Government Acts as if bureaucratic BS is a Virtue, subrogated by corporations, government now serves corporations. For years I have been trying to raise awareness and effect change of corporations being given a free ride to act irresponsibly while blaming residential for the poor air quality. In most cases it would take much time money or effort to clean up heavy Industry, but government is in corporations back pocket through the lobbying and illegal conflicts of interest in which both parties act above the law simply by making new legislation that makes all wars legal, including the war against mother nature.
The Pine Beetle is a good example of how government couldn't manage the publics affair which lead to the biggest infestations BC has ever seen. A public forum put on by government themselves, showed pictures in the early stages where just a few tree's had been infect, quick action may have averted the vast devastation that our forests are undergoing. The pine beetle is just that, a beetle that goes after pine only, this is because the pine is full of a sap,(think of it as blood of the tree) more so than any other species of tree.That sap is what use to cause problems for wood stoves as there was so much of the sap that it clogged up the inside of wood burning appliances with stinky thick tar.Well along comes the beetle, sucks out the sap like a vampire, the tree dies and we are left with a husk that is perfect for burning, after the wood is seasoned of course, though unfortunately pine makes poor quality lumber at the best of time, and has a short window of use after the beetle has left it standing dead.
So now enter's the government...., they got rooms full of over paid morons who have never worked a day in their lives running the show in an office highrise. They come up with the bright idea of just pushing it all into huge piles and throwing a 2 cent match after they are given 100 million each year for our province alone, plus they are making money on what little they do take to the mills. The biggest problem with their "educated up the wazzoo never worked a day in their life" ideas is they are doing this in the winter and spring when the wood refuses to burn which creates a toxic bomb of compounds that are highly acidic n corrosive. government acts above natural law, still not learning from their mistakes that you can not force upon mother nature what does not come natural to nature, what is not found in nature; how many forest fires do you find in the middle of winter, how many forest fires do you find when its wet and raining outside? A normal natural forest fire is not toxic because it has the optimum conditions for natural decomposition back to mother natures natural Alkaline compounds instead of toxic acidic chemical compounds...forest fire rejuvenate an environment, while man destroys the environment forcing his will through legislation at the barrel of a gun.
Moisture,think of wood like a rag, when it is put in water it soaks up water even when it is dead, in the fall, winter, spring there is heavy rain and snow melting. Ever dump a bunch of water in your gas tank??Doesn't burn well because the water is actually trying to put out the fire.Take notice to the color of the smoke filling the province and cities, in the fall is is quite light and gray, as more moister is soaked into the wood and temperatures drop, the smoke gets thicker and darker. In spring when all the snow melts, the moisture content is at it's highest and temperature are still low you will notice the smoke is a dark blue; this is at it's worst point, spewing tons of half burnt wood in it's chemical form into the air. Wood in it's chemical form is made up of poisonous chemicals similar to tobacco, yet try lighting a little cigarette in a public building.
Temperature is also a determining factor as the wood drops in Temperature the less efficient burn that occurs. the below zero freezes the water that is soaked up making the process even worse. the combustion process of any fuel is effected by Temperature, if you burn wood, try the difference of wood that has been sitting in the house for a day to wood that is brought in from out side and burnt directly. Amount of heat and smoke produced vary's quite a bit,,,,just look at the smoke difference exiting your chimney.
Beetle kill is not the best wood but it can been burnt cleanly in a EPA appliance as air is injected into the smoke to burn off most of the creosote before it enters the chimney.Yet city and government morons in charge of disposing of the beetle kill who know nothing about these facts ignore people like me and the citizens trying to educate the situation. The amount of energy in this wood is mind boggling,General Electric has clean wood burning generators capable of supplying whole cities with electricity. Why can the public not have access to this wood for use in their homes to save energy, it would help the city dispose of the wood cleanly, wood is a far cleaner energy form than gas so the environment would benefit. The only ones crying are the gas company's as they would loose a ton of money as demand would not be near what it is.
England ( http://www.woodenergyltd.co.uk/prod2/smoke-control-areas.ashx ) is one of many European~ countries able to ship wood all the way to their country, and burn it in a environmentally friendly clean pollution free generator that will power all the homes in Wales, countries all over Europe are also shipping North American wood all the way to their countries to partially replace dirty coal generators to meet the reduction of green house gases. WHY THE F@#K ARE WE NOT DOING THE SAME???; one word-GOVERMENT!
BECAUSE NATURAL GAS COMPANIES HAVE THE GOVERMENT WRAPED AROUND THIER FINGER AND WE AS CITZENS ALLOW IT TO HAPPEN.Government grants and Gas commercials are great propaganda, you see about a hundred commercials every day on TV and radio. People are tricked into thinking Gas is clean, good for the environment, and safe, yet every year people are gassed by faulty appliances like the family in Sunpeaks this year(2007) that very nearly fell victim to faulty gas appliances, or the hotel in Valley view a few years back that blew up killing citizens. Make sure you have a CO2 detector in your home!
People think because they don't see the exhaust that it must be clean, well gas has 350 times more methane gas and 7 times more CO2 and tons upon tons each year of acids and other harmfully carcinogens into the air, these fumes are directly responsible for the whole in the ozone. Natural gas is a worse polluter than cars as majority of homes and business rely on gas for heat, hot water, cooking, manufacturing on a host of other applications.So Get Your Head out of Your ASS tree huggers, mayor and government jerk offs ....look at the FACTS!!!
