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Posted: Mon Jan 23, 2006 7:41 pm
by mountaineer
Thanks, I have seen it show up in a couple of places recently and thought it was pretty cool.
Re: Environmentalists fail to prove their case
Posted: Mon Jan 23, 2006 9:03 pm
by dave54
hikerduane wrote:Where I live on/in the Plumas NF in Northern CA,
... I've seen one a couple times close to where I live, but it has been a number of years now.
Just north on Lassen NF is the Creeks Project, very similar to the Meadow Valley Project. Still finishing up the planning stages, the Lassen folks were keeping on eye on what happened [litigation] south. Interestingly, the activities planned on both the Meadow Valley and Creeks project are nearly identical to the management of Collins Pine Company does on their lands, and Collins is FSC certified, praised by environmentalists as a responsible timber company and an example of stewardship, etc. The Nature Conservancy also uses similar forest management activities. So when someone else does it it's good, but when the FS does it is bad.
I don't know everyone who worked on the Meadow Valley project, but on the Creeks project the planning team involved a wildlife biologist, an aquatic ecologist with a national reputation, a silviculturist who describes herself as a tree-hugging hippie chick, a transportation system planner who fly fishes all the streams in the affected area, a fire planner who is a certified FBAN (to the best of my knowledge no major environmental group has a certified FBAN on staff) and a recreation planner whose family has lived in the area for decades -- all local folks who have spent a good part of their careers with boots on the local ground. Yet their competence and motives are attacked on the environmental industry websites.
The environmental industry has long since lost any credibility on forest management issues. They are now rightly seen as a barrier to healthy forests.
Posted: Mon Jan 23, 2006 10:08 pm
by hikerduane
I recall things once in awhile. Former President Clinton said something in Seattle shortly after getting elected along the lines of let local communities work things out. The QLG tried to do just that. A Sierra Club member who is a lawyer (Michael Jackson), a Forester who I think worked for SPI, former County Supervisor Bill Coates and a few others.
I didn't know it was modeled after Collins Pine. Everyone should look at their practices. Although I don't like the plantation look when going into the Caribou Wilderness via Hay Meadow.
I was talking to a rancher neighbor on Sunday afternoon and she said the logging close to where we live would extend beyond the immediate area of all of our homes. I thought the thinning and logging would only be around the outskirts of our community. Since it extends beyond some, maybe that is another reason it has been fought against.
Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2006 12:27 am
by AldeFarte
Right on Dave. ZERO credibility. They are a barrier to proper mgt. of all resources. Hunters , trappers, Fishermen{women},Timber companies, forest service managers, etc. They all have a vested interest in Sustainable harvest of renewable resources. That means healthy resource. They are the last ones that want to see things disappear. Or diminish to a point where they are no longer a viable renewable resource. I have read and am old enough to have witnessed the fact that sometimes the ugliest timber harvest is the best for the resource, because it scarifies the land and that is what a healthy forest needs to replinish. Mineral soil. Of course no one wants to see that, or a nasty old fire, but it IS healthy. The Indians had it right and they did it for entirely selfish reasons. Old growth is awsome and beautiful but not neccesarily healthy. It is the end game. Our generations seem to have a need to want to keep things the way they are. The world is not static. {I.E. climate} I am of the belief that the enviro orgasmizations have an alternate purpose other than saving the environment. Tho many people join them in the belief that they can help by doing so. Remember Luke, the power of the dark side can be deceptive. jls
Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2006 8:06 pm
by dave54
hikerduane wrote:
...I didn't know it was modeled after Collins Pine. Everyone should look at their practices. Although I don't like the plantation look when going into the Caribou Wilderness via Hay Meadow...
That plantation at the bottom of the 10 Road is from a 1940's fire. Started at the old Chester dump.
Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2006 8:11 pm
by dave54
The Meadow Valley and Creeks Projects are specifically designed to restore the forest structure and composition to pre-settlement conditions. The environmental industry supports that idea in concept (or give lip service to the idea), but oppose anyone actually trying to accomplish it with actions on the ground.
Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2006 8:27 pm
by hikerduane
One of the meetings that I attended of the Friends of Plumas Wilderness, they were discussing roadless areas and how much could be logged on the forest per year. They came up with a figure that was close to what the timber industry wanted to log. I believe it was between 190 to 230 million board feet a year, maybe only up to 210 million board feet. This is a number that the local environmentalists came up with. I would have to look it up, but from what I have seen in the local paper I believe is where I have seen it, that the amount of timber harvested now is just a small fraction of that amount.
Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2006 9:37 pm
by dave54
hikerduane wrote: ... I believe it was between 190 to 230 million board feet a year, maybe only up to 210 million board feet...
Sounds plausible.
There's more than one way to define sustained yield, but by any definition used current harvest levels are wwwaaaayyyy below that number.
CO2 and climate change
Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2006 9:49 pm
by gdurkee
but wasn't there something out recently about ice samples from thousands of years ago showing CO2 levels are higher now then they were then? Meaning there is global warming from the story. I was doubting the global warming thing but have some doubts now after that. Anyone else put a spin or further interpretation on the story?
Duane:
You remembered right. There are two articles that have pushed me pretty firmly into the "yep, it's human caused" camp. That was from a series of studies on CO2 in Antactic glaciers. From SCIENCE Nov. 25, 1005
The results confirm that the modern atmosphere is highly anomalous and reinforce the view that greenhouse gases and climate are intimately related.
and:
"We find that CO2 is about 30% higher than at any time, and methane 130% higher than at any time; and the rates of increase are absolutely exceptional: for CO2, 200 times faster than at any time in the last 650,000 years."
The other study I found interesting was a literature review of all the peer reviewed stuff published in the last 5 (?) years on climate change. None suggested it wasn't happening; most agreed it's human caused.
So anyway, both those articles swung me into the whacko rad-enviro commie-lovin' Clinton column. Happy to be there... .
g.
and now some news from the ozone
Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2006 9:49 pm
by gdurkee
Ozone hole might not recover until the year 2065
Sid Perkins
From San Francisco, at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union
The ozone-free zone that develops high in the atmosphere over Antarctica each summer was a result of the presence of chlorine- and bromine-containing chemicals may not heal until 2065, about 15 years later than previously projected.
Over most of the world, an ozone layer blocks much of the sun's ultraviolet radiation from reaching Earth's surface. However, in the extremely cold air over Antarctica, the combination of sunlight and certain gases, such as the chlorofluorocarbons used in refrigeration, readily destroys ozone.
At its yearly peak in early October, the ozone hole covered about 24.3 million square kilometers, an area about the size of North America. That's down from the hole's largest extent of 26.2 million km2 in 1998 but not by as much as scientists had expected, says Dale F. Hurst, an atmospheric chemist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colo.
The production of many ozone-destroying chemicals was banned by international agreement in 1995, says Hurst. But concentrations of some of those chemicals low in the atmosphere over the United States and Canada—parcels of air that end up high over Antarctica 5 to 6 years later—hint that the chemicals are still used in significant quantities.
The recent measurements suggest that stockpiles of such gases may be larger than scientists had estimated. Recycling and reuse of those chemicals may be extending the life of such stockpiles, Hurst notes.
Using estimates of the atmospheric lifetimes of the ozone-destroying chemicals, researchers had projected that by 2050 the ozone hole over Antarctica would shrink to the size it was in 1980, the year that it was first noted. The atmospheric data gathered over the United States and Canada now suggest a 15-year delay in recovery, says Hurst.