111–120 of 332 posts
Use room air purifiers with hepa quality, those remove particles down to Furnace filters are not designed to filter as much, or else they would need changing too often and put too much pressure on the furnace motors when people forget, which is a hazard in its own right.
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…
It won't be as good as a purpose-built machine, but it will be far better than nothing at all.
TheWirecutter found it reduced particulate matter in a room by 87%, if you do it right. They also make clear important caveats about this method -- in short, this works in a pinch, but probably should not be used in place of a purpose-built filter if you want one for year-round use. https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-air-purifier...
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Today in HackerNews: Don't worry about that pesky wood smoke, it'll all be fine, folks!
No, that's not the takeaway. I wear my N95 outside, run my air filter inside, and avoid strenuous activity. However, there's no need to panic if you get a cough from the smoke. Don't exaggerate my statement.
So, while you’re not incorrect that individual wildfires are not a major concern, living in places where such exposure is common is a significant issue.
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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.
Source? What makes combustion particulates from coal substantially worse than combustion particulates from wood?
Coal is made of up of a mixture of aromatic hydrocarbons like a anthracene, naphthalene. These are already toxic to humans. Add metals like mercury, antimony, etc.
Coal smoke is much worse than wood smoke.
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Could you help me understand the reasons? When you are living history, you don’t know that ww2 is around the corner. I think the observations of the similarities between the brown shirts and violent protesters is correct. I don’t know if a better historical parallel. Look what happened to Aaron Danielson. Brown shirts engaged in antagonism and murder towards people they perceived as evil in the same way these Antifa…
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…
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 part of the nation’s legitimate police force at the beginning of hitler’s rise, but as he acquired power, so did they.
Do you reject the idea that there no parallels to the black bloc and the brown shirts behavior? Motivations are obviously not the same, but the behavior sure looks like it. Where does “Rules for radicals” fit in your perspective?
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In % of land area burned, the fires are pretty small. Far less than 1% of the US land area burned this year. So, given the same weather conditions, you should expect more fires next year.
That isn’t the statistic I would expect to be pulled out here. Not all land area has any chance of catching/spreading a fire. Fires don’t really spread through rainforest; they definitely don’t spread through rocky areas; nor, really, through swampland; nor across mountain ranges; nor through irrigated cropland. (Nor through modern concrete cities, but city land-area is negligible.) There’s definitely some portion of…
Cliff Mass spoiled himself for me with this asinine blog post comparing Seattle BLM protesters to brownshirts in Nazi Germany [0]. It feels icky to get behind someone who will use his platform to sling ridiculous accusations and accept no criticism [1]. It's a shame - his weather reporting is uniquely good and fun to read. [0] https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2020/08/seattle-city-in-fear-... [1] https://cliffmass.blogs…
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I worry about the consequences of prolonged exposure. There is historical precedent that shows we should be concerned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London
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.
Edit: I was probably thinking of smokeless coal which is processed to burn more cleanly.
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>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…
Or in a pinch, a HEPA vacuum cleaner. Double points if you rig it to take in outside air and vent it inside to create a positive pressure of filtered air. This should work.
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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.
It would help people understand the misguided policies that have been in effect, which prevent any meaningful reduction in fuel via cutting or burning -- policies meant to preserve the environment, but instead actually harm it.
Initially, fire suppression's "10 a.m. rule" was the result of forest industry advocacy. More recent burn opposition comes from real-estate interests --- homeowners, but also banks, mortgage holders, and insurance companies --- seeking to preserve asset values. Periods are roughly the 1930s for the first and 1970s/80s onward for the latter.
Actual environmentalists (and many foresters) have advocated more though controlled and smaller burns for decades. I've travelled through the Western US numerous times over the past 30 years, and the role and scale of fire has long been evident. My trips have included travelling through recently-burnt landscapes, and several which burned within a few years of my passing through.
I had a long conversation with a forester on a road trip in the mid-aughts that was particularly memorable, and on which I've had frequent cause to reflect on since.