Gaia on Fire

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BoSoxGal
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Gaia on Fire

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My county just elevated to extreme drought status during this latest heatwave - all the lawns are brown and burned as emergency water bans are adhered to, kayakers have noted the low water levels in our rivers, etc.

Here are a couple of pieces I read about on the ground conditions in Europe. I’ve read others about Bordeaux country falling victim to raging wildfires and fish dying in the rivers in mass numbers.

Europe’s rivers run dry as scientists warn drought could be worst in 500 years

Apples are baking on branches and hosepipe bans hit millions as England falls into drought

I’m dreading the next decades.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan

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Re: Gaia on Fire

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Major sea-level rise caused by melting of Greenland ice cap is ‘now inevitable’

Loss will contribute a minimum rise of 27cm regardless of what climate action is taken, scientists discover



Major sea-level rise from the melting of the Greenland ice cap is now inevitable, scientists have found, even if the fossil fuel burning that is driving the climate crisis were to end overnight.

The research shows the global heating to date will cause an absolute minimum sea-level rise of 27cm (10.6in) from Greenland alone as 110tn tonnes of ice melt. With continued carbon emissions, the melting of other ice caps and thermal expansion of the ocean, a multi-metre sea-level rise appears likely.

Billions of people live in coastal regions, making flooding due to rising sea levels one of the greatest long-term impacts of the climate crisis. If Greenland’s record melt year of 2012 becomes a routine occurrence later this century, as is possible, then the ice cap will deliver a “staggering” 78cm of sea-level rise, the scientists said.

Previous studies have used computer models of ice cap behaviour to estimate future losses, but the physical processes are complex and this leads to significant uncertainties in the results.

In contrast, the study published in the journal Nature Climate Change used satellite measurements of ice losses from Greenland and the shape of the ice cap from 2000-19. This data enabled the scientists to calculate how far global heating to date has pushed the ice sheet from an equilibrium where snowfall matches the ice lost. This allowed the calculation of how much more ice must be lost in order to regain stability.

“It is a very conservative rock-bottom minimum,” said Prof Jason Box from the National Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (Geus), who led the research. “Realistically, we will see this figure more than double within this century.”

The 27cm estimate is a minimum because it only accounts for global heating so far and because some ways in which glacier ice is lost at the margins of the ice sheet are not included.

The advantage of this study is that it provides a solid estimate of inevitable sea-level rise but the method used does not give a timescale over which the ice will be lost. Nonetheless, based on scientists’ overall understanding of how sheets such as Greenland lose ice into the ocean, the researchers said most of the rise would occur relatively soon. In 2021, other scientists warned that a significant part of the Greenland ice sheet was on the brink of a tipping point.

“The minimum of 27cm is the sea-level rise deficit that we have accrued to date and it’s going to get paid out, no matter what we do going forward,” said Dr William Colgan, also at Geus. “Whether it’s coming in 100 years or 150 years, it’s coming. And the sea-level rise we are committed to is growing at present, because of the climate trajectory we’re on.”

Colgan said: “If [2012] becomes a normal year, then the committed loss grows to 78cm, which is staggering, and the fact that we’re already flickering into that range [of ice loss] is shocking. But the difference between 78cm and 27cm highlights the [difference] that can be made through implementing the Paris agreement. There is still a lot of room to minimise the damage.”

Mountain glaciers in the Himalayas and the Alps are already on course to lose a third and half of their ice respectively, while the west Antarctic ice sheet is also thought by some scientists to be past the point at which major losses are inevitable. Warming oceans also expand, adding to sea-level rise.

“There is growing support in the scientific literature for multi-metre levels of rise within the next 100 to 200 years,” said Colgan. A collapse of the colossal east Antarctic ice sheet, which would lead to a 52-metre rise in sea levels if it all melted, could be averted if rapid climate action is taken.

Prof Gail Whiteman, at the University of Exeter, who was not part of the study team, said: “The results of this new study are hard to ignore for all business leaders and politicians concerned about the future of humanity. It is bad news for the nearly 600 million people that live in coastal zones worldwide. As sea levels rise, they will be increasingly vulnerable, and it threatens approximately $1tn of global wealth.” She said political leaders must rapidly scale up funding for climate adaptation and damage.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan

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Re: Gaia on Fire

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From Bill McKibben’s substack:
Pakistan's Floods Beggar the Imagination

Rainfall is at 780% of "normal," whatever that still means--Aid needed!


