Re: Life in a Forest Fire
 

Sorry to disagree
As one who lived in drought plagued California, I can safely say this is not "an unusual year". It's climate change and the lack of rain continues to get worse every year. By 2020' the haze will continue into winter because there's no natural source to disipaite it. Everyone loves excuses on the less developed side of the world and I suppose I need to accept it becuse I'm unable to express any meaningful opinions in social media, my blog and certainly not to any citizens because I need to respect that I am a visitor. Obviously they choose to accept a shorter life span and all the health effects that come with it. And when I say "they" I mean those in power that can actually change things or at least bring in other nations that could possibly explain how Palm can still be harvested without poisoning an entire region of earth for 18 years running

How did they do it before the Asian financial crisis? Funny how one event led to one of the worst man made pollution and health problems ever

Re: Life in a Forest Fire
 

:nod:

and

:goodpost:

Re: Life in a Forest Fire
 

This appeared in the Daily Mail today.
World Air Quality Index reveals how polluted YOUR city is | Daily Mail Online

Hope the link works.

Re: Life in a Forest Fire
 

Interesting link.

I was surprised to hear today, from a friend, that Phuket is in Haze too right now. That's very unusual. Never got haze there when I was living there.

Re: Life in a Forest Fire
 

Thailand is also suffering from drought this year. The first monsoon rains were 30 days late so I'm not surprised that winds that have historically never carried this slop so far are in fact doing this without nature's only defense which is rain

Reiterate that everyone is fooling themselves levels thinking this year is somehow unusual. It's a warning of what's to come if humans don't come to their senses

Re: Life in a Forest Fire
 

I have been watching this debate with some interest and it seems to me there are two separate issues being talked about. The first is air quality around Penang and in particular how it is being affected by deforestation in parts of Indonesia and the second is pollution in its wider sense and how this is creating global warming and possibly affecting El Nino. However I think there may be some misconceptions about the link between air quality index and forest fire haze.

As I sit here in the UK waiting to depart for Penang I wonder how bad the haze is today. The world Air Quality Index is currently showing the AQI in Penang to be around 80 for PM2.5 particles. These are particles with a diameter of 2.5 microns in size. 80 is about the same level as most of the West coast of USA and surpassed at the moment by London, Birmingham and Manchester. But hold on there is no fires burning in these places.

The important factor here is the use of 2.5 micron particles when making a measurement. For an explanation of why particle size is important see https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rc...0ujTKBSg2PAtcQ. Particles much above 10 micron are simply not getting into your lungs. Particles that create haze tend to be larger than 10 microns, you simply can't see the small ones. So no matter how unpleasant the smell the haze may not be doing as much harm as you think. I wonder where the Penang reading is being taken. If it is downtown George Town the AQI may be more related to vehicular pollution than the fires. Today is Sunday, is the traffic lighter in George Town at the weekend?

Now for El Nino, this is a cyclic phenomenon that has been around for a long time whether or not global warming is responsible for the strength of the current El Nino or not is open to debate and I'm not qualified to decide but I do think and accept that global warming is real and not just a cyclic phase that the earth is going through. Who should we blame for global warming? The answer is simple, the western world. True, with its recent rapid growth China is now the biggest polluting country followed by the USA with India fast catching up on the inside rail for pollution measured by CO2 emissions. But there are a lot of people in China all trying to get out of poverty and if you divide each countries emissions by the population then the per capita emissions from China are about half of those from the USA. Source EUROPA - EDGAR Overview. Indeed if I look at total emissions from 1970 to 2013 the USA is way out front with all 28 states of the EU combined running second. I recall a statistic from a decade or so back that USA was the worlds number one polluter and that if Texas were to leave the union then over night iirc it would become the 8th most polluting country in the world.

So whilst RODI asserts that the USA would not tolerate haze blowing in from Canada and would do something about it, I would ask how long did the world have to tolerate George W Bush's denial of global warming and refusal to do anything about America's emissions.

Re: Life in a Forest Fire
 

Wonder no more. Just to give you some idea. I'll attach a couple of pics. I've tried to get exactly the same view. One is taken in June 2013. One is taken in September 2015. See if you can guess which is which :sneaky: Sorry no prizes.

Should it affect anyone's decision in moving here? My personal view (and note that this is a personal view) is NO. It doesn't go on forever. Unless you have some respiratory problems, in which case, you need to choose. I know of one guy who came here on MM2H and had asthma. He decided to leave. I know of others who it affects. For me, I'm indoors a bit more. But actually I would be indoors a bit more if it was seriously monsooning, which it normally is in September.

Re: Life in a Forest Fire
 

A very lucid description, NeonHippy.

The haze is emotive because you can see it and that must be partly down to smoke particle size and partly down to humidity since water vapour particles are also quite large.

The air quality readings are taken at USM Georgetown (which you can find on Google Maps) and mainly measures traffic pollution - this is almost certainly made worse by the haze because even though the particles are much smaller they get trapped in the same air layer.

It is difficult to accept too much criticism of Asia's air quality from an American perspective given the much worse pollution the US has created at home and through its overseas activities (remember Union Carbide for example).

