Hi folks. Two Los Angeles related questions which have nothing to do with each other except in regards to geographic location.
First, smog. To the best of my knowledge, the smog over L.A. is due to the surrounding mountains. We have tight restrictions on pollution here, but the mountains just keep the bad air in with nowhere to dissipate to.
My idea was simply to put a giant hole in the mountains, in a few key locations. Let the wind move through and push the smog out like every other city.
I know it sounds crazy, but what’s crazier is that I was then told the idea has already been considered out here. Is this true? And why hasn’t it been done? The only excuse I’ve heard is that they were afraid it would create a massive and dangerous wind tunnel. My reply: make a bigger hole.
The second question relates to earthquakes. I know they’re unpredictable. But can we cause controlled quakes? Force the earth to release the pent up energy every few months, causing frequent small quakes so they can’t build up into one massive one. Is this sound theoretically? What about practically?
Well, with regards to the smog, you are right, it is partially due to the mountains, the reason the air quality is bad year around. I don’t think the answer is as simple as holes in the mountains though.
Smog is fairly common in major cities this time of year, due to light winds. Also, equally importantly, is the presence of an “inversion” several hundred to several thousand feet above the ground. Normally temperature decreases with height, however, and inversion is defined as temperature increasing with height. Therefore, the air that would normally rise and dissipate when the ground heats up, is “capped” by the inversion, and thus, cannot go anywhere. Combine this with the mountains, and you have ugly air. Same thing also happens in Mexico City.
Inversions are very common in the morning any day of the year, but usually “burn off” as the day progresses. However, in the case of Los Angeles (as well as many other cities in the central U.S. this time of year), you normally (i.e. climatologically) are located on the eastern side of the subtropical high (a quasi-permanent weather feature) that is over the Pacific, which equates to large-scale sinking motion (and light winds), which makes it even harder to “burn-off” the inversion.
So, to sum up, three factors make Los Angeles the smog capital of the country…
Light winds
The presence of an inversion
Mountains
Many cities have 1) and 2) this time of year and thus have smog to some degree. But adding in 3) and the fact that L.A. doesn’t get many weather systems this time of year to “clean” the air, makes it pretty bad.
As to the earthquake question, will let a geologist go for that one…
The Chinese have tried moving mountains to reduce smog. There seems to be some controversy over whether the method works. A Google search on the terms ‘smog mountain china remove’ gives some interesting links. Several are in pdf format, so are best acessed straight from the search results.
With some effort (but not much) I was able to find this link to some of the proposed solutions to the Los Angeles smog problem. It includes the ‘drilling holes through the mountains’ solution mentioned in the OP.
I’ll take the earthquake question. I live in the SF Bay Area and have thought of the same thing. Here’s the problem. The San Andreas fault runs for hundreds, if not thousands of miles. You would need to map the entire fault and determine where stress is building up and where it isn’t. You sure wouldn’t want to trigger an 8.0 accidentally (if that was possible) when you are trying to generate a bunch of 2.5’s! And that’s just one fault. There are scores of active faults in the Bay Area that you would have to map and “try to control”. And that’s just the Bay Area. Perhaps in Japan you could try it.
So the question is 1) Is it feasible? Probably not due to the uncertainty and shear number of faults involved and 2) Is it worth pursuing? Again, I would think not since the downside might be a huge quake that you, in fact, created. Releasing pressure on large scale faults isn’t an exact science and you could cause more problems then you fix.
The best solution IMO is to enforce stronger building codes and don’t allow construction near earthquake zones.
