USFS Chief Tom Tidwell on the Increasing Forest Fire Hazard
USFS Chief Tom Tidwell spoke today at the 2010 Wildland Urban Interface Conference [here] being held this year in Reno. The WUI Conference is produced by the International Association of Fire Chiefs [here].
I did not attend and do not have a transcript of Chief Tidwell’s speech. All I have to go by is a journalist’s report. There is always some risk of mistakes and wrong emphasis inherent in a journalist’s interpretation. It would be better to have Chief Tidwell’s exact words, and perhaps we can obtain those sometime in the future. But for now, this is what we have:
Wildfire danger increasing across U.S., federal official tells Reno audience
By Jeff DeLong, RGJ.com, March 30, 2010 [here]
A combination of forest restoration projects, creation of communities that can survive fire and aggressive fire fighting will be needed as wildfire danger increases across the country, the chief of the U.S. Forest Service said Tuesday.
Wildfires are getting larger and burning more fiercely, Tom Tidwell told a Reno conference of wildfire experts.
Warming climate and increasing development near forested terrain will result in increasingly dangerous fire behavior, Tidwell, chief of the Forest Service since June 2009, said.
“The fire behavior that we’re seeing, that people say surprises them, that is what we should expect,” Tidwell said. “I think we should no longer be surprised.”
Climate change, Tidwell said, is “one of the major drivers” in drying overgrown forests drying and make them susceptible to insect attack, with 17 million acres of pine forest across the interior West dead or dying due to bark beetles.
“In terms of fire fuel, we’re in a whole new era,” Tidwell said.
Serious wildfire years such as 2007, when more than 9 million acres burned nationwide, could soon be surpassed by seasons consuming 12 to 15 million acres, Tidwell said.
The danger is increased as more people move closer to fire-prone public land. Between 1990 and 2000, 28 million housing units were built within 30 miles of national forests, he said. Now nearly 70,000 communities across the country are deemed at risk from wildfire, Tidwell said.
Tidwell says forest restoration projects are crucial to thin overgrown forests and treat the landscape with prescribed fire.
Between 2001 — when Congress adopted the National Fire Plan — and 2008, nearly 30 million acres of federal land were treated to prevent fire. Tidwell said at that pace, it will take 35 years to treat the amount of terrain needed.
“It is essential we build support for the type of treatment that has to occur,” Tidwell said. …
As near as I can judge given the journalistic filter, Chief Tidwell mentioned restoration, fuels, preparedness, and the threat of increasingly severe fire seasons.
By restoration, he meant thinning overgrown forests and using prescribed fire (according to the journalist). Of course, restoration is much more complex than that, but it is good that Tidwell is on the right course. Restoration does involve active management. The word does not mean abandoning forests to the vagaries of nature.
Although there was the obligate genuflection to global warming now required of all bureaucrats, the real cause of our forest fire crisis is fuel build up. Forest fires burn in forests from the Amazon to Alaska, across every climate zone. Temperature is not the driver; fuel is. A one or two degree difference in temperature makes little difference, whereas the accumulated fuels of decades of untouched growth make a huge difference in the likelihood, intensity, and severity of fires.
Climate and Weather Forestry education Saving Forests The 2009 Fire Season
by admin
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All this talk of forests as carbon caches just a smokescreen
By Bob Zybach, Guest Viewpoint, Eugene Register Guard, Mar 29, 2010 [here]
Some of the basic ideas presented by Susan Palmer in her March 16 article in The Register-Guard, “A great state of carbon caches,” need to be rebutted — in particular, the concept of managing a forest primarily for carbon storage.
First, however, some basic information.
Wood is not usually considered a “fossil fuel.” Federal forests in the United States total more than 190 million acres (not 19 million). And the Willamette National Forest probably contains about 164 metric tons of carbon per acre (not total).
The article’s errors in logic are less obvious.
Is this even news?
A well-known political advocacy group, the Wilderness Society, compiles a list of “the 10 U.S. national forests with the highest carbon density.” Nine of the 10 are in the Northwest; six are in Oregon, with No. 1 (the Willamette National Forest) being located primarily in Lane County. The Register-Guard prints these assertions on its front page and produces an editorial in support of the listing.
Why?
