Free Republic

On January 6, 2024, the drive-by media went into overdrive, remembering (sometimes while oozing crocodile tears) the horrors of January 6, 2021. It was, they said, the day on which democracy was under attack...According to Rep. Clay Higgins (R. LA), who has been investigating what actually happened that day, when one deletes the layers of leftist propaganda, it appears that January 6 was a giant entrapment web that successfully stopped official challenges to election certification, made Trump even more toxic and, worst of all, turned his law-abiding supporters into criminals.###Regarding the entrapment, Higgins states:"The FBI had embedded themselves into various...

Mayor Bill de Blasio celebrated Earth Day on Tuesday by proposing more regulations — including a ban on new wood-burning fireplaces. The mayor made the proposal, along with those for other sweeping regulations that he said would update emission standards and help curb air pollution. Instead of wood-burning fireplaces, de Blasio wants to allow only cleaner-burning units, such as those that use natural gas. Residents who already have wood-burning fireplaces would be allowed to keep them, but would be required to use only firewood that has 20 percent moisture or less, according to the Department of Environmental Protection. Officials said...

An estimated 3 billion people in the world still cook with open fires and dirty cookstoves, including this mother in Guatemala. Credit: Photo by Nigel Bruce, University of Liverpool Two new studies led by University of California, Berkeley, researchers spotlight the human health effects of exposure to smoke from open fires and dirty cookstoves, the primary source of cooking and heating for 43 percent, or some 3 billion members, of the world's population. Women and young children in poverty are particularly vulnerable. In the first study, the researchers found a dramatic one-third reduction in severe pneumonia diagnoses among children in...

The Love Affair With the Fireplace CoolsBy CHRISTINA S. N. LEWIS Published: January 19, 2011 **SNIP** “The smoke from a fire smells very nice,” said Diane Bailey, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council in San Francisco. “But it can cause a lot of harm.” The tiny particles, she said, “can cause inflammation and illness, and can cross into the bloodstream, triggering heart attacks” as well as worsening other conditions. Or as Starre Vartan, a 33-year-old blogger who goes by the name Eco-Chick, put it: “Any time you are burning wood or cow dung, you’ll be creating pollution....

Good evening gentleman/ladies. 1. Get out your drink of choice. 2. Launch your favorite internet browser. 3. Open this in a new tab. 4. Then open this in a second, different tab. 5. Then open this in a third new tab. Once this tab is going, make sure to enter "Full Screen" mode. Turn down the lights, settle down and do what you do.

Another holiday. Another sweep of smoke scofflaws. Bay Area air pollution inspectors found 47 homes where wood fires were on Christmas Day during a Spare the Air alert when cold, unhealthy air was forecast. The tally was more than double the 22 violators detected on Thanksgiving Day when the Bay Area Air Quality Management District also called a Spare the Air alert. Violators get written warnings for a first offense and $400 fines for a second offense. While critics have bashed the air district for intruding on a holiday burning tradition, a spokesman for the agency on Monday defended the...

Is a wood stove insert warmer than a regular fireplace, even without the fan (if there's a power outage)?

The first mandatory no-burn alert in the Bay Area resulted in nine residents getting caught for lighting wood fires. The Bay Area Air Quality Management District will send warning letters to the violators of the Spare the Air alert, which was in effect from noon Wednesday to noon Thursday. Repeat offenders can be fined hundreds or thousands of dollars.Six of the nine violators were reported by neighbors, and three were detected by air district inspectors out in the field, said Aaron Richardson, a district spokesman.Regardless of how a violation is reported, an air district inspector must witness the burning to...

(11-19) 16:21 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- The fireplace police descended on the Bay Area on Wednesday. For the first time ever, residential fires are illegal under a new law, passed in July, that bans home burning on winter season Spare the Air days. The first such ban took effect at noon. Seventy inspectors from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District planned to spend the day and evening patrolling residential neighborhoods, looking for telltale chimney wisps. Violators will get warnings by mail. Repeat offenders face fines of as much as $2,000. The fireplace police say they are determined to keep...

Mention air pollution, and what comes to mind? Factories. Oil refineries. Auto tailpipes. Now Bay Area smog regulators are trying to crack down on another source that they say is just as significant, even if beloved: home fireplaces. Citing growing medical research that soot causes more severe health problems than was previously realized, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District is proposing a ban on all wood burning in fireplaces and wood stoves in the nine Bay Area counties during winter "Spare the Air" nights. --snip-- If approved, fireplace police would enforce the rules, and neighbors would be encouraged to...

Under the auspices of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, "public hearings" are being held to determine the fate of the family hearth. Those of us who live in rural areas have a pretty good idea what the outcome is going to be. Still, in the interest of basic fairness, we'd at least like the decision-makers to employ the rudiments of the scientific method, rather than riding the winds of energy dependence and global warming hysteria, before coming to a final decision. The scientific method follows a rigid methodology. Ask a question. Do background research. Construct a hypothesis. Test...

Throwing a few logs on the fire on a nippy evening, or boosting a home's market appeal by advertising its wood-burning fireplace, could go the way of the coal chute and the ice box for many Southern Californians if newly proposed air quality regulations are adopted. As part of air pollution plans designed to meet federal deadlines, South Coast Air Quality Management District officials have proposed a ban on wood-burning fireplaces in all new homes in Los Angeles, Orange and portions of Riverside and San Bernardino counties. In addition, on winter days when pollution spikes, wood-fueled blazes in all fireplaces...

Ever wondered how to make a real wood fire in your fireplace, with beautiful tall flames, which draws nicely, and warms the room up too? Do the fires which you have made not look like those in the movies, photographs or in cozy paintings and such? It's an easy task with this method I learned in a book written by a man who grew up in early 19th Century Loudoun County, Virginia. Joseph Janney, in his 90s in the 1890s wrote a little text for his children and grandchildren to read about his life as a child in frontier America....

<p>Even though local air authorities ordered you not to light your fireplace Tuesday, you burned your wood anyway. It was a chilly November evening. But did you get caught? The answer: You don't know.</p> <p>You won't find out for a few days because inspectors for the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District don't knock on doors. They mail violation notices.</p>

Air District Clarifies New Fireplace Rules Rule Violators Could Be Fined POSTED: 11:35 PM PST November 10, 2003 UPDATED: 11:19 AM PST November 11, 2003 BAKERSFIELD, Calif. -- New fireplace regulations that went into effect Nov. 1 mean before people light a log in their fireplace, residents will need to know if it's been declared a "no burn night." Dale Karnes uses his wood burning fireplace solely to heat the room where he and his wife spend most of their time. "We need the heat. It's not because our age or anything, this room is like a tomb in...

Today, I had lots of card board boxes and decided to burn them in the fireplace rather then fill up the garbage can. For an hour, this was working rather well and I was enjoying watching the fire. I still do not understand why that last batch was different, but the fire got very hot. While watching it, I started to worry about the front glass with such a hot fire, since it was making some unusual noises. Just to be safe, I went into the kitchen and filled a pot with water. Not once have I even heard of...