These stories are not connected, but they are put together, I suspect, to intensify concern about long-term global warming, which, to me — living where the air quality index is 270 at the moment — feels like a failure to take the smoke problem seriously. It's often hot in the summer in the south! This smoke is something I have never seen in my life. It's actively unhealthy for millions of Americans. After staying home for years hiding from a virus, I am now hiding from the air. On Twitter, I'm seeing conspiracy theories. The mainstream media treating this problem as a phenomenon on the level of 100° temperatures in Texas in the summer is going to make some of us paranoid.
Here's the kind of material I'm seeing, from that first headline:
Scientists said climate change helped shape the weather conditions that were causing misery and putting lives at risk from Mexico to Canada. There was no disputing the impact: If it wasn’t way too smoky, it was way too hot.
"No disputing the impact"?! The condition exists, and there's no disputing that, but to say "impact" is to make an assertion about the cause. I guess the word "helped" is supposed to fudge everything. There's climate change — who knows how much? — and it has some effect on the amount of smoke produced in a fire and how that smoke moves around — who know how much? — so it "helped" the conditions that had the "impact." Scientists said. But let's move on: It's way too smoky, right? We sure do know that. Idiocy!
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You can thank the eco-terrorists for the smoke, and the summer arson will continue until you get the message that you need to surrender your car. I don't know if this is some branch of the "Climate Defense Network" indulging in the techniques used by agent provocateurs, or just some loosely allied nut jobs, but plenty of arsonists have been caught, and the evidence for arson is very strong in both the US and Canada. However, the MSM would prefer that you blame these fires on "climate change," so coverage of these arsonists will not be provided in the New York Times, no matter how responsible they are for the destruction of air quality.
Don't worry though, your government and their MSM stenographers would not lie to you about this or anything else.
It's not bad here right now, I guess it's you guys' turn, but a few days ago, I was wearing an N-95 to work outside in my yard, and restricting outdoor activities like walks because I had developed a cough from the smoke, and my voice was affected. Visibility was about a mile, based on local landmarks I can see from my deck.
I live in Texas. The temperature and weather seem normal this time of year. The jet stream has shifted a bit north, so there is less rain in the southern portion of the state. In previous years, this has led to drought and red flag fire warnings preventing use of firecrackers as we neared July 4th. This year, there isn't even a drought condition. The nearest river monitoring station is 2' (5%) below flood action stage. We are doing fine.
Why doesn’t Biden send the military to Canada to put out the fires?
From today's WSJ ...
PG&E has applied for a roughly $7 billion dollar federal loan to fund its ambitious plans to reduce California wildfire risk by burying power lines and upgrading the electric grid, company executives said.
( ... )
PG&E hopes to use the loan to help fund the burial of 10,000 miles of power lines in regions at high risk of fire, Chief Executive Patti Poppe said in an interview. Other potential uses include replacing overloaded transmission conductors that carry power and upgrading substations.
PG&E has a history of poor maintenance leading to forest fires.
Air quality in Omaha is 88. And raining. I love living in the South.
This is how propaganda works.
Funny, how the left is blaming climate change for the smoke caused by fires started by arsonists.
Routine propaganda from de facto state media.
Demagogues use obvious distortions to influence the stupid at the expense of losing influence over smarter and more independent thinkers. As such, demagogues pair propaganda with bullying and censorship to maximize their influence and control.
Regarding global warming as a background agenda, yes, this was a conscious lefty decision circa the late 1980s to early 1990s. There was little climate data at the time, but a "gut feeling" that human fossil fuel burning was/would warm the planet. See the fully discredited first and extreme version of the Michael Mann hockey stick, and also Al Gore's many expired claims of "only 10 years to act."
The demagogues then in power consciously and explicitly wrote of using global warming to "stuff a potato in the tailpipe" of world economic/fossil fuel growth. They wanted constant background anxiety and gut feelings to precipitate industrial and activity freezes. They sought an advantage in blocking development, roads, farming, etc. by slowing action.
The propaganda worked quite well in Europe, with dark and gray Germany wasting $$$$$$ on solar energy, the EU wasting $$$$$$$$ on fraudulent "green diesel" tech from VW, Spaniards gaming the system by running diesel generators at night to shine light on solar panels for subsidy money, etc.
