Stage 1 burn banned announced for Pierce and Snohomish counties.
November 30, 2011 — Due to forecasted stagnant weather conditions and rising air pollution levels, the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency is issuing a Stage 1 burn ban for Pierce and Snohomish counties, effective at 5:00 p.m. today, November 30, 2011. This ban is in effect until further notice.
A large ridge of high pressure off the Pacific Coast is expected to bring cold evenings and poor ventilation to the Pacific Northwest for the next several days. Pollution levels are expected to rise throughout the Puget Sound region, but especially in Pierce and Snohomish county communities where residential wood burning is common. Air pollution levels in these areas could reach “unhealthy for sensitive groups.”
“Smoke from fireplaces and wood stoves is the single largest source of air pollution in our neighborhoods in the wintertime — and this pollution can build up quickly when it’s cold and not very windy,” said Craig Kenworthy, Executive Director of the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency. “Breathing this smoke causes major medical problems in vulnerable groups like children and the elderly. Please help them by avoiding burning when our air quality is poor or deteriorating.”
During a Stage 1 burn ban:
- No burning is allowed in fireplaces or uncertified wood stoves. Residents should rely instead on their home’s other, cleaner source of heat (such as their furnace or electric baseboard heaters) for a few days until air quality improves, the public health risk diminishes and the ban is cancelled. The only exception is if a wood stove is a home’s only adequate source of heat.
- No outdoor fires are allowed. This includes recreational fires such as bonfires, campfires and the use of fire pits and chimineas.
- Burn ban violations are subject to a $1,000 penalty.
It is OK to use natural gas, propane, pellet and EPA certified wood stoves or inserts during a Stage 1 burn ban.
The Washington State Department of Health recommends that people who are sensitive to air pollution limit time spent outdoors, especially when exercising. Air pollution can trigger asthma attacks, cause difficulty breathing, and make lung and heart problems worse. Air pollution is especially harmful to people with lung and heart problems, people with diabetes, children, and older adults (over age 65).
This is the first air quality burn ban of the season for the Puget Sound region. The purpose of a burn ban is to reduce the amount of pollution that is creating unhealthy air. Puget Sound Clean Air Agency staff will continue to
Did The 2012 Mayan Calendar Get It Wrong?
On November 8th an aircraft sized asteroid whizzed past Earth with enough destructive power to wipe out civilization.
The asteroid known as 2005 YU55 is expected to circle back for another close Earth encounter in 2041 – The exact orbit is unknown because the asteroid will first pass by Venus which will affect it’s orbit.
It’s reasonable to assume that the great and mysterious Mayan civilization wasn’t all that great. . .since it may have calculated that the asteroid would hit Earth next year around the same time.
There are many variables to influence the orbit of such an asteroid. . .possibly including flares from the sun’s surface, other close encounters with planets, moons and asteroids.
Maybe the Mayan’s did not even believe that the earth would end in 2012 – maybe they just stopped for a rest until they needed a new calendar. At any rate, don’t sell the house or quit the job just yet.
Earth and Moon photo by Jupiter-Bound Space Probe
This image of Earth (on the left) and the moon (on the right) was taken by NASA's Juno spacecraft on Aug. 26, 2011, when the spacecraft was about 6 million miles (9.66 million kilometers) away. It was taken by the spacecraft's onboard camera, JunoCam. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.
- Carl Sagan - In a lecture in 1996, the same year as he passed away, Carl Sagan shared his thoughts on a similar picture taken by the 1990 spacecraft Voyager 1