It has been a busy week for news already. Some of the highlights (or lowlights):
USFS Chief Gail Kimbell proffered an excuse for soaring fire costs and her agency’s failure to do a Congressionally ordered analysis of the nation’s aerial firefighting program following fatal crashes of planes working on wildfires: “We are a nation at war, and we’re a nation with a huge budget deficit.” [here].
Pretty cheesy. We can’t do our job because the nation is at war. It could be the war that Kimbell is talking about is the one the USFS is waging on forests and landowners throughout the West. Her agency did find $54 million to spend on conservation easements to stop homebuilding on private land. It “saved” the taxpayers money by curtailing private property rights and resident stewardship of the land in favor of holocaust megafires.
Weyerhaeuser was busted in another anti-trust case. A Portland jury on Monday ordered Weyerhaeuser to pay almost $28 million for unlawfully monopolizing the market for finished alder lumber [here].
U.S. Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey was in Missoula on Monday to answer questions about controversial secret meetings between the U.S. Forest Service and the Plum Creek Timber Company. Plum Creek is the country’s largest private landowner, with 8 million acres nationwide and 1.2 million acres in Montana [here].
More gravy for the Big Potato. Maybe Mark doesn’t realize that we’re a nation at war.
In wildlife news, a rabies outbreak is plaguing the Southwest. A rabid bobcat attacked two hikers, who had to kill it with a hammer [here]. Lesson: never go hiking without a hammer. For more rabies news see Wolf Crossing [here].
Speaking of disease-carrying animals, twelve “environmental” groups have sued to halt wolf delisting [here]. Nuff said.
On the climate front, the founder of the National Hurricane Center is being forced out for his failure to buy into Algore’s Inconvenient Lie [here]. Naughty, naughty. Here come the PC police.
And finally Friends of the Earth have been blamed for starving millions of poor to death after spreading ugly rumors about American food aid to Africa [here]. Guess that’s one way to deal with the overpopulation problem. Pin a medal on FOE.
Lovely news. Going outside now. Had my fill of it. If there were some way to dig the news into my garden, I’m sure I could grow pumpkins the size of Volkswagens. For big punkins, it’s all about the bull …
April 29, 2008 | 2 Comments | Topic: The 2008 Fire Season, Private land policies, Climate and Weather, Saving Forests, Politics and politicians, Federal forest policy
The BBC and the London (UK) Telegraph announced last Thursday that the World’s Oldest Tree had been discovered in Sweden. While this is not precisely correct (as I will explain below), nevertheless it is an important and significant finding with implications for our modern times.
From the BBC [here]
Swedes find ‘world’s oldest tree’
A tree said to be the oldest on the planet - thought to be nearly 10,000 years old - has been found in Sweden.
Scientists from Umeaa University discovered the spruce [Picea abies, commonly Norway spruce] on Fulu Mountain in Dalarna province while carrying out a census of tree species there in 2004.
The age of its genetic material was recently calculated using carbon dating at a laboratory in Miami, Florida.
World’s Oldest Tree?
Scientists had believed the world’s oldest trees were 4,000-year-old pine trees found in North America.
The oldest, a bristlecone pine [Pinus longaeva] named Methuselah located in California’s White Mountains, is aged 4,768, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.
The new record contender, which would have taken root just after the last ice age, was found among a cluster of around 20 spruces believed to be more than 8,000 years old at an altitude of 910m (2,985ft) on Fulu Mountain.
The visible portion of the spruce was comparatively new, but analysis of four “generations” of remains - cones and wood - found underneath its crown showed its root system had been growing for 9,550 years, Umeaa University said.
April 20, 2008 | 3 Comments | Topic: Climate and Weather
by Roni Bell Sylvester, Good Neighbor Law [here]
Pope Benedict XVI warns “failure to ensure the right to food is a violation of human dignity.” He wants our planet to grow enough food to assure that no one “goes to sleep on an empty stomach.”
But Pope Benedict faces a strong opponent.
Mr. Al Gore thought he’d won the title of President of the United States of America, but found out later that he hadn’t. Filled with rage, Al rallied his buddies at the UN and the European Union to come up with a plan whereby they could crush America and give Al title to a territory much larger than America. Something like… the world.
They needed to come up with something that would stir millions to march faithfully behind them. They met on a big O yacht and tried to figure out how to make billions of dollars and help Al get title to the world.
They founded a new religion they named the “Church of Global Warming,” and anointed Al Gore Head Preacher. In his first sermon, Preacher Gore asked his people “Weather - or not?” They answered in unison, “Weather!” And thusly they set up a doctrine that portended to stop “climate change” and any other loose change that followed.
How does this tie into Mr. Gore competition with Pope Benedict’s call to feed the poor and hungry? Well, the Church of Global Warming is using a method called Precautionary Principle to crush America.
