Nullius in Verba

Weekend Postcard from Lake County – Mt. Konocti

This is Mount Konocti in the morning last week after a cold front blew through.

==============================
Here’s an update from our National Weather Service for today.

Looks like we’ll get more frosting on Mount Konocti, elev. 4305 ft (1312.2 m):

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN SACRAMENTO HAS ISSUED A WINTER
STORM WARNING ABOVE 2000 FEET FOR LAKE COUNTY FOR HEAVY SNOW AND
BLOWING SNOW…WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM 11 AM THIS MORNING TO 11 AM
PDT MONDAY.

* SNOW ACCUMULATIONS: UP TO 10 INCHES OF NEW SNOWFALL WILL BE
POSSIBLE.

* ELEVATION: SNOW LEVELS WILL INITIALLY BE AROUND 3000 FEET
TODAY…BEFORE FALLING TONIGHT TO AROUND 2000 FEET. LOCALLY
LOWER SNOW LEVELS MAY BE POSSIBLE.

* TIMING: LIGHT SNOWFALL WILL BEGIN FALLING DURING THE DAY TODAY
OVER THE HIGHEST ELEVATIONS…WITH THE HEAVIEST SNOWFALL
OCCURRING THIS EVENING. SHOWERS WILL CONTINUE THROUGH THE DAY
MONDAY.

* WINDS: WIND GUSTS UP TO 30 TO 40 MPH OVER THE HIGHER
ELEVATIONS…COMBINED WITH MODERATE SNOWFALL WILL CAUSE AREAS
OF BLOWING SNOW.

* IMPACTS: WINTER LIKE TRAVEL CONDITIONS WILL LIKELY RESULT FROM
THE COMBINATION OF MODERATE TO HEAVY SNOWFALL AND BLOWING SNOW.
THOSE TRAVELING THROUGH THE COASTAL RANGE THIS AFTERNOON
THROUGH MONDAY SHOULD BE PREPARED FOR HAZARDOUS DRIVING
CONDITIONS.

Postcard from Lake County – Mt. Konocti

This is Mount Konocti in the morning last week after a cold front blew through.

==============================
Here’s an update from our National Weather Service for today.

Looks like we’ll get more frosting on Mount Konocti, elev. 4305 ft (1312.2 m):

* SNOW ACCUMULATIONS: UP TO 10 INCHES OF NEW SNOWFALL WILL BE
POSSIBLE.

* ELEVATION: SNOW LEVELS WILL INITIALLY BE AROUND 3000 FEET
TODAY…BEFORE FALLING TONIGHT TO AROUND 2000 FEET. LOCALLY
LOWER SNOW LEVELS MAY BE POSSIBLE.

* TIMING: LIGHT SNOWFALL WILL BEGIN FALLING DURING THE DAY TODAY
OVER THE HIGHEST ELEVATIONS…WITH THE HEAVIEST SNOWFALL
OCCURRING THIS EVENING. SHOWERS WILL CONTINUE THROUGH THE DAY
MONDAY.

* WINDS: WIND GUSTS UP TO 30 TO 40 MPH OVER THE HIGHER
ELEVATIONS…COMBINED WITH MODERATE SNOWFALL WILL CAUSE AREAS
OF BLOWING SNOW.

Have one-half of the world’s forests been converted to non-forest use?

I posted recently “You’re pulling my Yang. Ten reasons to use dead tree stuff,” the Yang being half of the Taoist Yin-Yang concept of male/female, light/dark/ ebb/flow, action/reaction. The post’s message was that we can’t look at only one side of an issue as a Yahoo Green blog had done (10 big reasons to stop using dead trees). In this post, my objective is to give you tips on double-checking the statistics tossed about in the green war for your wallet. One of the places the Yahoo blog had gathered its statistics was a report by the Environmental Paper Network (EPN), “The State of the Paper Industry: Monitoring the Indicators of Environmental Performance.” According to this report (and the Yahoo Green blog paraphrased), “Roughly half the world’s forests have been burned or cleared and converted to non-forest uses. Human activity has degraded almost 80 percent of what remains of the planet’s once vast forests.” This sounds troubling, if it proves to be true.

