I don't understand the appeal of home-fireworks, except maybe the sparkling fountain and smoke-bomb ones (mainly to give the little kids a fun show). Now, poppers and sparklers on the other hand? I always pick up a few packs of those - maybe I'm somewhat of a man-child in that regard but I could sit for a couple hours and toss poppers around.
You'd be surprised how many of those "recklessly blowing their stimulus check on fireworks" types are actually black market entrepreneurs. Around here people drive across state lines, load up their car full of fireworks, and bring them back here (where they're illegal) to sell at a mark-up.
You'd be surprised how many of those "recklessly blowing their stimulus check on fireworks" types are actually black market entrepreneurs. Around here people drive across state lines, load up their car full of fireworks, and bring them back here (where they're illegal) to sell at a mark-up.
Out of curiosity, how far away is the closest state to NYC that sells aerial fireworks? Here in Northwest Indiana, we basically supply the whole of Chicago with fireworks. I can't imagine it would be very profitable to resell in Chicago since Indiana makes it super easy to buy. We have giant year-round fireworks stores located right on the interstates coming from Chicago, and about half the billboards are dedicated to advertising fireworks stores.
I don't understand the appeal of home-fireworks, except maybe the sparkling fountain and smoke-bomb ones (mainly to give the little kids a fun show). Now, poppers and sparklers on the other hand? I always pick up a few packs of those - maybe I'm somewhat of a man-child in that regard but I could sit for a couple hours and toss poppers around.
Ugh, great. Glad I'm out living in the middle of nowhere now. I can't stand fireworks. Let's celebrate our country by making every neighborhood sound like a goddamn war zone. Our dogs also get mortified each year, and when we lived in civilization on the Fourth I had to wait until well after midnight when shit dies down to walk them. We had an asshole neighbor with his young kids shooting shit at a super dangerous 45 degree angle and landing way off his property. I found a few firework butts in our back yard. At least be careful if you're going to blow shit up like a middle school boy.
/get off my lawn
will fireworks ever be restricted for being a waste of money or global warming contributors , I sometimes wonder.
In this state we have fireworks stands that can be open for about a week prior to New years eve, and 4th of July. But otherwise you cannot get them throughout the year. Have lived in NY also, and remember people queitly passing around lists and prices of available fireworks brought into the state, and available thru their cousin or friend.
We don't. We're almost a mile off the road, and nobody for at least half a mile in every direction as the crow flies. From the property, I can see one "neighbor" across the cornfield when the corn isn't grown tall, but Google Maps tells me they're about 0.75 miles away.Ugh, great. Glad I'm out living in the middle of nowhere now. I can't stand fireworks. Let's celebrate our country by making every neighborhood sound like a goddamn war zone. Our dogs also get mortified each year, and when we lived in civilization on the Fourth I had to wait until well after midnight when shit dies down to walk them. We had an asshole neighbor with his young kids shooting shit at a super dangerous 45 degree angle and landing way off his property. I found a few firework butts in our back yard. At least be careful if you're going to blow shit up like a middle school boy.
/get off my lawn
Do you have neighbors at all? We live on a pretty middle of nowhere lake, but the people on the lake sure love their fireworks. And then they all wash into the swamp. When I lived in suburbia, we actually didn't have too many. May have been because those neighbors would call the cops on you for it. I love them though, apart from the trash, so this is reminding me to pick up some sparklers before the weekend.
I now find personal fireworks slightly annoying and idiotic, but I've never complained about them.
I now find personal fireworks slightly annoying and idiotic, but I've never complained about them.
I don't mind them in appropriate places, but I live in Manhattan and the other day someone set off aerial fireworks a 30-second walk from my front door (of a 10-story apartment building) for 20+ minutes at 1AM on a weeknight, until the fire department showed up with four trucks because I guess all the smoke set off a fire alarm somewhere. This has been happening all over the city this year - several fires have been started, some serious, and a number of people have been badly hurt, including a homeless person who someone threw a lit firework at on purpose, and a 3-year-old who was hit by a firework when some asshole decided to light them off outside his apartment building and one came flying in his window.
So yeah. I'm complaining about them.
Given that we are in the midst of a pandemic where medical care systems are already strained, I've been wondering if county governments aren't quietly trying to reduce fireworks sales. I'm not saying this is you, but I imagine there's a surge of ER visits following the fourth of July because of people being injured by their pyrotechnics.
will fireworks ever be restricted for being a waste of money or global warming contributors , I sometimes wonder.
In this state we have fireworks stands that can be open for about a week prior to New years eve, and 4th of July. But otherwise you cannot get them throughout the year. Have lived in NY also, and remember people queitly passing around lists and prices of available fireworks brought into the state, and available thru their cousin or friend.
Fireworks **are** restricted, as your post clearly indicates. What you mean is that you want them to be further restricted (if perhaps out-right banned).
As for contributing to global warming... I'm a climate scientist and that's a tough sell even for me. Google tells me we sell 268 million pounds of fireworks per year (it's unclear whether this is the TOTAL weight of the firework, or just the compustible material within. I'm assuming hereafter it's the black powder... but the figures would be much smaller if this includes the cardboard casing as well). In contrast, we burn through 895,000MM pounds of gasoline during the same time period (less than 0.03% the amount of gasoline).
It's such a tiny amount that raising the fleet MPG by 0.1mpg would have a larger effect than a complete ban on all fireworks.
Just for S&G I decided to compare fireworks to civilian ammunition fired each year (both use black powder). Apparently ATF estimates about 12B rounds are sold every year. On average bullets contain about 9.1g (0.002 lbs) of black powder (larger rounds use more), so back-of-napkin calculation shows all the civilian ammo shot off each year = 240.7MM pounds of black powder.
