The sad part is that this whole thing has been obvious for many years. Who really believed that India and China would cut their emissions when they are rapidly growing countries, highly dependent on affordable (i.e. fossil) fuel? Who really believes that the US populace will, for very long, cling to policies that hurt more and more as time goes on?

Only the same folks who believe the “scientific consensus” of the AGW alarmists. The ones who call any doubter a “denialist”; the ones who think that having a paper peer reviewed makes it right; the ones who think science is about consensus; the ones who think only oil company funding can cause biased results in science, while ignoring the suppression of younger skeptical scientists in academia; the ones who know the science is settled, when in reality the models are very rough and operating in an untested domain, and are not accurate physical models to being with due to chaos, the tremendous uncertainty about accurate parameterization, and the grossly undersampled spatial and temporal domains.

Get this, true believers: even if you are right, nobody is going to cause a significant change in the atmospheric CO2 trend as a result of governmental action. IT AIN’T GONNA HAPPEN. It ain’t gonna happen even if everyone believes the models (which would itsel be a bad day). IT SIMPLY WILL NOT HAPPEN.

Which means that all the thrashing around with economy killing measures like the Cap and Trade bill. err tax, err corruption machine – will do nothing but enrich some special interests while hurting the rest of us through raised costs and a damaged economy (remember the tortilla riots in Mexico caused by our deranged corn ethanol porkfest?).

They enticed the voters with a bunch of sweet nothings:

• A pretty package labeled “Stimulus” (bribe payoffs and other pork barrel)
• One tied with a green bow labeled “Climate Change Legislations” (more payoffs, and the fulfillment of long term leftist Luddite desires)
• A gift card saying “More Stimulus for You” (more vote buying)
• Aa gift bag labeled “Medical Reform” (state control and destruction of another 1/6th of the economy)

They got them drunk on a media fueled euphoria.

Now they are rushing legislation through in order to get their satisfaction – before the victim recovers enough to object!

The thread started with a posting by the moderator linking to the BBC’s Great Global Warming Swindle video.

The initial response, posted here with permission from the

anonymous

author, was

There IS a lot of publicity that plate tectonics occurs. Darn that publicity! However, there isn’t a lot of publicity that the earth sits on the back of a turtle. Wonder why?

There IS a shortage of publicity for the “contrarian” view that the moon is really papier-maché. Why? That claim hasn’t gone through the gauntlet that is science, the scientific method and publishing system.

It is the same with the contrarian view regarding global warming: where are the peer-reviewed research projects?

The problem with the material on the contrarian side is that, for the most part, it is self-published, non-journaled, non-peer reviewed. Why are these processes important? They are the gauntlet through which science puts its work to ensure objectivity and accuracy. This gauntlet works surprisingly well; we can name on just a few fingers the times that bad science was published in the last three decades in respected journals – think Fleishman and Pons of “cold fusion” fame and SNUPY, the dog of South Korea cloning fame.

Imagine a doctor about to open you up for surgery saying, “Well, I read about this new procedure on a web site sponsored by bodyparts.com. In fact, I’m inserting into you a part made by Ennox, a multi-billion dollar company. They sponsor the web site…..but keep that part quiet. I just found about about this as I’m really clever.”

“Have the procedure or implant been verified?” you ask?

“No, but this has to be true as it is contrarian and links to several pieces on quite a few op-ed pages.”

You look skeptical. “Is there any original peer-reviewed research on this surgery?”

“Well……uh…..those peer-review folks are all alike. They are wacky. Trust me.”

I think you’d probably get off the operating table.

Imagine boarding a new jet that hasn’t gone through the testing process. Do you think you’d fly when the captain says, “Well, we’ve not really verified anything, but we didn’t agree with the way the old planes were designed and now we’re going to try this plane. Sit down and enjoy the ride.”

Science really IS a rigorous process. Scientists are conservative by nature; they aren’t into making outlandish claims or statements. Most often when their extrapolations err, it is on the conservative side. Add to this inherent careful nature of true scientists, the processes of science, which create even more layers of rigor. There is a difference between peer-reviewed, synthesis-based, journaled work and self-published, non-peer-reviewed material. Sadly, most Americans can’t distinguish the two.

On the other hand, Steve Milloy and his ilk, often secretly funded through fossil fuel “think tanks”, frequently “publish” their work on the internet, write articles and op-ed pieces, and self-publish books. They don’t go through peer review. Wonder why? I think the answer is obvious. It is the same reason the “tobacco-smoking-is-good-for-you” “research” didn’t get peer review. It wasn’t true. It didn’t hold up to rigorous examination.

