Millions of dead trees in the Colorado Mountains (Boulder, Grand Junction: to move, pine)

[CosmicWizard]

Just curious here...what specifically qualifies someone as an enviro whacko?

Slightly before Gifford Pinchot and Teddy Roosevelt was John Muir. He founded the Sierra Club. Does that qualify Muir as an enviro whacko?

[Mike from back east]

Cos, shame that our nation can't seem to work well without pressure groups, no matter what the topic.

IMO, many well-meaning efforts get taken over by the extreme zealots on the fringe of the group. They slowly drive out the good ones who mean well and are reasonable. Some obvious cases:

- The women's movement. They used to be mainstream, I was a member, hell, I had a wife and 3 sisters that I wanted to see do well in this life and I thought the N.O.W. was on the way to making that happen. Then, a funny thing happened on the way to the forum....the lesbian wing of the N.O.W. managed to get all of it's issues in the forefront, and pushed the mainstream efforts for equal opportunity, pay, etc, to the back burner. I let my membership lapse well over 20 years ago, never heard from them again.

- Same thing with the PETA people, started out with a PR campaign to educate people about the downside of the fur industry, now these dudes are stark raving whacko's, throwing paint on people, raiding medical labs, etc.

- Back to the topic of this thread, there are good folks trying to strike a proper balance between the usage/logging versus the preservation of national forests, who seem to have been overtaken, at least in the news, by the whacko's who drive large spikes into trees so that it makes sawmill blade explode and kill or maim the workers. Total whacko's.

Does it have to be this way, all or none, sometimes by both sides ... total clear cutting versus totally NO cutting? Where is the role of "science" in such matters of where, when and how much to cut? Where is the happy medium?

[OrionsAngel]

The devastation of forests is larger than we can fathom, it comes down from Canada and has wiped out the midwest, it only took 2 years to kill off all the trees here. It was not just what is identified as the "pine beetle", I also found a bigass bug that I had never seen before in this state, it had a brilliant distinct color pattern on it, black and white, and it had 3-4 inch antennae on it, it creeped me out bigtime. What it left behind, is the younger lodgepoles, but if a fire hits this State, (and it will), everything will be lost, and will take many centuries to replace. I can no longer walk through the forest without fear of the dead trees falling in the wind. The errosion of soil will alter everything as well, dominoe effect. There seems to be less oxygen available up here too, and all the micro organisms have changed in the soil that the trees used to keep in balence. Fungus has taken over. It is no longer pollen storms we see in the spring air, it is mold, and that will have a huge effect on humans. It would be stupid of us not to care.

[suzco]

Originally Posted by Mike from back east

. . . Where is the happy medium?

She (and her crystal ball) must be in either Manitou or Boulder.

[wanneroo]

Originally Posted by OrionsAngel

. It would be stupid of us not to care.

I think we do care but there isn't really much to be done but let nature take it's course and burn it all up. If there are no more trees to eat it might be the end of the pine beetle as well.

[jazzlover]

Let's dissect how and when nature will take care of the beetle-killed lodgepole problem, and what it means for us. First, dead trees no longer have a functioning circulatory system (in fact, that is what the beetle does--it actually clogs the circulatory system of the tree, effectively girdling it), so the wood rapidly dries out--even during wet weather. Rain, etc. can really only wet the surface wood, so once the rain stops, the dead tree quickly dries out again. So, with beetle kill, we have entire forests with dried out trees ready to ignite. The second step is for the undergrowth underneath the trees--grasses, "duff" (dead needles, leaves, etc.) to get dry enough to ignite. In dense lodgepole forests, much of that understory is already dead needles that dry out quickly. With dead trees to provide little shade for the understory, it can dry out quickly if precipitation stops. Here's the fun part: in a normal year, the northern part of Colorado tends to dry out toward late summer (late July and August) as the SW monsoon tends to concentrate on the southern half of the state. Where are the lodgepole? Yeah, you guessed it--northern Colorado. So, in a normal year, one could expect the understory in lodgepole forests of northern Colorado to dry out and have increased propensity for fire. Is this going to be one of those normal years? Maybe. Long-range forecasts indicate a more active and wet SW monsoon, but that does not always translate into stronger northern incursions into northern Colorado. In fact, the SW monsoon has been much more active earlier this year in Colorado, but the NW part of the state has stayed dry for the most part.

