climate change

Study finds transatlantic pellet trade results in SIGNIFICANT GHG REDUDUCTIONS over fossil fuels

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Selected quotes from Biomass Magazine article summarizing a joint study conducted by U. Ga., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Yale:

– “A new study … has determined that the greenhouse gas (GHG) intensity of a unit of electricity generated in the U.K. using imported wood pellets is at least 50 percent lower than the GHG intensity of grid electricity derived from fossil fuels”

This study addresses the shortcoming of previous studies as follows: “those studies have typically assumed the feedstocks for pellet production were sourced from either nearby forest for from a wood processing facility located at a fixed distance to the pellet plant. The researchers also stressed that existing studies have considered only one harvest cycle when determining GHG savings, which has raised concerns among environmentalists and others.”

– “the researchers determined relative GHG emissions savings for electricity generated in the U.K. using imported wood pellets under 930 different scenarios. The analysis considered three types of woody feedstocks, two forest management choices, 31 plantation rotation ages and five power plant capacities. Depending on the power plant capacity and the rotation age, the results found relative per unit GHG savings in the range of 50 percent to 68 percen”

– “According to the information published in the study, the results of the analysis contradict the general belief that the use of wood pellets from 10 to 15 year old pine plantations in the southern U.S. do not provide GHG savings in Europe. Rather, GHG savings were found to be at least 50 percent, even at lower rotation ages.”

The full study can be found on IOP Science/Research Letters

The California Drought and Climate Change: Revkin and Hoerling

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I think Revkin and Hoerling deserve a shout-out for this piece in terms of explaining how the IPCC reached their conclusion. Revkin quoted from a note from Martin Hoerling, a NOAA scientist, so I guess Dr. Hoerling has a gift for explaining things at what I consider the right level of detail (I know this is in the eye of the beholder). Here’s a link to the Revkin blog post. Below is part of the quote from Hoerling’s note.

Concerning the “debate” highlighted by the above exchanges between Pielke and Holdren, the issue isn’t about analogues to past droughts (which, by the way, the California resource managers were more interested in), but about the scientific evidence that California droughts have become more severe due to climate change.

To the extent that precipitation is key, it can be said with high confidence that there is no trend toward either wetter or drier conditions for statewide average precipitation since 1895, so that has not likely been a player. But there are other indicators, and aspects of rainfall behavior that could be conducive to drought, even if the mean seasonal rainfall isn’t changing. What is the evidence there?

The argument hinges mostly on temperature and how it may be affecting water resources. (Never mind, by the way, that the farmers and water managers are praying to the heavens for rain, not for cooler temperatures, to bust their drought!).

A way of integrating the effects of temperature on drought is to examine soil moisture time series. These have been assessed (based on simulations with sophisticated land models), the results of which are summarized by the IPCC (2012) report on extreme events (for which this drought qualifies). The Palmer Drought index and simple counts of consecutive dry days have also been diagnosed. That latest 2012 report, (the so-called SREX report) in their Table 3-2 examines the evidence for regional changes since 1950, and makes the following assessment of these various indicators for western North America:

“No overall or slight decrease in dryness since 1950; large variability; large drought of the 1930s dominate.”

The team of 42 authors assigned a “Medium Confidence” to that assessment. The report’s team in Table 3-3 then goes on to assess the scientific evidence for how drought in this region will change in the 21st century. They write:

“Inconsistent signal in consecutive dry days and soil moisture changes,” to which they assign a low confidence.

It is quite clear that the scientific evidence does not support an argument that this current California drought is appreciably, if at all, linked to human-induced climate change.

This is not to say that a warmer climate can’t and won’t act to decrease soil moisture. It simply reminds us that the current drought event, like its historical ancestors, continues to be strongly driven by the vagaries of storm tracks and the manner in which rains are delivered to the narrow stripe of the U.S. West Coast.

Been There, Done That, Survived and Got the Patch – California and Drought

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My take – Nature’s Past reveals that Nature’s natural cycles in California in the first millennium, unaffected by significant man made pollution were worse than our greatest fears about man made global warming. To me, these two articles are an example of the problems with an environmental viewpoint that doesn’t consider all of the tradeoffs when setting forest policy.

1) Scientists: Past California droughts have lasted 200 years – From MSN News

Some selected Quotes:

“Through studies of tree rings, sediment and other natural evidence, researchers have documented multiple droughts in California that lasted 10 or 20 years in a row during the past 1,000 years — compared to the mere three-year duration of the current dry spell. The two most severe megadroughts make the Dust Bowl of the 1930s look tame: a 240-year-long drought that started in 850 and, 50 years after the conclusion of that one, another that stretched at least 180 years.” AND “The longest droughts of the 20th century, what Californians think of as severe, occurred from 1987 to 1992 and from 1928 to 1934. Both, Stine said, are minor compared to the ancient droughts of 850 to 1090 and 1140 to 1320.”

