climate change

Does % Attribution to AGW Matter in Adaptive Responses to Wildfire”: And Other “Conversations We Need to Have”

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This smoke map comes from Wildfire Today. https://wildfiretoday.com/2021/07/11/smoke-forecast-july-11-2021/

 

There’s a chapter in Priya Parker’s book “The Art of Gathering: Why We Meet and How it Matters.” called “Cause Good Controversy”. In it she talks about helping an architectural firm and she asked “what do you think is the most needed conversation for this group to have now?” If we think about the TSW group as a group, I’d like to ask folks what they think about this in a broader context. What are the conversations we haven’t yet had that might shed light on our ongoing disagreements?  Please comment below if you have a suggestion.

As an example, I’d like to take the idea that “bad  (as defined by human and ecological impacts) fires are caused by climate change.”  We see this statement all the time in news stories.  But perhaps there are two questions (1) “how much of what we see is caused by climate change in the broad sense (the climate is changing), (2) “what part of that specifically is caused by anthropogenic forces (including land use changes, and greenhouse gases of various kinds)?”. For whatever reason,  (1) and (2)  tend to get conflated in various accounts I’ve seen.

My view, based on exploring the models used in attribution studies, and having some idea about all the factors involved in big fires besides weather, is that no one really has a clue and it might not be all that helpful to pursue it because some of the uncertainty would be extraordinarily difficult to reduce, and possibly not worth the investment, when there are other questions that are more likely and more needed to be answered.  But the conversation I would like to have specifically is:  what difference would it make if if were 0%, 10% (caused by some mix of human factors)  30%, 50%, 70% or 100% (that would mean past fire suppression has 0 impact, which seems unlikely, but for the sake of argument..).  Given that today we have what we have, and no one also understands exactly what will  happen, in what timeframe, if we change greenhouse gases or other forcing agents according to what kind of timeline, how would the proportion attributed to AGW change our adaptation response to the situation we’re presented with today?

I don’t know and my thinking is “not much” but I’d like to start the conversation.

 

 

Chad Hanson’s New Book: “Debunking” Myths or Generating Them?

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Mullen Fire difference in treatment of thinning lodgepole pine. From Co/Wy SAF virtual field trip.

We picked this up in the High Country News, but it was originally published in The Food and Environment Reporting Network. Since that organization is based in New York, and Dr. Hanson is based in California, we might expect a somewhat Coastalist perspective. That is, folks who want to do fuel mitigation treatments to help with fire suppression efforts motives are really are all about making money from logging. Of course, there is no market for the products for many of these treatments on private or federal lands in, say, Colorado or New Mexico, so that argument on its surface wouldn’t fly in many places.

So let’s look at this book review (the book was published by the University of Kentucky Press) and the claims therein (with the caveat that this is a review, and perhaps those are the reviewer’s words and not Hanson’s):

But the logging industry and those who stand to benefit from it – especially the U.S. Forest Service, which pockets most of the profit from its timber sales and “functions like a logging corporation,” Hanson argues – have long been preying on society’s pyrophobia, pedaling a host of now popular myths to garner support for additional logging on both public and private lands. For example, “thinning” is often promoted as a means of reducing the fuel load in supposedly “overgrown” forests, thereby decreasing both the likelihood and intensity of wildfire. And yet extensive research has proven otherwise.

“Thinned forests often burn more intensely in wildland fires,” he writes, “because thinning reduces the windbreak effect of denser forests, allowing winds to sweep through more rapidly, while also reducing the shade of the forest canopy and creating hotter and drier conditions.”

In fact, the deadliest wildfire in California history, the notorious Camp Fire of 2018, began on several thousand acres that had been heavily logged – thinned in some areas, clear cut in others — following a lightning fire in 2008.

I especially like the idea of the Forest Service functioning like a “logging corporation” despite the best intentions of the Clinton, Obama and now Biden Administrations.. who, whoops, just offered this testimony about increasing fuel treatments a few weeks ago. Clearly the FS must be telling political appointees what to do.. or, more likely, environmental NGO’s who have the ear of political appointees disagree with Dr. Hanson.

