Global Cooling Sets In
There has been no global warming since 1998. The solar cycle that lifted the planet out of the Little Ice Age is over. That worm has turned, and we are headed back into a cooling cycle. This year, 2008 is expected to be the coolest since the early 1990’s. And 2009 will be cooler yet.
Global temperatures are not affected by atmospheric carbon dioxide. The planet is cooling despite “record” levels of CO2 (today’s CO2 concentrations are minuscule compared to paleo-atmospheric concentrations). Humanity has not warmed the planet. Temperatures are dipping despite everything humans do.
The current and former Chiefs of the USFS, Gail Kimbell and Dale Bosworth, both blame global warming for record forest fire acreage during their tenures. The Association of Fire Ecologists went so far as to issue a Declaration calling for direct and immediate conversion of forests to brush via a No Touch, Let It Burn, Watch it Rot, No Regrets policy.
The Wildland Fire Leadership Council, the federal advisory committee that oversees federal firefighting and is dominated by special interest groups, specifically the Nature Conservancy and the Wilderness Society, has launched a “Black, Dead, Burned Forests Are Beautiful” campaign. The propaganda effort is in support of their WFU program, the Let It Burn policy that encompasses most of the western U.S., public and private land alike.
Yes, in December the USFS formally extended its Let It Burn directive to hundreds of millions acres of private land, an official acknowledgment of their de facto policies of the last 15 years.
That announcement comes on the heels of a government-wide “Blame the Victims” approach to addressing the tens of thousands of private homes the USFS has incinerated during the last 15 years. Nearly 90 million acres have burned in wildfires in the last decade and a half, including the largest fires in the history of every western state.
The destruction of America’s public forests has been horrific. Trillions (with a “t”) of dollars in resource values have been lost. Regional economies have been crippled. Wildlife populations have crashed. Millions of acres of heritage old-growth forests have been converted to brush.
But hark! That’s all over now. Since global warming was the cause, now that global cooling has set in the problem has been solved. Right?
Wrong. Global warming was never the cause; bad land management was and is. And since the bad land management promulgated by the USFS and WFLC is getting worse, expect fire seasons to get worse, too, regardless of “climate change.”
Expect more acres, more forests, more homes to be incinerated this year. Your watershed, neighborhood, property has been targeted. It does not matter whether you live in a rural, urban, or suburban setting. Fire does not discriminate. And megafires arising from the deliberate actions (and inactions) of the federal government especially do not discriminate.
The time to act is now. The time to reintroduce stewardship into the landscape is now. The federal government needs to hear that message and get it in gear, now. The mistakes of the last 15 years must be corrected, now.
Regardless of global warming, cooling, or “climate change.”
by mr. mensa
Well, for starters, there have been only six years total since 2001, by my count. Hard to see how you get seven out of that stretch.
Be that as it may, I’ll let some other experts blow your contentions out of the water, Mr. Mensa.
Have at ‘em, boys and girls.
The tragedy in all this is that Warmer Is Better, in every possible respect, but Warmer is not happening. The hysteria to make the planet cooler is nuts both ways.
The real deal is that, no matter “weather” this climate change is man-caused or just the normal solar cycle, our forests need hands-on management if they are going to survive. When mortality exceeds both annual growth AND harvesting, you KNOW something is not right in the woods. Placing all 100% of the blame on global warming is the enviros way of marginalizing the world’s foresters. Hmmmm, quite a change from the 90’s when us foresters were the most evil and vicious thing in the forests.
Someday, the world will blame the enviros for doing exactly the wrong things at the wrong times. The tide IS turning and their eco-icons are all jumping ship. I DO predict that, one day very soon, Al Gore will side with Jerry Franklin in seeing the need to “tend to” our national treasures. It’s inevitable!
by Wayne Kraft
“Seven of the eight warmest years on record have occurred since 2001.”
This is a direct quote from the NOAA website (as is most of the stuff in mr mensabot’s post).
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2008/20080115_warmest.html
Apparently NOAA is writing this from the perspective of someone living in 2010 when there will have actually been 8 years since 2001. Kind of a science fiction thing. This is what our federal tax dollars buy for us.
by Forrest Grump
Backster, I got into the what if zone with your comment on JF and Algore — thinking bad company, which went Bad Company and…
If you listen to the wind, you can still hear them bray.
Mike - Stick to the forestry issues - when you post global warming-related comments you sound just plain silly.
It’s a bit early for your 2008 and 2009 predictions.
Despite your misinformation, here are the facts:
For 2007, the global land and ocean surface temperature was the fifth warmest on record. Separately, the global land surface temperature was warmest on record while the global ocean temperature was 9th warmest since records began in 1880.
Including 2007, seven of the eight warmest years on record have occurred since 2001 and the 10 warmest years have all occurred since 1995. The global average surface temperature has risen between 0.6°C and 0.7°C since the start of the twentieth century, and the rate of increase since 1976 has been approximately three times faster than the century-scale trend.
2008 is set to be cooler globally than recent years but is still forecast to be one of the top-ten warmest years.
Get your facts straight buddy!