Air stagnation

[Mark Taratoot]

We are currently experiencing an air stagnation event in the Willamette Valley. This isn't too uncommon. It happens when the atmosphere is inverted.  Low pressure in the valley floor is trapped by high pressure farther up in the atmosphere.  This condition traps pollutants at ground level.

Many people use wood for heat.  It's a renewable resource, and it's economical.  However, it also creates pollution.  Wood smoke creates particulate pollution.  Short-term health effects of particulate pollution includes cardiovascular effects like arrhythmias, heart attacks, asthma attacks and bronchitis.  Long-term health effects include lung cancer and other forms of heart and lung disease.

When we experience air stagnation and atmospheric inversions, if you have another way to heat your home, please consider doing so.  Your neighbors will appreciate it, and it may save their life.  If you MUST run a wood stove, do so responsibly.  Only burn dry, seasoned wood.  Run your stove HOT so it doesn't make smoke.  Do not damp down an older stove.  Better yet, get a modern stove that minimizes particulate pollution.  If your stove uses a catalyst, be sure to replace it when it is time.  Even with a modern stove, you must manage your burning to reduce  health impacts to your neighbors.

You can find some good information about wood heating and health risks at the Lane Regional Air Pollution Agency website at www.lrapa.org. 

[josiah fisher]

Thank you Mark!  

Lots of folks don’t realize how much smoke they are producing, especially if they load the stove and don’t bring it up to high heat before then damping it down.  

Josiah

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[mark willhoit]

It is good to remember that if you are heating with natural gas or electricity they are not clean fuels. You are just putting your pollution in somebody else's backyard.

       Most of our electricity is generated by coal fired or gas-fired generators. Some is produced by hydroelectric which is causing the extinction of our salmon runs. Much of the natural gas involves fracking.

      They have now realized that people with gas cook stoves in their houses have large amounts of air pollution in their house because of their cook stoves and are recommending that you get rid of them.

       And when you think that buying an electric car is going to solve all our problems do some research on the environmental impacts of manufacturing lithium batteries.

         There are no Simple Solutions there is no free lunch

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[Howie Opatowsky]

As with any claim, kindly city your sources...

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[Andy Gray]

48% of Oregon's electricity comes from fossil fuels: https://www.oregon.gov/energy/energy-oregon/Pages/Electricity-Mix-in-Oregon.aspx

For Pacific Power, it's 69%: https://www.pacificpower.net/content/dam/pcorp/documents/en/pacificpower/rates-regulation/oregon/tariffs/OR_LabelingInsert_LrgBiz.pdf

As the Secretary General of the UN said last week: “We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator.”

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[Howie O]

And this claim:  "They have now realized that people with gas cook stoves in their houses have large amounts of air pollution in their house because of their cook stoves and are recommending that you get rid of them."

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[George Brown]

Here's an article: https://www.opb.org/article/2022/11/13/multnomah-county-report-recommends-replacing-gas-appliances-to-reduce-health-and-climate-change-impacts/

I haven't read it but I saw it earlier today.

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[George Brown]

And here's another that I haven't read yet about OSU working on a new type of rechargeable battery: https://www.opb.org/article/2022/11/11/oregon-state-university-plans-to-develop-a-battery-that-would-not-rely-on-rare-minerals/

[mark willhoit]

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[mark willhoit]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: mark willhoit <willho...@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Nov 17, 2022, 7:40 AM
Subject: Re: [south-corvallis] Re: Air stagnation

To: Otmar Ebenhoech <cafe.e...@gmail.com>

You need to reread what I said I never said that lithium mining was worse than cars I'm just saying that there is an impact especially if your Native American and the lithium mine is going to destroy your sacred Mountain or the nickel mine is going to pollute the pristine Lake that you get your fish and your wild rice from. Most of my information comes from OPB.

      Big lithium,

 Big Oil they're both trying to put the best slant on their product.

     I am just trying to get people to look at their energy source just because you can't see it feel it or smell it or taste it doesn't mean your energy source is clean don't forget that we own it all and all together.

        It is nice that you can afford to be an energy producer. My energy consumption per month is approximately 255 KW hours which amounts to approximately $33.30 a month.

I didn't see any of your sources posted I wish you would give me some so I could compare them to my alleged oil industry postings. I have even heard that Twitter could be suspect.

    As I said in my original post there is no simple solution and there is no free lunch.

On Wed, Nov 16, 2022, 11:29 PM Otmar Ebenhoech <cafe.e...@gmail.com> wrote:



Hey Mark,

Long time no talk, I hope you are doing well!

It would be nice if you would cite your sources when restating wild claims like that. It makes it much easier for one of us to learn something. 

It takes hours to disprove thoroughly, but from what I’ve seen most of your claims are off, I suspect you’ve been reading news that’s funded by the fossil fuel industry, since it’s hard to find anything but that these days in energy news. The truth of course is nuanced and a matter of degrees, but clean electricity seems to now be the cheapest form of energy for new power plants and keeps getting cheaper and cleaner. I do believe electricity is our clean and sustainable future.

