Please note that W.I.S.E. has just added two Very Important Papers to our Library:
Thomas M. Bonnicksen, Ph.D. The Forest Carbon And Emissions Model. 2008. Prepared for The Forest Foundation, Auburn, CA.
FCEM Report No. 1 — (Description of the Beta Version)
FCEM Report No. 2 — Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Four California Wildfires: Opportunities to Prevent and Reverse Environmental and Climate Impacts.
For a review with selected excerpts and links to the papers, see [here].
Comments on these papers should be submitted to this post.
March 14, 2008 | 8 Comments | Topic: Climate and Weather, Saving Forests
By Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic
Remarks delivered at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, New York, March 4, 2008 [here].
Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen,
I would like first of all to thank the organizers of this important conference for making it possible and also for inviting one politically incorrect politician from Central Europe to come and speak here. This meeting will undoubtedly make a significant contribution to the moving away from the irrational climate alarmism to the much needed climate realism.
I know it is difficult to say anything interesting after two days of speeches and discussions here. If I am not wrong, I am the only speaker from a former communist country and I have to use this as a comparative — paradoxically — advantage. Each one of us has his or her experiences, prejudices and preferences. The ones that I have are — quite inevitably — connected with the fact that I have spent most of my life under the communist regime. A week ago, I gave a speech at an official gathering at the Prague Castle commemorating the 60th anniversary of the 1948 communist putsch in the former Czechoslovakia. One of the arguments of my speech there, quoted in all the leading newspapers in the country the next morning, went as follows: “Future dangers will not come from the same source. The ideology will be different. Its essence will, nevertheless, be identical — the attractive, pathetic, at first sight noble idea that transcends the individual in the name of the common good, and the enormous self-confidence on the side of its proponents about their right to sacrifice the man and his freedom in order to make this idea reality.” What I had in mind was, of course, environmentalism and its currently strongest version, climate alarmism.
This fear of mine is the driving force behind my active involvement in the Climate Change Debate and behind my being the only head of state who in September 2007 at the UN Climate Change Conference, only a few blocks away from here, openly and explicitly challenged the current global warming hysteria. My central argument was — in a condensed form — formulated in the subtitle of my recently published book devoted to this topic which asks: “What is Endangered: Climate or Freedom?” My answer is clear and resolute: “it is our freedom.” I may also add “and our prosperity.”
What frustrates me is the feeling that everything has already been said and published, that all rational arguments have been used, yet it still does not help. Global warming alarmism is marching on. We have to therefore concentrate (here and elsewhere) not only on adding new arguments to the already existing ones, but also on the winning of additional supporters of our views. The insurmountable problem as I see it lies in the political populism of its exponents and in their unwillingness to listen to arguments. They — in spite of their public roles — maximize their own private utility function where utility is not any public good but their own private good — power, prestige, carrier, income, etc. It is difficult to motivate them differently. The only way out is to make the domain of their power over our lives much more limited. But this will be a different discussion.
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March 13, 2008 | 2 Comments | Topic: Climate and Weather
Nobody asked me, but here is my judgment regarding the entire Plumas matter.
Everybody involved is in the wrong. The Plaintiffs, the Defendants, the Judges, all parties involved, are acting manners that will hurt the American people, that will harm wildlife, and that will destroy priceless heritage forests.
No one is seeking to protect, maintain, or perpetuate THE FOREST. As a result, the forest will be destroyed, along with the animals that live there and likely the adjacent communities as well.
The Plaintiffs don’t care if a megafire holocaust blows up in the Plumas National Forest, in fact they welcome it. Their “experts” routinely call for no initial attack, no fire retardant, no firefighting, Let It Burn, and good riddance. It is their stated objective to “reintroduce” fire to America’s forests come what may. If spotted owls are killed and their habitat destroyed, so what. If old-growth trees are incinerated, so much the better; they wish to “renew” forests by burning them down. If the skies and waters are filled with smoke, ash, and soot, hooray for our side.
The Plaintiffs come to these issues not from long experience in caring for forests, but from a radical political agenda that seeks to overthrow the U.S. Government and institute a communist/fascist dictatorship. They are closet anarchists and America-haters. In fact, they hate the entire human race.
The Defendants are a corrupt federal bureaucracy that seeks to incinerate the forests under their charge, and any and all private properties, homes, or communities within 30 miles of public land. They know nothing about forests or forestry, and seek public funds and power to destroy that which they were hired to protect.
