Tonight, September 4, 2023, the Colorado Sun digital newspaper, broadcast its much-advertised presentation on “Peak Ozone” with the hopeful tag line of “Looking at Colorado’s ozone season, how it’s going, and at policy changes”.

The presentation was recorded, which you can see at:

I commend the Sun reporter, Michael Booth, for interviewing the two top air quality regulators, Michael Ogletree, director of the Air Pollution Control Division, and Mike Silverstein, executive director of the Regional Air Quality Council. This is indeed a public service on a tough public health issue.

However, the reporter never asked the really tough questions about positively identifying the sources of our ozone precursors — which can only be done if you have sensors capable of measuring them, which the state currently does not possess at scale. (It does have a few sensors that can detect some ozone precursors; but they are not powerful enough to identify the chemical source of the precursors, i.e. vehicles vs O&G.) He did attempt to warm up to the topic, asking when are the regulators going to start using “sticks” instead of “carrots” in their policy decisions — but it never really went anywhere.

Poor Mr Ogletree and Mr Silverstein have the unenviable jobs of explaining to the public why our progress in reducing our summer ozone has been so poor. I must say they have learned to become quite adept at every possible euphemism about air quality sources and deflecting the questions to easier topics; but by the end of the presentation, hearing them talk was like eating cotton candy: all air and sweetness, but no substance.

For example: here is a screenshot of one of the main tables of data discussed:

This looks very scientific, doesn’t it? I mean, anytime you mention “ppb — parts per billion — that means this was an actual measurement, right?

Actually….no. Not exactly. These are not measurements at all, but model estimates, based on counts of the sources of emissions in the ‘Ozone Source’ column, like number of cars, number of factories, and number of O&G wells. For the latter, the state has to trust that industry is giving it accurate data, too, since they don’t have the resources to go out and count them themselves. And I have no idea how the ‘Backgrond and Natural’ source is measured or counted, which would be interesting to know; but they made much ado about how much “natural” ozone is out there, which apparently we can’t do much about. Really? Why don’t other areas have this problem? That was not explained.

So, it may just be my cynical nature, but I would rather trust an actual measurement, not take some model’s estimate, of something this serious.

Which is why we need to get a BoulderAIR monitoring station in Larimer County — so we can actually know what’s in our air.

Let’s hope the Colorado Sun gets some constructive criticism about their presentation — and by next year get some real answers to some real questions.