“”We continue to run California as if the longest drought we are ever going to encounter is about seven years,” said Scott Stine, a professor of geography and environmental studies at Cal State East Bay. “We’re living in a dream world.””

“the past century has been among the wettest of the last 7,000 years”

“Although many Californians think that population growth is the main driver of water demand statewide, it actually is agriculture”

“”I don’t think we’ll ever get to a point here where you turn on the tap and air comes out,” he said.”

2) An interesting post on the California drought and the need for better forest management in the form of reducing fuels – from the San Jose Mercury News

Some selected Quotes:

“In contrast, better forest management can reduce wildfire intensity and help to safeguard water quality. Ecologically based forest management may also increase water yield by thinning overly dense forests, thereby reducing the utilization of water by small trees and allowing more snow (and snowmelt) to reach the ground.”

“we must address the importance of California’s forested headwaters in securing and enhancing California’s water supply.

This includes the need to increase the pace and scale of fuels reduction in these forests as an important part of the state’s water strategy.”

Amazingly Different Coverage of Wildfire Funding: Denver Post

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Now, in the previous post here I was critical of what I thought was the Administration’s focus on climate change as the source of wildfires.. only to find out that perhaps it was the New York Times’ spin and not entirely the Administration at all! So let’s compare coverage in the Denver Post and the NY Times…

Here’s the story today from the Post.. more useful details, no climate change ..

The Obama administration wants to fundamentally shift how it pays for firefighting in the United States — something Western lawmakers and governors have been agitating to change for years.

The proposal, which doesn’t increase overall spending and is part of President Barack Obama’s budget this year, essentially allows for separate funds to fight fires so the federal government doesn’t have to take money away from prevention.

Amid a number of the most destructive wildfire seasons ever recorded, the Obama administration has been cribbing cash to fight fires from the same pot used for suppression and prevention.

In a classic robbing-Peter-to-pay-Paul scenario, the departments of Agriculture and Interior had to transfer $463 million in 2012 and $636 million in 2013 to fight fires. Those dollars came from programs that removed brush, managed forests and grasslands, and focused on forest health.

“We can’t keep putting our thumb in the dike,” said Gov. John Hickenlooper, following a White House meeting on the issue. “At some point, we’ve got to make the kind of investments that begin to solve the problem.”

Under the proposal unveiled Monday, the costs to fight severe wildfires — those that require emergency response or are near urban areas — would be funded through a new “wildfire suppression cap adjustment.” This funding mechanism removes firefighting cash from regular discretionary budget caps, thus protecting prevention funds.

This budget cap adjustment would be used only to fund the most severe 1 percent of catastrophic fires, and Congress would need to fund costs for the other 99 percent of fires before the cap funds become available.

In an interview, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack called the previous funding method “a vicious cycle.”

“It would also allow us to do a better job to work on the 70,000 communities who are now … surrounded by forest,” he said. “They want the benefit of beautiful scenery. This would give us the resources to better prepare those communities.”

Wildfire destruction has become a worsening problem. Six of the most destructive fire seasons in the past 50 years have been since 2000.

Hickenlooper said White House officials on Monday brought Western governors to the Situation Room to view drought, rain and water table conditions nationwide. White House officials said one-third of American families live within the wildland-urban interface.

“It was very sobering,” Hickenlooper said.

In November, El Paso County Commissioner Sallie Clark told a Senate panel her community needed the federal government’s help to clear dead, dangerous brush adjacent to urban neighborhoods.

On Capitol Hill, where the president’s plan would need approval, bipartisan bills are pending in both the House and the Senate that support the new funding scheme. Both Democratic Sens. Mark Udall and Michael Bennet support the Senate plan.

“This strategy will ensure we fight today’s fires without undermining efforts to get ahead of tomorrow’s blazes,” Udall said in a statement.

Bennet, who held a hearing last fall on the issue, agreed. “Today’s announcement addresses this issue by promoting a smarter, more sensible approach to dealing with wildfires that will save us money in the future,” he said in a statement.

It’s fascinating to me how stories are reported in different regional and national newspapers. And what newspapers are more likely to “blink out.”

Anyway, here’s my question for this story…”one-third of families live within the wildland-urban interface.” That seems like a lot to me. Does anyone know where this figure came from?

NY Times Story on Wildfire Funding

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Here’s a link:

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s annual budget request to Congress will propose a significant change in how the government pays to fight wildfires, administration officials said, a move that they say reflects the ways in which climate change is increasing the risk for and cost of those fires.