Every form of energy has some sort of pollutant, it’s all about the types and amounts. Few articles actually cite data, most are fear based hit pieces funded by special interests. 

I do read a lot, especially directly from the energy researchers on Twitter. From how I see it my favorite choices are wind and solar electricity heating a well insulated house through a minisplit heat pump. The solar on my house produces twice as much electricity as the (all electric) house uses in a year and the utility pays me about $1500 a year for the electricity I produce. the $ was a special deal on the buyback for 15 years, but even without that bonus solar is impressive if done efficiently. Solar panels themselves cost about 1/10 of what they cost ten years ago though some installer profits have not passed all that on. 

And as to lithium mining impact being worse that a gas car, that’s clearly fake news. EV lifecycle impacts are smaller in comparison to fossil fuels vehicles. But you wouldn’t know that reading the many false hit pieces funded by vested interests.

Oil companies take in $2.6 Billion a day, and that can buy a lot of news. 

It’s a mess out there, in many ways.

We do have a lot of wood in Oregon. I do hope people burning wood do it cleanly, since PM 2.5 emissions seem to have bad effects on human lungs. No worse of course than the forest fires exaberated by the climate change caused by the fossil fuels. 

I try to do what I can. But I still have a burn pile. And you’re doing great since you hardly drive at all. I think It’s probably still better to rarely drive a gas car like you do than to commute in a new EV a lot. But every cold start of a old gas car pollutes as much as hours of driving, so they do really suck. 

Be well! 

Otmar Ebenhoech

2255 SE Crystal Lake Dr.
Corvallis, OR 97333

cafe.e...@gmail.com

Shop Voice and TXT 541-862-1606

[Mark Taratoot]

It is true that heating a home with natural gas adds carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, and carbon dioxide is a cause of climate change.  It is also true that some electricity production also contributes carbon.  So does burning wood.  Some people feel using wood is better as the carbon in the wood came from the atmosphere through photosynthesis.  It does still put carbon in the atmosphere.

 

My request wasn’t about emitting greenhouse gasses.  It was about releasing particulate pollution during an atmospheric inversion.  A poorly managed wood stove emits far more particulate pollution than a well-managed one.  It also generates other toxic pollutants that can be held near the ground during an inversion.  When the atmosphere is stable and smoke can rise it poses less of a risk.  It still releases toxins, but they aren’t held close to the ground.  Even when we aren’t experiencing an inversion, it’s a good idea to run your wood stove properly and if you have an older stove consider upgrading to a modern wood stove that is certified by EPA.  The EPA provides some other guidance about wood stoves and the health effects of burning wood.

 

If you heat your house with electricity, it is possible that electricity was generated with fossil fuels.  It is also possible it was generated by clean fuel.  Now that the coal plant at Boardman has closed, I wonder what our current mix is.  Even with a fossil fuel plant like natural gas or coal, there are emission controls on the stack.  That’s not true for people who use wood to heat their homes.  I suspect if all users of wood heat had to get an air quality permit from the DEQ, there would be a lot fewer wood stoves.  It is also true that hydroelectric generation imperils salmon.  Wind turbines have their liabilities too.  Even nuclear energy has liabilities.  If/when we figure out how to develop fusion power, there may yet be unexpected consequences.  I hope we are able to find out.

 

My plea was for people who choose to heat their homes with wood to consider an alternative source when there is an atmospheric inversion and to manage their stoves to minimize particulate pollution even when there isn’t an inversion.

 

To just write it off because there are also impacts of using natural gas or electric heat is spurious.  By that logic, we should go back to using leaded gasoline and get rid of emission controls on automobiles because internal combustion engines still give off pollutants. 

The risks of using natural gas for cooking aren't relevant to this request.  I am curious how many people in the Willamette Valley are using wood burning cook stoves. I bet not many.  My plea was about home heating during and specifically during an inversion when air stagnates near the ground.

Thank you.

[James Bombardier]

Lots of good information here but it lacks my perspective that the underlying issue we need to tackle are the societal incentives we live by.  Currently in the West, private and not public profit is the driving narrative for our society that effects all decisions that are made, supposedly in the interests of our larger society.  We all know that is not the case but we nuance the heck out of all the rest of our forms of social organization but the money thing.

I posit that the role of government should also include all aspects of finance, because that government, supposedly represents all the people, and not just the few that currently control global finance.....and the politicians they have bought.

I am the guy with the I Support Public Banking sign linking to publicbankinginstitute.org in my front yard and believe our species is in a civilization war about this very issue with the China/Russia axis (RoW - Rest of World)

I studied the future with a cultural anthropologist and did state level public policy planning 50 years ago and have been watching our world become more financial focused since 1971 when money stopped being linked to gold.