Here is a review of a recent denier book. The review has some good points to make. Either listen or read. here.

In the 1970s and ‘80, we were warned about the damage to the ozone hole. We changed our actions. Those changes are having a measurable effect now. Lessons? 1) Human actions DO cause changes on a global scale. 2) You can get a lot accomplished when there isn’t a large industry spreading misinformation. (Read here )

Before arguing AGAINST something, it might be nice to know what the something is. You can read the original AR4 Synthsis report at here. Doing so would seem to be logical, unless data don’t matter and one’s mind already is fixed.

Some handy FAQs are here

This led to numerous replies, which were not forwarded by the list owner (this list is a notification list, not a mailing list).

My response was is the first response on this post. Please feel free to comment.

Death…is bad for the environment… toxic… [err.. they told us living was]. An alternative is the green burial movement. [blah] biodegradable [blah] [buried in] land uncluttered by headstones…

Brenda Proffitt…recently bought plots in a green cemetery… “I pretty much live by the reduce, reuse, recycle mantra,” Proffitt says. She likes the idea of returning to ancient, no-frills burial traditions…

Ah, no frills traditions like, say, Egyptian pyramids? That’s pretty ancient. Celtic burial mounds? Inca sacrificial burial pits?

At least she’s going to have sacred words spoken over her:

  biodegradable
                         uncluttered
              no-frills
    recycle
                 reuse

It appears that terminal ignorance is a requirement for those of the greenish persuasion.

Did you know that accidental coal mine fires in China continuously contribute as much CO2 to the atmosphere as all of the cars and light trucks in the US?

US cars emit 333 million tons of CO2 per year (337 in 1999).

Chinese coal mine first contribute about 330 million tons of carbon dioxide each year.

The Carbon Fund has the dumbest motto yet:

Toward a Zero Carbon World

We carbon-based life forms hope they don’t reach their goal.

The northern snakehead is an endangered species of fish living in and near the Potomac River. This unusual species can also crawl across land, a trait that could indicate genes useful for medical research.

The snakehead habitat is 68 million acres in 11 Eastern States and Washington, D.C.

The Endangered Species Act, already in widespread use in the West, requires strict restrictions on building, transportation and recreation in the habitat area in order to protect the fish. Currently, the snakehead is listed as an injurious species, denying it the listing it deserves. Injurious means that the government has determined it to be harmful to resources, other wildlife, forests or agriculture. However, the gray wolf (Canis Lupus) and red wolf (Canis rufus) are injurious by that definition and yet carry the “endangered” protection. The snakehead, far less damaging or dangerous than the wolf, is at least as deserving of protection. Furthermore, it must be protected under treaties signed by the United States including the Convention on Nature Protection and Wildlife Preservation in the Western Hemisphere.

Protections should include restrictions on the use of motorized craft on habitat waterways; review of all building projects to assure they will not block the over-land travel of the fish; restrictions on or prevention of commercial and amateur fishing in the habitat waterways; restriction on agricultural practices which may block movement of, or kill individual members of this species; creation of fish walkways under all roads and highways in the affected area; research funding to assure the efficacy of these measures, as there has been little evidence of success in conservation methods ordered under the Act for other species, as indicated by the failure to remove any species from the list in the last 30 years.

Westerners love our land and nature, and so a Colorado county government officials are leading the way in protecting the fish on the east coast. This provides the vast experience of the west with this law to assist the east coast in meeting it’s needs and obligation to protect endangered species.

See this Washington Times Article for how you can help.

The global warming alarmists look to the UN’s IPCC report (which comes out periodically) for the best scientific information on the subject. The report has an executive summary, which is highly edited in a political manner, and which is the only thing reported in the press. The main body of the report, which is written by the actual scientific committee is much less alarmist and expresses great uncertainty.

The Kyoto treaty is a fraud, and its proponents know it…. read on….

If you put the Kyoto treaty into the IPCC computer model, you find that the difference Kyoto would make by 2100 (the normal benchmark year) cannot be measured. That is, the predicted change in global average temperature (or pick your parameter) is so small that one could not tell, by looking at the temperature data, whether or not Kyoto had been in effect for 100 years. Looked at another way, Kyoto does not end anthropogenic warming, but only slows it down by 6 years out of 100.