The wildfire funding shift is one in a series of recent White House actions related to climate change as Mr. Obama tries to highlight the issue and build political support for his administration’s more muscular policies, like curbing carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants. On Monday, Mr. Obama plans to describe his proposal at a meeting in Washington with governors of Western states that have been ravaged recently by severe drought and wildfires.

The proposal will ask Congress to pay the costs of fighting extreme wildfires in the same way it finances the federal response to disasters like hurricanes and tornadoes, the officials said. When unpredictable events like Hurricane Sandy are destructive enough to be declared disasters by the president, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is authorized to exceed its annual budget and draw on a special disaster account. The account is adjusted each year to reflect the 10-year average cost of responding to such events.

Questions for those who know.. is it like the Flame Act? IF so why would it work better?

What difference does it make why there are more troublesome wildfires (building in the WUI, climate change, fire suppression) if you just have a commonsensical idea for dealing with it.. kind of like Congress already had, and probably didn’t couch it in terms of “dealing with climate change”?

Although,pragmatically, if that’s what it takes to legitimize a common-sense solution, I suppose it doesn’t matter why the Administration is doing it.

Unless there’s some poor bureaucrat somewhere adding up “funding Administration spends on climate change” and gets to add this as a healthy-sized chunk.”

Notice that the Times did not mention other potential causes, even the WUI that the Headwaters analysis singled out in our prior news coverage of the issue.

I liked this quote..(my italics)

A series of scientific studies have warned that increasing carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels could cause the planet to warm by more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century, leading to rising sea levels, stronger storms and more extreme droughts. A study published last year by Forest Service researchers concluded that wildfires were expected toincrease 50 percent across the United States under a changing climate, and over 100 percent in areas of the Western United States by 2050.

Hmm. “were expected to” sounds stronger than “could” perhaps the Times has greater confidence in the FS scientists than in the storm, drought and temperature scientists?

Seems like 100% more habitat for the black-backed woodpecker..or not, but it seems to me like policies/”science” need to pick a lane on this.

Oregon’s O & C Forest Lands: “The Rest of the Story”

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Register Guard Viewpoint
2/8/2014

Stephen P. Mealey*

After reading recent guest opinion pieces (Keene 2/4/14, and Doppelt 2/5/14) citing climate change as a primary reason to curtail management of the O&C forests, I felt compelled as Paul Harvey might have put it: “to tell the rest of the story”. The following is a key message from the forestry chapter of the 2013 draft National Climate Assessment (NCA): “Climate change is increasing the vulnerability of forests to ecosystem change and tree mortality through fire, insect infestations, drought, and disease outbreaks. Western U. S. forests are particularly vulnerable to increased wildfire and insect outbreaks…” In 2012, U. S. Forest Service researchers supporting the NCA concluded: “By the end of the 21st century, forest ecosystems in the U. S. will differ from those of today as a result of changing climate…wildfires, insect infestations, pulses of erosion and flooding and drought-induced tree mortality are all expected to increase during the 21st century.”

Around 48% of the 2.2 million acres of O&C forests are unhealthy and fire-prone, conditions that will only worsen with prolonged climate warming. Nearly 25% are classified as Fire Regime Condition Class 3 (FRCC3) meaning the risk of losing key ecosystem components (i.e., soil, water, wildlife) to uncharacteristic wildfires that are larger and more intense and severe than normal, is high. In addition to climate warming, these conditions reflect the long-term policy of fire exclusion and the dramatic reduction of timber management since 1990. Natural disturbance cycles have been altered, and have not been replaced by managed systems. Most of these “at risk” forests are called “Dry Forests” by Jerry Franklin and Norm Johnson and are generally found between the southern end of the Willamette Valley and California on the BLM Roseburg and Medford Districts and the Klamath Falls Resource Area. Forest types include Southwest Oregon mixed conifer, dry ponderosa pine, red fir, dry Douglas fir, and California mixed evergreen habitats.

The 2000 National Fire Plan and the 2012 National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy are federal/state government partnership initiatives to address the problems of the O&C at risk forests and those like them throughout the West. Goals are: restore and maintain landscapes that are resilient to fire related disturbances; provide for fire adapted human communities that can withstand wildfire without loss of life and property; and, make efficient risk-based wildfire management decisions. The most fundamental principle is: Actively manage at risk forests to make them more resilient to disturbance and protect human communities. To restore the FRCC3 O&C forests to resilience in a 20-25 year time period, 15,000-20,000 acres per year need to have tree densities reduced through selective harvest and prescribed fire while maintaining Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife population goals for wildlife.

