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Guest essay by Eric Worrall
As Alaskan winter temperatures drop below -30F, the EPA is considering fining and prosecuting entire towns for breaching clean air laws, because of smoke from residential fireplaces.
Alaskans’ Cost of Staying Warm: A Thick Coat of Dirty Air
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“That guy has got an old stove, right there,” Dr. Jeanne Olson, a veterinarian and air quality volunteer, said on a recent afternoon, pointing from the cab of her four-wheel-drive Toyota toward a spiraling column of thick gray smoke from a homeowner’s chimney. The thermometer inside Dr. Olson’s cab said it was 30 below zero outside, which meant that lots of people in the vicinity were probably putting another log on the fire, or thinking about it, even as she spoke.
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But here in one of the coldest parts of the coldest state, there is an only-in-Alaska pollution story: At about minus 20 Fahrenheit — a fairly regular occurrence here in winter — smoke that goes up comes right back down, to linger at ground level and, therefore, lung level. The average from 2013 to 2015 for dangerous small-particle pollution, called PM 2.5, which can be deeply inhaled into the lungs, was by far the highest in the nation in North Pole, just southeast of Fairbanks, according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
“It’s all one thing — when you most need the heat is when you’re most apt to create a serious air pollution problem for yourself and the people in your community,” said Tim Hamlin, the director of the office of air and waste at the E.P.A.’s Region 10, which includes Alaska.
And forces are now converging to heighten the tension in this seemingly unlikely pollution story. Civil fines by Fairbanks North Star Borough — which includes the cities of Fairbanks and North Pole, with a total population of about 100,000 — could be assessed in coming days against residential polluters. The E.P.A. could declare the entire area to be in “serious” noncompliance of the Clean Air Act early next year, with potentially huge economic implications, including a cutoff of federal transportation funds.
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Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/25/us/alaskans-cost-of-staying-warm-a-thick-coat-of-dirty-air.html
Let me see if I have got this right – if you try to escape President Obama’s skyrocketing energy prices by burning wood stay warm, on the very coldest winter nights you risk being fined by mobile EPA air quality inspectors.
Great illustrative picture:
http://www.newsminer.com/science_and_technology/what-makes-tanana-valley-inversions-so-harsh/article_a7c5dea0-c985-11e5-a6b9-d3a5a6a0a4f2.html
The EPA need to ban inversions! It is just not acceptable to have natural things happen anylonger in a anthropogenic World. Just ask them…..
But wood is a biofuel and a form of solar based energy. Such energy sources should be exempt from any inhibiting EPA regulations. Instead of being fined these people should recieve government subsidies for making use of biofuels. According to some of the theroy going around, additional particulate material in the atmosphere is suppose to cause cooling and counteracts global warming. People should be paid by the government to add particulate matter to the atmosphere.
Well said, burning wood assists in cloud nucleation and protection from GLOBAL WARMING
What we don’t know is how much the shrunken heliosphere and increased cosmic ray influx influence nucleation. The state of the heliosphere (and its cloud-propagating effects) might be in charge (for the present), no matter what the popular notions of climate regulation might be.
Part of a poem a while back that I’m reposting:
So if I do some harm
By just keeping warm,
You’ll have to kindly forgive me!
I find my solution
Is carbon pollution…
Ere Gaia will quickly outlive me!
It just might be a credo for my fellow Americans.
As a musician, What’s not to like? I’ve enjoyed all the opi that they have produced.
+ 1
Yet in New England we are told to heat with wood and wood pellets because it is renewable energ. We have 2 pellet stoves and I use the ashes to pour over areas I don’t want snow but don’t want to shovel
On the radio today there was the comparative cost of some means of heating. Lowest (in NB) was a conventional wood-burning stove. Next, IIRC, came wood pellets (but these require electricity, which makes them useless if you are using the heat source as the only heat source). After that, again IIRC, was a heat pump. After them came oil, propane, and electrical baseboards, and I lost track of the order for them.
Ian M
Who in the hell is outside at -30 for any time than is absolutely necessary who could be affected?
Don’t beam me up Scotty, get the EPA clowns outa here NOW!
Dear Dr. Jeanne Olson (veterinarian and air quality volunteer),
You are a fruitcake and a quack. You do not understand anything with regards to air quality or atmospheric pressure. Worse than that you do not understand anything with regards to scent tracking processes of a canine or any other tracking mammal. Go back to school and learn something worthy of your “title”. If your previous school didn’t teach it you should publicly condemn those to whom you paid for an inadequate education.
When the pressure is low (or fallling), scent as well as smoke will fall to the ground. A tracking dog will not be able to pick up the scent trail as the same atmospheric process causes the smoke to fall to the ground. And don’t even try any claim to global warming (I had to toss that one in).
I may have been a little hard on the babe but she wanted to claim a level of knowledge beyond her means. However, I would like a little advice on clearing the anal glands on my bird dog
Let’s not forget that Alaska, for the third year running, has seen its warmest year on record in 2016.
http://www.ktuu.com/content/news/2016–409402135.html
“In 2016, at least 14 communities around the state recorded their highest average temperatures ever. That includes Anchorage, where the average temperature was 4.5 degrees above normal. And in some places like Utqiaġvik, on the North Slope, the average temperature increased more than 7 degrees.”