I’m Skeptical

Of course, EPN crafted this factoid to sound troubling. You’ll make rash decisions if a gun is pointed at you, won’t you? Words matter. This rhetoric is designed to get you to take action, specifically grabbing your credit card and giving money to continue the fight. “Crisis, real or not, is a commodity,” Tom Knudson wrote in his 2001 series, Environment, Inc., “And slogans and sound bites masquerade as scientific fact.”

I’m also skeptical because of the organizations that EPN is affiliated with, including Tzeporah Berman‘s ForestEthics–an organization that, according to writer Mark Leiren-Young, “works with and/or bullies businesses into better environmental practices.” ForestEthics and World Wildlife Fund use “gray sources” and that will lead me to be more skeptical of the purported facts quoted. Ms. Berman contributed her expertise to Leonardo DiCaprio’s climate-change documentary, The 11th Hour.

Ms. Berman told the film’s producers, “I think you need to look at the world’s resources and data showing that’s showing that 80 percent of the world’s intact forests are already gone…” To which I would have said, “show me the data,” but they said, “Who are you?”

She was hired for that as a consultant after piping up at a Bioneers‘ Conference in Marin, California, “I think,” she told the group who turned out to be the movie’s producers and directors, “you need to look at the world’s resources and data showing that’s showing that 80 percent of the world’s intact forests are already gone and there are only three countries left in the world with enough forests to maintain biodiversity and ecosystem services. And that’s Canada, Russia, and Brazil.” To which I would have said, “show me the data,” but they said, “Who are you?”

There are two parts to this: (1) Conversion of roughly half the earth’s forests and (2) Degradation of roughly 80% of our present forests. Let’s start with the conversion question.

Have roughly half the world’s forests been burned or cleared and converted to non-forest use?

Probably not. In his book “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” Bjørn Lomborg states that most authorities put the figure around 20 to 25 percent.

Of course, this is disputed by Emily Matthews, then with the World Resources Institute. Although she concedes, “Andrew Goudie [one of the authorities Lomborg cites], indeed gives a figure of 20 percent net loss in forest cover since pre-agricultural times. However, its author provides no reference or authority for this number.” Of course, neither does she state why this is incorrect. She does state, “Lomborg confusingly contrasts net loss of forest cover (that is, his figure of loss of natural forest offset by regrowth and new plantations) with loss of original forest (WWF‘s figure).”

Apparently, then, the contention is that one-half of the earth’s forests have never, ever, been used for firewood, burned for plentiful game the following season, logged, or otherwise used for mankind’s purposes. I think the number is low because before humans developed agriculture, they used fire to change the forest’s composition to assure that young and tender new growth was there to attract game they could hunt.

The terms do get slippery, don’t they? “Original forest” can mean pretty much whatever you want it to mean; it does not appear in the definitions of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). The closest to what might be termed “Original” is the “Primary Forest” where the effects of humans no longer appear present. The FAO doesn’t fret about deep ecology or try to compare our current forests to forests before humans walked on two legs. They know we are in the Anthropocene Epoch. To the FAO deforestation and conversion mean the same thing: the change of use of the land (not the forest or its composition) to another land use or reducing tree canopy cover below 10 percent for a long time.

So, have half of the world’s forests been converted? That all depends on whose definitions you want to use. I would use Lomborg’s figure of 20-25 percent, since he uses FAO definitions and sources his number.

What do you say? Do you have any numbers to show that the earth has lost 1/2 of its forests?

Has human activity degraded almost 80 percent of what remains of the planet’s once vast forests?

I’ll get to that in the next post.

Definitions

Deforestation (aka Conversion), “the conversion of forest to another land use or the long-term reduction of tree canopy cover below the 10% threshold.” (My emphasis)
Forest, “Forests are lands of more than 0.5 hectares, with a tree canopy cover of more than 10 percent, which are not primarily under agricultural or urban land use.”
Degradation, “the long-term reduction of the overall potential supply of benefits from the forest, which includes wood, biodiversity and any other product or service.”