Management of at risk forests to restore resilience is not a “Trojan Horse” to “get the cut out”, as some claim. Clearly, the absence of active management is at least one of the principal factors resulting in the 2002 Biscuit Fire, Oregon’s largest. There, forest types the same as those at risk on the O&C forests burned in many places with uncharacteristic and harmful effects blowing the entire topsoil horizon out to sea in many places and destroying ESA protected Northern Spotted Owl habitat. The need for active management of the O&C forests is part of a much larger state problem. Many of Oregon’s more than 18 million federal forest acres reflect an unhealthy condition made worse by climate warming where most are considered at risk of uncharacteristic wildfire and nearly 40% (Dry Forests) are considered at high risk. In the past 10 years over 3 million acres in more than 20,000 wildfires have burned affecting 10% of Oregon’s total forest land and 16% of its timber land. These fires have come at significant economic and ecological costs. A hopeful response in Oregon’s Blue Mountains with much FRCC2&3 forests is a Forest Service program dubbed “accelerated restoration” designed to provide more timber for mills while restoring resilience to tree-killing insects, disease and wildfires.

Oregonians should be grateful especially to Congressmen DeFazio, Walden and Schrader, and Senator Wyden for addressing the needs for healthy forests and healthy communities in their respective proposals for management of O&C forests. While their approaches differ in some respects all agree that active forest management to restore forests and associated communities is imperative ecologically and economically. Proposed timber harvest in “Moist Forests” not only benefits local communities economically but can, if well distributed, create high quality early seral habitat beneficial to a wide array of wildlife species including elk and deer which are in steep decline.

Finally, in September 2013, the Pinchot Institute in Pennsylvania convened some of the nation’s leading thinkers in conservation science and practice to re-examine the vision, goals, and methods for conserving and sustainably managing forests in the Anthropocene, a new geological epoch where humans are massively changing Earth’s life support systems. More active management of forest ecosystems was seen as important to conserving biodiversity and maintaining other essential values of forest ecosystems such as water resource protection. Unmanaged “static” conservation reserves in rapidly changing “dynamic” ecosystems were not seen as useful options. That’s the rest of the story.

*Steve Mealey lives near Leaburg. He is Vice President for Conservation, Boone and Crockett Club, the oldest American hunter/conservationist organization in America. The Club was founded by Theodore Roosevelt in 1887.

Small Woody Biomass Plants in Colorado

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In Gypsum, located 140 miles west of Denver, a biomass mill began operations in December, burning wood to create 10 megawatts of round-the-clock electricity. A wall board plant is at left, the biomass plant is to the right. Bill Heicher photo.
In Gypsum, located 140 miles west of Denver, a biomass mill began operations in December, burning wood to create 10 megawatts of round-the-clock electricity. A wall board plant is at left, the biomass plant is to the right. Bill Heicher photo.

Most of the discussion in Colorado these weeks have been about the green (Cannabis) and the blue and orange (Broncos). Of course, the winter sky is blue, living trees are green and dead trees are orange, at least for a while. Here’s an article in the Sunday Denver Post Perspective, by Allen Best, about some new biomass plants in Colorado.

For most of the last decade, Coloradans have been talking about how to make good use of their mountain forests, dying and gray. Something is finally happening.

In Gypsum, 140 miles west of Denver, a biomass mill began operations in December, burning wood to create 10 megawatts of round-the-clock electricity.

In Colorado Springs, the city utility began mixing biomass with coal in January to produce 4.5 megawatts of power.

In Pagosa Springs, a 5-megawatt biomass plant may be launched next year, producing one-sixth of the baseload demand in Archuleta County.

And at Xcel Energy’s headquarters in Denver, environmental officials are sorting through proposals for a 2-megawatt biomass demonstration plant. The utility wants to understand the technology, the problems and promises.

This isn’t much electricity compared to the 1,426 megawatts generated by the Comanche coal-fired complex at Pueblo and the 1,139 megawatts at Craig. But biomass plants can and should be part of the electrical mix. In providing a market for woody material, they can make forests less vulnerable to fires like the ones that have killed nine people and destroyed 1,164 homes along the Front Range over the last two years.

Biomass also displaces burning of fossil fuels, reducing emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. That’s worth something, maybe a lot to Glenwood Springs-based Holy Cross Energy, which is paying extra for the electricity produced at Gypsum to help reduce its carbon footprint. It expects to be at 23 percent renewables later this year.

Colorado environmental groups, however, are skeptical that biomass plants will actually lower carbon dioxide emissions. “We’re saying we want to see the analysis of greenhouse gas impacts,” says Gwen Farnsworth of Western Resource Advocates.

Biomass clearly can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by displacing fossil fuels, says Keith Paustian, a professor of soil ecology at Colorado State University. “There are questions as to what degree you do that, and obviously, you want as low a carbon footprint as possible,” he says.

