Burning ban needed for North Cowichan

I am dismayed that North Cowichan council is considering an extension on open burning in Cowichan Valley. This should not even be considered, given the frequent pollution-trapping temperature inversions over the valley during fall through spring, and the increase in lung-related diseases in recent years.

Apart from these low-level temperature inversions, we have just 12 kilometres depth of liveable atmosphere on average, the troposphere. The troposphere is a thin “atmospheric skin” where all smoke, most water vapour, all clouds and all weather systems are confined because of an even stronger temperature inversion in the stratosphere above. And for 200 years we have been pumping every kind of pollutant into this very thin skin.

The ratio of this atmospheric skin depth to the diameter of Earth (12,700 kilometers) is about one to 1,000, the same ratio as the thickness of an apple skin to the diameter of the apple. Cut an apple in half to convince yourself just how thin that skin is, and likewise our atmospheric skin. Damage the skin of either, and you eventually rot out the surface beneath.

And then there’s the climate. Burning puts more carbon dioxide into the troposphere, contributing to global warming, while trees and other vegetation that we cut and burn reduce the amount of carbon that plants can absorb from the atmosphere, a double-whammy of trouble, and both are positive feedbacks to global warming.

North Cowichan Council should be taking leadership on pollution and climate change, not approving a proposal to extend the burning period. Geoff Strong Atmospheric scientist Cowichan Bay