No one in history has ever managed a forest for “carbon density,” for a number of good reasons. What happened to jobs, clean water, wildlife habitat and recreation as socially accepted forest management goals?
A “senior resource analyst” for the Wilderness Society is quoted as saying the Willamette “has always been seen as an especially productive forest,” but somehow its carbon density provides “yet another reason to refrain from cutting” its trees.
Does that even make sense?
A few years ago, local environmentalists were complaining loudly that the Willamette’s managers employed too many roads and clear-cuts, used too many herbicides, planted too many seedlings, suppressed all wildfires and did not do enough prescribed burning. Couldn’t that history be a more logical cause of its current high carbon density?
Why would the Wilderness Society favor the result of all those management actions, and then call for no management now? Is the Wilderness Society simply promoting its list to help justify an agenda to stop logging in all national forests?
The average citizen likely couldn’t care less about the “carbon density” of our local forests, and probably doesn’t even know what that phrase actually means. And for those of us who do know: So what?
Is carbon more valuable than fresh water, jobs, energy production, wildlife or recreational access? The idea of managing a forest for carbon storage makes no sense at all, given the increased likelihood that coniferous forests will burn catastrophically as fuels build over time.
Some people argue that storing carbon is important because it allows people to moderate or control the climate to socially desired conditions.
This idea is becoming less popular as more scientific information becomes available, but many (including some scientists) still subscribe to this concept. Is the Wilderness Society seeking to stop logging in order to (theoretically) control climate?
Then there is the reality that the Willamette National Forest’s “carbon stock” does not even equal two years of the nation’s carbon release due to fossil fuels burning.
Last summer’s Tumblebug Fire [here], the third-largest fire in the history of the Willamette National Forest, spread ash, smoke and carbon dioxide throughout the southern Willamette Valley. Over several weeks’ time it burned nearly 15,000 acres, destroyed about 5,000 acres of old growth spotted owl habitat and killed nearly $100 million worth of timber.
About 20 million tons of dead wood were created by this catastrophic event, oozing massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the environment for years as the timber rots, with no plans to salvage any of it.
Wildfires such as the Tumblebug are one consequence of not actively managing our forests. Untended forests predictably are killed by bugs or erupt into catastrophic wildfires.
So what can be done to manage our forests to reduce their carbon outputs, as well as promote their other beneficial uses?
One answer might be to compare the condition of the remains of the Tumblebug Fire with another area of the Willamette: the Jim’s Creek restoration project [here].
On Jim’s Creek, old growth oaks and pine are being released from invasive (and profitable) fir trees. Native species are being encouraged to repopulate the area. And fire is planned to be reintroduced carefully, to maintain and protect these important characteristics.
Local jobs are being created to accomplish these results — to the benefit of local residents and American taxpayers — and the threat of wildfire and dying trees is significantly reduced. Active management produces desired results; passive management produces catastrophic events.
It would be nice to see Oregon’s forests promoted at some point as the U.S. Forest Service’s “best managed” forests. Having an advocacy group promote them as leading candidates to avoid management because they hold so much carbon is something else entirely.
If this development is news at all, it is certainly not good news.
Bob Zybach, a forest scientist with a doctorate in the study of catastrophic wildfires, is program manager for the Oregon Websites and Watersheds Project Inc., which can be found online [here].
Here Come Obama’s Monuments
Last Friday the Obama administration announced for the first time in public in its plans to lock up millions of acres in No Touch Zones for the purposes of terminating responsible local stewardship and strangulating the American economy.
Last month we reported on the secret push by the Obama administration to lock up at least 13 million acres in new National Monuments via Presidential Proclamation [here]. The secret got out and caused a mini-furor in Utah and other western states.
Now the Obama administration has been forced into semi-transparency so they have couched the Lock It Up and Burn It plans as an outreach to youth called “America’s Great Outdoors”. They hope that by playing the Kiddie Card they can somehow avoid the increasing national disdain and disgust with Obama’s anti-Constitutional, one-party rule.
Obama’s efforts to circumvent Congress by declaring monuments, slashing oil and gas production, burning down forests, and declaring humanity-erased catastrophe zones (wilderness, roadless) were expected and are being carefully observed. Stab America in the back once, shame on you. Stab us twice, shame on us for allowing it.