The Defendants routinely create faulty plans that they know are out of accord with the laws that govern them, seek to cut corners in every case, appoint idiot lawyers who know nothing about anything, and display an incompetence that borders on criminal negligence. No, not borders, IS criminal negligence full blown.
The Judges are ignorant about forests, forestry, wildlife biology, fire, any and all environmental science, and are ignorant of the law as well. The 9th Circuit Court routinely issues ruling so out-of-whack with the U.S. Constitution and our laws that nearly every one of their decisions that makes it to the Supreme Court is overturned.
Nobody involved seeks to protect, maintain, and/or perpetuate forests, old-growth trees, wildlife populations, wildlife habitat, watershed values, or any other facet of forests.
Can forests be saved from catastrophic fire? Of course. Can owl habitat be protected from incineration? Of course. Can old-growth trees be saved and perpetuated? Absolutely.
What is required is professional forestry oriented to those missions. And that is exactly what is lacking.
The question is not what size of trees should be removed. The question is what trees should be left. The purpose is not to fill the mills with public logs, the purpose is to protect, maintain, and perpetuate the treasures that are our National Forests.
But nobody involved gets that. They all bury themselves in erroneous minutia and political posturings that do not address the actual forestry conditions or what might be necessary to save our forests from destruction. Nobody involved gives a rat about forests, or the various disasters that ensue when forests are destroyed. They all have agendas that are entirely separate from forest stewardship.
As a direct, planned, and authorized result, every summer our forests are visited by raging megafires that destroy all forest values, kill wildlife, foul air and water, and leave behind wastelands, scorched earth, and tick brush where once magnificent forests stood.
Every summer homes and communities are visited by those same fires, raging out of control off the Federal Estate, generated by the selfsame Parties Involved, with horrible consequences including billions of dollars in destruction and the deaths of innocent people.
My judgment: I condemn them all. I find all of the Parties Involved guilty as charged. I am sickened by their behaviors. If it was within my powers, I would throw every one of them in the penitentiary for 20 years to life, and let them rot in their tiny cells while they contemplate the error of their ways.
March 13, 2008 | 1 Comment | Topic: Saving Forests
Last November we reported (at SOS Forests, the old version) on a landmark decision made in a California forestry case [here, here].
On Oct. 16, Judge Morrison C. England of the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of California issued a written judgment denying the injunctions demanded by the Plaintiffs, a coalition of environmental groups led by Sierra Forest Legacy, formerly known as Sierra Nevada Forest Protection Campaign. Others in the (losing) coalition are the Center For Biological Diversity, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club, and the Wilderness Society.
The Plaintiffs sought a preliminary injunction on grounds that the Slapjack, Basin and Empire Projects risked irreparable harm to old forest habitat and imperiled wildlife including California spotted owls, Pacific fishers and American martens. However, no fishers or martens have been seen within 200 miles of any of the project areas during the last 40 years.
The Projects are forest thinnings in the Wildland-Urban Interface, that most dangerous of fire zones. The Empire Project will treat 2,500 acres immediately adjacent to five communities at risk: Quincy, Massack, Greenhorn, Keddie and Butterfly Valley. The 35,00 acre Slapjack Project is near the communities of Brownsville, Challenge, Clipper Mills, Dobbins, Feather Fall, Forbestown, and Strawberry Valley, which collectively are home to between 5,000 and 7,0000 people. The Basin Project is 1,300 acres of similar selective thinning.
The Plaintiffs appealed, and last week arguments were heard before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. A tape recording of the attorneys for the Plaintiffs and the Defendants is [here].
Various points were raised. The Plaintiff’s attorney argued that 20 inch trees are perforce old-growth based on their diameter. However, true old-growth trees are rarely that small. I have a Douglas-fir next my driveway that is 24 inches in diameter and 26 years old. Determining the age of trees is fairly simple. Why nobody involved bothered to do that in this case is beyond me. Perhaps if a real forester were hired, that kind of confusion could be ameliorated.
The judges seemed concerned that merchantable-sized trees would be harvested. I am aware of no law that limits the USFS to sub-merchantable size classes. However, there are numerous laws that require the US Government to supply timber to the national economy from federal lands. Why none of those laws were mentioned is again a mystery to me.
The Plaintiff’s attorney claimed irreparable harm would be done to martens and fishers that do not exist within 200 miles of the treatment areas. That seemed like a stretch of the truth. He also argued that thinning would impair spotted owl habitat, again a falsehood.
The Defendant’s attorney seemed to know nothing whatsoever about forestry, or forests, or wildlife habitat, or much else. She seemed, from the tape recording, to be nervous, confused, and ill-prepared.