Hanson keeps saying this, despite peoples’ experiences of fuel treatments working, and of places where material is not sold, (such as the PODs or any of the other voluminous information about fuel treatment effectives, both research studies and monitoring).

Given that, it strikes me that “ecological hate speech” is an interesting characterization:

“A kind of ecological hate speech has developed around the issue of wildland fire and forests,” Hanson writes, “and it is perpetuating the removal of massive amounts of carbon from forests worldwide under the banner of benign or benevolent-sounding terms, exacerbating climate change, and pushing at-risk wildlife species and ecosystems closer to the brink.”

Perhaps in the writing of the day, you can’t disagree with other people anymore.. you must “debunk the myths” of what they’re saying. Yawn. And you don’t disagree with other people, if they say something you disagree with, they are engaging in “hate speech.” And if people disagree with you, their claims must be “spurious.”

The vitriol ramps up and the opportunity for rich discussion and finding areas of commonality ramps down.

“Nor can fires be stopped by fire suppression tactics during extreme weather, regardless of how much money is spent or how many firefighters and water tankers are employed. In the era of climate change, we can no more stop weather-driven fires than we can stand on a ridge and fight the wind,” he adds.

I’d argue that these claims may only seem compelling to people who don’t live in areas likely to be impacted by wildfires.

More on the Carbon Capture and Storage Horse Race: California Efforts

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The Climeworks direct air capture plant in Hinwil, Switzerland, binds carbon dioxide to water and pumps it far underground.(Climeworks)

Matthew commented yesterday and included this quote from Jeremy Nichols: that he’s “incredibly skeptical” that the project will ever be built due to costs and “the commercially unproven nature of carbon capture and sequestration.”

I was about to go through the points that despite being currently unproven (economically, at scale), many people, including scientists, say we need it to stay below desired climate targets. Conveniently, Evan Halper of the LA Times had a nice summary as part of a recent article on “what California is doing about CCS.” I’ve bolded the parts that might be of interest to federal lands and forest watchers.

Here’s the link to the whole story..

It is no small undertaking. Installing sci-fi-type machinery to pull carbon from the air — or divert it from refineries, power plants and industrial operations — and bottle it up deep underground is a monumentally expensive and logistically daunting challenge. It is one climate leaders now have no choice but to try to meet as they race to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, the central commitment of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, which aims to avert cataclysmic effects.

“To have any chance of holding warming below that level, you can’t do it simply by limiting emissions,” said Ken Alex, a senior policy advisor to former California Gov. Jerry Brown who now directs Project Climate at the UC Berkeley School of Law. “You have to sequester significant amounts of carbon.”

The recognition has pushed state regulators to start drafting blueprints for what could be one of the larger infrastructure undertakings in California history. Millions of tons of carbon dioxide would need to be captured and compressed into liquid form, at which point it would be either buried throughout the state or converted into materials for industrial uses such as manufacturing plastic and cement.

The state is essentially starting from zero. There are no large-scale carbon-removal projects operating in California.

…

Carbon Engineering is promising that oil extraction is not in its long-term future. The oil revenues, the company says, make it possible to get early plants built. The hope is the costs of the plants will get much cheaper as the technology is put to widespread use, making it economical to just bury the carbon dioxide in the ground.

The European company Climeworks has taken a different route, using modular units to build smaller operations across the continent. Its biggest, in Iceland, will go online soon, collecting 4,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually. That would be dwarfed by what Carbon Engineering is projecting in Texas. But there is no fossil fuel component to the Climeworks projects.

“This is scalable,” said Christoph Beuttler, a manager at Climeworks. “We can get the costs down. Just imagine we were talking about solar panels in the 1990s and how far the prices have dropped. We think the same thing can be achieved here. “

California officials say direct-air-capture developers are eyeing where in the state they can build. Some are looking toward remote areas in Northern California where they could tap into geothermal energy, as Climeworks will do to power its Icelandic plant. Others are more focused on the deep underground basins of the Central Valley, suitable for storing billions of tons of carbon dioxide.

