SOS Forests

Gaia!!?!?! Save US from your followers!!

Notice how the AGW Chicken Littles have crawled back under their rocks? All the do-gooder bleeding heart super libs who want to tax you to death are strangely silent during these April snow showers.

Maybe it’s because the debate is over. Their argument was so pathetic and nazi-like that they had to declare all dialog finished for fear the truth would come out.

Global warming has jumped the shark. Anyone and everyone who uses AGW as a political hammer is either a halfwit or a lying dog. Oh wait, that’s everyone running for or holding office today! All scum, all the time.

Isn’t there a big difference between weather and climate? Seems like the weather this winter is quite different than the climate over, say, the past 50 years.

I can go to the house thermostat and control the climate inside my home. Evidently, Gov. Taxandgougeme feels we can do that with climate outside the house. I guess the upside would be no need for the thermostat inside the house, as we would have a perfect climate. My point of misunderstanding is how that will work in the colder climes.

The best way to feed the world is to have a warmer climate. If I remember the elementary science I once took in school, the warmer the air, the more water it can hold. Something about Boyle and expanding space for molecules to reside. So if we can raise the temperature a degree or so, there will be more moisture in the air somewhere. As that warmer air comes ashore from the 6/7th of the earth’s surface that is water and is forced upward and cooled, some of that water is released.

Of course, cold water will result in cooler air and less moisture, as is the case off the west coast of South America. There, by serendipity, it has been found that the evening fogs strained through a fine mesh netting will precipitate water, which can be captured in a trough, and you can have a fresh water supply even though you have a desert facing the ocean.

That example, in fact, is what a thrifty second growth stand of conifers, with 40% crown lengths or so, will do in the Coast Range or Cascades at the optimum elevation, and that is where the most productive sites are located for growing conifers. The needles are the fine mesh net.

Of course, as the trees age, they are more likely to burn in catastrophic fires. There are advantages to all types of forest cover, and that is diversity. However, if we have an entire forest of closed canopy forests, the end is always fire and always stand removal fire. And then it repeats itself. One has to wonder that if, considering just the water contributed to streams and to streamflow, whether logging and clearcutting were not the best answers for conservation of water over time. The range of canopies, the fine mesh net affect, plus the clean ground on north slopes and prairies to hold snow late in the year, are not a one dimensional surface. The variety of vegetative cover reduces sublimation and the reflection of energy to space, and has positive results for the health of the whole system.

Industrial timberland is now fast tracked to REITs and managed to benefit insurance companies, short to mid term investment by institutional investors, hedge funds, and the like. The mean annual culmination of incremental growth will drive the harvest process, and mills will rise and fall with economic tides. That part of the forest base will be forever in a state of perpetual juvenility, and of minimal use to wildlife. The wholesale pesticide brownup for site prep precludes most grasses, forbs, and woody plants, and go fast hybrid, gene modified trees will quickly take over the site for a quicker return. Land that does not meet the high site, quicker return forestry goals will end up as fragments of amenity land to be managed as the owner sees fit. That could or could not benefit wildlife. Maybe more suitable habitat, but less security cover. Certainly more suburban/wildland interface for the the agencies to deal with. Ying and yang. Good and Bad. But certainly change. The model is changing, and so maybe is the weather. If it gets warmer, there will be more use of forest land and that use will migrate north. If the climate cools, less interest in those lands and fewer homes will be built in the lands of early and late snows.

Janet:

Climate is, typically, just an average of weather conditions and extremes over a 30-year period. It is always changing — by the law of averages if nothing else.

I am old enough to remember Willamette Valley weather in the 1950s. And the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, too. The weather has been warmer at times during this 50+ year stretch, and also colder, wetter, drier, windier, more humid, and less humid. On average, though, the weather has been about the same, depending on the season and time of day.

We have a Mediterranean-type climate here in western Oregon: basically two seasons — Wet and Dry. All actual (non-computer model generated) scientific evidence shows that this has been the case since people first arrived here, more than 10,000 (or even 14,000) years ago. Some things never change, or else seem to take a very long time to do so.

In general, the climate is much cooler today than 6,000 or 8,000 years ago, but is still very nice. It is warmer than 200 to 400 years ago, and that is nicer yet.

With any luck, people will learn how to keep the climate warm, whether by burning fossil fuels, drinking milk from cows, or keeping the lights on at night. It is highly unlikely the answer is that simplistic — but wouldn’t that be great if it was?

Methinks the head WISE honcho is getting a bad case of cabin fever. Great Falls just hosed its cold record by 19 degrees (8 BELOW zero).

Now we’re looking at a late, late runoff. And when it does happen, it’s going to be fast, unless of course Al Gore is wrong. I’m thinking the high-angle sunshine of late spring will be a driver, compared to the corn snow days of early spring.

I guess I might as well lay in the dock at my new waterfront parcel on Restored Lake Missoula.

I know I leave every light on in the house up in the mountains here in Idaho and run the SUV constantly, and it hasn’t made a bit a difference (I’m a little poorer with the gas and light bill is all). I got my neighbors to do the same thing, still got 30 inches of snow on the ground right now and it’s snowing today. Man, it would be great if burning fossil fuels made a difference but it just doesn’t. If we could warm the planet, I think we’d have made better strides by now.