Read more
April 20, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Climate and Weather, Politics and politicians
Ted Turner wants to eat you. Former media mogul (and still a prize ass) Ted Turner appeared on the Charlie Rose Show and issued a Soylent Green dire report [here]:
If global warming isn’t stemmed, “we’ll be 8 degrees hotter in 30 or 40 years and basically none of the crops will grow,” Turner said during PBS’ “Charlie Rose.”
“Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals,” said Turner, 69. “Civilization will have broken down. The few people left will be living in a failed state … living conditions will be intolerable.”
Population control can help combat global warming he said. People should voluntarily pledge to have only one or two children, the founder of CNN in Atlanta said.
“We’re too many people; that’s why we have global warming,” he said.
Kobe beef, anyone? Cher and share alike? Pass the Col. Mustard?
But enough of the cannibal chatter–this post is about the profound ignorance most Americans possess regarding agriculture.
Does anyone out there know where food comes from? No, the answer is not the grocery store. Food comes from farms and ranches. Food is grown on purpose by people generally referred to as “farmers” and “ranchers” or “agriculturalists.”
Farmers grow edible plants on farms. That’s where food comes from. The edible plants need sunlight, soil, and water to grow. And warmth. This is a little known fact, evidently. Plants like it warm. Plants don’t grow very well where it’s cold, but they do great where it’s warm.
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April 16, 2008 | 5 Comments | Topic: Climate and Weather
A popular statement, usually attributed to George Box, is that “all models are wrong, but some are useful.” The usefulness of models fall into two broad classes: theory and prediction. Theoretical models attempt to map known physical, chemical, and biological relationships. Predictive models (sometimes called “black box”) attempt to make accurate predictions.
There is a strong tendency to confuse or combine these utilities, and that is true in any modeling (my specialty is forest growth and yield models). Proponents of theoretical models are often adamant that their models are best (a value judgment) and insist that they be used in predictive situations. Predictive modelers, in contrast, may use crude rules of thumb that are unattractive to theoreticians, but predictive modelers emphasize that their goal is accurate prediction.
Hence Box’s assertion that models are wrong must also be bifurcated. Theoretical models are wrong if the theories behind them are invalid. Predictive models are wrong if they make poor predictions. It is easy (but not useful) to confuse these wrong-itudes.
Predictive models are generally empirical, that is, data-driven. Predictions are validated (or invalidated) by the data on actual outcomes. Theoretical models are validated (or invalidated) by tests of theory, which may or may not be empirical. Experiments (empiricism) are used to test theories, but theoretical models do not rest on predicted outcomes because theoretical models are not predictive by design.
The best weather prediction models are more empirical than theoretical. They look at current conditions (fronts, pressure gradients, jet streams, etc.) as they are cadastrally arrayed across the globe, and compare those to past dates when the same or very similar arrays occurred. Then the weather outcomes of the similar past conformations are examined, and used to predict the immediate future weather. Not much theory to that, more of a data mining of the past; hence the descriptor “empirical.”
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April 9, 2008 | 1 Comment | Topic: Climate and Weather, Saving Forests
Janet writes:
I noticed in news stories about Mr. Bonnicksen study that it was not peer reviewed and the study was funded by a foundation that gets money from logging companies. Also, some other experts who were interviewed for a story said Bonnicksen’s estimates were on the high end. Seems like you folks had a problem with a certain study out of OSU that wasn’t peer reviewed so I’m wondering why you are fine with this latest Bonnicksen study not being peer reviewed?
Janet, Holy cow! Did you ever get all that backasswards and twisted around! Let me try to straighten you out so you won’t be so desperately confused and disoriented.
1. Dr. (not Mr.) Bonnicksen, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus of Forest Science at Texas A&M University, Visiting Scholar at The Forest Foundation, and the author of the greatest book ever written about our forests, America’s Ancient Forests – From the Ice Age to the Age of Discovery.
Dr. Bonnicksen holds a bachelor’s degree in forestry, and master’s and doctorate degrees in wildland resource science (he studied under Drs. Harold Biswell and Ed Stone at UC Berkeley). He has researched the history and ecology of ancient forests for more than 30 years, and has authored more than 80 papers and articles on forest ecology and resource management.
2. Dr. Bonnicksen is the originator of restoration forestry. His work has emphasized the fact that Native Americans were an integral part of America’s forests. The forests and the people who lived here formed an inseparable whole that developed together over millennia. He has endeavored to return our forests to sustainable, historical conditions and to protect, maintain, and perpetuate America’s forests.
3. Yes, Dr. Bonnicksen’s recent work was supported by the Forest Foundation, and that organization includes a timber company among its benefactors. But did you ever stop to think that every academic pursuit in California is supported by timber companies, through taxes, grants, and by the lumber that holds up the buildings on campus as well as your house?
March 18, 2008 | 16 Comments | Topic: Climate and Weather, Saving Forests
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
[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
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