We need to get value from this wood. Some of this wood should be given to the people of Canada to make products such as boards, plywood, log homes, ect....think of the market around the world for log homes and furniture alone, yet the officials are pushing it in to piles and throwing a 2cent match to it in a vain effort to just get rid of it. In doing so they are filling whole valleys and cities with think oily smoke that is very detrimental to the environment causing people with illness's and asthma great hard ship. There are laws and regulations that ministry of environment is allowed to disobey because the government allows them to.The province of B.C is given 100 million dollars each year to deal with the Beetle kill, yet most of it goes toward administrators filling their pockets. Nobody seems to care that this is wrong and dangerous, there are facts that are being disregarded simply because the guys in power of the situation refuse to acknowledge things like burning in the winter is not efficient simply because the temperatures are to low and the wood still has allot of moister in it not allowing proper combustion.
Forest fires are a natural necessity regenerating the earth, but when was the last time you saw a forest fire in the middle of winter? The forty degree difference make a very inefficient combustion,cold wood with high moister content just doesn't want to burn, that is why the smoke is blue not gray. Gray smoke is mostly of consumed wood that falls to the earth as fertilizer regenerating life while blue smoke is the oils not consumed falling to the earth in the form of oily acids.Do you wonder why your having bad acid reflux and lung congestion lately?It's all the poisonous oils filling the air turning it to a terrible blue.I'm worried about long term effects to peoples health as the "beetle kill" is just starting,there are roughly 2 billion tons in a hundred mile radius of Kamloops alone, officials plan to pocket the millions dolled out by governments which is taxpayer's money and incinerate the wood on the spot. unfortunately it will continue for years to come as it's just the tip of the iceberg as they say. I also worry about the people working near the fires for if they develop cancer or lung problems in a few years they will be left out to dry by government officials that refuse to look at alterative's, or admit their ignorant practices are flawed, shame on them, this is peoples lives they are playing with. I know my health has been effected as I never before had allergies or axemia until two year ago, Have you noticed any health issues in then last few years?
There are burning machines that burn 100% of the smoke making it feasible to get rid of the pine beetle safely and efficiently. These machines can burn right through the summer unlike open burning that can only be done in spring and summer. If you check out the web site www.airburner.com you will see one of several systems designed to burn any type of wood with any amount of moisture completely with out pollution. These machines cost from $70 000 for the smaller machines to $110 000 for the largest portable machines that can burn up 60 ton a day completely pollution and smoke free. B.C Hydro uses one at the Revelstok dams pulling wet water soaked logs from the lake and burn them the next day. The cost is a drop in the bucket with the millions of dollars of funding they receive from the government.Kelowna uses some of the clean burn machines in their city, in fact it is law.It's no secret that Kamloops city council and officials have develop what I call the "Kelowna Syndrome", constantly comparing Kamloops to Kelowna. "Kelowna has this and Kelowna does this so why don't we" city officials and council constantly state. I feel for the most part it's stupid to do so as Kelowna is totally different form Kamloops in every way.If they insist on comparing I wish the city officials would look at Kelowna practices of wood disposal & the bylaw they have in place to make garbage burning illegal & fines for constant smoke belcher's of residential heating.
Kelowna also has a "airshed" set of rules, this is a legislation by individual cities bring together politicians, Ministry of environment, health inspectors, fire marshal, and citizens to have a set of rules to ensure the air that effects the cities environment is to be kept clean as possible.Yet in talking with Ralf Adams, one of the heads of Ministry Of Environment in Kamloops, he has been turned down by our mayor and city officials time and time again.We as citizens have to lobby our council and mayor that a proper airshed program be adopted in our city like most other cities in our province already have.These set of rules work to clean up dirty old wood stoves by offering incentives for people to upgrade to a EPA ,commercial companies, such as the Lafarge that burns coal, making governments such as Minister of Forests, and the city's works to make sure they don't just push shit into a pile and burn it in the spring and fall when the wood is full of water...ever dump a bucket of water down your gas tank??? the gas won't burn properly if at all when you dump water in it , same with wood , not with out the help of mechanical incinerators.Right now the Minster of Forest is allowed to break the laws and regulations any way they want simply because the Beetle kill is an special circumstance, even though there are better ways of disposing of the wood than simply pushing into a pile and putting a match to it any time they want.It seems the MOE doesn't care what so ever about the health risks of the blue smoke constantly bombarding the whole province, yet there have been many studies on simple cigarette smoke and the cancer causing agents found in them.The thick blue smoke of the inefficient burning of the pine is much worse.Time will tell as in 20 years or so the amount of cancer in average people is going to go through the roof, not to mention the immediate effects on asthma suffer's, pregnant women, and those suffering from major sicknesses breaking down their immune systems even farther.Typical government mismanagement, ignorance and short sighted ness is not acceptable and we a citizens need to rally together and pressure government on all levels to change. So please do so by phoning the mayor, our member's of parliament of both federal and provincial, and show these moronic bastards that money doesn't trump our health and well being. They have no problem holding special sessions of parliament at night behind closed doors for things like giving them selves a raise in pay or drum up new laws, so why can't they do the same for the heath risks we are facing from the disposal of the pine beetle wood.It seems governments are there to serve the interests of them selves and big corporations and to hell with us citizens who actually need the help and it's our money in the first place, so lets take action to change these problems.
One little slashpile fire fills the whole neighborhood with thick gasses that makes it hard to breath. Amazing how temperature and water effects combustion. Our government is allowed to ignore health and safety laws because it is in a conflict of interest when writing its own legislation, [what it calls law]
The people in charge are either incredibly stupid or massively insensitive & narrow minded acting in greed 'n greed.
This smoke is an average day in Kamloops, they expect us to consider this normal and safe, yet back yard fires are against the law.
Government still thinks the world is flat as engineers know it all & rule all.
Health problems such as asthma, axema, headache, rashes, drying of the skin, itchy eyes, and trouble breathing not to mention kicking the shit out of ones immune system, especially dangerous for pregnant women, this smoke is like a billion cigarettes all lit at the same time.