Sources:

FAO Report, “ON DEFINITIONS OF FOREST AND FOREST CHANGE”
Lomborg, Bjørn.,The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World. Cambridge University Press. 2004 p.16

You’re pulling my Yang. Ten dead-on reasons for using dead tree stuff.

Some anti-logging activists have latched onto a fact like mistletoe on a branch; it looks green but it’s hurting the trees rather than helping. The fact: Trees remove carbon dioxide from the air, and via photosynthesis combine the CO2 with hydrogen to make wood, and expel oxygen. This process pulls CO2 , a greenhouse gas, out of the atmosphere and is useful in the effort against global warming. Then, a priori, trees must not be cut down because they are waaaay too precious to be made into crass commercial stuff.

One such post on the web is “10 big reasons to stop using dead trees.” The reasons are a combination of fact and fabrication. Here’s a fact: “One tree can absorb as much carbon in a year as a car produces while driving 26,000 miles.” Fine. While the Yin might be correct, the writer has neglected the Yang. We can’t talk only of how great trees are at holding carbon and neglect the other side of the demand equation. If we don’t cut the trees what will take their place? (Hint: you can’t say “nothing does” because something will; every day 6.5 billion of us get out of bed and need to live.)

Using wood beats the scary here’s-what-happens-if-you-use-wood statistics. At the threat of being called a Once-ler, let me give you ten dead-on reasons for using dead tree stuff:

1. Wood comes from a renewable resource.

Logic should lead to the conclusion that using renewable resources rather than nonrenewable substitutes would be better for the environment. Apparently unwillingness to look at what happens if we don’t harvest trees for wood (and instead use plastics, etc.) causes this disconnect.

2. Wood products require less energy to produce.

Consider aluminum, from raw material extraction to finished product, the energy input is 70 times greater than an equivalent amount of wood; steel is 17 times greater and cement 3 times. It should be obvious that we must consider the minuses of not using wood as well as the pluses for a balanced decision. We can’t just look at the carbon that won’t be captured when the tree is harvested. We must also look at emissions due to fossil fuel use in the production (and disposal) of substitute products.

3. Using wood decreases CO2 in the atmosphere.

Once a tree is cut, it doesn’t immediately start spewing all of its CO2 into the air. In fact, when made into products, the carbon can be held for centuries.

4. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says using wood is good for the planet.

In fact, the UN says sustainable forestry can halt deforestation and forest degradation, while curbing up to 25% of the CO2. Using wood products instead of non-wood products (all of which require more fossil fuel-based energy and materials) delivers the most bang for the buck for the long run. “In the long term, a sustainable forest management strategy aimed at maintaining or increasing forest carbon stocks, while producing an annual sustained yield of timber… will generate the largest sustained mitigation benefit.” By sustainable forestry the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change means harvesting the net growth (or less), assuring the harvested area is restocked, and doing other forestry practices to assure the forest remains healthy. (For more see the 2007 Mitigation report)
Here are the numbers of net carbon emissions from producing a metric ton of product:

Net Carbon Emissions In Producing A Ton Of
Material	Kg C/metric ton
Lumber	-460
Concrete	45
Brick	148
Glass	630
Steel	1,090
Aluminum	2,400
Plastic	2,810
Source: Honey and Buchanan, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, NZ, 1992.

5. Wood biodegrades.

Plastic is virtually forever. Steel oxidizes.

6. Wood is versatile.

It can be used to build a home and to heat the home. It is also used for paper, photographic film, plastic tape, rayon fabric, and many other products.

7. Wood is not a good conductor.

Which means wood insulates very well: 8.5 times better than concrete and 400 times better than steel.’[1] And, wood doesn’t conduct electricity (when dry).

8. The timber industry is the only net-carbon sector in our economy.

California’s forests, where I live, pull more than 14 million metric tons (MMT) annually from the atmosphere. About 10 MMT get returned to the atmosphere by fires, harvesting, insect kill, disease, and the decomposition of forest products in landfills and composting facilities. That still leaves 4MMT being sequestered. Name any other manufacturing industry that has a net carbon benefit.