If you pin down a knowledgeable Kyoto advocate and ask them about this, they will (if they are honest) admit that this is true. You will then learn that the purpose of Kyoto is “to get a climate control regime started.” Translated, this means “to stop anthropogenic global warming, we must make drastic cuts in CO2 usage in the future. But those will be enormously economically damaging and are not politically possible. So, we will start with a little step. Then we will do another little step, and eventually sneak the whole thing in.” Of course, one may also notice that Kyoto was written in a way to hurt the United States to the benefit of western Europe, China and India.

And remember, this is all based on computer models. So back to the “science…”

Consider the models. The climatological global circulation models (GCM’s) suffer from a number of problems. They do not come anywhere closes to modelling the atmospheric physics at high temporal and spatial resolution, much less oceanographic physics and biological processes – all of which are very significant. For atmospheric and oceanographics, the fundamental equations are all known and can at least be modelled at low resolution. Biological effects are much less well understood.

Furthermore, models essentially simulate weather, which is known to be chaotic. However, climate may not be chaotic, so the modellers make the assumption that over the long term (climate) the chaos balances out. This assumption may or may not be valid. In any case, the data is are most certainly wrong at any point in space/time during a model run, because at any particular point, you are looking at weather, not climate! In addition, physics based models cannot predict the past 150 years (which is how long we have primary temperature records for).

But models, because they are dealing with chaotic phenomenon and also do not have the computing power to resolve small time or distance scales, are “parameterized.” Parameterization means that one throws in a number or vector or array or whatever to account for something to hard to model. For example, the topography cannot be modelled at a lot of spatial detail, so you might have a tweak that “accounts for” how rough it is in a grid volume. Naturally, selecting these numbers is rather difficult, and controversial. As a result, one can sit around and tweak models to say all sorts of different things, just by fiddling with the paramters. So of course, the first challenge is to tweak it to show the past. Now a model which shows the last 150 years is achievable with this tweaking, but there is no reason to believe it will predict next year, much less 100 years into the future! There are too many parameters, and there are no doubt a very large set of parameter sets which would predict the past, with wildly different futures. Thus the tendency is to end up with models chosen by selection bias rather than science.

Furthermore, an assertion was made above that the temperature matches well the CO2 increase in the atmosphere (which has been substantial – mankind has increased the CO2 by about one third). But this is simply not true. Most of the temperature rise took place before most of the CO2 increase. Then the temperature settled down, and then rose rapidly the last 10 or 20 years. This does NOT match the CO2 concentration trend, which is far smoother.

Additionally, CO2 is a minor greenhouse gas. It is only 375 (or so) parts per million in the atmosphere. A far more significant greenhouse gas is water vapor, which has a much higher concentration. So be sure not to run your hydrogen powered cars… they produce water vapor! The fact that water vapor is so significant greatly complicates the modelling, because the it may cause a positive or negative feedback as CO2 is increased. Also, as another poster mentioned, condensed water, in the form of water or ice clouds, has powerful greenhouse effects, and whether the sign is positive or negative depends on droplet size and whether it is ice or not! Now the models have to somehow tell us what the clouds are going to be like through the next 100 years.

Of course, climatologists are not content with using just the last 150 years of data, since in climatological time scales it is not enough from which to draw valid conclusions. Hence they also use paleoclimatological techniques in an attempt to construct both the CO2 and temperature records into the past. Unfortunately, these techniques are not very good. They rely on chains of assumptions and also use very sparsely sampled data. One favorite is tree rings, which are really nifty because one can get precision in time measurement down to the year or better. But whether a tree ring is wide or narrow depends on many factors, such as temperature, rainfall, fire, mean cloudiness, nutrient competition, sunlight competition and even CO2 concentration. Hence the paleoclimatic data is pretty unreliable. Ice cores have their own problems, and of course sample only tiny spots on earth.

Finally, regarding Kyoto, if the science shown above hasn’t convinced you that it is an extremely dumb idea, consider that for it to achieve its neglible effects, mankind must behave itself for the next 100 years. No major wars, no big energy using rogue nations, no technological changes that invalidate the assumptions, etc. So just imagine that it is 1903 and we have the same data and are trying to achieve the same results. What would happen?

Obviously, the enormous political and technological changes of the 20th century would have rendered it moot. WW-I, WW-II, the rise of the huge communist states which had zero interest in reducing pollution, the huge increase in oil use, the invention of the computer, the atomic bomb, relativity theory….. Do we really expect the 21st century to be so boring and predictable that Kyoto would be meaningful after 100 years, given past history?

Kyoto is a fraud and a stupid idea. The Russians are doing us a great favor by killing it!

Then the garbage man came. Again they barked furiously and he too went away. They were even more proud.

This happens every week and is a great source of satisfaction to them.

