The Smokey Wire : National Forest News and Views
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With a new Republican President and a Republican-controlled Congress, how will this affect the Forest Service and the BLM?
Regarding the picture: I did some processing with a High Dynamic Range (HDR) program to get this artsy view. It is interesting that it enhanced the flames better than in the original scan, from a Kodachrome slide. I shot this while filling in on an engine, on the Lassen NF, back in 1988.
How does all of this affect current forest policy?
Here are two worthwhile reads regarding the role of forests in global warming / carbon sequestration. In addition, item “C)” raises and supports the question: ‘if there is no long term correlation between temperatures and CO2 then how can CO2 be the largest factor contributing to Global Warming?’. Everything we do is predicated on that one big “IF” yet, most refuse to acknowledge the lack of a direct correlation.
A) Pacific Northwest forests: Carbon sink or carbon source?
“Active forest management in dry forest ecosystems plays a critical role in reducing fuel loads, conserving functionality and biodiversity, and returning forests to a natural, resilient condition that is capable of responding to wildfire in a more socially desirable and ecologically beneficial way”
IMHO regardless of whatever role CO2 plays, healthy forests require, at a minimum, forest management as needed for the safety of society. The above quote simply illustrates that a “hands off” policy does not fit the needs of all forest ecosystems nor does it fit at all times within the need to maintain a specific forest ecosystem in order to support species dependent on the sustainability of a particular forest ecosystem niche. This in turn leads to the need for landscape level forest planning for all federal forest holdings.
– 1) “the single biggest contributor to climate change is CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion. Indeed, global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel emissions in recent years have been roughly ten times higher than emissions from the next largest global source, land use change, including deforestation”
—> See “C” below about the “inconvenient truth” that there is no proven long term relationship between CO2 levels and global temperatures. This does not rule out the possibility that, as yet, undetermined interactions with other variables could have an impact on the role of CO2 in global warming.
– 2) “there are many excellent reasons to support planting trees in WA state … However, mitigating the threat of climate change is not among those reasons, based on the available science.”
– 3) “Thus, the management of forests to accumulate carbon must not delay or dilute the phasing-out fossil fuel use.”
—> agree – but not because of CO2 emissions:
—- a) Health – pollution dictates a reduction in the use of hydrocarbons and an increase in the use of alternative fuels to replace the extraction of below ground hydrocarbons and an increase in the use of sound, sustainable forest management to reduce the risk of Catastrophic fires.
—- b) Geologic ramifications of hydrocarbon extraction and hydraulic pumping include surface subsidence and earthquakes.
C) The Question as to the pertinence of CO2 to Global Warming
We must consider the inconvenient truth that ice cores from Greenland and Vostok, Russia show that over the last ~ 100,000 years, temps have been significantly higher than today by more than 2 degrees centigrade when CO2 was 2/3rds of what it is now. So is CO2 really the cause of global warming?
Greenland Data – Mankind has lived in significantly warmer climates than current temps over the last 11,000 years with CO2 levels at 2/3rds of the present levels (current CO2 levels corroborates their extrapolation of CO2 levels to the present).
Global Mean Temperature Anomaly – 1880 – Present – Note 2000 – 2016 only shows a 0.3 degree centigrade increase versus the Greenland and Vostok Data and corroborates their extrapolations to 2000.
Vostok Data – Mankind has lived in significantly warmer climates than current temps over the last 140,000 years.
So the question is: how does all of this affect current forest policy?
Preserving Drinking Water is just one of the many reasons that Landscape Level Sound Sustainable Forest Management Is Needed everywhere including our National Forests. This doesn’t preclude hands off management nor does it preclude tailored management to provide for the desires of society when it fits within acceptable parameters as dictated by:
The following are quotes from various synopses of related articles:
A) Fixing Water By Fixing Forests
B) U.S. Cities Go to the Source to Protect Drinking Water
C) Forest Trends: “State of Watershed Investment 2014”
D) Report: Protecting Drinking Water At Its Source
I’m just going to drop this here. A side by side comparison of the land that some serial litigators insist is clear evidence of Forest Service salvage clearcutting in the Rim Fire. The caption reads, “Post-fire clearcutting on the Stanislaus National Forest in the Rim fire area, eliminated the wildlife-rich snag habitat and left only stump fields.” Where is the “wildlife-rich snag habitat” in that burned-over plantation on private land? The picture on the right is before logging started, from Google Maps.