9. Forests and their inhabitants have evolved with disturbances.

While harvesting is a temporary disturbance, this is something that forests and its inhabitants can cope with. It is the permanent loss of habitat that causes problems.
We need to weigh not just the carbon lost when a tree is harvested but also the carbon dioxide emissions due to fossil fuel use in the production of the substitutes.

10. We simply need to use wood.

A lowered demand for wood means greater demand for something else. Without an incentive to keep a forest in production owners will need to sell off their lands, which more often than not, get subdivided into ever-smaller parcels.

—-

There has been a concerted effort to restrict logging by labeling it deforestation or degradation. Some green activists call for zero-cutting on publicly-owned lands. If green organizations truly cared about reducing CO2, they would embrace forest management. They would promote using forests because finished wood products store carbon and other products emit carbon. Rather than calling for zero-cut, they would demand that the national forests begin harvesting timber in greater quantities. They would insist that we begin using wood instead of concrete, aluminum, steel, and other substitutes. And they would see harvesting not as the end but the beginning of a new forest.

Let’s face it, we do consume stuff. The stuff we consume should be wood-based over most other products. What do you think?

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[1]

http://greenspirit.com/logbook.cfm?msid=212

Postcard from Berkeley

Peets Original — Vine and Walnut, Berkeley the Original Peet's Coffee

Last Saturday, Mary and I were going to meet with the daughter of Walter Lowdermilk–a Rhodes scholar, forester, and soil scientist–and were too early. So we wandered off to toward Tilden Regional Park and happened across the Berkeley Rose Garden. It’s on a hillside in a shallow draw that looks perfect for a concert. We lingered there a while and then used my iPhone’s map app to find the nearest Peet’s Coffee. It came up with one on Vine St and Walnut Street.

Inside the store we found the eclectic mixture of people that is emblematic of the People’s Republic of Berkeley. Conversations about politics and the environment drifted past us. We also found lots of Peet’s memorabilia. Mary and I had stumbled upon the very first Peet’s Coffee and Tea store in the country. I suspect some of the people there had been coming to this store since it opened. And since, Mr. Peet had trouble getting people to leave (at one time removing all the chairs which only caused the people to sit on the floor) they may never have left.

I Love Trees

inside_r_plantation — This is what a plantation looks like, it's hardly a monoculture

I love trees. I love them standing. And I love them horizontal. I love them on the stump and off. I love all the stuff they provide, tangible and intangible. I love all the types of forests that exist, young, old, and in between.

My name is Norm and I’m a forester. It’s good to finally say it, after all these years.

I recently met others of my kind at the California Licensed Foresters Association (CLFA) convention, March 4-6 in Sacramento. The Hilton’s parking lot held more pickup trucks than a Hollywood gala has Prius sedans.

It’s easy to recognize a working foresters’ pickup. And, don’t let the patina of dirt and mud-caked splashes around the wheel wells fool you, you’ll see that on the trucks of people who just play in the mud. Foresters don’t play in the mud. They work in mud during winter. And they work in ankle-deep dust in the summer. The way to spot a forester’s pickup is found in the back of the truck. There you’re apt to see the tools of our trade: chainsaws, handsaws, double-bit axes, loppers, shovels, tow straps, plastic flagging, and fueling dispensers (complete with nozzles and meters. You may also see some odd looking stuff with even odder names: hoedads, dibbles, McLeods, Pulaskis, and log chokers. You’ll also find tree bark, leaves, and more dirt in the back of a forester’s truck.

It’s easy to recognize foresters. Inside the Hilton, we stood out like bib overalls at a black tie affair. Carhartt jeans and plaid-flannel shirts are the most common. We didn’t don our normal footwear, our caulked (pronounced “corked”) boots, which was fortunate for the floors. By the way, do you know how to recognize an extroverted forester? He (or she, yes, there are women in the woods) is the one looking at the other person’s boots.

Like nerds, we possess an impaired fashion sense (we wouldn’t know couture from a coat rack), love of Skol, and all things earth, foresters are quite intelligent. They aren’t knuckle-draggers, far from it. Our group included several PhDs and scads of Bachelor of Science degrees. Almost every attendee was an RPF (Registered Professional Forester).

