
I don't even know what a bezel. We would not
make it an M I T I suppose supposedly it's
(26:24):
one of the most recognizable rings in the world. Man
um I started listening to the podcast during long, long
hours and lab and grateful and I'm grateful to you
guys for entertaining me during my past four years. In
m I T PS and m I T we refer
to everything by number, including majors and buildings linguistics. The
field of Mr Chomsky is called Course twenty four The
(26:47):
Inimitable Mr Talks gnome I believe uh and is housed
in a pretty crazy looking building, Building thirty two, a
k a. The Status Center. Sorry to ramble on, I'm
very proud of my soon of the Alma Mater and PPS.
I thought of one more really geeky thing you might
want to make fun of regarding M I T S mascot,
the humble Beaver. One of our cheers for football games.
(27:09):
It is called the Beaver cheer, and I will do
that right now. I'm a beaver, You're a beaver. We
are beavers all and when we get together we do
the beaver call. E to the U D you slash
d x E to the x d x CO sign
(27:30):
secont tangent sign three point one, four, one five nine
integral radical m U d v IM. These are smart
things that understand. Uh, slipstick slide rule m I T
go tech. I feel like you just issued some sort
of orders that only like three people understand, and now
(27:52):
they're carrying out some sort of terrible mission. Yeah, like
the nuclear suitcases, like heating up right now, the bomba side. Yeah,
I can't even say, you're beaver cheer. That's how dumb
I am. It's okay, Chuck, who's it from? Laura? Thanks
a lot, Laura. That was a good one, And I
have one for you. You want to hear an engineer
joke that my dad, who was an engineer, taught me
a long time ago from the Herbal Elvis himself. Let's
(28:14):
hear it takes a minute. When will you bear with me?
So an engineer, a priest, and a doctor are all
playing golf one day, and um, ahead of them are
these guys and they stink they're hitting there, they're driving
in like the opposite direction of the whole. They're just
really terrible at the game of golf. So the beer
(28:35):
guy comes around on his cart and um, the priest
is like, do you have any idea. Who these guys
are there? They I've never seen anybody play golf this badly.
And the beer guy goes, oh, those are three firefighters,
and um, they put out the clubhouse when it caught fire.
But they all lost their sight in this fire. So
we let them play whenever they want. And then priestly
(28:56):
takes a step back and puts his heart on his
or his hand on his heart, and he goes, Oh,
Faith and Begora, just give me their names. I'm gonna
go pray for them. I'm gonna have my whole my
whole church pray for them at mass this Sunday that
they their sight is restored. And the doctors like that
is terrible, Like, here's my card. Make sure that these
guys get in touch with me because I know some
(29:17):
really good eye surgeons and making we can do something
about them. And the engineer goes, why can't they just
play at night? Pretty good? Huh, very nice, Mr Clark,
thank you very much. Like a good joke like that.
It's a good one, just not a one liner, but
it told joke. Yeah, I love it. Yeah. Um, so
let's see, Chuck, Oh, what were we gonna ask for? Um?
(29:41):
Is that to be Oh, what does chocolate rain means?
We want to know what chocolate rain means. Also, if
your tas on day and you listen to this, if
you tell us what it means that would hold a
lot of water would be great. That'd be pretty special.
You can tweet to us taison day or otherwise um
at s Y s K podcast. You can also visit
us on Facebook right Facebook dot com slash stuff you
(30:04):
Should Know, and you can send us an email at
Stuff podcast at Discovery dot com. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.
M brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
(30:28):
It's ready, are you
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
Show Links
AboutOrder Our BookStoreSYSK ArmyRSSPopular Podcasts
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Decisions, Decisions
Welcome to "Decisions, Decisions," the podcast where boundaries are pushed, and conversations get candid! Join your favorite hosts, Mandii B and WeezyWTF, as they dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often-taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday, Mandii and Weezy invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability, and authenticity, they share their personal journeys navigating their 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships, and engaging in thought-provoking discussions that challenge societal expectations. From groundbreaking interviews with diverse guests to relatable stories that resonate with your experiences, "Decisions, Decisions" is your go-to source for open dialogue about what it truly means to love and connect in today's world. Get ready to reshape your understanding of relationships and embrace the freedom of authentic connections—tune in and join the conversation!