Category Archives: Environmentalism

Weekend Postcard: Boggs Mountain State Forest

Winter is on its way in the northern hemisphere. Make sure to clear all those things that are meant to channel water: culverts, ditches, eaves, and the like. An ounce of prevention saves a ton of rock fill. If memory serves, this damage happened on Boggs Road 400 above Spikenard Creek near John’s Trail. (seeContinue reading “Weekend Postcard: Boggs Mountain State Forest”

A regulated forest

What makes for a regulated forest? A “regulated forest” consists of tree sizes in approximately equal parts (and age classes that correspond to the size classes). As the trees in a stand grow into the harvestable age class, equal volumes may be harvested at roughly equal intervals. Meyer (1961) says, it is “the organization andContinue reading “A regulated forest”

Deforestation diminishing the Snows of Kilimanjaro

Last year a Huffington Post post conjectured that the loss of snow on Mount Kilimanjaro was another sign of global warming. A team observed that Kilimanjaro’s glaciers were receding and “The increase of Earth’s near surface temperatures, coupled with even greater increases in the mid- to upper-tropical troposphere, as documented in recent decades, would atContinue reading “Deforestation diminishing the Snows of Kilimanjaro”

iPads and Kindles are better for the environment than books? Come again?

Brian Palmer (aka Slate’s Green Lantern) writes that “iPads and Kindles are better for the environment than books.” If the Lantern has taught you anything, it’s that most consumer products make their biggest scar on the Earth during manufacture and transport, before they ever get into your greedy little hands. He then papers glosses overContinue reading “iPads and Kindles are better for the environment than books? Come again?”

Deforestation: causes and cures

Cute, clever, incorrect. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations’s Forest Resource Assessment for 2005 uses the word “alarming” 20 times to describe the trend lines for deforestation. And, a commonplace inference is that forests are rapidly disappearing due to logging. Yet deforestation is not necessarily the result of logging (illegal orContinue reading “Deforestation: causes and cures”

Science Isn’t Enough: A Forester’s Search for Truth

  A presentation on 10 February 2010, by William W. Keye (of the California Licensed Foresters Association) given at the UC/USFS Pre- and Post Wildfire Conference. You may get the PDF version (with the visuals) of his talk here: http://ucanr.org/sites/Prepostwildfire/files/3765.pdf _____ In looking over the agenda preparing for this talk I must tell you thatContinue reading “Science Isn’t Enough: A Forester’s Search for Truth”