I could—and probably I should—write a column every single day about the effects of the climate crisis now playing out daily around the world. But there’s some balance that must be stuck between chronicling the ongoing horror, and becoming inured to it. Most of the time, it’s more important to figure out how the hell we’re going to slow the train down.

But sometimes—well, check out these video images coming in from Pakistan, where one of the truly awful tragedies of the greenhouse era is playing out.

The numbers—a thousand dead, 33 million affected—don’t mean that much (and are doubtless underestimates; it will take weeks to reach every corner of the remote northwest frontier where some of the worst damage is reported). But just try and imagine the number of lives turned upside down.

"The house which we built with years of hard work started sinking in front of our eyes," Junaid Khan, 23, told the AFP news agency. "We sat on the side of the road and watched our dream house sinking."

Or

"She told me: 'Daddy, I'm going to collect leaves for my goat,'" Muhammad Fareed, who lives in the Kaghan Valley in the northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, said.

"She went to the bank of the river and a gush of water followed and took her away."

There’s no doubt that this is what happens when you heat an atmosphere: warm air holds more water vapor than cold; in Sindh province, where some of the worst flooding is taking place, rainfall is nearly five times the average. Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s climate change minister, called the flooding a “climate-induced humanitarian disaster” of “epic proportions.” According to Bloomberg,

Millions of acres of farmland, including part of the prized cotton crop, have been destroyed in a country where the agricultural sector accounts for about a quarter of the economy.

And there’s no doubt that the people of Pakistan are not to blame for their tragedy: on average each Pakistani is responsible for about one fifteenth as much carbon dioxide as each American, and even that is fairly recent; over the whole span of the fossil fuel era, America has produced a quarter of the earth’s greenhouse gases; Pakistan, with about 220 million people, produces about one half of one percent of the world’s emissions. And yet, before the flooding, they suffered through a savage springtime heatwave; urban temperates reached 121 Fahrenheit, in a place where, as of 2018, there were fewer than a million air conditioners.

So, help, if you can.

The Red Crescent Society is at work—details here

So is the World Food Programme—details here

Other news from around the world of climate and energy

+A great profile of a 72-year-old climate activist from Oregon, making precisely the point we’ve been finding resonates so sharply at Third Act

I look back historically at social movements and individual acts of strength, like efforts around slavery, child labor and marriage equality, and what people have done to overcome oppression. I feel strengthened by their ability to persist and to know change can happen.

(I feel a particular bond here, because Bonnie McKinlay was also arrested on day 1 of the Keystone XL demonstrations in 2011)

+The unflagging activist Clara Vondrich celebrates Global Petroleum Day with an essay pointing out

Unless we put the brakes on the production and export of oil and gas at home, our investments in renewable energy will do little to change the course of climate history. Of the 11 million barrels of oil per day that were produced domestically in 2021, over 8.5 million barrels per day were exported. The Inflation Reduction Act only counts the barrels burned at home towards its targets, giving the fossil fuel industry a free pass to dump its trash in someone else's backyard.

+David Wallace-Wells, on the smell of smoke that is the new signature scent of the American West

Ten years ago, Californians often feared fire, even as they lived in some uneasy accommodation to it. Now, increasingly, they fear smoke — each pyrocumulus cloud or fire tornado an airborne toxic event expanding outward from the flames. Ten years ago, coastal residents might have taken comfort in the hundreds of miles between the inland fires and their homes; now they wonder about wind patterns that might bring the particle pollution to their doors.
https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/pak ... magination
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan

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BoSoxGal
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Re: Gaia on Fire

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Two articles I noted this week:

Brazilian forest guardian killed weeks after joining Amazon summit

Large parts of Amazon may never recover, major study says


The lungs of Gaia are beyond repair?



Also after months of drought and baking heat, we got six inches of rain in just a few hours today. The flooding in places was pretty catastrophic to infrastructure and vehicles, no word on any human fatalities yet. Rain in the forecast the next few days.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan

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Joe Guy
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Re: Gaia on Fire

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In my little part of the world today it is "officially" 106 degrees Fahrenheit in my city but my thermometer says, 111. In the many years I've lived here, the hottest it normally gets annually is mid 90s, usually in August. We could use rain here. The city has told us that we can only water outdoors two days per week (for me, Mondays & Thursdays - and the city encourages people to rat out their neighbors). I think there might be something to this climate change thing we've been hearing about.