OBAMA ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS ANNOUNCE WHITE HOUSE CONFERENCE ON AMERICA’S GREAT OUTDOORS
USDA News Release No. 0153.10 [here]
WASHINGTON, Friday, March 26, 2010 - Obama Administration Officials announced today that they will host a White House Conference on America’s Great Outdoors on Friday, April 16, 2010. Nancy Sutley, Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, Ken Salazar, Secretary of the Interior, and Tom Vilsack, Secretary of Agriculture are leading the conference, which will address the challenges, opportunities and innovations surrounding modern-day land conservation and the importance of reconnecting Americans and American families to the outdoors. … [more]
Ken Salazar invoked Teddy Roosevelt using the frequently repeated Obama refrain that nothing has happened in America for 100 years and maybe we can do something great again, if only we could break out of our century-long downward slide.
At a March 9 Senate Appropriations Committee Salazar testified, “It has been 102 years since President (Theodore) Roosevelt called the leaders of the nation together to launch a conservation agenda.”
History is not Ken’s strong suit. He must have forgotten the Timber Summit of 1993 when Bill Clinton and Algore shut down all logging in the Pacific Northwest and instituted a now 17-year-long depression in the region. That plan was inflicted ostensibly to “save” the spotted owl, but the owl population has crashed. Oh well.
Evidently forest stewardship was not killing off owls. Forestry was merely supporting the economy and supplying the nation with renewable resource wealth. Screw that action said Bill and Al, and Obama can’t wait to gesture to the region too.
The new monuments are located in Arizona (1), California (4), Colorado (1), Montana (1), Nevada (1), New Mexico (2), Oregon (1), Utah (2) and Washington (1). None are east of the Mississippi, where the vast landscape is already polluted beyond repair by Chicago gangsters and welfare-addicted hordes from Queens. East of the Mississippi is one big garbage dump, unworthy of confiscation by executive fiat.
One plan is to carve a giant upraised middle finger on some mountain out West, so the locals and gawking touristas can see what the East Coast fops, swells, and gangsters think of them. It will be named “Obama’s Legacy” or something like that.
More omnibus wilderness bills are in the works, as Obama’s omnibus runs over everybody and anybody who looks askance at the Obama-Gorbachev Doctrine of world domination through environmental takeover. “Throw them under the omnibus,” is the new catch-phrase at the White House and the UN.
Meanwhile, Obama’s rabid wolves stalk school children in Idaho, Montana, and New Mexico, and animist/atheists are engaging in a new transcendental slug worship cult. News with strobe video at 11.
The Wicked Witch of the East
The most vociferous proponent of locking up the West and inflicting catastrophic fire on forests is a pudgy blonde Congresswoman from New York City named Carolyn B. Maloney.
No one in Congress has done more to destroy forests, watersheds, livelihoods and communities than Carolyn B. Maloney, who herself has never seen a wilderness area, not counting Queens.
Maloney represents the east side of Manhattan and parts of Queens. It is an urban jungle, one of the most densely populated locales in America. The streets are filthy and riddled with gang warfare. The principal industries are drug trafficking and welfare fraud. Piles of trash line concrete canyons and the stench of garbage and raw sewage are overpowering. The endemic wildlife are rats, pigeons, cockroaches, and crackheads.
Yet Maloney was a main pusher of the Omnibus Public Lands Bill of 2009 that locked up more than 2 million acres of new wilderness areas in nine western states, dedicating those lands to holocaust. Not satisfied with that level of destruction, Maloney is the prime sponsor of the 24-million-acre “Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act” (NREPA) [here].
NREPA is the brainchild of the most radical enviro-arsonists in America. It is the Congressional manifestation of “The Wildlands Project,” an effort to “rewild” the West through massive pan-ethnic cleansing of humanity off our homelands [here, here, here, here].
The West has not been wilderness since humans took residence here 13,500 years ago. Wilderness is a myth, a pernicious myth, and a weapon of anti-humanists.
The West is a wealth-creation region. We grow food and fiber. In contrast, the 14th District of New York, Maloney’s district, is a wealth-destruction region. Billions of dollars are pumped in every year by American taxpayers nationwide, and nothing comes out but garbage, disease, and filth.
