I agree that it would be unreasonable and unfair for the homeowners to have to *fall on the sword* (take all the blame?) but it is not unreasonable to expect homeowners to be part of the total pollution, in my opinion.

We all breathe the same air and I think it would be very hypocritical of anyone (including homeowners who burn wood) to complain about air quality while they are still contributing to the overall problem by not doing their part. Their part would be to stop burning wood waste and heat their homes with cleaner energy, like natural gas and hydro if they are hooked up to those sources of energy already.

They expect others to do something while defending their own determination to keep polluting as long as the others are not cleaning up their act first.

That doesn't make any sense at all, sorry.

Correction: " to expect homeowners to be part of the total pollution" should read "part of the total solution" of course.

I will burn wood in my back yard in the form of a camp fire until hell freezes over. And seeing as global warming is more a myth than fact, hell freezing over may come soon...
:)

The california study is a sham. It was and still is not ground proofed. That is, no one actually has gone to the individual neighbourhoods to see waht can be seen form the outside, not the inside.

Such as?

1. Wood piles in the front and back yards.
2. chimneys - the old type which are connected to traditional wood burning fireplaces.
3. chimneys - the new type which are often inserts with vents poked through the old chimney liners or new vents that van be quickly distinguished from gas vents.
4. chimneys - active or not? is there still snow around the chimney area 2, 3, 4 days after a recent snowfall? if not, they are not being used on a daily basis, if ever.
5 - chimneys and vents. drive very slowly around a community at dawn on a say -20 celsius morning. Wood smoke is bluish and will be steady. Gas vents will cycle off and on.
6 - take a sample of wood suppliers - both pellet and solid wood. How have their volumes of delivery changes over the last 5 to 10 years?

and on and on and on. It takes more than putting a few sniffing instruments out there and put it through an electronic analyzer. It takes some ground work and it takes some "sense" of what is reasonable. The california firm did not do the first and has little of the second.

why is a California (worst smog) organization (never seen snow or cold) telling PG how and what to do about wood smoke.

One must be most cautious when reading the results of these polls.
First, they are not definite on one out of (4 or 5) houses, a substantial difference.

Second, I have never heard of this poll like I never heard about the one on water metering. Who and where did they poll? Did they poll 20 people in California or several thousand in PG? I do not have a wood burning appliance in my home, yet. We often discuss getting one installed to help reduce our monthly gas bill that has been climbing and is now at $180/month for a three bedroom mobile home.

Third, there has been no determination of who the majority contributors are for reduced air quality. Perhaps the powers that be are afraid to prove that it is industry that needs to be targeted and not home owners.
It is road dust in the spring for sure, it is also the various mills spewing tons of matter into our air shed. This morning I had the car windows rolled up and could still smell the money.

I suppose what I am asking is, "Where does the air contaminants really come from?"
I think this answer needs to be found before any actions are taken.

Pretty amazing we need a California company to come to PG to do a detailed study on how many homes burn wood. 20 to 25% of homes using wood is just unbelievable. How can city council even release such a report and expect the citizens to believe it.
The Federal government has a web site that industry must report all their pollution to whether it be air, water or other. Major industry in PG puts thousands of tonnes of particulate matter, chemicals, and metals into the atmosphere of PG each year. The web site is very easy to use. Look at the site and it will become very clear where the majority of pollution comes from. WWW.ec.gc.ca/inrp/npri.

When there is an air quality advisory in place what I smell is not wood burning or dust. It is the smell of chemicals. Now they can try to fool everyone otherwise but I WILL NOT ever believe that industry is not the MAIN problem with our air quality. Yes the other things play a part in it all, that I will agree to but very little in the scheme of things. When the powers that be start admitting to it is when things will get done. Start by at the very least adding industry topics to the discussions! Meanwhile I will be sitting on my acre of land having a wiener roast.

I am still blown away by the number of people here who rant on and on and on about targeting industry because they do nothing. Yes they pollute, and the have been here probably longer then most people on this site......so you don't like it......MOVE.

All of the major contributers have and continue to spend millions of dollars on reducing emissions. Right down to buying new heavy equipment that is more fuel efficient and has less emissions. (Ask Finning why they no longer have D8 CATS on the piles at the pulpmills...MAJOR loss for Finning and a reduction in emissions from industry.)

And yes they probably are still the major polluters but what do you expect? Without the pollution this town would soon follow th fate of Mackenzie.

Anyway long story short....Don't cry about industry NOT taking the blame and trying to reduce emissions unless you have any idea what you are talking about!

