California+Wildfires+Emitted+a+Year's+Worth+of+Car's+Pollution+in+Less+Than+a+Week


 * Article from NBC News can be found [|here]. **
 * Posted on the 26th of October, 2017. **



This article was about the affects of the wildfires that have been burning in California since early October. It mainly focuses on the amount of pollutants being released into the atmosphere (using cars as a metric) and mentions the degradation in air quality due to the high amounts of particulate matter in the air. The air quality index is used to measure the quality of air in a particular location. On an average day the reading would be from 0 to 50, but in Napa the readings are over 200, which is very bad for people. Additionally, the article talks about the environmental impact of the pollutants being released into the atmosphere.
 * Summary**

Trees are a large carbon sink, containing billions of metric tons of carbon (Miller 114). The amount of carbon being released into the atmosphere alone is staggering, but that's coupled with that fact that much more will be released in the process of rebuilding the 3,500 houses that have been burnt down, both to produce lumber and to power the machinery required to rebuild them. While this is not entirely a human contribution to climate change it is still important and needs to be monitored. As global temperatures continue to rise forests will become more dry and even more forest fires could happen, which would serve to exacerbate the issue.
 * Relation to the course**

I believe that people shouldn't live in areas that are prone to wild fires. We tend to stop wild fires because they pose a threat to communities and people, resulting in many of the dead trees and debris that would otherwise have burned being left in the forest. This leads to even larger forest fires because there is plenty of fuel for the fire to consume, leading to a much larger problem than would have occurred if the original fires had been left alone.
 * My Opinion**

This law is designed to limit emissions of pollutants to the best of our technology's ability.
 * Clean Air Act of 1963**

**Clean Air Act of 1963**