The vacuums are just one of many technologies California and other states are investigating in their sprint toward carbon removal. Back in Washington, there is a bipartisan push to allocate billions of dollars to the construction of pipelines and storage facilities for all the carbon dioxide lawmakers envision will be diverted underground in the coming years.

One of the first projects moving forward in California targets agriculture and wood waste that would otherwise be burned, resulting in greenhouse gas emissions. It aims to convert the waste into zero emissions power using a pioneering gasification process. The emissions created during production would be trapped and buried underground.

Other efforts are focused on the potential to trap greenhouse gases at factories for such things as cement and steel. Their production is emissions intensive due to the high heat temperatures needed and chemical reactions involved, and the only option for canceling out those emissions is diverting and burying the carbon dioxide.

“Some of these facilities cannot or will not be shut down, replaced or switched to carbon-free fuels quickly enough … to contain climate change at manageable levels,” said a recent report from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory urging California to become a carbon removal leader.

The race to bring carbon removal technologies to market is getting a boost from billionaire Elon Musk. On Thursday, Earth Day, his XPrize will launch a $100-million contest aimed at inspiring teams of innovators to develop carbon removal projects capable of being scaled “massively to gigaton levels, locking away CO2 permanently in an environmentally benign way.”

Groups of scientists have meanwhile been drafting blueprints for California’s transition into the new technologies. An exhaustive study by Stanford and the Energy Futures Initiative identified 76 existing factories, power plants and other facilities in the state where carbon capture technology could be used to remove 59 million metric tons of greenhouse gas annually by 2030.

Ringside Seats at the Decarbonizing Energy Horserace

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It’s interesting to me that as a group, the technology prediction community appears to be much more humble about predicting the future than the climate modelling community.  We discussed that here.

Decision-makers and investors would benefit from learning more about why they were caught unawares by the shale revolution, and how they can be better prepared the next time such a surprise occurs. The answer to that second question is not immediately apparent. Tautologically, if we were prepared for them, surprises would cease to be surprises. But perhaps a start is for decision-makers to adapt to an increasingly uncertain and dynamic world by creating a more imaginative discourse, one that welcomes nuance and doubt as spaces for opportunity and transformative change, and sees forecasts as the beginning of a policy or investment discussion rather than the end, and forecasters not as Delphic oracles of outcome, but as the people who know best why attempts at prediction must fall short.

 

And of course, climate modelling itself depends on assumptions about technologies (and land use, and so on).  But even in our own relatively tiny world with questions like “is using wood better than concrete for the environment, including climate”?  And “what is the impact of using natural gas (and the relationship of environmental concerns to extraction and use) on Federal lands”, we need to keep track of the horses in the horserace.

X Prize winners were announced, using carbon from a natural gas and a coal plant.

Selected by a panel of independent judges, both winning teams developed solutions aimed at reducing CO2 emissions associated with traditional concrete, which is currently the world’s most abundant human-made material and accounts for seven percent of all global CO2 emissions. The two team’s award-winning technologies will be, and already are, game-changers for global decarbonization and the fight against climate change.

Launched in 2015, the NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE was a five-year global competition developed to address rising CO2 emissions by challenging innovators around the world to develop breakthrough technologies that convert the most CO2 into products with the highest net value.

The competition included two tracks, the Wyoming track that focused on the conversion of emissions from a nearby coal-fired power plant, the Wyoming Integrated Test Center in Gillette, WY, and the Alberta track which used emissions from an adjacent natural gas-fired plant, the Alberta Carbon Conversion Technology Centre in Calgary, AB. The winning teams, one from each track, converted the most CO2 into products with the highest value, while minimizing their overall CO2 footprint, land use, water use, and energy use.

