http://westinstenv.org/sosf W.I.S.E. Commentary: SOS Forests Sat, 17 May 2008 04:46:29 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The lamebrained leftwing arsonist judges on the 9th Circuit Court have done it again. This week they issued an "opinion" that enjoined the USFS Plumas National Forest from implementing pilot thinning projects called for in the 1998 Herger-Feinstein Quincy Library Group Forest Recovery Act. The Plumas proposed thinning thicket forests overloaded ... http://westinstenv.org/sosf/2008/05/16/incinerating-california-judiciously/ I missed this one. You people are supposed to keep me in the swim. But here it is anyway, two weeks late. Oregon Senator Ron Wyden wrote a letter to Mark Rey, Undersec for the USFS at the USDA, asking him to expedite salvage logging on the Shake Table and Egley ... http://westinstenv.org/sosf/2008/05/13/enviros-ok-salvage-logging/ by Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, Friday, 09 May 2008 Full text [here] Excerpt from The Cost and Futility of Trading Hot Air: With climate change, politics regrettably predominates. This time, there is a dangerous complication: politicized science. The surprisingly small group of scientists who started and still stir the “global ... http://westinstenv.org/sosf/2008/05/11/the-cost-and-futility-of-trading-hot-air/ The incineration of the Payette NF (and the Boise NF) did not go unnoticed by the local residents. The following words and photos are excerpted from Discover McCall Idaho, a local promotional website, and the McCall Star-News. Special thanks to Joe B. for providing the links. Satellite photo courtesy NASA. July ... http://westinstenv.org/sosf/2008/05/10/long-valley-voices/ Since 1993 over a million acres of the Payette National Forest have been incinerated. In 1994 300,573 acres burned. In 2000 343,347 acres burned. In 2006 over 70,000 acres burned. And in 2007 a whopping 470,529 acres of the Payette NF went up in smoke. That's 1.27 million acres in ... http://westinstenv.org/sosf/2008/05/09/the-incineration-of-the-payette/ The new W.I.S.E. Fire Tracking website has been reporting on major fires in the West since mid-April. The first fire covered was (is) the Trigo Fire southeast of Albuquerque, NM. The Trigo Fire began on April 15 in the Cibola National Forest and by April 21 had grown to 3,750 acres ... http://westinstenv.org/sosf/2008/05/07/trigo-fire-follow-up/ The following editorial appeared Sunday in the Yakima Herald-Republic. We post it in full: Plea further extends Thirtymile tragedy Yakima Herald-Republic Editorial [here] In a New Year's Eve editorial on the last day of 2006, we were willing to concede at the time that "four manslaughter charges brought against a U.S. Forest Service ... http://westinstenv.org/sosf/2008/05/06/plea-bargain-dashes-hopes-for-full-investigation-and-justice/ A month ago (April 9) SOS Forests posted an essay entitled "Theory, Empiricism, Forests, and Global Warming Models" [here], in which I pointed out that global climate models are purely theoretical and based on zero empirical data. In contrast, I pointed out, weather prediction models are almost purely empirical. The best ... http://westinstenv.org/sosf/2008/05/05/global-warming-takes-a-powder/ The Forest Foundation of Auburn CA and the National Association of Forest Service Retirees have issued a joint review of California forests. Their finding is that the lack of reforestation following forest fires is responsible for converting an average of 30,000 acres per year of forest to brush. Nearly 150,000 acres ... http://westinstenv.org/sosf/2008/05/05/california-forests-are-being-converted-to-tick-brush/ Science Mag, that bastion of political bias with occasional glimpses of actual science, published a garbled article which reviewed the blue-ribbon panel review of the languishing USFWS Recovery Plan for the Northern Spotted. We have reviewed their review of the review, and present some clarifications for your illumination. The article in ... http://westinstenv.org/sosf/2008/05/03/flawed-plan-flawed-article-but-we-clarify-and-polish-our-apple/