Since the mid 19th century, CO2 in the atmosphere has risen 30%. Surface temperatures have risen about 1 degree. Environmentalists thus tell us that putting CO2 into the atmosphere caused the temperature to rise.

They too are very proud!

Recently I read that a refinery project proposed for the almost empty desert near Mobile, Arizona is being opposed on the grounds of “environmental racism.” Apparently the local press never bothered to do any research. Otherwise they would have reported that Mobile is has only 33 people in the vicinity, none of them closer than a mile to the site, and the vast majority are white!

ONSITE RESEARCH

Having driven to the area decades ago and seen no population at all, I was rather surprised at the implication that a minority community had sprung up. Thus, armed with a camera and GPS, an expedition was mounted to investigate this amazing development. The pictures are shown throughout this article. In addition, a little web research was undertaken.

Here is a picture of the pristine environment about to be protected by this doctrine:

Naturally, it is primarily used to block progress – as a useful legal and propaganda weapon in the armory of radical environmentalists and NIMBY’s. It’s especially useful since so few people understand it, much less see its effects. In accord with the idea of blocking any progress, the Clinton administration created an EPA organization (NEJAC) to ensure compliance with this dubious doctrine.

ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM/ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE – A DANGEROUS IDEA

Before continuing with the Mobile investigation, a few definitions are in order.

“Environmental justice”, or its opposite, “environmental racism” is a dubious idea that combines environmental radicalism with the thinking behind affirmative action.

The EPA defines “Environmental Justice” as follows:

Environmental Justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.Fair treatment means that no group of people, including a racial, ethnic, or a socioeconomic group, should bear a disproportionate share of the negative environmental consequences resulting from industrial, municipal, and commercial operations or the execution of federal, state, local, and tribal programs and policies.

This means that every action that affects the environment must have roughly proportional impact on all racial, ethnic and socioeconomic groups. This is, of course, an impossible standard to meet. It smacks of racial quotas in reverse! It requires the loathesome practice of defining people by race and ethnicity, with socioeconomic status thrown in for those cases where progress must be stopped and there aren’t enough minorities in the neighborhood.

This is yet one more way in which the green/left can use the courts to stop progress or block the will of the people. If this had been in existence 40 years ago, Los Angeles wouldn’t have any freeways, which, of course, would suit the environmental radicals just fine.

THE MOBILE,ARIZONA REFINERY PROJECT

In Arizona, an important $2.5 billion oil refinery project is being threatened by a dishonest application of this doctrine. See here, here, and here to read about the gasoline shortages that this refinery would have averted.

This would be the first refinery built in the US in a quarter century!, because of the actions of obstructionists! In other words, it would be the first refinery that could take advantage of decades of technological progress (like the invention of the powerful computers smaller than warehouses).

According to the Phoenix Business Journal:

The lack of home-grown gas production facilities is being blamed as one of the major factors contributing to the unprecedented fuel shortages. There are no refineries in Arizona, leaving the Valley dependent on pipelines and refineries from Southern California and Texas to get petroleum products to Phoenix gas pumps.

Supporters of refinery construction also cite May reports by the state Attorney General’s office and Department of Commerce that concluded the lack of in-state gas production facilities contributes to Phoenix susceptibility to price increases and disruptions in supplies.

The Commerce Department report also said refineries in California and nationally are operating at or very near capacity. There has not been a new oil refinery built in the United States in more than 30 years.

The site is ideal (except for the few NIMBYs) because it is far from any significant population, but has a major highway, a major railroad and a major natural gas pipeline going right through it. There is also the nations largest nuclear power plant nearby to assure adequate power. In addition, it is close to the Gulf of California where oil supplies can be delivered.

THE USUAL CULPRITS INTERFERE

That the refinery will be built out in the middle of nowhere hasn’t slowed down the usual culprits, a lawyer who represents environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity, and the very few NIMBYs who chose to live way out in the desert, next to a couple of huge landfills, the mainline of the Southern Pacific, a very busy highway, and a major natural gas pipeline. Interestingly, the same lawyer is also on the 2003 EPA enforcement subcommittee for NEJAC, something us ordinary non-lawyer mortals might consider a bit of a conflict of interest!

A previous project for this area, a hazardous waste incinerator, was also shot down by NIMBYs and Environmental radicals. Since this was before the codification of “Environmental Racism”, they had to use more disruptive tactics. GreenPeace sent activists from California to disrupt meetings, break the law and get arrested, That project was ultimately abandoned, costing the state government tens of millions of dollars in penalties and plenty more in foregone taxes. Needless to say, the environmentalists were ecstatic!