The RPF license requires seven year’s forestry experience and successfully passing a killer comprehensive exam. The exam covers everything about managing forests including: silviculture, surveying, vegetation management, forest protection, forest sampling and measurement procedures, timber growth, yield, and utilization; forest economics, forest valuation, statistics, and soils science, silviculture (forest care), mensuration (forest and tree measurements), dendrology (tree identification), wood technology (identification and wood characteristics: tensile and elasticity), to name just a few.

Despite working in the only industry that is net carbon-positive (see the table on this post ), we’re in an industry struggling to stay alive. I’m sure some can’t wait to dance on forestry’s grave and have thrown lawsuits large enough to choke a bear. Due, in part to their efforts at helping logging’s demise along, costs of producing THPs (Timber Harvesting Plan) have risen 1200 percent over the past 30 years. It’s a formula to squeeze some of the greenest jobs out of the state. As I said, we cut trees to grow trees because what is left standing is the important part. A t-shirt I saw said it more succinctly than I, “Trees. Cut ‘em down…they grow back! DUH!!!”

Stumps, logging slash of bark and branches, and skidding trails can look nearly devastated. I already see the decades beyond. My training has ingrained in me the need to monitor progress and see what has and hasn’t worked. Not everyone sees harvesting as I do.

The folks who don’t like logging also love trees. We have tree-hugging in common. They hug, perhaps, to tactilely become one with the tree and totally grok its nature. I hug trees to throw a D-tape around them to measure diameters for subsequent volume calculations. That’s my nature. Different flings for different things. You love trees your way I love trees my way.

I love trees. How do you love trees?

California’s Deforestation Due to Wildfire

This is a map of the National Forests in California. These forests comprise about half of the forestland in California.

The Forest Service graphic below shows the results of the 2000-2009 fire season in California. About 1% of California’s fires chalk up 90% of the total acreage burned. Half a million acres that had the potential to provide wood instead produced smoke filled with carbon dioxide and water vapor.

According to the United Nations, deforestation accounts for nearly one-quarter of human-caused greenhouse gases. Half a million acres were converted by fire and maybe one-tenth of that has been replanted.

How much deforestation is there?

I mentioned the other day in “What Killed the environmental Movement, that generally environmental organizations tell you how bad things are but will never say anything improved? Check this out:

[Illegal logging and unsustainable forest practices] lead to the loss of nearly 36 million acres of natural forests each year, an area roughly the size of New York state. The world’s poorest people often bear the brunt… – World Wildlife Fund

Now I crosschecked with the 2005 Global Forest Resources Assessment compiled by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO):

Deforestation, mainly due to conversion of forests to agricultural land, continues at an alarmingly high rate – some 13 million hectares [32.1 million acres] per year. – 2005 FAO report

Now, that’s close enough that I wouldn’t quibble, but the FAO adds that due to reforestation the number is less:

“At the same time, forest planting, landscape restoration and natural expansion of forests have significantly reduced the net loss of forest area.

Fig 13 - Trends in wood removals — And is the culprit illegal logging and poor forest management? Sometimes. From this FAO graphic it looks like it might be fuelwood gathering.

In fact, it’s an improvement. An improvement of over a million and a half hectares (4 million acres) per year:

Net global change in forest area in the period 2000–2005 is estimated at -7.3 million hectares per year (an area about the size of Panama or Sierra Leone), down from -8.9 million hectares per year in the period 1990–2000.

I know, I know, we’re still losing acreage and I agree with the WWF that “The world’s poorest people often bear the brunt…” but much of that is due to the United States desire not to harvest in its own forests.

Consider California. It has 40 million acres of forest with 313 billion board feet (BBF) of timber In 2000, 2 BBF were harvested.

California has 40 million acres of forest with 313 billion board feet (BBF) of timber. In 2000, 2 BBF were harvested from California and we consumed 8.5 BBF, a difference of 6.5 Billion board feet had to be imported from somewhere else.
(Source: McKillop, William. “Forestry, Forest Industry, and Forest Products Consumption in California.”)

Who Killed the Environmental Movement ?