Now comes the "perfect storm" part. In a worst-case scenario, northern Colorado dries out beginning later this month as it frequently does. The understory of growth in the lodgepole forests--overgrown thanks to a wet spring--"browns up" and becomes fire-prone. The last ingredient needed is an ignition source. A human? Maybe. But it could be a natural event. For example, a small "plume" of monsoonal moisture invades one of the dead lodgepole forest areas in, say, Summit or Grand counties in mid-August. It isn't strong enough to bring much precipitation, but it unleashes a batch of dry thunderstorms that throw off a lot of lightning. The lightning ignites numerous spots in the tinder-dry forest. The storms have enough associated wind to get the fires moving--enough that they climb from the "ladder fuels" in the understory into the dead trees--"crowning out" in forestry parlance. With a nearly unlimited fuel supply, this kind of fire can quickly (like, within hours) develop into a mega-fire. Mega-fires are basically unstoppable because they actually start to make their own weather--the draft of the fire sucking in copious amounts of oxygen, fanning the heat and flames, and spreading embers as big as one's fists several miles from the main fire area. If several of these huge fires were to burn together, not an unlikely event with the amount of fuel available, a truly "Biblical" event could be in the offing. In that scenario, no human intervention does much good, except getting people the hell away from the fire. Even structures with "defensible space" and fireproofing usually don't survive if they are in the fire's direct path. In the end, Nature is usually the only thing that stops such fires--sufficient rain or snowfall to put them out.

How likely is this scenario? Given the extent of the beetle-kill, and knowing Colorado's weather patterns, I would say pretty darned likely. When? Maybe this year, maybe not--but I would guess within five years or less we will see this kind of catastrophic mega-fire event, probably multiple events, across Colorado. It may not be confined to the lodgepoles, either. There are significant beetle-kill problems in many of Colorado's Ponderosa forests, in Douglas Firs, and problems with spruce budworm in some of Colorado's spruce forests. Without some climatic intervention--namely an extremely long and cold winter sufficient to kill off a lot of the beetle population, Colorado's days of having heavily forested mountains may soon be over for up to a few centuries. Ignoring the effect of this type event on the "viewshed" that people expect to see in Colorado, the long-range effects of such fires would be sobering. Soil erosion would be a major one. That mixture of eroding soil and ash would cause major siltation problems in mountain streams and rivers. That would kill off most all of the fish population--so much for that recreational industry--and could threaten both the quality and availability of municipal water supplies in the affected areas--including the Front Range cities that rely on water diversions from those areas. Silt from fire areas would also dramatically increase siltation rates in reservoirs, speeding the decline in the amount of water that they can effectively store. Given that most of the water diverted for Denver, Aurora, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Fort Collins, and Greeley comes from "lodgepole country," this should be no small matter of concern, but you don't hear much about it. You will. It's not just a matter of the mountains not being "pretty" anymore--it may actually adversely affect people's ability to live here.

[treedonkey]

Originally Posted by OrionsAngel

I also found a bigass bug... it creeped me out bigtime.

How could anyone dispute such a scientifically sound report?

The fact is, we don't know what will happen with our forests in the near future, but we do know that it would require dramatic changes in basic human nature before such problems could truly be solved.

here's a quote from Al Gore "Earth in the Balance, Ecology and the Human Spirit" (1992):
“The more deeply I search for the roots of the global environmental crisis, the more I am convinced that it is an outer manifestation of an inner crisis. Indeed, it is a crisis of a spiritual nature.”

[CosmicWizard]

treedonkey quoting Al Gore:

“The more deeply I search for the roots of the global environmental crisis, the more I am convinced that it is an outer manifestation of an inner crisis. Indeed, it is a crisis of a spiritual nature.”

BINGO!

[Ticky909]

Originally Posted by wanneroo

Understood about the differences as my family has been partly in Colorado for 100 years.

But the forest will come back and regenerate as it always does. It might look different but so it goes.

I've been to Yellowstone a few times since the massive 1988 fires and it is making it's way back. Mount St. Helens as well in the outer zone, the trees are coming back.

I think Teddy was someone like me. We live in the world, not on top of it or below it. I think he always sought out the balance and that is what the enviro wackos don't get. Usually as in the case here, they make it worse.

Called utilitarian conservationism. Basically, use wisely, conserve so you can have all its benefits into the future.

[BayAreaHillbilly]

Originally Posted by wanneroo

The pine beetle epidemic is an example of what happens when you don't let nature run it's course and let the left wing enviroterrorist agenda take over. Things always end up worse doing it the eco or green way.

Since we would not let forest fires burn, nature has taken over and let the pine beetle go crazy. Sad to see of course but the eco people had to have their way and now we have a time bomb on our hands.

I'm not worried for the long term future. The short term will be painful when the fires come, but long term not worried. New England was nearly clear cut for 200 years and the forests are beautiful now. Same where I live now in PA, everything was clear cut from 1830-1910 and now a deep lush forest has returned.

There was a bumper sticker popular with the "Earth First" crowd back in the 1980s - "Nature Bats Last."

Many Gaia worshipers assume that "Nature Bats Last" means what Al Gore presented.

But nature is a crafty beast. Always got a four seam breaking ball up her sleeve.

On that note, today it was reported that Late Rust has been detected in the lower 48 for the first time. Google "Irish Potato Famine."