Here’s another one about a zero emissions gas plant:

For the other plant, 8 Rivers is working with the Southern Ute Indian Tribe Growth Fund in Colorado. Both projects will be designed and developed this year, which 8 Rivers says requires spending tens of millions of dollars. A final decision on whether to go ahead with the facilities is due in 2022.

Net Power’s technology uses a new kind of turbine to burn natural gas in oxygen, rather than the air. As a result, the plant only produces carbon dioxide and water as a byproduct. The water can be frozen out of the mixture and the pure stream of CO₂ can be buried in depleted oil and gas wells or similar geological structures.

What’s interesting about the latter is this quote:

Though the power plant won’t produce any pollution, environmentalists are concerned about the continued use of natural gas. The production and transportation of the fossil fuel does lead to emissions, which companies that rely on natural gas will have to mitigate.

Doesn’t it seem like the question would be “what are alternate sources of energy, now, in the short term and the long term, and what are their pros and cons vis a vis the environment?  Is a pipeline or trucking worse for the environment (including, say, sage grouse) than new solar and wind installations with new powerlines? How do you balance land impacts with carbon impacts?
Does every industry “have to” mitigate its transportation emissions (say agriculture)?  Who decides which industries “have to” and which don’t? Is this rational, or is there an underlying desire to have a “scape-industry”?  Which leads back to the interview with Michael Webber here.

Forest management in the climate context

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I thought the graphics from this research article did a good job of illustrating the role of forests and forestry in climate change mitigation.

Even if there is a lot of uncertainty in the assumptions and modeling, forest management is likely where the greatest opportunities are for land management to contribute to climate mitigation.  (Note that fire management is a relatively minor contributor.)  (AFOLU – the new acronym of the day – is Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use.)

Thus, ecosystems have the potential for large additional climate mitigation by combining enhanced land sinks with reduced emissions…  We describe and quantify 20 discrete mitigation options (referred to hereafter as “pathways”) within the AFOLU sector …  We refer to these terrestrial conservation, restoration, and improved practices pathways, which include safeguards for food, fiber, and habitat, as “natural climate solutions” (NCS).

Improved forest management (i.e., Natural Forest Management and Improved Plantations pathways) offers large and cost-effective mitigation opportunities, many of which could be implemented rapidly without changes in land use or tenure. While some activities can be implemented without reducing wood yield (e.g., reduced-impact logging), other activities (e.g., extended harvest cycles) would result in reduced near-term yields. This shortfall can be met by implementing the Reforestation pathway, which includes new commercial plantations. The Improved Plantations pathway ultimately increases wood yields by extending rotation lengths from the optimum for economic profits to the optimum for wood yield.

Work remains to better constrain uncertainty of NCS mitigation estimates. Nevertheless, existing knowledge reported here provides a robust basis for immediate global action to improve ecosystem stewardship as a major solution to climate change.

Unfortunately, the major role of forests in NCS mitigation strategies is pretty minor with regard to overall climate change mitigation needs.  (I.e. planting a trillion trees won’t do the trick; we need significant emissions reductions.)

 

USDA Climate-Smart Agriculture and Forestry: Request for Comments

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There is an request for comments from USDA that concerns topics of interest to TSW readers, specifically climate-smart forestry. The due date for comments is April 29, 2021. It’s part of Biden’s Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad.

I like how comprehensive it is, and the broad range of topics, as well as the questions that directly address what tools and research are needed, and how we can all work together better. I’d be interested in getting guest posts (email me at email on donations link) or comments that describe your own ideas. Also if your organization has sent in a comment, please link below.

I already found some interesting responses in the Regulations.gov site, but it’s kind of a pain to click on every answer, read it, download the document, read it, go back to the site remembering the last name I looked at… If anyone has an easier way of reviewing comments (like tweaking it so it reads them directly into one giant pdf?). Any ideas on how to do this better
would be appreciated.

1. Climate-Smart Agriculture and Forestry Questions

A. How should USDA utilize programs, funding and financing capacities, and other authorities, to encourage the voluntary adoption of climate-smart agricultural and forestry practices on working farms, ranches, and forest lands?

