Barbara and Dan’s ski and hiking trip to Europe: March 2025 I spent most of March in Europe; first skiing the Birkebeiner in Norway and then the Haute Route in the Alps. Here is a blog on that trip with a bunch of pics and videos....I dont usually do "travel blogs" but this was such an exceptional trip, I had to write something…
Does your stove result in bad air pollution? It’s been a big few years for gas stoves and the natural gas industry. Following the publication of research linking gas stove use to childhood asthma, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission moved to regulate gas stoves federally in January 2023.
Which websites is best for looking at smoke distributions? My wife and I had a plan to go hiking today, of course with our cute border collie/mutt “Georgie”. But where to go given the wildfire smoke. I compared the AirNow Fire and Smoke map with the Purple Air map. I was surprised at what I learned and it changed my decision about where…
In this blog post, we set out to answer two questions: When is the air the dirtiest in the Pacific Northwest (or PNW)? Has the timing of air pollution changed in the PNW over the last decade? This blog post is aimed at anyone interested in air quality in the PNW, but especially teachers who may find this module useful in their classrooms. …
In recent months, there has been a surge of concern regarding the health effects of owning a gas stove. Articles from the New York Times (see article here), as well as several other news sites, have pointed out possible risks of living with gas stoves (see statement from US Consumer Products Safety Commission). Despite the recent surge of news, there is surprisingly little data out there and many questions remain...
Smoke in the Methow Valley, Sept. 8, 2022: 600 ug per m3 = Hazardous air. At this level, the ug/m3 and AQI are nearly the same at 600. Anyone living in the west knows that smoke is now a common occurence almost every summer. It doesn't seem to matter where you live, although California and the NW states seem to get it the…
In the summer of 2021, I was driving thru the North Cascades and picked up a hitchhiker who had just finished hiking the entire Pacific Crest Trail. This is an amazing feat and he was not much younger than me! I asked him what were the best sections and he replied "The Sierras, Goat Rocks and the North Cascades". I was blown away,…
How bad were the 2020 wildfires? Why do we have so many wildfires? How can I keep smoke out of my house? For answers to these and other questions, watch the presentation that Dan gave on January 20, 2020. See the presentation here.
Implosion and dis-mantling of the coal-powered Navajo Generating Station in December 2020. Photo credit: Adrian Herder/Tó Nizhóní Ání In the midst of the most bitter election battle ever, you might not have noticed a really significant news item. On December 18, 2020, the stacks at the Navajo Generating Station (NGS) were imploded as part of the dis-mantling of what once was one of the largest…
If Science Eludes Us, So Does Democracy Thirty-four years ago, I wrote an op-ed with the same title as this one. At the time, I was a grad student at UW. This article was published in the Seattle Times on 8/17/1986. You can click here to see my old and yellowed copy of this. sci_eludes_1986-1Download Or if you are a Times subscriber, you…