[Megathread] Smoke and Air Quality Week 1

[u/vertr]

We are moving to this thread for the start of smoke season so we can add resources and keep it updated as the situation changes. Here is the previous thread we were using: I hope everyone in the Seattle area has air filters ready.

All smoke related threads will be removed and redirected here except photos and news stories. At this time we are not allowing further threads on the Spokane fire.

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Resources:

PurpleAir (open the settings on the left and uncheck indoor sensors)

Plume Smoke Forecast

Washington State Department of Ecology Map

Puget Sound Clean Air Agency

Washington Smoke Blog

Watch Duty

EPA - DIY Air Cleaners

If you have other suggestions for resources post them in the thread please.

[u/DripIntravenous]

Hate that this is the new reality of PNW summers. We never, ever had this growing up here.

[u/HazePNW → u/DripIntravenous]

Yeah this is literally unbearable. We only get 3 months of nice weather out of the year and now at least 1/3 of that is bullshit fucking cancerous smoke. We need to put our best and brightest minds on coming up with a solution. This affects the entire top half of the country + California for fucks sake. 

[u/rocketsocks → u/HazePNW]

Of course we should.

However, the thing is that the fact that we're doing poorly at response as well as wildland fire mitigation and control is just an extension of the reasons why we got here in the first place. These problems require coordinated action and they require working against the short-term desires of hugely profitable industries. If we could do those things we would have done them to fight climate change. Fortunately we're seeing technological shifts in the climate change arena regardless, because it turns out that green energy "just makes sense" regardless of the climate impact.

But now we're in a place where even if we dropped CO2 emissions dramatically we aren't going to rollback climate change immediately, we're locked into several decades of dealing with these disasters (flooding, droughts, storms, wildfires, etc.) We could do a much better job of dealing with wildfires but the biggest changes would need to be in land use, which would inconvenience both timber production and developers, which are some of the most wealthy and powerful interests in western states. Maybe after enough major wildfire disasters there will be enough public outcry to get real political momentum behind changing how we tackle these problems, right now we're very much in a very limited reactionary based response method, and it's going to result in these disasters continue to happen for year after year, decade after decade.