“When the search for truth is confused with political advocacy, the pursuit of knowledge is reduced to the quest for power.”

– Alston Chase

Tales of doom and gloom are wildly exaggerated by many environmental organizations as a way to get you to care,

At the very least, they emphasize the bad and ignore the positive. Actually things have improved over the last century. Known reserves of fossil fuels and most metals have risen. Agricultural production per head has risen; and the number of people facing starvation has dropped in the developing world. The threat of biodiversity loss is real but overblown, as is the problem of tropical deforestation. And pollution is diminishing. How would I know? I’ve been around to see the changes. So has this guy, Patrick Moore:

Does this mean the world has no problems? That’s not at all what I’m saying. We certainly have problems. In fact, the Copenhagen Consensus Center has ranked the world’s greatest concerns as to where our effort should go. The Copenhagen Consensus (not to be confused with the climate talks just ended in Copenhagen) commissions “research that analyzes the optimal ways to combat the biggest problems facing the world.” It gores many Sacred Calves. Like a buyer for WalMart, the Copenhagen Consensus looks for where we humans can get the most bang for our buck. It turns out anthropogenic (a fancy way to say something caused by people) global warming wound up at #30, a fact that fries most greens and climatologists.

Speaking of goring sacred calves, Bjørn Lomborg‘s The Skeptical Environmentalist is still worth reading ten years after its first printing. It gores many of former-vice president Gore’s sacred calves.

Hot Air Cuts California Forests Out of Carbon Offset Program

In order for California’s proposed cap and trade system to be anything but a mockery we need to rip down the “Do Not Disturb” signs on much of California’s forests and commit ourselves to harvesting in California’s forests, even (gasp) clearcutting. Foresters and forest landowners aren’t the only ones who feel this way; the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) agrees.

Last month, an out-of-state special interest group derailed the forestry portion of a provisional carbon cap and trade system aimed at lowering California greenhouse gas emissions. You might guess that an oil company that pressured the California Air Resources Board to fold, but it was in fact a Tucson-based environmental lobby, the “Center for Biological Diversity” (CBD).

“We commend the Air Resources Board for its commitment to addressing the critical environmental questions related to forest carbon credits,” crowed a CBD spokesperson. “It’s crucial that the state not give incentives to business-as-usual clearcutting and other destructive logging practices that hurt our forests and do nothing to address the immediate impacts of climate change.”

It’s a case of the wrongheaded politically spinning a regulator, who should know better. Once again, spin consumes science, and those putatively for a healthy environment have obfuscated for their own gains. “Crisis, real or not, is a commodity,” Tom Knudson wrote in his 2001 series, Environment, Inc., “And slogans and sound bites masquerade as scientific fact.”

For California to be part of the climate change solution, it must remove the “Do Not Disturb” sign currently on its forests. When we don’t cut here, we cut “over there,” contributing to deforestation and environmental degradation elsewhere while also increasing greenhouse emissions. (For more, see “The Illusion of Preservation.”) And it isn’t just foresters like me who think this way. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recommends that we cut more wood, and use wood in place of concrete, steel, and other wood substitutes. By cutting forests, our forests, not someone else’s forest, we can contribute to saving the world.

For many of us the climate change debate borders on incomprehensible. I’m not saying I understand it all; but some context might be helpful for discerning how forests relate to global warming.

In 1895, Svante August Arrhenius, presented a paper to the Stockholm Physical Society titled, “On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground.” In it, he argued that thermal radiation from the sun warmed the earth’s surface during the day and as the surface cooler at night, certain gases which included CO2 and water vapor, acted as a blanket retarding the escape of heat. The idea of plates of glass in a greenhouse allowing sunlight in and trapping the heat inside worked as a metaphor for the process, hence the ‘greenhouse effect.’

The worry now is that through our use of coal, oil, gas, and other fossil fuels; we have added too much CO2 as a result could the earth may be over-heating.

In 1988, the United Nations created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to assess scientific information concerning human-induced climate change and the options for adaptation and minimizing its effects. In 1997, representatives from around the world met in Kyoto. They passed the Kyoto Protocol which sets binding targets for 63 industrialized countries to create five per cent less of their 1990 greenhouse gas (water vapor, methane, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and ozone) emissions.