Besides stealing and destroying land thousands of miles away from her district, Maloney’s big issues are gay marriage, gun control, support for Islamo-terrorism, and dismantling National defense.
Rumor has it that Oregon’s Senator Ron Wyden has his principal residence in Maloney’s district. That’s just a rumor. I don’t know where Ron’s wife and family live, but it isn’t in Oregon.
2007 Fire Season Politics and politicians The 2008 Fire Season Useless and Stupid
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Yellow Journalist Lies Again
Noted extreme lefty journalist Rocky Barker of the Idaho Statesman yesterday accused Congressional Republicans of delaying a forestry bill:
Republican protest holds up Risch’s beetle bill
Submitted by Rocky Barker on Fri, 03/26/2010 [here]
Idaho Senator Jim Risch’s efforts to protect forests against the ravages of pine bark beetles hit a snag this week.
It wasn’t radical environmentalists who opposed the bill, co-sponsored by Colorado Democrat Mark Udall, because it would make some logging easier on national forests. No, the bill that would speed up thinning of beetle-threatened timber near communities to reduce the threat of wildfire was held up this week by Republicans.
It’s all about the health care bill and their anger that the Democrats passed it over their objections. In response Senate Republicans used a rule to stop hearings from occurring more than two hours after the start of the Senate’s daily session.
That stopped a hearing on Risch’s and Udall’s bill cold. That leaves logging contractors waiting to get into the woods across the West cold.
Hold on there, Rocket. It’s the Democraps who control Congress. How can a tiny of minority of Republicans stymie the majority party?
Didn’t we just witness the specter of one-party rule with the $trillion dollar grab of the health care industry? Even though every single Republican opposed Obamacare, it didn’t matter one iota to the jackbooted Democraps, who marched through Congress like Hitler’s Brownshirts at a beerhall putsch.
But now it’s Republican recalcitrance holding up a beetle thinning bill? Rocky, Rocky, Rocky. Everybody knows the Democraps don’t give one about forests. Your party is the Arsonist Party. Your party favors megafire destruction of forests.
Rocky Barker himself is the author of “Scorched Earth: How the Fires of Yellowstone Changed America,” a (poorly written) book that extols the virtues of million-acre holocausts and prescribes wholesale forest destruction for the entire country. Rocky is famous for defending the incineration of Idaho in 2007. He spit on the 10 Oregon firefighters who died in in 2008, before their families even had a chance to bury their dead. Rocky wants to ban fire retardant so even more firefighters get killed.
Rocky Barker has never seen a forest he didn’t wish to burn to the ground for his own sick, twisted, homicidal pleasure.
Just to set the record straight, there are no “logging contractors waiting to get into the woods”, sitting in their pickups with the engines idling while they wait for Risch’s bill to pass. It isn’t going to pass. Not because the Republicans have stymied Congress, but because the Democraps control the Hill and Democraps are arsonistic forest-haters.
No pack of lies from an anti-forest, anti-forestry, pro-holocaust jerk like Rocky Barker is going to change that fact.
Soils, CO2, and Global Warming
On March 24 the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) issued a News Release [here] that proclaimed the soils of the Earth are now giving off more CO2 because the Earth has warmed over the last 20 years.
Even soil feels the heat
Soils release more carbon dioxide as globe warms
Mary Beckman, PNNL, March 24th, 2010
Twenty years of field studies reveal that as the Earth has gotten warmer, plants and microbes in the soil have given off more carbon dioxide. So-called soil respiration has increased about one-tenth of 1 percent per year since 1989, according to an analysis of past studies in today’s issue of Nature.
The scientists also calculated the total amount of carbon dioxide flowing from soils, which is about 10-15 percent higher than previous measurements. That number — about 98 petagrams of carbon a year (or 98 billion metric tons) — will help scientists build a better overall model of how carbon in its many forms cycles throughout the Earth. Understanding soil respiration is central to understanding how the global carbon cycle affects climate.
“There’s a big pulse of carbon dioxide coming off of the surface of the soil everywhere in the world,” said ecologist Ben Bond-Lamberty of the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. “We weren’t sure if we’d be able to measure it going into this analysis, but we did find a response to temperature.” …
The research paper touted in the News Release is: Bond-Lamberty and Thomson, 2010. Temperature-associated increases in the global soil respiration record, Nature March 25, 2009, doi:10.1038/nature08930.
