What Ever Happened to Acid Rain?

All the hoopla about Global Warming, and how it’s to blame for hot summers, cold winters, and the socks missing from the laundry, has made me look back to a more innocent time in my life. The catastrophes weren’t global, they were local, and I totally believed them.

So, in the interest of seeing if I’ve become more savvy or just more jaded, I decided to look up some stuff on Acid Rain. I remember how concerned I was about acid rain back in high school. The science made sense to me, and they had REAL EXAMPLES. I mean, there were lakes where fish could no longer live. There were forests that died completely!

Turns out the forest (in Vermont) died in 1952, or thereabouts, due to extreme weather. Had it been acid rain, the effect would have been more widespread and repeatable. It wasn’t.

Turns out the lake was returning to its natural acid state after the human activity which resulted in pH elevation was curtailed.

Turns out that a lot of the whole Acid Rain thing is farce and hype and outright fraud. It does exist, and there are negative effects. And let’s face it, why would we want to dirty our home any more than necessary? But it’s not an environmental serial killer – it’s not nearly so sexy. Maybe that’s why we don’t hear a lot about it any more.

Meanwhile, about 30 people died while I was writing this, because we won’t let other countries use DDT. And I’ve never seen any outrage over that in the media.

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