1. How can USDA leverage existing policies and programs to encourage voluntary adoption of agricultural practices that sequester carbon, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and ensure resiliency to climate change?

2. What new strategies should USDA explore to encourage voluntary adoption of climate-smart agriculture and forestry practices?

B. How can partners and stakeholders, including State, local and Tribal governments and the private sector, work with USDA in advancing climate-smart agricultural and forestry practices?

C. How can USDA help support emerging markets for carbon and greenhouse gases where agriculture and forestry can supply carbon benefits?

D. What data, tools, and research are needed for USDA to effectively carry out climate-smart agriculture and forestry strategies?

E. How can USDA encourage the voluntary adoption of climate-smart agricultural and forestry practices in an efficient way, where the benefits accrue to producers?

2. Biofuels, Wood and Other Bioproducts, and Renewable Energy Questions

A. How should USDA utilize programs, funding and financing capacities, and other authorities to encourage greater use of biofuels for transportation, sustainable bioproducts (including wood products), and renewable energy?

B. How can incorporating climate-smart agriculture and forestry into biofuel and bioproducts feedstock production systems support rural economies and green jobs?

C. How can USDA support adoption and production of other renewable energy technologies in rural America, such as renewable natural gas from livestock, biomass power, solar, and wind?

3. Addressing Catastrophic Wildfire Questions

A. How should USDA utilize programs, funding and financing capacities, and other authorities to decrease wildfire risk fueled by climate change?

B. How can the various USDA agencies work more cohesively across programs to advance climate-smart forestry practices and reduce the risk of wildfire on all lands?

C. What additional data, tools and research are needed for USDA to effectively reduce wildfire risk and manage Federal lands for carbon?

D. What role should partners and stakeholders play, including State, local and Tribal governments, related to addressing wildfires?

4. Environmental Justice and Disadvantaged Communities Questions

A. How can USDA ensure that programs, funding and financing capacities, and other authorities used to advance climate-smart agriculture and forestry practices are available to all landowners, producers, and communities?

B. How can USDA provide technical assistance, outreach, and other assistance necessary to ensure that all Start Printed Page 14404producers, landowners, and communities can participate in USDA programs, funding, and other authorities related to climate-smart agriculture and forestry practices?

C. How can USDA ensure that programs, funding and financing capabilities, and other authorities related to climate-smart agriculture and forestry practices are implemented equitably?

Please provide information including citations and/or contact details for the correspondent when submitting comments to Regulations.gov.

Seth Meyer,

Chief Economist, Office of the Chief Economist.

Practice of Science Friday: Getting to Co-Design and Co-Production of Climate Models

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From Meadow et al.
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/wcas/7/2/wcas-d-14-00050_1.xml

We’ve been discussing the RCP 8.5 issue in climate modeling, this week and earlier, which reminded me of this story. A few years ago, I attended a reunion (my class’s 40th) at the Yale School of Forestry (cl and Environmental Studies (now School of the Environment). Jerry Melillo, of Woods Hole, gave a talk about climate modelling.

Jerry showed a slide of “protected areas,” and of course, having worked on the Colorado Roadless Rule for years, I could see from the map that I might not agree with the boundaries. At least not in terms of physically meaningful differences for input into climate models. Imagine how hard it would be to take the non-Wilderness parts of your neighboring forest and make assumptions about what they would or would not contribute to climate change in the next fifty years or more? My question to Jerry was “forest management is a sliding scale, from planting trees after fires and leaving them alone thereafter, to intensive forest management as practiced in the southeastern US with loblolly pine. It’s a dial not a toggle, so how do models of future land use reflect that?” His answer was that IUCN had made the determination of what was protected, and he was using their numbers. Of course, determining something is a toggle when it is a dial is a value judgment, not a scientific finding. And folks might choose toggle due to computational convenience, not proximity to validity.

