From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, word of insanity afoot in local government there. I wonder if the board members at Parks and Recreation will give up their cars, or maybe their home furnace?
Beach bonfires may be banned
They fuel global warming, parks department says
P-I REPORTER
Even with the skies overcast and threatening rain, Khang Nguyen, 18, and Joel Juan, 19, kicked back after school at Alki Beach.
“It’s just a relaxing way to hang out with friends,” Nguyen said of the bonfire crackling in front of them one evening earlier this week.
But Seattle Parks and Recreation might do what even this week’s chilly weather couldn’t — douse the long tradition of beach bonfires at Alki and at Golden Gardens.
Park department staff is recommending reducing bonfires at the two beaches this summer and possibly banning them altogether next year.
The park board will hear the recommendation Thursday, and the city plans to run public-service announcements and hand out brochures later this month about the effects of bonfires on global warming.
According to a memo to the park board from the staff released Thursday, “The overall policy question for the Board is whether it is good policy for Seattle Parks to continue public beach fires when the carbon … emissions produced by thousands of beach fires per year contributes to global warming.”
Under the proposal, the department in July would reduce the number of fire rings at Alki from six currently to three and at Golden Gardens from 12 to seven.
Then later this year, the department would consider banning bonfires or requiring fees and permits to reduce the number of bonfires next year.
It’s the second time in the past few years the tradition of lounging by a fire at the beach has run up against the environmental ramifications of bonfire smoke.
Parks and Recreation recommended banning the fires in 2004, after a violation notice from the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency to the city after someone set a couch on fire at Alki Beach. However, 1,200 people signed a petition to save Alki’s bonfires, and 100 others signed a petition to save the ones at Golden Garden.
Instead, park staff said the department should do more to regulate what people burn and make sure the fires are out by 11:30 p.m.
“I think people still feel the same way (about preserving bonfires),” said Larry Carpenter, treasurer of the Alki Community Council. “Old-timers see bonfires as a tradition that they did as children and growing up. It’s a nostalgia thing.”
At Alki on Wednesday night, Linda Garcia, a 56-year- old West Seattle resident, walked her dog and made a slightly rose-colored argument for preserving her beloved bonfires. “It’s so windy around here it probably doesn’t pollute that much.
“They have to try to take everything away,” she said.
Sara Russell, 34, who also was walking her dog, rolled her eyes at the idea of banning bonfires to stave off global warming.
“If they really wanted to do something, they could enforce the no-cruising law, because in the summer you see so many cars cruising around here,” she said.
Russell’s neighbor, Debbie Nichols, said that last July Fourth, she got up at 5:30 a.m. to grab one of the fire pits. “I wrapped myself in a blanket and sat there all day,” Nichols said. “We use the fire pits all year round.”
Since the park board last heard the issue, the department assigned more staff to the two sites. The number of fires using illegal materials has dropped by two-thirds, according to the park memo.
The memo also noted that restrictions could cause illegal fires and fights over the limited number of fire pits. Charging fees to use the pits could disproportionately bar youths and low-income people from having bonfires, the report said.
But Mayor Greg Nickels’ plan to reduce climate-threatening pollutants “begs the question of whether Seattle Parks is acting responsibly … to systematically reduce controllable contributions to global warming,” the memo said.
“I can certainly understand it. (Global warming) is a legitimate concern,” said Robert Drucker, vice president of the Sunset Hill Community Association.
Still, he said of the bonfires at Golden Gardens: “It’s a long-standing tradition. I think people would be upset to see it go.”
But at Alki, Nguyen said he’d be OK with banning bonfires.
“By all means, I’d rather not have bonfires than have global warming,” he said.
As a sliver of silvery sky shrank under the growing clouds, Nguyen played a guitar, and maybe for the last year, the flames licked the salt air.
MORE INFORMATION
The Seattle Board of Park Commissioners will hear the bonfire ban proposal at its next meeting, Thursday at 7 p.m. The meeting will be at the park department’s offices at 100 Dexter Ave. N.
Hahahahaha! Seattle is supposed to have one of the most highly educated populations in the country. I feel good about myself.
If stupid people can just be persuaded to hold their breath…
When wood rots, it is only oxidizing more slowly. The same amount of gasses are released when it burns, except in a shorter time.
More and more people believe that environmentalists are either crooks or morons.
Why didn’t they try to get Al to give them carbon credits for banning the bonfires? That would be double plus good. Anything that causes misery should qualify for carbon credits.
So they ban the fires, which burn wood, which grows from photosynthesis, which takes carbon out of the air. That is the perfect “low carbon footprint” fire.
Why don’t they ban planting trees, because trees could later be burned in fires, which would contribute to global warming?
You know if they switched to nuclear campfires it would eliminate the CO2. Or perhaps they could gather around a CFL.
It’s amazing how much control the regulation of CO2 can give to a government.
I’m sure I’m the only one who has noticed this.
What a pile of overripe h*******. Mr. Gore exploits AGW to make himself rich. What’s the Parks & Recreation folk doing? The skeptic in me is thinking that they’re doing this to stop having to clean up after the bonfires ~ and they’ll probably ask for a raise to boot!
