has been very bad this year. I live in Madison, WI (US) BTW.

Starting on about sept 3/4 another huge plume of dust & ****
could be seen blowing of the east coast of Africa
between about 10-30 north. During the course of the next
week it has been slowly wafting east towards the us, and
appears to have reached us. Thick tendrils of smoke from
fires in Montana (?) were also noted a few days ago. Not
certain what's going on in Africa. Been some terrible plumes
of dust and pollution blowing off Africa this year.

For weeks (months really) large parts of south America have
been burning, at about 10 south (Brazil and company). Likely
more unsustainable slashing and burning to feed an increasingly
bloated H. Sapiens population. SE Asia, China, Malyasia have
been under an incredible pall this Summer. Combination of
forest fires and pollution. It looks very bad judging from
satellite imagery. Parts of Mexico have been very bad too.

Here in the US, in the wake of hurricane Katrina, emissions
standards have been lowered for gas. Already the global production
of 'light sweet' oil has peaked. Most of the remaining crude
is 'heavy' This stuff has more sulpher, heavy metals, and other
impurities which need to be refined out. So now we can now look
forward to more sulpher dioxide hazes. I fear that as we
hit the hydrocarbon dregs and the global population continues
to swell air quality will keep getting worse. More coal
being burned, gas with more crud in it, more people burning
wood to stay warm, especially in the US where the cost of
nat. gas is skyrocketing.

If you google 'global dimming' you'll see that, especially in
the northern hemisphere, there's been a measurable decrease
in the intensity of sunlight reaching the ground, especially
since the 1950s - up to 20-30%. I imagine this can't be helping
us amatuer astronomers as far as the clarity and transparency
of the sky. Basically just pollution.

It seems to me that, overall, the number of good clear
days has been declining in my neck of the woods. And the
clear days that do come aren't as clear as they used to be.

Lately I've been feeling the need to retreat to the southern
hemisphere. Perhaps the sky still occasionally looks blue there.

-Eric B