溫度，污染，和電費

You may have noticed your summertime electricity bills, when you are you're cranking the A-C. A–C, they are more pricey than your wintertime payments. That's because air-conditioning is an electricity hog. And when a whole city or your region turns down the thermostat, utilities have to meet that increased demand somehow.

This is often when we turn on the oldest power plants or the dirtier power plants. Tracey Holloway, an atmosphere atmospheric scientist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Some of these old older power plants that may only run on fuel oil or may run on coal , only come on on the hottest days.

Using data from the EPA, Holloway and her team studied how air pollutants respond when the temperature goes up. They found that across the eastern U. S. , for every degree of Celsius temperature rise, power plants spell belched out 13000 140,000 metric tons of additional carbon dioxide. And admissions emissions of the pollutant pollutants sulfur dioxides dioxide and nitrogen oxides rose 3 three and a half percent per extra degree of heat, averaged across the region.

That's especially bad, because hot summer days are the worse worst days to pump out more pollution. The These hot days, when we turn on the air conditioning across the U. S. or across the states state also happen to be the most chemically reactive days. So every unit of air pollution is that's going into the air is , you know , that much more likely to form ozone. The And ozone itself is a potent air pollutant. The study is in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

Holloway says the answer to the this summertime pollution peak maybe may be an energy source that thrives on hot, sunny days. If we could be getting solar electricity during this peak time , it may all set offset this hot weather midday peak and be a great solution for avoiding having to turn on those peaking power plants. In other words: why not use the sun, to keep cool? .

• Words worth to be remembered:
  • cranking: 摇动, 起动, 开动
  • atmospheric: adj. 大气的，大气层的；有情调的，有魅力的
  • thermostat: n. 恒温（调节）器
  • hog: n. 猪；贪婪者，象猪般的人 v. （使）拱起
  • belch: n. 打嗝；喷吐；喷出物 v. 打嗝；喷出
  • offset: n. 抵销，支派，旁支，平版印刷 v. 弥补，抵销

譯文

或许你已经注意到夏季家里的电费情况，当你开启空调后，电费要比冬季更多些了。这是因为，空调属于耗电大户。而当一整座城市或者地区都调低恒温器的时候，功耗就不得不超过了需求。 这常见于当我们打开最古老的设备或者已经比较脏的发电设备时。这是Tracey Holloway，麦迪逊市Wisconsin 大学的一位研究大气的科学家。 这些古老的发电装备中有些只能依靠燃烧燃油或者煤炭，只在最热的日子里才会开启它们。 利用EPA 的数据， Holloway和她的研究团队对当温度升高时，空气污染物如何反应的问题进行了研究。 他们发现，贯穿美国东部， 温度每升高1摄氏度，发电厂可喷射出140，000吨额外的二氧化碳。而且，整个地区平均，热量每增加一度，污染物硫氧化物和氮氧化物的排放量就上升3.5 了个百分点。 这特别糟糕，因为炎热的夏季是泵出更多污染的最差的日子。 这些炎热的日子， 当美国人开启空调，或者一个州的居民开启空调， 这些日子也是化学反应最激烈的日子 。 每单位空气污染物进入空气很有可能就形成了臭氧。而臭氧本身是一种潜在的空气污染物。该研究已发表在《环境科学与技术》杂志上了。 Holloway说，应对夏季污染高峰的对策或许可以采用一种在炎热的阳光充足的日子里也很充足的能源。 如果我们可以在高峰时间得到 太阳能发电，这或许能抵消炎热的天气中午高峰时段的污染物排放，并且这还是一种避免不得不开启那些用电高峰时候才需要开启的发电厂的好办法。换句话说：为什么不用太阳提供的能量，保持凉爽呢。