SOS Forests

The public who funds you wishes to know whether you are a scientific institution or a political front group promoting partisan political (and a-scientific) opinions.

Was that even a question?

I expect a serious written response to the complaints I have levied.

LOL, that’s so far into bite-your-tongue-in-cheek that you are liable to need stitches, but I doubt your insurer covers self-inflicted wounds.

Mark, your cup of cynicism runneth over. But I am glad you are amused. Laughter is the best medicine.

Mike:

I agree with each and every one of the points you make.

As a taxpayer, I am sick and tired of the so-called “peer reviewed science” that is being produced at my expense — and then kept hidden from my own review. The fact that this “green science” is often shamelessly distorted and promoted via public media only makes the process more suspect. More like product sales and politics than actual science.

As a forest scientist, I applaud the content of your own review, and the fact that you make the object of your criticisms openly and freely available to your readers. That is truly “peer review” — and by those of us paying for it in the first place and politically subjected to its “findings” thereafter.

What are these people (truly) afraid of? “Lost revenue?” I think we can all get a good laugh out of that claim! Or to an open revelation that the emperor is parading naked down Main Street again? I’m guessing it’s more the latter than the former.

The original piece was little more than poor, readily available data tarted up with statistics to justify widespread distribution of some provocative politically correct claims regarding Global Warming speculation. And — likely — to help justify the public monies paid for the “study.”

The WISE criticism was pointed and insightful. It will be interesting to see if the Journal has enough integrity to print it, and to make a response. That would be good manners, good politics, and good science — but maybe too much to expect. It will be interesting to find out.

The eco’s would like nothing more than to solidify their claim that our forests are dying because of “climate change”. There is never any mention of other factors and causes, such as overstocking and neglect, for the massive dieoffs we are now seeing. My forays into eco-la-la-land have shown me that they have absolutely no plausible answer why we currently have all those millions of acres of dead trees. They will drag in all those old 90’s and 80’s issues, instead of the reality of 4000 trees per acre. They will blame fire suppression and grazing. They will blame plantations and tree farms.

They also offer no other solution that will make a difference other than the dreaded Let Die, Let Rot and Let-Burn idealistic dogma drama.

However, I also see a very large silent majority on some of those sites, where formerly preservationist types DO see the forest logic and science but, are afraid to go against the party line of no-compromise and “NOT ONE STICK”. It used to be that people would have a big logger-hater dog pile to escort the intruder out of their lair.

Today, you get greeted by a few possibly very young kids who spout the early 90’s rhetoric. You might get a former “ologist”, who knows some things but is ignorant of good forestry and harvesting skills (including modern equipment!)

When we have devolved control of multi-billion dollar assets to the economic worth of the mere threat of exercising the distracted whim of an urban majority, I seriously doubt that a printed retraction even in a front-page above-the-fold article in the New York Times would make a bit of difference in public cognizance. It took decades to build that mass psychosis. It will either take a similar effort or catastrophic consequences to undo.

My bet is on the latter. You can call it cynicism, but I call it an observation. Even so, as you know, that doesn’t mean I’m sitting here waiting for it to just happen.

BTW, I’ve made similar observations of private businesses claiming copyright on the work of public employees for quite some time. Worse yet is when public employees copyright photographs they take on company time with government equipment. Drives me nuts.

This is a critical issue. As a cretinous member of the undereducated lay public, I am sick to death of having “peer reviewed” articles amped up in the general press as being policy critical, yet the meat of the article is only available to an academic audience.

If the journal wants the FREE publicity, and the authors want the FREE publicity, and they want their conclusions to be entered into the public discussion, then they should be happy to distribute their stuff to the public that is being amped with this important “science” for FREE.

Especially since the public PAID for it in the first place.

The lead author of the article in question, Dr. Jeremy Littell of the Univ of Washington, has supplied us (today) with a “legal” link to his paper [here] courtesy UW. He has no qualms about disseminating his work to the public; indeed, he favors it.

So screw Ecological Applications. They are worse than worthless. Their funding should be cut off; we really don’t need them.

Dr. Jeremy Littell needs to be congratulated.

Whether we agree with his methodology and findings, or not, it is refreshing to deal with scientists open and willing to have their work reviewed.

And maybe “we” really don’t need Ecological Applications, but maybe Dr. Littell and his cohorts at UW do. It is a publish or perish world throughout much of academia, and EA helps serve that purpose.

More to the point, EA could likely benefit more from the actions of contributors such as Dr. Littell than Dr. Littell might benefit from publication in EA.

Now — is Dr. Littell sufficiently confident in his work to answer to Mike’s criticisms? Or to engage in a pointed discussion of his findings with WISE contributors?

If UW rates or evaluates its faculty on the basis of their publications in EA, then they are doing a disservice to the faculty, the students, the university, and the citizens of Washington.

EA is a political, not scientific, journal. Suppose the researchers had done the exact same study but derived the opposite conclusions — that “climate change” has played no significant role in forest fire acreage — that is, the same conclusions I drew. Would EA have published their findings? Of course not. That would have clashed with EA’s political agenda.

All that publication in EA proves is that a scientist knows how to toe some political line. It says nothing about the quality or caliber of their science. And in turn, if UW bases judgments about science faculty on their political correctness, then they degrade the university.

That’s bad university management. Instead UW should find other criteria with which to judge faculty. And if they can’t, then the department heads should be canned, tenure or not. We’d be better off paying them to stay home.

I don’t mean to single out UW. Other affiliations of the researchers who co-authored the article are the USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station and Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego.

Those institutions also need to evaluate their faculty/professional employees by criteria other than publication in EA.