Roger Pielke, Jr. and Justin Ritchie wrote a comprehensive historical account of the development and use of RCP’s, including definitions of the relevant jargon. From a history of science/sociology of science perspective. It has been the best guide I’ve found to try to understand “is our work (land-use) an input, output or both?” There are even flowcharts! Roger and Justin have a few suggestions (these are only some):

*Despite the presence of thousands of IAM scenarios in the community, and the motivation to proceed with ‘one model one vote’ dynamics where all models are assessed equally with no explicit probability statements, more regular attention needs to be given to a much simplified set of near-term, policy relevant scenarios, similar to how IEA issues three scenarios on an annual basis: a Current Policies Scenario (high), a Stated Policies Scenario (baseline) and a Sustainable Development (policy) scenario.

(I see this as fewer but more realistic options, done more frequently to reflect changes and course-correct assumptions, some of the same preferences we would have for any planning effort.)

*More work is needed to reconcile long-term narrative pathways based on an idealized year 2100 end-point with what policy makers need to know about the next few years and decades. While there are an increasing number of scenarios focused on the role of Paris Agreement NDCs through 2030, there is a significant gap in the literature for scenarios that address developments before 2050 in the context of today’s policy environment. This gap is created by an excessive focus on long-run, full century scenarios, driven in large part by the needs of the physical science modeling community.

There seems to be a need for policy folks to say “nope, that solution isn’t working for us, how about trying …?” Not sure that there is the direct connection among groups for this discussion to take place. Remember the idea of “co-designed, co-produced research” with stakeholders and policy makers?

* Climate research and assessment would benefit from a more ecumenical and expansive view on relevant knowledge. The IPCC scenario process has been led by a small group of academics for more than a decade, and decisions made by this small community have profoundly shaped the scientific literature and correspondingly, how the media and policy communities interpret the issue of climate change. The dominant role of this small community might be challenged in order to legitimize a broader perspective of views, approaches and methods.

It would be handy IMHO if that were to be a role of (at least some of) the new climate $ in the President’s budget proposal. I can imagine a multi-stakeholder group at the regional level asking questions like “what do we want from climate models to help us plan mitigation and adaptation strategies?”. How can we use our local and regional knowledge as input into the process? What have scientists learned that can be helpful to us, and what else do we need to know?

As it turns out there is quite a bit of literature on co-design and co-production of climate science. You can go into Google Scholar and search on “climate science co-production.” That’s how I found the Alison et al. paper that yielded the Table 2 above.

Climate tipping point for forests

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www.e-education.psu.edu

Add to this diagram – “Respiration (when overheated).”

We’ve talked about how older forests may sequester less carbon and dead forests release carbon (for example, here).  New research indicates that forests also sequester less carbon and start to release carbon (while they are still alive) if the temperature gets too high.  As reported here:

‘We’re in Bigger Trouble Than We Thought’

The data show a clear temperature limit, above which trees start to exhale more CO2 than they can take in through photosynthesis, said co-author Christopher Schwalm, an ecologist and earth system modeler at the Woodwell Climate Research Center. The findings mark a tipping point, of sorts, at which “the land system will act to accelerate climate change rather than slow it down,” Schwalm said.

“Seeing such a strong temperature signal globally did not surprise me,” he said. “What I was surprised by is that it would happen so soon, maybe in 15 to 25 years, and not at the end of the century.”

Other researchers commented on management implications of drought-stressed dying trees:” 

It may come down to looking at options for saving valuable, individual stands of trees,  and protecting genetically distinct and more resilient species. It could also be important to conserve corridors and patches of woodland to reduce the distance seeds must travel to enable forests of the future to spread or reconnect under more favorable climate conditions, he explained.

“We think a lot of these areas are going to go down, so where can we save some of it?” he asked.

There are obviously implications here for national forest planning.  It seems like it should be the role of the national headquarters to review and interpret the implications of new research for forest management, and to advise national forests regarding its implications for their plans and whether they should consider making changes.

Fuel Treatments and Carbon in Forests: Why Scientists Come to Different Conclusions

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Awhile back, Rene Voss commented with regard to the question “is “leaving things alone” the best for climate mitigation?”:

“There are several scientific analyses that show that leaving the forests vs. various management schemes to reduce fuels & fire risk is the best approach to help mitigate climate change.”