Paustian hopes a more detailed accounting of carbon impacts will be a byproduct of the $10 million research project he is leading. The project, the Bioenergy Alliance Network of the Rockies, seeks to examine the potential for conversion of the 22 million acres of beetle-impacted wood in the Rocky Mountains into bioenergy.

An even broader fear among some environmental groups is that public lands will be managed to feed the hunger of biomass plants, instead of the bieomass plants being a useful tool for curbing fire risk. “We don’t want the tail wagging the dog,” says Sloan Shoemaker, director of the Carbondale-based Wilderness Workshop.

If Eagle Valley Clean Energy, developer of the plant at Gypsum, sticks to its projections, that won’t be a problem. It insists that at least 30 percent of wood will come from landfills, another 20 percent or more from private lands, and a minimum of 40 percent from state or federal lands.

As far as I know if the question is “environmental impacts of burning wood that is dead and would give off greenhouse gases anyway, compared to coal and natural gas, it seems like it has been studied, in fact, quite a bit.

What the big biomass controversies I’ve seen are about “if people convert lands to grow biomass energy” or other “ifs” about biomass sources that are not considered to be “residues.”

Western Resource Advocates works against coal and natural gas, which are our current main sources of energy here.

I also appreciated Sloan’s comment. It seems to me you can work with “fear of getting too large” pretty easily by only using small sized units and putting a cap on the total. But if it’s about trust, maybe not. I have to note that back when I worked on bark beetle residues, DOE was supposed to help the FS with this, but focused their work on giant-sized solutions, not small or mobile technologies.

Best’s last paragraph..

In other words, biomass plants aren’t the answer to everything that ails us. They won’t immediately turn our forests green, nor will they alone replace the fossil-fuel plants that are fouling the atmosphere with greenhouse gases.

But biomass has another attribute. Think of it as the energy equivalent of community agriculture. The 20th century was all about bigger and more centralized production of everything. This creates huge supply lines, mile-long coal trains going to plants, and high-voltage power lines leaving them.

It’s easy to think of water originating in the tap, electricity in the outlet, without broader consequences. Smaller sources of power generation, close to their locations of use, keep us in touch with the spider’s web of our relationship to the energy we use.

You could probably say that about local wood products as well..

SAF Linked-In Discussion on Tree “Assisted Migration”

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The Society of American Foresters, in addition to the ForestEd website I’ve already talked about, has a LinkedIn site. Now, I am not a fan of Linked-In. One night at a Retiree Roundup I pressed the wrong key and everyone on my late husband’s email list got an invitation to LinkedIn. From then on I looked on it as a from of irritating and intrusive virus and closed all my accounts. Later, I determined it was good for the Committee on Forest Policy to have a presence on the site, and there are many interesting things there that could be reposted here on this blog. So I took a deep breath and signed up again. If you don’t want to “go there”, I can’t argue with you.

There are many interesting discussions here, which are open to all, not just SAF members. However, I’d like to point to one, started by David South a forestry professor at Auburn University, on “assisted migration.” Here is a link to the discussion. I think that there are a couple of things of interest.

One is that this thread has gone on for months intermittently, but it adds up to David finding different studies to query and asking different questions about the same topic.

The second is that there are some classic quotes, even just recently. The problem is that I don’t think I can link directly to a specific comment (if others can help with that, please let me know) I like David’s quote:

[Note: Good terminology clarifies differences… poor terminology masks differences.]

which I think is broadly applicable.

This may also be broadly applicable; I summarized the relationship between FS research and operations:

So here is my summary of what the Forest Service does. You can quote me ;). The FS has researchers who work on different things in different places and have different ideas. The FS has different operational units who work on different things in different places and have different ideas.

Sometimes a researcher will influence one or more folks in operations. Other times they rely on their own academic and practitioner knowledge and experience. Many times the operational vocabulary is different from researcher vocabulary.

And Harvey Tjader’s expression of recent climate.. are we really likely to be able to model what genotypes will respond well to this, let alone whatever happens 50 years hence?

Regarding coming out and going into cold weather, we cannot go by the calendar in Northern Minnesota any more. We had cold weather well into May last year. When we had snow in September, someone remarked that we had four months without a snowfall. Then a rather warm fall. Hard frost came a month later than average. Followed by the third or fourth coldest December on record. In a recent spring, maybe 3-5 years ago, we had three blizzards in April, one week apart. Phenology of native plants was greatly affected through half the growing season. The 50-60 below zero temperatures I mentioned before may have been in 1996 instead of 2006. Leaf out of native trees that year was delayed and many native species had reduced leaf size and abundance. We’ve also experienced warmth. A January thaw is not a big deal any more; we can have a thaw every couple weeks. In the spring of 2011, we saw 80 degrees very early in the spring, followed by temperatures in the 20s. Some spruces lost their cold tolerance in the warm spell and lost needles or were killed in the subsequent cold snap. Heat and drought are common in the summer.

