Last Monday I featured a parody T-Shirt of the sort flogged in support of worthy causes like 350.org, Chemtrails, and The March For Marching:Last Wednesday
The New York Times
ran this deadpan call for climatically correct fireworks:
A Greener Red, White and Blue?
Welcome to the Climate Fwd: newsletter
On this Fourth of July, we’re thinking about the environmental impact of fireworks. And if you missed it, we have a report about global warming putting 800 million people in South Asia at risk...
By Tryggvi Adalbjornsson The New York Times Climate Team JULY 4 2018
“Mom, are they going to turn off fireworks because of you?”
Kimberly Prather remembers her kids asking her that when they learned that she had written a scientific study of fireworks pollution. Professor Prather is a chemist at University of California San Diego who spends most of her time studying cloud formation. But she has a side interest — fireworks.
Kimberly Prather remembers her kids asking her that when they learned that she had written a scientific study of fireworks pollution. Professor Prather is a chemist at University of California San Diego who spends most of her time studying cloud formation. But she has a side interest — fireworks.
The goal of fireworks is to be big, loud and colorful. To achieve that, a range of chemicals is needed, often including charcoal-based fuel along with various metal compounds to make the colors. For instance, copper has a role in blue bursts, and strontium in red ones...
There’s a chance for “green” fireworks in the future, though — and not the barium kind. Another pyrotechnic-minded professor, Thomas M. Klapötke of Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany, has been looking for ways to make fireworks better for the environment. His research focuses on military-grade products (flares, for instance)...
In 2014, his team introduced a new way to make blue fireworks. Traditionally, chlorine was involved, but “Our new chlorine-free coloring agent could revolutionize the manufacture of fireworks and blue-emitting signal flares for the U.S. Army and Navy,” he said at the time.
Coming soon, in other words: Maybe more fireworks that don’t take your breath away?