THE TRUTH ABOUT MOBILE, ARIZONA

The Arizona Republic reports:

Mobile was founded by African-American sharecroppers from Mobile, Ala., among other places.

Attorney Howard Shanker has notified Owens of his concerns that the refinery would continue a pattern of discrimination against minority communities when it comes to locating industry. The area is home to two landfills, and another large landfill is proposed.

Sounds like an African-American area!

What isn’t mentioned is that nobody lives there (the US census shows a whopping 33 people live within 4 miles of the site, of whom 5 are black, and 5 are mixed race Native American). Too bad the Arizona Republic didn’t bother to drive to the site or check the US Census bureau before blandly reporting the racism argument! !

MOBILE, ARIZONA IN PHOTOS

See if you can spot the residents of Mobile in this panoramic photo collection taken from exactly the former waste incinerator and proposed refinery location. You can click on any one of the photos and see the full resolution picture.

Photos are also available from Arizona Clean Fuels, the company behind the refinery project (and with which this reporter has no relationship, direct or indirect).

Of course, there is the school… which could obviously be moved if it was in that much danger. But the school is .64 miles upwind of the refinery site, sitting right on the highway and the railroad track, very close to the major natural gas pipeline, and just south of the landfills. Is the refinery going to hurt the school? Hardly!

The school and a view looking north from it to the landfill are shown here:

Other than the school, there is one visible building from the refinery site, and it appears to be part of the site. Here is the site itself:

And then there’s the view of the school from the refinery site. Look closely!

If you drive down the highway a bit, then go south a mile on a dirt road, you do find a few properties. These do not appear to be poverty stricken, but are rather mostly “horse properties” – one or more acre lots set up for people with horses. Apparently this is the group which is to be protected by “environmental justice.”

This site is more remote than ANY existing refinery in the southwestern US.

If this is a case of environmental racism, as implied by the attorney, then the race under attack must be a few lizards and rattlesnakes!

What’s really happening here is another common case of NIMBY and environmentalist obstructionism, and lying, aided and abetted by the laziness and bias of the press.

[UPDATE: 10/30/2003] The refinery is not going to be built. Although the company said that the opposition was not the reason they are going to move, I would chalk this up as an other victory to the obstructionists. Of course the company is not going to admit to such a thing, but the threat of an added lawsuit, with a short deadline to get the project built before a change in clean air rules, was enough to push it over the edge.

Now they are considering building in Yuma county, which is less favorable as a location, except for envirowhining.

But mark this prediction: the NIMBY’s and the environmentalists will do their best to block it there. Oh, and the area they are looking at is also out in the middle of the desert!

He points out that the beautiful film, “Last of the Mohicans” was filmed in clear-cut private forest!

From The Wall Street Journal, March 30, 1993 (excerpted):

Remember the dramatic scenes when French and Indian soldiers laid siege to Fort William Henry? Amid a thick forest of loblolly pines and hardwoods (less thick to areas where artillery shells were supposed to have landed), the brightly uniformed Europeans and their war-painted allies fired on the British fort, or bivouacked in the brush, or chased the film’s heroes as they made their harrowing escape in canoes.

As director Michael Mann’s wonderful adaptation of the James Fenimore Cooper classic, the breathtaking scenery was as much a star as the Daniel Day-Lewis. Mr. Mann and his producers had searched the entire eastern half of the U.S. to find a suitable backdrop for their epic, and finally decided to shoot most of the movie in North Carolina’s mountains. Mr. Mann was aiming for realism, for an accurate depiction of what the virgin forests of the upper Hudson Valley looked like in 1757.

He found the stage for the siege of Fort Henry in a corporate-managed private forest on North Carolina’s Lake James. Every tree you see in those scenes is between nine and 22 years old. In addition, they were all the product of clear-cutting.

Free-market environmental-ists have arguing for years that private management of resources such as forests, generates better results than public management for the simple reason that private owners seek a maximum return on their investment.

In the long run, it’s crazy for a private owner to strip his land of every tree without replanting them. And indeed , the evidence shows that lumber companies and other private owners do replant millions of trees a year. In North Caroling alone, there are more acres of commercial forest than there were in 1938. Pine forests are growing in size, not shrinking, even as the state’s forest- related industries rank first or second in the country in virtually every kind of lumber, wood product or furniture.