I also find it stange that people believe "cleaner energy - like natural gas" is cleaner than wood. Both are carbon base with the added pollution of sulfur from the natural gas. Natural Gas got the "cleaner energy" title from the gas companies when they were trying to get people to convert their fireplaces to natural gas as there would be no ash to clean out.

Also I wonder how many of the people that believe we should all get rid of our fireplaces and stoves realize that if our houses are with our power we would have no heat. I had to use my fireplace for 1 week for emergency heat.

I do believe that if we want to keep our wood stoves and fireplaces we should upgrade to the cleaner systems. But don't tell me I can't have it until all the industry clean up their pollution.

No one said industry does nothing. What I AM saying is that our City officials wont admit that It is industry as well as wood stoves, dust and backyard fires. When they have meetings all they focus on is HOW THE PEOPLE who live here should change. Dont get me wrong, we do have to change but lets call a spade a spade. I believe they are looking for something else to put fines on for a nice TAX GRAB.

*Ducking now

Biomass(wood) vs. natural gas.
Wood has a much greater percentage of carbon than does natural gas and wood can also contain sulphur as well as many other elements.
Natural gas burns much cleaner than wood simply because it is a gas and mixing more easily with the air needed for combustion. Natural gas combustion can take place with extremely low levels of excess air simply because of its ability to readily mix with air. Wood on the other hand requires much greater volumes of excess air to burn properly as it is a solid fuel. Non mixing of carbon and air usually results in higher levels of carbon monoxide when burning wood as compared to natural gas.
Wood also contains ash. White wood can contain ash approximately as low as 0.25% and bark as high as 3%. It is this ash that fouls heating surfaces and results in biomass burning appliances needing a larger heat recovery surface than those appliances burning natural gas.
The ultimate analysis of both wood and natural gas is readily available on the net. While looking up the ultimate analysis also do it for wood ash. Remember the elements in the earth are those that end up in the tree and ultimately in the wood ash. After reading you may not be so interested in eating that hot dog just roasted over the open flame of a wood fire.

"I am still blown away by the number of people here who rant on and on and on about targeting industry because they do nothing. Yes they pollute, and the have been here probably longer then most people on this site......so you don't like it......MOVE"

Lame. That would sort of be like saying "If you don't like how the BC Liberals run the Province then MOVE". Or, "If you don't like the crime in Vancouver then MOVE". Or, "If you don't like the taxes we pay in Canada then MOVE". Or, "If you don't like the fact that we can't offer certain cancer treatments in Prince George then MOVE". 20 years ago you could have said "If you want your kids to go to Univeristy then MOVE".

Thankfully we still have some people in our society who are willing to resolve problems instead of running away from them.

Actually I think it is more like saying: We were here first and we dont appreciate new people moving in and trying to change the place to their liking without respecting our rights.
I have to wonder what ever happened to global warming?? Those folks promoting natural gas over wood in one breath and condemning folks for polluting on the other seem selfish if one considers greenhouse gasses. Wood burning does NOT contribute to net increases in greenhouse gas impacts (since wood decomposes naturally into bad chemicals like methane). It doesnt matter what time period we are talking about here, in the end, since most folk burn dead trees which would not other wise be used, the wood is going to turn into greenhouse gasses. Natural gas is in essence naturally sequestered carbon. Burn it in your house and you release the carbon into the atmosphere so it becomes a problem. IF you buy into global climate change at all, you have to see that burning fossil fuels might be better for the bowl it is worse for the world.
I like to solve problems, I just dont like to sacrifice uselessly when the real sources (and thus air quality) are not addressed. The reason the city tries to dump it on the average tax payer is the same as when they try to blame drug crime on landlords. The average Joe cant protect himself from the city (unlike, say, the elephant in the room they never mention).
When we start using the arguement that people oght to be willing to do their part we ought to be talking about them doing so voluntarily. It is always easy to suggest someone else do their part, even if that part is to accept regulations that force them into it.
A lot of folks are taking around this study on wood heat so let me be more blunt: The statement that 20 percent of houses in the bowl rely on wood heat is BS. The study was either faulty or reality falls outside it's margin of error.

"Actually I think it is more like saying: We were here first and we dont appreciate new people moving in and trying to change the place to their liking without respecting our rights"

Who cares who was here first? Besides, at some point in time even the people that were here first changed something to their liking to get to where we are today. That's how a culture gets established and as we all know, cultures change. They are in a constant state of flux and that's what we are seeing today when it comes to people wanting a cleaner environment, etc. Your argument also assumes that all of the "old people" like it the way it is, which certainly may not be the case . . .

