Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico is part of a network created by NOAA's Chemical Sciences Laboratory to monitor anthropogenic aerosols in the Earth's gases of life even as emissions released by oil and gas extraction in the Permian Basin threaten Texas and the other horrible red states on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. NOAA wants to be able to detect whether Solar Radiation Modification (SRM), sometimes called solar geoengineering or albedo modification, is happening. Sandia is also home to the Plasma Research Facility and is operated by a subsidiary of Honeywell International under contract with the Department of Energy.
Laura Swiler, a senior scientist at Sandia, developed an algorithm that could take an observed aerosol plume from any source — say, a volcanic eruption, or a large wildfire — and look backward in time to estimate its size and point of origin. It’s a hard problem, Dr. Swiler said, because “the aerosol plume is moving.” [The U.S. Is Building an Early Warning System to Detect Geoengineering]In New Mexico's Second Congressional District the oil and gas industry operators in the Permian Basin just abandon hundreds of orphan wells leaving the state and feds to do the work to cap them. Some eighty percent of the world's oil transactions are priced in dollars subject to enforcement actions by the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice. But we all know Texas is a failed state. From wildfires to being the 50th freest state to enriching New Mexico's cannabis retailers to gas pipeline explosions to hurricanes: the Lone Star State is in turmoil.
The wind carries the faint perfume of hydrocarbons — hints of plastic, hints of glue, hints of gasoline — picked up as it crosses the most productive portion of the most productive oilfield in the country, the Permian Basin. As the wind blows north, the dust and chemicals turn the morning sky from a light blue to a hazy white. In a couple of hours the air will carry the sizzling tang of ozone, eyes will burn, lungs will ache, and distant landmarks will lose their detail and filter into shades of light gray. It envelops passing cars with a potent vapor that smells like a mix of fingernail polish and paint thinner. The resident of the nearest house, which sits about 1,000 feet away, wouldn’t talk about the oil well next door. [The EPA Stalled and Then a Fix for New Mexico Oil and Gas Pollution Evaporated]Disadvantaged populations have been subject to environmental racism for decades and in 2014 Nobel Prize winner, Professor Paul Krugman warned Americans that Earth haters want to destroy America.
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