Comments

1

great question. upside is housing prices may go down if every year we get a fucking month of smoky cancerous breathable death

2

On the other hand, it's unlikely this much smoke is sustainable. A few more years of this and there will be no forests left to burn. Yay?

3

Of course, I love the sepia ambiance.

4

Everyone should be already making their long-term plans under the assumption that worst-case climate change is going to happen. There is no chance we're turning this thing around.

5

My lungs are already complaining about this gunk after only a couple of days. No way I could handle months of it.

6

How sad to see Seattle and Washington State resemble L.A.

7

@6 L.A. moved to Seattle so it was only a matter of time before they brought their air quality with them.

8

@4: Already on my to-do list. It's after relining the pantry shelves.

9

@1 Except Beijing is 3rd on the list of the world's least affordable cities. Most people don't care about their health until they have to.

@6 I know you're just making a crack, but LA has come a long way in reducing the smog of the 60s–80s (no joke—some days air quality was so poor they'd cancel school). Hopefully, some of those proverbial transplants will push Washington state toward California's strict air quality standards so you can hang on to the fresh air ya'll usually enjoy.

10

I never leave the house anyway so it doesn't really matter at this point.

11

If you want to stay in the western U.S., where else can you go to escape smoke? It's happening everywhere. May as well stick it out in Seattle. At least we have glorious, life-affirming rain most of the year. (That's right -- RAIN IS LIFE.)

12

I agree with the potato head @11 - I moved here 40 years ago and became fond of the rain early on. I can't really think of any other non-smoky place I would rather live. It might cause me to spend more of my summers traveling elsewhere, however.

14

@6: Only this is tree smoke, not auto emissions.

Washington has been Californicated for decades.

15

The pollution we are getting in Seattle is not from Seattle. You can see it all over our state, Oregon, and B.C. But if you want to move away or encourage others not to move here because of this myth, go ahead.

I tell people to not move here because they need to make 100k a year to move into a 1br shit shack. Then they will be preached to everyday by someone who says they are inclusive but hates everyone that does not agree with their ideological views. If you eat meat, have ever owned a gun, live in a house, drive once in a while, not want to ride a bike, (that is 97% of our population by the way), or don't want needle exchange shelters near your home, you are a rotten person. I'd rather stare at the pollution. It might be the best thing we have.
Ask the Stranger staff who fits every one of these srandards. Probably not one. But they preach about it everyday.

16

If it's any consolation, Portland has it worse than we do. But really - we are only on like day three of this. Can't The Stranger's staff hold it together, or have they gone full-on high school newspaper?

17

@13:

Nobody ever said a damned word about climate change STARTING fires - rather it is the long-term climate patterns that come with climate change: longer periods of hot, dry weather with no precipitation, and which, among other things, results in increased infestations of tree-killing predatory species such as mountain pine and bark beetles,; both of which that affect a forest's ability to store and cycle carbon and are major contributors to the increased intensity and duration of wild fires on the continent.

So, yes, DO PLEASE feel free to argue with THOSE Facts. I also am just posting them.

19

I smoke too many trees to complain about air quality. What I choose to fill my lungs with is way worse than anything in the outdoor air.

20

@9 tip of the hat. I appreciate your style of disagreement

21

@17

Contributors, yes. "Major" contributors... very, very debatable.

There is a huge abnormality in the historical and physical climatological record of wildfire frequency and intensity, and that abnormality is not the uptick of the past few decades, but rather the massive decrease from the end of the 19th century to 1950 or so, and the subsequent low levels through the present. For at least a few centuries prior to 1900, fire frequency and area burned in the US was consistently four times todays levels, if you can believe things like lake bed deposits and carbon-dated charcoal in soil samples.

So while global warming is certainly contributing to wildfire intensity, the evidence suggests that some other factor or factors have a much larger impact.

22

@20 I really do hate being "that guy", but thank you.


Please wait...

Comments are closed.

Commenting on this item is available only to members of the site. You can sign in here or create an account here.


Add a comment
Preview

By posting this comment, you are agreeing to our Terms of Use.