You just can’t make this stupidity up!!!!!
‘Weapons-grade stupidity’: Gird your loins! EPA now waging a War on Sunlight
The EPA tweets ……….
✔@EPA
Think sunny days are good for plants? Not always. Sunlight causes #ozone to form, which harms foliage, weakens trees: http://www3.epa.gov/airquality/ozonepollution/ecosystem.htm …
Don’t bother trying to go to the page with the massive stupid on it. The EPA has already taken it down.
Some entertaining pushback in the replies. @EPA took down the post, probably because of the insanity factor. https://twitter.com/EPA/status/648969378852151297 …
Beyond the necessity of sunlight for all life on the earth’s surface ……. well, all life, the EPA’s tweet is even more anti-science once one understands what ozone actually does for plant life!
Yes, sunlight does cause ozone to form ……. in the stratosphere! And, thank God it does!!!! You see, ozone is created by the ultra-violet part of sunlight’s spectrum, mostly by the dangerous UVc spectrum. In other words, O3 (ozone) absorbs/blocks UVc and UVb (along with other molecules). Wanna know what’s really harmful to plant-life? Well, that would be UVc.
Yes, yes, for the pedantic, some miniscule amount of ozone at the surface is caused by sunlight. Mostly, when nature causes ozone at the surface, it’s because of lightening. ….. and yes, hydrocarbons also create O3 when sunlight hits it.
The benefits of sunlight is always much greater than any imaginary detriment. Indeed, the imaginary “detriment” the EPA cites, provides us (and plants!) with a much greater benefit.
All inhabitants of planet Earth have a vested interest in reliable information.
Human tyrants have always had a vested interest in prohibiting public knowledge of the forces that actually control planet Earth.
That seems to be the basis for the ~500 year (1543-2015) conflict between science and tyrants. See “Stalin’s science“
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/STALINS_SCIENCE.pdf or
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281017812_STALIN'S_SCIENCE
James, they were not completely wrong about that. I live in the Southeast. We have lots of VOC producing plants here. The VOC and sunlight makes far more ozone than lightning does, for the plants make tons of VOC for every hour that the temperature locally is high enough for them to release terpenes and ethylene. That ‘pine-wood’ smell is first from the terpenes and secondly from the near surface ozone that gets made by photolysis. I think the threshold temperature for that is 80F to 86F (27C to 30C), so pretty much any day with full sun and no breeze from April to November can have photochemical haze. The haze helps lower the local temperatures and help protect the plants. The plants have enzymes that handle the ozone.
People have no clue about how much life has remade the Earth.
Hey James, I think there is a mistake in the picture – referring the green colour for plants/chlorophyll. It is not the most absorbed but the most reflected?
LMAO! You’re right! They can’t even get that right!
Crap!!! Yeh, you’re right, Lars. I didn’t look it over before using it. I picked it up from a Twitchy quote on the subject. I hope it isn’t, but, it probably is from one of our textbooks.
I think twitchy said it’s from an EPA website.
Correct. Chlorophyll absorbs strongly blue and red light.
Steven Goddard aka Tony Heller: “The Price of Freedom Is Eternal Vigilance.”
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2015/10/01/the-price-of-freedom-is-eternal-vigilance-2/