I personally do not think the 9th Circuit Court should be a training ground for rookie attorneys, particularly when so much is a stake. The purpose of the proposed projects is to SAVE forests, not destroy them, to SAVE habitat, by preventing incineration of it, and to SAVE the homes and lives of the resident citizens from catastrophic megafire. That’s not a joke or a practice game for greenhorns.
The Plaintiffs seemed not to care one tiny whit whether forests, habitat, homes, or lives are destroyed by raging infernos. They are holocauster life-haters, evidently. That kind of evil must be countered with some serious effort. Unfortunately, no one involved seems to get it.
March 13, 2008 | 4 Comments | Topic: Saving Forests, Federal forest policy
Guest Post by Bear Bait
If you depend on science alone, the effort fails. There is art involved. Forestry is science and art combined. My experience over 49 years getting a paycheck from the woods, or from imparting some consultation to someone who needed my help. Science and art…
Diversity is having 10,000 groups of 100 or less people managing their little part of the landscape to provide for their sustenance, the survival of their DNA to another generation. All will do things a little bit differently. Their diet preferences will differ, as will how they adorn themselves or shelter themselves. And by happenstance or serendipity, they will move plants and animals and change the local landscape with accidental or set fire, changing a stream’s flow a little bit to spread water, cleaning under a tree so as to prevent ground fire from killing it and losing the annual nut crop. Slow, little tiny needed change. And it all becomes diversity.
Now compare that with a Forest Plan. An EIS for a watershed. A directive from the Chief’s office. That is a dulling one size fits all policy, and that is armor-plate without art. That is mindless dreck piled on more mindless dreck. The land now shows that. The whole of the National Forests and BLM lands now reflect top down planning. No subtle differences on the ground, no preferences for some one thing over another. Mindless lock step march to sameness, all in the name of diversity. Human diversity, forest diversity, plant diversity, animal diversity. Cookie cutter forestry. Paint by the numbers forestry.
That is what got us Swiss needle cast in off-site Doug fir in the fog belt. That got us high elevation Idaho Doug fir seed planted in the Hebo Burn oh so long ago. Super trees. Ten by ten spacing. And the industrial foresters will tell you if you don’t overplant, you end up with limby ice cream cones. So they grow their trees, and the govt should grow their own.
Hay-Soos Crisco, Shotgun, where in the hell did all the meadows go? The fens, the wet meadows, the wide riparian zones, the lakeside meadow, the savanna? All are now trees. You hike into the wilderness and the sign says you can’t gather firewood or camp anywhere near the lake. Like sure, dude. The Molalla Indians had those signs everywhere. Don’t! No! Cease! Can’t!… At least they burned off the grass in late summer or fall, and it all grew back thrifty and strong the next year. Now that meadow by the lake has been lost to encroachment of trees.
In the whole of the west side of the Cascade range, on USFS land, there is only one grazing allotment and I think they are trying or have eliminated that one to cutthroat trout issues. The rest were lost to tree encroachment. Or deliberate tree planting. The Feds planted the meadows with trees. Is planting trees in a meadow as egregious a strike against nature as cutting all the trees down in a clear cut? I would think so.
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March 12, 2008 | 2 Comments | Topic: Saving Forests
[Note: I wrote the following comment in response to another comment at W.I.S.E. Forest and Fire News, but am so enamored of my own writing that I am placing it here as a post.]
Re the “alarmist” appellation [as in Global Warming Alarmist]: the climate debate was declared over by political types. Those who disagree with the UN [IPCC] conclusions were (are) labeled “deniers” in reference to Holocaust deniers. Vast Draconian “solutions” have been subsequently adopted worldwide, with more to come.
Yet the debate is not over. Numerous scientists, including over 100 top experts who attended the NY Climate Conference, make the claim that recent global warming is minor, natural (not human caused), largely over, and a good thing (warmer is better).
Those points of view are roundly excoriated by the worldwide Media. Those of us who hold those views feel very marginalized and deeply insulted by the alarmists’ lack of open mindedness. Friends of mine have lost their jobs for holding “contrarian views” on this issue, by purely political witch-hunting.
The “solutions” offered have driven up the prices of energy and food. Great suffering has resulted in the poorer countries of the world. None of the “solutions” will affect the Earth’s temperature one iota, but the suffering is now and it is real.
Those who would starve the poor are indeed heartless. Those who would impose a new world order regardless of the pain they inflict are indeed authoritarian and totalitarian. Megalomania has not miraculously disappeared. It is alive and expanding on this planet.