As for the rest of your post, I agree. While wood burning could cause some isolated issues, it's goofy for the city to suggest that it is the culprit that needs dealt with first. For the record, I honestly don't know ANYONE in town who heats their home with wood . . .

"Actually I think it is more like saying: We were here first and we dont appreciate new people moving in and trying to change the place to their liking without respecting our rights"

Ah.... so you are saying that industry is the same as First Nations .........

That is an absolutely excellent point!!!!

Moving on from that, First Nations were here before Industry .......

The logical conclusion then becomes?????

Come on you people .... let me hear it please ......

1. We came after Industry thus we can move if we don't like it .....

2. Industry came after the non First Nations settlers, so Industry can move if the offsprings of those settlers don't like it .....

3. Non First Nations settlers came after First Nations settlers, so their offsprings can move if they don't like it .....

4. First Nations settlers were the first humans here to the best of our knowledge, so they get to stay and dictate to everyone else that followed them how this land will be used .......

So, rule number one of logical debate is to make sure when you provide a premise for an argument, it can't be used against you ........

Loki - "Second, I have never heard of this poll like I never heard about the one on water metering. Who and where did they poll?"

There was no poll that Sonoma, the firm responsible for the report, used. They used a marker, lovoglucosan, which identifies wood burning. What it can't do is differentiate between different source of burning wood - a forest fire 70 km upwind of the city, a fireplace, a pellet stove, a beehive burner, a wood fired cogen facility, backyard fire pit, charcoal bar-b-q, etc. etc.

http://www.pgairquality.com/files/pdf/PG_PM25SourceApportionment_FinalReport.pdf

Go to the summary on page 7-1

PM2.5 has been monitored in Prince George since 1994, and the annual average PM2.5 concentrations are the highest in the province. A large monitoring, modeling, and data analysis effort is under way to better understand the sources of PM2.5 in the area. This report summarizes the application of two types of source apportionment tools, CMB and PMF, to the Prince George speciated PM2.5 data. Review of the emission sources in the area indicated that the most important PM sources were likely to be emissions from the pulp mill, wood burning, and mobile sources. To better quantify wood burning, special measurements were made of LEVOGLUCOSAN, a unique marker.

They base virtually all their findings with respect to wood burning on levoglucosan. They di not do any ground truthing to find out what the sources might be. They assume it is primarily residential wood burning appliances. They have no objective independent data to back that up.

Here is another study which questions the use of levoglucosan as a tracer that can itself predict the quantity of wood burning.
http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/162243809.html
They found that “levoglucosan fraction may be highly dependent on combustion conditions, making it uncertain to use it as a quantitative tracer under real-world burning conditions. Thus, quantitative estimates of wood burning contributions will be very uncertain using solely levoglucosan as a tracer.”

But hey, the PG scientific crowd is easily led down the garden path ..... After all, these people are consultants from California. They must know what they are talking about. And this levoglucosan sure is a neat trick they introduced.

So many people still believe in those magic pills.

In the meantime, we suffer and the pressure on industry has been relieved. But just to make sure, let's keep all our meetings secret again they way they were before.

"Wood burning does NOT contribute to net increases in greenhouse gas impacts (since wood decomposes naturally into bad chemicals like methane)."

True over the very 10s and 100s and 1,000s of thousands of years. In fact, decompositon of such organic matter ccreated the sequestered coals, oils, gases ... the fossil fuels of today.

So, if sonmeone in those days had had the smart idea of burning the vegetable matter for energy, we would not have the energy storehouse we have inherited.

No matter which way one slices it, whether we use current vegetable matter for energy or fossil fuels for energy we will run out of that form of energy within a few generations and run low withing this and the next generation.

And, since we are using carbon based fuels, whether currently grown or sequestered underground, at an ever increasing rate compard to the pre-human impact condition, we are also putting more and more carbon into the air, irrespective of whether it contributes to global warming. It does contribute to the deteriorating condition of the quality of air we breathe.

Not mentioned yet is the p.m. generated by the pulpmills that burn hog fuel, so I guess the fancy California Levoglucosan method must go right off the meter when the mills are on hog, since it cannot differentiate between different sources of solid fuel burning emmissions. What a (yet another) waste of time and our money is this issue. PG gets it worse than some other locales because we are goldfish in a bowl, and when the wind does not blow fair, we eat dust. Solution: move out of the bowl to higher ground, it worked for us folks.
metalman.