I flew down to Las Vegas today to do some work that I’ll talk about later. Also, I had time to document Shot Show 2010 for a number of sources including Wired, The Firearm Blog and other resources. More on that stuff later as well…

For now, I wanted to show you a top down view of the infamous inversion that residents of the Wasatch Front have been dealing with for the last little while. It gets depressing enough to drive you into the mountains to get a little sunlight and escape the dirty air which unfortunately, has been ranking as the unhealthiest air in the country this week. At any rate, climbing out of Salt Lake International Airport rewarded us with this view of the inversion from about 15,000 feet up. The image up top is the view over the Kennecott Copper smelter while the image below shows a view looking towards downtown Salt Lake City underneath the muck.

Its ugly folks. Even though this inversion only lasts for a small portion of the year, the thought of significant growth over the next 20 years and all the attendant pollution that will generate is enough to make me seriously consider moving. Granted, not all of this is pollution, but is pollution mixed with clouds and fog, but still… We’ll need to start reducing automobile traffic or reduce particulate production from all sorts of manufacturing. I wonder what sort of air filtration could be undertaken for the Wasatch Front? I am sure the physics could be worked out, but how many cooling tower like contraptions with air cleansing filters would be required to cleanse the air? How big would they have to be and what sort of cost would that involve?