Shoot the dogs and save Fairbanks Alaska!!!

So I had dinner recently with a guy who grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska. He was a volunteer EMT there for 5 years as well. Very cool guy.

Jason, my dinner companion, told me about Ice Fog. Have you heard of it?

It seems that ice fog is a phenomenon that occurs in very cold weather. Tiny ice particles, rather vertical in nature, form and hang in the air close to the ground. If you find yourself in an ice fog bank(?) you cannot see around you. However, if you look up you can see the sky. If you are flying over ice fog you can look down and see the ground. But if an airplane comes in to land, flying through the ice fog, the pilot can become disoriented and crash. Apparently many have, hopefully years ago and not a recent occurrence.

So, Jason said that when they responded with the ambulance to a call, it was generally outside of city center where the fog was less intense. However, the hospital was inner city and they would enter the Stephen King like fog bank on the way to the hospital, thus driving blind. They always tried to have three staff on the ambulance: a driver, the EMT in back with the patient, and a lookout with his/her face pressed to the side window watching the curb. The lookout would count how many times the curb disappeared, thereby indicating a cross street. Counting the missing curbs would tell them when to turn into a missing curb (cross street) on their way to the hospital.

Once presumes they would make it all the way to the hospital while not bumping into parked cars, dunks or polar bears.

A study from the mid-60s (URL below, or as our vice president would say, the web number) indicates that moisture is the culprit when it comes to ice fog.

Duh.

However, the researcher found that power plants, evil cars and people contributed tons of moisture to the air in Fairbanks every day. He also found that dogs at rest contributed 500,000 pounds of moisture to Fairbanks’ air every day!

And this was in 1964 when there were only 2,000 dogs in Fairbanks!

At rest!!

Goodness knows what moisture these dogs exhaled while frisky!!!

Can you imagine how many dogs live in Fairbanks now?? Over forty years later?!?!

Normally I’m not a fan of harsh treatment (except for bozos on people movers) but has anyone considered eliminating the dog population of Fairbanks? I think just the idea alone could generate a conversation inspiring bumper sticker, don’t you?



http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF13/1319.html