It is a common thing to blame one’s fellow man for “problems” real and imaginary. That is the thread that has run through totalitarian movements throughout history, with horrendous repercussions. Blame Humanity is popular these days, just as it was in fascist dictatorships prior to World War II. “Too many people” is an old and deeply corrupt philosophy!
The corollaries to that philosophy are profoundly anti-human, racist, and evil. It the philosophy that created Auschwitz.
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March 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Climate and Weather
This just in from a SOSF fan, forester, and long-time contributor:
Now that the eco’s AND the Bush Administration are united in burning our forests to the ground, what can foresters do? It looks like the shift will have to go with salvage logging. The stage is set for foresters to make their stand in court on the benefits of salvage logging. Too bad the government lawyers know almost nothing about forests. And in a battle of lawyers, which lawyer would you trust on environmental issues? (No, you DO have to choose!…LOL) — Backcut
This is sarcastic commentary, tongue-in-cheek, and I am afraid many newer readers may not understand the nuances. Please let me explain a few things.
I personally do not give a dead rat about salvage logging. Salvage logging is not forestry. That’s not what foresters do.
Hello, World! Catch a clue! Forestry is not about the logs!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Forestry is about the forests. It’s about protecting, maintaining, and perpetuating living forest ecosystems!!!!!!!!!
NOT ABOUT THE LOGS!!!!!!!
Look, I know that you all live in wooden framed structures made of boards that came from trees, or else in concrete Stalinist tenements that were built using wooden forms. Naturally, you are concerned about the price and availability of construction lumber since your very lives depend on them.
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March 11, 2008 | 12 Comments | Topic: Saving Forests
Maybe it is not clear to the newest readers of SOS Forests that when the USFS says “the full range of Appropriate Management Response strategies for the management of wildland fires,” they mean whoofoos. They mean Wildland Fire Use, and Let-It-Burn. They mean no rapid response initial attack. They mean holocaust, catastrophic megafire ala the Biscuit Fire (2002).
The USFS has announced their intention to burn down the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest [here]. That is their intention.
Appropriate Management Response encompasses a range of possible responses to unplanned fires, from monitoring (watching the fire burn to ensure objectives are being met) to full suppression (putting the fire out).
Watching the fire burn is code for Let-It-Burn. Watching is not firefighting, it is watching.
During the 50,000 acre Tatoosh Fire (2006) [here, here] on the Okanogan NF, watching consisted of a fly-over once a day. During the Little Venus Fire (2006) [here] on the Shoshone National Forest, watching consisted of sending “monitoring” crews with a defective radio system into tight canyons where they got burned over and nearly killed. In any case, watching is NOT containing, controlling, or extinguishing the fire.
“The goals of Appropriate Management Response are to allow more acres to be affected by fire where we believe it will benefit forest health, obtain desired ecological conditions, and reduce the risk of damage over the long term” said Scott Conroy, Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest Supervisor.
Scott Conroy is wrong. Let-It-Burn wildfires in unmanaged forest are stand-replacing (kill all the trees) and do not reduce the risk of damage; they realize it!
Wildfires do not benefit forest health; they destroy forests and convert them to brush!
The desired ecological conditions in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest are NOT incinerated forests converted to brush!
March 7, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Saving Forests, Federal forest policy
The U.S. Forest Service is planning to incinerate the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest in a catastrophic megafire this coming summer.
WE MUST STOP THIS ILLEGAL DESTRUCTION
Now is the time to flood the process with comments in opposition. Get your name in the legal record. There will be a major lawsuit. We need your participation.
THIS IS AN EMERGENCY
Please make your voice heard. Your forest is at stake. Below is the press release from the RR-SNF. Beware the eco-babble and bureaucratic gibberish. Email your comments in opposition to
comments-pacificnorthwest-rogueriver-siskiyou@fs.fed.us
or mail them to Rob Budge, Deputy Fire Staff-Fuels, Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, P.O. Box 520, Medford, Oregon, 97501.
DO IT TODAY — THIS IS AN EMERGENCY — SAVE THE ROGUE
Forest Service Seeks Public Comments on Appropriate Management Response [HERE]
Contacts:
Rob Budge, Deputy Fire Staff, Fuels, (541) 858-2434
Patty Burel, Forest Public Affairs Officer, (541) 858-2211MEDFORD, OR, March 5, 2008 – Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest land managers are seeking public comments regarding a proposal to amend the Forests’ Land and Resource Management Plans to allow for the full range of Appropriate Management Response strategies for the management of wildland fires.