Mitchell et al. (2009) describes tradeoffs for managing for carbon storage (a valid goal in any forest management action) versus fuels reduction. That study suggests that, with the exception of some xeric ecosystems, “fuel reduction treatments should be forgone if forest ecosystems are to provide maximal amelioration of atmospheric CO2 over the next 100 years.” Id. at 653.

Depro et al., 2007, found that eliminating logging would result in massive increases in Carbon sequestration. “Our analysis found that a “no timber harvest” scenario eliminating harvests on public lands would result in an annual increase of 17–29 million metric tons of carbon (MMTC) per year between 2010 and 2050—as much as a 43% increase over current sequestration levels on public timberlands and would offset up to 1.5% of total U.S. GHG emissions.” (Depro et al., 2007 abstract)

Moreover, Mitchell et al. (2009) found the amount of net carbon released into the atmosphere, on an acreage basis with small diameter thinning for fuel reduction (if used for biomass), puts more carbon into the atmosphere than an average fire, on an acreage basis:

“Our simulations indicate that fuel reduction treatments in these ecosystems consistently reduced fire severity. However, reducing the fraction by which C is lost in a wildfire requires the removal of a much greater amount of C, since most of the C stored in forest biomass (stem wood, branches, coarse woody debris) remains unconsumed even by high-severity wildfires. For this reason, all of the fuel reduction treatments simulated for the west Cascades and Coast Range ecosystems as well as most of the treatments simulated for the east Cascades resulted in a reduced mean stand C storage. One suggested method of compensating for such losses in C storage is to utilize C harvested in fuel reduction treatments as biofuels. Our analysis indicates that this will not be an effective strategy in the west Cascades and Coast Range over the next 100 years.”

(my bolds)

And yet, other studies (and visible evidence) show that not burning forests is better for carbon sequestration (see the one Steve linked to here). So I went back to look at Mitchell 2009, which can be found here.

The authors picked three kinds of sites, the Coast Range, the west Cascades, and east of the Cascades (on the Deschutes). Now it may be just me, but I don’t think of fuel treatments in the Coast Range or the west Cascades. So I looked around a bit and found this interesting study by Ager et al. 2014, which indicates that no forests in the Coast Range, Western Oregon, or (surprisingly to me!) even the Deschutes are on the top 50% of areas where fires are likely to occur.

It seems likely that if an area doesn’t burn and keeps sequestering carbon that is a good carbon situation. Just like we have talked about before.. if you want to get a great deal of carbon sequestered, pick a place where trees and other plants grow well and there are no fires or bug outbreaks. On the other hand, some key questions for looking at fuel treatments are 1) is this area likely to burn and 2) are there critters or people and their stuff that need protection (despite whatever carbon impacts)? It looks like the Mitchell et al. authors selected two places unlikely to burn and said “fuel treatments will decrease carbon sequestration here.” That seems perfectly plausible. But most of us would ask “why would you even do that in the Coast Ranges and western Oregon?”. Another question is if fires are unprecedented due to cc, what do we really know about the fires of the future? Is it then “the best science” to use the past for input into models?” Or regionally downscaled climate models? Or just admit we really don’t have a clue? Or even “why do this study if the reason people do fuel treatments has very little to do with climate mitigation?”

A quick look at the Depro et al. paper that Rene also cites, shows that it is talking about timber harvests (across the country) and not fuel treatments in dry forests.

But back to Rene’s original point “several scientific analyses that show that leaving the forests vs. various management schemes to reduce fuels & fire risk is the best approach to help mitigate climate change.” To my mind that’s not what actually these studies show, and not exactly what the authors said in the papers.

Is This True? Is Leaving Things Alone Always Best For Climate? Statements Around the 30 x 30 Initiative

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On the trail to Laurel Falls in Great Smoky Mountains National Park in July 2019/NPS

Jon posted this quote from one person’s opinion about the George Washington National Forest and 30 x30. But I have seen this same concept stated in other places that I can’t locate right now.