[Note that the transgender/sterilization/pre-pubescent sexualization agenda can be seen as a complimentary propaganda effort to limit population by creating eco martyrs and saints.]
Propaganda is routinely seen as evil with hindsight:
https://artifactsjournal.missouri.edu/2012/03/wwii-propaganda-the-influence-of-racism/
It's not climate change driving the fires. Rather,it's the woke socialist government of Canada refusing to follow sane forestry procedures.
Speaking of smoke and flame, did you hear that NYC wants to ban wood, coal, and charcoal fired ovens in all 5 boroughs?
Thousands of metric tons of Canadian wildfire smoke isn't as important as the smoke generated by a few hundred pizza ovens. It's about priorities. It's about stewardship. It's about saving the planet. Thank you NYC for leading the way!
BTW, studies of the bark for 2,000 year old sequoia trees and smoke particles in the ice in Greenland, which is laid down in annual layers, like tree rings, shows that for the past thousand years, North America has been plagued by fires, for most of that time, anyway. So maybe, if it is "climate change," we should use Occam's razor and figure that the climate is reverting to the mean, after a very cold few decades in the 19th century.
Look at the literature of the time, "The Adventures of Arthur Gordan Pym" - E.A. Poe and "Frankenstein" - Mary Shelly, show a fascination with extermely cold weather. Frankenstein was written during a summer at Lord Byron's Switzerland estate, when it was so cold and rainy the whole summer that they found stuff to do, staying inside, like having a writing contest. The monster ends up mushing a dog sled over frozen terrain in the book. The Year Without a Summer also happened in the 19th century. A thousand years ago, it was so warm that there was a population explosion in Sweden and Norway, sending the Vikings looking for more land to support their populations. Greenland supported farming and exports of cattle, based on historical records, until those same records show that the sea lanes had become clogged with ice, and routes had to be changed, and cattle ranching and farming collapsed there.
I think that anybody who denies that the above factual statements are true should be labeled a "climate change denier." Just look at the Hockey Stick for yourself, and extend the "handle" and assume that the "blade" never happened, and see if you would want to live in that world without "Global Warming." When Greenland starts supporting cattle ranching again, let me know.
100° temperatures in Texas
When I read that I’m reminded of Austin Powers: “Here’s the plan . . . we hold the world ransom for . . . one million dollars!”
Fires are a major problem this summer. And...so are arsonists. There have been a handful of people already arrested for starting some of the Canadian fires. Not that nature needs a hand in this, but this is a forest management problem, a human arsonist problem, as well as a heat problem. We can't fix the heat. Nature has done this before, and will do it again, long after we're gone. But forest management and human arson are things we can get better at.
On the other hand, if you were a serious climate change cultist, you might see it as a great way to get people to take global warming seriously by lighting a few massive wildfires. Just as some toss paint onto works of art, or glue their hands to it. Or throw paint on great architecture, or chain themselves together across a highway to stop traffic to...you know...make a statement.
WaPo is like a high school student newsletter at this point. I would expect them to arrange natural and unnatural events in such a way as to make a case for whatever is their current cause.
Ann wrote, "This smoke is something I have never seen in my life. It's actively unhealthy for millions of Americans."
Several decades ago my morning commute was notable for the reduced visibility (less than one mile) due to "smog". Our airports reported visibilities less than one mile requiring instrument approaches due to "smoke and haze". Those problems were solved years ago with restrictions to industrial pollution.
What we are seeing today is related only to the Canada fires caused by inadequate maintenance of their forests.
That carbon belching monster truck of Meade's was the last straw for the climate. He's screwed us all.
Mother Nature knows who done it too and she started these fires upwind from your house as payback.
Check out this map: https://fire.airnow.gov/.
I took the usual bicycle errand tour yesterday and didn't notice any air problem other than haze and hysterical air quality warnings.
"on the level of 100° temperatures in Texas"
I spent three years in Texas and each summer was "record breaking" they said ..40 years ago.
Anyway, for once Montana is being spared the Canadian smoke! It's lovely here in Missoula.
A bunch of Nancy boys back East, what can I tell ya…
Follow teh Science®!
Lefties can’t survive unless they have something to be deathly afraid of.