Finally, David was trying to figure out what and how much, the FS actually plants trees. So I looked for the reports.

Here’s what I found through Google..
http://www.fs.fed.us/forestmanagement/silviculture/reforest-tsi.shtml
This national page stops at 2004.
Here’s R-1’s for 2012.. looks like 8,252 acres or thereabouts.
http://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS
/stelprdb5403645.pdf
yay.. R-1!

My opinion…if the FS has an annual report (which is useful), they should keep posting it every year, in an easy to find place. But I could be wrong and I just couldn’t find it. Can anyone out there in blog land find it?

Southern Pine Beetle in New Jersey: NY Times

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spbnj

In Book Club we have been talking about whether scientists still refer to the balance of nature, and equilibrium kinds of conditions. So for the purposes of NCFP, I think it’s interesting to pursue this mystery with stories in real time. Thanks to Dan Botkin for sending this NY Times article:

Notice that “scientists say it is a striking example of how.. are disturbing the balance of nature”. But no actual scientist is mentioned saying this.

In an infestation that scientists say is almost certainly a consequence of global warming, the southern pine beetle is spreading through New Jersey’s famous Pinelands.

It tried to do so many times in the past, but bitterly cold winters would always kill it off. Now, scientists say, the winters are no longer cold enough. The tiny insect, firmly entrenched, has already killed tens of thousands of acres of pines, and it is marching northward.

Scientists say it is a striking example of the way seemingly small climatic changes are disturbing the balance of nature. They see these changes as a warning of the costly impact that is likely to come with continued high emissions of greenhouse gases.

The disturbances are also raising profound questions about how to respond. Old battles about whether to leave nature alone or to manage it are being rejoined as landscapes come under stress.

The New Jersey situation resembles, on a smaller scale, the outbreak of mountain pine beetles that has ravaged tens of millions of acres of forest across the Western United States and Canada. That devastation, too, has been attributed to global warming — specifically, the disappearance of the bitterly cold winter nights that once kept the beetles in check.

But the same bark beetle outbreaks have been seen in the past and we have been told in Colorado (by scientists) that bark beetles and fires are “natural disturbances.” Also, fire suppression must have a role or there wouldn’t be so much prime old lodgepole habitat. Perhaps it’s the location and magnitude that are different, but that’s a bit of a finer point.

Now there is an identified scientist, who says…

Dr. Ayres, one of the nation’s top beetle experts, has studied New Jersey closely for several years and has published research saying the rising temperatures have made the invasion possible. “I think the scientific inference is about as good as it gets,” Dr. Ayres said. “This is a big deal, and it’s going to forever change the way forests have to be managed in New Jersey.”

Ah.. here is the overstocked argument; my italics on “unnatural.”

Long ago, fires would have helped keep the forest more open, but they have been suppressed across much of the country for a century to protect life and property. That has left many forests in an overgrown, unnatural condition.

Experience in the South has shown that such “overstocked stands,” as foresters call them, are especially vulnerable to beetle attack because the trees are too stressed fighting one another for light, water and nutrients. Control of the pine beetle has been achieved there by thinning the woods, leaving the remaining trees stronger.

Mr. Williams, who is critical of New Jersey’s government, advocates a similar approach, involving controlled burns and selective tree-cutting. Mr. Smith, whose college degrees include one in environmental science, pushed through a bill that would have encouraged the state to manage its forests more aggressively. But several environmental groups were suspicious that large-scale logging would ensue.

“We saw this legislation as an excuse to come in under the guise of ‘stewardship’ to open up our forests for commercial operations,” said Jeff Tittel, the director of the state’s Sierra Club chapter.

I like the Guv’s attitude:

To allay such fears, the senator included a requirement that any state forest plan receive certification from an outside body, the Forest Stewardship Council, which is trusted by many environmental groups.

That approach has been followed successfully in other states, including Maryland. But Gov. Chris Christie vetoed the bill, saying he could not allow the state to “abdicate its responsibility to serve as the state’s environmental steward to a named third party.”

Below is my bolding:

Dr. Ayres said that if climatic warming continues, nothing would stop them from eventually heading up the coast. That means forest management is likely to become critical in many places where it has been neglected for decades.

“It’s hard for some people to accept — ‘What, you have to cut down trees to save the forest?’ ” Dr. Ayres said. “Yes, that’s exactly right. The alternative is losing the forest for saving the trees.”

Well, I would only argue that the only thing stopping them would be hosts.. which are relatively fewer to the north.

