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Smoke has caused temperature forecasts to go crazy

cliffmass.blogspot.com

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Re: Smoke has caused temperature forecasts to go crazy

#131
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coal smoke in that case, not wood smoke. Coal is a terrible pollutant. If you survive the wood smoke, the literature suggests you'll be back to normal in a couple weeks.

It's not the wood I'm worried about, it's all the non-organic material in the smoke. Plastic, household chemicals, paint, etc... In some years we'll see a massive spike in cancer and respiratory issues from these fires.

I doubt there is a significant enough amount of those materials being burned. Millions of acres of forest has burned compared to relatively few buildings.

Re: Smoke has caused temperature forecasts to go crazy

#132
post #91

I'm in southeastern Canada years ago smoke from Quebec forest fires made the sky red. The soil where I am from is also red. It was like living on Mars. The fun ends quickly when your throat gets scratchy and there is no where you can go to escape it the air in your house has to come from outside too. I'm not looking forward to any smoke now my dad has COPD, IPF, is on oxygen, and he's elderly. If we get any amount of…

>I'm not looking forward to any smoke now my dad has COPD, IPF, is on oxygen, and he's elderly. If we get any amount of smoke here it will be the end of him. It's hard enough trying to keep him from contracting SARS-Cov-2 and developing covid-19 Seriously, get a HEPA rated air filter. Speaking as someone who has some serious lung issues, it's literally life changing/saving. Honeywell sells a number of models, cost is…

If you have COPD or other serious lung issues, don't get just one HEPA filter. These machines are rated to filter the air in an area that's certain number of square feet, based on how many CFM of air they move. Get at least enough of them that your whole living space is covered, and deploy them throughout the entire dwelling. You may want more individual machines so you can run them on a lower fan setting, which produces less noise. Assuming availability of outlets, you can also go for a larger number of smaller machines, each with a lower CFM rating, which should also reduce the noise level somewhat.

I personally use Winix machines. I don't think it matters much in terms of efficacy which brand you use, so, consider the cost of replacement filters here. The machines I bought were around $200 each, and worth every penny, IMHO.

My machines are both made for environments with pets, so they have a pre-filter to catch large things like dog fur, and they also have an activated carbon filter to pull odors out of the air. The carbon filter is quite effective. Unfortunately, I was able to test this first-hand, by observing that I could no longer smell dog poop after about 10 minutes of the machine running in the room said poop was in.

I wouldn't worry about silly features like accompanying smartphone apps, or any kind of "ion technology." IMO, that stuff is mostly marketing fluff, and just adds complexity to what should basically be a small fan with a filtered intake.

I've found my machines to be very effective in cleaning the air inside my apartment. I've been lucky enough so far to not have any issues from the Bay Area smoke, despite having asthma and allergies. I credit that to my HEPA filter machines, as well as wearing an N95 mask outside whenever the AQI is too high.

As an aside, I once put one of my machines (each rated for around 300 sq. ft., IIRC) inside my bathroom, which is no more than about 30 sq. ft., for a while. Eventually, the air in there smelled so clean, it literally took me back to the days when I used to regularly work in a class 1,000 (ISO 3) electronics clean room. "Class 1,000" means the air inside is supposed to contain no more than 10^3 particle >= 0.1 µm in diameter per m^3 of air. Once you've smelled the air inside a decently high level clean room, you'll recognize it when you come across it again. It smells like a glorious whole lot of nothing, which makes my allergies happy. :-). For reference, ordinary, unfiltered, not-apparently-dusty air typically has about 10^6 particles >=0.1 µm per m^3.

Re: Smoke has caused temperature forecasts to go crazy

#133
post #91

I'm in southeastern Canada years ago smoke from Quebec forest fires made the sky red. The soil where I am from is also red. It was like living on Mars. The fun ends quickly when your throat gets scratchy and there is no where you can go to escape it the air in your house has to come from outside too. I'm not looking forward to any smoke now my dad has COPD, IPF, is on oxygen, and he's elderly. If we get any amount of…

>I'm not looking forward to any smoke now my dad has COPD, IPF, is on oxygen, and he's elderly. If we get any amount of smoke here it will be the end of him. It's hard enough trying to keep him from contracting SARS-Cov-2 and developing covid-19 Seriously, get a HEPA rated air filter. Speaking as someone who has some serious lung issues, it's literally life changing/saving. Honeywell sells a number of models, cost is…

They're a little hard to come by right now.