Somehow, the notion that a relatively young forest could play the role of an old-growth forest of the 18th century frontier seems hard for people to buy. In North Carolina, the prominence of the beautiful mountain ranges and pine forests in “Last of the Mohicans” gave environmentalists an opportunity to crow. See, they said, forests don’t have to be cut down to be profitable. We can film them and bring tourists to them. If we allow greedy companies to clear-cut our precious tees, we’ll lose this all-important resource!

Yes, these environmentalists would flunk freshman economics, but their basic facts aren’t even right. George Moyers is a forester is a forester with Crescent Resources, a subsidiary of the Charlotte-based Duke Power Co. He’s managed Crescent forests like the Lake James property for 30 years. Mr. Moyers pointed out in an interview with Duke Power News that clear-cutting is an appropriate practice for trees that are “shade intolerant,” such as white and yellow pines. They grow best in open sunlight.

“The point I would make to opponents of clear-cutting is this,” he says. “These film producers selected one of the most intensively managed forests in the country to make this film—and they selected it for its scenic and natural beauty. When we harvested the old timber stands and planted the new ones, it changed the scenery, no doubt about it. But, the beauty of this site in the movie shows you just how quickly the new forest comes back, better than ever.”

Clear-cutting isn’t a good idea in other kinds of forests. But a blanket condemnation of the practice is silly. And employing the appropriate technique for harvesting trees in particular areas is something that private companies can do much better than some kind of state or federal planning regime. They have economic incentives to make the right decision, while public managers face either subsidy distortions of the market or pressure from the extreme antilogging lobby.

Note the subtleties here that environmentalists tend to miss: clear-cutting isn’t good for all forests, but is good for some; private industry has incentives that lead to good forest management (although I would point out that some amount of government oversight is needed to prevent a “tragedy of the commons” situation on public lands).

Outside of economics, but significantly different from the religious environmentalists, is the view of conservationists: forests are important for more than lumber protection, so we don’t want massive clearcutting everywhere. Some forests should be managed for aesthetic use by people, and for animal habitat, so that people can enjoy or use the critters.

But never fear, the same Tucsonian idiots are trying to block-off a much wider area, stopping not only power lines but most everything else. They want to set aside 64 SQUARE MILES of prime land PER OWL (a total of 1920 square miles!) to protect a pygmy owl – although they can only find 18 of the critters. Even the left-wing moonbat 9th Circuit court found that too much to swallow, and sent it back for review (i.e. make an argument that sounds better so we can approve this land grab without being lynched).

Haven’t they ever heard of Darwin and the fitness of species? One might suspect that the rarity of these owls is due to natural The birds are probably so rare because they can’t find each other in all that land!

Go figure…

From USA TODAY:

The Bush administration and Congress, pressing to enact a “Healthy Forests Initiative” that calls for thinning 20 million acres of forest, are “on the right track,” said Dirk Kempthorne, Idaho’s Republican governor, refecting [sic] the opinion of most on the tour.

But if the governors had gone instead to the scene of Colorado’s worst wildfire, the Hayman fire of 2002, they might have had a bit more skepticism about the beneficial effects of forest thinning.
Yes, let’s take one anecdote and draw our conclusions from that…

Click here for information on the billboard shown above, and the Rodeo-Chedeski fire that burned up so much of our beautiful Arizona ponderosa forest.

“Thinning,” concludes Greg Aplet, a forest ecologist with The Wilderness Society, “can change fire behavior under certain conditions, but it’s a mistake to say it can control or eliminate fire,” a statement supported by a comprehensive U.S. Forest Service study of Hayman fire.
Set up the straw-man: eliminate or control fire. What thinners want to do is reduce the damage of fire. If you want to see the real effects from an even larger fire in the same year as Hayman, click here

…[the Hayman fire was bad]…

The Hayman fire also tested theories about how thinning can affect fire behavior. The blaze slammed into areas that had been altered by commercial timber harvests or earlier natural fires. Some areas had also been thinned by chain saws and purposely set fires designed to clear underbrush and small trees.

With some exceptions, according to a study conducted by the Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station, the modifications had “little apparent effect on fire severity.”
So of course, only one fire, happening under record drought conditions, is enough to discredit thinning. That is what the article would like us to believe.

The accepted wisdom underlying the Healthy Forests Initiative is that poor management has left forests overcrowded, resulting in severe fire seasons in recent years.

An aggressive thinning program is needed, according to this analysis, to reduce the number and severity of western wildfires. Interior Secretary Gale Norton and other senior officials say that some 190 million acres of federal land are at severe risk of fire and must be treated.