Appropriate Management Response encompasses the spectrum of possible responses to unplanned fires. Aggressive fire suppression actions would take place where private property or natural resources are likely to be damaged and less intense responses could be considered where resource benefits are more likely.
“The goals of Appropriate Management Response are to allow more acres to be affected by fire where we believe it will benefit forest health, obtain desired ecological conditions, and reduce the risk of damage over the long term” said Scott Conroy, Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest Supervisor.
Appropriate Management Response encompasses a range of possible responses to unplanned fires, from monitoring (watching the fire burn to ensure objectives are being met) to full suppression (putting the fire out). The same fire may have objectives for protecting values and infrastructure as well as for resource benefits.
Land managers evaluate several criteria before deciding on how to respond to a fire. Where resource benefits are part of the management objectives, fire managers establish boundaries and define weather conditions under which the fire will burn.
“Land managers throughout the West have learned over the last forty years that there are ecological benefits of having fire on the landscape as it can provide for a renewal of the Forest. It is a natural cycle of life in a forest,” said Conroy.
Managers would base their response to an unplanned fire on the conditions and situations present at the time of the fire. Part of all of a fire may be managed aggressively where damage to private property, forest developments, or natural resources is likely. Areas where the fire is meeting Forest Plan goals and objectives could be managed less intensively if conditions allow.
Land managers evaluate several criteria before deciding on how to respond to a fire. Where resource benefits are part of the management objectives, fire managers establish boundaries and define weather conditions under which the fire will burn.
Where a fire threatens life, property, or resources, it is suppressed.
In response to all fires, the Forest Service emphasizes firefighter and public safety and recognizes the need to avoid or prevent damage to property or resources.
The agency is seeking public comment on issues to be considered in amending both of the Forests’ Land and Resource Management Plans to allow for the full range of Appropriate Management Responses for the management of wildland fires. Specifically the agency is proposing to amend both documents to:
modify fire management direction for Appropriate Management Response;
provide Standards and Guidelines that are consistent with federal fire policy and direction; and
replace outdated fire terminology and direction in the current Forest Plans.
The agency would like to hear any comments, concerns, ideas, or issues the public may have regarding this Proposed Action by April 4, 2008. The Forest Service would review all input and anticipates publishing an Environmental Assessment in May 2008.
Comments regarding this project may be sent to Rob Budge, Deputy Fire Staff-Fuels, Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, P.O. Box 520, Medford, Oregon, 97501; FAX (541) 779-3098 or electronically to comments-pacificnorthwest-rogueriver-siskiyou@fs.fed.us. Please include the name of the project, “Appropriate Management Response” in the subject line. For further information, or questions please contact Rob Budge at phone (541) 858-2434 or by e-mail at rbudge@fs.fed.us.
March 6, 2008 | 24 Comments | Topic: Saving Forests, Federal forest policy
by the President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus
From his address to the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, March 4, 2008
What I see in Europe (and the U.S. and other countries as well) is a powerful combination of irresponsibility, of wishful thinking, of implicit believing in some form of Mathusianism, of a cynical approach of those who themselves are sufficiently well off, together with the strong possibility of changing the economic nature of things through a radical political project.
As a politician who personally experienced communist central planning of all kinds of human activities, I feel obliged to bring back the already forgotten arguments used in the famous plan versus market debate in the 1930s in economic theory (between Mises and Hasyek on the one side and Lange and Lerner on the other), the arguments we have been using for decades - till the moment of the fall of communism. Then they were quickly forgotten. The innocence with which the climate alarmists and their fellow travelers in politics and media now present and justify their ambitions to mastermind human society belongs to the same “fatal conceit.” To my great despair, this is not sufficiently challenged neither in the field of social sciences, nor in the field of climatology. Especially the social sciences are suspiciously silent.
We have to restart the discussion about the very nature of government and about the relationship between the individual and society. Now it concerns the whole mankind, not just the citizens of one particular country. To discuss this means to look at the canonically structured theoretical discussion about socialism (or communism) and to learn an uncompromising lesson from the inevitable collapse of communism 18 years ago. It is not about climatology. It is about freedom. This should be the main message of our conference.
These extracts were posted by Joseph D’Aleo, CCM at ICECAP [here]
SOS Forests will post the full text when it becomes available (soon). For more reports regarding the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, see Forest, Fire, and Wildlife News [here]
March 6, 2008 | 2 Comments | Topic: Climate and Weather
