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.
Off topic.
I notice the RSS May figures have been released. Your prediction, after seeing the UAH figure, that RSS would also be below the zero line has come true.
May is -0.083. This is 0.163 lower than the April figure of 0.08. Not quite as big a drop as the UAH figure, but still pretty cool.
I left Seattle this morning on a flight to San Diego. The temp was 58 degrees F and it was raining heavily. I can’t stand the terminal stupidity of the politicians and bureaucrats any longer.
We could white wash everything and call it the White Planet.
I think outlawing bonfires in Seattle is a great idea since the liberals in that state get a dose of their own medicine concerning the global warming fraud. Next, I hope they outlaw (or severely increase taxes on ) cars in Washington state. It would serve the citizens right. Ha ha ha!! I just love it when the liberal and refuted idea of man-made global warming, which was designed to destroy capitalism and take away citizens’ rights, BACKFIRES and takes away their rights!!!
Let’s also shut down the space program!!! Did you see all the pollution that the space shuttle made on takeoff the other day!!! Shut’er down!!!!
Hunh. When 600,000 acres of the Okefenokee swamp and surrounding area (plus some other fairly significant acreage in other sloughs and swamps in Florida and Georgia) burned last year, it didn’t seem to affect the world temperature at all.
Perhaps Seattle burns more than 1,000 square miles or so of forest on those beaches every year?
“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?”
You see, comments like this just prove how incapable of solid reasoning skills deniers are. You see, when you burn wood, it creates fire. Fire is hot. Hot things generate heat. Heat makes things warmer. Thus, it only stands to reason that all these fires have contributed to global warming.
Please try and think all these things through before posting.
(And lest I be reprimanded, yes that was sarcasm)
Mosh, I hate to confess this in such a public way…I had a load of whites out on the line just yesterday. Today, jeans and sweats.
nobody got the albedo mania joke.
REPLY: I haven’t made my post yet on cow albedo
I just cut down a HUGE China Berry tree.
I’m going to burn it all Winter long ….. I might cut down a few more too.
I was under the impression that theory stated that it was the release of CO2 from using ancient sequestered hydrocarbons that was the cause of AGW – not the heat released that did the damage. Using Biomass is touted as a responsible approach to energy production i.e. renewable. Have I missed something here? Or should just go back to being a luking skeptic of all things AGW?
A long time ago, in a century far, far away, it was the concensus that cats caused bubonic plague. So the learned people of those days decided to kill cats to solve the problem. The idea that the problem had been identified and was being corrected blinded those same learned people from finding the real cause and then taking a more proper course of action. Could CO2 be the medival cat for our time?
I suppose every little bit helps.
I suspect what is the environmental extremists are doing is getting us use to just shrugging our shoulders and going along with their demands, or at least not tossing the demanders in the looney bin. Eventually they hope to get us to accept demands that will really have impact — eliminating heavy industry and government mandated population reduction and control.
Hmmmmm. Perhaps the albedo of those 25,000 polar bears may cause the next ice age. I say why take chances?
Al Gore could be whitewashed and Capt Ahab summoned.
Steven,
Think BIG WHITE hats. I got it. Made me laugh I like that idea lets all put 10 white sheets of paper on our roofs and the government should mandate white hats for all. Now if we get everyone in the world to do it, then global waring is solved.
Steven,
Think BIG WHITE hats. I got it. Made me laugh I like that idea lets all put 10 white sheets of paper on our roofs and the government should mandate white hats for all. Now if we get everyone in the world to do it, then global waring is solved.
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?
Well, I sure hope not! But just to ensure that I can get my retroactive carbon credits for burning so much wood for heat over the last 30+ years, everyone please chant with me now: “wood is not fossil fuel. It is natural!” A few demonstrations involving naked women and gigantic paper mache’ puppets wouldn’t hurt, either.
Yes, with your “tough and principled” diplomatic support, I just might-could be rich.
Crosspatch:
Seattle doesn’t have thermal electric. Remember the Columbia project in the 1930’s with Bonneville and Grand Coolee? Well, about 1/2 of Seattle’s power comes from there and the rest from local hydroelectric plants in the mountains of the Puget Sound region and adjacent projects in Canada.
Oh, and the Governor here just recently rejected a coal plant because we don’t have cap and trade. That power though would have gone mostly to the Portland area.
I’m sorry, this is just too much!! The global warming nonsense has really gotten out of hand, and it’s a shame to see people who are supposedly of normal intelligence fall for what is amounting to a great scientific hoax – perhaps * the * greatest of my lifetime.
Anthony – I appreciate you bringing these kinds of stories to light. I have decided now that one of my life’s missions will be to speak out forcefully against this stuff whenever I have the opportunity. I can no longer remain silent while this insanity infects both the climate science community (which I once had some respect for) and the population at large. I just hope it’s not too late…
Frank
Crosspatch –
Sorry to burst your bubble, but in the Northwest, hydro is the big thing. The Green folks want all the dams removed to restore the “wildness” of the Northwest. Nuclear is also there as well, untill it was shut down in the ’70’s’.
A native Washingtonian, I moved to Colorado about 13 years ago, and have never looked back. I knew I made the proper move when some supposedly intellegent members of my family told me that Bush masterminded the attack on the Twin Towers in New York….
Uh yea, that day was pink…
We should ban campfires, bbqs, stogies, sternos, mosquito-repelllent candles, all manner of nefarious summertime evils.
I can see it now, St Nickels …the patron saint who saved xmas in July.
[snip] And the nightmare begins in police city of Seattle….as the last scroll of liberty was destroyed, an old dying English citizen (who was denied Avastin for her brain tumor, as Kennedy got) whispered, “The Road To Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions.”
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, as per The New York Times, “Every week to 10 days, another coal-fired power plant opens somewhere in China that is big enough to serve all the households in Dallas or San Diego.”
Umm, aren’t fossil fuels natural too?
Diatribical Idiot:
> I want to hit something.
Don’t do that! It causes global warming!
Geez, don’t you people know? Believing in Santa Claus causes global warming:
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3012/716/1600/addams-family-belief-in-santa.jpg