Yes, the story is still up on their website, in all its slanderous glory.
Have a nice day!
Several years ago, I rolled into Cedar City after a long drive from California. Apparently, there were no rooms available, due to a Shakespeare Festival. So, I decided to drive up towards Cedar Breaks National Monument and Dixie National Forest, in the dark. I took a well-used gravel road and found some open space, under a bright moon. I didn’t sleep very well but, I woke up to these many hundreds of acres of golden and orangish aspen stands. The morning light’s “Golden Hour” was fully in force. Now, don’t think that the Dixie is uniform or monoculture. The diversity here is tremendous, often with rainshadows and geologic differences happening within only miles of each other.
I wandered around a bit, greedily snagging all the colorful views, until I saw other campers starting to rise. I almost forgot that it was hunting season! Be careful, out there in the woods.
I shot this picture from the top of Mammoth Mountain Ski Area, along the Sierra Crest. At the end of July, there should be a lot more snow and ice (including small glaciers) in this view of north-facing slopes. The view behind me was obscured, for three afternoons, by a Fresno area wildfire, with smoke drifting up over the crest. I’m sure that the groundwater levels are extremely low, as well.
Water levels at Mono Lake also continue to drop, exposing more of the famous Tufa formations, created by the fluctuating lake levels, over tens of thousands of years.
This viewpoint shows more of the reasons why the desire to have larger and more intense wildfires, in the Sierra Nevada, is the wrong way to go.
In this picture below, fire crews were run out of this stand, and back into the “safety zone”, on this fire I worked on, back in 1988.
http://www.sacbee.com/2014/09/28/6737076/viewpoints-urgent-action-needed.html
Air quality the past two weeks has been several times worse than some of the most polluted cities in the world due to smoke from the King fire. Last year’s Rim fire emitted greenhouse gases equivalent to 2.3 million vehicles for a year.
Also, the lost habitat and recreational opportunities from major fires like these are significant. It is not an exaggeration to say that virtually all Californians are affected when these “megafires” occur.
The report points out that wildfires are getting larger and burning at higher intensity than ever before. The Rim fire burned at nearly 40 percent high intensity – meaning virtually no living vegetation is left – covering almost 100,000 acres. More acres have burned in the first 4½ years of this decade than in seven decades of the last century.
What can we do about it?
The main bottleneck in treating more acres is in implementation. The Forest Service is unwilling to increase the size of its Region 5 timber management staffs. They use some of the usual excuses, some of which are beyond their control but, not all of those issues are really significant, looking at the big picture. Yes, it is pretty difficult to implement extremely-complex plans when you are constantly training new temporary employees, hired right off the street.
In Colorado, in the circles I run in, Governor Hickenlooper, when he disagrees with what we might call “the “environmentalist” narrative” is said to be “in the pockets of the oil and gas industry.” There have been op-eds in the Denver Post, which I couldn’t find, but I did find this.
The cozy relationship between politicians and big business has been a fact of life in America since the days of the robber barons. Today, this affiliation is especially strong between certain governors and the oil and gas industry. And, the consequences could include drastic impacts on the health and safety of their constituents. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the case of Colorado’s Gov. John Hickenlooper.
Here’s the link to this story.
Now this is kind of good, because Hickenlooper is a D, and so we have been blessed with relief from partisanizing invective, at least for this. But the interesting thing is that no hype is too strong for some writers.
But when I first heard this idea about Hick being in the pocket of industry, I had listened to this podcast of the Frackingsense series. What I heard on the podcast was something else entirely. The understanding of the technology and the people involved, by someone who had worked in the field of natural resources. Listen and see if you can hear the same thing. The Governor starts talking about 11 minutes in..but hearing Professor Limerick introduce their work in the first 11 minutes is also interesting.