By protection, I mean minimizing human activity in order to allow for “as natural a state as possible”. This approach is termed proforestation, letting standing forests grow and develop in complexity to their natural old growth state; such restoration is also the most effective way to counter climate change.

I think it’s what was behind many of the 20th century federal lands debates (the LTA concept-leaving things alone, except for preferred forms of recreation, is best for the environment). Still, given the narrative that Anthropogenic Global Warming is the primary environmental problem of the day (crisis), reasonable people have to wonder whether this “LTA is best” remains a true statement. You’ll notice that in the Biden Admin press release on 30×30, it mentions the extinction crisis but doesn’t state that “protecting” areas (to be defined by DOI?) will help with climate change.

So it will be interesting to see how this plays out in various news stories, op-eds and so on. But we can think of various situations in which LTA does not seem to be the best for action on reducing GHGs.

1. Build-out of infrastructure for solar and wind, with accompanying transmission; also pipelines for carbon capture.

2. Leaving fires alone can lead to deforestation and less carbon being soaked up, see Hayman Fire for example.  It’s possible that planting is OK in “protected” areas, but if you’re going for Wilderness, believe it or not, I recall at one time folks said you couldn’t plant disease-resistant whitebark pine in Wilderness because it was unnatural. Maybe it’s the breeding (so they survive) and not the planting that makes it unnatural? Would fuel treatments be OK in these protected areas, or just prescribed burning, or ??  Or maybe suppression shouldn’t occur either.   So many questions and complexities, that are not ultimately not scientific in nature.- because protection is an abstraction, and abstractions are usually defined by … those with privilege.

3. No drilling or mining of fossil fuels will likely lead to increased development on private lands and/or more imports (that’s what decreasing supply without changing demand has historically done.  Thank you economists!). Now, logically, transporting imports from another country may lead to more use of fossil fuels in the act of transporting.

Can you think of other situations in which “leaving things alone except for currently preferred forms of recreation” is not best for climate?

Sidepoint: it is conceivable that any recreation form that requires gas-powered or electricity sourced from fossil fuel energy (a high proportion of most electric grids nowadays), is also not good for the climate. However, I don’t see anyone proposing a regulation that all skiers at FS permitted ski areas arrive only by certified carbon-free vehicles.

My other point about 30×30 is that if we can’t meet our own energy and minerals needs from our own land because we are “protecting” it.. are we merely exporting the impacts on biodiversity to somewhere else, whose biodiversity is just as desirable (or possibly more, for whatever reasons that specialists in the various kinds of biodiversity can think up) as our own?

And of course, there are arguments that for social justice toward our own working classes that we would not want to export jobs. Then there’s the same old forest products argument that asks if the other country’s labor and environmental protections are as good as ours? But we still import wood from Canada, a friendly and benign ally with similar rules.  To say it gently,  our relations with countries such as China, Russia, the Saudis and so on are more geopolitically complex. Not to speak of the concept of balance of trade being a thing worthy of consideration somewhere in all this.

The logical thing to do IMHO seem to be to start with the new infrastructure, and then see what’s left to put into protection. Otherwise, it seems a bit disorganized – especially for solutions to the #1 problem and crisis in the world, that we need to act on urgently.  On the other hand, various scientists and folks like the TNC say that some places are more worth protecting that others. Hopefully, all these concerns will line up- but right now there doesn’t appear to be a mechanism to do that. Or maybe the Biden Admin will be more welcoming of nuclear because more land could be “protected?” Will be interesting to watch.

Another thought, if the US becomes a “park” country, at the expense of other countries becoming “industrial zone” countries, is that a good thing? For whom? What is the net impact on the environment?

Anyway, it seems to me that some people see 30 x 30 as just another opportunity to restate “LTA is best,” with “besides, it’s the best thing for climate” perhaps, as a rhetorical flourish more than a statement of reality.