Lefties can’t survive unless they have something to be deathly afraid of.
"Speaking of smoke and flame, did you hear that NYC wants to ban wood, coal, and charcoal fired ovens in all 5 boroughs?"
Why shouldn't NYC be able to have what it wants? It's a democracy.
Sometimes old technology is outlawed and it's not grandfathered in. Do you think there's a constitutional right to hold onto whatever technology you've already got?
“PG&E has a history of poor maintenance leading to forest fires”.
California restricts PG&E and everybody else from clearing the old dead wood that arsons use to set these fires. PG&E should shut down And teach California a serious lesson. Instead they keep taking in up the ass from the same people howling for their blood.
I doubt that the WaPo could name the scientists who "said". ("Scientist says that the WaPo is a fascist propaganda rag." I'm a scientist, and I just said that.) But they are probably right about climate change causing these fires, since from what I've read they're deliberately set by people who think climate change will cause more wildfires. They're just showing the prediction is correct.
“Why shouldn't NYC be able to have what it wants? It's a democracy.”
Yes! Ship it all to China, along with the illegal aliens.
"Why shouldn't NYC be able to have what it wants? It's a democracy."
Democracy is four wolves and two sheep voting on what's for dinner.
The virtue signalling fools want to ban pizza ovens. Democracy? Maybe. When was the vote on this? Which politicians ran on ending the scourge of wood fired pizza.
Me thinks some nameless bureaucrat was the seed for this weedy plan.
When this type of smoky situation occurred in California a few years ago, caused by wildfires ignited by the country's most expensive, least reliable, and most dangerous electrical utility system, the governor tweeted, "Climate. Change. Is. Real". I think that is how very stupid people indicate their mind is closed.
Our Professor said..
This smoke is something I have never seen in my life
gilbar sees it, all the time.. In Wyoming. I've never seen it in the midwest, that's for sure.
If you watch, you can see ashes falling out of the sky. Again, common in Wyoming; Never before here.
"Why shouldn't NYC be able to have what it wants? It's a democracy.
Sometimes old technology is outlawed and it's not grandfathered in. Do you think there's a constitutional right to hold onto whatever technology you've already got?"
It is of a muchness. It's about a sense of proportion. The science they are using to base their decision on is not accurate. While coal and wood smoke does have a higher PPM content of carbon/carcinogens/soot the overall release into the atmosphere from hundreds of the existing ovens is so miniscule compared to other sources as to be statistically insignificant. I promise you that the carbon emissions of even a quarter of the NYC motorpool is orders of magnitude higher than the discharge of these few hundred ovens.
Secondly, it's not democracy. The news of this move by the city has been met - albeit anecdotally - with derision. NYers don't want this. They want good pizza. This isn't something they directly asked for. Like everything else these days, this is imposed, not selected.
There are quite literally a million other ways to reduce the low thousands of pounds of contaminants these ovens produce without placing this burden on hundreds of small business owners. Mayor Adams could take 3 fewer airplane trips a year for instance.
"Sometimes old technology is outlawed"
It's a wood fire. Is the wheel next?
Lately I've been thinking of developing a "Propaganda Quality Index" (PQI) for media with a color code to alert people to the cognitive hazards of continued brain exposure to such sources. My early prototype shows that the PQI for the WaPo is currently at 375 (400 PQI is max). Only the NYT (389 PQI) is higher.
I even have an experimental version of a calculator to convert PQI to how many cigarettes you'd have to smoke to have the equivalent effect on polluting your brain. At present, continuing to read the WaPo and NYT is the same as forcing your brain to smoke 4 packs of cigarettes a day. Unfiltered.
So, Ann, you're like the Joe Camel or the Marlboro Babe of bloggers.
"What we are seeing today is related only to the [Canadian] fires caused by inadequate maintenance of their forests."
Modern "green" forestry is as arrogant and supercilious as an Earth Day keynote speaker. Its guiding principle is Nature knows best. Leading academics in the field advocate a hands-off management approach that makes one wonder why any government would bother to hire anyone with a forestry degree, abolishing the National Forest Service outright would have the same effect. Commercial foresters who manage private stands of lumber and pulpwood get fired for practicing such neglectful methods.