Ergo, restricting bullets would have a similar effect on global warming as restricting fireworks, on a percentage basis. But both sources are rounding errors when it comes to actual climate change impacts.
..and since I've gone down this google rabbit-hole, I've learned that the US dropped 7.423 munitions ("bombs") in Afghanistan in 2019. Apparently these things are well tracked. Most of the munitions currently used by the US forces range from 500lb to 2,000lb payloads, with some smaller as well. Even using the larger end of the spectrum, all the bombs likely totaled less than 14.8MM pounds of explosives, or ~5% of the total weight of all the fireworks exploded in the US. Again, direct comparisons should not be made as the internal energy of black powder (used in fireworks) is less than TNT or RDX (used in military explosives).
will fireworks ever be restricted for being a waste of money or global warming contributors , I sometimes wonder.
In this state we have fireworks stands that can be open for about a week prior to New years eve, and 4th of July. But otherwise you cannot get them throughout the year. Have lived in NY also, and remember people queitly passing around lists and prices of available fireworks brought into the state, and available thru their cousin or friend.
Fireworks **are** restricted, as your post clearly indicates. What you mean is that you want them to be further restricted (if perhaps out-right banned).
As for contributing to global warming... I'm a climate scientist and that's a tough sell even for me. Google tells me we sell 268 million pounds of fireworks per year (it's unclear whether this is the TOTAL weight of the firework, or just the compustible material within. I'm assuming hereafter it's the black powder... but the figures would be much smaller if this includes the cardboard casing as well). In contrast, we burn through 895,000MM pounds of gasoline during the same time period (less than 0.03% the amount of gasoline).
It's such a tiny amount that raising the fleet MPG by 0.1mpg would have a larger effect than a complete ban on all fireworks.
Just for S&G I decided to compare fireworks to civilian ammunition fired each year (both use black powder). Apparently ATF estimates about 12B rounds are sold every year. On average bullets contain about 9.1g (0.002 lbs) of black powder (larger rounds use more), so back-of-napkin calculation shows all the civilian ammo shot off each year = 240.7MM pounds of black powder.
Ergo, restricting bullets would have a similar effect on global warming as restricting fireworks, on a percentage basis. But both sources are rounding errors when it comes to actual climate change impacts.Spoiler: show
will fireworks ever be restricted for being a waste of money or global warming contributors , I sometimes wonder.
In this state we have fireworks stands that can be open for about a week prior to New years eve, and 4th of July. But otherwise you cannot get them throughout the year. Have lived in NY also, and remember people queitly passing around lists and prices of available fireworks brought into the state, and available thru their cousin or friend.
Fireworks **are** restricted, as your post clearly indicates. What you mean is that you want them to be further restricted (if perhaps out-right banned).
As for contributing to global warming... I'm a climate scientist and that's a tough sell even for me. Google tells me we sell 268 million pounds of fireworks per year (it's unclear whether this is the TOTAL weight of the firework, or just the compustible material within. I'm assuming hereafter it's the black powder... but the figures would be much smaller if this includes the cardboard casing as well). In contrast, we burn through 895,000MM pounds of gasoline during the same time period (less than 0.03% the amount of gasoline).
It's such a tiny amount that raising the fleet MPG by 0.1mpg would have a larger effect than a complete ban on all fireworks.
Just for S&G I decided to compare fireworks to civilian ammunition fired each year (both use black powder). Apparently ATF estimates about 12B rounds are sold every year. On average bullets contain about 9.1g (0.002 lbs) of black powder (larger rounds use more), so back-of-napkin calculation shows all the civilian ammo shot off each year = 240.7MM pounds of black powder.
Ergo, restricting bullets would have a similar effect on global warming as restricting fireworks, on a percentage basis. But both sources are rounding errors when it comes to actual climate change impacts.Spoiler: show
You can bet when adding in the bombs we drop in other places than Afghanistan, Sell to the Saudi's to drop into Yemen, etc - the # goes up. Especially if you add in the # of bullets, bombs, and artillery rounds used for training each year for the US military. Thanks for your quick calculations - I would have thought fireworks would contribute more.
I suppose the amount in pounds of fireworks pollution would equal a rounding error per your calculations, but i wouldn't consider it having zero effect.
Anyhow i may be a bit jaded, as today we watched a long documentary on Vietnam war, and the amount of explosives used there was incredible, and one could argue a big waste of money / resources/ lives.
Fireworks are really nice when they're set off as part of a regulated and safe program. Personal fireworks have always seemed to be the domain of assholes who want to irritate those around them by setting off crappy tiny displays unsafely and usually at inappropriate hours.
I guess you can add me to the #getOffMyLawn crew. :P
Starting at dusk till around 11 pm a near continuous volley of explosions could be heard in my little part of everything-is-legal Indiana.
While we normally put our 2 and 5-year old down to bed around 7 pm, we realized that wasn't going to work out too well for the 4th and just let the kids stay up as late as they could. Around sunset, we walked around the town looking at the fireworks being set off, and everyone seemed to be having a good time. There's a family one town over that puts on a rather impressive aerial display over the lake and we were able to see it pretty well.
Overall, thanks to our youngest getting older the experience of the 4th is getting much better. Two years ago, the 4th with a newborn was definitely not fun.
Hi Sibley!
We neither attended the town show nor purchased any fireworks. Geez, I can't remember the last time we ignored the fireworks entirely. Didn't want to sit shoulder to shoulder to watch them this year. Didn't buy any b/c our critters would be very unhappy.