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Re: Gaia on Fire

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I have always wondered about the wasting of water in the desert southwest, as there were plenty of folks already warning about conservation of water when I moved there in 1979, but very little was done for decades to incentivize conservation among the population.

This fascinating piece from the Guardian reveals that there is a religious foundation behind some of the intransigence on this issue. For Mormons, a perfect lawn is a godly act. But the drought is catching up with them
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan

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Re: Gaia on Fire

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I wasn’t sure whether to put this here or in the thread on Putin’s war on the world. Does anybody need more evidence that he’s a total psychopath? Why on earth would he sabotage these pipes and release 400,000 tons of methane into the atmosphere??!
Nord Stream gas leaks may be biggest ever, with warning of ‘large climate risk’

Scientists fear methane erupting from the burst Nord Stream pipelines into the Baltic Sea could be one of the worst natural gas leaks ever and pose significant climate risks.

Neither of the two breached Nord Stream pipelines, which run between Russia and Germany, was operational, but both contained natural gas. This mostly consists of methane – a greenhouse gas that is the biggest cause of climate heating after carbon dioxide.

The extent of the leaks is still unclear but rough estimates by scientists, based on the volume of gas reportedly in one of the pipelines, vary between 100,000 and 350,000 tonnes of methane.

Jasmin Cooper, a research associate at Imperial College London’s department of chemical engineering, said a “lot of uncertainty” surrounded the leak.

“We know there are three explosions but we don’t know if there are three holes in the sides of the pipe or how big the breaks are,” said Cooper. “It’s difficult to know how much is reaching the surface. But it is potentially hundreds of thousands of tonnes of methane: quite a big volume being pumped into the atmosphere.”

Nord Stream 2, which was intended to increase the flow of gas from Russia to Germany, reportedly contained 300m cubic metres of gas when Berlin halted the certification process shortly before Russia invaded Ukraine.

That volume alone would translate to 200,000 tonnes of methane, Cooper said. If it all escaped, it would exceed the 100,000 tonnes of methane vented by the Aliso Canyon blowout, the biggest gas leak in US history, which happened in California in 2015. Aliso had the warming equivalent of half a million cars.

“It has the potential to be one of the biggest gas leaks,” said Cooper. “The climate risks from the methane leak are quite large. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, 30 times stronger than CO2 over 100 years and more than 80 times stronger over 20 years.”

Prof Grant Allen, an expert in Earth and environmental science at Manchester University, said it was unlikely that natural processes, which convert small amounts of methane into carbon dioxide, would be able to absorb much of the leak.

Allen said: “This is a colossal amount of gas, in really large bubbles. If you have small sources of gas, nature will help out by digesting the gas. In the Deepwater Horizon spill, there was a lot of attenuation of methane by bacteria.

“My scientific experience is telling me that – with a big blow-up like this – methane will not have time to be attenuated by nature. So a significant proportion will be vented as methane gas.”

Unlike an oil spill, gas will not have as polluting an effect on the marine environment, Allen said. “But in terms of greenhouse gases, it’s a reckless and unnecessary emission to the atmosphere.”

Germany’s environment agency said there were no containment mechanisms on the pipeline, so the entire contents were likely to escape.

The Danish Energy Agency said on Wednesday that the pipelines contained 778m cubic metres of natural gas in total – the equivalent of 32% of Danish annual CO2 emissions.

This is almost twice the volume initially estimated by scientists. This would significantly bump up estimates of methane leaked to the atmosphere, from 200,000 to more than 400,000 tonnes. More than half the gas had left the pipes and the remainder is expected be gone by Sunday, the agency said.

Jean-Francois Gauthier, vice-president of measurements at the commercial methane-measuring satellite firm GHGSat, said evaluating the total gas volume emitted was “challenging”.

“There is little information on the size of the breach and whether it is still going on” Gauthier said. “If it’s a significant enough breach, it would empty itself.

“It’s safe to say that we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of tonnes of methane. In terms of leaks, it’s certainly a very serious one. The catastrophic instantaneous nature of this one – I’ve certainly never seen anything like that before.”

In terms of the climate impact, 250,000 tonnes of methane was equivalent to the impact of 1.3m cars driven on the road for a year, Gauthier said.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan

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Re: Gaia on Fire

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan

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State Farm quits California

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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... fires.html

State Farm stops writing new home policies in California due to wildfires and rebuilding costs. They’re the largest insurer in California.