Re: Smoke has caused temperature forecasts to go crazy

#134
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least from my perspective this has been an ongoing problem for many years now and I would refer you to Godwin's law. There is this weird sort of mystique about Hitler and the Nazi Party that keep people entranced that it was "pure evil" rather than a decade-plus political process taking place in a very unique time of history with many other actors in play. You can't use any sort of "slippery slope" argument becaus…

Have you read the rise and Fall of the Third Reich? I appreciate your perspective on the incubation period of nazi Germany- but I think you are floating over some important events. These ‘brown shirts’ were citizen volunteer believers who evolved into a kind of political pressure group hitler could direct around. They would harass towns, intervene at businesses, assault and eventually murder people. They were not a p…

> Do you reject the idea that there no parallels to the black bloc and the brown shirts behavior?

Yes. It's very clear that organised violence in the US is overwhelmingly from the far right. Anyone denying this either isn't paying attention or is being dishonest.

Re: Smoke has caused temperature forecasts to go crazy

#135
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because he gives misleading social commentary, doesn’t mean that his meteorological information is any less accurate.

How do you know his meteorological information is accurate?

He is a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington, a fellow of the American Meteorological Society, and his resume [0] looks impressive to me. I realize that this is an appeal to authority, but since I don’t know enough about meteorology to make an informed decision about the specific information that he gives, his qualifications seem to indicate that he is a trustworthy source of meteorological information.

I did a quick internet search and looked him up on Wikipedia. His Wikipedia entry [1] mentions the controversies surrounding his non-professional views, but I didn’t find anything about his meteorological views being in question.

Please correct me if I missed something! It can be hard to determine if someone is trustworthy on the internet.

[0]: https://a.atmos.washington.edu/%7Ecliff/CliffsVitaeLatest090...

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Mass

Re: Smoke has caused temperature forecasts to go crazy

#136
post #3

Genuine question, are these fires big enough to stop them from happening for a while? Or should we expect another one next year? Edit: My original question was more in mind with does this have same effect as controlled burning / prescribed burning. Thank you all for replies :)

This is not scientific at all, just an observation that lets me hope for a clean 2021. I live outside Seattle, and the 2018 fire season was terrible (I have asthmatics in my family). We had some fire every year since I moved here in 2014. In 2019, we didn't have any smoke days all Summer/Fall. I like to tell myself next year will be better, but the other posters in this thread using, you know, numbers, are probably more right.

Re: Smoke has caused temperature forecasts to go crazy

#137
I have a utility that automatically sets my desktop picture to a snapshot from the GOES satellite image feed every 20 minutes or so, and this morning I noticed it showing this [0]. I was curious to see if it was what I thought, so I switched to the west-coast feed [1], and indeed, the smoke appears to have crossed the entire continent on the jet stream.

No apparent effects here on the east coast for now, but I'm betting sunsets will be prettier than normal for a while...definitely somewhat concerned for the possibility that it could worsen, though, if the fires continue.

(Images come from here [2], swap the 16 in the URL for 17 for the west coast feed)

[0] https://cdn.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES16/ABI/FD/GEOCOLOR/2020...

[1] https://cdn.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES17/ABI/FD/GEOCOLOR/2020...

[2] https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/fulldisk.php?sat=G16

Re: Smoke has caused temperature forecasts to go crazy

#138
post #85
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coal can have radioactive materials inside of it. There's radioactive carbon (c14) and it looks like also a bunch of more concerning materials. [] - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-... .

Regarding carbon-14, there is so little of it that it makes no sense to even think about it (about 1 in 10^12 atoms). In addition, all biological matter (including you and the food you eat) has carbon-14 present in it -- that's the basic principle behind carbon dating. In fact, ash from wood burning would probably have more carbon-14 if anything. But yes, the article you linked talks about trace amounts of uranium an…

[deleted]

Re: Smoke has caused temperature forecasts to go crazy

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but they don’t keep the air clean nearly as fast as putting room air purifiers near people (closer to source) unless you have an HVAC that is so powerful you feel wind inside..

It's really not related to wind speed or hvac power. If you have a well insulated house then a normal hvac system can maintain positive pressure and keep the air inside clean. Assuming it's designed for that purpose. Alternatively just having a bunch of box fans forcing air through filters is also good. That's essentially what a air purifier is.

I love the box fan method, wish they would market that at menards for people doing drywall demo :)

Re: Smoke has caused temperature forecasts to go crazy

#140
post #7

Would be curious to compare how much CO2 has been emitted as a result of these fires to California’s annual CO2 savings by going for renewable energy.

That might be interesting from a purely educational point of view but it is of little practical relevance. Trees burning in wild fires release CO2 that was captured in the last couple of decades by the tree in the process of growing. Burning fossil fuels releases CO2 which was captured millennia ago and buried deep underground. It's roughly the same as why melting icebergs cause sea levels to rise but rain will not.

> in the last couple of decades by the tree in the process of growing [...]

Isn't most biomass from trees that are centuries old?

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