[pjc50]

Where I live there's been a long running saga around flaring: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/c6wk2ml6gwzt

When it's lit at night you can see it from up to twenty miles away. Closer in you can hear it. Things have gone back and forwards on mitigations, fines, industrial disputes, and in the end the plant is closing.

[munificent]

I grew up in Louisiana in Cancer Alley[1]. At night, we rarely got to see stars because the flares gave the sky an orange glow.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_Alley

[fuzzfactor]

You might have smelled Baton Rouge before the Clean Air Act of 1990 kicked in.

And that was long after the emission cutbacks of the 1970's had taken place, back when it was really rank. But the EPA had not been around very long at that early point.

Driving across the state of Louisiana you could feel better stopping to nap in the car for a few hours in a far-away mosquito-infested rest stop next to a low-lying bayou during a flash-flood warning, rather than get a hotel room in the state capital, it smelled so toxic.

Don't ask me how I know . . .

[encrypted_bird]

I know you said not to, but I am genuinely curious, so here goes: how do you know? (I want to hear the story!)

[arethuza]

When we lived in Edinburgh our flat had a fantastic view north - which included the spire of Fettes College and occasionally the flare from Mossmorran - which together look quite like Barad-dûr and Mount Doom...

[consumer451]

I have a basic understanding of the economics behind flaring, but from the outside it seems like such a waste of energy & hydrocarbons!