It is not as if this is being ignored in Asia and the pressure for Indonesia to clean up its act has never been greater. But industry is always slow to respond if their profits are adversely affected which is a consequence of the (western) capitalist economic model - so once again the US viewpoint risks being seen as somewhat sanctimonious in these circumstances.

Re: Life in a Forest Fire
 

Excellent and well thought out. Let me clarify a thing or two. By no means am I in favor of almost everything the USA does on almost every aspect from financial superiority to global empire and everything in the middle. If anything, we both chose thr other side of the world to get away from the never ending in your face garbage that spews from my country every day. Nothing but racism, anti Muslim and fear propagated by a government paranoid of losing power

Having said that let me be the first one to say that GWB is a totally different topic and I would need an entire forum to express my hatredfor almost everything the USA has become since 9/11 although as a Brit you can understand that Iraq would not have been possible without the UK. But this is off topic

While you may be scientifically correct that's not really my point on this thread. All I can say is i do a lot of cardio and my lungs hurt as do my contacts from smoky air . Bottom line: inhaling toxic chemicals for weeks on end is simply not normal for anyone. The media reports talk of closing schools and Indonesian kids falling ill. It's not normal and while US goverenment policies of empire are horrible, at least I can open a healthy debate on blogs, social media or even TV and you can't do that here. The people are scared of reprecission and that is the reason nothing changes. Not because the USA has already ruined the world with is spread of crappy food or east versus west political policy disguised as religious fundamentalism.

One last thing. You say you're not here now so I'm unsure how you can actually know the situation. We arrived on July 1 and had two months of spectacular beautiful sunsets from our balcony at Batu Ferrneghi. For four weeks all we have is an obstructed view of nothing, air that stinks to high heaven and little rain to clear it out. Georgetown traffic has notjing to do with a drastic change from normal tropical skies to this. And my other point is aimed at those who think this is just an unusual year. It's because there's no rain in sight, and simply dismissing it without understanding that fires can't extinguish themselves is foolish. Future years will ultimately lead to three or four months of haze until it eventually becomes like Beijing unless people in a democracy demand their right to breathable air. As a kid in NYC my air quality sucked also but legislation and people speaking up at least made it livable. This current situation to me is not livable because it's man made and controllable.

Re: Life in a Forest Fire
 

See my last post. Just because I am American doesn't mean I'm unaware of all the evil the western world has done to the planet over the last century. Please try not to generalize that we all support Bush, war and guns. And I hold to my belief that no neighbor of an empire nation would be permitted to keep doing this despite how morally reprehensible US companies are. I worked 30 years in the financial industry so I know all the evils

Re: Life in a Forest Fire
 

I think you can speak out on this subject without fear. The only restriction as MM2H'ers is that we do not involve ourselves in Malaysian politics, as guest residents we have no say in how the country is run.

Re: Life in a Forest Fire
 

Whose empire are you referring to here?

Re: Life in a Forest Fire
 

Rodi, you are correct I am not currently in Penang and do not know the current situation but my first point was to break the link that was being made between the haze and AQI. That is why I started with 'I wonder what it is like today'. It would have hurt my position if the haze had improved significantly along side the reduction in the AQI.

My second point was to demonstrate that on a global scale the current situation is really not that significant. I don't like the fact that it is happening in the place where I intend to see out the rest of my days but are you and I in a position to complain? I still feel shame at the UK's central role in the slave trade and to a lesser extent the way my nation's wealth was build on imperial colonisation of other countries although I try to console myself with the thought that we brought development and economic success to many of those countries (Canada, Australis, New Zealand) and failed in miserably in others (Zimbabwe). America built it's wealth by the subjugation of the Native Americans in a far less acceptable manner. Both of our countries damaged the world to build the wealth that allows you and I to retire to Malaysia and live in comfort. If it means a bit of discomfort to allow these third world countries to develop and improve the lifestyle of their inhabitants I don't think we are in a position to preach.

As others have pointed out you can, and I certainly will, take a vacation to another part of Asia during the worst of the haze. There are lot of very interesting places to see.

Re: Life in a Forest Fire
 

We're back to Singapore next week and if the haze there is as bad as last year then the view from our apartment will be very poor.
In fact the number of days when we had blue skies and sun during our last visit must have been less than 20%.

Just breezing through the thread and picking up a couple of points.

I'm not in the global warming camp.
We won't know for certain for another 500 years imo.
Too late to do anything then so I'm all for the measures being suggested now.

Also I can't see the benefit of staying indoors during the haze. Can the indoor air be that much cleaner than out doors?

If large national or MNC are guilty of causing forest burning then they should be financially penalized to the same extent as VW are going to be in the US and maybe at home in Germany.
If it's just locals burning to claim some land for their own use then that has to be accepted.
Same as we shouldn't blame locals for killing endangered species for which they earn 'peanuts' in order to keep their families going but anyone found exporting/importing endangered species bits and pieces should have the book thrown at them.

Look don't bother explaining where you think I may be wrong with any of the above, I'm not for turning as someone once said.:cool:

Re: Life in a Forest Fire
 

Peronally, I can't argue with any of that. I'm not convinced by the "man-made" global warming argument which I think is too self-serving for certain countries/politicians to be beyond reproach. If it's right, it's too late to fix and if it's wrong then it's demanding sacrifices from the wrong people.