Nature disposes of deadfalls and fire-prone understory by just such wildfires that are smoking up delightful Madison today, achieving the same ends as interventionist forestry but with other, less pleasant side-effects, just as pandemics are Nature's population control.
"feels like a failure to take the smoke problem seriously"
Well, that only affects actual human well-being. Not a prog priority, so who cares?
""No disputing the impact"?"
Careful. For now, they let you "dispute." As long as Google doesn't do a clean sweep of heterdoxy across all its outlets. But among actual scientists, the groupthink is already stifling "disputes."
A legislator once told me to sniff all new regulations back to the first guy in a suit requesting them.
In this case, the city is requiring all restaurants using wood or coal burning ovens older than a certain number of years to hire architects to evaluate them for upgrades or exemptions. It's about 100 stoves.
The "people of NYC" didn't request this. Likely, the architects' lobby did, with assist from the busybody "public servants" needed to evaluate claims or claim environmental purity.
These 100 stoves may or may not need upgrades, but to suggest that they are affecting air quality as much as, say, one preening environmentalist's private plane travel is absurd. As the NY Post put it, you'd have to burn a pizza oven for 849 years to equal one year of John Kerry's private jet use.
I know all about the eco-freaks. They lecture all and sundry on the importance of the environment while they toss their empty Coke cans into the trash, lest they have to walk ten feet to the recycle bin.
Thanks to the eco-freaks neither Canada nor California properly manages its forests, nor do they jump on fires to put them out, nor do they aggressively investigate or prosecute arsonists
On the one hand the eco-freaks do not want us burning natural gas to produce electricity, lest we release CO2 into the atmosphere. St the same time the eco-freaks say that the forest fires — many deliberately set by eco-freaks — are releasing CO2 into the atmosphere by the ton. And each mature tree is capable of absorbing, on average, 48 tons of CO2 per year. So each fire is turning trees by the thousands into CO2 (and other gases) and preventing the forests from absorbing CO2.
Good work there.
Speaking of smoke and flame, did you hear that NYC wants to ban wood, coal, and charcoal fired ovens in all 5 boroughs?
You know it is bad enough when your commenters spread bullshit. Don't you think it is your responsibility to do a simple Google search and if it is bullshit (and it is) call them out on it?
Modern "green" forestry is as arrogant and supercilious as an Earth Day keynote speaker. Its guiding principle is Nature knows best.
Actually, modern forestry encourages the use of subscribed burns and clearing of debris. Much of the current problems in our forests have to do with the legacy of extinguishing every fire, which of course was the practice of much of the twentieth century, before the "green commies" got involved.
These 100 stoves may or may not need upgrades, but to suggest that they are affecting air quality as much as, say, one preening environmentalist's private plane travel is absurd. As the NY Post put it, you'd have to burn a pizza oven for 849 years to equal one year of John Kerry's private jet use.
This of course is comparing apples to rutabagas. Emissions from pizza ovens cause extremely localized pollution (soot, ash and smoke).
I flew out of Ohare yesterday morning and the smoke was so bad I couldn"t see the across the airport. I could smell the peaty smell of wood smoke.
What you also have to remember is that Canada landmass is larger than the US but it only has about 37 million people. They don't have people or the resources we do.
The heat wave in Texas isn't record breaking- such heat is quite typical for the state this time of the year and has been for my entire 57 year life. The Spring and Summer to date here in Oak Ridge, Tennessee has been a bit on the mild side- we have been over 90 degrees F only once so far this year, which is unusual- by this time last year we had been over 90 degrees F 13 times.
We are being fed lies about the "increasing heat" in the Summer in the southern US for certain. The Summer weather here in the mid South isn't hotter than it was when I was growing up- if anything the Summers of the last 12 years (with the exception of 2012 which approached the heatwave Summer of 1988) have been noticeably cooler than what I grew up with. The Winters have been noticeably warmer than what I grew up with in the 1970s and early 1980s, but those Winters were outliers for the decades preceding them.
When I see assurances that NYC doesn't really want to either shut down brick pizza ovens or force the owners to spend a fortune on them, I'm reminded of the assurances they gave that they really don't intend to make gas stoves illegal.