We’ve been having such a lovely stretch of spring weather these last few weeks in eastern Massachusetts. Every day I tell myself to soak it up and really appreciate it, as I know it will be soon enough that we have to close the house up for months in order to endure the heat and get any sleep.

This burning world sucks and we don’t appear to be going to do anything really significant about it except maximizing corporate profits as long as possible.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan

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Re: Gaia on Fire

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Basic physics is unforgiving. There is an awful huge amount of water in the oceans on this planet. It is a scary number to calculate the rise in sea level just due to temperature expansion if the average temperature of all that water there now just warms two degrees.

snailgate.

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Re: State Farm quits California

Post by Bicycle Bill »

BoSoxGal wrote:
Sat May 27, 2023 11:29 am
... as I know it will be soon enough that we have to close the house up for months in order to endure the heat and get any sleep.

This burning world sucks and we don’t appear to be going to do anything really significant about it except maximizing corporate profits as long as possible.
So of course you, along with all your neighbors, will button up the doors and windows and turn on the A/C, creating a demand for electricity, 60 percent of which is created by the burning of fossil fuels (natural gas, coal, and petroleum) — which in turn creates greenhouse gases.   Add to that the fact that we have literally paved the planet and that this pavement, whether it's highways, parking lots, playgrounds, or buildings, absorbs solar energy and acts as a secondary radiator of this heat while at the same time reduces the amount of plant life (trees, grass, open fields) that can mitigate some of these gases through photosynthesis — and it becomes a vicious circle.

As Walt Kelly said, many, many years ago ...

Image

Now, granted, at that time (1971, the first anniversary of Earth Day) he was talking more about littering and illegal dumping (the other half of this panel showed Porkypine lamenting how much it hurt bis feet to have to walk over all the trash) — but if the shoe fits...
Image
-"BB"-
Yes, I suppose I could agree with you ... but then we'd both be wrong, wouldn't we?

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Re: Gaia on Fire

Post by MajGenl.Meade »

Now, now BB. Keep up with modern science. You wrote about
fossil fuels (natural gas, coal, and petroleum)
According to the Republican legislature in Ohio, gas is actually green energy - not like icky fossil coal and petrol rubbish.
Ohio’s new law is anything but homegrown, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post. The Empowerment Alliance, a dark money group with ties to the gas industry, helped Ohio lawmakers push the narrative that the fuel is clean, the documents show. The American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, another anonymously funded group, assisted in the effort . . . Unlike renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power, natural gas and other fossil fuels emit significant amounts of greenhouse gases . . . Climate activists have urged politicians and journalists to stop using the term “natural gas” and instead use the phrase “methane gas,” since its primary component is a powerful planet-warming pollutant.
- from Washington Post Jan 17, 2023

Not to worry. By November next year, we might be reassured that it's actually renewable!!!! :o

As to methane instead of 'natural', our new state motto shall be: Ohio - the Fart of it All
For Christianity, by identifying truth with faith, must teach-and, properly understood, does teach-that any interference with the truth is immoral. A Christian with faith has nothing to fear from the facts

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Re: Gaia on Fire

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Nova Scotia of all places is experiencing devastating wildfires right now, with thousands evacuated and hundreds of homes lost. Our sunsets are gorgeous from all the particulates but how awful, the maritimes is not a place one expects to see this the world is upside down.

I really loathe AC, I always have. Growing up the only AC we had was a wet cloth hanging across the front of the box fan, and I learned to tolerate some brutally hot and humid days just being still like a flat cat. Then we moved to Arizona and I had to live in AC for most of the year, and even in the cooler months things were built not to open (many schools out there are built without windows, just like prisons yay) so fresh air was at a minimum. I hated it so much and relished my summers back East with my grandparents.

Now the summers get so bad - instead of a three day heat wave we often have week long or longer heat waves - it’s impossible to live without some AC, especially if you have a health condition or are very young or elderly and struggle with temperature regulation. Last summer my elderly hospice patient almost died from heat stress, we really didn’t think she’d make it to the fall but she rallied once the heat backed off. And she was living in a space cooled by AC.

It’s not for nothing that scientists warn that as the heat increases more and more people simply won’t be able to live. People who use the bare minimum of AC because they can’t afford to use more even if they wanted to, even if they weren’t concerned about the environmental impacts of their carbon footprint.