And Alaska has been seeing some warm weather this winter…
https://weather.com/news/climate/news/alaska-florida-record-warmth-january2017
“America’s northernmost city, a mere 1,300 miles away from the North Pole, pushed above freezing on New Year’s Day. Utqiaġvik, formerly known as Barrow, Alaska, soared to a high of 36 degrees on Jan. 1.
Not only did this tie the town’s January all-time record high, but it also tied the warmest temperature for any date in more than five months between Nov. 12 and April 22, according to Rick Thoman, Climate Science and Services Manager with the National Weather Service’s Alaska region.
Even stranger, these above-freezing New Year’s Day temperatures occurred in the morning over virtually the entire North Slope of Alaska, thanks to southerly winds moving down the leeward slopes of the Brooks Range to the south.
This record warmth also required no sunlight. The sun hadn’t risen above the horizon in Utqiaġvik since Nov. 18 and wouldn’t do so again until Jan. 22.”
In Fairbanks the forecast for tomorrow is -26*F, at sunrise 11:00AM. Practically the warmest winter ever…
Who needs a wood fire, when the Weather Service is keeping you warm with all those (pants on fire) warmest ever temperatures.
The January high of 36 in Barrow was in 1974 but the all time January High temperature was 54 back in 1930
http://www.intellicast.com/Local/History.aspx?location=USAK0025
Reading the actual article seems to present a different picture to this post..
There is a local pollution problem, recognised by local residents and there is a solution: cleaner burning stoves, for which financial support is available.
Key quotes not shown above:
“Some residents said they feared that an overreaching government, locally and in Washington, was out to take away their stoves. Others, like Dr. Olson, who works with racing sled dogs in her veterinary practice and volunteers with Citizens for Clean Air, a local group that has sued the E.P.A. to force a decision on Fairbanks pollution, said the exact opposite.”
““Both sides are digging in their heels,” said the borough’s mayor, Karl Kassel, who has been calling residents to chat about their heating systems and to urge them to upgrade, with financial help from the borough, to more efficient wood stoves. “We have been setting ourselves up for a crescendo.””
“Mr. Hamlin, the E.P.A. official, said his agency was definitely not trying to take away anyone’s wood stove, or make life more expensive.”
So they are not going to fine anyone, just buy everyone “new wood stoves”. That clears it all up. Except the part about how people get new stoves, without “making life more expensive”.
“Financial support” is not the same as buying new stoves for those that need them. It means we get to choose who gets what, and if you don’t like your deal, you have a choice of “making life more expensive” through buying something new to replace what you already have, or paying a fine.
not that long ago, every home and business in our country was heated with wood or coal in cold weather. Every single place, used coal or wood. Even though the population was smaller, the amount of smoke was much higher than today. So why wasn’t the climate affected?
Interesting. So the UK can cut down and burn every forest in the USA, to keep warm, but Americans cannot?? Where is the logic in that?
(I refer to Drax, a 4 gw power station in the UK that is now fired by wood pellets from the US.)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drax_power_station
R
another issue is some (many/all ??) newer stoves reduce particulates by keeping chimney hotter. makes actual room heating away from chimney areas less efficient.
catch 22.
“How did I advocate low income folks harming anyone?”
Written by the idiot who spent $3500 to burn down his house with his children in it.
Why? According to this idiot, to save money.
While there are sometimes unintended consequences to new policies, burning wood or coal for home heating is not new and still being used by billions of the worlds poorest.
The first problem is fire. The second problem is carbon monoxide poisoning. Collecting firewood can also be very dangerous. In North America and northern Europe, killer smogs are a thing of the past because of cleaner heating sources.
Personally, I enjoyed heating with wood. I learned about the hazards and mitigated the risk.
If you are doing something hazardous to save money, you are too stupid to actually save any.
Never mind the EPA going after the Alaskans, why don’t they threaten to reduce federal funding to California until they stop burning their forest fires thereby emitting loads of particulates of all sizes.
Double standards anyone? If this is a serious issue then surely any cost would be acceptable.
SteveT
PS Do I need a sarc tag?
I haven’t tried to calculate any figures, but given the population of Alaska I would be surprised if their emissions could hold a candle to California’s emissions. See what I did there?
Benjamin Thompson was born in Woburn, Massachusetts in 1753 and, because he was a loyalist, he left (abruptly) with the British in 1776. He spent much of his life as an employee of the Bavarian government where he received his title, “Count of the Holy Roman Empire.” Rumford is known primarily for the work he did on the nature of heat.
In England, he redesigned the open fireplace by making it wider, taller & more shallow, so that wood or coal would burn hotter & combust the smoke before it passed into the streamlined chimney. The shape of these fireplaces would radiate much more heat into the room; being twice as efficient as the fireplaces they replaced. Such fireplaces would be a boon in Alaska & are available in the US from Jim Buckley & the Superior Clay Corporation. http://www.rumford.com/
In the UK, we have one Rumford fireplace in the house & another much larger Rumford outdoors as part of our summer kitchen. It was straightforward to cast the concrete throats in situ. We use the fireplace to extend the BBQ season to all year round in the garden & it really blazes out the heat. I suspect that Rumfords would also be an answer to small particle pollution.