Billadams,
But how much C02 is released when the brain of a Parks Department official rots? That looks like a significant factor at work here.
Bill,
“More and more people believe that environmentalists are either crooks or morons.”
I have believed that for a long time. People are also beginning to realize that environmentalist really aren’t very nice:
http://depriest-mpu.blogspot.com/2008/05/anti-humanist-aka-environmentalist.html
Anthony,
Do you have an army of people that help you find stuff like this? Thanks for all you do.
Shouldn’t they do something useful with their time, like banning forest fires?
Ignorance, the most expensive commodity produced by mankind. In Seattle, they each have a double helping. Crooks or morons, tough choice, decisions decisions, so many choices.
I had a bonfire last week to get rid of the branches pruned from the trees around the house. Perhaps I should feel guilty but I don’t. I offset my emissions by making sure that most of the things I buy are made from plastic or at least wrapped in plastic. Then, instead of wasting precious power recycling the plastic, I take it to the local rubbish dump where it is subterraneanly sequestered. No Guilt at all. Might sound stupid but then Al Gore says some pretty stupid things and look how rich he is getting.
I have become more and amazed at how unbelievably stupid supposedly smart people can be. The “fueling global warming” hysteria has truly reached proportions that are utterly laughable, except that it has actually been considered legitimate by enough elite thinkers in government to influence policy. It’s scary that common sense and reason have so unimaginably destroyed our ability to just enjoy a campfire without someone either feeling guilty or angry about it.
I want to hit something.
You can probably see the stacks of a power plant from that beach. That plant generates in about one minute the same amount of CO2 that has been released from all the bonfires ever held at that beach.
What a bunch of morons.
Anthony,
You remember here in Cali they tried to ban BBQ’s. Same old idiotic stuff
And to think I’m moving to this city more or less volutarially (under the Happy wife, happy life theory). I miss Arizona ever more when I read these stories.
I trust they will ban jogging in the parks; it generates unecessarily large amounts of CO2.
Why give a sucker an even break?
There is a simple solution — the Seattle Parks and Recreation department can sell bonfire carbon credits and require that all bonfire participants use Bloomsberry Climate Change Chocolate to make their Smores.
And thus, the planet will be saved.
Holy smokes!!! That “bonfire” is almost as tall as a human! No wonder they have a problem, if there’s “thousands” of fires like these (according to the article).
Oh wait. Either: a) the Seattle-PI photog is playing camera games by putting a normal “campfire” as a close-up with people some distance in the background; or b) the Parks department should be subject to endless public ridicule for providing “fire pits” so large that huge fires can be built in them.
I vote “a)”, even though I’m sure that a Seattle-based journalist would never intentionally try to exaggerate anything to do with AGW.
Being highly educated doesn’t make one more or less gullible, apparently.
This is what I mean when I say that insane draconian laws will be proposed and inevitably put into law the majority of the time due to blind zombies that call themselves environmentalists demanding them ever more enthusiastically as they sense increasing danger to their “theory”. They have completely religiously devoted themselves to their “theory” and will not go down without kicking and screaming bloody murder, no matter how insanely communist it is. Instead of saying “Flowers for Stalin” (like the Soviet painting), they want us saying “Flowers for Gore”.
The painting is actually called “Roses for Stalin”, painted in 1949.
I was under the impression that wood was a renewable energy source generally called BIOMASS – therefore it doesn’t contribute to Global Warming when used an as energy source. Or have the rules changed?
I think of them as morons more often than crooks. I live outside of Seattle and work with folks from there, most of whom consider themselves as environmentalists.
As an environmental scientist I have no choice about who I interacts with, so when they spew on about CO2 I generally just smile and remember the proper way to think of their name – environ(mental)ists.
There’s no reason why environmentalists can’t be BOTH crooks and morons.
That’s funny, though. I wonder if they’re going to ban using the fireplaces in the condos at the beach.
Moshpit humor interlude.
We should compel people to dress in white to raise the earth’s albedo.
I fought global warming today. I took a sheet of white paper and put it out in the back yard. I sat there and started to calculate. what if everyone did this?
what if we all worked to increase albedo. !
albedo mania.
Then I thought. remember when I was a kid.
And every back yard had acres of white undies flapping on clotheslines?
rememeber that? ( hehe)
Think of the lost albedo! We used to dry our tighty whities on the clothesline.
For free! Acres of white surface! we were saving the planet! Now we build nasty coal plants to dry tiny thongs in nasty appliances.
Every inch of white surface diminishes global warming. It’s true. Google it. albedo. Everyone should wear white clothes, and dry giant white granny panties on clotheslines . or go commando.
Next I put a reflector in the bed of my pickup truck. By my calculatons
the Truck is now carbon neutral. It’s carbon emissions are offset by its albedo contribution. I did the math. Phil Jones has the data. ask him for it.
The tin foils hats some people wear also offset global warming.
This ends todays humour.