But the Hayman fire offers several caveats to that way of thinking:

• The impact of forest thinning projects on fire — what works and what doesn’t under differing conditions — is not well understood. The research record is spotty at best.
  It is well known that reducing undergrowth and thinning normally reduces the severity of fire.
• The amount of acres that need thinning in order to protect homes may be far less than commonly thought, and much of it is in private, not federal hands.
  Thinning is to keep forest healthy, not just protect homes. Usually environmentalists are in favor of healthy forests, but certainly not if this involves any activity that might bring in the devil logging industry.
• The critical factor in keeping homes safe, according to a Forest Service researcher, is reducing flammable vegetation within 150 feet of homes and using fire resistant building materials.
  Isn’t that what we call “thinning?” I guess it works close to houses but not back in there forests? Uh huh…
• Climate cycles, including global warming, may play as important a role in the recent increase in catastrophic fires as how people manage forests.
  Ah yes… can’t have a catastrophe without “global warming.”

There is little doubt that man has had an impact on the frequency and severity of fires. That is particularly true in the dry forests dominated by Ponderosa pine trees that are common at low and medium elevation areas of the West, reaching as high as 8,500 feet.
Like what we are rapidly losing here in Arizona, with the help of environazis!

Under conditions that existed prior to white settlement, those forests experienced frequent, mild fires every 2 to 35 years or soBecause those fires thinnedcleared out underbrush and smaller trees, blazes were less severe and older trees survived. Natural Ponderosa pine forests resembled parks, with widely spaced mature trees and the forest floor covered in native grasses.
In other words, they look like they have been thinned, which of course is exactly what nature did. But nature can’t do that any more because the high density forests burn too hot, destroying all of the trees and even the deep forest soil, which is why human thinning is so important. Oh, and before white settlement, man was already thinning the forests. The Indians Native Americans burned the forests a lot as part of hunting, which helped prevent dense stands from developing. Don’t expect to learn that in this article.

Poor grazing and forestry practices, combined with nearly a century of firefighting efforts, have converted many of those forests to dense stands ripe for catastrophic fires that are difficult to stop.
Exactly. Here is the environmentalist meme: natural is good; man is bad. The amazing thing is that this article implies that thinning, which helps restore the forest to its “natural state” is bad, but only if man does it.

But for a subject of such interest, there is little research on the effectiveness of thinning. “There’s been a lot of anecdotal observation, but in terms of empirical studies, it’s a very small body of research,” says Erik Martinson, a researcher at the Western Forest Fire Research Center at Colorado State University who took part in the study of the Hayman fire.
Could this because Clinton’s Interior Secretary, Bruce Babbit discouraged such research? Could it be because such research is hard to do – empirical research means burning forests! Wait… most environmentalists themselves base their arguments on anecdotes about how things were before the evil white people came along.

In other types of forest, thinning may make little sense. Forests dominated by firs and lodgepole pines at higher elevations and more northern latitudes, for example, burn differently under normal conditions. These forests receive more moisture and are shade tolerant. So these forests are naturally far more crowded and have infrequent, severe fires.
Excuse me, but am I missing something? Aren’t severe fires bad things? Perhaps we should thin them. Oh, that’s right… nature is always right. If nature wants severe fires (such as those that destroyed entire forests early in the 20th century and killed hundreds of mere humans), nature should get them… now that’s environmental “thinking.”

Furthermore, there is some evidence that only a small fraction of the acreage cited by Norton and others may need to be thinned in order to achieve the program’s most important goal — protecting homes and communities on the forests edge.
Once again, a strawman: as if we only care about the homes. The most important goal is to protect the forests, both at the urban interface and the interior. A thinned forest normally burns at low temperatures, like the natural cycle. A forest which is not thinned often burns at very high temperatures, destroying not only the trees but the soil which took many centuries to build. This forest is replaced by vacant soil or grassland and does not recover for hundreds of years (See this current picture of 1977 Mt. Elden AZ fire).

Furthermore, forests away from homes are still part of watersheds, and if burned in a high temperature fire not only lose their beauty, but also their ability to reduce rapid run-off. In other words, they produce floods. Then there’s the wildlife… normally a matter of concern to environmentlists, but not as important as keeping out the devil loggers.

As Professor William McKillop of UC Berkely wrote today:”Thinning and
fuels reduction programs are much needed on our Western National Forests.
Those programs should not be restricted to only the “wildland/urban
interface” near communities as some suggest. Fires that occur in the
back-country are also a threat to communities, because they spread rapidly
by throwing hot embers far ahead of them when the crowns of burning trees
explode.”