So we have an article in which the quoted scientist is pragmatic about “things used to be different, now they have changed and we have to deal with it.” But we have only the writer’s claim that

“scientists say it is a striking example of the way seemingly small climatic changes are disturbing the balance of nature. They see these changes as a warning of the costly impact that is likely to come with continued high emissions of greenhouse gases.

Still, old pine trees will still die, with or without the pine beetle. And if we can’t burn them to get rid of the tree corpses, they will hang around and ultimately fall over and decay, quicker in hot climates than in the Rockies. Is that what the people of New Jersey want from their forests?

And the Sierra Club guy seems a bit ideological. Local sourcing of things is good but making money from dead trees is bad, because it’s “commercial.” I thought the Sierra Club’s antipathy for selling dead trees was just for federal lands, but maybe not?

“Unpublished” Interview with Pielke Jr. on Climate and the Typhoon

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David Beebe made some statements implying attribution of the recent typhoon to climate change here, which reminded me that I thought these comments by Roger Pielke, Jr. on his blog to be of interest to us. First, there are similarities between the disasters we deal with (fires and floods) and other disasters.

I especially like these quotes:

Disasters are well understood to be consequences of human development (As Gilbert White used to say, extremes are acts of God, disasters are acts of Man) — where we live, how we live, etc. So you could say that a disaster is 100% human caused. At the same time, without the extreme event there wouldn’t have been a disaster either. So you could say that the disaster was 100% natural caused. Not sure this is a useful question, though I do understand the urge to assign blame. A better question is, what actions can we be taken so that future storms have a lesser human impact?

and (shades of our discussions about people simply moving out of wildfire country)

The same question could be asked of Miami, San Francisco, Tokyo, or Boulder etc etc. As Dennis Mileti used to say, we cannot avoid disasters, but we can shape how we experience disasters. The Philippines are always going to experience tropical cyclones, some very extreme. Similarly, San Francisco is always going to experience earthquakes. The questions to be asked well before an event occurs (or in the aftermath of the most recent event) are how do we want to experience those disasters, and what can we do to shape those experiences via purpose action (which invokes issues of wealth, politics. capacity, etc.)?

and Roger suggests something that is always wise to do:

Again, rather than speculate we should await rigorous post-disaster assessments. These are important questions that deserve thoughtful approaches.

Sound familiar? But going back to the Gilbert White quote, the idea that extremes are now thought by some to be themselves “Acts of Man” leaves the Deity out of the equation entirely (I wonder how She feels about that? ;)).

Those of us who are familiar with historical prophets may feel a resonance with “repent or God will destroy the world,” to “repent or Humanity will destroy the world.” I wonder whether, if given the facts of the situation, it’s ultimately brain chemistry that determines whether you tend to trust that people (aligned with Spirit, if that’s your belief system), will ultimately prevail in making a better world, or not. Many of us on the blog are old enough to remember that we were thought to be close to nuclear annihilation at one time. Is some level of fear of the future a part of human brain wiring, and the space is filled by “sinners” “nuclear warfare” “climate change” depending on who gets closest to the media with their fears? Is there a “right” balance to living in the moment and planning for the future? Do certain personality types tend to focus on the current versus the future? Where does “planning for” cross the line into “worrying about”? (Hmm.. that was pretty philosophical).

Also of interest is the way the interviewer asks questions and Roger pushes back when he thinks they are “ill-posed.” Harder to be that quick in a real time interview than a written one.

Anyway, I lifted these from two comments (4 and 6) to this post of his. Sorry, it wasn’t clear how to link directly to his comments in Blogger.

Seth Borenstein of AP sent me an email asking some questions, my quotes didn’t make it into his story, but here they are:

Here are ten questions:
1. What human factors do you see in play here in Typhoon Haiyan?

RP: If you are referring to the physical qualities of Haiyan, then I will defer to the recent IPCC AR5: “In summary, this assessment does not revise the SREX conclusion of low confidence that any reported long-term (centennial) increases in tropical cyclone activity are robust, after accounting for past changes in observing capabilities.”

That means that the scientific evidence does not presently support claims of attribution of the effects of greenhouse gas emissions on tropical cyclone behavior with respect to century-long trends (much less the behavior of individual storms). The IPCC AR5 cites some of our peer-reviewed work in its report (Weinkle et al. 2012, Journal of Climate).

Our peer-reviewed work suggests that assuming model predictions for future changes in tropical cyclone behavior are perfectly accurate (for a range of models) that it will be many decades, even centuries, before such a signal can be detected in trend data. More generally, I have written: “In practical terms, on timescales of decision making a signal that cannot be seen is indistinguishable from a signal that does not exist”

Of course, there are scientists willing to go beyond what can be supported empirically to make claims at odds with the overwhelming scientific consensus on this subject — e.g., Mann, Francis, Masters are always good for inscrutable and unsupportable quotes. Such outlier views are welcomed, as help to push science forward. But they are also a minefield for journalists, politicians and activists who may cherry pick them as if they are somehow representative.