There are many parts of this podcast that echo some of our forest natural resource disputes. Ideas like “where do you get your facts?”; with some thinking that folks in the academy are better sources than the experts in state government or others working in the field. I find this fascinating, because we discover that all these years it has not been seen useful by the Science Establishment to study the health effects of fracking (which has been going on for 20 years or more). Meanwhile, the folks in the State (whom Hick mentions) have been working in the trenches (or the wellpads) with the industry experiencing the real world of regulation. It seems to be a matter of trust.. with the academics thought to be more “independent” or perhaps more “objective science.” Fortunately, it appears that NSF has asked for evidence of neutrality in this grant.
Listening to the Governor he seems to lay out the complexities (like what do you do when you have split estate and people bought the mineral rights?). He seems to be coming from the “we’re all in this together, let’s figure out a way” school. But others are more in the “let’s not do it” school, which of course is difficult, as Professor Limerick points out because Coloradans’ behavior shows we are fine with using natural resources but perhaps not fine with producing them. Which means that we export both the impacts and the jobs to somewhere else. Does this sound familiar?
Except in this case, we are not exporting them to our friendly northern neighbors as with timber. Using natural gas has benefits for our country in terms of our economy, and also avoiding “foreign entanglements.” Maybe it’s because Colorado is host to numerous military bases, we can see firsthand the impacts of these to our military people and their families. We need to do this in a safe way. There is no “us and them,” we are all in this together.
As I listen to the Governor talk. he seems to know the business and knows the people. He even has real-world examples, as in “ if our energy prices are too high, we can’t attract business”. And of course, the conundrum, businesses bring jobs- without business, people are poor; and research shows that being poor has negative health effects.
Anyway, here’s a link to the podcast. Listen and see what similarities you detect between energy production and forest controversies.
Here is a link to the other FrackingSense podcasts. And one to the Center for the American West. Note that they are still selling their Gifford Pinchot t-shirts.
This is where the Rim Fire “ran out of fuel”, in Yosemite National Park. Kibbie Lake is near the northeast flank of the fire, where there will be no firelines. Ironically, I was planning a hike to this area, a few weeks ago. (I shot this picture while flying with a forestry buddy, back in 1990. )
“Fire monsters can only devour landscapes if we feed them fuel. More than a century ago, we began protecting forests from fire. We did not know that lightning and Indian fires kept forests open and immune from monster fires. More recently, we adopted an anti-management philosophy that almost completely bans logging and thinning on public lands, even when it is designed to restore historic forests and prevent monster fires. Now, fallen trees and branches clutter the ground and young trees and brush grow so thick that it is difficult to walk through many forests. It is not surprising that the gentle fires of the past have become the fire monsters of the present.
Even so, we keep feeding fuel to the fire monster while blaming global warming, high winds, drought or any other excuse we can think of that keeps us from taking responsibility for the death and destruction these monsters create. We know the climate is warming just as it has done many times for millions of years. We also know that fires burn hotter when the temperature is high, fuel is dry and winds blow strong. Even so, these conditions only contribute to fire intensity. It is a scientific fact that a fire can’t burn without fuel. The more fuel the bigger the fire, regardless of drought or wind.”………. Dr. Thomas Bonnicksen
This article Here is in the local paper, here in Calaveras County, just an hour away from the Rim Fire.
www.facebook.com/LarryHarrellFotoware
I’m away from home now but, I just had to post this VERY interesting video of a military plane making a retardant drop on the Rim Fire. I think the radio conversation is with the lead plane. What an exciting job!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_eGiGG1B-Q
There are also several other videos of this plane on You Tube.
On a side note, I was still able to see the column over 100 miles away, from the city of Pleasanton, on Interstate 680. The smoke at my house this morning was so thick there was only 1/4 mile visibility, and the fire is about 40 miles away. The old burn perimeters haven’t even slowed down the fire, re-burning in at least 4 older burns. It’s looking REAL bad, with just 2% containment of a 105,000 acre fire.