James

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[Torsten Pihl]

Even before the pandemic, I'd wear a mask on inversion days to reduce breathing toxic wood smoke.

Regarding electric heating, anecdotally my heat pump has been running 24X7 for the last few weeks, and my electric bill was only $34 (was double in years past, and that's not adjusting for inflation). As more and more renewables come online, "moving the pollution elsewhere" becomes more and more moot.

Thor/Torsten

[James Bombardier]

Mark Taratoot is correct in his contextualization of the Air stagnation issue and wood burning which is a reality in world and represents a direct form of conversion for heat.  The subsequent comments didn't put Mark's comment within a context of energy sources and usage which I fault on profit instead of public good propaganda focus.

Einstein said something to the effect the electricity is an inefficient way to boil water (cook food).  Maybe society needs to provide both gas and electricity to houses and design them appropriately so that each energy source is used most efficiently.  Heat pumps are not totally sufficient at our current temperatures and additional heat must be provided by another source, which most efficient currently is gas.....why are we forced into an either/or equation?

IMO, we are not acting as a society but as consumers of what offered without question anymore.  Between 1949-1986 the US had a Fairness Doctrine that required "both sides" context to public media coverage.  Why did that form of public regulation go away?

Watching our current world spin makes me motivated to speak out...thanks for reading

James

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[Torsten Pihl]

Even before the pandemic, I'd wear a mask on inversion days to reduce breathing toxic wood smoke.

Regarding electric heating, it is indeed inefficient for resistance heating (heating coils), but there are far more efficient ways of using electricity to heat. My heat pump has been running 24X7 for the last few weeks, and my electric bill was only $34 (was double in years past with an older less efficient model, and that's not adjusting for inflation). Heat pumps can be used for water heating too. They simply grab the heat that's in the outside air and put it to use inside (and in the summer, reverse the process to cool inside). And as more and more renewables come online, "moving the pollution elsewhere" becomes more and more moot.

Thor/Torsten

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[Tracy]

This is a very interesting and respectful conversation. Thank you! I have a question. Lots of our neighbors heat with wood, we can see the smoke from their chimneys and it does feel like it's very smoky at ground level on certain days. We don't have a wood stove, so I don't understand what they are doing that is producing so much smoke. I read at the beginning of this thread that it has to do with what temperature the stove is before a "damping" down. What does this mean? What is the smoky and non-smoky way to operate a woodstove and is there a reason why people aren't doing it correctly? Does it save on wood or make the heat last longer? Please excuse my ignorance of the proper language.  

Thank you, neighbors. Tracy 

[Andy Gray]

I heated with wood for years and used to build wood-burning stoves. The number 1 cause of smokey fires is wet (or damp) wood, which is also inefficient because you're using energy to boil water instead of heat the house. High-efficiency (airtight) stoves make a big difference too; open fire places or fireplace doors are not very effective at heating a house. Their main impact of an open fireplace is the sensation of heat provided by the light from the open flame hitting your skin; most of the hot air is just going up the chimney.

The other thing is how you operate the wood-burning stove. When adding a new load of wood, or starting the fire, you want to crank it up to a roaring flame with a lot of air--the hot flame will burn off more of the volatile gases that are emitted early in the combustion of a log. Once the log is burning well, you can shut the air down ("damping" down) to keep the wood burning efficiently and keep the heat in the stove box as long as possible so that it can heat the stove and the room. That's why it's better to do large loads at a time rather than add a little bit at a time. If people damp the fire down too much (perhaps hoping to keep the fire going all night), it will just become a smoker again from lack of air. I doubt such a fire is providing much heat overnight; it would probably be best to let the fire burn out at a decent burn rate.

Most wood burning pollution can be attributed to how people burn.

Andy

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[Mark Taratoot]

Hi Tracy,

Andy pretty much got it. 

• Dry wood smokes less under all circumstances, and of course as he mentioned some of the energy from burning is used to vaporize off the moisture if the wood isn't already dry.
• Getting the stove HOT will do a better job of burning. 
  
• If you buy a new stove, it must be an EPA certified stove.  Some have catalysts that help reduce particulate smoke and other toxic substances.  The catalysts have to be replaced from time to time.  There are also non-catalytic models that use other design features to move the hot exhaust around and get a full burn.
• If you have an older non-certified stove, you must replace it if you ever sell the property.  This is true of a stove in your house or in your shop or barn.
  
• You ~CAN~ get an older non-certified stove to burn cleaner, but you have to make a point of it.  That said, you can also get a certified stove to smoke too much.
• Modern wood stoves don't need dampers.  Older stoves used them to reduce the amount of air leaving the fire.  Damping down the firebox can let the wood start to smolder at which point it smokes a lot.

One of the "problems" with wood heat is that it can be.... HOT.  If it gets too hot, you can open a window to let some heat out.  Damping down an older stove to keep it from being too hot in the house can smoke out your neighborhood and hurt your neighbors.

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