| biswo |
Posted
on 12-Oct-00 10:46 PM
Safa tempo and air quality
I am surprised to know that you believe this Wal-street reporter quoting a
nepalese person who says he feels the air is better now. One thing you
need to know is whether this air quality changed is caused by safa tempo
or some thing else. If it is caused by safatempo then the question arises
whether there is any data where we can test the hypothesis of clean
visibility before and after the introduction of safatempos in Kathmandu.
Ashu, you seem like a person with who has a very little knowledge on
environmental sciences and how to test the hypothesis that air quality has
changed significantly before and after the introduction of Safatempo. I
also found you quite a gullible person when the article comes from some
one who praise you or your friends. You definitely have superior
complexity and you love to brag about things that other people say rather
than studying about the subject and learn the detail of it (since you are
not an expert in every thing as you claim to be!). While in the past, it
may have been the case that you have written in every subject without much
knowledge, I suppose your false expertism feeling is not revered by at
least me. I would believe in safa tempo and air quality only if the
correlation between those two are highly significant. If it is true that
the air quality has changed (in your case the visibility which is a
function of sulpher content in the air), I would like to find what are the
other variables that have changed during the time period (such as is there
more afforestation in the region, is there less Kiln or wood burning or
coal burning). I also like to see the statistical result in the time
series data collected over the time period on visibility regressed over
CO2, SO2, NO2. You may want to learn about all of this by contacting an
environmental economists about this. As for me, I contacted Dr Krishna
Paudel who is an Assistant professor in Auburn University and used to be a
visiting professor of environmental economics in NASA.
Mobile source of pollutants such as vehicles emit there criteria
pollutants : ozone, CO, and NO2. To control these pollutants one should
depend on a comparatice analysis of costs and benefits with paricular
reference to such factors as
1. The number of agents regulated
2. The rate of deterioration while in use
3. The life expectancy of automobile
Since safatempos operate in batteries, the disposal of lead is going to be
a big problem in KATHMANDU. Water quality in KTM is already so pathetic
you do not want to make even worst with lead poison. Therefore, few of
the solutions for air quality improvement in Kathmandu is not only bring a
cost effective vehicle such as electric tram or train that operate inside
Kathmandu but also internalizing the cost of externality caused by airpollution. I have known a very good MIT graduate railway engineer Dr.
Dharma Acharya who can probably look at the introduction of this kind of
possibility in Nepalese context. Also, hydrogen power vehicle could be an
alternative if they become commercially viable. Remember, economics
matter in every thing whether your vehicle moves only 7.5 per hour or
more.
For the home work purpose, Ashu please read some environmental journal
articles before writing more on this topic. If you do not know where can
you find them, I will help you to locate them, but your famous reluctance
to read sources referred is not forgotten here. But
please do read about the subject matter before writing all the nonsense
garbage again in this topic.
Good day.
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