One of the defining days of my experience of the climate crisis, I will never forget it: it was the middle of summer in 2006 and I was living out in Yuma Arizona where in July it gets to 120 degrees and never gets cooler than the high 90s, even in the dead of night. Friends from Maine invited me to join them at a resort outside Tucson - they were visiting to check out the resort because she was an events planner for a major biotech company in Maine, so she got free trips all the time to scope out venues for bio conferences.

I decided to hit the movies in Tucson to see An Inconvenient Truth, which was apparently so inconvenient and controversial back then the major movie theater in Yuma wasn’t even going to screen it. I watched the film, which was sobering and heartbreaking, and then I made my way to this gorgeous resort carved into the mountains and surrounded by cactus and fantastic desert views. The ‘highlight’ of the resort was this fantastic massive lobby area that had a huge wall of windows and glass doors overlooking a stone terrace where guests could sit on chairs surrounding gas fire pits and look out over the gorgeous views. So on this evening in July in southern Arizona, people were sitting around all these lit gas fire pits enjoying the views and other people were walking in and out of the always open glass doors into the hotel lobby where the air was so chilled it gave you goosebumps and gas fireplaces were lit all the time so you could sit by one inside and drink, too. So cozy, all those fires. All that AC spilling out the open doors into the 100+ degree desert.

There are people to be angry at about the misuse of resources on this planet. Elderly and sick people who cannot survive without a little bit of AC in the very hottest months of summer are not the people to be angry at.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan

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Re: Gaia on Fire

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I use my taxpayers dollars to get my air-conditioning. I button up my apartment. The only utility bill I have is electricity. I keep the thermostat set at 78 in the summer, 66 in the winter. I go to a local public library everyday. There is one of three nearby that is open 10am to 9pm every day of the week. There is also a swimming pool provided for afternoons till 8pm everyday by my landlord. The water temp rarely gets to body temp. My electricity bill is about half what my neighbors pay.

snailgate

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Re: Gaia on Fire

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Air quality alerts today in Massachusetts thanks to ongoing wildfires in eastern Canada - this time it is Quebec. The sky looks just like it did for weeks and sometimes months on end during wildfire season in Montana.

Boston today:
Image


What's the air like in your neck of the burning planet?
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan

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Sue U
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Re: Gaia on Fire

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We had considerable haze from the Canadian wildfires here in South Jersey this morning; the Sun was just an orange disk in a grayish sky. Seems somewhat clearer this afternoon, but the National Weather Service is now saying we're at risk for wildfires ourselves in eastern PA and southern NJ:

Image

ETA:

This is NYC today, but the sky looked pretty much the same here 100 miles south this morning:

Image
GAH!

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Re: Gaia on Fire

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So nice, NYC looks like Beijing! :(

I thought I'd escaped the choking wildfire smoke when I fled home from the mountain West, but of course not. It sucked skipping my woods walk today and still ending up with a sore throat and migraine.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan

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Re: Gaia on Fire

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Yankee stadium tonight. NYC has some of the worst air quality in the world right now. I’m not sure why they are even playing baseball in this? I guess air quality warnings against athletic activity don’t apply to professional sports ball players.

Image
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan

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Re: Gaia on Fire

Post by ex-khobar Andy »

CNN has a story about this today https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/06/us/new-y ... index.html

PM 2.5 levels in NYC air are among the worst in the world. PM 2.5 = Particulate Matter less than 2.5 microns. For comparison a human hair is roughly 60 microns. The point about this fraction, and the reason it is so dangerous to human health, is that bigger lumps of particulate matter in the air are largely trapped by nose hairs and do not make it into the lungs, and much smaller particles - say PM 1.0 and less - will generally go past the nose hairs but are too small to be retained by the lungs and will just get breathed back out again.

If I lived in NYC or thereabouts I'd be digging out my old N95 masks. Even the loose surgical type mask will give some protection. Under 42 CFR, N95 gives 95% protection against very small particles and the test criterion used to verify this is a sodium chloride 'smoke' of 0.3 microns.

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Re: Gaia on Fire

Post by Sue U »

Well the air here this morning tastes like crap and my eyes are irritated. Got the air purifier running, hope it helps. It is such a shame to have to keep the doors and windows closed on what have otherwise been glorious days.
GAH!

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