…

But environmentalists worry the Healthy Forests Initiative — approved by the House and awaiting action in the Senate — will be an invitation to conduct large-scale logging in forests far removed from homes and communities at risk.
In this sort of issue, environmentalists would rather let the forests burn at high temperatures, destroying them for centuries and killing spotted owls and other environmental fetishes than to let their arch-enemies, the logging companies, get anywhere close to the forests. Because of this, environmentalists forced into law a restriction on thinning any trees larger than 12″ diameter – in other words, any trees which might interest a logging company.

And the criticism extends beyond environmental groups. Jerry Taylor, director of natural resource studies for the free-market Cato Institute, calls the Healthy Forest Initiative a “nice symbolic gesture with a big price tag.” To thin all forests at risk, he says, would be prohibitively expensive since thinning can cost more than $1,000 an acre under some conditions.
Not if you let the logging companies do it. They can take out the undergrowth as long as you let them take out some profitable trees too! Here in Arizona, what is left (after last year’s fires) of the world’s largest ponderosa pine forest has large trees very close together. When Bruce Babbit’s family first ranched in this forest (yes, of course Mr. Environmentalist’s family owns a whole bunch of it), natural fires had kept the tree density down so that “you could ride a horse at full gallup through the forest.” Now you cannot, because the big trees are too close together.

It would be far better, says Taylor, to treat the 1.9 million acres close to communities and follow the prescription of Forest Service researcher Jack Cohen. His research argues that homeowners can fireproof homes by reducing vegetation within 150 feet of their houses and eliminating flammable materials like wooden roofs.
Far better for reducing the loss of houses. But not better for the forests or the millions who enjoy the beauty of them. Not better for the watershed. Not better for the wildlife. Better, however, for the environmentalists. The more fires, the more species become endangered, and the more habitat becomes “critical” and subject to restrictions! And, of course, this approach keeps out the devil evil loggers.

Tapping the ocean to meet California’s water needs could threaten marine life,
spur development in sensitive habitats

How much marine life? Oh well, the greenies don’t care.

and turn what has long been considered a common good – the ocean – into a commodity,

Amazingly powerful! Turn the Pacific ocean into a commodity? Scary!.

according to a new report by the California Coastal Commission.

Now one wonders just how much marine life could be bothered by a few hundred square feet of pipe entrances down in the ocean. But of course, this isn’t the real issue – rather it is the fear of the loss of power by this bureacracy, in total compliance with Moore’s Laws of Bureaucracy.

Reading on, we find:

Private and multinational companies that would run desalination plants are likely to seek profit over protection of coastal resources, the report says.

profit… isn’t that a crime in California?

And under international free trade agreements, multinational companies could claim exemptions from state rules on coastal protection, it argues.

In other words, the commission couldn’t exert its usual authoritarian control!

Today’s post was stimulated by the New York Times article entitled “Climate Talks Shift Focus to How to Deal With Changes.” (See NY Times – free subscription required).

This is a major victory for the forces of sanity! Some of the lunacy of the anti-global-warming movement has been beaten back. The more responsible members (not the Sierra club, of course) have abandoned their misguided attempt to crash the economies of the first world, especially the US, by forcing a drastic reduction of CO2 emissions. It is an amazing show of sanity on the part of the green-left – I am truly surprised!

This can only be attributed to George Bush’s refusal to sign the Kyoto treaty, and the growing evidence that Kyoto was a sham.

The global warming scare is one of the longest running junk science causes of the enviro-left. It is based on poor science, and until today, advocated foolish and damaging methods to prevent the “disaster.” “Global warming” has come to mean the expected warming of the earth as a result of the release of “greenhouse gases” – usually CO2.

Unfortunately for its promoters, the science behind this scare is weak. Certainly it is not unreasonable to expect some warming as a result of CO2 growth, but to believe the specific predictions used to back proposals like Kyoto is to accept uncertainty as if it were truth.

Even more damning, if Kyoto had been accepted, and if the science behind it were correct, it’s impact on global temperature would have been unmeasurable (statistically in the noise level) over the next 100 years.

Kyoto would have made no practical improvement. Sadly, it would have had dramatic negative impact on economies, with (never mentioned) trickle down effects which would have increased third world poverty.

When challenged on this, the proponents of Kyoto answered that Kyoto was “only the first step.” It was a trojan horse… a step that increased government restrictions on energy usage (at least in first world countries)… and of course increased the power of the green/left factions over the economies… but it had no benefit.

To achieve the purported benefit, much greater restrictions on energy use would have followed, with disastrous economic impact!

Of course, you never hear that from the mainstream press in the US – but the press bias is a topic for another day.