Note: The PNNL is a Richland, WA, Department of Energy Office of Science national laboratory “proudly operated by Battelle”. Battelle Memorial Institute (Battelle) is “a charitable trust organized as a non-profit corporation under the laws of the State of Ohio. Battelle is exempt from federal taxation under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code because it is organized for charitable, scientific, and educational purposes” [here].
In this essay I discuss whether there is any merit to the findings of the research paper.
Meta-Studies and the File Drawer Effect
The PNNL/Battelle/DOE study is a meta-study or meta-analysis. That means that the authors did no soil testing themselves. Instead they examined the studies of others (818 at last count) and “pooled” them.
All meta-analyses have inherent problems including the File Drawer Effect, also known as publication bias. Researcher-authors are more likely to submit for publication positive rather than inconclusive results. Journal editors are more likely to accept articles that report “significant” findings than research which finds no effect. Studies that find no effect are shoved in a file drawer; hence the name.
Publication bias is likely in this area of study especially, given the strong political/funding incentives to find climate change effects.
California Calls for USFS Management Changes to Prevent Wildfire
by Larry H.
A California state senator has introduced a resolution calling for the USFS to “change management structure.”
BILL NUMBER: SCR 75 [here]
INTRODUCED BY Senator Hollingsworth
FEBRUARY 18, 2010This measure would declare that there is an ongoing emergency due to the threat of wildfire, call on the federal government to take immediate measures to prevent imminent catastrophic wildfires, and request Governor Schwarzenegger to advocate at the federal level for the United States Forest Service to undertake prevention and maintenance work in the state’s federal forest lands and to encourage a change in management structure in the United States Forest Service to coordinate decisionmaking authority over state project decisions inside the state.
Lots of very interesting “whereas” clauses are included in this bill. Example:
WHEREAS, Insurance losses for each fire season run into the billions of dollars, and insurers have paid out in excess of eight billion dollars ($8,000,000,000) to thousands of policy holders from just the top 10 state wildfires since 1970;
And a “resolved” cause to change the structure of the USFS:
Resolved, That the Legislature, together with the state’s local governments, requests that Governor Schwarzenegger advocate at the federal level for the United States Forest Service to undertake prevention and maintenance work in the state’s federal forest lands, and to encourage a change in management structure in the United States Forest Service to coordinate decisionmaking authority over
state project decisions inside the state;
California Sen. Holligsworth is evidently fed up with his state being a burn zone for the Feds. He’d rather not incur any more disastrous wildfires due to Federal incompetence. He’d prefer that the USFS figure out how NOT to promulgate any more megafires because the cost-plus-loss to California is outrageous.
The 4th Annual Good Neighbor Forum
ANNOUNCING:
The 4th Annual Good Neighbor Forum
April 17, 2010 at Casselman’s Bar & Venue - 26th & Walnut in Denver
A day of internationally known speakers…an evening of pure fun!
Doors Open 11:00 AM. Forum begins 12:00 PM sharp!
(2010 Members FREE - Non-members $25.00)
You may join online or by sending an email to: GoodNeighborLaw at msn.com
Please indicate in your email if you are attending forum: Yes___ No____.
Good Neighbor of the Year Recognition Dinner
April 17, 2010
Dinner begins 6:30 PM
(2010 Members $50.00 - Non-members $75.00)
BUY TICKETS
Seating limited. Reservations a must. Please register today at:
http://www.casselmans.com
A percentage of net proceeds will go to benefit the Colorado Boys Ranch (Youth Connect).
Download brochure [here]
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FORUM SPEAKERS INCLUDE:
Karen Budd-Falen, Attorney
Subject: Taxpayers fund environmental lawsuits — Congressional Action on Exposing Taxpayer Funded Lawsuit Racket of Radical Environmentalists
Dr. Willie Soon, Astrophysicist at the Solar, Stellar and Planetary Sciences Division of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Subject: The Milky Way, the Sun & the CO2 monster — Avoiding CO2 Myopia
Dr. David Legates, Associate Professor at the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment, University of Delaware and Delaware State Climatologist.