In 2006, California passed a law similar to Kyoto, pegging our CO2 output to 1990 levels. Now I am skeptical that reducing our CO2 output will have any meaningful results. I think planting trees in urban settings and painting roads and rooftops white are better uses for our taxes. And we need to reduce tropical deforestation by cutting more trees in temperate forests such as California. All of these actions increase the albedo, the reflectivity of objects, which is part of the models used to predict global warming.

Nevertheless, because trees soak up CO2, the California Air Resources Board adopted a program that included allowing forest management activities for which CO2 emitters could buy carbon credits. The Center for Biological Diversity contends logging practices hurt our forests and do nothing to slow climate change. As I said before, the United Nations’ IPCC disagrees.

The IPCC says deforestation and severely degrading forests accounts for 20-25% of greenhouse gas emissions (IPCC is not talking about timber harvesting regarding deforestation and degradation). It also says the best strategies to prevent degradation and deforestation are: 1) “carbon conservation,” which includes both preventing forest conversion to agricultural uses, subdivisions or other non-forest uses, as well as controlling major fires; 2) “carbon sequestration and storage,” which means expanding forest area and/or biomass of natural and plantation forests; and 3) “carbon substitution,” which broadly means using wood products instead of non-wood products, all of which require more fossil fuel-based energy and materials. According to the IPCC, carbon substitution (wood products over cement, steel, aluminum, plastic, to name a few) has “the greatest mitigation potential in the long term.”

I’m a subject matter expert on growing wood; frankly it’s my passion. The growth and yield of forests is what forestry revolves around. Our California forests have the capacity to produce all the wood we need and export some as well, yet we import 75% of our wood. You can bet the wood we import wasn’t harvested under restrictions as comprehensive as those within California’s Forest Practice Rules requiring Timber Harvesting Plans that consider water, wildlife, and other concerns.

We need to stop trying to preserve everything and pretending that it doesn’t cause a mess elsewhere just because we can’t see it. The “not in my backyard” (Nimby) mentality outsources the mess: to Brazil, to Siberia, to countries not willing to enforce environmental regulations the way California can and will.

There has been a concerted effort to restrict logging by many environmental groups, from the Sierra Club to the Center for Biological Diversity. If green organizations truly cared about reducing CO2, they would embrace forest management in California. They would promote using California forests for the wood products that store carbon. They would demand that the national forests begin harvesting timber in greater quantities. And they would insist that we begin using wood instead of concrete, aluminum, steel, and other wood substitutes.

What can you do? Start buying sustainable California wood. At least, buy wood certified by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) or the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). Write congress and tell them to push for harvesting in the national forests, rather than letting wildfires send more CO2 into the air (the California wildfires of 2001 – 2007 reportedly equaled 30 million cars on the road for a year).

Let’s stop pretending wood comes from the lumberyard.

Sources:

Berlik, Mary M., David B. Kittredge^,and David R. Foster. “The illusion of preservation: a global environmental argument for the local production of natural resources.” Journal of Biogeography, 29, 1557–1568

Center for Biological Diversity Media Release, “California Withdraws Harmful ‘Carbon Credits for Clearcuts’ Forest Policy.” (http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2010/logging-credits-02-25-2010.html accessed 14 March, 2010)

Dekker-Robertson, Donna L. and William J. Libby. “American Forest Policy: Some Global Ethical Tradeoffs.” BioScience, Volume 48 No. 6

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Technical Paper I: Forest Sector (http://www.gcrio.org/ipcc/techrepI/forest.html accessed 14 March, 2010)

McKillop, William. George Goldman, and Susanna Laaksonen-Craig. “Forestry, Forest Industry, and Forest Products Consumption in California.” UC Berkeley, Publication 8070 (http://anrcatalog.ucdavis.edu/Forestry/8070.aspx accessed 14 March, 2010)

NASA, Earth Observatory Biography. Svante Arrhenius (http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Arrhenius/ accessed 14 March, 2010)