Puerto Rico is having a heat wave, or was, and made the front page of the NYT. 125 degrees in PR, the story told us. The TV news repeated it. My neighbor told me that 125 degrees is really hot!
125 degrees is hot. I've been in places where it was 125. I worked in an engine room where it was routinely over 100 in most places.
But it was not 125 degrees in PR and I could have told you that was bullshit without even looking outside. All time high is 104, according to weather.gov but withan asterisk that is is "being reviewed" and the real all time high may be 100 in Ponce in 2004.
Where I live it got to about 95. We have a special name for temperatures like this. We call it summer. It is hot, but not unbearable or even that uncomfortable. I spent time outside yesterday in the mid 90s and it did not bother me.
If turns out that it was NOT 125 degrees in PR. The "Heat Index" was 125. The heat index is a bullshit number made up to scare the crap out of people GLOBAL WARMING IS GOING TO KILL US ALL!!!!
F***ing news media lying to us again.
FWIW, the hottest year on record, highest average temperature, for San Juan was 40 years ago, 1983. So much for global warming.
John LGB Henry
Big Mike,
I'm pretty sure you know but billions of people don't about trees and CO2.
Yes, trees and plants absorb CO2 as they grow. But they don't live forever and as soon as they die, they start releasing the CO2 that they absorbed over their lives. Sometimes quickly as in the case of fire, sometimes slowly as they lie rotting on the ground. But it all comes back.
Also, few people seems to realize that there is a huge class of trees, shrubs, grasses and other plant life that are the exception. They never absorb any CO2. Or release it either, never having absorbed any. This is the tens of thousands of square miles of plants that will never live because their habitat has been covered by solar panels.
For battery cars alone the 300GW required will render an area the size of of Tennesee sterile, except for some scrub weeds underneath.
John LGB Henry
I listened to the beginning of All Things Considered yesterday and they were all in on climate catastrophe. (Remembered why I stopped listening to them). The temperature in Texas is "above normal"! Half of all temperatures are above average, ATC. Do better.
The really tough stuff to listen to was the claim we need more wind and solar to stabilize the power grid. Climate change is difficult science. The performance of "renewables" vs fossil fuels in not.
Regarding climate and the press; I wished I had saved the link. It was a comparison of two color coded temperature maps for two summer days in England; one from the 1980s and one from the current day. The temperatures those two days were very similar but the difference in map colors was striking. The 1980s map was colored in non-threatening greens and yellows. The 2020s map was in scary reds. Same temperatures, markedly different presentations.
Ratwang's Cabana Boy writes, "Actually, modern forestry encourages the use of subscribed burns and clearing of debris. Much of the current problems in our forests have to do with the legacy of extinguishing every fire, which of course was the practice of much of the twentieth century, before the 'green commies' got involved."
("Actually..." I must give you credit for that unintentional comedy.) You've got your story back-to-front, as usual. Interventionist forestry methods are returning from the dark realms ruled by your "green commies", but only in non-progressive retrograde states like Florida, Idaho, and Nebraska. It wasn't the "legacy of extinguishing every fire" that created this problem. It was the policy of banning logging roads that allowed commercial removal of mature trees in the "green commie" era that still prevails in CA, OR, WA, and many other enlightened hellholes. Mature trees were, and still are, allowed to die and fall, creating the fuel-rich understory that creates these annual wildfire plagues, and it's the absence of logging roads that also function as firebreaks that sustains wildfires and makes them catastrophic. Those missing logging arteries also permitted firefighters of the past to quickly and efficiently reach nascent wildfires. Prescribed burns (I don't know what your "subscribed burns" could be) are useful when the season, the weather, and land use factors coincide, but hardly as much as conscientious commercial logging of public forest land.
It wasn't the "legacy of extinguishing every fire" that created this problem. It was the policy of banning logging roads that allowed commercial removal of mature trees in the "green commie" era that still prevails in CA, OR, WA, and many other enlightened hellholes.
The banning of logging plus the extinguishing of every fire were both factors. "Global Warming", is of course bullshit that generates lots of money for grants to tame "scientists" who will support the narrative. Trump tried to explain this in a visit to California as President but was mocked by the loonies. There is just too much money sloshing around to stop the lunacy.
I've been watching a series about the 2022 Tour de France on Netflix. What a hoot.