2. What about poverty and coastal development? How much of those were as factors?

RP: In general there is an inverse relationship between loss of life and property damage. The wealthier nations become the less loss of life in big disasters (again, in general). At the same time, more wealth also means more property damage.

While the details of Haiyan’s course of death and destruction will have to await post-disaster assessment, what we can say is that the development of warning systems and responses have led to a dramatic decrease in loss of life to tropical cyclones (and disasters generally) around the world. See:http://www.jpands.org/vol14no4/goklany.pdf

Haiyan, and events like it, tell us that there is still much work to do in addressing vulnerability to disasters. The long-term trends tell us that we have a sense of what actions will be effective in that work.

3. How about construction quality or is this a case with winds (depending on who is measuring) of 150 or 200 mph, is construction no longer an issue?

RP: Construction quality, including standards, enforcement, etc. is always going to be important in locations exposed to high winds. When the intensity is such that it exceeds building capacity to withstand, then it is important to have plans in place for evacuation to safe zones or shelters. To suggest in any situation that “construction is no longer an issue” is probably the wrong way to think about the challenge – construction always matters.

4. What about disaster preparations, quality or lack thereof, as a factor?

RP: The Philippines have centuries of experience with typhoons and the tragedies that can result. The specific lessons from Haiyan (Yolanda there) should await a careful assessment of what worked well and what might be improved. It is premature to speculate.

5. What about sea level rise, especially that attributed to climate change?

RP: Sea level rise is inexorable and relatively slow in comparison to the surges associated with tropical cyclones. It is important to be aware of, especially in the context of long-term planning. It is not possible to identify a “sea level rise” signal in historical normalized losses from tropical cyclones, and of course, not a GHG-driven sea-level rise signal. More generally, when we are talking about 5 meter storm surges, I am not convinced that 3 mm/year of sea level rise is a big issue in the magnitude of disaster losses (because building and adaptation along the coast is continuous and in the context of where the sea is presently), even though sea level rise is (again) real and important to consider in long-term planning and will have economic and social consequences.

6. When you look at all the human factors and then look at all the natural factors, what percentage would you put at human-caused (including poverty, development, population, preparation, construction, and climate change related) and what part natural? And why?

RP: Sorry, I don’t understand this question? What part of what?

Disasters are well understood to be consequences of human development (As Gilbert White used to say, extremes are acts of God, disasters are acts of Man) — where we live, how we live, etc. So you could say that a disaster is 100% human caused. At the same time, without the extreme event there wouldn’t have been a disaster either. So you could say that the disaster was 100% natural caused. Not sure this is a useful question, though I do understand the urge to assign blame. A better question is, what actions can we be taken so that future storms have a lesser human impact?

7. This is an area that normally gets more tropical cyclones than anywhere else in the world and generally stronger ones. And the Philippines are 7000 islands smack in the middle, how much of this is unavoidable? And when we talk unavoidable, what about just avoiding living in dangerous places, does this count?

RP: The same question could be asked of Miami, San Francisco, Tokyo, or Boulder etc etc. As Dennis Mileti used to say, we cannot avoid disasters, but we can shape how we experience disasters. The Philippines are always going to experience tropical cyclones, some very extreme. Similarly, San Francisco is always going to experience earthquakes. The questions to be asked well before an event occurs (or in the aftermath of the most recent event) are how do we want to experience those disasters, and what can we do to shape those experiences via purpose action (which invokes issues of wealth, politics. capacity, etc.)?

8. There’s also a few human factors that lessen disasters _ warning, good construction, disaster preparations, etc. What were their roles here?

RP: Again, rather than speculate we should await rigorous post-disaster assessments. These are important questions that deserve thoughtful approaches.

9. In this case did human factors that lessen disasters outweigh or come close to outweighing human factors that exacerbate disasters? And why?

RP: Ill posed .. see #6.

10. In general, looking at the last decade of mega-disasters worldwide, are human factors worsening or lessening disaster effects? And why?

RP: Overall, globally and over decades, disasters from weather events are resulting in lower damages per unit of GDP and less loss of life. This is a sign that the world is collectively doing better. Events like Haiyan remind us that there is a lot of work still to do, and other very large, consequential disaster events (Japan and Boxing day tsunamis, etc.) also remind us that the human toll can still be very tragic. In this sense disasters are too important to merely serve as a talking point in the debate over climate change and greenhouse gas emissions.