Subject: Climatology and hydrology — Avoiding CO2 Myopia
Robert F. Nagel, Attorney
Subject: Constitution - Static vs. Living
Michael Shaw, Attorney and CPA, Director of Freedom Advocates
Subject: Agenda 21
Dr. Howard Hayden, Physicist, author of The Solar Fraud: Why Solar Energy Won’t Run the World, and A Primer on CO2 and Climate
Subject: Renewable energy
Beverly K. Eakman, Educator/Author
Subject: Numbing, Dumbing America
Leon Coffee, Rodeo Clown
Subject: Political correctness and behavior modification
Book signing: Jim Keen - Author/Photographer: “Colorado Rocky Mountain Wide”, and “Great Ranches of the West”
Silent/Live Auction items will also showcase Antiques
Curt Blake (Music spinner extraordinaire!) to provide sound affects and music throughout the day/night!
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Separate from the Forum will be the Good Neighbor of the Year Recognition Dinner - which begins 6:00 PM.
Kevin McNicholas, owner/partner K.M. Concessions, will be honored as “Colorado Good Neighbor Of The Year”
Hadley Barrett, Rodeo Announcer, Master of Ceremonies
Entertainer: Lea Marlene, LA Comic, Actor, Writer
——————————————————————————
Good Neighbor Law is a Colorado For-Profit Corporation.
Good Neighbor Law is dedicated solely to the purpose of helping people learn how to be a good neighbor.
For matters pertaining to protecting your private property rights, constitution, land and water, please go to: http://LandAndWaterUSA.com
Avoiding Carbon Myopia
Note: I’ve been telling you that global warming is an outrageous scam/fraud/hoax designed to rob you of your wealth, freedom, and livelihood. But you don’t need to trust me about that. Read what respected scientists have to say:
Willie Soon and David R. Legates. 2010. Avoiding Carbon Myopia: Three Considerations for Policy Makers Concerning Manmade Carbon Dioxide. Ecology Law Currents, Vol. 37:1.
Dr. Soon is an astrophysicist at the Solar, Stellar and Planetary Sciences Division of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Dr. Soon has written and lectured extensively on issues related to the sun and other stars and climate. The views expressed by Willie Soon are strictly his and do not necessarily reflect those of Harvard University, the Smithsonian Institution, or the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Dr. Legates is an Associate Professor at the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment, University of Delaware and his views are given as a university faculty member under academic freedom rights. He also serves as the Delaware State Climatologist.
Full text [here]
Selected excerpts:
TOWARDS A GLOBAL CARBON REGULATORY TRADING SCHEME
In December 2009, lawmakers and representatives from around the world, along with scientists, numerous journalists, and various celebrities flew to Copenhagen, Denmark. For the most part, their goal was to promote a regulatory scheme aimed at controlling human carbon emissions by declaring the element a tradable commodity and establishing laws and regulations to govern the trade.
The proposed regulations were premised on the flawed notion, articulated by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), [1] that increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations will change climate dramatically and thereby cause major ecological and economic damage.
While many scientists, including us, have observed some changes in climate, the hypothesized dangerous consequences of rising atmospheric CO2 are too speculative for responsible regulatory policy. In analyzing climate policy, decision makers should be cognizant of three key considerations regarding the impact of projected rises in atmospheric CO2: (1) policy choices likely will have no measurable effect on the occurrence of severe weather; (2) positive effects on ecosystems and biodiversity are likely and should be weighed against the negatives; and (3) carbon trading schemes (such as the one touted in Copenhagen) are unlikely to lead to a reduction in atmospheric CO2. …
A Dark Day for America
The virtue of the American system was rule by mutual agreement, tempered by unwavering protection of individual rights. The job of our representatives was to find compromise that all could live with, even if some were not enthusiastic about it, but always within the confines of the Constitution.
That spirit of mutual agreement has been lost. We have devolved to tyranny of a bare majority, the very thing Alexis de Tocqueville warned against.
It is no secret that “progressive” means progression toward Marxist enslavement, the impoverishment of the masses, and enrichment of the ruling class.