In one of the eps the coach was talking about how hot is was going to be out on the road, needs to be careful and generally making a big deal of "the heat".
80 degrees F.
Is there anywhere in the US where that is considered a hot day?
John LGB Henry
It was 102 degrees in Dallas in July 1914. It has been over 100 every year. It was 110 in 2000. 112 in 1980
Science via Google
The current, climate change induced heat wave in Texas is alarmingly similar to what used to be called "summer" here every year since 1983 when I first arrived. We are all doomed, not from climate but from utility bills.
My son, who works for CalFire, says Newsom is now starting to talk about forest thinning and brush clearing. He is probably thinking about his presidential campaign.
I was under the impression the congestion-pricing fixed all of this.
Minneapolis top ten years of days with temperatures 90 degrees or above (Source Minnesota DNR)
"rank year days of 90 or above
------------------------------
1. 1988 44
2. 1936 36
3. 1934 34
3. 1937 34
5. 1949 33
6. 1933 32
7. 1955 31
7. 1976 31
7. 2012 31
10. 1894 30
10. 1931 30
Last modified: May 23, 2018
Only one in the current century, now nearly a quarter of a century in.
"Funny, how the left is blaming climate change for the smoke caused by fires started by arsonists."
It's just this Ukrainian war and that lying son of a bitch, Trump!
"Do you think there's a constitutional right to hold onto whatever technology you've already got?"
Yes. It's called Liberty.
The wildfires that plagued California in recent years have been attributed somewhat to arson; there were a couple down in SoCal that were positively identified as such. PG&E does have issues with their lack of maintenance on the lines in rural/mountain areas but in fairness to them, the greenies have shut down any sort of harvesting/clearing opportunities, so the forest floors are just full of potential fuel.
Meanwhile the temps this spring and early summer all along the west coast are below normal. The forecast for the long holiday weekend in the Bay Area is 80s and 90s inland (Livermore & Concord) and maybe triple digits into the Central Valley. Downtown SF is sunny and comfortable today, (66 degrees) but by about 4pm the fog will begin rolling in, and the damp winds will make it clammy. The marine layer at the beach is keeping the temps about 55 degrees. It's been gray and grim, with heavy morning drizzle.
Places in the Sierra and east into Nevada are warning about runoff flooding now that the snowpack is really beginning to let loose. Creeks and rivers are already flowing higher than usual so things are going to get interesting.
Obama's Science Czar once suggested that the federal government add sterilants to the drinking water so people would stop reproducing. Oh yeah, and we might need to force women to abort their babies.
What Are They Doing in Secret?
Brought to you by the people who want to Blot Out the Sun!
Dr. Strangelove Is An Ivy Leaguer
and it has some effect on the amount of smoke produced in a fire and how that smoke moves around — who know how much?
Um, I do. It’s not too tricky to think about rationally. It’s the difference between the AQI today and in every other year when there weren’t massive Canadian fires. Canadian fires are nowhere near this prevalent normally. If you look at a map of the hundreds of active fires up there it’s actually very sad and strange to see. But this is the world our right-wing overlords have left to us - one where the yellow-gray skies match the increasingly hot hell on earth, and all so that oil and coal execs could be wealthier. I really hope those who benefited from these policies think it’s worth it. Eventually they’ll either fix the problem or be dealt with in the less savory way that nearly all despots are.
Every unusual natural event is in some way attributable to AGW.
"Brought to you by the people who want to Blot Out the Sun!
Reminds me of an old Simpsons episode where the evil Mr. Burns tells his toady:
"From time immemorial, Smithers, men have dreamed of destroying the Sun."
p.s. to the emotionally incontinent and downright STUPID hpudding: the Earth has warmed about 1 to 1.5 degrees C in a hundred years. NOthing unusual. The past 20 years have essentially shown NO temperature increase. The oceans are rising 1 to 3 mm per year, as they have done for hundred of years. Canadian forest fires frequency have DECREASED over the last hundred years. You are a walking encyclopedia of Idiocy.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/06/10/you-are-being-conned-data-studies-un-ipcc-all-reveal-canadian-fires-not-due-to-climate-change-there-has-been-a-significant-continuing-decline-in-the/
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