This is a very dark day for America, not just because of the health care bill, not just because of the soaring deficit and attendant economic collapse, but more tragically, the end of the America system of governance of, by, and for the people. We the people, and we do exist as sovereign individuals, were once the masters of our own fates. Now we are chained in servitude to a powerful elite who govern us without our consent.
The Democrats gained power through slander and lies. They duped the electorate and sowed fear in the hearts of voters. Now they have turned on those who elected them, and proved their duplicity and ferocity.
Like wolves. Like wildfire.
There is a pestilence upon the land, and it is the Democrat Party.
This is not a political blog. We don’t campaign, we don’t recommend candidates, we don’t favor one party over another. But the foundation of America is crumbling, and we would be remiss not to point it out. Vote for whomever you want to, but know this: your vote means nothing anymore. By itself, voting will not cure the evil that has befallen this country.
Freedom isn’t free. Only those who are willing to pay the price will ever enjoy its fruits.
Ecology As Religion
A review of:
Robert H. Nelson. 2010. Ecological Science as a Creation Story. The Independent Review, v. 14, n. 4, Spring 2010.
The full text is available [here]
Selected excerpts may be found in the W.I.S.E. Colloquium: Forest and Fire Sciences [here]
Dr. Robert H. Nelson, Ph.D. is a professor of public policy at the University of Maryland, a senior fellow of the Independent Institute [here], and a senior scholar for the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.
*****
Robert H. Nelson has given us a remarkable examination of the philosophical roots of environmentalism and the environmental sciences. Those roots are less scientific than they are religious. Ecology is founded on a post-Darwinian yearning for spiritual certainty, something Darwin’s theories cast aside.
Nelson cites and deconstructs the teachings of some of the most famous and influential ecologists, including John Muir, Frederic Clements, Aldo Leopold, A. G. Tansley, Eugene Odum, and E. O. Wilson. In the key works of each Nelson discovers quasi-religious themes and structures and more theology than science.
The American environmental movement has deep roots in and still depends heavily on the conviction that a person finds a mirror of God’s thinking in the encounter with wild nature — or, in traditional Christian terms, that a person is in the presence of “the Creation.” Absent this conviction, many of the American environmental movement’s basic beliefs and important parts of its policy agenda would be difficult to explain and defend. …
For many secular environmentalists, the simplest course is to ignore this disconcerting issue — to partake of strong feelings of religious inspiration in the direct presence of “God’s creation” and then to go about their daily lives. Environmental creationism has not come under the same intense public scrutiny and criticism as Christian creationism. There have been fewer social and intellectual pressures for environmental creationists to work out their own precise thinking in this area. …
Indeed, the outward scientific appearance of ecology masks a strong underlying religious content. The powerful religious element is not necessarily a problem in itself, but in the case of ecology, at least, the presentation of religion in the guise of a value-neutral science creates major tensions and even contradictions. Ecological science develops a new creation story that differs in some respects from the original biblical version but also exhibits basic continuities. The result is often both poor science and poor theology, as judged from a rigorously analytical viewpoint based in either area. …
Poor science and poor theology lead to poor policy, and we have suffered many disasters because of it. The Let It Burn movement, responsible for so much destruction, is based on a tenuous philosophy and pseudoscience grounded in religious beliefs, not practical, rational thinking.
W.I.S.E. Luncheon
Last week the Western Institute for Study of the Environment held our first Annual Luncheon in the Columbia River Gorge. A wonderful time was had by all. Some photos:
At Crown Point. Left to right: Carl, Kat, Mike, Melissa, Steve, Dan. Click for larger image.
Coldest U.S. Winter in the Last 20 Years
Climate At A Glance [here]
Winter (Dec-Feb) Temperature
Contiguous United States
NCDC Climate Services and Monitoring Division
Summary of the past winter is provided by the National Climate Data Center figure, below, indicating that last winter’s (December - February) temperature in the contiguous United States was the coldest winter temperature of the last 20 years and that these winter temperatures have been trending downward at a rate of 0.47 degrees F per decade for the last 20 years.
Winter (Dec-Feb) 2010: 31.21 degF Rank: 1 (coldest)
Climate and Weather Politics and politicians Useless and Stupid
by admin
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The Latest Fad in Enviro Lawsuits: Climate Change
U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy in Missoula suspended 61 oil and gas leases on BLM land in Montana the other day, because the BLM failed to review the lease sales for climate change.
Climate change cited as Mont. leases suspended
By MATTHEW BROWN, AP, Washington Post, March 18, 2010 [here]
BILLINGS, Mont. — A federal judge has approved a first-of-its-kind settlement requiring the government to suspend 38,000 acres of oil and gas leases in Montana so it can gauge how oil field activities contribute to climate change.
At issue are the greenhouse gases emitted by drilling machinery and industry practices such as venting natural gas directly into the atmosphere.
Environmentalists - who sued when the Montana leases were sold in 2008 - argued the industry has allowed too much waste and uses inefficient technologies that could easily be updated.
Under the deal approved Thursday by U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy in Missoula, the Bureau of Land Management will suspend the 61 leases in Montana within 90 days. They will have to go through a new round of environmental reviews before the suspensions can be lifted.
“We view this as a very big deal, if a modest first step, in the BLM addressing climate change in oil and gas development,” said plaintiffs’ attorney Erik Schlenker-Goodrich. “It’s quite a dirty process, but there are ways to clean it up.”
Plaintiffs in the case were the Montana Environmental Information Center, the Oil and Gas Accountability Project and Wild Earth Guardians.
A parallel lawsuit challenging 70,000 acres of federal lands leased in New Mexico remains pending.
Judge Molloy is the same guy who threw out wolf delisting, by the way. And WildEarth Guardians is one of the most litigious eco-extremists groups ever. Between 2000 and 2009, Forest Guardians (now known as WildEarth Guardians) filed at least 180 lawsuits in the federal district courts and at least 61 appeals in the federal appellate courts [here].
Put activist eco-judges and sue-happy EAJA hogs together with “climate change” and the entire US economy will soon be shut down by “rulings” from the loony bench. The specter of government gone insane looms in the offing.
Active Forest Management Can Save the Entire Planet
The following interesting article appeared today in the New York Times. According to the authors, active forest management via prescribed burning can prevent “scorched earth” stand-replacing wildfires. As an added benefit, CO2 emissions due to catastrophic megafires would be significantly reduced, thus saving the globe from the terrible fate of global warming.
We demur from the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) hypothesis, but we strongly endorse the implementation of restoration forestry to prevent the destruction of forests.
Forest restoration means active management to bring back historical cultural landscapes, historical forest development pathways, and traditional ecological stewardship to achieve historical resiliency to fire and insects and to preclude and prevent a-historical catastrophic fires that decimate and destroy myriad resource values. Those values include [here]:
1. Heritage and history
2. Ecological functions including old-growth development
3. Fire resiliency and the reduction of catastrophic fires
4. Watershed functions
5. Wildlife habitat
6. Public health and safety
7. Biomass energy
8. Carbon sequestration
9. Jobs and the economy
But if saving the planet from CO2 emissions is what floats your boat, then restoration forestry works for that, too.
Excerpts from the article, with emphasis added:
Study Calls for More Prescribed Burns to Reduce Forest Fire Emissions
By JESSICA LEBER of ClimateWire, NY Times, March 18, 2010 [here]
A new study offers a prescription to increase carbon storage in western U.S. forests: Use more controlled burns to prevent a completely scorched earth.
Increasingly, forest managers are setting so-called “prescribed” fires to clear out underbrush and small trees that, if left to accumulate, can quickly escalate a single spark into a catastrophic blaze.
Prescribed practices mimic the natural, smaller burns, caused by lightning or set by Indians, that were all but eliminated by decades of unnatural fire suppression. Today, in many Western forests, piles of fuels are just waiting for a spark.
Wildfires can also contribute to climate change. Because they are much more intense than prescribed fires, they often kill many old-growth trees that store the most carbon, a consequence that hazardous-fuel reduction programs are meant to avoid. No one before, however, has measured the carbon savings of better fire management on any large scale, according to Christine Wiedinmyer, the study’s lead author.
“We know that prescribed fire can burn less fuel than a large, stand-replacing wildfire. The question was how much? Is it enough that it should be a management technique worth perusing if you want to store more carbon?” asked Wiedinmyer, an atmospheric chemist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
